It’s Friday, and we all know what that means! Interviews with your favorite badass feminists and activists. Whether social media queens and kings, creative artists, sex educators, or just kick-ass personalities, these people harness righteous anger, instigate movements and inspire cultural change. We’re here to honor them and their work, but more importantly, to highlight how we can all get up, plug in, and Just Start Doing.

This week’s badass is Cunning Minx. She is the producer and host of the PolyWeekly podcast, and has been since 2005. There, she talks about non-monogamy as well as kink, providing a valuable resource for the poly-community. The podcast has received much praise, and Minx has been invited to speak at many conferences, including Sex 2.0 and the Heartland Polyamory Conference.

Here is what she had to say to us!

You’ve been doing the PolyWeekly podcast since 2005 now. How did you get started? Has your audience changed at all during that time? Do you see trends in the topics you cover, or are there some staples that always come up again?

I started podcasting on a lark. My boyfriend at the time came to me one weekend, all excited about this audio RSS thing he’d read about in Wired magazine. I shrugged it off as a geek thing. Then, one day, I walked in to a coffee shop to meet him, and he was chatting into a computer mic. He hit a few buttons, and I asked him what he was doing. “I just recorded my podcast and converted to MP3,” he said. “Oh, wait,” I said, “Podcasting is just talking? Like a normal person? I can do THAT!”

Famous last words. Over 300 episodes and many, many hours of wrestling with audio, creating content and wrangling guests and cohosts, I can’t believe I entertained the idea of doing a weekly show so lightly!

The audience has certainly grown over the years. When I began in 2005, iTunes wasn’t yet a podcatcher, so folks had to be pretty geeky to figure out how to aggregate podcast RSS feeds. I remember looking at my stats and being amazed that 200 people I didn’t know were listening to me! Now, of course, we have over 50,000 monthly downloads and a really engaged listener base. I think that’s the thing that has changed the most since the first year—topics come and go, but what has really kept the show going was the active decision to make it a listener-directed show. I chose to cover content I Iike, but the feedback is what determines how often we revisit those topics.

One thing that has changed since the first year was my reluctance to give advice. I didn’t really feel qualified, so I sort of hedged around it. After a few years, though, I kept seeing smart people in real pain with real issues asking for help, so I shared my own experiences and the knowledge I’d gained from them.

How has your personal approach to non-monogamy changed over time? Have you learned any lessons from your listeners or contributors?

One thing I’ve definitely honed over the last six years is my own identity and preferred non-monogamous style—and that those who choose a different style are no less polyamorous than I am. It’s rare that I’ll say “oh, they’re not really poly” when I hear of a person or couple practicing differently from me. The only thing I’m a stickler about is communication and consent—I will rain down bloody hell on you if you do not communicate your desires and activities to all parties involved so they can make informed relationship decisions. But apart from that, I’m pretty tolerant.

Personally, I’m semi-monogamous or poly-friendly. I don’t feel the burning need to have more than one long-term partner, but I like having the option of exploring feelings and relationships when they arise. And while I was blessed with a wonderful period in which I had two long-term boyfriends, I don’t feel like I’m missing anything by having only one at the moment.

One thing I’ve learned from my listeners is that the things that we discuss on the show don’t apply exclusively to polyamory; it really all does come down to self-knowledge and honest communication. About half of the Poly Weekly listening audience identifies as monogamous but let us know that they find the show helpful for improving their monogamous relationships with better communication.

How do you feel about representations of non-monogamy in the media, be they fictional representations (such as Dr. Taub and his wife attempting an open marriage on the TV series House), or “real life” (such as Gingrich’s second wife revealing his asking her to open up the marriage)? Are they positive because they bring non-monogamy to the public attention, or negative for overwhelmingly portraying non-monogamy as a way for dealing with cheating within a marriage (and usually a cheating husband, specifically)?

Ah, that’s quite a question. It depends on the representation. We’ve discussed instances of poly in the media such as the polygamy depicted in the show Sister Wives, with mixed responses. The show is positive in that it does show ongoing communication to make the marriages work, but negative in that it shows a religion-based, patriarchal, heterosexual model that isn’t really representative of how a lot of people practice modern polyamory. And, well, if you’d seen my post on Gingrich, you’d know how I feel about that. I think he has sullied the traditional family values of polyamory with his sleazy, half-hearted proposition to his spouse.

[And here is that post on Gingrich!]

What is most essential about mentions of poly in the media is that there are more of them—a lot more—than even just five or six years ago. And the mentions are becoming decreasingly sensationalized and increasingly normalized.

Similarly, how did you feel about the book Sex at Dawn? It became very popular very quickly, and was received in a largely positive way. Do you think that it can have any lasting effect in the way that monogamy/non-monogamy are viewed?

The value of Christopher Ryan’s Sex at Dawn is that it got many people thinking about non-monogamy in a logical manner. It has tremendous value in that it provided a conversation starter for many people who would never otherwise have considered the biological and anthropological origins of non-monogamy. Plus, bonobos are fun.

What’s your current hot topic? What blog/public figure/news event are you getting really excited/passionate/angry about? Or, feel free to plug any project you are currently working on!

Mostly I’m just really excited about the overwhelming expression of listener support for the show. One thing podcasters never tell you is that we get tired of weekly production. Over the last two years, I’ve nearly shut the show down several times because it just takes so much time and energy. And I wasn’t in a relationship, myself, or even getting lucky, so it was pretty heartbreaking to get on mic every week and spew advice about relationships I didn’t have!  So when a listener suggested the show have a button for monthly repeating donations, I wasn’t sure what would happen. But I’m pleased to report that in the two months since its inception, the Poly Weekly Playmates has 15 monthly donors. And the fact that those people want to hear the content every week has been a huge motivator for me. There is no danger of the show stopping any time soon!

I’ll be speaking on a new topic, How Not to Be a Douche on FetLife, at MomentumCon in March, and I’ve submitted to speak at OpenSF this summer as well. I’m looking forward to both events!

Thanks so much for your time, Minx!

(Jamie has actually been with us for a few months, but she hasn’t had the chance yet to properly introduce herself. So, it’s high time we make up on that. We’re so glad to have Jamie on the team!)

Hello readers!

I’ve been a writer for The Line Campaign since August 2011 when I saw the call for bloggers and jumped at the opportunity to blog with such an awesome team working to empower young leaders to end sexual violence in such a creative and participatory way.

I’m an NYC based writer and activist with an academic background in political theory and an interest in the intersectionality of feminism, queer theory and critical animal studies. I have worked specifically on projects addressing gender mainstreaming following the passing of United Nations Resolution 1325 working to incorporate more women in all aspects of peacekeeping and peacebuilding. I currently serve as the communications and outreach intern with the Global Network of Women Peacebuilders writing their newsletter, member profiles and press releases.

In addition for writing for The Line Campaign I’m also a contributing editor at Autostraddle, an intelligent, hilarious and provocative feminist online community for a new generation of kickass lesbian, bisexual and otherwise inclined ladies (and their friends), and One Green Planet, an online ecosystem that draws links between the environment, animals and vegan living.

Follow me on twitter @jamiejhagen or check out my website. I ook forward to continuing to build connections between movements and address issues of sexual violence and the LGBTQ community in the coming year!

It’s Friday, and we all know what that means! Interviews with your favorite badass feminists and activists. Whether social media queens and kings, creative artists, sex educators, or just kick-ass personalities, these people harness righteous anger, instigate movements and inspire cultural change. We’re here to honor them and their work, but more importantly, to highlight how we can all get up, plug in, and Just Start Doing.

Today’s Badass is Salamishah Tillet. Dr. Salamishah Tillet is an assistant professor of English and Africana studies at the University of Pennsylvania and the author of the forthcoming book, “Sites of Slavery: Citizenship and Racial Democracy in the Post-Civil Rights Imagination.” She is a rape survivor and the co-founder of the nonprofit organization A Long Walk Home Inc., which uses art therapy and the visual and performing arts to end violence against girls and women. You can follow her on Twitter.

Let’s hear what she says about her work!

You are a professor, author, activist and co-founder of a non-profit organization. Sounds like you lead a pretty busy, full life! How did you end up there? Did you always know that you wanted to do this work, or was it something that developed along the way?

I didn’t always know I wanted to do this work or rather I didn’t always know I could this work.  Like many people, I started exploring my academic interests and activism while I was in college.  I knew that I loved literature and was deeply interested in how art could be used to change the world for the better.  I was an undergraduate at the University of Pennsylvania, which is located in the predominately working-class, African American community in Philadelphia, and everyday I was confronted with the disparity between those who had access and those who didn’t.  I spent most of my college days learning about writers like Jean Toomer, Ann Petry, and Rita Dove, and my evening and weekends doing community work in West Philadelphia.   But, the most important life changing experience for me occurred my junior year when two of my friends were physically assaulted by men they were dating and I was sexually assaulted during my study abroad program in Kenya.  After that, I knew that I had to do something to prevent other people from ever experiencing those kinds of violence.

How do the different areas of your work interact? Does your feminism and activism inform your academic work, and vice versa? Do you feel that more academics should try to connect these fields?

I see myself as feminist, particularly a black feminist, inside and outside the classroom.  For me, it is not simply an ideology or theory but a way of being in the world.  This means that I teach courses on black women’s literature and music, write about sexuality and gender in popular culture and politics, and actively work with fellow feminists to achieve gender justice.  I guess I truly believe the adage: “the personal is political,” because I can’t imagine a more liberating and fulfilling life than mirroring a politics of sisterhood in all my relationships, whether it is mentoring to my students, living my activism, or simply being a good friend.

One of your activist ventures is the non-profit organization A Long Walk Home, Inc. Can you tell us what your hopes and goals are for that organization, and how you feel that art therapy and the performing arts can help end violence against women?

A Long Walk is one of my proudest accomplishments.  It grew out of a project that my younger sister, Scheherazade Tillet, created when she was in college after she learned that I was raped. She was a budding social documentary photographer at the time and asked me if she could document my healing process.  That was in 1998, before documenting rape survivors was fashionable.  She later added a cast of women artists, music, dance, poetry, and interviews with me to bring her photographs to life. We later named the multimedia performance, “Story Of A Rape Survivor” (SOARS).  As we toured SOARS around the country, we noticed three things: (1) art brought out non-traditional student populations, people of color and men, to anti-rape events; (2) a woman of color could be the face of the anti-rape movement; and (3) more students were willing to share their own stories of sexual assault and seek help.   Art seemed to inspire new dialogues and new actions.  So, when we decided to expand and use art therapy and visual and performing arts to organize high school students with our Girl/Friends Leadership Institute, we believed that art could not only attract a new generation of activists.  Our own feminist boot camp, Girl/Friends encourages girls to use art to find their voices, organize their peers, and to generate policies to end gender violence in their communities.  Given how heavy these topics are, both art therapy and the visual and performing arts gives everyone with whom we work an opportunity to release and reinvigorate themselves to keep fighting the next day.

Another project that you are currently working on is a book on the civil rights activist Nina Simone. What inspired you to write this book, and what do you hope your message will be to your readers?

I fell in love with Nina Simone when I was writing my dissertation.  I would listen to her music as I wrote so when I began thinking of my second book (the first, “Sites of Slavery” comes out this July), it seemed like a natural choice.  I believe that she is simply one of the most brilliant artists of the twentieth century because her performances refused and redefined musical, racial, and gender boundaries.   Her political commitment to the Civil Rights movement is well-documented, but I am amazed by her ability to blend so many musical traditions, like classical music, rock, and jazz, while being a bridge for so many political generations, such as feminism, Black Power, and hip hop.   She is a wonderful model for my generation of artists and activists because, like Harry Belafonte or Miriam Makeba, she didn’t flinch in the face of power.

What’s an issue that is currently on your mind?  Anything you’re really excited about or really disappointed in? Any big goals for the year 2012?

I am really excited that there is so much energy about ending violence against girls and women.  The mix of traditional community organizing and the birth of social media activism make me feel like there are more people, globally and locally, that are make a big difference in this fight.   But, I am most excited about the youth leaders in out Girl/Friends Leadership Institute in Chicago. Each year, Girl/Friends attracts more teen girls from Chicago’s Westside and Southside communities, who are willing to spend their school year designing community campaigns against sexual assault and teen dating violence.   These girls, most of whom are African American, working-class, and survivors themselves, are such an overlooked population for leadership positions.   Yet, when they have the opportunity to change the world for better, their vision is so bold and radical, I feel lucky to just be part of the process.

If that doesn’t make you feel positively giddy with hope, I don’t know what will.

A debate started on the Internet about two months ago on the website The Good Men Project. While I am not going to go into the specific details of the argument (a summary of which can be found here), I want to talk about some points brought up that I think are especially relevant to male feminists.

Before I start my discussion, I want to give you all some information about who I am. I am 20 years old, white, male and straight. I am a junior at American University in DC and I grew up in a DC suburb in an upper-middle class family. My first experiences with feminism were at my summer camp, Camp Moshava, that is part of the international socialist-Jewish youth movement Habonim Dror (lit builders of freedom). As a young kid I participated in the annual take back the night commemorations at camp and had educational activities run for me about why gender roles and stereotypes are bad (to put it simply). While my 10 year old self did not understand the full significance of what I was experiencing as a camper, what I learned at a young age has continued to influence me. Since my childhood, I have remained active in my youth movement and at camp, and as a counselor, I have planned and run some of the same programming that influenced me as a camper.

In high school, I was the president of my school’s Gay-Straight Alliance and started to become involved in other activist circles, including the student anti-sweatshop movement and the DC radical scene. It was in these circles that I discovered more gender-based analyses of not only world issues but also our own interpersonal relationships. After taking a gap year in Israel, I jumped into the radical activist scene at AU. I also became involved in the Women’s Initiative feminist group on campus and I currently serve as its director for men’s outreach.

Patriarchy exists. I have, as a man, a significant amount of privilege that puts me at a distinctive advantage in society over women.  I do not think that anyone can ignore the fact that male privilege exists. To make statements that diminish the significance of male privilege (and other privileges) is itself a privileged act.

There is a rape culture within our society, especially on college campuses, that protects male perpetrators while stigmatizing female survivors. As a male, I have the privilege of not having to fear for my sexual safety. Men do get raped. To deny that would be disrespectful to their experience. However, rape culture is inherently a patriarchal culture and no man can be assumed to be outside that culture until he is proven to be so.

That poses a difficult question for us male feminists. How can we deal with our privileges and our gender’s position as oppressors and rapists? While there is a responsibility for everyone to promote a culture of consent, I think there is a specific onus on men to promote consent as a lifestyle. Men do not need to only change their own beliefs and behaviors towards women but also change the beliefs and behaviors of other men. Only when rape culture is replaced by consent culture will men as a gender be redeemed.

(We’re back with another look at our awesome new crop of bloggers!)

Hey everyone! I’m Ruwaida and I’m an ardent human rights advocate, emphasizing on women and LGBT rights. It feels great to finally be a part of a revolutionary campaign such as this, as the Where Is Your Line blog’ focuses on sexism, feminism, rape culture, and sexual consent – all of the causes I’m concerned about.

I have recently completed my undergrad in Psychology and work as a Special Educator at a local children development center. When I’m not working or writing exhaustively in my daily journal, I spend maximum time volunteering my time and effort in different charity events across the city. I am also a part of the Pixel Project twitter tag team, wherein I tweet latest domestic violence news and statistics from across the world. Apart from that, I have an undying love for indie folk music, noisy typewriters, rusty Polaroid cameras, reading excessively and eating healthy.

Although my roots are Indian, I was born and raised in Dubai, UAE, where I continue to reside. This has given me a considerable exposure to two very diverse, yet similar cultures, mostly in their treatment towards women in the society. It has made me aware of the deafening sexism that lies in our society, and strictly embedded gender stereotypes that individual’s hold, ever to tightly.

As a blogger at The Line, I hope to discuss the pop culture, media representations of women, the norms that shape the society we live in, the growing rape culture and shed light on the Middle eastern state of women rights, especially that in Saudi Arabia.  I intend to use this wonderful opportunity and platform to spread awareness about causes and issues that are not gaining the attention they deserve.

I hope you all enjoy reading my posts!

It’s Friday, and we all know what that means! Interviews with your favorite badass feminists and activists. Whether social media queens and kings, creative artists, sex educators, or just kick-ass personalities, these people harness righteous anger, instigate movements and inspire cultural change. We’re here to honor them and their work, but more importantly, to highlight how we can all get up, plug in, and Just Start Doing.

Today’s badass is Lena Chen. She made her debut on the internet with her blog Sex and the Ivy. These days, she’s a feminist and queer activist and a writer who has contributed to a variety of magazines and papers, among them The Boston Globe, Glamour and Salon. She has also worked with the National Campaign to End Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy, where she hosts the video series Sex Really with Lena Chen, and starting this month she’ll also be hosting a new video series called Sexy Times at gURL.com. Currently she blogs at her own blog, the Chicktionary.

And here she is!

On your website, you call yourself a “reluctant sexpert”. Why reluctant? How do you feel about the work that you do now, and where do you see your aim?

I have a love-hate relationship with the term “sexpert”, because I don’t think anyone is necessarily qualified to be giving advice on topics as personal and complicated as sex and love.  Of course, that doesn’t prevent tons of folks from using the term and profiting off it by selling books, workshops, consulting services, etc. The romance industry is booming. There’s no shortage of people who are willing to pay big bucks in search of The One and certainly no shortage of “sexperts” willing to take advantage of them. I find this incredibly distasteful, which is why I’m conflicted about adopting the term myself, but I’ve been labeled this way for so long that I’ve more or less accepted it. And since it’s inevitable that there will be so much overly simplistic and sexist advice out there, I throw my hat in the ring in the hopes that I’ll be able to influence people for the better.

Still, I always acknowledge that there isn’t a one-size-fits-all rule that applies to all individuals or couples. I speak from a combination of personal experience and reproductive health expertise, but I don’t purport to have all the answers.

You had your start with a sex-blog, Sex and the Ivy. In a 2011 article at Salon, you talk about the repercussions of your blog, both positive and negative, as well as your own feelings about the reactions. Have you ever regretted writing the blog? In the article you conclude that sexual freedom does not exist. Where do you see the biggest obstacles to sexual freedom, and what do you think needs to happen, first and foremost, to change things for the better?

don’t live with regrets, and although writing Sex And The Ivy has definitely exposed me to the seedier side of the Internet and made me extremely jaded about the feasibility of changing people’s sexual attitudes, I do think I’m a stronger person and a better writer for the experience. Like the commenters on the Salon article, many people assume that because I stopped blogging about sex, it must mean that I came to regret my earlier writing. Nothing could be farther from the truth, but these days, I simply don’t have the legal recourse or the emotional energy necessary to deal with the potential consequences.

I dealt with many different types of criticism when I was writing Sex And The Ivy. It ranged from the self-righteous pearl-clutching you might expect of social conservatives to outright slut-shaming from anonymous trolls. The former didn’t bother me that much, since I knew that my lifestyle was incompatible with many people’s moral or religious beliefs, and of course, I don’t expect everyone to agree with my opinions. The latter, however, was really disturbing. For years, I’ve had to deal with very severe online harassment and concerted attempts to ruin not only my reputation, but the reputations of my friends, family, and boyfriend. This has contributed largely to my decision to stop writing about my personal life, yet it seems that no matter what I do or how much I scale back, I remain a target. Earlier this year, for example, an anonymously written hate blog began outing my readers, which has had a direct impact on my ability to use social media and comments in communicating with those who follow my work. The funny thing is that the more people are attacked, the less credible my attackers seem. It’s one thing to target a single blogger you don’t like, but an entirely different thing to also start slandering anyone and everyone who is close to her.

I don’t have an answer to how we can make the world a safer and more tolerant place. I’ve essentially written off the need for societal approval at this point, and I wish more people did the same. We care an astonishing amount about our social reputation, which is why so many folks keep their sex lives under wraps or conceal their sexual orientation or preferences. I don’t think anyone should ever be pressured to come out or to reveal private details, but I live as publicly as I can precisely because I want to demonstrate that it’s possible to have a bunch of casual sex and still be happy and fulfilled. This is my very small way of contributing to sexual destigmatization.

In one of your episodes of Sex Really you talked to some other feminists about dating while feminist. How do you incorporate your feminist ideals into your romantic life? Have there been instances of that not going well at all? How about a success story, where a date or partner surprised you in a positive way?

Last year, I wrote a personal essay for GOOD Magazine about dating a man who turned out to have a major Asian fetish. That was definitely one of the more anti-feminist romances I’ve had, but these days, I’m much more aware of warning signs and I’m even picky about platonic relationships I have with men. Part of this may be because I’ve grown up and my social circle has naturally narrowed, but I also think my preferences have been influenced by my ideological development.

I’ve been in a relationship for the past four years, and my boyfriend Patrick is someone who shares my views on gender and sexuality. We don’t plan on getting married or having children, but we’re completely committed to each other and we’re currently in the midst of planning a transcontinental move to Berlin. It’s been very reassuring for me to be with someone who isn’t judgmental about my sexual history or threatened by the fact that I write very openly about taboo topics. For me, “dating while feminist” has never been about splitting things down the middle or going tit-for-tat. Patrick and I contribute different things to our relationship, but there’s a kind of natural division of labor which, in our case, has felt fair and feminist.

Starting this month, you’ll be hosting a new series called “Sexy Times” at gURL.com. What’s this series going to look like and what will you be doing there?

Last year, Alloy Digital relaunched gURL.com and hired me as the Health, Sex, & Relationships expert. The site has actually been around for a long time, and I even read it semi-religiously back when I was in middle school. I loved it because it was one of the few outlets in which girls could get sensible sex ed and dating advice that wasn’t all glossed up the way it was in most teen magazines. Now that I’m the one dispensing the advice, it totally feels like everything’s gone full circle! The web series we’re doing is a really fun, informal way of helping girls make sense of complicated issues like body image, sexual orientation, long-distance relationships, virginity and abstinence, and contraception. These are serious topics, but I try to tackle them in a tone that appeals to teenage girls. I’m pretty used to academic and literary language so this is honestly a bit of a challenge for me. I absolutely love it, though, because I always want my work to be relatable for lay audiences.

What projects do you have planned for the future? What are you hoping to accomplish in 2012?

I’m currently writing a book proposal for a fictionalized memoir based on Sex And The Ivy. I’ve been planning a blog-to-book project since 2007 and the proposal has existed in various incarnations over the years. It’s just recently that I’ve decided to shelve my other freelance projects in favor of working on this in earnest. I have a bad habit of overcommitting and taking on so much that I’m not able to fully focus on what really matters to me, which is my personal writing. I’m hoping to complete the proposal before my move to Berlin in the summer of 2012. What happens after that is anyone’s guess – I’m excited about the uncertainty!

It’s Friday, and we all know what that means! Interviews with your favorite badass feminists and activists. Whether social media queens and kings, creative artists, sex educators, or just kick-ass personalities, these people harness righteous anger, instigate movements and inspire cultural change. We’re here to honor them and their work, but more importantly, to highlight how we can all get up, plug in, and Just Start Doing.

For today’s interview, I talked to badass activist Clarisse Thorn. Clarisse writes at her own blog, ClarisseThorn.com, about feminism, BDSM/kink and non-monogamy, among other topics. She has blogged for Time Out Chicago, is a regular contributor to Feministe, and has recently started editing the Sex + Relationship section at Role/Reboot. She’s also done a bunch of other awesome stuff, but I’ll let her tell you herself! Without further ado, here’s Clarisse!

You’re doing a lot of diverse work: most prominently, you’re a writer for your personal blog that mostly deals with BDSM and kink, you do in-person workshops, you’re a certified sex-educator, and you’ve done activism work in Africa.  How did you come to each of these jobs?  Do you see a common theme that sums up all of your work?

First off, let me correct a misconception here — I’m not a “certified” sex educator.  The closest a person can get to being a “certified sex educator” is to be a member of the American Association of Sexuality Educators, Counselors and Therapists (AASECT). But sex education is actually a fairly unregulated field, because sexuality is so stigmatized; our society simply doesn’t value sex education as an important profession.  AASECT, while an important body, has a surprisingly small amount of pull because sex education is such culturally fragmented and contested territory.

I’ve only heard good things about AASECT.  But for a number of reasons it hasn’t been possible for me to meet the necessary conditions to join AASECT.  And it also hasn’t been necessary for me to be in AASECT to do the work I want to do.  So, while many of my friends are in AASECT, I am not currently in it myself.

This leads me to the fact that the vast majority of people who work in sexuality or sex ed end up doing it in a kind of “starving artist” way.  Either we have a totally different job that’s our “day job” and we do sex ed on the side; or we have tangentially relevant “day job” that allows us to occasionally work on issues of sexuality (for example, therapy or academia); or we have our fingers in a lot of pies and patch together a living from different outside-the-box, badly-paid activities.  (My friend Sarah Sloane, who’s worked in a number of sexuality-related professions, once wrote a wonderful Letter to a Sex Educator that I always recommend when people ask me how to get into the field.)

I’ve always had a compelling interest in sex and gender.  But the way I started as an educator was that I was struggling to understand my BDSM identity, and one of the ways I dealt with that was to start writing my blog. The original tagline for my blog was “BDSM Outreach”, because I knew that I wanted to destigmatize BDSM so that other people wouldn’t have to go through the kind of anxiety and self-hatred that I did.  Around the same time I started my blog (late 2008), I was hanging out with a friend who works at Chicago’s Jane Addams Hull-House Museum  — a historic feminist site — and we came up with the idea of Sex+++, a public documentary film series about sexuality.  I’m proud and happy to report that the film series was a huge success and continues to this day… somewhat to my surprise!

Both running the film series and writing my blog contributed to a fast and furious self-education.  Pretty soon, I started volunteering at the Leather Archives & Museum the world’s awesomest (and I think only) S&M museum, which happens to be located on Chicago’s north side.  I designed an overview presentation on BDSM that was intended for audiences who knew nothing about it, and I started looking for places to present that.  During that process, some venues asked me to design workshops on other topics such as sexual communication.  It all came together in this incredibly organic way; as I came upon more and more opportunities, I learned how to keep an eye out for them or even actively seek them.

Africa was weirdly coincidental.  I have wanted to do international development work for years, way longer than I’ve understood my sexual identity.  I could have been pointed in a number of different directions, but I ended up getting sent to do HIV/AIDS mitigation.  Which was actually 100% perfect for me, because working on HIV/AIDS is a whole nother education about sexuality.  (Public health is one of those “day jobs” that people who are really interested in sexuality will sometimes take because it allows us to do what we love some of the time.)  I was working in sub-Saharan Africa for about a year, and I learned an amazing amount.  But I felt really disconnected from the communities that are important to me, and I also ultimately concluded that I was more valuable to the issues I cared about when I lived in the USA.

Over the years of writing, I changed my blog tagline from “BDSM Outreach” to “Pro-Sex Outreach, Open-Minded Feminism”.  This arose from my growing understanding that all forms of sexuality are culturally intertwined, and that those of us who work towards the acceptance of one type of consensual sexuality ought to seek allies among other sex-related identities and subcultures. As I learned more about feminism, feminist sexuality, and began to understand how thoroughly feminism is under attack, I also decided to front-and-center myself as a feminist and find ways to work on more “traditional” feminist issues.  I’ve focused more directly on feminism in recent years, both online and in real life.  For instance, one thing I did in 2011 was get certified as a rape crisis counselor and volunteer in that capacity.

The Line: You’ve written extensively about Sex Positivism. Where do you see the role of sex positivism in feminism today? In your own work?

I’ll start by saying that I think it’s a good thing that feminists have historically questioned and debated sex.  This is good!  But it gets out of hand when people start telling each other that consensual sex is “bad” or “wrong”. I like to direct people to this amazing article by Susie Bright, a pioneering sex-positive feminist.

It was written when Andrea Dworkin died; Dworkin was a famous feminist activist who had a real problem with sex-positive feminism.  I’ve heard that Dworkin did some things that I think are really wrong, such as publicly revealing the sexuality of certain sex-positive feminists in ways that she knew would damage their reputations, lose them their jobs, etc.  Susie Bright has written a lot against Dworkin, and yet when Dworkin died, Bright felt a sense of loss because of the incredible contributions Dworkin had made to feminism.  Bright felt as though she and her opinions could never have existed without Dworkin, and she stated as much.

I think that sex-positive feminism has become, in a way, mainstream feminism.  Although I think a lot of feminists my age have emotional difficulty reconciling some types of consensual sexuality with feminism — see, for example, my own S&M coming-out story – I have the strong impression that most of us see it as a priority to do so.  Admittedly, I’m biased, but on the other hand I often see sex and sexuality front-and-center in feminist media.

My fear is actually that important old-school feminist insights might get lost in the scuffle.  Again, even Susie Bright said someone like her couldn’t have existed without Andrea Dworkin.  And for example, I don’t agree with most anti-porn feminists, but I don’t think porn gets a free pass from feminist analysis, either.

I’m really excited about the feminist initiatives that have emerged in recent years that try to meld sex-positive ideas with important “classic” feminist activism like anti-rape activism.  The 2009 book Yes Means Yes: Visions of Female Sexual Power and a World Without Rape is an important and groundbreaking example of this.  I’m also really into the recently-formed Chicago group Sexuality Health Education to End Rape (SHEER). I’ve tried to do a bit of this in my sex-positive film series, too.  Where, as it happens, we screened “The Line” just a couple months ago — which I also think is an important example of this work.  For example, although “The Line” is a film about Nancy’s experience with sexual assault, there’s also a part where Nancy goes to talk to some sex workers about how they set boundaries and understand bodily integrity.

If anyone’s interested, I’ve attempted to write my own version of Sex-Positive Feminist 101.  Also, a student recently emailed me a bunch of basic questions about sex-positive feminism that I then republished in interview form.

Your main theme in your blog is BDSM and kink, and you have had some negative reactions to your writing on those topics. How do you integrate your feminism with these topics? How do you feel about the idea that submissive sexuality is problematic from a feminist standpoint?

To be blunt, I think most of the ideas that BDSM is problematic are born out of sexual stigma and fear.  Some people who practice BDSM see BDSM as a sexual orientation; others see it as just another way of understanding or interacting with our bodies.  It’s true that sometimes, questions of sexual consent can become complicated when we talk about BDSM.  But questions of sexual consent can also become complicated when we talk about other sexuality-related topics such as sex work or asexuality.  Ignoring these topics, or saying that they’re terrible, won’t make them go away.  Sexuality is more complicated, persistent, and powerful than that.  When we stigmatize consensual forms of sexuality, we just drive them underground and make people feel awful about themselves.  And for what?  We prevent people of all genders from enjoying enthusiastic sex with consenting partners.  I cannot accept that as a feminist act.

Also — as a result of these complexities, BDSMers have a lot of really interesting and obsessive conversations about consent — just like feminists!  I try to bring those conversations into feminism whenever I can.  One of the best things I ever wrote was actually co-written with another feminist BDSMer, Thomas MacAulay Millar (whose writing was published in Yes Means Yes, the book I mentioned earlier).  It’s a post about  safewords, consent, and sexual communication.

I don’t think the BDSM community is a perfect ideal place.  There are messed-up aspects of the community, and I’ve written about some of them.  I think a lot about abusive BDSM relationships and what can be done about them, for example.  It’s not like abuse doesn’t happen in the BDSM community; abuse happens in all communities.

I can feel my tone becoming defensive when I write about this.  It’s a very personal topic for me because it took me a long time to deal with my own internalized shame around my sexual identity.  I don’t want to dismiss the opinions of other feminists out of hand.  But the plain fact is that I now have years and years of experience practicing BDSM in a joyful, consensual way.  I’ve learned so much about myself, about gender, about sexuality from the BDSM community and from my own BDSM experiences.  I want to share those insights with feminism!  I want to integrate them into feminism!

Many, if not all, of your posts are intensely personal. Do you draw any lines in what to reveal and what not to reveal? Is the personal always political do you, or are there things that you do not share, and why?

I anonymize everything.  If I think the chances are too high that certain information will reveal my identity (or that of one of my partners), then I don’t write about it.  Even though everything is anonymized, I also try to be careful about my partners’ boundaries, especially since I might come out of the closet someday.  It’s tricky, because my sexual experiences don’t just belong to my partners, they belong to me too and it’s important to me to write about them.  But I don’t want to hurt anyone, and sex in particular is such a personal thing.  I try to work with my partners to understand what they don’t want revealed.

Sometimes I’ll publish something that involves someone without running it past him first.  I will do this in the following circumstances: (1) If I made a reasonable effort to get in touch with him, but can’t.  (2) If whatever I’m writing about is public knowledge among our social circles.  (3) If I’m reasonably sure that whatever I’m writing about him is totally not identifiable, or so vague that it wouldn’t reveal anything if he were identified, or if it happened so long ago that it’s water under the bridge.  (4) If he’s a long-term partner who has given me blanket consent to write whatever I want.  Actually, a lot of my partners do this before I ask whether I can write about them — they’ll be like, “By the way, you can write whatever you want about me.”  It’s funny.  But even then, I’ll usually run the first piece or two past him, just in case.

I’ve heard a saying that “Writers are assassins.”  The idea being that when you write so personally, you’re bound to do harm, or to give a certain shape to people’s reality that changes their self-conception.  In some ways that’s true, and I think in some ways there’s no getting around it, but I really try to mitigate the effect.

There are things I don’t share.  Some, because I’m still processing and it will be a long time before I can write about them.  Some because … I just won’t.  Sometimes it’s a big thing, but sometimes it’s small, or it seems small to others.  I remember once I was in bed with one partner, and I was telling him about a BDSM encounter I had with someone else.  I mentioned that I’d created a new name for my other partner to call me during BDSM encounters.  So this guy I was in bed with, he asked, “What was the name?”  And I said I wouldn’t tell him and tried to change the subject, but he wouldn’t let me.  He was like, being playful, saying c’mon c’mon — and I was like, “No, it’s too personal.”  I remember he was surprised by that, but then he said, “Wow, I’m glad to know that I’ve got your confidence on really personal things.”  And I said, “You’ll always have my confidence.”

What blogs do you follow? Do you have any new projects in the pipelines that you would like to tell us about?

It’s really important to me to try and bring together different voices, to publicize excellent work that isn’t getting the attention it deserves, and to put excellent work that’s well-known to certain gender-related or sex-related audiences in front of new audiences.  This is especially relevant because I was just recently hired as the new Sex + Relationships editor at the gender-focused website Role/Reboot.  I want to use this position well, and I want to branch out from my comfort zone and my usual circles, so I’m doing my best to earmark time specifically for seeking good and interesting material across the Internet.  This is harder than it sounds.  Hey writers, if you think you’ve got something cool to say about this, then you should totally email me about it — I’m available at clarisse at rolereboot dot org.

I’m so behind on reading blogs.  I have so much going on that I just can’t keep up with everything in my Google Reader.  I grab stuff off Twitter sometimes.  I get a lot of stuff through various email services and listhosts, too.  I’m so overwhelmed with media, but at the same time it’s really important that I have an idea of what’s out there ….

My biggest upcoming project is that I’m completing an eBook on the “seduction community” or “pickup artist subculture” Now that is a whole nother thing, but I’ll try to summarize it quickly.  It’s a subculture devoted to figuring out how to seduce women.  I’ve spent a couple years on-and-off talking to pickup artists, learning their techniques, and eventually even giving them (feminist) tips on how to interact with women.  I ultimately decided that the subculture was too much of a mess for me to participate — it was just too damaging and problematic — but it’s fascinating too, and I learned a lot.  My upcoming eBook is titled Confessions of a Pickup Artist Chaser: Long Interviews With Hideous Men and it is going to be super awesome.  I just published a three-part article on the Good Men Project about it, actually: here’s Part 1,  here’s Part 2  and here’s Part 3.

Thanks again for this interview opportunity.  I appreciate it!  Sorry it went so long!  I love “The Line” and your questions were so thorough — they were too much fun to answer.  Anyone who wants to keep track of my work can visit clarissethorn.com  or follow me on Twitter @clarissethorn.

Thank YOU, Clarisse!

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The Where is Your Line blog wants you!

Are you passionate about sex and sexuality, as well as sexual health and safety? Are you excited about reaching out to other people, creating a community and fostering a deeper understanding of sexual agency and consent? Are you up-to-date on the political, societal and cultural forces that impact these issues? Are you curious to explore the far-reaching connections of sex, gender, race and class as they shape our understanding of sexuality?

Do you know where your Line is?

The Line Campaign, Inc. is a newly formed non-profit, that works as an interactive media project designed to get people talking about sexual consent and boundaries. The Line is a film that is being screened at festivals, universities, community centers and schools around the world.  Our blog highlights relevant topics in politics, society and the media, as well as showcasing important players in the world of activism.

For this blog, we are looking for new voices who are interested in contributing their own unique take. We are looking for people who can keep us posted on pop culture,  people who would like to help us follow and understand student movements and current events as they tie into feminism and gender justice, and for people who can keep up with the daily sexual circus of American politics. Feel like live-tweeting your commentary on the super bowl commercials? We’re open to that, too.

Are you interested? Please let us know! We will offer a small fee per blog post.

Please send 2 writing samples and a resume to Joey at J.C.Schorn (at) gmx.net by January 15th.