Education

We all deserve an education which can help us deepen our understanding of ourselves, and cultivate our growth into, alongside, and against the world around us. Sexual health and wellbeing education is for everyone at every age. I approach creating and offering educational content through a liberatory lens grounded in social emotional learning principles and shaped for the context of the learning environment.

While my portfolio features numerous established workshops and educational series, I meet each new group of learners with curiosity and openness. What is the learning that is desired here? How do the people in the room learn best? In what ways can I meet the predetermined learning objectives while remaining open to the endless possibilities that collaborative, liberatory learning can generate?

Artist: Dids

Workshops

  • What is a definition that you’ve heard of to describe sex? What is your definition of sex? This is where we start as we intentionally and radically expand our definitions of sex and eroticism in order to expand our own capacities for pleasure and connection.

  • Humans are messy creatures. Connecting and relating with other humans is a messy experience. How do we build collective methods of caring consent while creating space for what is messy and complex within all kinds of connections?

  • Most of us will engage in sex in our lives. And as with anything in life, there are risks and rewards associated with sex. What information do we need to make the most informed choices for our bodies, circumstances, and desires? How do we expand into our pleasure while minimizing our risk of harm?

  • There are innumerable ways to relate to other beings. How do we cultivate relationships that are nourishing and secure while also being able to hold the complexities of the people and experiences within the relationship?

  • Menstrual health is an integral part of our overall wellbeing. And yet many of us know very little about our menstrual health. How do we co-create curiosity and generate knowledge about our bodies that bleed, while examining the systems which profit from both our lack of knowledge and our bodies processes?

  • There are three possible pathways one can follow when experiencing a pregnancy: Birthing and parenting, birthing and adoption, or abortion. All options hold validity and value. It is my aim to provide people with the information and care they need to make choices that serve them and their goals, regardless of where they are in their pregnancy journeys.

  • The ableist systems under which we exist sever eroticism from the disabled body or mind. I assert that sex, pleasure and eroticism is for anybody who desires it. How do we reframe our ideas of which bodies are deserving of pleasure and co-create methods to engage in pleasure safely and securely for your body?

  • Most of us have been reared in a world where pleasure is deemed a shameful act. Self indulgent at best, criminalized and violently extinguished at worst. We are told our erotic selves must live only in the shadows, it is not welcome in the world as part of our full and complex humanities. But. Who we are and how we move through the world are not and cannot be separate from our erotic selves. It is an act of self harm to truncate this part of ourselves from the whole. When we are asked to diminish ourselves for the sake of other people’s comfort, for the sake of upholding systems built on denying us real embodied pleasure, what would happen if we refused?

  • Whether you’re questioning your gender and or sexuality, feel settled in your identities, or have never really thought about it either way, we are all of us, in all of our complex identities, deserving of humanity. And it takes a community to ensure these humanities of ours are protected and upheld. This workshop aims to reframe our understanding of difference through the lens of queer and trans identities, and provides the information and tools you may need to build out communal humanity and care.

For all folks ages 13 and up (Workshops are tailored differently for different ages)

For folks ages 5-13 (Workshops are tailored differently for different age groups)

  • Hey! I have a body! And so do you! What does that mean for how we move through the world? How do I treat my body well so my body treats me well? How do I treat other people’s body’s well and ask them to treat mine well? Age appropriate education on consent, bodily autonomy, nourishing our bodies, regulating our bodies, and more.

  • An introduction to puberty and all the things that come with it. Body hair, body odor, body growth and more. All while contending with emotional changes and the simultaneous expansion and collapse of our awareness of the world around us.

  • How do we know we are loved and valued? How do we confer that love and value unto ourselves and the people around us? We’ll practice social, emotional, and verbal skill building to communicate to ourselves and others how we want to be treated in different contexts, and how we can ask others how they want to receive love and value from us.

  • Targeted, age appropriate education on what even is sex? Why do people do it? What does it mean for me? What do I need to know about it to make choices that keep me safe, healthy, and happy?

For Providers (Healthcare providers, teachers, parents, guardians)

  • By centering the experiences of queer and trans parenting and pregnant homeless youth, we can intentionally and explicitly begin deconstructing structural misconceptions and injustices that impact us all. This workshop introduces effective best practices for providing care for queer and trans, houseless or housing insecure, pregnant and/or parenting youth by framing the challenges this population faces in healthcare through the lens of historical and present day systems of oppression. We must first understand where these issues come from if we are to respond to them with care and intentionality alongside our patients.

  • Queer and Trans people deserve care that is tailored to their needs, especially when it comes to their reproductive health care. Queer young people are twice as likely to experience an unplanned pregnancy as compared to their heterosexual counterparts because there is a failure in our system to adequately respond to the unique needs of queer and trans youth. This workshop introduces best practices for providing affirming, accessible, and quality care to meet the reproductive needs and desires of queer and trans patients.

  • We all deserve to feel safe, comfortable, and celebrated in the spaces we move through. Unfortunately, Queer and Trans young people are often made to feel unsafe, excluded, and omitted from the spaces they must move through, including school, the healthcare system, and youth programming. This workshop introduces best practices to build out spaces that are inclusive, affirming, and intentionally celebratory of all young people, in all of their complex humanities.

  • Menstrual health is a vital part our overall health and wellbeing. And yet it is systemically underfunded and under-addressed. I’ve spent nearly a decade working to build menstrual equity access programs in numerous settings. This workshop shares the findings and best practices for the creation, implementation, and maintenance of menstrual health and equity programs which can be so crucial for menstruators.

  • Dignity in dying is a fundamental human right. Part of seeking out dignity in dying can involve engaging in pleasure and eroticism. This workshop provides supportive frameworks from which to introduce practices of pleasure into palliative care.

  • When many of us never learned how to talk about sex with one another, it can feel daunting to broach the topic of sex, intimacy, and pleasure with our children. This workshop introduces age appropriate methods to talk to your children about their bodies and many of the things that having a body entails, including sex, pleasure, safety, and reproductive health.