Leonore Tiefer

The Open Center has joined with the Huffington Post to host a panel on sex and public discourse in the United States. Since changing that discourse is what we're all about here I wanted to post the announcement and encourage any readers in the NYC area to attend. I'll be there. If you'll be there too, let me know via Twitter (elizabethSITPS) and maybe we can say hello!

Below is the announcement from the Open Center web site:

I recently published an article, "Consciousness-raising 2.0: Sex Blogging and the Creation of a Feminist Sex Commons," in the journal Feminism and Psychology. I was invited to submit the piece by Leonore Tiefer , chief advocate of the New View Campaign against the medicalization of sexuality. She was putting together a special issue of the journal looking at the uses the New View has been put to since it's inception ten years ago. I immediately agreed because, while I believe in the importance of expert research guiding policy and knowledge, I think it is important for that research to be grounded in the experiences of real sexual people and should attend to their social environments and not only to their chemical and genetic components. Over-medicalization, and the privatizing of knowledge about sexuality distances us from our bodies and our experiences and frames our issues in terms of diseases instead of seeing the way that social and cultural factors influence our ability to experience sexual pleasure.

More on what's in the issue, on my contribution and how you can help me expand my article below the fold.