IASHS SAR: Days 7-8

Coming into the home stretch of my SAR experience, I just wanted to share the final wrap-up. So the Sensorium was Thursday night; Friday morning, I was feeling pretty burned out on IASHS and the whole SAR process. It wasn’t that I was having too many feelings or it was bringing up a lot of personally confrontational memories or anything…the only feeling I was having was rage at the outdated, racist, sexist organizational techniques, and complete disbelief that this organization is somehow handing out “doctorates” to people who might genuinely be interested in a study of human sexuality. “It feels like a scam,” one of my friends told me. “Like they’re just calling themselves “University of Sexytimes” and handing out a piece of paper they printed on their home computer that says “I’m a Doctor!” without actually providing any of the level of information you’d expect from a degree program.” Indeed.

So Friday started with what was supposed to be a 2.5 hour workshop on BDSM — it actually ran to 3 hours, which cut our lunch break short. The vast majority of this workshop was spent defining a list of BDSM vocabulary words. Since several of the workshop participants had already said they identified as kinky, it seemed like a lot of retread material. We had a short break for lunch and then had another panel on “sex work” in the afternoon.

I was pretty excited for this one, as I am very interested in sex worker’s rights and advocacy. It’s a fascinating area, and there’s a lot of good, interesting work going on. I had just gone to a book launch for the excellent “Selling Sex: Experience, Advocacy, and Research on Sex Work in Canada“, which featured readings by the authors and a fantastic cabaret show. I was disappointed to find that the panelists were mostly sexological bodyworkers, although one panelist had also worked as an escort and dancer (she was a white cisfemale, and was currently working as a — you guessed it — sexological bodyworker).

I don’t actually even know what “sexological bodywork” is; it’s not something I ever heard about in my graduate program, and from what I can tell, it seems to be sort of like massage therapy for the genitals. One of the panelists described his job as being a “sacred intimate”, and stressed that he was like a sexological bodyworker only without using latex barrier methods…which I found appalling. Massage parlour workers use latex gloves when providing “hand release”; one would hope that someone who portrays himself as some kind of professional bodyworker would do the same. He also made many references to working with “shamans”, which I found appropriative and disconcerting.

By the time small group rolled around, I was feeling very uncomfortable. There had been no discussion of street-based sex work, or of the issues facing sex workers who are NOT sexological bodyworkers (that is to say: most of them) — we had been presented with a panel that was in no way representative of sex work, and discouraged from asking questions about anything to do with sex work beyond their personal experiences. Yikes. In small group, several of the group members brought up how uncomfortable the Sensorium had made them feel, and our group leader told us that we could have said no at any point and that she expected us to “hold our alcohol” as we were all “adults”. This astonishing lack of awareness of the problematic nature of the Sensorium made my respect for and faith in the skill of IASHS employees drop further.

Fortunately, I had plans to go over to the Center for Sex and Culture for an erotic art opening; the feeling between the two locations could not have been more different. The CSC space is open and welcoming, the walls are lined with up-to-date books on all kinds of sexual topics, with clearly labelled categories. The guy at the front desk had a great conversation with me about workers’ rights (the BART strike was still on), and the art was unusual and interesting. In contrast, one of the first things you see in the IASHS space is the extremely racist artwork I posted a few days back; all of the books on their shelves are old and yellowing around the edges, I don’t think I saw one more recent than the early 1980s. It gave me a lot of hope that there are other organizations in SF doing excellent work in the sexology field, and I would encourage the CSC to consider developing and running their own SAR or training program.

I spent the rest of the evening at a conceptual drag performance at The Stud, which left me tired on Saturday morning but in excellent spirits. Saturday was our day of “heterosexuals”. We had still not discussed any alternative relationships structures, like nonmonogamy, which seemed very strange to me. We also completely glossed over bisexuality (on the “LGBT” day) and there had been no discussion whatsoever of intersex people on the “trans*” day, so I was expecting the final day of SAR to be catching up all the bits we missed. Instead, we talked about heterosexuality.

After the panel, we had a long lunch, and came back for our “graduation ceremony” and group discussion. The teachers asked everyone to talk a bit about what their expectations and experience in the SAR had been like and I sit back a bit to see if anyone would bring up the issues I had been having. Most people talked about how happy they felt to have found like-minded people to talk to and a lot of other generically positive commentary. I decided to wait to go last, since I was likely to derail the positive commentary with my laundry list of complaints.

When it was my turn, I listed out my problems, namely:

• the incredibly, dangerously outdated material we were watching, reading, and discussing, and the outdated ideas about human sexuality that were being passed on
• the complete lack of any discussion of intersectionality — including race, gender, socioeconomic status, the neoliberal system, and appropriation
• how rapey and nonconsensual the Sensorium felt

The teachers looked a bit shell-shocked, but I saw a lot of people nodding along with me as I spoke, and several chimed in to say they agreed with me, and listed some other issues they had wanted to bring up as well. One of the teachers acknowledged my issues (without saying what they would do to resolve them, by the way) and said that IASHS considered itself more of a “historical” program and they saw the need for more updated material but the implication was that the board members were very set in their ways and things could not be changed. The issue of intersectionality was brushed aside with a statement that there was a lot of information to cram into a week and we “didn’t have time” for discussions like that.

One of the women in the class, who is in an interracial relationship, said, “Excuse me, but when WILL there be time for the issues of PoC and minority groups? Isn’t that the problem we are facing in the first place?” I gave her a fist bump. It seemed appropriate. Since that IS the point: as long as the sexual issues of PoC and minorities are brushed aside because we “don’t have time” for them, we are marginalizing groups of people and telling them their experience is worth less than our cisnormative, white, upper middle class experience. I say upper middle class because the SAR cost $850, and the degree program at IASHS costs quite a lot as well: it would not be accessible to people of low SES.

After the group discussion was over, several people came up to ask me questions about things I had said, or support my having spoken out. I was very appreciative of that; although I’m outspoken and firm in my convictions, it’s nice to have support for what I think should be fundamental basic issues that need to be addressed.

Overall, I would not recommend the Institute for Advanced Study of Human Sexuality to anybody, under any circumstances. The information is outdated and focused heavily on mainstream cultural expression. Certainly if you are a minority group, your issues are likely to not be addressed or heard. We were repeatedly placed in ridiculous or downright offensive situations and told to “trust the process”, a process which is so antiquated that it reeks of Haight-Ashbury circa 1962. This assessment includes my external perspective on their degree program, which is expensive and apparently does not really provide a high level of academic rigor. If you are looking for a legitimate degree in sexology, I would recommend the Kinsey Institute or any of the excellent accredited degree programs listed on this resource list (I can vouch for the Curtin University program and the University of Guelph program). Do not go to IASHS unless you can ascertain that these problems have been effectively addressed.