Metro Weekly

Kae Ecstatic Makes Masturbation Month Spiritual and Sexy

Author and spiritual coach Kae Ecstatic goes deep on life, sex, politics, and competing on "The Great BateWorld BateOff."

Kae Ecstatic
Kae Ecstatic

It might go unobserved by many, but May is International Masturbation Month, a glorious time set aside worldwide for commemorating the joys and benefits of pleasing oneself.

While each self-lover is free to celebrate however they desire, over at BateWorld.com, the world’s largest online masturbation community for gay, bisexual, and straight men, Masturbation May means another season of the site’s signature reality-style competition, The Great BateWorld BateOff.

Currently in the thick of its fourth season, the show pits six eager onanists against one another in a gripping head-to-head battle for the title of Master Bator (obviously). Facing weekly video challenges like “Hands-Free Fun,” “Bulge ‘N Briefs Display,” and “Getting Verbal with Yourself,” each competitor gets their turn at bat to try and win over the voting audience.

Each of the show’s contestants is noteworthy, in his own way (like the impressively skilled auto-fellatio enthusiast from Arizona, for example), but only one lives here in Washington, D.C. — charismatic yoga coach, spiritual guide, and author, Kae Ecstatic.

Already a soothing and soothsaying presence to hundreds of thousands of subscribers and viewers of his YouTube channel, Ecstatic Self, the devoted yogi will reach a very different audience with the BateOff. Though, anyone who watches his yoga and spiritual content has likely already seen the salt-and-pepper-haired zaddy shirtless or nude. (He even did this interview shirtless.)

One might say nudism is integral to Ecstatic’s practice. “Years ago, someone said to me, ‘You’ve been given this body so people will look. Once they’re looking, get them to listen,'” he says.

And people are listening, whether they partake in his spiritual guidance, or read his books, including Journey to the Ecstatic Self, or find his adult yoga content on OnlyFans (at The Great Om). “Why they resonate with me,” he says, “is seeing somebody who is visibly living a different way, who isn’t following the rules, and seems to have attained a certain level of happiness.”

Indeed, Ecstatic, who publishes under his name, Kaelan Strouse, projects an authentic calm, chatting with me over Zoom from his yoga studio. He beams unabashedly when the conversation turns to his husband, Anthony, and their search for a sanctuary to hold their yoga and spiritual retreats.

“I can only be me,” he says. “And my whole life, that has been an intense struggle because when I followed all the rules and did all the things that people told me I was supposed to do, I was miserable. I wanted to be anybody else.”

Owning his authentic self, as Ecstatic puts it, has been a process taking years, but the time and effort have paid off. “In owning my authentic self, I have found a deeply joyful life,” he says. “I have found a partner who celebrates me in my totality. I have found a day-to-day existence in the work that I do and the people I connect with that is deeply fulfilling.”

Fitting together disparate parts of his real and online life, “that should not go together, but they do, has made me live in a way that feels aligned,” he declares. And he acknowledges that not everyone will understand or get it.

“There are many who will dismiss me, but I know that there are a few who will see a naked photo of me online and say, ‘There’s something about this guy, I don’t know what it is, but there’s something and I want to know more.’ And then they’ll go find a book, or they’ll go watch some YouTube videos, or they’ll send me an email, and they’ll say, ‘I clicked because of the naked body. I stayed because of your energy and what you’re saying.'”

METRO WEEKLY: I did not know until I was pitched this story that May is International Masturbation Month. When and how did you learn about Masturbation May?

KAE ECSTATIC: Oh, God. I mean, it’s always been in the cultural zeitgeist in the periphery, but I remember, two or three years ago, I made a YouTube video about it, so I think that’s when I was officially like, “Oh, we should talk about this.”

MW: I’m just late then. How will you be celebrating this Masturbation Month?

ECSTATIC: You mean apart from being in a masturbation challenge? I don’t know if there’s a more outwardly demonstrative way of celebrating it. But I got a good session in this morning, so we are right on.

MW: Oh, great. The journalist is not supposed to disclose these things, so I’m not going to comment.

ECSTATIC: We’re all good, brother. This is a sacred space. And nothing you say leaves this sacred space.

MW: Actually, that’s not true. You’re on the record. Obviously, a lot of bators and gooners will be celebrating this month watching you and all of the BateOff competitors. How did you get involved in the competition? And why did you want to compete?

ECSTATIC: In 2023, I started a naked Twitter account, and I’ve always been very pro-body, celebrating your humanness, celebrating what makes you you. I started to post some masturbation content on there. So, that drove me to the website, BateWorld, and I thought, “Oh, there’s other people who enjoy sharing their bodies and sharing their connection with themself.”

Last year, I saw them posting about the BateOff for their third iteration of it. Then a month or two ago, they said, “Submit an audition tape to partake.” Initially, I was like, “Do I want to do this? Do I not want to do it? Is this something I want to partake in? Is it not?”

Even after I submitted the video, and even after voting had occurred, I was still going back and forth, “Do I want to pull my name from this?” Because even though I’m very comfortable posting body-celebratory content and sex-positive content, it’s always been, historically, on my own terms, and I can always create the framing device. I can always say, “Yeah, I’m doing this, but it’s about celebrating my body. It’s about connecting to something deeper. It’s doing masturbation as a meditative practice.”

So, to have to enter somebody else’s world and have them put it however they want to, and to create whatever sort of container, and be in comparison to other people for this very private act, felt a little disconcerting, but I did decide to go through with it. And now, the first challenge is posted, we’ve got four more to go. So, we’ll see how people respond to it. But it was one of those leaps of faith of, “You know what? What have I got to lose? Let’s just go for it. Have fun. Be silly.”

MW: How have people responded to it? You must have heard or experienced some response.

ECSTATIC: Well, you can go on the website and read people’s comments. A lot of nice comments. I’ve historically avoided things that put me in direct comparison to other people because I just find it doesn’t put us in the best head space. So, I haven’t been sitting there reading them all. I’ve gotten some very nice DMs from people. That’s been lovely. But more than anything, I just really try to maintain a space of celebrating for each person, who they are and what they bring to the table, and how they decide to represent themselves and what turns them on, and try to stay out of that competitive mindset of being judged even though you technically are.

MW: Since we’re talking about the competitive part of this, I’m curious about training. Were you doing extra Kegels or grip exercises? Is there any preparation involved?

ECSTATIC: People all the time ask me, like, “Hey, do you have advice on masturbation techniques?” because I am so pro showing connection with your body. But for me, it has never really been so much about the external experience of, “What grips do you use? What position do you put your body in?” For me, it’s always been more about connecting with my inner self, connecting with the feeling of vibrancy that comes from sexual stimulation, connecting with a sense of flow.

I’m a long-time meditator. I’ve been meditating since I was 20-years old, every day. For me, it’s always been more of an internal experience rather than an external thing. I don’t even really look at porn that much. With this challenge, I really didn’t think in regards to so much of, “What are they going to see? Do I have to work to show something special?” Like, I’m not a self-sucker. I don’t have impressive cum shots. It’s just, I’m going to be me, but the thing I can bring that I think is maybe a little bit different — and I don’t need to train for this — is a little bit of my outside-of-masturbation self into each of the challenges. So, in each of them, I tell a little bit of a story. I don’t think other people went quite as far in the storytelling aspect of this.

For this first challenge, I shot myself, like, “Oh, receiving the email. Welcome to the BateOff. Oh, my gosh. I don’t know what to do. Let’s create a list of different ideas of how I can do hands-free masturbation because I don’t do that,” and then trying different things and failing at them and then trying something that works.

For the next challenge, it’s the post-workout challenge, so I brought in my yoga practice, and I do it amidst yoga. There’s a challenge where you have to masturbate to yourself in the mirror, which is something that made me feel a little self-conscious. You’re supposed to talk to yourself and look at yourself. And it brought up some feelings for me. So, the way I worked around that was getting dressed for my day, putting on a button-up shirt, and being like, “Oh, don’t you ever wish you could just put on a costume and make life more fabulous?” And then me rummaging through my laundry and pulling out a Harry Potter costume, or pulling out a Gladiator costume or pulling out a kilt, playing with different archetypes. So it was less about the techniques and more just about creating a story and sharing something more of myself.

MW: Were you doing the camera work, editing, and art directing your environment?

ECSTATIC: Yeah. I started on YouTube in 2020. I got over 300,000 followers on my channel for that. So, I’m very comfortable with the camera work and telling my stories.

MW: Reading about Masturbation Month, I saw that the Chief Medical Officer of Planned Parenthood talked about how masturbation can enhance our physical, mental, and sexual health, and the health of our sexual relationships. Which is wonderful. Have you always had such a sex-positive relationship to masturbation as you do now?

ECSTATIC: Yes and no. Yes, in the sense that masturbation has been a primary sexual expression for me. I’m somebody who identifies as demisexual, so I’ve never had a lot of intercourse with other people. Masturbation and mutual masturbation have always been more of a primary drive for me.

Even with my husband, we’ve been together for 10 years, we’re both very masturbation-focused in our lovemaking. So, for me, yes, it’s a celebration of “Sex doesn’t need to be the end goal.” It’s not a replacement for sex. It’s not a precursor to sex. It can be something enjoyable, in and of itself.

But have I always felt so proudly masturbatory? No, I have not. I definitely used it as a coping mechanism for stress when I was younger. I definitely used to have feelings of shame around it, as we all do, growing up in such a sex-negative and body-negative society. There were definitely a lot of feelings, for many years, of feeling like there was something wrong with me that I preferred it to going to a hookup. Because that’s the trope we hear, especially in gay society, is why would you jerk off when you can find somebody to… Can I say fuck or boink, whatever I’m allowed to say?

MW: You can say it all.

ECSTATIC: Okay. When you could go fuck somebody. And we all know the gay trope of the stud muffin who goes and fucks five guys in one night because he can. And even though part of us thinks that maybe there’s something a little bit wrong with that, there’s also a part of us that thinks like, “Well, look at him. He’s such a stud. Let’s celebrate that prowess.” And for [someone] to say, “No, I’d rather stay home and masturbate,” it’s like, “Oh, is there something wrong with you?”

And so, working through those feelings of saying, “It’s okay to be sexual however you’re sexual. It’s okay to connect with your intimacy however you want to.” If it wants to be something shared, if it wants to be something private, if you want to go give someone a blowjob, fellatio, whatever, you can. If you want to, in one of the contestant’s case, sit home and give yourself a blowjob, you definitely can. But it’s about learning to just accept yourself where you are and say, “All the expressions of our humanity are beautiful.” Letting go of that shame of thinking it needs to be a certain way, or look a certain way, has definitely been a journey for me.

MW: I will disclose that, part of my journey, I got to skip the shame because I literally just was ignorant of masturbation until late in that game. So, by the time I came along to it, I couldn’t be ashamed of it because it was okay. I don’t know if that’s lucky or if I would have had a more exciting early teens if I knew more about masturbation.

ECSTATIC: I started when I was seven.

MW: Oh, my God.

ECSTATIC: Yeah. I was seven. And what was funny for me is — I now identify as neurodivergent, so I now understand why I did this — but in my head, I justified it saying, “Well, I don’t masturbate because masturbation is this motion, and I do this.” So, that’s how I got around the shame for a little while.

MW: I should also add I was an only child. Do you have siblings?

ECSTATIC: I was raised as an only child. My father had two sons in his first marriage of three, who were 20 years older. So, basically, only child.

MW: Yeah, they weren’t necessarily hipping you to how that part of growing up worked. Where did you grow up?

ECSTATIC: Suburbs of Chicago.

MW: I watched some Ecstatic Self videos, and I saw one that you shot with your husband, Anthony. You guys talked about meeting in Chicago, and you were an actor at the time. Tell me about the transition from acting into what you’re doing now, which is yoga, and being a spiritual guide and life coach.

ECSTATIC: Even when I was working as an actor, I was living in a meditative community. So I got super into yoga and meditation while I was studying acting at Northwestern University. And when I graduated, I moved into an intentional community — or ashram — of meditators. I would go and work as an actor during the day and in the evening if I was doing a show. And then in between, I’d be back at the center doing meditation classes, selfless service, cooking, cleaning, all that kind of stuff. Then in 2016, I had the opportunity to move to L.A. I got booked on a project that was really exciting to me, got an agent, got a manager, thought this is where I want my life to go. And I was out there for five months and just realized it’s not what I wanted. I realized what I wanted in life was genuine connection, being valued for who I was and not how much money I could make somebody, being in a community, being in a city that I loved, and being truly seen in a deep way. And I knew L.A. would never give me those things.

So I moved back to Chicago, moved in with my then-fiancé, now husband, and I took a job doing corporate coaching work, teaching leadership skills, executive presence, communication, public speaking, conflict resolution. I did that for four years, got to travel the world. It was very exciting in many ways, but I also knew that that wasn’t what I was supposed to be doing. It was more of a placeholder. When the pandemic happened, a dear friend and advisor of mine said, “You need to bring everything you’re doing all together. Do coaching work, but approach it from this more meditative spiritual angle, bring your acting background, start a YouTube channel, write a book.”

And it all just coalesced at the beginning of the pandemic. I published my first book, Journey to the Ecstatic Self. I launched my YouTube channel, got a great response right away. I started getting people reaching out to me to work with me one-on-one. And so much of my focus, since starting this specific part of the journey, has been on serving gay men. And gay men are sexual, right? We celebrate our bodies. We love to engage in sexual ways. So, if you’re going to reach somebody who is part of that community, I don’t think you’re ever going to do it in monk robes. I don’t think you’re ever going to do it saying, “Your body is sinful and it needs to be transcended.”

It’s saying, “No, celebrate your sex life. Celebrate your humanness. Realize that there is something beautiful in all parts of you. And instead of bifurcating your life or segmenting your life so you’re one person at work and another person at the club and another person with your partner and another person with your boyfriend, what if we bring all that together and say, ‘You are allowed to be your whole self and to see it as beautiful.'” And so, that’s what I’ve been doing.

MW: What did Anthony think of you doing the BateOff?

ECSTATIC: My husband has always been my biggest champion. And my husband often sees me clearer than I see myself. When he met me in 2015, he was like, “You know you’re not an actor, right? You’re a spiritual teacher.” I’m like, “No. I’m an actor.” He’s like, “No, you’re not.” So, he’s always been very celebratory about working through shame, learning to own yourself authentically. When I told him, “Hey, I think I’m going to start a naked Twitter,” he’s like, “Absolutely. Go for it. Please monetize it because I don’t want you giving it away for free, but please…” So, he’s my confidant, my best advisor, my best friend, my lover. He’s so many things to me.

So, when I approached him, I was like, “Hey, there’s this masturbation competition.” He knows about BateWorld. He has a profile on there, too. “There’s this masturbation competition. What are your thoughts? It definitely would draw attention to me in a way that I’m not typically doing.” Because I don’t do porn. I don’t do collabs on my OnlyFans. I try to make sure everything stays within the same sort of realm. Even if it’s more explicit or less explicit, it stays still within this specific vantage.

And he was like, “You know what? Why not? It’ll be fun. It will push you outside of your comfort zone a little bit.” He’s somebody who’s always challenged me to identify where I’m holding shame and holding myself back.

MW: I watched the Meet the Contestants video, and I watched the first episode. Bawdy is not how I would describe it. I think it’s wholesome. Guys kicking back and enjoying a really regular thing, but for the sake of competition. You all record separately, and you live in different places. Have you had an opportunity to meet any of the other contestants?

ECSTATIC: No. Me and Parker Woods had chatted briefly a couple of years ago [on X]. I’ve never met any of the other guys. I’ve never spoken with them. I’d like to, but no, it’s just the way things go in this virtual time.

MW: Somebody will put you all together at some point, I’m sure. Have you met Colby Jaxx, the season 2 winner and host of the current season?

ECSTATIC: I mean, I know him from the show, but I’ve never met him. The thing about living in Washington, D.C., is this isn’t New York, this isn’t L.A. There’s not a ton of influencers and creators and people that you go meet. It’s an industry town. And unless you’re part of that industry, it doesn’t feel like a lot of people have a reason to come here.

MW: This is a very company-town question, about a video you posted in July of 2024, before the Democratic candidate switch had been made from Biden to Harris. You offered an impassioned, and what you called nonpartisan, plea for people to consider the fact that the other side was openly planning a dictatorship, including policies like “replacing experienced government workers with regime sycophants,” which is 100% what has happened. I’ve watched all this stuff really closely and with horror. Has the reality of we’ve watched play out matched your expectations of what you thought was coming?

ECSTATIC: Yes and no. Yes, in the sense that so many of the things that were written in Project 2025 are absolutely coming to pass. No, in the sense of, I feel like there’s a higher level of chaos and ineptness than I anticipated. There’s a lot more, I think, ego and chest-thumping, of wanting personal validation or retribution, that I think distracts from some of the worst aspects of Project 2025, but I do think it’s an absolute travesty. We’re watching the dismantling of something that people have literally spent their lives trying to build for generations and generations. And the callousness and carelessness about it.

Am I surprised at all by the level of cruelty, or the lack of concern for people’s well-being? Sadly, no. At the same time, one of the spaces I really try to hold for myself and for the people I care about is this idea that I think there is this desire on their part to make us feel miserable, to make us feel disempowered, to make us feel disheartened, and for us to not give them that, to not give them our joy, to not give them our anger, to not give them our power, and to reclaim that for ourselves and to say, “The only choice I have really in these situations is how I personally respond. I’m not going to change their policy. I’m not going to change their behavior, but I can change me.”

So by continuing to find the things to be grateful for, to find the things to be joyful for, to find the things that make me celebrate being me — including masturbation — saying, “You know what? I’m not giving you my joy because if I give you my joy, you win. And I’m not going to give that to you.”

So, that’s one thing. And then a second thing is, as uncomfortable as it is, I often try to take a long-range point of view regarding life and civilization, and look and see that every civilization goes through periods of transformation. Every civilization goes through periods of destruction. It is deeply uncomfortable when that happens, but that is the course of life. Everything grows, matures, withers, and then dies.

Now, will this be a time of radical transformation, and we will rise, transformed and better for it? Possibly. Is this a time of dissolution? Possibly. Whatever happens, I don’t get to change that. The only thing I can do is try to ride that wave as gracefully as I can. And if it’s time to let go, then we let go and we don’t hang on to life, and force things to be the way that they were.

MW: You also expressed concern in that video that they might turn towards incarcerating people who create sexual and or adult content, especially content distributed on the internet. Is that still a concern you have?

ECSTATIC: Marginally, but I don’t think that concern does me any good. At this point, it’s not like a big mystery, it’s out there. And acknowledging the hypocrisy of that, when there’s the RNC [Republican National Convention], the fact that Grindr blows up and breaks all the servers because they can’t handle that level of connection. I don’t do sex work, but I’ve encountered people who do, and they talk about the number of senators and congressmen who they engage with. I won’t name names. I think many of us know who they are.

MW: I know a couple of names on either side of that equation.

ECSTATIC: What breaks my heart is — I want to say it’s the disrespect for humanity, but it goes beyond the disrespect for humanity. It’s the disrespect for life, that we view this planet as something we can pillage and dominate, that we view animal life as sacrificial for our needs. And I’m a meat-eater, so I’m not saying that like I’m a vegan. I had some buffalo this morning. But the same with human life — that we view human life as not being sacred, and that we have a right to legislate and take away people’s rights and joys. I think in a fundamentally well society, we would give people agency to be who they are and what they are without critique or judgment. If they’re masturbators, go be masturbators, if they’re trans, go be trans. If they’re whatever they are, say, go do you, as long as you’re not hurting anyone, go do you and live in peace. So, this need to control, this need to break people’s spirits, it’s not a sign of intelligence. It’s not a sign of emotional maturity.

It’s a sign of somebody deeply hurting. Ultimately, these people who are making these, I’ll call them very uncomfortable choices, I like to believe that they are coming from a deep place of pain. Because from many spiritual traditions, and points of view, what you do to another person, you’re ultimately doing to yourself on a soul level.

I’m not going to name names, but I met a very central figure of our government recently, and when I was in their proximity, I felt almost tar-like scar tissue inside of them. Because if you’ve purposely enacted an act of cruelty against someone else, that also affects your own energy body. So, if you’re somebody who doles out cruelty and meanness and hate right and left, what does that do to your inner life? And ultimately, it didn’t make me feel angry at them. It made me feel deeply sad for them, how one person could endure that level of suffering.

Those people who want to cause this pain, I can only imagine what their inner life is like and what their home life is like. I wouldn’t want to be their dog, because of what they must dwell in every single day. Hopefully, we’ll get to a point as a society where we’ll recognize people who, when they want to be in leadership roles, we’ll say, “You’re coming from a place of love, compassion, openness, freedom. We’ll vote for you.” “You’re coming from a place of tension, fear, anger. You should not have authority.”

MW: There are people who might hear you say something about what this administration is going to be, back in July, and be completely right about it, but they still would dismiss what you’re saying because you’re shirtless while you’re saying it, or because you’re competing on the BateOff, or you create adult content. What are your thoughts on being taken seriously?

ECSTATIC: It’s something I think about almost every day, because a lot of people will dismiss me for those things, but I also recognize that my job is not to be mainstream. Mainstream is what got us into the position we’re in. Disconnecting from our bodies and the wisdom in our bodies is what has gotten us to the position. Shame around our humanness is what got us to this position we’re in.

If people felt comfortable being naked with each other, if they felt comfortable owning their sexual desire unabashedly, if they realized that being a beautiful human celebrating themselves could go hand in hand with seeing themselves as a flicker of the divine God incarnate, image of God, whatever you want to call it, and saw them not as opposing, but saw them as being beautifully mutual, that it’s a gift to have this human life, it’s not something to transcend, it’s not something to deny, we would not be in this position.

I will never be accepted by the mainstream. For the number of followers I have, I don’t have brand deals, I don’t have sponsors, I don’t have Kellogg calling me up and asking if they can sponsor a video on YouTube. But I also recognize that that’s where real change occurs.

I identify as a threshold walker, somebody who borders the sanctified and the profane. I am too embodied for the spiritual groups. I’m too spiritual for the erotic groups. I’m too wholesome for the roll-in-the-muck-and-mud, filthy, own-your-sexuality people. I’m too sensual for the holier-than-thou group. But I also feel like oftentimes that’s where the radical transformation comes from, are those people who don’t fit into any box and straddle the lines of society and live on the outside. And I think ultimately that’s the people who feel called to go deeper.

MW: You talked about being in a cult in a video. Is that what that meditation living experience was, at the ashram? Or are you talking about something else? How did you get into it and how did you get out?

ECSTATIC: I got into it because, like most cults, they target people who are between 19 and 22, who are socially unmoored. They don’t have a strong support network, and they come to you and say, “You’re special. We love you. Here’s a group of friends, and you’ll fit right in.” And that’s how they get you.

Was I intentionally targeted, or was it just happy happenstance? I don’t know. I use the word cult because when I first encountered them, it raised red flags. “Is this a cult?” And I even asked, and someone said, “Oh, no it’s not.” Over the years, you learn to trust your inner knowing. When I got thrown out because I defended a trans person and they didn’t like that — and more so, it was the cult leader’s trans son, who they ostracized — when I got thrown out and started to look back through all the programming, I realized, “Oh, yeah, this was definitely a cult.” And I didn’t have the language to see it.

What’s been a difficult situation to recognize is a lot of well-meaning spiritual traditions end up falling into that. There’s a lot of religions that can be seen that way. There’s a lot of political movements that can be seen that way. That doesn’t discount that there were real experiences of spirit, real lessons, real teachings, real community. But it has made me very conscious that as I move into a role of trying to guide others on a spiritual path, it comes from a deep space of humility and not trying to control, not trying to tell people what they should do about respecting their own agency and dignity. About always being approachable and not setting myself up as someone holier than thou.

When I talk to people, I always say, “I’m here walking beside you. I’m not ahead of you. I’m doing the work right here with you.” So, it was one of those things that if I could have saved my younger self from doing it, would I have? Probably not, because the amount that it taught me and the amount that I grew through that experience was profound. Would I wish it on anyone else? No. Would I ever tell somebody to go find that group and work with them? Absolutely not.

MW: I was curious about your other content, not on Ecstatic Self. What are you creating beyond BateWorld?

ECSTATIC: Well, like I said, I feel like it all lives in a constellation. So, everything that I do is of that ilk. If you’re talking about my OnlyFans, because I do that under a different brand name, it’s still very much in line. If people subscribe to my OnlyFans [The Great Om], you’ll see naked meditation and guided masturbation as a practice of getting back into your body and connecting with your energy. Sometimes it’s just me jerking off and enjoying it and having fun, and sharing that experience. Could be me and my husband making love, and sharing what that looks like to have embodied sexual experiences together. Historically, I’ve sometimes — there’ve been very, very few — other friends who are on the tantric yoga path, I’ve sometimes had them on, interviewed them, done a little play with them. A lot of photography. But for me, it’s a space to demonstrate what embodied living looks like, and deep connection with yourself unashamedly. So, even though it’s technically not Ecstatic Self, it’s still Ecstatic Self-adjacent, it’s still teaching the same things.

The Great BateWorld BateOff is available for streaming exclusively on BateWorld with a subscription to the site. New episodes drop on Thursdays, leading up to the live-streamed finale on June 5. Visit www.bateworld.com.

Find Kae Ecstatic at www.ecstaticself.com, and on YouTube at www.youtube.com/@ecstaticself.

Subscribe to Metro Weekly’s free magazine and newsletter.

Support Metro Weekly’s Journalism

These are challenging times for news organizations. And yet it’s crucial we stay active and provide vital resources and information to both our local readers and the world. So won’t you please take a moment and consider supporting Metro Weekly with a membership? For as little as $5 a month, you can help ensure Metro Weekly magazine and MetroWeekly.com remain free, viable resources as we provide the best, most diverse, culturally-resonant LGBTQ coverage in both the D.C. region and around the world. Memberships come with exclusive perks and discounts, your own personal digital delivery of each week’s magazine (and an archive), access to our Member's Lounge when it launches this fall, and exclusive members-only items like Metro Weekly Membership Mugs and Tote Bags! Check out all our membership levels here and please join us today!