Anyone who works in the sexology field in North America (and probably out of it) has heard of IASHS: one of the foremost non-accredited places to get degrees in sexology-related subjects. Annie Sprinkle went there. Carol Queen went there. They STARTED the SAR (the Sexual Attitudes Reassessment) with a group of Methodists about 53 years ago. I’ve been fangirling about the possibility of taking a SAR there ever since I realized that I could theoretically go take it ( it’s not a strict acceptance process: you mostly just fill out the paperwork and send them a cheque).
I arrived in the Bay Area at 2am the night before I was supposed to be at the SAR bright and early at 9:30am. My wife and I had gone through a gruelling series of travel, leaving Toronto at 11:30am and having first our bus to Buffalo airport delayed by two hours so we had to run to the first plane…which turned out to be delayed for two hours so we missed our connecting flight to Oakland and had to rebook the final leg of our trip (the last plane to SFO) from the tarmac outside Chicago Midway. Despite the discomfort, I woke up bright and early the next morning, after a confusing night of anxiety dreams. Before I do anything that’s important to me, my brain likes to present me with horrifying scenarios for how it could go wrong. What if you didn’t look up the directions properly and it will actually take 2 hours to get there and you haven’t left enough time AIIIIEEEEEEEE! What if you try to pack your things to leave in the morning and you can’t find anything and when you do find it, it’s covered with bugs you have to brush off AIIIEEEEEEE!
My brain’s helpfulness aside, I got to the SAR in plenty of time Saturday morning and spent half an hour chatting to people from around the country about their reasons for being there (mostly, to talk about sex). The vast majority of attendees are in one of the degree programs at IASHS, mostly the doctoral program. Most that I spoke to are already working in the sexology field, as workshop teachers, porn producers, erotic counselors, and a wide range of other career options I had never considered. We had a panel of speakers about masturbation, and one of them was a masturbation coach, which I have to admit I had never considered could be a career before. I also found out that the BART workers might go on strike, which because I’m satying in Oakland and the SAR is in SF, would be an absolute horror of transportation logistics (AIEEEEEEEEE!).
Still from “The Bed”
We spent the morning discussing how the SAR would work, and talking about fantasies, with an introductory autobiographical talk by SAR developer and IASHS founder Ted McIlvenna. The afternoon, we mostly focused on masturbation. We watched some classic SAR films, like James Broughton’s “The Bed”, an artistically playful short film shot in the late 60s about all the different uses for a bed, featuring celebrity appearances by photographer Imogen Cunningham, philosopher Alan Watts, and a bunch of ecstatically nude hippie folks. After the panelists spoke about masturbation experiences, we broke into our small groups to discuss fantasies and masturbation and process anything we had been presented with. Then we watched a brief film about the Stonewall riots, in light of our participation in the Pride Parade today, and closed the day.
Ted’s personal introduction gave us a lot of background into how the SAR came to be (as well as some totally unrelated information, much of which didn’t actually seem to have any relevance to the SAR process, but that was probably just my overtiredness talking). I feel like the SAR could probably benefit from some of the techniques I’ve seen used in activist circles, like the facilitator encouraging discussion parity without letting people dominate — this SAR is full of some strong personalities, and there is always a tendency to hear more from strong personalities if they aren’t specifically reined in. I also really appreciate workshop group activities — I’ve been to (and taught) at some workshops where radical group activities were the most useful learning tool. We did some whole-group stuff (and obviously with more than 20 attendees, it’s hard to do), but they didn’t seem particularly geared at teachable moments — more about getting comfortable with each other as a group.
Sign from Toronto’s Gay Village
I admit to struggling a lot with my personal belief in intersectionality. I am not JUST a sexologist: I am an activist, and one who believes in a lot of fairly left-wing things. I don’t think you can support the right of LGBT people for equality at the expense of PoC people…or that you can be feminist without supporting trans* people. I am anti-neoliberalism, and spend a lot of time using words like “capitalist hegemony”. If you have no intersectionality in your activism, to my mind, you are not being a successful activist: you are leaving out the idea that all the struggles are interconnected. They all come back to a fundamental idea: the current system is broken and oppresses EVERYBODY, for different reasons. Indigenous people are suffering under years of colonialism, which is also responsible for the corporate rule that has made it impossible to avoid fat-shaming and queerbaiting advertising.
There were a few moments at the SAR where I have felt like intersectionality is being ignored. That makes me extremely uncomfortable. I cannot support actions that support one group while oppressing another. I just can’t. Today’s marching in the (extremely problematic) SF Pride Parade, while exciting (Pride after the DOMA was repealed!) is also fraught with possibilities for ignoring intersectionality, and I am conscious of all of these issues as I look at where I will be and what I will be doing today. I have the possibility for some good discussion out of it, at least — we’re supposed to be processing our feelings after the Parade, and I look forward to bringing up my issues (like, hey, what about that whole Bradley Manning thing, eh?).
Claire Litton, Sexologist & Coach 