IASHS SAR: Day one

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?).

TMI Tuesday: June 25

Via the TMI Tuesday website, here are my answers! Feel free to leave yours in the comments or post on your own blog!

1. Have you ever investigated having an open relationship?
– Have you tried to have an open relationship?

Hells yes. My first relationship was as one of the legs in a W, and I identify as polyamorous. I keep telling my friend Marcus that we’re recruiting, because most of the time I end up having conversations with people about how great poly is, they end up eventually coming back with comments like “Hmm, well MAYBE I could try it sometime, it doesn’t sound unreasonable.” RECRUITMENT!

2. Do you have any sexual phobias?
– What have you done to manage or overcome them?

Phobias, no. Seriously triggery sexual experiences, yeah. I can’t dominate a partner without it making me feel really uncomfortable and squicky (too much negative personal experience), and for the same reason, there are some phrases I just can’t hear without feeling…icky. It’s kind of a dealbreaker for me, in that I don’t think I could seriously date someone who was really really into it, although I’d definitely be willing to try if that was the only thing standing between me and a partner. So far, it hasn’t been an issue.

3. What is the best new sexual activity you have tried in 2013?

Believe it or not, masturbating with a dildo. I have NEVER been interested in toys — my hand does me just fine, thank you — but I’m starting to experiment with insertables. Next thing you’ll hear I’m trying to stick everything up there. Phone book? Pots and pans? Fists?

4. Have you ever called into a sex advice radio/television show or written to a sex advice columnist?
– Was it helpful?

No, but I’ve BEEN the sex advice person, does that count? Oh, actually, that’s not true: I wrote to Savage Love once a long time ago, but my letter never made the cut. Too hetero, no doubt.

5. Would you use the services of a sex therapist? Why or why not?

Of course I would, good therapists are worth their weight in gold and precious jewels. I tend to turn to therapists whenever I even have an inkling of needing some help. Unsure of how to make an important decision? Therapist. Feeling anxious about an upcoming event? Therapist. Not sure what to make for dinner? THERAPIST.

6. Should sex therapists be allowed to engage in actual sexual activities with clients? Why or why not?

Depends on the kind of therapist, you know? Licensed psychologists or people whose job is not described as being “having sex with their clients” should NOT be having sex with their clients: it’s a breach of ethics and often relies on an inappropriate power imbalance. But sexual surrogates, or sexual physical-therapists, the people who have sex with their clients to teach them or encourage them into personal growth, as long as they are clear from the beginning that this is the nature of their relationship, I think it’s okay.

How to Run A Masturbate-a-thon

…or really, any sex-positive, body positive, queer positive, generally-very-positive-and-sexuality-related event. I am happy to answer questions about this event, event organization in general, or any of the ways that we developed or produced it. This was the first one, both for Cameryn and I as organizers, and for Montreal…we learned a few things that will help the next one run more smoothly!

The number one question that we got, which I will answer right off the bat, is: why did we have a different pricing scale for masturbators/women and non-masturbating men? Because we were encouraging voyeurs, we really wanted to avoid a situation where a bunch of men showed up just to gawk and make people feel uncomfortable or unsafe. We figured a pricing tier would discourage any men who were expecting a personal porn show. It seemed to work very well — we only had 3 guys who showed up clearly expecting the room would be full of skinny cis ladies masturbating for them, and they left after about twenty minutes when it became clear the event was about all shapes, sizes, genders, and styles. Encouraging guys to register as masturbators to get the cheaper ticket price was also a way to encourage event participation without forcing anyone to sexually perform if they were nervous.

Helpful links include:

The Adipositivity Project

SF Weekly’s (extremely NSFW) article about SF’s 11th Masturbate-a-thon

Head and Hands (the organization we raised money for)

Brown Paper Tickets

Also, if you are interested, the wonderful print on the wall behind me (it says “Practice Radical Self Love”) is from artist Phoebe Wahl, whose work I cannot recommend highly enough.

A Quick Meditation On Balls

The weekly meditation group I have been going to on Sundays is relatively small, but we do have a couple of young guys who show up pretty faithfully. This week, one of them came before the other and was sitting on the couch chatting with us when his friend walked in. I noticed that he immediately rested his hands in his crotch, which was probably a gesture born out of necessity, as his friend tried to punch him in the nuts as he walked over and sat down.

“Does he do that every time you see each other?” I asked the first guy.

He thought about it. “Yeah, pretty much,” he said.

“Does he even know he’s doing it?” I asked.

“It’s pretty automatic,” he said.

This led to a twenty minute discussion of balls, ball-punching, different things testicles have been used for over time (I pointed out that people used to place their hands on testicles to swear in court, and was roundly shouted down for making it up, which I, in fact, did not), and finally circled around to something I never really considered before, and my friend & meditation leader M. pointed out: that, as a woman and a yoga/meditation teacher, when she tells people to be aware of different parts of their body, she can never know what it feels like to centre her attention in her testicles.

It’s really true! Obviously, I can never know what it feels like to be punched in the nuts (and thank god for that), but that is also a whole body part that I can never understand exactly what it feels like to touch, feel from the inside, or focus my attention on. I just CAN’T. Obviously, I have body parts men can’t understand as well, but it had really just never occurred to me in relationship to mindfulness work and yoga practice before.

For someone who spends a lot of time trying to empathize with and understand how someone is feeling and what they are going through, it’s odd to think there’s a whole series of sensations and focus points that I just can’t share, no matter how hard I try!

Review: “Release” at Mainline Theatre

I first saw Cameryn Moore‘s one-woman play “Phone Whore” at Montreal’s Zoofest through a fluke of circumstance; I had a friend of a friend with a comp ticket and she knew I liked hearing people talk, act, and generally obsess about sex, so she offered it to me.

“Phone Whore” is a one-woman play about a phone sex operator. You could argue that it’s also about her clients, since the vast majority of the play is taken up with calls, where Cameryn speaks one-sided fantasies that tell us an awful lot about the person on the other end of the line. However, each client is still being painted in Cameryn’s words, through the eyes of the operator; every sex worker has an idea of what their clients are like that doesn’t actually mesh with how the clients would describe themselves, and this was being filtered through a lens of dramaturgy besides. Basically, it was a great play, but it was all Cameryn.

“Release”, her newest show, playing at Mainline for only one more night, is no Cameryn. A Studs Terkel-like slow wander through the lives of six strangers, “Release” has the power of quiet fascination. You don’t know anything about these people except the details they’re choosing to deliver, in their own very individual ways. We hear their voices, telling their stories. They’re simple stories, occasionally funny, but more often striking the kind of realist poignancy that leaves you sympathetically holding your breath.

Every character, at some point, made my heart ache. It’s not a sad play; far from it. It’s just…a REAL play. It’s immediately captivating. The characters are distinguished from each other by slight shifting of small details: the rotation of a chair, rolling down of coatsleeves, walking across the stage in boots. It’s still all Cameryn, but you barely notice her; you’re so drawn in by the gestures and voice of this new person you want to get to know, and the small segment of their life you get to see.

The segments, naturally, are based around sex and sexuality in one way or another. It’s not a graphic play, especially compared to “Phone Whore”, unless you find raw emotion graphic. There is no sex in “Release”, but it is about the almost unstoppable need to blurt things out, especially with strangers. Each character needs to share something with us, something they may not have ever told anyone else, and, just like sex, when they finish, you can’t always tell if it was good or bad for them.

I was really impressed with this show, and enjoyed not just the acting, but the writing and staging as well. Cameryn has done a great job here; I look forward to her future works.

Unmemorizing “Silence is Sexy”

I found this article in my internet wanderings, and it touches on some really fascinating points.

I really like this part:

But “just say no” isn’t enough.  Imagine this: since men are expected to make the first move in the majority of sexual situations, where does that leave women if they’re not yet sure what they want?  This “sexy silence” standard makes saying “no” or “stop” even harder for women who want to feel sexy but don’t necessarily want to do what their partner wants to do; who want a hug goodnight, but not a kiss; who are excited about kissing, but uncomfortable with petting; who are enthusiastic about making out, but aren’t ready for sex.  Being forced to say “no” or “stop” will invariably make the experience end sooner than it might otherwise, and on a rather negative note, even if it started positively with both people excited.  Come to think of it, I can’t think of anything less sexy or romantic than making an enthusiastic move and being pushed away, or having to tell someone whom I like to stop what they’re doing.

Such a good point. We need to learn to be mindful and active listeners when our partners tell us what they really want. To be good sexual beings, we need to accept that when someone says “I’m really enjoying kissing you, but I’m not in the mood for sex”, that’s okay, they don’t hate us or think we’re ugly, and they’re really telling the truth. The faster and more openly we learn how to listen to our partners and encourage them to speak, the better sexual experiences we will have.

Welcome

Welcome to my blog. I will be using this as a space to answer questions about sexology, my work, or other human sexuality-related issues, as well as talk about upcoming events I will be attending (or ones that I think readers might find interesting). I will also be posting the 7to13 podcast here when it goes live, shortly. I look forward to hearing from and interacting with you! Thanks for visiting.