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I’m really happy to announce that the first episode of [SSEX BBOX]is now available online!
[SSEX BBOX] is an ambitious documentary project, headed by Priscilla Bertucci. Their goal is to explore sex-positive communities in San Francisco, São Paolo, Berlin, & Barcelona (hence, the SS BB in the name) and explore the different ways that people in these locations are examining and discussing sexuality. By looking at how people are using sexuality as a means for social change, [SSEX BBOX] will help connect different movements and offer inspiration for new ideas.
I’ve spoken with sexologists from around the world and one of the challenges we face is that cultural differences and variations in language make it hard to translate concepts from one country to another. …
Continue reading [SSEX BBOX] Episode 1 Is Out!
One of the best things about my job is getting to geek out about sex with other brainy folks. So I’m really looking forward to the Sex Positive Discussion Panel at Mills College. We’ll be talking about issues of consent, how to navigate its many nuances, and ways to integrate it into our sex lives. Here’s all the info about the panel. And if you can’t make it, follow the #sexpositivemills hastag. And if you want to help get the word out, please pass the Facebook event page and the Brown Paper Tickets link along.
See you there!
Sex Positive Discussion Panel
Lisser Theater, Mills College, Oakland, CA
January 27, 7-10 pm, $7.50
Purchase tickets and find location info here
The Mills College Community Health …
Continue reading Upcoming Event: Sex Positive Discussion Panel at Mills College
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what it means to be empowered. It’s a question that frequently comes up in discussions about sexuality, sexism, porn, choice, and sex-positivity. I recently ran across this post on the topic by Jennifer Kesler which points out some of the ways in which this word is misunderstood and the effects that can have on how we think about our sexualities.
One of the things that Kesler points out (rightfully, I think) is that the word empowerment has been co-opted by a variety of people and forces that don’t have our best interests at heart. Rather than the original definition as “a multi-dimensional social process that helps people gain control over their own lives,” it’s often used in ways …
Continue reading What Does It Mean To Be Empowered?
Following up on my post yesterday, I had a really interesting conversation with Meghan Murphy of the F Word, both on her blog and on Facebook. After sleeping on it, I realized where something was missing from my description of sex-positivity. I had thought it was implicit in my choice of words, but looking back at things I’ve said, I don’t think it really was.
One of the difficulties that I’ve faced in discussing sex-positivity with some folks is that there are two different lenses that a lot of people use when talking about these issues. Some use an entirely personal lens, as in “I like doing this thing, or I find it empowering, so that makes it OK.” And others look at …
Continue reading Expanding My View of Sex-Positivity
Meghan over at the F-Word has a thought-provoking piece about the recent post by the Pervocracy on sex-positivity, and it’s inspired me to finally write something that’s been on my mind for a while.
As I’ve said before, I think that the only relevant criteria for assessing a sexual act or practice is the consent, pleasure, and well-being of the people involved. While that may sound simple, there’s a lot more to it than may be immediately apparent. After all, consent is really only meaningful when one has the ability to make a fully empowered decision. That’s limited by what options people are aware of (sex education!) and believe are open to them, among other things. If you’ve been taught that you have to have …
Continue reading The Complexities of Sexual Well-Being
There’s a new post up on the Good Men Project, Is Sex Positive Ever Negative?, which highlights many of the ways in which sex-positivity is seriously misunderstood. The writer, Lili Bee, starts with an account of a conversation she had with a friend and the roadblock they hit when he suggested that she do some reading on sex-positivity. So she went to her mentor, Robert Jensen, to get his thoughts on the issue. And that’s where things get squirrely.
Bee starts off pointing out that one of the problems with what many people think of as sex-positive communities is that there’s often a reactivity to the overboundedness that has been imposed on sexuality. I agree with her that a lot of people who say …
Continue reading Robert Jensen Doesn’t Understand Sex-Positivity
There are a lot of reasons people live lives that aren’t authentic to them. Messages about who we “should” be come at us even before we’re verbal. Just look at how children are taught what it means to be male or female, as if an infant really cares about having a pink bow or a baseball cap on their head. But it certainly affects how others interact with that child, which trains them into performing the gender role they’ve been assigned. This certainly isn’t limited to gender, either. There are lots of ways in which our authentic expressions are bottled up, shamed away, or result in punishment.
There was a time when I believed that when it comes to sex, we should all tap into …
Continue reading The Limits of Authenticity
I’ve been following the current debates about sexualization with a lot of interest, both because I want to live in a sexually healthy world and because these sorts of discussions often have a direct impact on my work as a sex educator. And while I’ve been sitting with the question of what a sex-positive response to the topic might be, especially after reading Renee Randazzo’s post on the Good Vibrations magazine and Peggy Orenstein’s post on mommyish.com, it wasn’t until I received a link to Onscenity that it came together for me.
My understanding of sex-positivity rests on the notion that the only relevant criteria for assessing a sexual act or practice is the pleasure, consent, and well-being of the people who choose it …
Continue reading Sex-Positivity and Sexualization
There’s a post on SexIs today from Roland Hulme, in which he shows that he almost gets how his privilege works. In his piece, he discusses the responses to a previous post of his, in which he wrote that (at the time), he was of the opinion that transgender people shouldn’t be able to change the designated sex on their birth certificates. And as he wrote:
It drew a lot of comments — many of them angry and frustrated — and opened my eyes to a lot of different perspectives on the issue. Ultimately, the debate revealed that something I thought was cut-and-dried turned out to be a lot more complex than I’d imagined. My opinion was challenged and my attitudes changed by the
…
Continue reading When Straight, White, Cisgender Men Don’t Get It
Debates about sex work and trafficking aren’t new, but they sure are heating up these days. As someone who has known many different sex workers of all different genders and sexual orientations in pretty much every branch of the business, while also not having ever been a sex worker myself, I find that I have a rather unusual perspective, at least among the people engaged in this debate. And at the recent conference for the Society for the Scientific Study of Sexuality, I heard about an enlightening way to think about sex-positivity that I think offers some clarity around this issue.
Breanne Fahs PhD from Arizona State University approaches sex-positivity from the understanding that true liberation requires both “freedom to” and “freedom from.” While …
Continue reading A Sex-Positive Perspective on Sex Work
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"The journey between what you once were and who you are now becoming is where the dance of life really takes place."
- Barbara Deangelis
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