Sex, Gender, & Relationship Workshops at Your College

Posted on October 19, 2011 in events | 8 Comments

Hey! Students at colleges, universities, and beyond! I’m still working on booking workshops, readings, and gigs this fall and spring.

I’m available for the Trans Day of Remembrance in November, for example. Want to book me?

HERE’S WHERE I’LL BE

I am already planning some visits to certain places! If you can help me book something there while I’m visiting, I would be very grateful. Are you in any of these cities? Do you know who I should talk to? Would you help me get people out to an event? Thanks!

These are the dates I *am available* to book something in these cities:

November 7-8, 2011: Seattle, WA
November 9-10, 2011: San Francisco, CA
November 28-30, 2011: Atlanta, GA
February 16 or 21, 2012: Seattle, WA
February 23-27, 2012: San Francisco, CA
April 14-19, 2012: San Francisco, CA
April 10-15, 2012: Durham, NC
April 10-15, 2012: Boston, MA
April 15-30 or May 15-30, 2012: Chicago and/or Milwaukee
May 2-3 or 7-8, 2012: Portland, OR
May 3 or 7, 2012: Seattle, WA
July 9-10 or 16-17, 2012: Seattle, WA
July 17 or 23, 2012: Albuquerque, NM
Fall 2012 (TBD): Toronto, ON
September 20 or 24, 2012: Seattle, WA

The rest of the time, I’m based in New York City and I can travel all over the Northeast seaboard, from Boston, Providence, and Burlington, down to Philadelphia, DC, and Durham. And if you want to bring me somewhere that isn’t on this list, I’m game for that too! I’m just hoping this will help me get in touch with you folks who are already in these cities.

HERE’S WHAT I DO

My workshop list is online at mrsexsmith.com/workshops, and I’ve got an online press kit at mrsexsmith.com/about/press-kit with photos, one-pagers, etc. My booking company usually charges a certain amount for a workshop plus travel + lodging, but I can be flexible about that and work with the budget you’ve got. I do have a minimum that I need to cover, but I am willing to negotiate.

Right now my most popular workshops are Radical & Responsible Gender, which is more academic and made for folks who are used to breaking down gender to start think about how to build it up in ways that are empowering and liberating, and Cock Confidence, which is a strap-on 101 type of workshop that focuses more on the psychology of strapping on and insecurity than on the how-to, though there is also a part for strap-on technology, meaning the toys that are available and what to buy. That one I rarely do at colleges, though I bet it’d be a blast.

I have also been working on doing a two-event set, being an afternoon workshop on exploring sex, gender, and relationships through writing as a way to develop self-reflection, introspection, and identity, and then having a showcase in the evening with the folks from the writing workshop reading and me doing a :30-:45 spoken word set.

If you’ve got any ideas, requests, or contacts, I’d love to chat with you. Please do get in touch with me via email, mrsexsmith (at) gmail dot com, and see what we can do.

SINCLAIR SEXSMITH: NOW BOOKING 2011-2012

For booking contact: mrsexsmith+booking@gmail.com
Phone: (917) 475-6316
or:
PhinLi Bookings, LLC at bookings@phinli.com
Phone: (347) 829-7446

Press kit and materials available upon request

Please forward to colleges, universities, students, and organizations.

Represented by PhinLi Bookings, LLC, in New York City, SINCLAIR SEXSMITH is a writer, performer, student, and teacher of sex, gender, and relationships. Visit Sinclair online at sugarbutch.net, mrsexsmith.com, or on Twitter @mrsexsmith.

“Sinclair Sexsmith writes with such rare clarity and passion that she is one of the best reminders we have that sex and gender are not abstractions of theory, but essential to our everyday humanity.”
—Chris Hall, editor of CarnalNation.com

8 Comments | Category: events | Tags: cock confidence, college gigs are my bread and butter, please help me keep going in this work, teaching, traveling, what I like to teach about, workshops

“Steamy: How To Write About Sex” Workshop at Sugar in Baltimore Tomorrow

Posted on September 12, 2011 in events | 3 Comments

UPDATE: As of Tuesday 13 September, 3pm, I’m sorry to report, the class at Sugar is canceled. Catch you next time, Baltimore!

Photo by Syd London

That’s one of my favorite shots of me teaching a workshop, this is from Cock Confidence at Butch Voices NYC in August 2010, taken by Syd London.

Tomorrow! I’ll be teaching a writing workshop in Baltimore about sex.

Steamy: How to Write About Sex
To write about sex well you need the boldness to command and describe the dirty and oh so delicious acts we humans explore, and the basic writing skills of plot, setting, and character. In this pen-to-paper writing workshop we’ll look at some examples of extremely successful and unsuccessful erotica, steamy love letters for your sweetheart, how to step up your blog to the next level, where to submit your work for publication in the erotica world, and some quick basics for editing your work. Bring a paper and writing utensil, we will be doing writing exercises.

Tuesday, September 13th, 6:30pm
Buy tickets in advance on BrownPaperTickets
Sugar is at 927 West 36th Street on the Avenue in Hampden Baltimore, MD

Any recommendations for a good vegetarian cafe to eat dinner at beforehand? Any other must-see places in Baltimore I should check out? I’ll only be there for the day, but I’m excited.

3 Comments | Category: events | Tags: I am looking forward to the two-hour drive because I'm going to listen to night of hunters on repeat, I'll be on my way to dark odyssey, I've never really spent any time in baltimore I'm excited to see it, one of my favorite topics for sure, sugar, teaching, writing workshops

What’s Happening in November

Posted on November 10, 2010 in events | 7 Comments

I have a whole bunch of events coming up in November! So many, in fact, that I haven’t even had time to post about them yet. I try to keep them updated over at my mrsexsmith.com/appearances page, even when I don’t post about them here.

Strap-On 101 Workshop
Thursday, November 11th, 2010
Fascinations, Tuscon, AZ

Cock Confidence & Strapping It On
Monday, November 15th, 2010, 9pm
Conversio Virium, BDSM Student Group
302 Hamilton
Columbia University
New York City

Radical & Responsible Gender
Wednesday, November 17th, 2010
Smith College
Northampton, MA
7:30-9pm

Radical & Responsible Gender
Thursday, November 18th, 2010
6 – 8 pm
Kimmel Center, 9th floor, room 905
60 Washington Square South
NYU, New York City

All of these are open to the public, as far as I know. See you there, perhaps.

7 Comments | Category: events | Tags: college gigs, events, how to stalk me, my cock confidence workshop is popular this year, radical & responsible gender is a new workshop, teaching

gender frustrations and clarifications

Posted on May 27, 2008 in theory | 18 Comments

I haven’t been posting much of substance here since the heated discussion On Misperceiving Someone as Femme or Butch and the follow up post. This lack of posts has been intentional. I’ve been frustrated, dissuaded.

I feel like every time I attempt to go a little farther, get a little deeper into the nuances of these discussions on gender identities and gender self-labeling, I get pulled back to square one by a barrage of emails and comments saying, “But wait! I’m offended! What about this other thing? What about people who don’t identify? What about me? What about my expeirence?”

And I want to have individual communications with everybody, to go into each detail of what they’re asking and what I’m saying, to break down the moments where I’m being misperceived, to communicate in open discussions about these fascinating issues from various perspectives.

But I can’t – mostly, I just don’t have time.

This is one of the challenges of a blog format of writing, actually: it’s not linear, it’s not one chapter building on another, it is be more of a jump-in-anytime type of format. Unfortunately, with a subject as completely personal, as totally misperceived, as dangerously controversial, and as heated as gender identity in lesbian communities, it’s very difficult to jump right in without adequate explanation as to where I am coming from in my philosophies and explorations.

I’m working on an Official Disclaimer for my discussions of gender, to put some foundations in place to which I will point. There’s so much I want to say about it, and I barely even know where to start. I have began to write this post about why that discussion frustrated me ten times, and I still get overwhelmed and my head gets chaotic when I begin to sit down to write it.

Right now, I want to make a few things in particular abundantly clear:

I do not seek to encourage others to identify as butch or femme. It is not my intention to impose butch/femme gender identities on anyone else, ever.

I seek to break down what it means to be “butch” or “femme.” I seek to apply the deconstruction of feminist methods of sexism, gender roles, and gender restrictions to lesbian gender identities, such as “butch” and “femme.”

I seek to broaden our ranges of experiences, with the underlying goal of encouraging people to be more comfortable in themselves, to come more fully alive, Yes, it’s a lofty goal. But I aim for it, and no less.

If it ever seems otherwise, if it seems like I am saying that someone should identify as butch/femme, or that it’s not okay to reject gender roles and identities, or anything along the lines of gender policing or gender enforcing or gender proselytizing, please do ask me about it. I will clarify, as well as I can.

But please keep in mind that I never operate from that space. Please consider giving me the benefit of the doubt, and come from a place of kindness – and perhaps not defensiveness – when you ask me to clarify things I’ve written.

The very foundation of my beliefs about gender is that our binary compulsive gender system is limiting to our full range of human experiences. I believe we should self-identify, should dress and act how we wish, how we most feel like ourselves, how we are most comfortable and most celebrated.

Period. Always.

And, of course, all of these writings are my own personal experiences, observations, and studies of butch/femme and variations of gender expression. It was a long hard road through the gender police checkpoints to get where I am now; I learned a lot about myself, about queer theory, postmodern theory, and feminist theory on the way to where I’m at, and I seek to share my stories in hopes that they can be helpful.