Elizabeth's blog

It's almost Independence Day weekend in the United States and so I am making my own very specific declaration of independence. In  honor of "the personal is political" and in honor of Independence Day (and because I happen to have a very recent photo of me swimming naked near an American Flag) I want to make a simple declaration: I need to be free to swim naked. I dislike the confinement of swimsuits. They cling and bind and besides, other than wet t-shirt contests, why would anyone put on clothes specifically to get them wet? We take off wet clothes! Why put something on to go in the water?

I hesitate to make too much of small things. On the one hand i don't want to blow them out of proportion. On the other i don't want to jinx a process that might be just in its early stages. But despite those two concerns I am excited by two recent policy changes that the Obama administration has made which seem to indicate at very least a less restrictive interpretation of the Defense of Marriage Act and perhaps more than that: perhaps a slow chipping away at the act itself. 

First of all, today the New York Times printed an AP story reporting that the Census Bureau would in fact count same sex married couples as married. That reverses a Bush administration policy that I wrote about here explicitly stating that these couples could not be counted because DOMA prohibited the federal government from recognizing same sex marriages in any way. Apparently the Obama administration disagrees. Then again, the Obama administration also understands the need for accurate research and solid data when making policy decisions, and data provided by a census that did not count such marriages would be inherently flawed.

For the second year in a row I'll be posing in the Sex Blogger Calendar, a fundraiser for Sex Work Awareness. Sex Work Awareness (SWA) is an organization dedicated to building capacity and media skills for sex workers. In addition, they are involved in important research projects like the Exploratory Research on Internet and Sexaulity (EROTICS) project.

Last year SWA used funds from the calendar sales to put on a media training for NYC-area sex workers. That training resulted in Calico's having the skills necessary to record many of the Sex 2.0 presentations and distribute them online. The training materials themselves are available on the SWA web site. You can see that by supporting SWA you are helping to make information and educational materials available to a worldwide audience.

This year's calendar involves twelve different photographers and more than a dozen models collaborating on images that illustrate sexual freedom. (Yes, if you're doing the math that means there will be some group shots!) I expect it will be provocative! I'll be working with Vito Fun. I won't tell you yet where we'll be shooting but we're working on a very cool location that is memorable for its old machinery and stunning waterfront views.

The photographers are donating their time and their skills. The models are donating the use of their images. All we need is you. You can help us by purchasing a day on the calendar and placing your own message there. Promote yourself or your project. Say happy birthday to someone. Send a message about what sexual freedom means to you. 

Use the buttons below to buy days on the calendar or to buy days and preorder a calendar.

 Buy a day for $10.00.

Buy a day and a calendar for $30.

Sales are hosted at Audacia Ray's Waking Vixen store. Audacia Ray is one of the founders of Sex Work Awareness, and is also author of Naked on the Internet, director and producer of The Bi Apple, adjunct professor at Rutgers University, and social media guru for International Women's Health Coalition. 

We've upgraded our Drupal installation and that's caused us to make some other changes around here. Please pardon any glitches while we get things sorted out. We hope you like the new changes, including:

• A new color scheme and layout
• Sections, to better organize content (see them across the top menu bar, and note we're having to catalog the site, so do be patient)
• Better use of images
• Gravatar and OpenID integration
• Other cool stuff.

  Please let us know what you think as we continue to develop the site. Use this contact form.

This year my partner and I both missed our anniversary. A week after it had passed, as we were talking on the phone while I was in my mother's hospital room, he said to me: Do you realize our anniversary was a week ago? I had not. And in a similar way I almost missed the second birthday of SexInThePublicSquare.org. Yesterday on Twitter CatalinaLoves said to me "So I read on the @NYCSexBlogCal that SITPS turns 2 tomorrow? RU Celebrating in some way?" I had specifically put the birthday on the calendar so that I would not forget it. And what happened? I forgot it!

It is hard to believe that it's been two years since Chris Hall and I launched this site. In that time we've welcomed new regular contributors (Lou FCD, Michael Goodyear, Caroline) and have been honored by the contributions of guests (Lorraine K, M. P. Clark, Lolita, LisaVNYC, Rebecca Deos). We held a very productive forum on sex work, trafficking and human rights, and we've created a space for the stories of outed sex workers who want to speak out.

Click here to read more about our past two years and get a glimpse into the future!

This is the edited version of the slideshow presentation from my talk today with Michael Goodyear at the Society for the Scientific Study of Sexuality (SSSS) Easter/Midcoast joint regional meeting called "The Business of Sex."

NOTE: There appear to be some problems viewing this slideshow using some versions of Internet Explorer.

Click on this link:

I wish I'd marked on my calendar the date I first read Carol Queen's The Leather Daddy and the Femme. That would be the date when something clicked inside my brain and connected the fragmented parts of my erotic and intellectual understanding of my sexuality. Real Live Nude Girl and Pomosexuals cemented my crush on Carol. And then several years ago through a remarkable chain of mutual friends and happy coincidences we got to know each other "IRL". I'm thrilled that now Sex In The Public Square and Center for Sex and Culture can work together on all things sexual-freedom-related. To that end, we're co-hosting a cocktail hour and reading on Monday, June 8 from 6-9 in NYC. The event is free and open to the public (as long as you're over 21). Donations to Center for Sex and Culture are welcomed, and we're counting on you to help us meet our bar guarantee!

What: A Sex-Positive Soiree and Reading

Who: Carol Queen visits from San Francisco, joined by Rachel Kramer Bussel, Elizabeth Wood, Audacia Ray, and Sinclair Sexsmith!

When: Monday, June 8, 6-9 pm (reading will start between 7:30-8, last about an hour).

Where: Happy Ending, 302 Broome Street, NYC 

Why: Carol Queen's coming through town and wants to collaborate with her friends Rachel and Elizabeth to make a space for connecting, schmoozing, touching base, and furthering plans for sex-positive world domination! Her SF nonprofit The Center for Sex & Culture has hosted Rachel Kramer Bussel, worked with Elizabeth Wood on her online community Sex in the Public Square, and has plans to expand its educational and cultural offerings online as soon as we can (if we can't afford NY real estate, at least we can visit you via your computers). Come mingle with your fellow NY sex people and meet some new ones, then enjoy a reading that will surely be more salaciously smart/sexy brain candy than most people ever get on a Monday (and in some cases, sadly, EVER). Cosponsored by the hotties at the NYC Sex Bloggers Calendar (www.sexbloggercalendar.com to benefit www.sexworkawareness.org). Free calendars! Signed! (The theme for the 2010 calendar, in production now, is sexual freedom -- yay NYC Sex Bloggers!)

Open to everyone 21+ -- please pass it on.

How much: FREE, but we have a bar guarantee to meet, so have a drink, and donations will be gratefully accepted for the Center for Sex & Culture -- no amount to big or too small, and tax-deductible!

Click here for more info about our readers - It's a fabulous lineup!

Dr. George Tiller, one of the nations few providers of late term abortion care and medical director of the Wichita-based Women's Health Care Services, was shot to death this morning at Reformation Lutheran Church, where he was a member. The Wichita Eagle reports that police are looking for a white man driving a 1990s powder blue Ford Taurus with Kansas license plate 225 BAB.

Dr. Tiller was a courageous and ethical man. His dedication to women's health and reproductive freedom involved compassion and spirituality as well as clinical care. Women's Health Care Services has a chaplaincy program, for example, and its late term fetal indication abortion page acknowledges the emotional and spiritual pain that many families struggling with unhappy news about an advanced and much wanted pregnancy feel as they face that pregnancy's end.

Compassionate and clinically excellent reproductive health care is an essential part of sexual freedom, but even more fundamental perhaps, it is an essential part of gender equality. A society where women can be forced to be pregnant is a society where women can never be equal.

Click here to read more.

Many thanks to Calico for her willingness to record sessions at the recent Sex 2.0

conference in Washington DC and to Audacia Ray and Sex Work Awareness for the excellent Speak Out! media training where Calico learned to be a whiz with a Flip cam.

Here is the session that Renegade Evolution and I co-facilitated: "Building Bridges & Alliances between researchers, sex workers & clients":

Link to this blog: http://tinyurl.com/pphl9f

Video courtesy of Calico. You can find more at her Blip.tv page.

Two years ago on Mothers Day I wrote about a set of wishes I had. Today I'm reposting that list because I just spent the weekend with my mother. Where? At Sex 2.0, a grassroots conference amazing for the way it explores the intersection of feminism, sexuality, and the internet.

I took my mom partly because it was Mothers Day weekend, partly because I was presenting and she rarely gets to see me present, and partly because I love her and wanted to share this experience with her. We went to sessions about the research on marginalized sexualities (CARAS), on the politics of sex work in the Obama age (Stacey Swimme, from St. James Infirmary, and Audacia Ray), and on restructuring debates around sexual freedom (Ricci Levy and David Phillips of Woodhull Freedom Foundation). I co-facilitated a session with Renegade Evolution on the building of ally relationships between sex workers and researchers. 

When I wrote my post two years ago I shared it with my mother and she thought many of the items were important but too idealistic. I think today she feels like they are even more important, and that they are perhaps attainable. So much has changed in two years. The Obamas are in the White House, marriage equality is spreading, and my mother and I are attending sexuality conferences! Click here to read my list of Mothers Day wishes from two years ago.