Gigi Raven Wilbur: Talking BDSM with the Bisexual Intersex Elder

Every morning, Gigi Raven Wilbur wakes up and does erotic affirmations. They lie in bed, get themself aroused, and then hits play on the affirmations they have recorded on their phone. 

“And I think what happens when we become erotically aroused, we become more receptive. The subconscious becomes more receptive. And so it’s really helped transform my life.”

Their sexual interests and desires have been a through line in their life, something that’s been clarifying and healing. Getting to role play a BDSM scene with another person acting as their father — he was a pastor and abusive — was the key to moving on from that trauma as an adult. 

Gigi Raven Wilbur is bisexual, intersex, nonbinary, polyamorous…the list goes on. And it’s a modern experience of queerness, I’ve found. We want all of the labels, every single one. Labels can be constricting and whereas many used to fight and push back on these limits, now I talk to more and more people who embrace these contradictions and simply overlay each identity, one on top of another.

This interview has been edited and condensed, and it’s possibly our most R-rated. 

Jeffrey Masters: I want to go back to when you were 23 and you learned for the first time that you were intersex. What was going on then, and how did you learn that?

Gigi Raven Wilbur: I had just started college, and I took a human sexuality class, and when they covered intersex conditions, I went down the checklist. Yep, that’s me, that’s me, that’s me. And I realized, “Oh, holy cow, I must have been born intersex and nobody told me.”

JM: What was going through your head? How did that feel to discover?

GRW: It kind of felt like a relief, because I remember it was a few years before that I came across the word androgynous, and that just resonated with me. I thought, “Wow, that’s what I am.” And then when I learned about intersex, that hit even closer and resonated at a deeper level, and I realized, “Oh, okay, that’s why I’m so different.”

JM: Describe what you mean by different. How would you have described that back then?

GRW: I knew I didn’t fit in as a boy, and I didn’t ever feel like I was a real boy. I identified real closely with, I think it was Pinocchio, and I thought, “I’m not a real boy.” And it just felt so good to figure out finally, oh, this is who and what I am.

JM: There’s so many misconceptions around being intersex, that something is wrong with the body or needs to be fixed—those are not true, just for people listening. However, at that time, learning this for yourself, did you worry that it meant something was “wrong” with you?

GRW: I didn’t feel like anything was wrong with me. I thought something was wrong with the medical community, because they did these surgeries on me, and I still have a little bit of scarring. And I thought, it just felt like they were playing God with my body, trying to create this illusion of making me a sex that I’m not.

JM: And in these surgeries, you were hours old, days old, right?

GRW: Yeah, when I was an infant.

JM: Did your parents give them permission?

GRW: I don’t know. My father was a minister, and they never talked about things like that. And my mother was very, kind of one of those holy rollers, she was into speaking in tongues and all that stuff. I think the other thing is that, once I got caught playing doctor with boys and girls, and my parents were in shock and said, “You’re never supposed to do that.” I was probably about 12 or 13, and it wasn’t until many years later that I came out as bisexual, and that’s when my family pretty much disowned me.

JM: Did they ever come around, or was that more or less permanent?

GRW: It was pretty much permanent. I was always kind of the black sheep of the family anyway, and I was a dyslexic ADHD kid.

JM: I believe at one point your father brought a bishop over to perform an exorcism?

GRW: Yeah. He called it a house blessing. He spent about an hour blessing my bedroom and about 10 minutes for the rest of the house. And then he put his hands on me, on my head, and cast out demons, and he said, “Be gone, evil spirits, and I bless you, and from this point on, you’re a sacred being.”

JM: Did you judge this part of yourself? Did a part of you want that blessing to work?

GRW: Actually, afterwards that night I went up in my bedroom and masturbated.

JM: Why? What was that impulse?

GRW: I never believed sex was a sin, and the church always spit it out as a sinful thing. And even now today I think, well, the Creator created my body, it’s a sexual body. And am I gonna slap the Creator in the face and say, “Oh, I’m not gonna use the gift you’ve given me?” Or am I gonna embrace it and say, “Sex is a sacred act”? And I think that’s part of what was, it wasn’t in those words back then, but that’s how I felt.

JM: I wanted to talk to you about your work in the BDSM community, but it sounds like even before you found that, sex has been a very important part of your life.

GRW: Oh yeah. Growing up I was very curious about sex, and I read all I could about orgasms, before I could even have an orgasm. And I was a late bloomer, I didn’t reach puberty till about almost 17, and that’s characteristic of intersex, we’re late bloomers. But I still liked the tingly feelings I got down there, so masturbation for me wasn’t about reaching an orgasm, it was about feeling that good, tingly, yummy feeling.

JM: I think too, one of the common themes I’ve seen doing these interviews, is that pleasure is clarifying in many ways. So the world is saying it’s bad to be intersex, it’s bad to be bi, it’s bad to be pan, all these things, and you’re like, “No, it literally feels good in my body.”

GRW: Exactly. And I said, “How can something that feels so good be evil and bad?” It just didn’t make sense to me. And so I think my response to the exorcism was that it was kind of this almost paradoxical feeling that here’s the church saying I’ve got evil spirits, and I’m gonna kinda turn it around.

JM: Yeah.

GRW: Masturbation and celebrate the things they are calling evil as sacred.

JM: You’re in your late 60s now. Is masturbation still an important part of your life?

GRW: Oh yeah, every morning I do my erotic affirmations.

JM: Can I ask what that looks like?

GRW: Yeah, basically what I do, I’ve recorded my affirmations. It’s like, you know how we’ve got negative or positive mind talk, the things we tell ourselves? When I came out of high school mine was so negative, I’d been told all my life, “Don’t even think about college,” or, “You’re a failure, you can never do anything right.” And I used to tell myself those things. And so I started turning those statements into truth statements. And so I recorded all these affirmations on my phone. So in the morning I get up, I pee and brush my teeth, and then I come back to bed, and I start raising erotic energy. I touch my whole body and feel those tingly feelings and get very hard and erect. And when I really get into that headspace of being fully aroused, I hit play on my phone, and it plays out all my affirmations, I’ve got about 20 of them. And I think what happens when we become erotically aroused, we become more receptive, the subconscious becomes more receptive. And so it really helped transform my life.

JM: So getting yourself aroused and listening to affirmations, is that something that somebody told you to do, or is it something you discovered for yourself?

GRW: I just, well, I started just with the affirmations. It was much later that I started adding the erotic element. I’ve been doing the erotic affirmations for about 10 years now.

But I’ve been doing affirmations since my early 20s.

JM: And it was your early 20s when you started to come out too, as being both bi and intersex.

GRW: I wasn’t fully out. I was out to a few close friends. It wasn’t until later that I came fully out.

JM: When was that?

GRW: Late ’80s, early ’90s.

JM: Okay, because I was wondering, this was the 1970s, it was Texas, it’s a conservative place. No one would’ve blamed you if you’d said, “Let me not make this public right now.”

GRW: Well, partly it was illegal to cross-dress in Texas when I was growing up. If I’d gotten caught wearing a dress, I would’ve been put in jail. Wasn’t until, I forget which case it was, that it got thrown out.

JM: When that case was thrown out, did you start wearing dresses in public immediately?

GRW: I had a guy I was dating, and he was into doing drag shows, so I started doing drag shows with him. And he got one of those big auto mechanic toolboxes and made it into his makeup kit. He’d paint my face and do my makeup and hair, and then we’d do drag shows.

JM: Did you have a drag name, or did you use Gigi?

GRW: I just went by Gigi. Gigi’s not my birth name, I changed my name because I was having a lot of family problems back then. They were attacking me, and one of my sisters was saying she was gonna have some ex-cop friends pay me a visit. And it got real nasty. So basically I told them that I’m gonna get my name changed, and I took my partner’s last name, Wilbur, and got rid of my old name, ’cause I didn’t want to have anything more to do with the family. And that’s when I finally said, “Okay, I’m out of here.”

JM: Yeah. So moving to your experience with BDSM, how old were you when you first discovered, had your first experience?

GRW: Oh goodness. It was when I had one of my first boyfriends, he was into it, and he was the one that was telling me, “Oh, you’ve got really negative mind talk.” And so he said, “We need to do some role play around some of your negative experiences.” And basically he played the role of my father when he was beating me, and for the first time I had safe words, and that empowered the inner child that had been so wounded, ’cause as a child I didn’t get safe words.

JM: And so that opened something up inside of you.

GRW: Yeah. Because my father beat me one time so badly I was bruised all over my backside. It was really a bad one. I just felt powerless, and it was through BDSM that I re-empowered myself.

JM: And that has lasted through the majority of your life as well.

GRW: Yeah.

JM: It wasn’t like one or two experiences and you said, “Okay, thank you, I’m done.”

GRW: No. Basically, it wasn’t one or two experiences that got me in such bad shape coming out of high school, so it took time to process. And I believe the body carries memories that are not conscious, or subconscious. And think about it, when an action happens, often our bodies will react before we even think about it. And so bodies carry a type of memory, I think, muscle memory. And it’s going, retraining my body to be more open and receptive.

JM: I should specify too that you also teach BDSM, you’re not just doing it.

GRW: Right. Basically, when I was in the community, there was nothing written back then, no training, or very limited. And so I wrote a book called The Dominant’s Handbook: An Intimate Guide to BDSM. And I interviewed quite a few doms before I wrote the book, spent about two years researching it and about another year writing the book. And I put it together because there’s so many people that get into it, especially when it started getting more popular with the mainstream, and people were just jumping in not knowing any of the foundation that I learned through the leather bars.

JM: What were those foundations you learned?

GRW: Oh, things like protocols for safety, how to put together a scene, going over medical histories with people before you play, gaining consent, and planning out the scene with your submissive before you just jump in and do it. And so it’s just a lot of protocols that you have to go down.

And when I do a scene, I’ve added some protocols that I think really help out, because not only am I interested in physical safety, but psychological safety. And that way I know, okay, it’s not that I’m beating someone that’s causing this, it’s because we’re going into forbidden territory, and we need to slow down and rethink it and reapproach it.

JM: They sound like healthy things for anyone, in or outside of BDSM.

GRW: Oh, yeah. I mean, a lot of what we do in BDSM are healthy, but in BDSM they’re required, where there’s not as much of a detriment if you don’t follow them in other areas of life. But in BDSM it can be very detrimental if you don’t follow them.

JM: This is the 101 question, but BDSM doesn’t always entail penetration and ejaculation, right?

GRW: No, a lot of people don’t do any sex with BDSM, and it depends how you define sex. If you bend someone over your lap and spank them on the bottom, you’re stimulating their genitals to some degree or another. Or even if you’re flogging them, those vibrations are going through the body, and it may not register at a conscious level, but at some level there’s some sexual stimulation. Now, it may not be sexual in the sense of when you have sex and you get aroused, but there’s some stimulation going on.

JM: And we were talking earlier about your attraction to masculine and feminine, but we, correct me if I’m wrong, we’ve kind of gendered being dominant or submissive, right? But that’s artificial.

GRW: Yeah, totally. I started as a sub, because when I first got into BDSM you weren’t, couldn’t switch, you had to be one or the other.

And I’ve had many dominant women play with me through the years, and that’s been very empowering.

JM: You’re saying even BDSM, the community has evolved to understand that people can switch between the two, and that’s relatively new?

GRW: Oh yeah, relatively, yeah. Last 10, 15 years it’s become more acceptable. Whereas when I first got into it, in the late ’70s, early ’80s, it was one or the other.

JM: How has sex changed for you, in general, as you’ve gotten older?

GRW: With sex I think it’s pretty much been an even keel. I don’t get off as many times, when I was real young, when I first came of age, it was all the time, now it’s like once a day. I used to masturbate like three to seven times a day when I first came of age.

JM: That’s a lot of time.

GRW: Yeah. Well, also I’ve learned, through some of the tantric practices, where I can come in under a minute or I can last hours, and part of it’s doing the pubococcygeus muscle exercises, that’s your sex muscles. A lot of people call them Kegels, but Kegel didn’t come up with that, that comes from tantric practices. And so once you develop, and I do my exercises every day, but as you strengthen your sex muscles, you gain a lot more control over orgasm, you get stronger and better erections. And even for women, women get erect too, if they practice their Kegels or their PC muscle exercises, then they develop firmer erections.

JM: For people who favor being submissive or being dominant…I’m thinking about a nature versus nurture, how innate are these things? Is there a grand reason why we like what we like?

GRW: Well, I often think about theater when I think about BDSM. What we’re doing in theater or in movies is we’re taking our imagination and bringing some reality to it. And so I think throughout our lifetime, well, I’ve always kinda been drawn to being a switch, but a lot of people are more on the dom side or the sub side. And so I think it’s partly personality, partly just what you desire, and sometimes your moods can change. Sometimes I’m into watching a sci-fi film, and other times I’m into watching a drama.

I don’t think it’s so fixed as we make it out to be.

JM: I was curious because I think that we can oversimplify things. We say that somebody had an experience as a kid and that’s why they prefer to be submissive. And it feels a bit reductive to me.

GRW: Yeah, I’ve never bought into that. Even early on I liked to dom, it wasn’t just my past experience, it felt good to be in control and to take control of somebody. And role-play can be so helpful into your regular life, ’cause I know even on jobs, until I started learning how to be a good dom, it was hard for me to be assertive at work, and it taught me how to be assertive, not aggressive.

JM: I know that you’re also part of a community, a BDSM community. Do you feel welcome as a bisexual, as an intersex person, as someone who presents gender-nonconforming? Were you welcome in all these groups and felt safe?

GRW: Some more than others. And even in the gay community there’s a lot of prejudice against bisexuals. I knew a lot of gay guys that said, “Oh, I’d never date a bisexual, they might leave me for a woman.” And I said, “Well, they might leave you for another man too, if you’re not very good at dating.” And I can tell you, I had a lot of gay guys say, “Oh, you just need to make up your mind and get off the fence.” And I said, “I’m bisexual, I like sucking cock, I like eating pussy, they both are a turn-on to me, that’s not gonna change.”

JM: You mentioned earlier about the cross-dressing laws that were in Texas when you were growing up.

GRW: Yeah.

JM: Lately in Texas there’s been a very big focus on cracking down on trans kids, on drag.

GRW: Oh, no, it’s horrible.

JM: Have you seen or felt a change with all the new laws that are passed or trying to be passed?

GRW: I think the change I feel is from trans friends that are just really scared of it. But me and my partner have even sat down and talked about, if things get too bad, we may need to move to another state.

JM: Do you have a line, that if X happens, you’ll move?

GRW: I think if things go back, if the laws get changed here to where I couldn’t dress the way I wanted, or be the way I wanted, or have sex with who I wanted, it would be time to go.

JM: Do you think we’re close to that, or do you still feel comfortable enough?

GRW: I think that a lot of the conservatives in Texas have gained power, but there’s also a lot of liberal people in Texas, and I think the more the conservatives try to push this stuff through, it’s gonna kinda waken up and get the liberal side more active, is my hope. And maybe it’s wishful thinking, but I think that as they try to push this stuff through, I think a lot of the liberals are gonna say, “Hey, wait, enough’s enough, you’ve gone too far with this.”

JM: Texas politics aside, do you have things you’re worried about as you continue to age and get older?

GRW: Not as much. I used to be much more active in the pagan community, the gay communities and the trans community. And now I’m pretty much creating sex training videos and doing a lot of stuff at home. I think since COVID I’m staying a little more isolated socially, except on the internet, just for health reasons. I did get COVID, not last summer, but the summer before that, and I didn’t know if I was gonna make it through, it was bad. And so having survived it, I’m a little more cautious. When I go out I still wear a mask, even though most people don’t. So I’m a little more isolated than I used to be.

JM: You have a partner though, so you’re not entirely isolated at home, right?

GRW: Oh no, I’ve got two partners. I’ve got a boyfriend, and my long-term female partner. We all live together.

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Click here to listen to the full interview on the LGBTQ&A podcast.

LGBTQ&A features interviews with the most interesting lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer people in the world. Hosted and produced by Jeffrey Masters. ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@jeffmasters1⁠⁠⁠

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