Sexuality within a committed relationship works differently than casual hook-up sexuality. This distinction can help you address relationship issues and avoid frustration if you expect things in bed with your spouse after a trip to IKEA to be just as passionate as they are with a mysterious guy you picked up at a jazz bar. Similarly, teenage sexuality works differently than adult sexuality. A distinction that helps you adapt your sex education knowledge to this new phase of life and avoid stress when you expect body parts to become erect and lubricated just as easily as they did when you were…

We’ll continue our exploration of how workshop sexuality differs from other forms of sexuality. In Part I, we concluded that workshops are structured around a didactic framework, follow a plan, and prescribe certain rules and etiquette. For this reason, the claim that workshops break social norms is only partially true. As is often the case, breaking with norms here does not simply mean a lack of norms, but rather the establishment of a new norm. In our society, for example, it is “normal” in the sense of “common” for sex to be largely nonverbal. And this does not mean the absence of dirty talk, but rather an honest and respectful exchange about what one likes and what one does not. In sex-positive workshops, on the other hand…

In 2021, the Institute for Cultural Inquiry in Berlin hosted a conference titled “The Workshop—Investigations Into an Artistic-Political Format,” whose content offers wonderfully illuminating insights into the internal logic of sex-positive workshops and their influence on a particular understanding of sexuality. Presentations explored all the wonderful promises of workshop culture: solution-oriented collaboration, the solidarity-based sharing of resources and knowledge, and mind-blowing opportunities for consciousness-expanding experiences through meditation exercises, psychological self-observation techniques, improvisation, or orgy experiments... According to the conference description, workshops are considered “highly adaptable and almost universally applicable…”

The last blog post mentioned the cultural studies conference “The Workshop - Investigations Into an Artistic-Political Format” at ici Berlin, where workshops were also examined for their distinctly artistic and performative aspects. Similarly, sex-positive workshops are a kind of performance or social sculpture that follow choreographies. Many theatrical concepts apply here: a specific form of interaction is rehearsed, skills are practiced, and rituals are performed. This shapes workshop sexuality as an ars erotica. Here, there is no need to…