Join Babeland and Jacklyn Friedman for a reading and discussion to celebrate the release of her new book What You Really Really Want: The Smart Girl’s Shame-Free Guide to Sex And Safety, as well as her 40th birthday!  We are thrilled to see such an empowering book on the market for women.  Best of all, a Babeland Sex Educator will be there to award one lucky lady a Orgasm in a Box for Her!

This raucous evening, co-sponsored by Bluestockings Bookshop will feature:

emcee Jessica Valenti,

The burlesque stylings of Sake Fevah, Franny Fluffer, Essence Revealed, and Tiny D.

Jaclyn, interviewed live on stage by Irin Carmon.

Tunes spun before & after the show by DJ Lobotomy Copter.

and appearances by Samhita Mukopadhyay, Chloe Angyal, Sofia Quintero, Deanne Zandt, Jamia Wilson and other special guests to be announced.

No cover, 21+.

At Fontana’s, 105 Eldridge Street, Manhattan.

Be there!

The President of Yale has cancelled Sex Week at Yale, a student organized week with all sorts of events promoting sexuality. Babeland participated in Yale Sex Week a number of times, and there is a special frisson at bringing Babeland’s style of feminist sex positivity to such a bastion of establishment power broking.

People, especially young adults need sex education. Some folks like to think that sexual knowledge leads to sluttiness. But that’s not true.  Sex information helps people have more satisfying sex and happier lives. Good adult sex ed. goes beyond procreation and disease prevention, it teaches the anatomy of pleasure and the physiology of arousal. It also encourages people to notice their feelings, communicate their desires and to expect sex to be pleasurable. Chaste or promiscuous, the sex they have will be better. Encouraging people, especially women, to insist on their right to sexual pleasure helps undermine a culture of drunken groping that leaves women feeling used.

One of the concerns of Yale President Richard Levin is that sex week is overly commercial. Babeland, for example, has offered workshops and discussions on the G-Spot, Oral Sex Tips, Sex Toys etc.,  and of course we always mention babeland.com. The fact is there are still very few resources for adult sex education, and Babeland is a good source of the accurate sex information and encouragement that is so needed. Although there are a few new academic programs in sexuality studies (SF State has a great one) and a handful M.D.s who have focused their practices on sex, there isn’t a large credentialed professional class of sex educators at the college level. For the most part today’s sex educators come from a grass roots movement of pleasure activists who have trained each other in non-institutional settings.

Sex education is a big part of our mission at Babeland and we do tons of outreach and in-store workshops that teach various aspects of human sexuality. Helping to empower folks around their sexuality is the juice that makes selling vibrators a thrill. Going to Yale has been a fun part of that. But if Yale wants a less commercial sex week, I hope they pay that forward with a program to train those educators at Yale. I’d love to see a pleasure focused Sexuality curriculum in every college and medical school in the country.

Until that happens the students at Yale are regrouping and are planning a new SWAY- Sex Week All Year. If they invite us we’ll be glad to be a part of it.

If you have some free time on Saturday, you may want to join the New View Campaign in their national flash activism event. At Babeland, we have always believed that people’s bodies are sexy just the way they are, so we were excited to hear about this campaign. I know I’ll be there – I hope you will be too!

International Vulvanomics Flash Activism

November 19, 2011

Sponsored by The New View Campaign to Challenge the Medicalization of Women’s Sexuality (newviewcampaign.org)

Since 2008, the New View Campaign has challenged the growth of a dangerous new industry, female genital cosmetic surgery (FGCS) wherein amputations of parts of the vulva (labiaplasty and clitoral hood reduction) are marketed as “enhancement” and “beautification” procedures.  On their websites, surgeons post before and after photographs that misinform the public about genital diversity, suggesting  that all vulvas should look alike and that there is something wrong with full labia. Check some of them out for yourself here and here.

The New View Campaign (a feminist project  that began in 2000) believes that the informed consent process for these procedures must include information about the range of genital diversity. New View is speaking up and targeting surgeons who make false claims and who create self-consciousness and anxiety.

On November 19^th, add your voice to an international day of FLASH ACTIVISM. Participants will be taking and then uploading photos of themselves holding signs in front of the surgeon’s offices and sending a very specific message: we support genital diversity!

For more information about the event, how to participate, and a list of FGCS surgeons near you, please e-mail vulvanomicsactivism at gmail dot com.

Please forward and share this announcement.