We've got a number of things brewing at the NSRC in Education and Training. I'm leaving for Denver tomorrow afternoon to co-faciliatate a daylong institute and a couple of workshops on sexual literacy at the NGLTF Creating Change Conference. We've also been preparing for our next regional training, this one to take place in Austin, TX, on February 26 and 27, and planning our annual Summer Institute, the theme of which this year is "Race, Gender, and Sexuality in the U.S." My job as the Director of Education and Training requires that I go beyond ensuring that participants in our programs learn the basics of sexuality education and research and help them prepare to be professionals in this field - and that may mean different things to different people and there are many disagreements about what that means. For example, some prefer to be called sexologists while others prefer sexuality researchers and sexuality educators while others prefer to be called anthropologists, psychologists, sociologists, etc., who work in the field of sexuality studies. I don't think there are many other fields that require this type of debate or consideration.
A number of incidents over the past few weeks, personal, professional, and political, have caused me to ponder what it means to work in the field of "sexuality." Over the holiday break, I returned home to Austin to see friends and family. My husband, David, and I were asked to model for an artist friend of ours, Heyd Fontenot, who just so happens to paint "naked people." During our session with Heyd, we started talking about what it means to do artwork that is in some ways sexual or erotic in nature. The conversation we had sounded very familiar to discussions I've had over and over again during the past fifteen or so years, and something that every teacher, researcher, and artist must consider when choosing a career in sexuality. Our work is guaranteed to be questioned, even scrutinized, in a way that our colleagues in other fields will not. We have to work twice as hard to prove that our work is legitimate (I find it necessary to "warn" graduate students to expect a longer human subjects review process if their thesis or dissertation work is sexuality-related). We find our work the butt of jokes from friends, and I've found that it can be hard for our family members to understand and/or explain to others what we do for a living. It's much easier for a mom to boast to her friends about the success of her daughter who is a lawyer and works as a prosecutor in the district attorney's office than it is to explain that her son studies the ways in which straight identifying men negotiate reducing their risk of HIV infection when cruising for anonymous gay sex on manhunt.com. (Just writing that makes me cringe at the thought of someone's mother trying to explain what her child does for a living to a group of her church friends!)
For those of us whose work is "legitimate" and legal, we are automatically suspect and questionable. Something must be wrong with us. "Why do you want to teach young children about sex?" "What happened to you that makes you want to write about the symbolism of semen?" "How come you want to take photos of naked people in various states of arousal?" As a result, we attempt to remove ourselves from the sex aspect - or to desexualize our work - to make it more palatable to not only the public but to our friends and family members who are uncomfortable with the work that we do. AND to address our own uncomfortableness with the subject matter. We create a paradox in that we do this work to confront societal and cultural mores about sex and sexuality yet in order to do so we must engage in this strange behavior of making it "not dirty" and "legitimate" to get our work taken seriously thus continuing a vicious cycle of shame and guilt. I am not by any means saying that we should not do this work or strive for it to be taken seriously. I am just beginning to understand that those of us who choose careers in this field must strive to believe in ourselves and accept who we are including being proud of our work; we must live our lives without regret and without apology. Isn't the whole point of this so that we and others can be sexually healthy and happy?
