Events

Reporting Live from Netroots Nation 2011

Dan and I are lucky to be attending Netroots Nation 2011 (#NN11) this week, especially the LGBT pre-convention all day today, organized by the illustrious Mike Rogers. NN11 is the in its sixth year and has grown geometrically to the several thousand bloggers and citizen journalists converging on the Minneapolis Convention Center right now. The LGBT pre-convention is fabulous so far because it is entirely hands-on and focused on affecting change. We will try to post transcripts and videos that have been promised.

This morning, the 100+ LGBT bloggers and organizations/organizers worked as a group to raise the on-the-ground issues that most concerned us, how they were being covered, and what support is needed. This session was exhaustive, exhausting, and exhilirating all at the same time, and this spirit continued throughout the day.

Next we brainstormed strategies in small groups to end gaps in the LGBT movement and answering how we can engage more effectively across generations, race/ethnicity, faith/non-faith, and, overall, how we can ensure that the LGBT blogosphere is strong and well-funded.

This afternoon, we broke into two very informative groups. One was about utilizing blogging, social media, and online activism to effect change and offered a future where LGBT organizations would offer breaking news as an exclusive; sponsor fellowships to reliable bloggers; and, as a group establish an endowment or permanent fund to be used to support bloggers financially (for example, sponsoring travel to events). This was prefaced by a brief presentation by Eden James on behalf of change.org which has resources for individuals/bloggers to carry out successful campaigns. Check out change.org, an amazing resource for bloggers/activists as recently shown when truthwinsout.org collaborated with change.org to successfully petition Apple and get them to drop an app for reparative therapy on the grounds that it is an entirely discredited practice to “cure” the gay.

Next up was a rather heart-wrenching panel of young immigrants, most of whom have come out as LGBT and come out as undocumented, whose personal stories disclose the important intersections and overlap of both struggles, namely the DREAM Act and the Uniting American Families Act.

We wrapped up with a fishbowl panel (audience participants rotating in to make a point or ask a question) answering, “How can (same-sex) marriage strategically help us get closer to full federal equality?” And, “What other equality opportunities does (same-sex) marriage open up to us?” Is this the galvanizing issue because “that’s where the money is?” Does this disenfranchise others with more life-and-death issues they care about such as LGBT homeless youth? Transgender equality? Immigration equality? Won’t marriage equality become a chief pillar for diminishing discrimination overall? What do you think?

At the end of the program we joined with a parallel pre-convention, Labor Netroots Connect, meant to strengthen the existing alliance between Labor and LGBT rights, over cocktails.

When it comes to economic and social justice, it was made clear yet again that all of the issues discussed today are connected. Until there is true pluralism, full personal sovereignty for each person, we have to continue fighting them together on all fronts.

Last, we are especially happy to welcome this week Jos Truitt of feministing.com, who plans to cross-post her impressions and ideas here throughout the week. Thank you, Jos!

VenusPlusX helped sponsor today’s event, along with National Center for Lesbian Rights, Human Rights Campaign, Gay, Lesbian, & Straight Education Network, National Gay & Lesbian Task Force, Victory Fund, Servicemembers United, AlterNet, The Raw Story, Gill Foundation, Freedom to Marry, Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, and Evelyn & Walter Haas Fund, providing dozens of scholarships to deserving young bloggers.

Tomorrow the rest of Netroots Nation programs begin and we will continue to report out items of interest.

— Alison

P.S. We brought along beautiful commemorative posters for Netroots. If you’d like to receive one by mail, just send your snail mail address to columbia@venusplusx.org.

 

A DC Pride Photo

Soaking in DC Pride, my thoughts drift in several directions.

 

 

 

 

 

The first is topical, these pictures were snapped on P Street, just hours before the Parade kicked off, at the chain store, Lululemon Athletica. When asked, the store clerk said that this was just something they cooked up, not a chain-wide campaign. The whimsy, frivolity, and good nature of this window display was backed by a few employees minding the store with the courage to put their mannequins where their hearts were.

It was great seeing all the young people, many of them straight suburban kids, pour out like syrup from the Metro stations. They come to see perhaps a spectacle but more than that they are following inner wonderings about their own sexuality and they have come not only to check out others but also to check out themselves.

Second, I have dwelled on the remarkable fact this year that the LGBT community-at-large is now raising more money for HIV/AIDS prevention than anyone else, as Rick Rosendall said in his column this week in Metro Weekly, meaning “women and children with HIV will live thanks to those who were once ostracized.” That is a maturity and benchmark for this movement to be proud of.

Last, the gaiety prompts me to again be dumbstruck how a community that is all about love so often itself is the scene where mutual support and success is often sabotaged by personal grudges socked away in the minds of people, sometimes for years. This is always bad, retarding our progress by dismissing out of hand new ideas, initiatives, and people as they join in our struggle. We’ve got to stop doing—not just because it is counterproductive but because it is so small-minded and mean-spirited and should have no quarter in what we are all about. The LGBT movement rather should be a model for others displaying unified action, without requiring uniformity, among its constituency. Get people to say, “Wow, look at how they all get along and treat each other so respectfully. I want to be a part of that.”

Gladly there are signs that this distemper is being weeded out so that growth is steadier, stronger, and more long lasting. For example, it has been a miracle to witness how Maryland trans folk are rising up from the ashes of the failed legislative session and their historic disagreements on approach. The Maryland legislators said no to gay marriage and no to gender identity and expression protections, but gender activists are joining hands in a new spirit of cooperation, putting aside petty competitiveness and time-worn grudges, to win these important battles this year because it is really a grossly overdue matter of life and death.

Nowhere is this more evident than the leadership of a new organization called Gender Rights Maryland, which plans to work non-stop as advocates and lobbyists to first educate and then win the hearts and minds of the state legislators. In May, Maryland Governor O’Malley voiced support for gender identity non-discrimination legislation, and Gender Rights Maryland is going to make him stick to it.

It’s a new day and a new dawn. Happy DC Pride 2011.

—Alison Gardner

Editor’s Note: While not Maryland residents ourselves, Dan Massey and I have been asked to help by joining the Gender Rights Maryland Policy Advisory Board, further deepening our own commitment to these issues, both in Maryland and nationwide.

 

 

Sexual Healing

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tonight, we just returned from the opening of Momentum, a weekend about “making waves in sexuality, feminism, and relationships through new media.”

First up, sex positivity stars Jenny BlockTristan TaorminoReid Mihalko, and Carol Queen (pictured left to right above with moderator Lynn Comella on the far right). The fivesome talked and took questions about the role of sexuality in today’s culture and what all of us can do to generate conversations about sexuality that fit into daily life.

The best half hour of the night was stolen, though, by the stand-up stylings of Maria Falzone. According to the write up, this was an abbreviated version of Falzone’s “SEX RULES,” an act she performs all over the country, talking about “serious sexual subjects in a frank and funny manner” resulting in a few hundred people laughing uncontrollably.

We’ll keep you updated on the sold-out weekend (#mcon). Based on the diverse audience this conference has brought to Washington, D.C., it should be very interesting. In a sex-positive world, sex work is respected, and a lot of Saturday and Sunday’s sessions will delve into taking this work out in the sunlight. One of the campaigns Team COLUMBIA at venusplusx.org has started this year has to do with just that.

Decriminalization or legalization of the oldest profession is long overdue in this country. In Washington, DC, one of just a handful of locales with truly progressive human rights laws, we are participating in a multi-year campaign starting with satisfying immediate public health needs and full access to health care, zero tolerance for all forms “survival sex” and human trafficking and slavery, and the full-on creation of a legitimate, out-of-the-shadows “sexual healing” industry, licensed, regulated, and even unionized to serve interested clientele out of the shadow of criminality and shame. Like, “By the way, dear, I’m stopping off for a sexual healing session right after my yoga class.”

If you are interested in getting involved, please write to Dan or Alison at columbia@venusplusx.org.

We’re rolling

We’ve returned from several weeks helping a young trans woman fleeing Mexico and seeking U.S. asylum. This is the personal part of our work advocating for global sexual freedom that from time to time requires all of our attention and resources.

But we are now back to our nascent adventure as bloggers and webmasters, balancing it with our ongoing involvement with other individuals and organizations active on campaigns such as Global Sexual Freedom Rights, Trans Leadership and Politics, and just beginning in 2011, the legalization of sex work in the District of Columbia. More on these campaigns to follow.

We appreciate the 400+ who signed in at February’s Creating Change conference and since then and hope everyone will stay posted at venusplusx.org for news and views on universal sexual freedom. Thanks, especially, for the patience of all those who submitted free T-shirt requests — you’ll receive one of our updated new ones in April.

Together, we will work to uphold the eminent and inherent right to universal sexual freedom, something absolutely necessary to guarantee mutual personal sovereignty, respect, and dignity. There is no democracy without true pluralism and true pluralism requires individual autonomy, equality, and shared privilege. Universal sexual freedom is also crucial to finally rid the world of its problems — war, hunger, and economic and social turmoil — because all of them can be traced directly to the unwelcome and ill-advised coercive ideologies (that always include sexual repression in some form) imposed by governments, religious hierarchies, corporations, and backward social custom.

Again, more to come . . . Alison

 

Kinky Twin Cities

For more on Transhuman Erotic Freedom…

One of the great joys of VenusPlusX and Team COLUMBIA’s presence at Creating Change 2011 was meeting people from the local Minneapolis – St. Paul community who found our open acceptance and promotion of freedom in all matters erotic very much in line with their own experiences and understandings.

Team COLUMBIA’s exposition and unification of all forms of sex and gender expression and satisfaction, including many themes and forms not otherwise visible at conferences like Creating Change, set a new standard for erotic inclusiveness, attracting the attention of the local queer community and  the “sex-rad” community, talking about sexual freedom and such things as virtual (simulated) sex and gender play, machine sex, teledildonics, pharmaceutically enhanced sex, BDSM, Leather, sacred sexuality, paganism, and other practices long considered to be “kinky.”

Our two days of programming included friend Loraine Hutchins, Phd, in a joint exploration of the origins, history, and destiny of  sacred sexuality as a source of power for the slowly brewing revolution against millennia of social erotic repression.

Sexual repression has so long stifled human creative and progressive expression, and been used as a merciless tool of governments and religious hierarchies to restrict human rights. Governments depend on their ability to enslave the guilt-ridden, fearful man to mount wars so crucial to its continued existence.

Dr. Hutchins and I discussed how hidden efforts to preserve the understanding of sacred sex began to flower slowly and furtively in the 19th and 20th centuries, from the public appearance of Rosicrucian-derived esoteric communities to the broader interest in sexual healing, modern paganism, and polyamory we see today.

The role of masturbation was cited as a perfected entry point to the experience of sacred sex, a source of insight and connection to living Truth through the power of joy and orgasm that becomes a tool for personal transformation and progressive realization of one’s true destiny.

Dr. Jenny Wade, in her book, Transcendent Sex, likewise talks of lovers engaged in sex “as usual” who suddenly find the “veil between the worlds torn open,” that this changes lives like any other spiritual awakening. “Atheists have become believers; long-standing psychological wounds have been healed; and the sexually abused have become whole,” Wade’s evidence shows.

This and other themes come close to the core truths which underlie many “pagan” and “esoteric” traditions, that are now increasingly available for general public education and adoption.

Such knowledge has always been deemed “pagan” because it invariably involves sex in some sacred capacity. This personal source of spiritual and psychological liberation is abhorrent to the bigots and hypocrites who in desperation invent false theologies, dogmas, and moralities to deliberately enslave the human spirit, mind, and body.

Such knowledge has (until now) been “esoteric” because those who truly understood it and lived according to its principles risked becoming outcasts from society or even being murdered for their beliefs and teachings had their activities been at all public.

A great revolution in human affairs is underway, powered by the living Truth of sexual freedom. We will be delving further into this great power which aligns with the force of destiny and transforms individuals who in turn will transform the world to realize the New Age of freedom, liberty, equality, and justice for all.

—Dan Massey

Twin Cities on my mind . . .

This quiet bastion of liberalism, Minneapolis – St. Paul, is a stone’s throw but also a universe away from anything Michele Bachmann, and an enchanting community of people who live and let live as a way of life, accept all manner of queer or kinky people as their neighbors and friends, and happen to be among this country’s leaders in establishing equality for all its citizens as a matter basic human rights.

Minneapolis-St.Paul gives pause to anyone with any shade of coastal mentalities, and I’m checking myself here too, who thinks fly-over country holds nothing of interest except the occasional museum or ski resort. You will be hard pressed to find anyone who lives there, straight, gay, or kinky, who could be described as jaded or insincere. The breath of fresh air was more than the wind chill. For me, it was a rediscovery and a new love affair with the frontier spirit I had read about and dreamed about in my youth.

Never thought of as anything like a romantic getaway (especially in sub-zero winter), the Twin City area is nonetheless an oasis where you can be who you are, no matter how extreme or gender-bending, pretty much without interference. That freedom, that sexual freedom, conveys a palpable feeling of safety, comfort, and inner joy that no travel agent or city booster could package and affix a label even if he tried.

Fiercely independent is the way U.S. Rep. Keith Ellison (Minn.-5) described Minnesota in his address closing Creating Change, the National Gay & Lesbian Task Force’s annual conference on equality, which brought more than 2000 gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people to the Minneapolis Hilton, February 2-6.

VenusPlusX and Team Columbia’s message and cause of universal sexual freedom drew hundreds, mostly young people, to our high-tech and interactive display in Creating Change’s exhibition hall. Team Columbia’s two days of additional sexual freedom programming next door at the Hotel Ivy was open to Creating Change registrants and free to the general public, and culminated with one of the best parties in town on Saturday night.

The local people we connected with were without exception unforgettable, highly personable, and clear-headed about respect for everyone’s individual autonomy, something so crucial to ending sexual repression in our culture. They were not only passionate about the interest group they happen to represent, they were passionate about the rights of every other group or individual to pursue happiness in the manner of their choosing, and enjoy the right to be who they want to be, without the interference of government, religion, or social practice.

For these and many other reasons, Team Columbia has confirmed its plans to return to the Twin Cities this summer for more sexual freedom programming and receptions open to the public. Stay tuned.

–Alison Gardner

Join the Revolution

For more on Transhuman Erotic Freedom…

An increasing sexual free world is appearing on the horizon. Can you feel it? Touch it? See it? Haven’t you at least noticed that the sexual repression crusaders are crumbling under the weight of their own hypocrisy and fear?

This “New Age of Erotic Freedom” will be elucidated on Saturday, February 5 (10:45 AM at Minneapolis’ Hotel Ivy) by Dr. Loraine Hutchins, a well-known erotic adventurer, educator, and activist, and Dan Massey, a life long student of human mythology and co-founder of Team COLUMBIA and VenusPlusX.org.

Their presentation will put forth the historical legacy, the present day status, and the path ahead for realization of a new age of liberty, freedom, justice, and equality for all, and show how erotic power drives the transformation of all human action.

You will become privy to the historical activities that have gradually led to the clarification of so-called “occult” beliefs and their practices in the present day. You can judge for yourself the recent social developments in sacred sexuality, polyamory, and the public and private practice of sexual healing in our society, the natural outgrowth of greater public exposure to esoteric teachers. You can learn the ancient secrets of earthly enlightenment through such channels as the proper psychic use of masturbation.

And, there’s still more.

Loraine and Dan will point us towards the ample evidence of the cosmic power shift that is uplifting our unified will to stand against all forms of erotic oppression, and bringing about the final corrective answer to the evil and oppression of our past. Once transformed we will have the opportunity,  ability, and the power to transform the world.

Their 90-minute session is FREE and open to the public along with registrants at the National Gay & Lesbian Task Force’s Creating Change conference, next door at the Hilton, expected to bring more than 2000 gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people to the Twin Cities this week. See the full schedule for VenusPlusX’s two days of sexual freedom workshops, demos, special presentations, political caucuses, and parties (with free drinks), all under the banner of “Blueprint For A Revolution.”

More . . .

Sexual Freedom Printed Program for Minneapolis Now Available

For everyone who lives in the greater Minneapolis-St. Paul area and everyone coming to the Twin Cities for the National Gay & Lesbian Task Force’s Creating Change conference next week, here is VenusPlusX’s Printed Program. It includes Presenter’s Bios and the complete Program Schedule for two days of sexual freedom workshops, presentations, demos, and parties on Friday and Saturday (February 4 and 5) at  The Hotel Ivy, FREE, next door to Creating Change headquarters at the Minneapolis Hilton.

Looking forward to seeing many of you there.

Alison Gardner & Dan Massey

Sexual Freedom Blog Swarm

Our Sexual Freedom Blog Swarm is underway and will continue through next week’s Creating Change 2011, the National Gay & Lesbian Task Force’s annual conference at the Minneapolis Hilton. Here’s one from David Castillo for The Bilerico Project, Freeing Myself from Sexual Repression

We will be live blogging from the Exhibition Hall and you can follow us on Twitter: @venusplusx and Facebook.

If you want to make sure your blog post is included, please contact me, Andrew@venusplusx.org, or leave a comment below. More background and information on VenusPlusX’s and Team Columbia’s programming at Creating Change, visit our Press Room.

Thank you.

Andrew Fogle

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Sexual Freedom Website Launch Today!

Sexual FreedomWelcome to VenusPlusX — powered by Team Columbia.

From this modest beginning our goal is not just to change the conversation about equal rights. We intend to change the very atmosphere in which this conversation is taking place.

Friends of reality can demonstrate how to protect and advance our innate sexual freedom. The individual autonomy we each possess commands mutual respect and is grounded in all other human rights. Sexual freedom is a more inclusive concept than even government-granted civil rights.

“Sexual Freedom — You Are Born With It” is our slogan and also our battle-cry.

Sexual freedom advocates are aligning around the world to publicly discredit the tyrants that seek to marginalize and criminalize people through uninvited and unnecessary incursions in the name of the state, a religion, or always the worst of all, the unholy combination of the two.

Today heralds the end of our collective enslavement. Signs of an epochal tipping point are everywhere. It is a near future where reproductive rights, sexual orientation, gender identification, and sexual practice are not matters of some busybody’s politics or defective ideals.

Compassion, tolerance, enhanced creativity, proven leadership, and diverse personal relationships are emblematic of those who choose sexual freedom over sexual repression. We are the new generation, a rising majority wielding love and truth to disarm those who try to erase us from the face of the earth, who will at long last eliminate the stain of discrimination and set the world free.

We hope you will stay tuned and join in our one and only cause: universal sexual freedom.

Alison & Dan