In a recent conversation, a friend mentioned that she was upset about about a pattern she noticed. She described how when Christians tried to convert her, her attempts to describe how hurtful it was were met with their disbelief – after all, everyone involved had good intentions! This set off bells in my head. Because […]
Culture
In Order to Fix Professional Boundaries, We Must Revolutionize the Meaning of Sex
I think about professional boundaries a lot. This is in large part because I occupy a number of professions: scholar, adjunct professor, sex educator, dance instructor, dance performer, and freelance writer, to name a few. I see a lot of people in a lot of different contexts (some of them even social!) and I like […]
Comparing “Real Food” And “Real Women” Rhetoric
We’ve all seen the “real women” memes: “Real women have curves,” and so on. There’s been some pushing back against these ideas, which I think is useful, since holding up one category of womanhood as more “real” than another is ultimately essentializing and harmful. This intriguing blog post, Real Food, draws a parallel between the […]
Selective Applications of the Law in Indiana Part 2
As described in part 1 of this post, Indiana’s Religious Freedom Restoration (RFRA) law selectively grants protections to some sexual minorities but not others – and that by region, as well. In this post I’ll discuss another problematic application of the law, specifically, the feticide law affecting Purvi Patel. Indiana resident Patel was just sentenced to […]
Selective Applications of the Law in Indiana Part 1
As someone living in Indiana right now, I’ve been hit with the dual disappointment of two current events that impact women and LGBTQ minorities disproportionately. It’s especially upsetting because of the way these laws are being enacted, which is to say, selectively. First I’ll talk about RFRA, or the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (also called […]
And Then I Brought Up Flesh Hooks.
One of the topics I discussed with my fall 2013 college-level class on non-monogamy is BDSM and kink. I deliberately introduced the topic at the end of the semester, when we’d already studied sexual and gender configurations around the world, past and present, with an eye toward how gender, sexuality, and relationship models inform one […]
The Joys of Talking About Sex
I don’t talk about my sex life in print or in public very much. It’s not because I’m ashamed of what I do (though shame is a very pervasive force in Western conceptions of sexuality), but rather because I feel that I reach people better as an educator when I’ve got a bit more distance […]
Why I’m Silent About My Sexuality (For Now)
This is a topic that weighs heavily on me and is not easy to write about. I’m massively in favor of providing shame-free sex education, of oversharing as a political act, and of creating sex-positive learning environments. And yet I feel unable to talk about my own sexuality publicly or in print. In a way, this […]
Japanese Vulva Censorship
This article on a Japanese artist recently crossed my screen, and it’s sadly sex-negative as well as ill-informed as to female body parts. In a sentence: Provocative Japanese artist Megumi Igarashi, who has been arrested twice this year on charges related to her design for a kayak that incorporates a 3-D model of her genitals, […]