Dancing Is All About Choices – And So Is Sex

Enjoy this vintage post from 2011, written while I was spending a year in Estonia finishing my PhD. I’ve added a picture from my time in Estonia, from a photoshoot I did with the ladies I belly danced with while there. This is to emphasize the creative choices that go into belly dancing: costuming, makeup, […]

Genitals, Stigma, & Shame (or why camel toe needs to die in a fire)

I don’t know whether to blame lack of universal, accurate sex education in America, or the more general sex-negative and sex-phobic lens of mainstream American culture, but it seems to me that people don’t know what’s up with their genitals. Things having to do with genitals are largely seem as shameful, and hence too stigmatized […]

Woodhull’s Sexual Freedom Summit 2015: Best Conference Ever

I go to a lot of conferences. The conference presentations section of my CV is a bit ridiculous, and lately, as I’ve been attending more conferences in the sexuality field, I haven’t even been presenting that much, but rather going to soak it all in. So, I’ve experienced tons of conferences. But Woodhull’s Sexual Freedom […]

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 […]