This sex positive is all about action and open access. Kali is a BDSM expert with 13 years experience in the adult industry and has devoted herself to sexual education for adults. Her sex positivity is to enable informed choices. She founded the Kink Academy in 2007 and branched out to Passionate U, both education websites for adults of all levels of experience. She is also the founder of the Fearless Press, which explores the intersection of sex and other aspects from everyday life from relationships to spirituality and personal style. She wants to see more inclusion of Kink in the mainstream and sex workers’ legitimate voices taken seriously in academia.
1) Identify one or two trends, or influential people in the Sex Positive community that you identify with (or are inspired by) and those trends which you relate to not-so-much.
It’s exciting to see Sabrina Morgan growing in her public writing about the sex positive community and the sex worker perspective. She’s really insightful and gets straight to the heart of whatever she’s talking about. Also, Charlie Glickman has always been one of the most inspirational people in the community in my opinion. He manages to talk about really complex issues, particularly regarding sexuality and gender identity, in a way is easy to relate to and understand.
As far as trends go, I’m excited to generally see a lot more people actively interested in being sex educators. Even more importantly I’m excited to see some nationally known educators doing trainings for up and coming sex educators. When I started doing BDSM workshops there weren’t any ways to find mentors or learning specific to the sexuality field.
I’ve been thinking about it and while there are trends that I don’t relate to as part of my personal identity, I am still excited to see progress that’s being made in those other areas of the sex positive community.
2) How do you define “sex positivity” for yourself and your work? In other words, what is your primary passion and how do you distinguish your writings and interests from other branches of thought within the sex positive movement?
For me, the definition of “sex positive” is the same as it is for “feminism”… it all comes down to choice. Even the Kink phrase “safe, sane & consensual” is pretty subjective, at least the “safe” and “sane” parts. The #1 requirement is consent, and more specifically, enthusiastically informed consent.
So the “informed” part has become a driving part of my personal mission and is the reason I founded Erotication in the first place. There are a lot of “risky” activities in creative sex, but that doesn’t mean we should shy away from them. There are a lot of risky things in any aspect of living life outside of a closet! But to educate ourselves in every and any way possible opens up the possibility for a lot more successful (aka positive!) sexual experiences.
In terms of how that distinguishes my work, it has been particularly important to me that “sex positivity” is reflected in the wide range of topics made available on Kink Academy and Passionate U. It can be easy to censor based on my own preferences and interests, but instead I look at whether the people teaching and being taught are highly considerate of physical and mental health, safety and consensuality.
3) What directions do you think sex positivity will take within the next 5 – 10 years? Or what topics and with what platforms would you like to see sex positivity develop more thoroughly within the next 5 – 10 years?
My biggest personal and professional hope is that sex positivity both within the community and in the mainstream will continue to give kinksters more acceptance. I truly believe the ‘kink movement’ needs to take a similar path to the ‘gay movement’ in coming out and talking with others. When more people realize they know someone who is kinky then the stigma will finally start to fade. I also hope that sex workers become more recognized and respected within the academic sexuality arena. It’s been beyond frustrating to be left out of important discussions because of what I like to call ‘in the field’ work. When sexuality professional organizations acknowledge the kind of learning and insights that can come from being a sex worker, there will be a lot more potential for cross-over activism.
Obviously, I have a bias but I hope that video-based, online learning about sexuality continues to grow. I believe it’s like the VCR for porn. It opens up this huge opportunity for private learning on the user’s end and massive reach for educators.
Regardless of all the online community that’s building these days (which is an awesome thing!), in-person events will always play a big part in both activism and education. I think using videos and forums to create a strong foundation allows the face-to-face time to be more meaningful and efficient.
Opinions shared are the author’s own. Want to participate in this interview series? What is your sex positivity?