Consent Corner 1.22

by Emma Atkinson and Rachel Drake

Hello lovely readers, and we hope you’re relishing all the juicy aspects of Pride.  Doesn’t it seem like the world is opening up a little bit?  There are more people out in parks, gathering in small groups, and enjoying what the Pacific Northwest has to offer at this time of year.  

Question:  you see a friend who you haven’t seen since pre-COVID - what do you do?  You want to give them a big hug, but what’s the new etiquette?  You can’t assume that your own comfort level with physical contact is the same as your friend’s comfort level.  

We like to suggest that right now the world is giving us opportunities to hone our consent skills.  Could we ask our friend:  would you prefer to hug, bump elbows, high five, or share a smile?  Could we ask:  are you huggable?  Imagine how impressed your friend will be as you flex the consent muscles you’ve been building in our time together.  What’s even better is knowing that the consensual greeting can be followed by what’s really important - reconnecting with a loved one.

Homework:  savor Pride celebrations, find a way to ask about physical contact that feels good for you, and look for chances to practice good consent.  Please, and thank you.  

We give our consent for contact at:  info@thecspc.org.

“Be excellent to each other” - Bill and Ted

“Be sexcellent to each other” - Emma and Rachel

Consent Corner 1.21

by Emma Atkinson and Rachel Drake

Hello lovely readers, and Happy Pride Month 2021!  We hope it’s uplifting and joyous.  Of course antics, shenanigans, and other consensual mischief are always encouraged!  

Thinking of our own sense of pride, it occurred to us that we’re exceedingly proud of:  you.  Yup, you.  You believe in sex positivity (well, you’re reading this newsletter).  You want to know more about consent (and, you’re reading this column).  You want to be the best possible you (don’t we all?).  You rock!  

You’re amazing, and we think you ought to be reminded of it regularly.  Thank you for being a part of this super sexy community.

A little bird says the CSPC may be able to host some safe small-scale parties in the not too distant future.  Woohoo!  This same bird went on to ask us to remind you to please fill out the brief survey asking for your views on safe CSPC reopening practices.  You can find it here.

Are you huggable?  If so, we’re sending you consensual virtual hugs.  Yum!  Was that good for you, too?  

We love exploring the intricate jewel that is consent.  Thank you for joining us on the journey.  Praise and admiration can be sent to:  info@thecspc.org.

“Be excellent to each other” - Bill and Ted

“Be sexcellent to each other” - Emma and Rachel

CSPC Volunteers to Take Part in Consent Fest 2021

Consent Fest 2021

Where Will Consent Take You?

Presented by: The Consent Academy

Friday, June 18th: 3:00-9:00pm (Pacific) / 6:00pm-Midnight (Eastern)

It’s been 15 months since we gathered together to join in our annual celebration of Consent. Some things have changed dramatically; others feel like they’ve been standing still. The Consent Academy has been along for that ride and all its changes. Now, as people look to parties, gatherings, and getting back together, we want to focus on our important work...

Consent Fest 2021 is being held virtually on TwitchTV

https://www.twitch.tv/consentacademy

Featuring: short education segments, information about Consent, connection with Consent organizations, giveaways, and more. Join us at any point to see what’s going on, learn about Consent, ask questions, and celebrate with us. 

Subscribe to our newsletter for updates and announcements: https://forms.gle/FQUV6qBH1rpz6BfA9

Help us spread the Invitation and Consent Education: Share the website, let people know about Consent Fest, and talk about consent whenever you can. www.consentfest.com

For any questions, please email the Consent Academy at: theconsentacademy@gmail.com

www.consent.academy

Volunteer Position: Instagram Specialist

The Center for Sex Positive Culture welcomes everyone and encourages our members who identify as BIPOC or LGBTQ/SGL to apply for this volunteer position.

Summary:

Monitor the Center for Sex Positive Culture (CSPC) Instagram account on a daily basis. Create original content and post CSPC events on a regular basis. This position reports to the Communications Director and works closely with both the Communications Team and the Programming Team.

Responsibilities:

  • Monitor the CSPC Instagram account on a daily basis

  • Reply to comments, questions, and messages

  • Post CSPC events using the images and text copy provided or create your own images and adapt text from other CSPC sources

  • Create other posts from time to time to promote the mission of the CSPC and attract followers

  • Use the Instagram account to connect with organizations and individuals who align with our mission

  • Attend Communications Team Zoom meetings on a regular basis (currently 7-8pm PDT every second Monday)

Qualifications:

  • Membership with the CSPC

  • Completed Volunteer Orientation (can be done at the start of volunteering)

  • Familiarity with Instagram

  • Willingness to engage with others on social media

  • Competence using an image editor of your choosing (Gimp, Photoshop, etc)

Contact:

 The Center for Sex Positive Culture creates spaces to celebrate, develop, and explore sexuality and sensuality among a diverse, supportive community.

Ten Indications That You Might Be Masturbating Too Much

By Mistress 7, Inveterate Wanker

10.  For the sake of accuracy, you’ve permanently set your online status to “AFK - masturbating”

9. You’ve written an erotic novel in which all of the characters are disembodied hands

8. Your neighbors fasten breakables with earthquake straps due to the frequent tremors you cause in the area

7. A judge has ruled that your genitals are required to pay you at an overtime rate

6. You’ve started making videos of yourself wanking while watching videos of yourself wanking to videos of yourself wanking

5. “Lube and tissues” is a bigger slice of the budget pie chart than “food and shelter”

4. When reading, you feel the need to rub one out every time you come across a sexy article, such as  “the” or “a”

3. The extreme variety of your masturbatory vocalizations keeps accidentally summoning demons to our world

2. You have a backup generator dedicated to keeping your sex toys running during blackouts

1. Your masturbation habit leaves you insufficient time to write a decently funny article for a sex-positive newsletter

Note: This article is satire. Unless there is a medical reason to change your practices (i.e. your doctor advises it), I don’t really think that anybody reading this is masturbating too much, or too little. It’s completely your choice, and there is no shame associated with whatever amount of self-pleasure you feel is right for you. Happy International Masturbation Month!

Consent Corner 1.20

by Emma Atkinson and Rachel Drake

Hello lovely readers!  

Pride month is almost upon us, so it’s time to get your freak flag out of wherever it happens to be, and get it ready to proudly fly.  The LGBTQIA+ flag is big enough to represent all of us in all of our varied splendor.  

We’d long thought that pride and humility were at opposing ends of some sort of spectrum.  Remember the expression “pride goes before a fall”?  That kind of pride seems boastful, self-centered, and apt to lead a rude awakening.  

We now believe that pride and humility are lovely together.  We’re imagining them all lubed up and commingling in joyous harmony.  Is it getting hot in here?  Whew!  Okay, we’re back.

Before we elucidate the thought, here’s a quick note:  humility is not the same thing as humiliation.  Humiliation is thinking less of yourself (I’m ashamed of how long it took to make this salad) and humility is thinking of yourself less (I wonder what she thinks of this salad?).  

Pride month reminds us to joyously appreciate ourselves for the wondrous beings that we are.  And, with humility, we can help others do the same.  Doesn’t that sound like fun? 

One of the things that Pride month brings up is self-acceptance. We would like to invite and challenge you for Pride this year to think about the following: What does self-acceptance mean to you in your own life? Have you consented to be yourself? Do you need more information about how you land on the beautiful spectrum of orientation possibilities, be it sexual attraction, relationship dynamics, or kinks? 

With good consent, you allow you to be yourself and your partner(s) to be themselves.  Doesn’t that sound like fun, too?  

Feeling curious?  We give our consent for you to email us at:  info@thecspc.org.  

“Be excellent to each other” - Bill and Ted

“Be sexcellent to each other “ - Emma and Rachel

Top Ten Benefits of Being Solo Polyamorous During a Pandemic

By Mistress 7

As I look back on the lessons learned from My past year in various stages of lockdown, one thing becomes apparent: living apart from partners during this time is difficult. It’s especially difficult for those of us who have been living with none of our partners and miss our accustomed time with many beloveds.

But, every cloud has a silver lining. Here are some of My positive take-aways from spending the past year in pandemic as a solo poly person:

10. You’re not afraid of spending time by yourself.

9. You already live with your primary partner, and they make or buy all the meals for you.

8. You were already good at talking to people about viruses and risk.

7. Not having as much sex has given you a chance to stop neglecting your hobbies.

6. After a year stuck at home, some of your cohabitating friends finally get what you mean by wanting personal space.

5. New thing to shout during sex: “Are you coming? Press spacebar, I think you’re on mute!”

4. No longer going out on dates saves you more money than most people.

3. Forget three-ways – with Zoom you can get 49 on a page!

2. You already had a year’s supply of medical gloves.

1. With all this personal autonomy, there’s no limit to the number of people you can’t see.

Meet Friends and Play in the CSPC’s Virtual Sandbox

Sadie and Sakari took some time to chat about the CSPC’s upcoming ageplay party, Virtual Sandbox, with newsletter reporter 7.

7: To start off, tell me something about yourselves.

Sakari: Well, I am Sakari, she/her pronouns, and I am the collared submissive of this lady here, Miss Sadira. And we're putting on a littles’ party with her boyfriend, Babybear. We've been together now for 9 years coming up, right?

Sadie: 9 years as of the 27th.

Sakari: Yeah. Wow.

Sadie: (stage whispering) I’m planning a secret anniversary surprise, but don't tell her that.

7: (stage whispers back) I will keep it secret. It's a good thing that we have this “cone of silence” thing.

Sadie: Yes, yes it is. (laughs)

Sakari: And, well, I serve her 24/7. We kind of just live our D/s lives together.

7: Awesome!

Sadie: I’m Sadie. I go by Miss Sadira in formal situations. I have been formally involved in kink since 2003, and hosting events for the last eight years, mostly with Sakari here, but also with my other submissive, Babybear, who unfortunately couldn't be here today. We've been putting on FemDom events and littles’ events and general kink events for a long time, both out of our house, the Dom(me)cile, and out of the CSPC.

7: I love that your house has its own name, by the way. Can you give me a bit of background on where that came from?

Sadie: When we moved in here we decided that we needed a... not a leather house name because we're not exactly leather, although I pull that way a little bit. It’s my own version of leather. We decided that our household needed a name. And we liked the punny-ness of the Dom(me)icile, which has an extra “me” in parentheses. It’s the femme domicile.

7: That’s clever! Let’s talk about the Virtual Sandbox.

Sadie: The Sandbox is for ageplayers of all kinds: littles, diaper lovers, middles, or however the caretaker or ageplayer identifies. We're setting up virtual rooms for different activities, so that hopefully there will be something for everyone. It will be a free and open party where attendees can bounce from place to place, check out some show and tell, some arts, some virtual gaming. They can check out the general discussion group or the X-rated discussion group. Our goal is to provide a little bit of a lot of things to bring our ageplay community together.

We miss both the CSPC F*cking Precious party, and the Dom(me)icile used to have a littles’ party, and we just wanted our community to have this.

7: Yeah, F*cking Precious was a favorite party when we were doing things in person. The Virtual Sandbox sounds very active for an online event.

Sadie: We really wanted to give it a sense of things people can do, activities. Speaking of which, we're still recruiting leaders. Anyone who's volunteer-certified for the CSPC, if you have an idea for an activity, that's great, contact us. There's going to be a virtual singalong, probably interspersed with some karaoke. We hope to have some art projects, as well as free time for arts & crafts. There's going to be storytelling and some group storytelling, kind of a D&D-like experience without all the pesky rules. Because a lot of littles don't like rules so much.

We want to have a sampling of things for everyone, so we're going to provide a room or two where R-rated/X-rated talk is allowed. But we also want to provide places for littles who don't access that when they are their little self, so we're going to have G-rated rooms as well. In this one we're not allowing nipples and genitals to show, but you can certainly show off your finery, your onesies, your diapers, or whatever it is that you enjoy showing off. Come as you are and be who you are.

Sakari: Yeah, ageplay lends itself to doing stuff like story time, coloring, and other activities. A lot of the Virtual Sandbox is action oriented. We felt it was important to have stuff to do in addition to discussing things. There's obviously room for that in the community.

Sadie: And in the party.

Sakari: Yeah, we’ll have discussion space in this party as well. But it was important that we have more than that.

Sadie: At any given time we hope to have four to eight different activities going on in different rooms. We're planning to put a schedule out about a week before the event, so that that will all be laid out. Almost like a convention. If I don't like this activity or this class I'm going to, I can move over to this one over here.

Sakari: You'll be able to pick and choose where you want to go.

7: I've totally done that at a conference before. If in the first five minutes of a room I decided it wasn't for me, I’d have my second choice ready so I could head over to that.

Sadie: Yes. And hopefully people will find a couple of choices each half hour. My intention is for half-hour to hour-and-a-half length activities that people can drop in on as they please.

7: Cool. It’s a three-hour event, correct?

Sadie: Yes

7: So that could mean up to six different things to do. That's a very full day!

Sadie: Absolutely.

7: I'm hoping that we’ll have a naptime area for those who get tired.

Sadie: Yes, a little ASMR, whispers in the microphone, soothing sleep time.

7: Great! What is your vision for this in the future? Do you hope to have more Virtual Sandboxes?

Sadie: Yes, and as we move back to in-person events we're probably starting F*cking Precious again.

Sakari: Yeah, I like that format.

Sadie: One of the leaders of F*cking Precious right here (gestures to Sakari) has been talking about bringing that back when the time is right. But until we can host those in-person parties, we're probably going to start doing Virtual Sandbox at an every other month cadence, and work up to monthly.

Sakari: It depends on what kind of response we get from the first one.

7: Makes sense. Is there anything else you'd like to say before we wrap up?

Sakari: If anyone is interested in ageplay stuff in the community around here, please check us out. It's a good way to get back into the swing of it, finding out what is going on with this community right now, and taking a couple of tentative steps toward when things open back up. You'll have a little bit of a social network for when we jump back into activities.

Sadie: It's been a long year, and for many of us a very hard one. I feel like we have lost a lot of that connection and community. And there's definitely a lot of places out there that are creating that. West Coast Jungle Gym is doing a lot of work on creating community. There's an ISO Story Time from people on the East Coast, who are working on creating connection within the ageplay community. And this is just one more way for us to come together and not have to hide who we are.

7: That’s wonderful. And it's not only a chance for people to connect to each other, but it's also a bit like a virtual ageplay tasting party.

Sadie: I like that way of saying it.

Join Sadie, Sakari, Babybear, and our other activity leaders at the Virtual Sandbox on Saturday, April 24th.

Consent Corner 1.19

by Emma Atkinson and Rachel Drake

Hello sexy readers!  Can you believe it’s Spring?  Can Summer be far behind?  

Earth Day is coming up and it’s a good time to think about respect.  Consent is about respecting yourself and others, and Earth Day reminds us that we need to respect the planet as well.  We’ve only got one planet, and there’s no spare planet we can move to if this one becomes unhealthy.  Do you know those people who look different from you and speak a different language?  They’re your neighbors.  We’re all neighbors on this planet, so we have to get along with each other.

We’re officially promoting the concept of respect as a guiding principle in being a good neighbor.  Respect is much more than tolerance or acceptance.  It’s about appreciating what makes you and your neighbor unique and special, and looking for ways to build stronger connections with each other.  Building these connections makes us all more aware, more informed, and once we understand each other we’re more willing to help one another.

Here’s a secret that you might already know:  Helping others gives you far more in return for what you give.  Maybe there’s more you can do to help others, with your myriad skills and abilities, than you’re already doing.  The CSPC, for example, would love to see you at a party, munch, meeting, or other event. We’re under new management - come check us out!  

Homework:  In honor of Earth Day, consider a way to show your respect for the Earth and your neighbors on it, and give it a whirl.  We think you’ll be glad you did.  

Got respectful thoughts for us?  Share them at info@thecspc.org.  

“Be excellent to each other” - Bill and Ted 

“Be sexcellent to each other” - Emma and Rachel