I talked about my experience with the Institute for Advanced Study of Human Sexuality and the SAR on Dragonroot Radio, CKUT’s feminist radio show. We talked about intersectionality, the way IASHS treated trans* panelists, and the need for discussions of privilege in sexuality education.
You can listen to the archived show here! I’m in the second half of that broadcast, after the banjo song — the first half is about Israeli apartheid, I think.
I am an attendee of the 2013 SAR. I was one of I believe two people in the group who are not enrolled in the degree-seeking program at IASHS and was attending the SAR as a professional credential for my career as a sexologist. I had a number of issues with the SAR and IASHS and wanted to raise them in writing in the hopes that they will be dealt with sooner rather than later.
First, I was unimpressed to see that the questionnaire we were given to fill out about our sexual practices on the very first day had a “Gender” choice on it at all, given that that information is not actually relevant for the purposes of demographics, but was particularly disconcerted to see that there were only two options. Adding an open field for gender, or replacing “male” and “female” with an open text box is far more inclusive, as Sarah Mei explains here: http://www.sarahmei.com/blog/2010/11/26/disalienation/
Second, there was an offensive and racist image hanging in the central hallway. This image was so offensive that I found it difficult to look at whenever I went down the hall, and when I described it to non-attendees, they were appalled. I have attached a photo of the image. I would suggest removing the image or placing it in a less prominent location along with an explanatory plaque, as well as an investigation into why a public organization would feel comfortable presenting this image in the first place.
This brings me to one of the largest issues I had with the SAR. All of the attendees identified themselves as working in the field of human sexuality, whether as counsellors, educators, or in some other format; these were all people with a modicum of experience in the field of sexology. The SAR is an opportunity to provide information to professionals in the field of sexuality, especially information they might not already have thought of or that might rattle their worldview.
That is theoretically the stated goal of the SAR. However, there was no discussion of race, feminism, socioeconomic status, or the number of other political factors that have a strong impact on the way human sexuality is presented and explored. There were few to no non-white faces in any of the videos we saw, and only one person of colour on a panel…Jody, on the last day of the SAR. There was no discussion of classism at all. These issues are not only completely relevant to the study of human sexuality, but actually dangerous to ignore. When I and several other members of the group tried to bring up discussion of these issues (as in when I mentioned Bradley Manning during our discussion of Pride), we were rapidly shut down and further discussion was forced away. When I mentioned how noticeable and hurtful I thought this omission was in our final discussion, it was stated that the SAR “didn’t have time” to cover all the material people might want to see. I pointed out that each of the speakers could have taken 5 less minutes and we could have had a brief discussion of privilege and disadvantage as it related to the daily topic we were discussing. Another student pointed out: “Well, when exactly WILL there be time for people of colour and lower socioeconomic status?”
This is exactly the problem. The IASHS SAR was heavily skewed in favour of white, able-bodied, middle class values, and other points of view were not discussed. It is precisely this problem that has led to the marginalizing of minority groups: treating them and their stories as less important, less visible, and less interesting than the dominant (white, able-bodied, cisnormative, heteronormative) paradigm. As an organization that is training future professionals in the field of sexology, it absolutely behooves IASHS to provide a well-rounded experience for its attendees. Ignoring intersectionality is not just a serious flaw, it is outright hostile to minority groups.
May I suggest the following links for reading material on intersectionality and the impact of ignoring it:
http://racismschool.tumblr.com/IntrotoRacism
http://www.derailingfordummies.com/
http://tigerbeatdown.com/2011/10/10/my-feminism-will-be-intersectional-or-it-will-be-bullshit/
Another issue I have is with the incredibly outdated material being used in the SAR process. The films we watched were mostly over thirty years old and, while nice, there are many more recent, inclusive, and useful films that would provide a better-rounded understanding of whatever human sexual behaviour we are supposed to be dealing with. There are a lot of feminist porn activists, for example, who are creating sensual videos available online. The written material we received was also outdated, and a lot of the techniques used felt like they were better suited to Berkeley circa 1962 than a modern-day San Francisco classroom.
As IASHS is situated in a global hub for cutting-edge information, artwork, creative energy, and queer and alternative lifestyles, I was expecting a certain level of awareness and interest in keeping ideas and audiovisual material up to date. In comparison, the bookshelves at the Center for Sex and Culture feature a wide variety of academic and pop culture literature on a diverse range of topics having to do with human sexual practice, none of which were any older than 20 years (unless they were historical, like the Shere Hite report). In contrast, I struggled to find a book more recent than the 80s on the bookshelves at IASHS. It is both shocking and, again, dangerous, to provide such outdated material to professionals in the field, and does them a great disservice. If the video and materials were presented from a historical standpoint ONLY, and this was stressed, I would have less of a problem with them, although I would still be confused as to why we were using only historical information in such a forward-thinking location.
Finally, I had a series of problems with the Sensorium experience. It may be detailed best by the article I wrote about it on my personal blog, which goes over exactly how unsettling and potentially unsafe I found the entire experience to be and why: https://clairelitton.wordpress.com/2013/07/07/iashs-sar-sensorium/
To sum up: I found the Sensorium’s absolute lack of informed consent for participants to be completely inappropriate in every way. The SAR in general, actually, had almost no discussion of consent (or any of the recent movements surrounding it, like the “Consent is Sexy” campaign, slut-shaming and the Slutwalks, victim-blaming, etc) other than a generic statement for people to speak up if they didn’t like something. This is not consent. This attitude creates an environment where people do not feel safe speaking up, and situations such as several people encountered at the Sensorium were allowed to happen.
As you can see, all of these issues are interconnected. The lack of discussion of intersectionality created a situation where minorities were marginalized and silenced, while a focus on using outdated material contributed to this, which ultimately resulted in a non-consensual, disturbing event.
I also have several problems with the way communication was handled over the course of the SAR. I and several other attendees were frequently surprised to learn that an event or activity that we assumed was mandatory was not…after the fact. For example, we were only told after Pride that we had a choice not to march with the group: we thought it was a mandatory part of participation in the SAR to march with “Straights for Gay Rights” (which I also had some issues with, given that it silenced any queer voices that we might have in the SAR group). When we brought this up later, we were told, “Oh no, of course you could have done something else!” It seems like there needs to be better communication about which activities are mandatory and which activities are flexible.
I am happy to provide further information, examples, or reasoning behind any of these issues as needed. I chose to attend the IASHS SAR because of the good reputation the Institute has; I would very much like to help IASHS live up to that reputation.
Thank you for your time and attention.
Best,
Claire Litton
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 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.
I figured the Sensorium experience gets its own post because of exactly how many problems it had. When I explained to a friend a general outline of what happened, his jaw dropped and he said, “Are you going to complain about this to the staff?” Cementing my reputation as the angry activist, I did indeed bring it up to the staff, but wanted to go over exactly why it was such a big problem.
Hey, IASHS: are you paying attention to this campaign?
So the Sensorium experience was scheduled for Thursday night; we were deliberately told nothing about it beforehand, except that we could dress up in costumes if we had them, and that it would be at the IASHS location. After a short time milling around trying on different parts of costumes, we were introduced to our “guides”, who would call us through the experience one by one. I was, interestingly, the first person through.
Immediately upon entry, I was blindfolded and taken through a series of experiences — there was minimal physical contact, just hands in my hands leading me to where I needed to go. I smelled some things, heard some things, and generally “engaged my senses”, which was, I presumed, the point of the exercise. At the end of my walkthrough, my blindfold was removed, and I was told to start participating myself, but given no guidelines for what to do, precisely.
As each participant passed through the experience and was un-blindfolded, they were told to join the participation as “educators”. There were some objects around that we could use to touch people with (“different sensations”), most of which had been shown to us on the “Bodies” day. My first issue was that many of the objects had been identified on the “Bodies” day as things to which some people might have allergies or objections (fur, wool, feathers), and that we should always check with our partners before using them: at no point during the Sensorium did anyone ask about whether a blindfolded recipient had an allergy.
This is when it started to get REALLY problematic. As the number of un-blindfolded people to blindfolded people grew, there started to be three or four “educators” to every participant. People had multiple hands on them at once, and many people started to touch blindfolded participants in some provocative ways. The atmosphere was charged with a sexual energy: lap dancing, genital rubbing, and moaning were everywhere.Eventually, I bowed out and went in the other room, and eventually left at 9:30 to return to the East Bay, feeling incredibly uncomfortable with what I had witnessed.
Why was I uncomfortable? The biggest reason was: if any person in that group had an undisclosed history of sexual assault, and was blindfolded and placed in a situation where people would be rubbing against them in a sexual fashion WITHOUT THEIR CONSENT AT ANY POINT, it would have been massively, intensely triggering. Even without a history of sexual assault, being blindfolded and brought into a situation where multiple people would be touching you in sexual ways WITHOUT YOUR CONSENT AT ANY POINT, could be seen or felt as sexual assault. Are you getting my drift? THERE WAS NO CONSENT AT ANY POINT.
It turn out that some people DID feel mildly assaulted, especially as some had told their “educators” to stop touching them…and that didn’t happen. So basically, someone said no…and the touching continued. WHOA. We had been told from the beginning to “trust the process”, and I have to say I find it incredibly difficult to trust a situation where workshop attendees are placed, without warning or consent, in a situation that felt incredibly unsafe to ME, and I have never been assaulted and was the first person through, so had no physical touch. The only thing I felt after that was that I could not believe they had told us this would be a safe space…and then created such an unsafe, hostile environment, and expected participants to just power through it, with no information or explanation of what was going to happen.
People had also been encouraged to bring and drink alcohol before participating, and I know many had brought bottles of wine: not that I was triggered at any point, but I personally find being in situations where I am surrounded by drunk people very difficult due to some past experience with an abusive alcoholic ex-boyfriend. The new educators could look around the room and use that as a guideline for their own behaviour, since they received no information about HOW to participate as an educator…which means that if they saw their previous (potentially drunk) classmates engaging in sexually-charged behaviour, they would do that themselves “in the spirit of fun”.
The whole thing was an intensely disturbing experience. When several of us brought up our reservations about the whole experience, we were told that every SAR is different, and that sometimes they did not have sexual touching occur…and that, as participants were adults, they should be expected to “know how to hold their alcohol.” When I brought up how uncomfortable the lack of consent and entire situation felt during the final large group session, one of the men in the group actually said, “Well, you could just trust the process instead of being grumpy about it.” ExCUSE me? Did you just minimize my extremely valid concerns with a super-rapey situation by telling me to stop being grumpy? Because women are supposed to be polite and nice all the time, I suppose.
How could this have been avoided? The simplest way, to my mind, would be to have people participate with INFORMED CONSENT. Before the start of the Sensorium participants should be told that the event will involve being blindfolded and touched, possibly by multiple people. No genital touching should be allowed unless expressly requested. This way, participants would have the choice to OPT OUT of the experience if they did not want to participate at all (again, it was presented as being mandatory to the completion of the SAR), and then the onus of touch is on the educators NOT TO TOUCH GENITALS unless asked…as opposed to on the blindfolded participant to have to say no and fight someone off when they are touched inappropriately. Relying on the victim to say no when something has already happened, to prevent it from happening again, is shutting the barn door after the horse has been stolen: we should be stopping uncomfortable feelings by addressing the touchERS not the touchEES. Victim-blaming, by telling participants “well, you could have said no if you didn’t like what was happening”, is NOT OKAY.
Basically, after this experience, I would never in a million years recommend to anyone to take this SAR, or any course by the IASHS. If an organization offering degree programs in the study of human sexuality can create and encourage a situation where CONSENT IS COMPLETELY IGNORED and NEVER DISCUSSED, I believe they have no authority as educators. Being told “his doesn’t happen at every SAR” is no excuse: I’m GLAD this doesn’t happen at every SAR, because that would mean people would feel assaulted every year. EVERY. YEAR. How on earth is this allowed to continue? And why, when I brought it up in large group, did other workshop attendees — many of whom were degree-seeking students at IASHS — act like they had never heard of the concepts I was mentioning as problematic? If they are doctoral-level students of human sexuality, should they not have discussed issues of consent and assault RIGHT AWAY in their studies?
I have no idea what IASHS is up to, but this evening was intensely uncomfortable, and threw their entire reputation as a safe space into question.
Day 5 we focused on trans* issues and had a bit of a holiday to Walnut Creek, while day 6 we spent mostly learning about adolescent sexuality and sex and disability.
Montreal seems to be pretty supportive of trans* issues — there are a lot of queer events and inclusive spaces, and most of the workshops/ateliers I go to begin with having attendees introduce themselves by name and state their preferred pronouns. Obviously since I am not trans*, I don’t know what it is actually like, and I would never presume to speak for that community, but it seems pretty good. San Francisco is also pretty good, I’d assume: steeped in the queer culture I mentioned in the last post, it seems like most of my friends here are welcoming, enthusiastic people who like to wear bear costumes and laser cut robots and date genderqueer people.
This book is a GREAT resource for learning about trans*, genderqueer, and non-conforming gender identity/expression.r people.
Our panelists were an older man and a younger gender non-binary person (who goes by “he”) — the younger panelist was also asexual. I’ve really been appreciating the variety of panelists — many panelists, aside form being “lesbian” or whatever the reason for their appearance on the panel, openly discuss also being poly, kinky, asexual, whatever. Clearly these concepts are pretty new for a lot of the attendees, as we spend a lot of time discussing them.
For this panel, we discussed asexuality and non-binary gender presentation in depth, with some divergence into questions I personally found a little bit…iffy. Obviously if people don’t know things, they should ask, and it seemed like the majority of attendees had never met someone who identified as genderqueer or asexual before (and some had clearly never knowingly met a trans* person, either). One of the other attendees said she wasn’t sure what possible purpose could be served by asking some of those questions, and I have to agree. If you can’t think of a good reason you would need to know the answer to something, other than idle curiosity, maybe better not to ask it? I’m trying to be diplomatic here, obviously, but I admit to having a few cringey moments.
The general format of the workshops is also starting to get to me: we spend all day every day sitting in relatively uncomfortable chairs in an extremely stuffy room — no outside light and no fresh air. By midafternoon, most of us are completely exhausted. Since I am basically just a basket of tiny problems (I get sciatica if I sit too long, I have bunions, I get Restless Leg Syndrome if I drink caffeine after 4pm…anyone who wants to send me a cane to thwap the young whippersnappers with, feel free), this amount of sedentariness is terrible for my body and I find it difficult to get enough exercise and stretch. If the BART workers weren’t striking, I’d be walking a lot more, but as it is I mostly just feel like a creaky octogenarian. If you’re planning on coming to this workshop, be aware: lots of sitting.
After the trans* panel, we drove out to Walnut Creek for an “away day”. Again, I think I am a little bit jaded. I’ve been to Burning Man 5 times: if I’m surrounded by naked people and there’s nothing exploding or on fire, I tend to find it relatively tame. Also I’ve taken my clothes off in public so consistently that my mom said she thought I would grow up to be a nudist; I don’t find it to be a particularly intimate or shocking experience, but I forget that many other people don’t have the opportunity to be exposed (ha!) to group nudity that often.
Day 6 began with a guest speaking about adolescent sexuality…sort of. She didn’t seem particularly well-prepared, and her talk mostly just centered on personal stories about her children, who were not actually adolescents. I don’t know that I learned anything revolutionary from this section, although I did very much enjoy watching videos that one of the workshop facilitators had produced with a group of Hawaiian teenagers a few years ago. It reminded me of my own teenaged forays into playwriting and how incredibly CLEVER I thought I was. (I wasn’t.)
Why is there a picture of me putting mascara on my best friend in this post? Because why not.
In the afternoon, we focused on sex and disability — everything that is facilitated and taught by the small group leader Jody is very well-prepared and excellently documented. He’s professional, enthusiastic, and explains things in an easy-to-understand and in-depth manner — he talked about trans* issues and also introduced the sex and disability section. We talked about physical disability, non-visible disability, and had a panelist come and discuss her sex life after acquiring ME. By the late afternoon, we were incredibly tired, and we still had a long evening of participating in the Sensorium exercise.
My interest and enthusiasm for the program is definitely starting to flag — I think if I were either learning something intellectually or learning something emotionally, I would be more upbeat, but…I feel like all of the information I have received was presented to a high standard through my Curtin sexology degree, and all of the emotional processing skills I’ve developed through years in therapy and meditation. I’m not perfect, by any means, and have a way to go. But I would stress for any potential future attendees: this is a very base-level course. This SAR is not designed for advanced sexologists, either people who have completed coursework in human sexuality, or people who have done a lot of processing on their own. I can get SOMETHING out of it, but it is mostly starting to feel a bit arduous to be spending all day, every day doing things I am already familiar with, when I could be spending time with my friends or going to workshops at the Center for Sex and Culture.
Or, I admit, going home and sleeping in my own bed.
Day 3 of the SAR, we concentrated on homosexuality, with a very brief foray into bisexuality. Day 4 was a discussion of the physical body, including some sensate focus-type exercises.
I really loved the panel of lesbians, although the panel of gay men was interesting for their personal stories. The lesbian panelists were engaging and witty, and talked a lot more about their multiple interests and facets of their identity. All panels got a lot of questions, and we also watched some videos, most of which were pretty old school.
I got into an interesting conversation with my friend Robert about how SF is steeped in queer culture so much that queer history and ideals and beliefs are part of SF history and ideals and beliefs; they’re unseparatable concepts. Everyone here grows up surrounded by knowledge about the AIDS crisis and Harvey Milk that people in other places have to seek out. It’s unique, and makes me jealous, honestly. I wish I had grown up in that atmosphere, only without having to live in the Bay Area.
We also watched the Fuckarama, a multiscreen pornography experience that can only be described as headache-inducing. It’s designed to desensitize viewers to sexual images, although the vast majority of images shown were a) pretty tame and b) full of cocks. There was an awful lot of penis in these clips, and a lot of focus on ejaculation as the terminus of sexual experience. Interesting stuff, despite all the blinking lights.
Day 4 (today) was mostly about the physical body: bodywork, touch, STDs. We discussed barrier methods, had a presentation about sexological bodywork, and engaged in some group touch exercises. At first, I felt unsure about whether or not I wanted to be touched by anyone. While everyone is nice, I’m not super comfortable with being touched intimately (by which I mean “as though the person is intimate with me”, and not specifically sexually — this includes cuddling, hand holding, etc) by people I don’t know well, unless we just have that kind of relationship. My bestie Marcus and I startled cuddling each other almost the first day we met: it just felt OK. But strangers? Nope. Especially when the SAR is likely the only thing we really have in common.
The touching exercises felt pretty safe though, and I was fine to do them. Not particularly challenging, in that they weren’t pushing my buttons or anything. So far the only things that push my buttons are the occasional casual references to unfortunate mindsets…or this absolutely dreadful image, which is hanging with a set of “vintage erotic art” in the front IASHS hallway:
I find it difficult to believe the organization really cares about making attendees feel completely safe if they openly display such an offensive piece of art. It’s not the sexual aspect of it that’s offensive: it’s the outright racism. Yikes.
We’d been told on day 1 that we would be marching in the Pride Parade with a contingent called Straights for Gay rights; this organization was begun by one of the Institute’s original members, Janice Epps, and has been marching in the Parade since 1977. Things have changed a lot since 1977 (understatement), when it was revolutionary to “come out” as a straight person supportive of gay rights. These days, while there is obviously still a lot of homophobia, someone in the SAR pointed out: “Everyone who was at the Parade and straight could have been called straights for gay rights.”
From the beginning, I was quite uncomfortable with this being the group we were designated to march with. In the first place, it discounted the voices of SAR participants who were not straight. By marching under a banner that labelled all of us as straight, it effectively negated their personal identity. In the second place, I feel like there are enough spaces where straight people, as the dominant culture, can have their voices heard. A Parade for queers by queers, a place to celebrate queerness, is one place where, honestly, I feel like straight people (and I am one) should butt out. I mean, go if you want to be supportive, but marching in the parade under a banner that basically says “Hey, pay attention, we support you!” felt…disturbingly like we were asking for cookies.
I marched anyway, though, and met up with Sky and some other friends to eat vegan salad and prowl the Civic Centre. Our SAR group met back up at IASHS at 4 to process our feelings around marching in the Parade.
I started by bringing up how difficult I find the increasing corporatization of Pride. Float after float by banks and Facebook and businesses that have never made any effort to include images of queer people in their advertising…it seems quite obvious to me that these businesses are participating in Pride solely as a marketing technique, to break into the lucrative LGBT market. As more businesses put a rainbow on it, it seems like blatant product placement to encourage and allow them free access to marginalized pockets. The LGBT subgroup, after all, is more than what they buy.
this was not a popular opinion with other SAR attendees, and I had to explain myself many times. I also brought up the Free Bradley Manning protestors I had seen; many SAR attendees did not know who Bradley Manning, the contested ex-Grand Marshal of SF Pride, was, and no explanation was given.
In small groups, we discussed these issues in more depth, and I learned that participation in the Parade with the SFGR contingent was not mandatory for SAR participants, as we’d all thought it was. Our small group leader said she would bring this up to the Institute.
Overall, it was a challenging day, and I felt like there may not be much of an effort to include intersectionality in this SAR process.
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 