Sexuality Happens

I leave this afternoon to go speak at Brown University’s Sex Week. They’ve really loaded it up with awesome sex educators; myself, Oh Megan, Sarah Sloane and more!

What am I talking about while there?

Monday, March 15th

Strap-On 101 w/ Shanna Katz

Time/Location: 12:00pm @ Sarah Doyle Women’s Center lounge (26 Benevolent St.)

Come learn all about the joys and pleasures of strapping it on. Who said harnesses were just for girl-on-girl action? In this workshop, we’ll discuss double-penetration, “pegging,” using harnesses for cuckolding, “femmecock,” and so much more! Ever wonder what the difference is between a g-string and a dual strap? We’ll cover that too! You’ll learn how to properly work a strap-on, contemplate a plethora of positions, and learn about the pros/cons of different types of toys. This class is open to singles, couples and moresomes of all sexes and genders. Never used a harness before? That’s fine – we’ll start with the basics. Plus, everyone will get to try on harnesses with toys to get a feel for the different styles, as well as figure out what works best for them.

SexAbility w/ Shanna Katz (and potentially Marlene Chait, a Brown Post-Doc Research Fellow whose doctoral dissertation is ‘An Exploratory Study About Women with Physical Disabilities: Survey of Their Views on Personal Assistance Services (PAS), Sexuality Education, and Sexual Expression’)

Time/Location: 5:30pm @ Salomon 202

People of all ability levels are sexual beings. Sex is hard enough to navigate and negotiate when one fits in with society’s notions of what a sexual being is, but once you add in the concept of ability, it can become quite challenge. This workshop is discussion-based, and covers issues such as coming out to your partner(s), how to discuss ability levels, new things to try, correct terminology, negotiating sex play (including kink/BDSM play), and much more. Participants are encouraged to share suggestions, trade ideas, etc. Great for people of all ability levels (and their partners) who want to recognize themselves as sexual beings. This workshop hopes to challenge people’s viewpoints, foster discussion and conversation, and open doors towards a shift in the social constructions surrounding sexuality and disability.

Make it Work Outside the Box: Relationship-Mapping & Communication w/ Shanna Katz

Time/Location: 8:30pm @ List 120 (64 College St.)

Description: Communication is key, but how DO we communicate? More importantly, how does communication change (or not) once we break the boundaries of what are considered “traditional relationships”? In this workshop we’ll talk about the different styles of communication, the languages of love, types of non-verbal communication, why communcation is so important, and how to adapt all of this for kinky AND vanilla relationships. We’ll gain an understanding about the basic types of relationships that people have in their lives, how we can map them, patterns to look for, and what we can get out of these maps. Finally, we’ll talk about polyamory/non-monogamy – its various facets, how to get into it, and most importantly, how we can make it work when there are more than two people involved. Bring paper, pen, and an open mind. We will be raffling off two Tantus toys at this event, so make sure you arrive early and get a seat!

Tuesday, March 16th

Feminist Pornography (Out For Lunch) w/ Shanna Katz

Time/Location: 12:00pm @ LGBTQ Resource Center (3rd floor Hillel, at 80 Angell St.)

Are you one of those who has wondered exactly what it is that makes porn “feminist” or “sex positive?” Join us as we talk about definitions of pornography and obscenity, and how sexual pleasure can be recording in a feminist and sex positive way. We’ll discuss current companies who identify as sex positive, and what separates them (or not!) from current, mainstream pornographic productions. By the end of this talk, everyone will still have formed different opinons, but will be more educated as to what this sex positive porn movement is.

A friend of mine, Audacia Ray, is doing some great research along with some other researchers in regards to what people can access at public libraries on the internet, including both websites and using search terms.  It’s really sad that in many places, things that are put in place to “protect” us then wind up hindering us from finding important information. I remember in High School, the library blocked the term breast as pornographic, so you couldn’t look up breast cancer, or anything about self exams. On the same note, when I was in a class where I had to do a presentation on contraception, and one on Tay-Sachs, I couldn’t find a lot of the information I needed, as many search terms were block. 

Many people cannot afford their own computer or internet access in their place, so they use public libraries to ascertain information. By blocking them from getting information about abortion decisions, anal health, and transgender/transsexual identities, we are doing the public a HUGE disservice.  Below is information on the study; all you have to do in order to help out is go to your local library, type in www.infoandthelibrary.org and fill out the survey on the site.

I hope if you have a free moment, you participate in this very important research.  It’s an easy way to give back and help support sex positivity with very little time and no financial obligation.

-Essin’ Em

We are investigating the use of content filters on public library computers with Internet access. The priority research areas are access to information about sexuality and sexual reproductive health. We need help with this work, and request that people all over the United States visit their local public library and do some simple searches. In places with filters, the items that are filtered are not standard across systems. Filtering today cannot be fine-tuned to exclude only pornographic or violent content rather than health information. For example, in a large east coast city, only the word “anal” seemed to be filtered, which prevented people from gaining access to information about anal cancer as well as any potential sexual content. www.infoandthelibrary.com

Am I getting annoying about this yet? If so, I apologize.

I’ve made it to be a finalist for the Lezzy blog awards in the category of Sex/Short Story/Erotica.  I’ve got good company; Sinclair (Sugarbutch) and Scintillectually Yours.

Lots of my favorite bloggers made it on there; I’d suggest voting for Lady Brett Ashley (of Don’t Let’s Talk) for best engagement/wedding blog; she’s interesting, a deep thinker and really just awesome at combining daily life with ponderous topics.  I’d love for Sinclair Sexsmith (Sugarbutch Chronicles) to win Lifetime Achievement.  Plus, Just Like Jesse James is up for not one, but TWO awards! Feministing is also in the finalist group; congrats to the whole blogging staff (I wrote a toy store review for them once, so I feel kinda sorta doubly cool only not)! Last but not least; Fit for a Femme is a great blog in the culture/entertainment category.

So if you like this blog, if you like what I write, if you think it’s cool that I talk about gender and orientation and fluidity and write not just hot erotica, but also sex fail, and that I open myself up as much as I feel that I possibly can, and you enjoy reading/commenting/questioning/wondering about my writing, please go to www.TheLesbianLifestyle.com and vote for me (or whoever you feel deserves it).  You can vote once a day until March 2nd — just please remember to click on the confirmation link in your email, or else your vote doesn’t count. Please feel free to twitter/facebook/text etc, and tell people.

And if you don’t like me, or like someone else more, that’s fine too.  Just head over there and check out all the awesome lesbian/queer written blogs out there!

Thanks (in advance) for your vote, and your patience in me bugging you with this.

-Essin’ Em

This is a repost from ShannaKatz.com for the most part. For those who don’t follow me on Twitter or Facebook, I’m heading to San Francisco this week. Q will be at a higher ed conference, and I’m going to put on some classes/workshops, as well as meet up with some of my favorite sex positive people.

Hope to see you there!

-Essin’ Em

I’m heading out to one of my favorite cities this week; beautiful San Francisco. While out there, I’ll be presenting not one, not two, not even three, but four classes/workshops AND I’ll be reading erotica with the lovely Rita Seagrave and dashing Patrick Califia.

What’s the 411 on what’s going on? Well, you can always check my schedule, but I’ll break it down for you here as well.

February 25th – I’ll be at the Center for Sex and Culture talking about Relationship Mapping and Poly 101. Click here to get more info.

February 26th – I’ll be presening my famous Vaginal Fisting for One and All at the CSC. Click here to get more info.

February 27th – Today is a busy day, as I’m part of Sizzle at Femina Potens. At 2pm, I’m talking about BDSM 101 (click here for info/tickets). At 4pm, I’m presenting Sexability, about sex and dis/ability (click here for info/tickets). Then at 8pm, I’m reading erotica (click here to get info/tickets).

There you go folks; 5 opportunities to come learn, chat, grown and talk about sex with me. I’ll be available after each class/workshop to talk more one and one, and I certainly hope to see many of you (of those in the Bay Area) at one or more of these events!

In case you forgot about it, last week was the end of my glass butt plug contest. I had tons and tons of entries, both at the original post (in comments) and of course, on twitter. Thanks to everyone for entering this one!

The winner of the contest is Aida, who blogs over at Rainbows and Riding Crops and tweets as the Pledgemistress (currently locked, so I’m not linking).

If you didn’t win, SexToy.com has a ton of other awesome glass butt plugs and other rocking sex toys. Make sure you check them out to thank them.

Also, I’ll have another awesome contest in March.  I can’t give it all away yet, but it looks like it’ll involves some awesome porn. And I mean, really, who doesn’t love good porn?

Thanks for entering, and hope to see you back!

-Essin’ Em

Hey all –

Someone was kind enough to nominate me for a Lezzy, which is an award for lesbian authored blogs. I’ve been nominated in the  Sex/Short Story/Erotic blog category.

I didn’t post this before, because I don’t really identify as a lesbian; I identify as queer. However, I get where they are coming from with this, and would love to make it to the top three.

How do I do this? I need more nominations. You can nominate one blog (URL) per category per 24 hour period. All you do is fill out a little form, and then click on the email to confirm (the email part is important, or else it doesn’t count).

If I don’t make it into the top three, that’s fine. My happiness doesn’t rest on this. However, I think it would be awesome if I did a) because it’s awesome, b) because I’m a lot of different things (kinky, queer, disabled, non-mongamous in some counts, femme, Jewish, alternative, fat, etc) and would love to get to rep all of that and c) because it would be nice to have a queer person win and explain WHY I don’t identify as a lesbian.

If you’re up for helping me out, please CLICK HERE to nominate me, or just type in TheLesbianLifesyle.com whenever you get a chance. Remember, you can vote once a day!

Thanks in advance for your support!

-Essin’ Em

As many of you know, I’ve been working for Fascinations as their online media specialist and resident sex educator.

This Thursday, Feb 18th (aka, tomorrow!), I’ll be putting on a free workshop at one of our Scottsdale, AZ stores called “What’s In Your Toy Box.” It’ll be a great sex toy 101 on what toys are designed for, how they can be used, the care, storage and cleaning of sex toys, other ways you can use them, etc.  Should be lots of fun.

For more information, click here for our blog post on the subject. Would love to see you there!

Lots of people have been asking me about how my new job at Fascinations as their Resident Sex Educator and Online Media Specialist is going. The answer? Just swimmingly.  As you can see above, they got our sex ed department a full sized vulva puppet, who we’ve named Vivian the Vivacious Vulva. Side note: a reader bought me a mini vulva puppet, who is ADORABLE, and who I’ve named Veronica, for when I do my own sex ed classes.

Anyways, the above picture is at a Let’s Talk Sex open house. We’ve been doing some sex ed classes, with Tristan Taormino and Oh Meghan, and are really looking to expand this spring.  We’ve got a whole list of awesome educators that I can’t tell you about till they’re confirmed, but it’s going to be super cool.

Obviously, I went to Vegas for the AEE and AVNs.  It was awesome. But we’ve already talked about that.  Let’s talk about new things.

We’ve stopped selling anal eaze, shrink creams and numbing balms on our site. You can read about it here.  Taking it out of stores will be a longer process that involves educating the customer, but we’re on that too.

We’ll be working with Sex 2.0 on sponsorship of this awesome event.

We’ll be doing video reviews on our blog.

We’re sending out other items to be reviewed and or given away on other blogs.

We’re consistantly rocking out on our facebook and twitter, including giveaways.

In many of our stores, we now carry Good Releasing titles, and will have them online soon!

Soon, we’ll have an awesome new affiliate program where we’ll have a 30% commission payout! (info coming on that).

We’ve brought some great sex education writers on board as well.

I got to go give an awesome safer sex/general sexuality talk to a dorm on the ASU campus…including tons of free condoms, lube, some dams, and toy giveways.

I also got to go with Q (not pictured obviously) to the Arizona Fetish Ball, as seen below:

Plus, we’re giving members of local kink organizations in AZ and CO 10% off of all in store purchases.

Yeah. While the whole getting up ridiculously early to get to work thing is frustrating (my ideal work schedule; 10am-7pm), I do love this job, and I’m so excited about the change we’re enacting at FunLove.com.

-Essin’ Em

Photo Credit: Hawksdream

To those of you who may have missed the multiple but sometimes not attention grabbing memos, I am, when not writing under this pen name, Shanna Katz, M.Ed.  Sexuality Educator and fisting faciliator and all that jazz.

In order to find out where I’m going to put on classes/workshops/trainings,etc, to hire me to teach/consult/train/lecture/etc, to learn about me, to find out about sex coaching I can provide, to contact me regarding sexuality education, etc…

I’d like to present the new, and oh so improved (thanks to the lovely AAG!), and accented with leopard print (of course!),

ShannaKatz.com

That is all. Please enjoy. I have some blog posts there (more educations/news based/informative) than the ones on here, I have my schedule, contact info, and so on.  Have fun, and enjoy your Saturday.