Wednesday 10 July 2013

Sex Ed: Karen B. K. Chan

The month of June, 2013, saw a flurry of activity on Twitter for #AdultSexEdMonth, the brainchild of Ms. Quote @GoodDirtyWoman. A number of bloggers, experts, and anybody interested in the topic of sex posted a wealth of information about this most fundamental and natural aspects of the human condition. I ran across the following video and thought to repost it in an effort to spread the word.

Karen Chan is a sex educator who works out of Toronto, Canada. Her web site, Fluid Exchange, explains a variety of offerings including the facilitation of hands-on, interactive, and experiential workshops, public speaking, and the writing of training manuals, lesson plans, fact sheets, and advice columns. (As an aside, the expression fluid exchange refers to just that, the exchange of fluids during sex although we all should be using protection, right?) In the following YouTube video, Ms. Chan applies her creativity to a novel comparison between sex and a musical jam session. If I return to the central idea of #AdultSexEdMonth, talking about sex is a good thing and talking about sex can lead to good sex.

Talking about sex is much more intimate than doing it.
by Dr. Marty Klein, sex therapist, educator and public policy analyst (How To NOT Get An Erection)

Ms. Chan explains her video: Jam was my first video work, commissioned by SexEd: Chapter 1, a New York City art exhibition curated by Norene Leddy and Liz Slagus. Jam is my interpretation of Thomas MacAulay Millar's important essay "Towards a Performance Model of Sex". It's my way of contributing to the movement towards enthusiastic consent and sex positivity: through a proposal in simple language.


Published on Jan 31, 2013 by SexEdProjectvideos
Jam, 2013, by Karen B. K. Chan



References

official web site: Fluid Exchange Consultation
Karen B. K. Chan: Sex Educator: Sexuality & Eroticism, Emotional Literacy, Diversity Competence

Twitter: Karen B. K. Chan @karenbkchan

Facebook: Karen B. K. Chan

Wikipedia: Emotional literacy
Emotional Literacy is made up of ‘the ability to understand your emotions, the ability to listen to others and empathise with their emotions, and the ability to express emotions productively. To be emotionally literate is to be able to handle emotions in a way that improves your personal power and improves the quality of life around you. Emotional literacy improves relationships, creates loving possibilities between people, makes co-operative work possible, and facilitates the feeling of community.

Diversity Competence or Cultural Diversity Competence
This refers not only to an organization’s capacity to serve diverse groups in socially and culturally appropriate ways. It also refers to the organization’s capacity to manage and support diversity within itself (policies and procedures supportive of diversity, diverse staff and volunteers, physical facilities and artifacts that are supportive and reflective of diversity in the community, etc.

About dot com: Fluid Bonding by Elizabeth Boskey, Ph.D.
Couples who choose to stop practicing safer sex with each other are sometimes said to be fluid bonded, because they share bodily fluids with each other. Some monogamous couples believe that fluid bonding is a way to enhance intimacy, although there is nothing inherently more intimate about having unprotected sex in comparison to safer sex.

Washington City Paper - Apr 19/2010
Sexist Interview: Thomas MacAulay Millar on Feminist Men by Amanda Hess
the first installment in a new Sexist feature: Interviews with experts on the subjects that most vex us around here. First up: Thomas MacAulay Millar, my favorite feminist writer who is also a man. Millar, which is not his real name, is a New-York based attorney and feminist writer.

“Toward a Performance Model of Sex,” by Thomas Macaulay Millar, chapter 2 from the book Yes Means Yes.
The negotiation is the creative process of building something from a set of available elements. Musicians have to choose, explicitly or implicitly, what they are going to play: genre, song, key and interpretation. The palette available to them is their entire skill set — all the instruments they have and know how to play, their entire repertoire, their imagination and their skills — and the product will depend on the pieces each individual brings to the performance. Two musicians steeped in Delta blues will produce very different music from one musician with a love for soul and funk and another with roots in hip-hop or 1980s hardcore. This process involves communication of likes and dislikes and preferences, not a series of proposals that meet with acceptance or rejection. … Under this model, the sexual interaction should be creative, positive, and respectful even in the most casual of circumstances.

Amazon - 2008
Yes Means Yes!: Visions of Female Sexual Power and A World Without Rape by Jaclyn Friedman and Jessica Valenti
In this groundbreaking new look at rape edited by writer and activist Jaclyn Freidman and Full Frontal Feminism and He’s A Stud, She’s A Slut author Jessica Valenti, the way we view rape in our culture is finally dismantled and replaced with a genuine understanding and respect for female sexual pleasure. Feminist, political, and activist writers alike will present their ideas for a paradigm shift from the “No Means No” model—an approach that while necessary for where we were in 1974, needs an overhaul today.

Yes Means Yes will bring to the table a dazzling variety of perspectives and experiences focused on the theory that educating all people to value female sexuality and pleasure leads to viewing women differently, and ending rape. Yes Means Yes aims to have radical and far-reaching effects: from teaching men to treat women as collaborators and not conquests, encouraging men and women that women can enjoy sex instead of being shamed for it, and ultimately, that our children can inherit a world where rape is rare and swiftly punished. With commentary on public sex education, pornography, mass media, Yes Means Yes is a powerful and revolutionary anthology.

2013-07-10

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