It’s always amazing to me how squeamish university administrators and state legislators get when it comes to supporting Sex Week events. I’m scheduled to speak at the University of Tennessee Sex Week in April and I just found out that while the event is still on the calendar, the majority of the funding has been [...]

I have a confession to make. Taking no for an answer doesn’t always happen easily. See, there’s been a lot of conversation in different online and in-person communities that I move through about “creepy men.” I’ve even written this piece on five things men can do to not be creepy. Part of those discussions include [...]

The way we present our gender to the world around us can have big effects on how people treat us, but so far, there isn’t much research on how gender nonconformity shapes our work lives. Of course, plenty of people have stories to tell, and my friend Alison Fogarty is looking for research participants for [...]

Yesterday, Jezebel posted an article about a woman whose post on Fetlife (a social networking site for the BDSM world) about an experience of sexual assault resulted in the usual slut-shaming and victim-blaming. It’s worth checking out, and if you’re on Fetlife, take a look at the original post. The Jez piece ends: Dayna’s experience [...]

There are lots of different kinds of privilege in the world and despite how people often think about them, many of them are not guaranteed to last a lifetime. People with money can fall on hard times, anyone can become disabled, and social status can disappear with the shifting winds of popularity and politics. This [...]

There’s been an important shift in several different communities and scenes lately. In the kink world, in atheism circles, among feminist folks and their allies, in pagan communities, I’ve been seeing more people than ever before talking about the effects of sexual coercion, assault, harassment, unwanted attention, and other related topics. Of course, none of [...]

I’ve been having conversations about the meaning of BDSM for a long, long time. Part of that is that I’ve been doing various things that generally fall in the kink category since I was about 19. Part of that is that sex educators have these sorts of talks with a lot of different people. Part [...]

There are lots of things we can do to make the world a better place. We can reduce our consumption of irreplaceable resources, we can develop our capacity to bring compassion to our relationships, we can support people in crisis or need- there’s plenty to be done. And there’s one thing that I think has [...]

Some new headlines about the Robert Pickton case are making the rounds. It seems that Jim Brown, one of the police officers involved in the investigation of the serial killer, had some photos on Fetlife, a social network for the BDSM world. The images of him holding a leash that’s connected to a collared woman [...]

There’s been some really good discussion lately about sexual harassment at conferences and community events. I’ve mostly been tracking it via Greta Christina’s blog, though of course there are lots of other people talking about it. I’m really glad to see more conversation about what kinds of behaviors different communities consider acceptable, how to make [...]