In March of 2022, I piloted this new presentation with women student leaders at the College of St. Benedict's and at a St. Cloud State University human sexuality class. The session was titled, The Revolution is COMING: Sexual Politics, Pleasure Equity, and Cliteracy. This session gives participants an opportunity to (re)learn and discuss the politics around women's sexuality, pleasure and orgasm in/equity, cliteracy, and examine cultural messaging about sex and gender roles, desire, and the impact of sexual trauma on sexuality. I also share resources and strategies for change. This is a great presentation topic for college students, adults, women's groups, men's groups, pre-marital/marriage groups, conferences, etc. What inspired me to take on this new topic is recognizing how little people of all genders know about the clitoris and the lack of prioritization of pleasure for people who have them! I have had many conversations with women of all ages who had been having sex for years (even decades!) and did not know where their own clitoris was located and/or never had an orgasm. This both pained me... and pissed me off. THIS IS A FREAKING TRAGEDY YA'LL... Our "sexual education" system protects patriarchal sexual norms. "Sex ed" is purposefully designed to invisibilize and fail women, queer, and gender-marginalized folks. At the college I work at, students were really interested in inviting a speaker to talk about the orgasm gap on campus. We searched... and there were only a handful of speakers we could find throughout the country that spoke on this topic... and only one or two speakers who lived in our state. So, here I am. Talking all about clits and other important stuff because women's sexual lives are not trivial. Another one of my many life missions is for women to have better sex and to openly, proudly, unashamedly talk about women's sexual pleasure and orgasm equity. The personal is political and the political is personal! I am a feminist practitioner with a social and political science background. No, I can't tell you the biology or give the detailed specifics surrounding the science of arousal and orgasm, but that's not really what I see audiences are looking for anyway. Pleasure/orgasm inequity has far less to do with biology, sex/gender differences, or actual orgasm difficulties as it has to do with power, social and cultural norms, patriarchy, sexism, sex/gender roles, sexual entitlement, and this fabulously accurate new term I'm hear more: "strategic incompetence." It also has a lot to do with who defines "sex."
Those questions are mostly rhetorical, as the answer(s) is literally hitting us on the head with a giant brick. So, is the content I share in this presentation cutting-edge, earth-shattering, wildly innovative, and novel? Nope. Sometimes, we just have to collectively face the music. I'll be sharing the research, allowing us some space to discuss, learn, unlearn, and think critically to confront the silly sexual messaging we receive about the "mysterious female orgasm" because, oh heavens, women's bodies are sooooo complicated. *Eye roll* Yes, there a bit of snark in this presentation. How could there not be? Sometimes, we must laugh at the absurdity. And then... fight for the revolution. It's COMING.
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