In Hanoi: the 2009 IASSCS Conference 

NSRC Director Dr. Gilbert Herdt often refers to the Bush years as the dark ages for sexuality. Fortunately, Americans have a new president and things are already looking brighter.

As the cultural climate shifts under the Obama administration, Dr. Herdt envisions the possibility for sexuality health and education policies based on a sexual literacy model: health promotion that focuses on a holistic approach to well-being, including pleasure and desire; life-long education that recognizes gender and sexuality diversity and addresses the realities of interpersonal relationships; support for science-based sexuality education training.

Dr. Herdt is taking his message to Hanoi—for the 2009 International Association for the Study of Sexuality, Culture and Society (IASSCS) Conference, held April 15-18. He will present “Sexual Literacy and Well-Being in the U.S. (in the New Era of Obama)” for the Director’s Symposium. Looking at sexual health in the first decade of the twenty-first century, he tackles the question on the minds of many sexuality researchers and advocates: How did the United States sink so low? According to Herdt, Bush’s opposition to science-based policies is largely to blame. Students received abstinence-only education, reproductive rights were threatened, and politicians led the pack against same-sex marriage specifically and LGBT rights in general.

Bush’s ideology and policies created fear on every front. Needless to say the moral panics that resulted hurt Americans on so many levels, their health, heart, and spirituality included. Change doesn’t happen overnight, and in the next year, NSRC will further develop and fine-tune its sexual literacy model, Dr. Herdt says.

Other themes to be covered at the IASSCS conference include “diverse sexualities in a globalized word”; “sexuality across generations: adolescence to old age”; “sexual health, public policy and advocacy”; and “religion and sexuality”—all close to NSRC’s own heart and mission.

NSRC has a strong history with IASSCS. In 1997, Dr. Herdt cofounded the organization, which is based in Amsterdam and aims to strengthen the field of social and cultural sexuality research. In 2005, the NSRC along with San Francisco State University hosted V IASSCS Biennial Conference. Incidentally, that year it was produced by Dr. Herdt’s husband Niels Teunis. Further proof that it is a small world after all, that the work of individual sexuality experts has global implications.