I decided to start writing this blog as an attempt to save my relationships with family and friends. While my children no doubt find my constant deconstruction of popular culture to be highly valuable and insightful, and while my significant other very likely revels in my diatribes over coffee at the breakfast table, I’m thinking that there is a very small, almost microscopic chance, that they might grow tired of my commentary. So I thought it best that I find a different forum for expressing some of my thoughts. For the most part, those thoughts will revolve around issues of sex and sexuality, gender, and feminism. However, I’m casting a wide net on those and related issues. In other words, what this blog will actually cover will be topics that I find interesting and believe are important. I hope you, too, will find the occasional topic interesting and will want to engage in a conversation about it. If so, please feel free to make use of the Comment section to express your thoughts.
You’ll notice that there’s a Q & A section to this website. If you visit the “About” page, you’ll learn that I’ve been working and teaching in the fields of sexuality, gender, and women’s issues for many years—and I give workshops for parents about talking to their kids about sex. While overall, it is clear that as a society we have become more comfortable with and open about topics of sex and sexuality, when it comes to our kids, we are still unsure what to say and when to say it. Further, the landscape is constantly changing, requiring us to keep up or, perhaps, feel like we’re being left behind a bit. For instance, while we as a society have, overall, become increasingly comfortable with and knowledgeable about varying expressions of sexual orientation, many people still find issues of gender identity (e.g., what it means to be transgender) to be both confusing and discomfiting. We all have questions and uncertainties.
So I urge you click on the Q & A link, and ask away on the Contact page. As teachers always tell their students, it’s very likely that if you have a question, someone else has the same question. Plus, your question might well spur a blog post. And it will almost certainly bring us all in new directions.
So… that’s why this blog.
