Workshopsexuality. Part I
Partnered sexuality works differently to casual hook-up sexuality. It's a distinction that can help you tackle relationship problems and save yourself frustration if you think that things should be just as fiery in bed with your spouse after a visit to Ikea as they are with a mysterious guy you drag out of a jazz bar. Similarly, adolescent sexuality works differently to adult sexuality. A distinction that helps you to adapt your sex education knowledge to the new phase of life and save yourself stress if you think that body parts should erect and lubricate just as easily as they did when you were a teenager.
Both differentiations seem self-evident at first. Of course, just as heterosexuality works differently to queer sexuality. However, the more I observe and think about it, the more I notice how rarely sexualities - in the plural - are mentioned. Usually, universal statements are made that lump together the various sexualities with their very different specifics. What leads many people to sex or couples therapy is that adults orient themselves towards the sex definitions of youth because these are the universally accepted criteria for 'normal' sex - an almost inexhaustible supply of physical energy and hormones that make you horny, spontaneous sex sessions with no strings attached, firm skin,... - and convince themselves that something is wrong with them if their bodies can no longer keep up with these standards. And for those who set the sexual behavior of fresh crushes and adventurous impulsiveness as the gold standard, the return of calm and routine in long-term relationships appears to be a deficiency and a problem.
It therefore makes sense to orientate yourself and understand what kind of sexuality you are currently living and to consider it as equal to the others, as well as to get to know its peculiarities, difficulties and promises. Then your love life can be shaped and enjoyed appropriately in its respective context.
The same applies to the type of sexuality that is encountered in workshops, which is unique and different to other sexualities. However, I haven't found this formulated anywhere: that there is such a thing as workshop sexuality.
Time to catch up.
What characterizes workshop sexuality?
Taking the medium of the workshop seriously means understanding that sex-positive workshops are not simply neutral containers in which sexual topics are dealt with. Just as every form always influences the content, the form "workshop" changes the content "sex". One could go even further and formulate the thesis: Sex in workshops is itself workshopified.
Workshops are educational spaces in which knowledge and techniques are tried out in a trial-and-error process and experienced first-hand. It is therefore not about one-sided teaching, but about entering and inhabiting open-ended spaces for experimentation and experience. Participants reflect on what happens during the course and take different things away with them. However, what they take away cannot be imported one-to-one into sexual spheres outside of the workshop. You might try things with your partner that you enjoyed in the workshop, but then be surprised why it doesn't work as well now as it did in the workshop.
According to a definition on Wikipedia, a "workshop [...] is an event in which a small group works intensively on a mostly practice-oriented topic for a limited, compact period of time". A workshop is prepared. It follows a program and is divided into different program points or modules. But above all: a workshop ends. After just a few hours or days. This limited duration enables exactly what one of the greatest potentials of workshops is: Here you can dare to do something! You can do things differently here! For example, I can try out what it feels like when others address me as they/them. Here I can slip into role-playing games with strangers with whom I have nothing to lose, even if it's embarrassing because we never see each other again afterwards. It's about pushing boundaries, leaving familiar paths in a contained setting. But if workshop content is then carried over into long-term relationships or other formats, it automatically changes. Other things are at stake. The partner may be unsettled by the new pronoun or the role-playing may bring up unconscious relationship dynamics that want to be processed in a completely different way afterwards. But there is no longer a facilitator or a group to keep up and support this.
This does not mean that attempts to translate workshop experiences into other areas of life should be avoided, on the contrary. Workshop participants just need to be more prepared for this or be aware that the peculiarities of the respective spheres need to be taken into account. For example, that workshop sexuality thrives on collective undertakings and cooperative peer support from very specific people, as well as being neoliberally individualistic.
The word itself reveals that workshopping is about work. It is a workshop where things are tinkered with and done. In workshops, sex becomes something that can be worked on, repaired and refined. This also has huge potential, as it thwarts prevailing ideas that sex should simply happen of its own accord, as it is something that is above all 'natural' and follows an inner drive. Workshops are therefore part of an emancipatory project: we are not just at the mercy of things, we can proactively shape them! This makes workshops a wonderful gem, but one that can also prove to be a stumbling block. Because this empowerment attitude could, for example, overlook all the equally valuable sexual experiences in which sex does something to you rather than you doing it. Experiences of surrender, of being carried away as if by a huge wave, who knows where. The approaches of skill, mastery and improvement that predominate in workshops do not get to these aspects and could even inhibit them. This goes hand in hand with the methodical individualism that workshops pursue. Well-tempered subjects act in them, who have access to themselves and their experience through various self-techniques: sharing rounds, processing, sensing, exchanging, reflecting, making transparent. By communicating wishes, boundaries and needs as clearly as possible. With this understanding of the subject, workshops turn sex into an optimistic project. However, an interesting school of queer theory points out the shortcomings and dangers of such attempts at a "redemptive reinvention of sex", in which "there is a hidden agreement that sexuality is inherently less disturbing, less socially upsetting, less violent and more respectful of 'personality' than it has been in the past". This quote comes from the theorist Leo Bersani, who coined the term "self-shattering" through sex, according to which the self dissolves to a certain extent during sex, as with other experiences of intoxication. Workshop sexuality, on the other hand, only works with an intact self and ends where depersonalizing intimacy begins. There has to be someone who can confidently apply what you learn in workshops. But if you forget and lose yourself (which - depending on the situation - can be a scary, but also wonderfully exquisite and beneficial experience), then you can no longer tell where you are on the Wheel of Consent; whether you are serving, taking, allowing or receiving is then a matter of heaven and earth.
This leads to the next specific feature of workshops, which are characterized by the fact that they are moderated or pedagogically held by someone and thus also limited. As workshops are not only well-behaved but also safer spaces, they are primarily concerned with linking sex with responsibility and consensual action. Workshop sexuality comes with its own norms, rules and regulations.
What this is all about and what it entails can soon be read in Part II...
