Archives for May 2009

This week the NSRC highlighted the California’s Supreme Court’s decision to uphold Proposition 8. However, there are a lot of other important stories happening this week that speak volumes about the state of sexuality in the United States. Here are a few issues we find important, and we hope you’ll read more about.

California’s impending budget cuts literally threaten the lives of Californian’s living with HIV/AIDS.  An East Bay facility that treats low-income people living with HIV/AIDS closed its doors this past week, and it’s likely that impeding budget cuts will threaten HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment through out the state.

Obama’s nomination of federal judge Sonia Sotomayor to replace Justice David Souter has the entire blog world speculating about her positions on numerous issues related to sexuality. RH Reality check reviews her record on abortion, and the Guardian and Pandagon.net...

Today, May 27, 2009, is the first ever World Multiple Sclerosis Day, a day dedicated to uniting MS organizations and individuals world wide in the name of mobilizing a truly global movement to end MS.

As someone who has MS and is also a sexuality educator, my contribution to a new global movement for MS awareness is to work with NSRC to provide the best (U.S. based) resources I know of to support the (sexual) lives of people with MS and those who are intimately...

The 2009 Alternative Sexualities Conference: Cultural Competence and Clinical Issues was held on Thursday, May 21, 2009 in Chicago.  The second annual conference is a day-long training on BDSM, kink, polyamory and other consensual non-monogamies specifically designed for therapists, counselors and clinicians.  This year, we also encouraged the presentation of academic / scientific research on these alternative sexualities, and had several presentations on research results and presentations on forming future research questions.

All together, there were 15 different sessions. 

We had over 67 attendees, not including the staff of the producers of the event (who also provided some of the sessions).  The producers are CARAS and SOGI - the Sexual Orientation and Gender Institute, housed at the Center on Halsted in Chicago.

Plans are already...

I recently attended the 41st Annual AASECT (American Association of Sex Educators, Counselors, and Therapists) Conference. I had the privilege of presenting at the conference, which I greatly enjoyed. More importantly I was a small part of an outreach that brought the SM community and the academic research community, who have in the past been seen as at odds to one another, together. Having the perspective of one who resides in both camps, it was quite amazing to hear commentary from each organization about this outreach and what it could mean to not only the future of sex education and therapy, but to the future of those of us who feel we live on the fringes of society because of our sexual identities.

APEX, the Arizona Power Exchange, opened its doors to those attending the AASECT Conference. As far as I know, this has never been done quite like this before. APEX had the courage to reach out to a community that many BDSM lifestylers are cautious and even afraid of. And because of this magnanimous gesture, another 150 educators and therapists have returned to...

This year members of the NSRC have had the amazing opportunity to attend numerous national conferences related to sexuality studies. We’ve heard from experts doing research and advocacy at every intersection of sexuality, health, and social justice. As newbie to the field these conferences afforded me the opportunity to chat with authors whose work I have studied and admired from afar, and I was often star-struck.

Meeting stars of sexuality studies is very excited, but it pales in comparison to my experience yesterday at the 4th annual SF State of Sexuality conference. The conference is a showcase of sexuality research produced by SFSU graduate students, and it was held in classroom one floor up from my office. Many of the participants are students in the Sexuality Studies department, and I knew each of them from my time in the department last year.

Despite my familiarity with each presenter I felt star-struck once again. In less than a year and with no funding each student produced research that changes the ways we should think about sexuality.  Presentations varied in topic from examining the way Black men negotiate racialized and sexualized stereotypes in creating online profiles to a film on sexuality, visibility, and disability.

The most striking...

Statement by Friends & Family of Rodger McFarlane on his Death

New York, Monday, May 18, 2009 – It is with deep sadness that we announce the death of our friend, colleague, and hero, Rodger McFarlane. A pioneer and legend in the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) civil rights and HIV/AIDS movements, Rodger took his own life in Truth or Consequences, New Mexico last Friday. In a letter found with his remains, Rodger explained that he was unwilling to allow compounding heart and back problems to become even worse and result in total debilitation. We know that Rodger was in a great deal of pain. Already disabled in his own mind, he could no longer work out or do all the outdoor activities he so loved. He was also now faced with the realization that he could literally not travel, making employment increasingly difficult. As his friends and family, we thought it was important that we communicate to the world that it has lost an amazingly wonderful individual who contributed so mightily to our humanity.

Rodger approached every aspect of his life with boundless passion and vigor. While many people go their entire lives wanting to be good at just one thing, Rodger excelled at virtually everything he did. Brilliant activist and strategist, decorated veteran, accomplished athlete, best-selling author, and...

On last night's Daily Show, Jon Stewart made a sharp observation about the absurdity of our leaders. Essentially, they will go to any length to protect us, including torture, unless it involves boys who like boys, because, you know, ew.

(Don't Ask Don't Tell bit starts at 3:20 in the clip below)

Hans Rosling unveils new data visuals that untangle the complex risk factors of one of the world's deadliest (and most misunderstood) diseases: HIV. He argues that preventing transmissions -- not drug treatments -- is the key to ending the epidemic.

Perhaps first things you learn as a sexuality researcher is to set aside your preconceptions. So as I prepared for my first Society for the Scientific Study of Sexuality regional meeting in Pacific Grove, California, I tried to banish my preconceptions of what a conference on the science of sex would be like. I was pretty convinced it would be everything you don’t really want sex to be – dry, humorless, boring, and a little bit weird.

All of my preconceptions melted away on Friday night as I sat in a lecture hall at the Monterey Bay Aquarium watching Isabella Rossellini’s Green Porno with Steven Webster, PhD a founder of the aquarium. He was giving us a lecture on sex and marine life, and he (along with Isabella) introduced us to some of the ocean’s creatures with the most interesting gender and sexual variations. Highlights included male sea horses that get "pregnant", clown fish who are sequential hermaphrodites, and anglerfish whose males are essentially parasites living off of the bloodstream of females.

Who knew that a college could suspend its students for their actions outside of the university - actions that are not illegal or harmful to onself or others.  Recently, John Gechter was suspended from Grove City College for starring in gay pornographic films: http://www.sharon-herald.com/local/local_story_129223109.html?keyword=topstory

Gechter noted that he does such films and other forms of modeling to pay for his education.  Certainly, other students are doing the same thing - but maybe in other jobs and professions.  What's the difference?

Kudos to President Obama for walking the walk. His 2010 budget, released yesterday, makes good on his promise to re-assert the role of science and evidence in policy, by zeroing out all Title V abstinence only funding. As study after study has shown (including our own Sexuality Research and Social Policy issue dedicated to the topic), abstinence only education policies are at best a dismal failure, and at worst dangerous for the healthy sexuality of teens. Even better, the proposed budget includes renewed funding--173 million--for more comprehensive sexuality education. Here's a clip from p. 491 of the budget:

We will be interested to see how this part of the budget plays out in Congress--or if legislators will finally acknowledge that it is time to move beyond moral agendas, and back to what evidence and research shows. We couldn't have wished for a better beginning to a re-invigorated conversation about supporting healthy sexuality. We also hope that as the President moves forward, his efforts don't focus narrowly on teen pregnancy prevention, but look at all the factors that influence, inform and shape whether or not teens are sexually healthy--a

The sensationalizing, melodramatic, "scare-the-crap-out-of-you", hype machine that passes for mass media these days is once again doing its best to ensure that parents are ready to break out the chastity belts, pass out whistles for "stranger danger" encounters, install nanny software on their home computers to block adult content, and this time, take away their cell phones to ensure that they are safe from the big, bad, sexually predatory world out there. Yes, I'm talking about the attention the "recent phenomenon" labeled "sexting" has gotten in the mainstream media in the last few weeks.  According to the news reports I found via a simple Google search, sexting is a very dangerous activity that could damage your future and ruin your life - although there wasn't really much of an explanation of how this could happen.  Instead of getting caught up in yet another panic, let's take a rational look at this "new" behavior as well as some of the real concerns that a more responsible press might address. 

First, sexting is not new.  Cell phones are no longer new; texting is no longer new; and even sending photos via a cell phone is no longer a new technology.  And before there were cell phones, there was the internet and a similar panic about teens emailing nude photos or posting nude photos online. There was even a...

Today marks the eighth annual National Day to Prevent Teen Pregnancy, and 2007 marks the first increase in the total annual number of teen pregnancies after fourteen years of decline.

Why the increase? In a media call hosted yesterday by RHReality Check, Bill Albert from The National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy chalked it up to these main factors:

• The 'magic formula' of less sex+more contraception that drove down rates in nineties is slowing or reversing,
• There is less concern among teens about HIV now than in the past--Albert pointed to Kaiser Family Foundation data released last week that shows show dramatic decline in concern about HIV in young adults,
• Greatest increase in teen pregnancy is among those 18 and 19 years, and few prevention messages are geared towards them,
• Prevention fatigue—nothing but good news for fourteen years has contributed to less dedicated resources,
• Our overal culture contributes to and shapes teens’ social scripts.

Whether you agree with the framing or not, there is general agreement that reducing teen pregnancy is a laudable goal. The National Day was originally conceived to call attention to the need for 'comprehensive' sex ed, but the rallying call has been taken up by the ab-only folks as well. And in that spirit, it is Bill...