A World of Desires: Sexual Diversity in the Postmodern Age
Instructor: Carol Queen
Sessions:
Wednesdays, June 30, July 7 and July 14
8:30 PM Eastern / 5:30 PM Pacific
Each session will run between 2 and 2.5 hours
Each session will be recorded and immediately available for streaming for participants who are unable to attend a session.
Taught by renowned sexologist Carol Queen, this course will examine sexualities that are outside the traditional heterosexual binary and transgress norms of acceptable sexual desires.. A failure to recognize and accept diverse identities has caused considerable cultural—and personal—pain and trouble. “A World of Desires” will teach a healthy sex-positivity beyond unnecessary binary norms. Insistence on a “normal” sexuality simply does not fit the conditions and constructions of the world as it exists today.
Since the publication of Carol’s book exploring a spectrum of postmodern sexual identities more than twenty years ago, nonbinary identities have taken a far more central role in the way we think about both sexuality and gender. From pronouns to pansexuals, refusing a binary identity has made sense to ever more humans and has left others trying to keep up with this element of cultural change.
The ability to think outside the binary helps us challenge assumptions that have long been cultural building blocks, so it’s no surprise that there is pushback. In this course, we will unpack the reasons behind the pushback. We will explore how we can live in a world of diversity in sexual and gender identity and expression, and, by extension, a world of many other nondual and nonbinary experiences.
About the Instructor
Carol has worked as the Staff Sexologist and Chief Cultural Officer at the San Francisco sex shop Good Vibrations since 1990 and is the founding director of the Center for Sex & Culture. She’s the author of Exhibitionism for the Shy, The Leather Daddy and the Femme, and the collection Real Live Nude Girl: Chronicles of Sex-Positive Culture. Her co-edited book PoMoSexuals won the 1998 Lambda Literary Award. Queen has also appeared in many documentaries on human sexuality and is a past guest on Unregistered with Thaddeus Russell. Queen holds a PhD in Human Sexuality from the Institute for Advanced Study of Human Sexuality.
