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As you may have heard if you follow her on twitter, Tristan Taormino was invited to speak at Oregon State University’s Modern Sex Conference, at least until the folks in charge at the school found out that she makes and sells porn. Since I’m one of the speakers at the conference as well as being one of her colleagues, I’d like to offer my take on this situation.
Some background: a few months ago, the con organizers emailed me to ask if I’d be interested in participating. They invited me to do a closing keynote presentation since Tristan had been asked to do the opening one. It sounded like a great fit and I thought that Tristan & I would be a …
Continue reading Oregon State U Shuts Tristan Taormino Out
Two articles came through my in-box the other day. I found one of them rather thought-provoking and the other quite irritating. But they both had one thing in common. Well, actually, more than one thing, but they had one thing in common that I found especially difficult.
They were both using gender-essentialist language to talk about men and sexism.
In Fight the Sexualization of Young Girls the Right Way, Sarah Seltzer discusses why we need to shine a light on the sexualization of girls and young women without ending up being anti-sex. It’s a good look at the challenges in navigating that. She argues very convincingly that what we need to do is make room for young people to explore and discover their authentic …
Continue reading Gender Essentialism, Masculinity, and Sex-Negativity
One of the difficulties I’ve seen when it comes to discussions and debates around sexual practices and communities of erotic affiliation centers on the notion of consent.
On one side, there are the folks who bring everything back to the question of the individual. The general argument is that if a person consents to a particular act, then there isn’t any reason that they shouldn’t be allowed to do it. Yes, this is a vast oversimplification of a much more complex statement, but it often boils down to the notion that people should be able to anything they want, as long as they and their partner(s) consent to it.
On the other hand, there are people who …
Continue reading Consent, Open Relationships, and Sex-Positivity
Last month, I finally got to meet Sinclair Sexsmith in person, after months of emails and tweets. We were both presenting at the Talking About the Taboo Conference, hosted by the Center for Sexual Pleasure and Health and it was a real treat to get to geek out with Sinclair and other sex education folks.
Sinclair sat in on my presentation on sex-positivity and sexual authenticity and I’m deeply flattered to read her reflections and responses to what I said. Here’s a snippet:
Everything and anything can be sex positive. Sex positivity is about a state of mind, not what you do in bed—a fundamental acceptance of what other people do, even if it isn’t
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Continue reading The Courage to Be Sex-Positive
I’ve never liked the idea of the “walk of shame.” The idea that you should be ashamed when you’re heading home the morning after rest on and reinforces the notion that sex is something to be ashamed of. And anyway, in my experience, this sort of shame is leveled at women much more often and much more harshly than at men. Meh.
Kiersten at mysexprofessor.com has a post about exactly that. I’m especially in favor with how she ends it:
Thus, we come to my proposition. I think we should reframe the “Walk of Shame” as the “Walk of AWESOME” or some other positive feeling. Someone doing the “Walk of AWESOME” would easily be able to make
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Continue reading The Walk of AWESOME
I’ve been really intrigued by they way that people are referring to Melissa Petro, the elementary school teacher who has been taking a lot of heat for being honest about having been a sex worker, as “that woman” or “that kind of woman,” among other things. It highlights the belief of sexual contagion. Once a woman has been soiled by sex, she loses status to the point that she’s seen as less than “clean” women. It’s a classic way to shame someone. Virgin/whore dichotomy, anyone?
Yesterday, Debauched Domestic Diva wrote a post in which she asked why the anti-sex work folks like Margaret Brooks, Melanie Shapiro, Donna Hughes and Gail Dines aren’t coming out in …
Continue reading Do I Hear Crickets? Where Are The Anti-Sex Work Folks?
This piece also appeared on the Good Vibrations Magazine.
At the beginning of September, I wrote about an opinion piece published on the Chronicle of Higher Education website. The original piece, by Margaret Brooks, is a pretty standard example of how people attack sex education through fear, shame, innuendo and misrepresentation of the facts. And several of my colleagues and I responded to it. We also collaborated to write a letter to the editor of the Chronicle of Higher Education, which we sent them on Sept 16:
Dear Chronicle Editors,
We were deeply disappointed by your recent publication of economics Professor Margaret Brooks’ op-ed, “‘Sex Week’ Should Arouse Caution Most of All.” It is clear
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Continue reading Sex Educators Call Out the Chronicle of Higher Education
Folsom St. Fair was yesterday. It’s the biggest kink/leather/BDSM event anywhere and as often happens, the weather gods smiled on the pervs. The sun was out, but it was just enough to make the skin on the men glisten with sweat.
But I digress.
Every year, a few people get their knickers in a twist about the event, saying that all that open sexuality is dangerous, scary, and harmful to teh kiddiez. And yeah, it’s not a kid-friendly event. Unlike many people, I don’t think that children need to be protected from sexuality. I think that they deserve to be protected from adult sexuality because children and adolescents need the room to be sexual beings as children and adolescents. We let 5-year-olds play tee ball, …
Continue reading Why Folsom St. Fair is Fun, Sexy and Important
There are a lot of reasons people have sex. We do it because we want to express love, feel pleasure, or build connection. We also do it because we’re bored, we’re stressed out, we want to distract ourselves from our problems, we want to manipulate our partners, or to avoid arguments.
In one of my workshops, I have the participants list some of the reasons that people might choose to have sex. I (and other sex educators) have been doing this sort of exercise for years, so I’ll admit that I wish I’d published it before David Buss. His research team interviewed people about their reasons to have sex and came up with a list of 237 different ones. Now, I don’t think his …
Continue reading When Sex Almost Works
This post also appeared on the Good Vibrations Magazine.
Every year, I get dozens of calls and emails from university groups, professors, fraternities and sororities, and residential assistants, asking about sex education presentations. I send trained educators to them to talk about sex-positivity, the physiology of pleasure (as compared to “reproductive anatomy”), safer sex, body image, sex toys, sexual diversity, relationships and communication, and many other topics. It’s a valuable part of our mission to provide accurate, non-judgmental information about sex, pleasure, and relationships to young adults.
So I was curious to read Margaret Brooks’ article ‘Sex Week’ Should Arouse Caution Most of All, in which she raises both questions and fears about these …
Continue reading There’s Nothing Wrong with University Sex Weeks
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