Earlier this month, I was forced to deal with a frightening attack on my personal integrity and one of my sex-positivity projects. Thankfully, no serious damage to anyone or anything was done, but the attack helped me see that these experiences have now become a pattern. In other words, as it’s already happened several times over the course of the last year, I realize they’re probably not going to stop soon.
It’s no surprise, really. I’ve gone through an incredible transformation from a disgruntled youth to what I believe I can safely describe as a sexual freedom community organizer this year. Merging my passions for technology and sexual freedom has meant I’ve become a spokesperson for the intersection of tech and sex, founding KinkForAll put me at odds with some of the more traditional sexuality community leaders, and the louder I get and the more I do with media projects like Kink On Tap and SexEdEverywhere, the more obvious a target for opposition I become.
This change has provided some invaluable experiences from which I’ve learned a lot. However, not all of these lessons have been fun, or easy. Some of them, like what happened a few weeks ago, have been downright enraging, deeply hurtful, and very scary.
Now, I could get upset about attacks on me and my work (and I did, especially since the nastiest ones came from people who call themselves educators), but I could also see opposition to what I do as a sort of unsolicited advice. Detractors can help me figure out what more I need to do to make the world a better place. Some of the people holding uninformed beliefs that I’m recklessly endangering people’s lives rather than improving them are the very ones I need to find a way to reach more than any other group.
And that brings me to my question for all of you:
In your attempts to share knowledge, how do you deal with certified educators who try to prevent you from speaking up, who want to silence your voice? What do you do if you disagree with them about what education itself means?
This is the question that’s been challenging me for weeks now. Despite mulling it over in my head, I haven’t come up with answers. I have, however, learned some lessons about what to do in tough situations that I’d like to share with you now. In so doing, I hope to start a conversation with you and the wider education community about educators and education itself, particularly education about controversial topics like sex, because I think this is a conversation that needs to be had and from which I can learn a lot.
1. Don’t let “stop energy” distract you from your work.
Time and again, the first thing I hear when I propose an idea to a group of people is the word “no.” It’s like an omnipotent monster, always there everywhere you go, never backing down. This monster can also come in the form of “can’t,” “don’t,” and perhaps most tellingly, “shouldn’t.” All of these are the same: a form of opposition that Dave Winer calls stop energy. Dave describes stop energy as reasons why [one] can’t or shouldn’t be allowed to do what [one] proposes.
Sometimes stop energy is unintentional, coming from friends who want to help you avoid pitfalls but fail to express themselves supportively. Other times, stop energy can be dangerous, coming from people who will actively try to prevent you from accomplishing your goal. In my experience, these are often people who feel threatened by you or your work because you’re changing the status quo in some way. These are also the people most likely to viciously criticize and undermine you in any number of subtle and not-so-subtle ways.
As I mentioned in my KinkForAll Providence presentation,
For those that don’t know, when Sara Eileen and I co-founded KinkForAll, we took some very heavy criticism from people who believed that the essentially open and public nature of KinkForAll events were “recklessly endangering” participants, that we would be “outing” people. I believe this criticism was spawned from a belief in [a] false dichotomy: that to be public is to be out, that in order to have adequate privacy, people of sexuality minorities must be closeted.
Most often, however, stop energy can simply be distracting. The larger the group you’re speaking to, the more distracting stop energy you’re likely to encounter. Like waves in a giant pool, I encountered torrents of this form of stop energy when I started MaleSubmissionArt.com from people who were disapproving of my use of imagery I didn’t know the source of, who questioned the need for the site’s existence, or who simply didn’t understand my goal. If I had taken the time to respond to most of these people, the site would never have survived because all my time would’ve been sucked up by the distraction they created.
Stop energy is deadly to projects and ideas. Regardless of whether it is active opposition or simply a passive decoy, I learned that you must absolutely never let negative attention keep you from doing your work. You must constantly, consistently, relentlessly keep pushing forward. Stop for just a moment before you reach your tipping point—a kind of stop energy escape velocity, if you will—and your success is in question.
2. Win-win is more possible than you think; never settle.
I don’t believe in compromise, in splitting the difference, or in zero-sum games. That doesn’t mean I’m going to ignore people or force my will on others. What it means is that given two diametrically opposed resolutions to a problem, I always seek a third option.
Sometimes finding win-win situations involves changing the rules of the game. Despite what many people might say, changing the rules of the game is okay because if you prioritize a system’s bureaucracy over the value it was (ostensibly) intended to provide, you’ll lock yourself into a cage called stagnation. Giving in to a compromise is the antithesis of win-win situations (scenarios in which everyone benefits and no one’s desires are sacrificed) and, I promise you, win-win situations are more possible than you think.
Case in point, despite the stop energy people threw at me for MaleSubmissionArt.com about its use of images, many artists whose work I feature are very happy to have their photographs displayed on the site. What I find horribly ignorant is not the desire of some artists to protect their work by restricting who can republish it, but the notion that because they don’t want to participate in the site, they have some right to prevent me from involving others. That’s the kind of approach guaranteed to preclude even the possibility of a win-win situation from emerging, and that’s just bad for everyone.
For a more personal example, in the two months or so since I quit my day job, I was able to find a new job that takes up less of my time. When I quit my day job, I wrote:
I’m not willing to merely survive, because I demand excellence and happiness. I demand it of myself, and so I demand it of you. […] I believe there is more value in doing, being, and getting what I want than in sacrificing it. I believe that there is more richness in the world than can be measured with all the world’s riches.
If I was ever willing to compromise the full realization of my dreams, I would never have been able to make the opportunities I have now.
3. Engage opponents in constructive dialogue.
Sadly, despite your best intentions, some people are just going to dig their heels in and fight against everything you do. At KinkForAll Providence, Megan Andelloux gave a talk called Sex Panic in Pawtucket where she discussed her experience dealing with just such a situation:
When Megan Andelloux wanted to open The Center for Sexual Pleasure and Health in Pawtucket, RI, “freaked out” residents barricaded her opening for 5 months and the local police threatened to arrest her. At KinkForAll Providence, 1 week after Megan’s education center opened, she gives a talk about the “sex panic” that swept the state and captured national headlines. Megan tells of a University of Rhode Island professor who waged a “war” to stop her from educating adults about sex, how locals demanded that “we should outlaw sex!” and how she fought for your sexual freedoms—and won!
(Emphasis mine. Megan’s struggle eventually made its way onto Wikipedia, where we can learn that the University of Rhode Island professor crusading against sex-positive culture and those in it is none other than character assassin and right-wing wingnut Donna M. Hughes. For more information about Donna M. Hughes’ unabashed smear campaigns, see my later post.)
Megan’s talk is well worth listening to, but what I found most interesting about it is that she had to fight back against educators who were trying to stop efforts to educate. This is interesting because the slanderous attacks against me have often come from educators, too.
In one case, the person in question runs classes about various sexuality topics and accused me of attempting to get KinkForAll attendees registered as sex offenders because of my insistence that the unconferences place no age-based restriction on who can participate. In another case, the person is a professor at a university (much like Megan’s experience), who tried to stop KinkForAll events by trying to build a case to show how I’m supposedly intentionally crafting dangerous environments and luring young people there, among other things.
I think these people are afraid. So afraid, I think, that they let paranoia overcome their reason. I think educators more than any other group should be people who empower, not censor. As I said during my presentation at KinkForAll Washington DC:
If you truly want to protect our children from sexual abuse, then education is far and away the best protection you can give them. And yet, sadly, even in otherwise unbiased communities, many people are extremely uncomfortable with the idea that young people might want to participate, almost always citing fears that access to sexuality information could be traumatic. Tragically, projecting such sexual paranoia onto young people is actually killing many of them.
[…]
Sadly, because of the social constructions of power with which sex and age are so inextricably intertwined, the people in power—the adults—often choose censorship to restrict the availability of sexuality information to young people instead of education, all under the guise of protection. But censorship and oppressive information restrictions are not protection, only education is.
In these and other instances, attempting to engage constructively with these individuals has proven enormously difficult. In one case, I was forced to disengage when I realized that the discussion itself was a stalling tactic; the person in question was determined to turn any engagement whatsoever into pure stop energy. In other cases, people refused to engage me directly and instead went behind my back in order to sabotage my work and the work of my collaborators by making outrageous and slanderous claims about us and our intentions.
Thankfully, these sorts of people have a fundamental weakness: they don’t listen. In one case, the person in question actually used my own words about education’s importance (the ones I quoted above, in fact) in order to attempt to convince others that I was trying not to educate. Nonsensical, I know, but that’s how twisted these people’s perceptions of me are.
After KinkForAll Washington DC was ousted from our original venue, we were concerned that the negative press it got would mean detractors would show up to the unconference itself. We were concerned about the same thing at KinkForAll Providence. That didn’t happen, but what if it did? What could we do?
As part of the public discussion about the concerns, “Chris!” made the suggestion on the KinkForAll mailing list that we could actually invite these people to voice their opinions in the same manner that we are voicing ours: by encouraging them to lead a session at KinkForAll! I think this could be exactly the right move.
This doesn’t merely sound diplomatic and effective as a show of integrity if not actual discussion. (I don’t know if any people who might show up as protesters to a KinkForAll would actually take us up on such an offer.) More than that, I think it would engage the opposition in the very process of constructive conversation they wish to destroy. Because, as I’m beginning to realize more and more, opposition is not inherently incorrect, nor is it inherently less informed (although it certainly is less informed relatively often).
Opposition is just that: difference. And difference is required for the very thing I want to promote: diversity. Because diversity is unity.
What opposition doesn’t have to be is violent, restrictive, or oppressive. It doesn’t have to impinge on anyone’s rights or freedoms. There can be opposition to a thing and that thing can still harmlessly exist at the same time. That’s the kind of opposition I have to church groups, for instance. I’m certainly not interested in going to any, but I don’t feel any compulsion to stop them from meeting in public places or from letting them pray in those places or in private.
Live and let live—freely, diversely, and without restriction. Again, quoting from my KinkForAll Washington DC presentation:
The more afraid we are, the more arbitrary rules—like age-based oversimplifications—we try to impose on each other. That’s not a solution—that’s unacceptable.
I think people who oppose education oppose humanity itself. Our innate human drive to learn, to know things we didn’t know before, to explore the strange, new worlds of uncertainty is among the most fundamental parts of our existence. It’s the driving force behind the pursuit of happiness. Because if knowledge is power, learning is self-empowerment. In fact, the root of the word educate is educe, a word that means “to draw out potential.”
To me, it seems treasonous to our species that educators like the ones who attacked Megan Andelloux would so unashamedly oppose others’ attempts to educate. Since I can’t fathom why anyone would want to do that, I want to learn more about what these and other people are thinking.
And if you’re someone who’s attacked me in the past, I also invite your comments, especially if you’re one of the people who have previously avoided speaking with me directly. Now’s your chance; I don’t like you right now, but I’m willing to hear you out and learn from you.
What strategies have you used to protect yourself or resolve attacks on your work, your personal life, and your friends from people who are in positions of authority, especially traditional educators? I’m looking forward to hearing about your thoughts and learning from your lessons. Thank you.
by Stilllearning
25 Feb 2010 at 05:05
In your position of leadership you have to aim to educate those from which most of your opposition is likely to spawn. Only a change in the mainstream, which usually where standards are generated, will ultimately lead to a global change.
Indeed, you have reached the mandatory stage of STRUGGLE. You will be one in a long list of distinguished leaders who made a difference through struggle. But you are not alone. And you need an army of peaceful warriors. You will not let anyone or anything stop you. You will succeed!
by sarcozona
25 Feb 2010 at 07:17
Even though my experience as a scientist is very different than yours as an educator, many of the things you said did resonate with me. As a scientist, I face three big obstacles: the criticism of my work by other scientists, the denial of scientific conclusions by creationists, etc., and stereotypes of scientists that forget our humanity.
The criticism of my work is something I seek out and don’t really see as an obstacle anymore. It helps me refine my ideas, correct mistakes, see things in new ways, and even have new ideas. I didn’t always seek this criticism out and it can be painful. An important lesson for me has been separating this from “stop energy.” Some criticism does come with stop energy and that may seem at first to be all there is, but the determination (and even hostility) of those critics has forced me to understand my subject better and consider complexity I may not have originally in order to defend my work. Someone who just thinks you should quit often still has something you can learn from them.
The denial of scientific conclusions by creationists and climate change deniers and their ilk is most certainly stop energy and I think scientists in general really struggle with this, though usually not as personally as you’ve had to do as a sex educator. This is the most frustrating obstacle for me because it is hard to educate people when their entire worldview is contingent on not accepting what you have to say. Not all of the denialists are like this, but many are – especially in people who are also religious. I imagine this is the closest of my experiences to what you’ve had to deal with, but I’m afraid I don’t have particularly good advice. My strategy has been to publicly combat their arguments, but to avoid them personally and engage with people who aren’t completely convinced by their arguments.
The last, stereotypes about scientists that make it difficult for people to see us as full, emotional, sexual, not always rational human beings, can be particularly painful. I think science blogging (especially people like Dr. Isis) and more recent popular science books like The Wild Trees are doing a lot to overcome that, but it still hurts when someone is willing to talk about art or history they’re unfamiliar with, but not ecology, or when someone is intimidated or immediately thinks I’ll be uninteresting because I’m a scientist, but the same doesn’t apply to the philosopher at the party. Because this is so personal – criticism of my work isn’t necessarily criticism of me (though it may feel like it) and the people who deny science don’t direct their attacks at me – it’s the hardest for me to deal with. I’m trying to learn to stand up for myself in situations like that or to coach people through their discomfort at talking to someone they consider more intelligent than themselves, but more frequently I just end up retreating – leaving the party early to hang out with other scientists.
I don’t know if you’ll find anything in my experience useful, but I hope you do. And I know I’m a stranger, but based on what I know of you online, I have every confidence in you.
by Clarisse Thorn
25 Feb 2010 at 12:46
More power to you, Maymay, but you know I tend to think you’re a bit aggressive. That aggressiveness is typified throughout this post (“I don’t believe in compromise”, etc). I would be inclined to think that it will damage your goals, but then again, let’s face it — even if we are in the same business, you’re male and I’m female, and different tactics will work differently, no matter how we may deplore the mechanisms behind that. You can get away with being a lot more uncompromising, at least on the surface, than I can (even if I were inclined to be as uncompromising, at least on the surface, as you).
Here’s an old thread from an intra-community argument I got into once in Chicago. I think it exemplifies my own approach pretty well, but again, my own approach is pretty different from yours … but maybe you’ll glean something useful from it? Don’t know.
http://groups.google.com/group/tngchicago/browse_frm/thread/5509f3d0500567a3
by Elle
25 Feb 2010 at 19:47
I’m afraid I just don’t understand some people’s insistence at throwing “stop energy” at others. One example of what I’m trying to get at, something that just puzzles me and pisses me off: people who oppose gay marriage. Why???? It’s not them getting married, what do they care what others do in privacy???? It’s like they can’t find value in their own life so they have to go and ruin someone else’s?
I’m very much of the “live and let live” type. And I believe if everyone was like that, society would be much better off.
Hmm I don’t think I’m being very helpful here. Guess what I’m trying to say is I understand the problem you’re talking about, but I don’t understand why it should even happen, and I have no clue how to fix it, unfortunately ;)
by maymay
02 Mar 2010 at 00:05
I’m glad that things resonated with you, sarcozona. But y’know, it’s funny, because I was pretty careful not to refer to myself as an educator, simply someone who wishes to promote education. The distinction is subtle but important. For instance, in the world of Flickr, when anyone with a camera can take a photograph that gets worldwide exposure, what’s the difference between a “photographer” and a person who takes pictures?
I know, Clarisse. I know. ;)
The simple truth is, as you state, I can get away with having the balls to be aggressive because I have balls. The irony is that I’m trying to change the world so that statement no longer holds water. Go figure.
The link you provided requires me to be a member of the TNG-Chicago group to read it. As I’m not a member, I can’t read it. Maybe you can forward me your email privately? I’d be very interested in reading what your own approach looks like.
by dullbrightness
11 Mar 2010 at 23:17
A bit late (I’m here via the Male Submission Art blog, which is lovely, by the way, and as an amateur photographer is making me want to go make some pictures), but I just wanted to say that I admire your rare commitment to actual education for all amid a litany of voices claiming that to not explicitly bar education to the under-18s is tantamount to child abuse. That’s the direction in which things seem to be going these days, especially on America’s Right, but it seems to be creeping more and more into progressive domains too, which is a shame since they’re challenging every other frontier.
As someone who keeps running up against the unchallenged, unexplained assumption that you can’t tell younger people anything about sex, and as someone who’s made that assumption myself without thinking because society tells me that I have to, this was a breath of fresh air. Thanks. :)
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by Maybe Maimed but Never Harmed › The Salvation Army incites personal attacks against me; a blog reply
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[…] then mean, angry, or frightened people insinuate nasty behavior on your part, misquote you seemingly on purpose, and paint you out to be a nightmarish creature. A sex slaver. A […]
by rumiboy
12 Apr 2010 at 04:56
A number of years ago, i read an article about the Progressive Labor Party taking a position on homosexuality. Apparently, it was ok for two women to be partners because that was based on a woman loving a woman, but it was not ok for two men to be gay, because that was based on hating women! I wish I could find the original bulletin to which you refer and I’ll bet it was written with the same doctrinaire flair.
Hearing that the Salvation Army had reprinted and publicized the slander against you also disturbed me deeply. The Salvation Army saved my ass once when I went broke in Reno Nevada, and have always been my charity of choice when I have a bag of stuff to give away. But they are, after all, an Army, with uniforms and a very narrow vision of how the world should be organized. They are front line when it comes to providing physical support to desperate and trapped victims of exploitation, but they have clearly been misguided if they think you are the enemy.
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