More about sexualities activisms please,we need it!

The problem

I’m going out on a limb, here, but I think there is a void in Sexualities. Sexuality scholarship is largely about the problems that sexual behaviors, attitudes, discourses, politics, and identities cause for individuals and society. The articles and special issues in Sexualities approach this scholarship with passion and innovation. Yet, although sexuality scholars, including many who write in Sexualities, participate in various types of transformational and advocacy activities to remedy society’s problems with sexualities, little is written about activism and advocacy how-to, why and what-for in the journal. Scholars have ceded this terrain to editorials, newsletters, blogs, alternative media or social media and may even themselves write such material, but is there still a need for such splitting?

Maybe it’s time to examine the chasm between activists and the academics who research and write about social issues and movements. In our sexuality research and theory we are interested in revisiting, reframing and disrupting traditions of sexual understandings and practices. Our origins in gay and lesbian studies, feminism, and sexuality and gender studies may offer the proper platform for challenging this hoary academic tradition of splitting our analysis of and our work for social change.

Over five decades (1960s–2010s) as a sex educator, theorist, researcher, sex therapist, and member of many professional organizations, I saw very little attention paid to advocacy in scores of professional conferences. No workshops teaching activism skills, few plenaries describing successful activist campaigns, no lectures highlighting needed areas for advocacy. I learned that activism was something a professional did in their spare time, not as part of their career. Because of feminism I got involved in activism in the 1970s in my spare time and ultimately became an amateur sexuality activist who challenged medicalization and the pharmaceutical industry (see newviewcampaign.org). But I always wondered if there wasn’t a better way to learn how to do it so as to be able to do it better.

There were some exceptions. In feminist professional groups such as the Association for Women in Psychology (AWP) or the Society for Menstrual Cycle Research (SMCR), politics was a regular topic of invited lectures and participatory workshops and activist demonstrations were on occasion even scheduled into the program. Framing one’s career in terms of ‘scholar-activism’ has been popular in these groups, a reflection of the social change philosophy at the core of feminism.

SMCR devotes a webpage to activism:

We are dedicated to the fusion of consciousness-raising, activism, scholarship, and feminist politics. Working both within and outside of academia, we work to lessen gender inequalities and place menstruation and women’s reproductive health in the spotlight. (Society for Menstrual Cycle Research, n.d.)

On the sexualities front, the brightest organizational light in terms of addressing activism has been the International Association for the Study of Sexuality, Culture and Society (IASSCS). The mission statement of IASSCS that appears on its website www.iasscs.org/ indicates that it is ‘committed to a broad range of research activities, including strengthening communication and promoting collaboration among researchers, policy makers, and activists/advocates.’ At another spot on its website IASSCS lists predictable organizational initiatives such as research training and dissemination, but then comes:

Policy and Advocacy

IASSCS is an essential source of expertise on sexuality in advocacy policy debates regarding sexuality. It seeks to identify and support current sexual rights advocacy initiatives and strategies that impact state policies and programs; sustain an on-going dialogue on future action research; support campaigns advocating for the visibility of sexual minority issues and empowerment; and position itself as a reliable, accurate source of information to those working in academic, government, research and media venues who are involved in policy and advocacy work in sexuality. (IASSCS, n.d.)

A Solution

Were Sexualities to accept this challenge to embrace a role in sexualities activism (not just write ‘about’ it, in other words), what might that look like?

First, I think Sexualities could announce a special issue examining the traditions and conventions in academic publishing, how they exclude and marginalize activism, and what might be some new directions and policies. The evolution of scholarly publication traditions, personal activism accounts, analyses of advantages and disadvantages to the journal and authors’ careers of including activism in Sexualities, publisher positions and editorial commentary could all be included. Perhaps then there should be an opportunity for commentary and feedback in a subsequent issue. And then, finally, a trial period of inviting activist contributions to the journal could be announced.

Setting aside a section for activist writings in each issue is one obvious direction, but what if authors of scholarly articles were encouraged (not required) to include activist perspectives. Instead of calling for ‘more research,’ then, in their conclusions, some authors might suggest ways to educate the community they studied about gender violence, or ways to affect the pornography narratives favored by the video companies they studied, or ways to change the laws about sexual texting they studied, or ways to regulate or deregulate the reproductive sexuality topic they studied, or ways to raise awareness in the media about the media problem they analyzed, etc.

An example from Sexualities, 2013:

To give an illustration, I take at random an article from the September, 2013 issue of Sexualities. It truly is at random, as I am nowhere near my home library, nor do I have access to Sexualities online. I have with me only two journal issues. I took volume 1, number 1, to see if, in his introduction to the new journal, founding editor Ken Plummer offered any support to my suggestion. More about that later. And I picked up the 2013 issue because it lay on top of the stack. I think any issue would work.

Sarah Miller (2013) offers an account of the media coverage of the first school-supported student production of Eve Ensler’s play, The Vagina Monologues. She presents and examines the arguments made by those voicing support or opposition. She concludes that supporters were unable, because of social pressures, to praise the school production for promulgating ideas of girls’ sexual pleasure and emancipation, and were limited to adopting a discourse of sexual risk and praising the play as an antidote to sexual violence.

Activism additions to this discourse analysis could address single issues such as media coverage of girls’ sexual lives or broad progressive agendas such as sexual rights. So, for example, if she had some experience with the single issue, Miller might have recommended a specific strategy for following up a performance of The Vagina Monologues by coordinating a burst of positive social media or convening a follow up discussion for progressive parents and teachers focusing on ways to support Ensler’s pro-sex message. On the other hand, if her experience was more broadly based, she might have described how to influence school board elections or textbook choices or community sex education initiatives.

Conclusion: Sexualities’ latent power

The matter of activism and academic publishing is clearly a complicated topic in need of sophisticated discussion far beyond what I have offered here. I was moved to choose this topic because of how I felt as I ended my own activist campaign in 2016 (see New View Campaign, 2017). My rudimentary and improvisational approach as a sexuality activist rankled even after many years, especially as I felt perhaps I’d shortchanged the many students and colleagues who had been attracted to working with me on medicalization issues because they wanted to ‘do something,’ not just read about it. I have learned a great deal about sexuality from Sexualities in the past 20 years, but I’m greedy. I want more; I want practical advice about how to make the world a better place. Is that the wrong thing to be asking for?

Did Ken Plummer call for pieces on activism in Sexualities back in his Introductory remarks in the first issue? No, to be honest, I couldn’t find anything that suggested he encouraged this direction. He said, ‘Where appropriate, political implications should be explicit’ (1998: 7), but that’s a far cry from calling for a how to section for budding disruptors. But he repeatedly emphasized his desire for ‘a wider range of presentation formats,’ and some of his suggestions (e.g. ‘pedagogic essays,’ ‘teaching suggestions’) are not too far from what I am suggesting.