Here is the Prezi of the workshop, and here is a link to a wonderful recap/liveblog: http://imaginetoday.net/2011/04/02/momentum-liveblog-part-three/

In fact, Jill’s liveblog recap is better than my notes. Damn girl. You are quite the note taker! Thanks!

In April, on the weekend of my 38th birthday, I will be in Washington [...]]]> Last year, I was sure that discussing safe anal sex procedures in front of famed atheist/evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins at TAM (during a workshop on sexuality) would be the highlight of my speaking career. Now, I am not so sure.

In April, on the weekend of my 38th birthday, I will be in Washington DC presenting a workshop at Momentum, at conference that is “making waves in sexuality, feminism and relationships through new media!” Not only that, but I will be presenting at the same conference as just about every single one of the women I have followed in the sex positive community, including Tristan Taormino, Always Aroused Girl, Anita Wagner, Jenny Block, Dylan Ryan, Carol Queen, Ducky Doolittle, and SUSIE FREAKING BRIGHT!!!!!!!!!!

My workshop:

A Spoonful of Sugar Makes the Vanilla Go DownPresenter
Heidi Anderson

Sexual assault prevention has generally been focused on two things: teaching women strategies to avoid being victims (watching your drink, parking in well lit areas) and teaching men that “no means no!” This not only reinforces the “women are the gatekeepers and men are the aggressors” sexual stereotype, but also patronizes, alienates, and makes heterosexist assumptions about the very audience it is intended to reach. In addition, the heavy focus on date rape drugs and stranger assault ignore the reality of what the majority of sexual violence actually looks like.

But what if we approached it from a different perspective? What would happen if we used the opportunity to share a vision of healthy sexuality, rather than using horror stories to scare young people into “good behavior?” What would a consent curriculum based on sexual negotiation techniques practiced in BDSM and non-monogamy look like? Can kink practices make sex safer for everyone?

============
This post, Dream Come True – Combining Sex Positivity and Sexual Assault Reduction, originally appeared on The Fat One in the Middle on February 7, 2011.

My sons were just watching Max and Ruby while I was making cookies. Ruby was the Princess, and Max and his grandmother (the Prince and the Queen) conspired to test the Princess’ true royalty by putting a pea under tens of mattresses to see if she felt it. She did feel it, of [...]]]>

My sons were just watching Max and Ruby while I was making cookies. Ruby was the Princess, and Max and his grandmother (the Prince and the Queen) conspired to test the Princess’ true royalty by putting a pea under tens of mattresses to see if she felt it. She did feel it, of course, and her sensitivity proved her to be a real princess.

This annoyed me. I have always hated this fairytale. Why was her weakness/inability to find the source of her discomfort a sign of true femininity? What the hell does femininity even mean?

So it occurred to me that some women go through life complaining about being uncomfortable, but have no idea that it is due to the pea under their mattress.

Other women feel the discomfort, get down, examine the mattress, find the pea, remove the pea, realize it is a test and still complain about being uncomfortable to be seen as feminine.

Other women feel the discomfort, get down, examine the mattress, find the pea, remove the pea, realize it is a test, and then get mad as hell that someone put a goddamn pea under the mattress to test their femininity. These women then organize, tell others, and make it their life long goal to expose the vast Patriarchal Pea Plan.

============
This post, Ain’t I A Woman?, originally appeared on The Fat One in the Middle on January 10, 2011.

I am still THIS person, the person who wears a tutu on her head for her Princess Son!

“ If women told the truth, the world would crack open,” Audre Lorde

This morning, I got an email that I knew would come. I did not know who would send it, or when [...]]]>

I am still THIS person, the person who wears a tutu on her head for her Princess Son!

“ If women told the truth, the world would crack open,” Audre Lorde

This morning, I got an email that I knew would come. I did not know who would send it, or when it would come, but I was sure of its eventual arrival.

When I first started thinking about losing weight/eating better/etc, I remember being afraid of a backlash. Thinking that people who enjoyed my “fuck you society!” posts about being fat would be disappointed in me. Worried that if I wrote about something so mundane and trivial as weight loss and food, that people would think less of me. That I was “bowing down to the man” or selling out.

Several of my friends thought I was ridiculous to think that this would happen.  All of those friends were thin. My fat friends knew exactly what I was talking about.

So this morning, I basically got the “Heidi, I am glad you are trying to get healthy, but why are you writing about it and posting your weight and focusing on this and I am sad to see you become this. You were an inspiration to me and now I am sad.”

And it hurt, but like most things, it hurt because it was true.

I AM writing about weight loss, and posting my numbers, and any petty thoughts I may have. I AM writing about being hungry and how it feels to wear smaller clothes, and the battle that goes on in my heart in regards to my love of being mobile and there for my children that sometimes seems at odds with my love of my curves.

But this is the price I pay for living “publicly” – when you put your thoughts and actions out in the public arena, people are free to comment on them. And I understand that.

But the focus on my weight is only the flip side of what was a false confidence about my weight. I have never thought I was ugly – NEVER! This is not about that. But part of the reason I focused so hard on building my identity into that of the “happy fat girl” or the “outrageous fat girl” was so that I would not have to deal with REAL ASPECTS of myself.

I am vain, just like thin women. I worry about my looks, just like thin women. But I am not losing weight just for a looks issue. In fact, I am still adamantly into not only my own curves, but the curves of other women.

And I want my identity to revolve around the whole of who I am, and not just one piece.

I started losing weight as a side effect of a drug. I then decided to continue it to increase my health, and decrease pain in my knees and my herniated disc. Both feel much, much better.

I am making all of this public is because  I benefit from working my issues out online. I always have. But in doing so, I expressed fears that people would react in just this way – that I would be seen as giving up something huge in my identity to fit in better.

But here is the thing – I still have ALL the same values, ideas, opinions, faults, strengths, and weaknesses I did before. I am the same person, albeit one who is in a headspace about losing weight.

Is this ok? Am I allowed to do this? Am I allowed a moment to be human where I worry about the health consequences of high blood pressure and pre-diabetes – especially in the same year that my father died at 61 years old due to congestive heart failure.

I know that many people considered me a role model in “fat positive” issues, and loved my sassy fat self and the way I seemed to be above the trivial issues I am now writing about.

But I am not above it. A very dear friend told me that my persona was a huge suit of armor I was wearing, and he was right. I am human, I am weak, but above all, I am a work in progress.

Part of me wants to explain that MY weight loss is different because it is based in self-love not in self-hate, but then I realized, by saying that I am judging everyone else who is not like me.

My journey now allows me to focus on the food issues I have hidden and suppressed for so long. If you need to hide me because it triggers you, bores you , saddens you, infuriates you, or simply makes you go “meh – bring back the anal sex!” then certainly hide me.

But I am not a movement. I am not a symbol. I am a woman who wants to feel good, look good, and live long enough to see her great grandchildren become as goofy as their ancestors.

And I am still Heidi Marie Anderson.

And when I get to where my body wants to stop losing weight, I will make and wear this t-shirt:

============
This post, Cracking Open My World*, originally appeared on The Fat One in the Middle on November 12, 2010.

Fat girl accepts that she is fooling no one into thinking she is a selfless, deep, non-appearance oriented person just because she is fat.  Radical shifts occur.

http://movingtothefront.tumblr.com/

Susie Bright is one of my personal heroes. Always has been, from the first time I saw her on TV as a young teen.

Now she has written about the attack on Craigslist to get it to remove the sex ads from its site:

Craig’s List has removed its Adult Services section from [...]]]>

Susie Bright is one of my personal heroes. Always has been, from the first time I saw her on TV as a young teen.

Now she has written about the attack on Craigslist to get it to remove the sex ads from its site:

Craig’s List has removed its Adult Services section from their bulletin board, under  pressure from a McCarthyist collection of “non-profits” (cough cough) and ambitious law enforcement magistrates.

I think their decision was a tactical retreat—  with the swipe of a claw. I have no professional interest or investment in CL, nor am I privy to their private discussions. But I have a sense of “deju vu” from previous witchhunts, and a clear memory of CL’s origins.

There was one piece of her post that in particular spoke to me, as a lifelong feminist who has spent her entire career working with domestic violence and sexual assault victims:

You won’t find the anti-Porn, anti-Trafficking Activists in the domestic abuse shelter, the rape crisis hotline, the emergency room, the orphanage, the refugee camps. Heavens, no. They have no interest or knowledge of what goes on in the trenches. They are actively fighting sex workers all over the world who have articulated their needs and rights. They don’t want anyone to have any kind of sex they don’t sanction. They are FRAUDS.

Thank you Susie, for continuing to inspire me to this day! Read the entire fantastic post here.

============
This post, Susie Bright Breaks Down the Craigslist Sex Ad Fiasco, originally appeared on The Fat One in the Middle on September 17, 2010.

The September issue of The Humanist contains an interview with a woman who is witty, intelligent, a humanist, lover of science, former nurse, a feminist, and just happens to be a porn star.

Marie Hartman graduated with honors from San Francisco State University and is the author or coauthor of several [...]]]>

Nina Hartley

The September issue of The Humanist contains an interview with a woman who is witty, intelligent, a humanist, lover of science, former nurse, a feminist, and just happens to be a porn star.

Marie Hartman graduated with honors from San Francisco State University and is the author or coauthor of several books published by major publishing houses under her stage name, Nina Hartley. She is also the star of more than 600 adult films spanning three decades. In addition, Hartley is a humanist, a proud atheist, and a vocal feminist. . .

The Humanist: I’m curious about your hobbies and education growing up. You mentioned that your grandfather had a PhD in Physics. Were science and medicine an important part of your life?NH: Both of my parents are science folks. My mother was a chemist and statistician for the State Department of Public Health and my dad has a good layman’s understanding of science and biology. I loved all natural science as a child and wanted to be Jane Goodall when I grew up. I especially liked human biology and anatomy. I’m an RN with a BS in nursing and I love science to this day. I keep up with the latest advances in science and enjoy physics, biology, psychology, brain science, and more.

The Humanist: You weren’t raised in a religious home, but one full of values. For the religious, values and religion are synonymous. Could you explain the difference?

NH: We were taught social justice at home. My maternal grandparents were early supporters of civil rights in Alabama, where my mother is from. As secular Jews (my grandfather refused Bar Mitzvah) they were already a minority, but when my grandfather turned to socialism for its sense of social justice it put the family in jeopardy and they were subject to harassment by the Ku Klux Klan. My grandfather almost lost his life to goons.

This sense of social justice carried over into my parents’ marriage, and I grew up participating in civil rights marches and anti-war demonstrations. There was never any mention of God as a reason to do right. It was just the right thing to do. I feel strongly to this day that right and religion don’t necessarily go hand in hand.

As a believer in evolution, we can “take the best” from religion and “leave the rest.” We no longer need the story of “God” to explain why the rain falls, or the wind blows, or spring comes again each year. I’m comfortable with there being things about people or the world that I can’t know, or that we don’t know yet. I’m fine with life as we know it being random or an “accidental” result of chemical and physical processes.

For the full text of this truly delightful article, go to The Humanist website.

============
This post, Thoughtful Intercourse, originally appeared on The Fat One in the Middle on September 10, 2010.

It started off similar to what I was saying:

I remember my first encounters with the sex positivity/sex positive movement, especially through the internet. I remember loving [...]]]> After my most recent post on sex positivity, blog friend/mentor/hero aag tweeted the link to a post on madame thursday called “sex positivity and other lies”.

It started off similar to what I was saying:

I remember my first encounters with the sex positivity/sex positive movement, especially through the internet. I remember loving the basic principle of the thing: “Sex is awesome! No one should be ashamed of their sexuality or wanting sex! Let’s bring it out into the open so we can all enjoy a healthy, happy relationship with sex!”

Yeah! Rock on.  Sex positive is awesome!!!! And then . . .

But there was this lie in the whole thing, and the lie was told by blog after blog, webpage after webpage that talked a great game about how we can be open about sex, but seemed to equate sex with the nude bodies of thin, conventionally attractive, blonde white women in male-gaze centric pornography, as though if I really pushed myself to enjoy such titles as Biker Bitches 5 and clinically lit photoshoots of a woman with her legs in improbably acrobatic positions, I’d be making the world a better place.

Oh yeah. That part.

People have been celebrating the sexualities of attractive white people for centuries. In fact, I’d say if there were ever a time when people’s discomfort towards sex dissipates and they’re willing to accept, tolerate, and engage with sexual content is WHEN it comes in the form of these bodies, these pre-approved forms.

But what about the queer porn?

Worse yet, so many queer oriented blogs are so white, able, and cis that it hurts. I’m a pansexual/cisgender/cissexual person, and when I see these blogs I see the white, Western version of queerdom splattered across the screen.

Oh god. She is right. Jesus.

If you’re sex positive and you’re not making an active effort to include and celebrate all kinds of sexuality from all kinds of people? You’re a fucking liar. There it is. You’re a liar.

Because sex positivity and body positivity and anti-racism and fat acceptance and the disability movement and queer positivity and womanism are part of the same thing.

So I say FUCK sex positivity. I want sex inclusivity.

I think we just got schooled. I know I’m taking notes.

Thank you madame thursday.



============
This post, Sex Positive? Or Sex INCLUSIVE??, originally appeared on The Fat One in the Middle on August 16, 2010.