Friday Night Symposium Panel- Sexual Diversity, Identity, and Expression

Last modified on 2011-12-05 18:55:36 GMT. 0 comments. Top.

Friday Night Panel Text

Sexual Diversity, Identity, and Expression – Friday night’s Symposium Discussion Panel

Panel moderator, Barbara Carrellas

Sexual and gender diversity means that no two people experience their gender or their sexuality in exactly the same way. Gender identity and sexual preference have often been mistakenly lumped together in one category. They are actually completely different.

Your gender identity answers the question, “Who am I?” Your sexual preference(s) answers the question, “Who am I attracted to and what do I like to do?”

Both gender identity and sexual preference(s) were once seen as fixed binaries. Today, more and more of us think of gender and sexual preference as a rainbow spectrum along which everyone can find the particular shade of color that looks best on them. It is no longer as simple as man or woman, homosexual or heterosexual, vanilla or kinky, monogamous or polyamorous. Each one of us is in the process of our own, unique, individual, sexual evolution.

Join us for a discussion of the infinite number of erotic and ecstatic possibilities available to us at all points on our journey, how this is impacting today’s world of sex and relationships, and what it might mean to you!

Part of the Great N.E. Sacred Sexuality Round-Up
and
Friday’s panel streamed LIVE for FR*EE on the web via Quest TV!

Mistress of Ceremonies: Barbara Carrellas
Date: Friday, October 28, 2011
Time: 7pm-11pm, doors open at 6:30
Location: Reflections Yoga Studios
250 West 49th Street, 2nd Floor

Special performances by Kamala Devi and Kiela Cabaret will kick-off the evening’s discourse!

Buy your tickets for this event here to be with us in person!

Moderator…

Barbara Carrellas, of UrbanTantra.org and BarbaraCarrellas.com, is the author of Urban Tantra: Sacred Sex for the Twenty First Century and Luxurious Loving: Tantric Inspirations for Passion and Pleasure.

She is the founder of Urban Tantra®, an approach to sacred sexuality that adapts and blends conscious sexuality practices from Tantra to BDSM, and the co-founder of Erotic Awakening, a pioneering series of workshops focusing on the physical, spiritual and healing powers of sex. Barbara was named Best Tantric Sex Seminar Leader in New York City by Time Out/NY Magazine for her Urban Tantra® workshops. Barbara is a proud graduate of the Coney Island Sideshow School with a double major in fire eating and snake handling.

Panelists…

Celebrated transsexual trailblazer Kate Bornstein has been traveling around the world for over 15 years, with performances and talks designed to encourage audiences to give themselves permission to unleash their hearts’ harmless desires.Tenderly intimate and unapologetically edgy, Kate is the radical role model, the affectionate best friend, and the guiding mentor all in one. With more humor and spunk than any other, she has ushered us into a world of limitless possibility through a daring re-envisionment of the gender system as we know it.

A celebrated pioneer for the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, Intersex (LGBTQI) community, Kate is the author of two classic books on gender and sexuality: My Gender Workbook: How to Become a Real Man, a Real Woman, the Real You, or Something Else Entirely and Gender Outlaw: On Men, Women and The Rest of Us. Kate’s most recent book is Hello, Cruel World: 101 Alternatives to Suicide for Teens, Freaks, and Other Outlaws, a one-of-a-kind guide to staying alive outside the box, Hello,Cruel World is a much-needed unconventional approach to life for those who want to stay on the edge, but alive. Follow her writing and adventures at Kate Bornstein’s Blog for Teens, Freaks and Other Outlaws.

Ignacio Rivera, aka Papí Coxxx, identifies as a Queer, gender-fluid, polyamorous, kinky, Black-Boricua. Ignacio, who prefers the gender-neutral pronoun “they,” is a lecturer, activist, sex worker, sex educator, and performance artist, sharing spoken word, one-person shows, and storytelling internationally. Ignacio’s body of work has focused on gender and sexuality; specifically on queer, trans, kink and sexual liberation issues within a race/class dynamic.

They are the creator of Poly Patao Productions (P3). Poly Patao Productions is dedicated to producing sex-positive workshops, performance pieces, play parties, panel discussions, teach-ins, social/political groups and educational opportunities that are specially geared toward queer women, transgender, multi-gender, genderqueer, gender non-conforming and gender variant folx of color.

Ignacio is also one of the founding board member of Queers for Economic Justice; a progressive non-profit organization committed to promoting economic justice in a context of sexual and gender liberation.

Follow Ignacio on Twitter at @Ignacio_Rivera

Sebastien is a gender-fucked stone butch top, half-breed Lakota, paramedic, pervert and blue collar activist who came out in the San Francisco leather community in 1999 and currently resides in New York City. He has been facilitating workshops for the past eight years and when he’s not teaching across the country, he’s probably surfing.

Angel has been a professional pervert since 1993. He came out as a leather dyke in San Francisco and is now a trans, femme, daddy living in NYC. He is an activist both in and out of the leather and kink communities. As a queer person of mixed race, indigenous origins and complicated ability status, he prizes inclusion in all of our communities.

Brandon B. is a sex educator, writer, and performer living in Brooklyn, New York. He conducts workshops out of various venues including the famous Pleasure Chest in the West Village where he is the manager. In 2009 he created TheINQUEERY.com, a sex toy and product review site for gay men which attempts to make safer sex sexy for the community. In 2010, he began reading erotic pieces from his personal mini-art zine at various venues including a 12-month residency at The Bowery Poetry Club for the burlesque, queer, performance art show Auralfixia. In 2011, he was a model for the New York Sex Blogger Calendar and presented at the MOMENTUM conference in Washington DC. Currently he is the manager, writer, and model for DarlingHouse.net and is working with Guiding Proud as an LGBTQ youth mentor in New York City.

Stay up to date with Brandon via Twitter at @mebrandonb

Jazz Goldman is an actor, singer/songwriter and social justice advocate and activist. She is a graduate of The New School where she received her degree in Liberal Arts with a concentration in the social sciences and gender studies. Recent performances include a lead role in the acclaimed Hidden: A Gender by Kate Bornstein. And she was a participant in a panel discussion led by Barbara Carrellas at the Open Center called: Explorations in Modern Love: Part I-The Art of Open Relationships.

Jazz currently works as a Sex Educator/Sales Associate for the feminist adult toystore Babeland.

Follow Jazz on Twitter: @GoldmanTouch