THE PILLOW BLOG

 

Clauses. A Self-Reflection
Beate Absalon Beate Absalon

Clauses. A Self-Reflection

The list of things we want to include as clauses in our workshop descriptions keeps growing and growing with each new workshop experience. For example, it used to feel like it was enough to simply write that “people of all genders and sexual orientations are welcome.” But it’s now clear: Simply mentioning that isn’t enough, of course. Because a diverse group brings its own potential for conflict, and while everyone is welcome, how do we address the specific challenges that arise? Can workshop facilitators talk about vulvas in a way that allows people without anatomical vulvas—but with energetic ones—to receive their vulva massages too? Who can do that? How? And how do group leaders navigate this, ensuring that a group handles it well when, for example, structurally marginalized people (e.g., people with bodies that fall on the spectrum of race, gender, age, and disability and thus have different conditions than those dictated by a socially conventional norm) are present—without triggering…

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An Eclectic Essay on (In)security (work in progress)
Beate Absalon Beate Absalon

An Eclectic Essay on (In)security (work in progress)

risk, safety, conflict, consent—what drives sex-positive communities usually has something to do with these key concepts. It’s complicated. Uncertainty isn’t bad in and of itself, and safety isn’t good in and of itself—and vice versa. From my personal experience, I’ve found spaces that strongly emphasize consent to be both empowering and enriching, as well as restrictive, school-like, or tamed—and therefore simply boring—or, in cases that are fundamentally ambivalent gray areas, failing to do justice to the situation. Sometimes these spaces led to frustration when the very people to whom I could fully open up because of their trusting nature would always back down in the name of safety just as things were getting interesting, so as not to cross “my” boundaries…

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