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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 written about [SSEX BBOX] before because it’s such an amazing project. The filmmakers have been interviewing smart, thoughtful, sexy people in São Paulo, Barcelona, Berlin and San Francisco, four cities known for sex-positivity and celebration of sexual diversity. They’re putting together a fantastic documentary and the last time I spoke with them, they were working on getting Portuguese, Spanish, German, and English subtitles translated in order to help spread the stories and wisdom their participants shared. That’s especially challenging since each culture has created new languages for talking about sex, so SSEX BBOX is going to bring some new connections into the world. Ultimately, there will be a whole series of web episodes for the project.
On January 30, the Center for Sex …
Continue reading Come To the [SSEX BBOX] Premiere Party!
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
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
This post also appeared on the Good Vibrations Magazine.
The NY Times has an opinion piece up the other day by Ross Douthat, Why Monogamy Matters, which highlights what happens when people who don’t think all that clearly about sex write about sex.
Douthat starts with the recent research from the Centers for Disease Control that says that US teens and 20-somethings are waiting longer to have sex. Leaving aside an analysis of that research, I think there’s a pivotal sentence in the piece that shows how muddy Douthat’s thinking on sex is:
But there are different kinds of premarital sex. There’s sex that’s actually pre-marital, in the sense that it involves monogamous couples on a path that might lead to matrimony one
…
Continue reading Critical Thinking in a NY Times Opinion Piece on Sex? Unfortunately, No.
I recently ran across a fascinating article: Why rejection hurts: A common neural alarm system for physical and social pain. According to the authors, physical pain and social pain (which happens when social relationships are threatened, damaged or lost) are both processed in the same part of the brain.
It seems that the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) is activated when we experience pain in order to create a sense of distress. There’s a different part of the brain in charge of the actual sensation of pain. You can think of it as a partnership- one portion receives the message that some part of the body has been damaged, so it sends a signal to the ACC, which sets off the alarms so you know …
Continue reading The Pain of Rejection and Shame
Margaret Brooks, the noted anti-sex work activist who thinks that arresting sex workers somehow protects them (because hundreds of years of evidence isn’t enough to show that it always makes things much worse for them), is at it again.
Citizens Against Trafficking just released a statement from her that’s full of scare quotes, misinformation, and misdirection to try to convince readers that sex education is the source of all evil. Let’s take a look:
She starts off with a statement about how “At least four students attending universities in Rhode Island have contracted acute HIV infections within recent months,” which she describes as a sudden increase and a recent outbreak. According to wikipedia, there are 12 colleges and universities in the state, with a …
Continue reading Margaret Brooks Attacks Sex Ed Again
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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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