Date: Tuesdays, March 6, 13, 20, 27
Time: 7:00pm-9:00pm
Location: Connective Therapy Services || 5510 N Commercial Ave
$197. 

Sexual experience. Intimate relationships.

Few areas of life are more fundamental to our personal stories and overall wellbeing. Yet we’re rarely offered empowering information about them. In school, if we get sex ed at all, it’s often force-fed and fear-based, and pleasure rarely enters the discussion. This skewed approach, once lodged in our heads, can lead to a lifetime of problems. We aren’t told how our bodies work, what feels good, or how to communicate in healthy ways about sex and desire.

This four week course will cover the sex ed you should have learned in school — and then some — in a fun, welcoming environment.

Tell us what you want to learn in this course! We're gathering survey data to help steer course discussion.

Week 1: Pleasure Anatomy. Sex ed usually only covers enough anatomy to explain procreation. Where’s the pleasure in that equation? Where’s all the kinds of sex that don’t fit a heteronormative model? When we have a narrow definition of sex we don’t have a whole menu of items to choose from if something about our body, or our partner’s body, changes. Not to mention there are a lot of non-procreative activities that are a lot of fun. In our first week, we’ll go over pleasure anatomy for all bodies along with ways to learn and explore on our own.

Week 2: Good Sex, Good Communication. Mainstream sex advice would have you believe that if you just learn that special move, you’ll blow your partners' minds. But bodies don’t work that way. Everyone is different. The only way to know what someone likes is to ask them. For week two, we’ll talk about ways to communicate about sex and bodies and pleasure. We’ll cover ways to figure out what you’re into, and how to give and receive requests along with how to negotiate enjoyable encounters for everyone involved.

Week 3: The Sexual Experience Spectrum. The things we hear about sex and relationships only cover a narrow slice of the possibilities available. This week we’ll cover the rainbow of gender and sexuality along with relationship styles beyond monogamy, and we'll cover kink, BDSM, and fetish.

Week 4: Safety and Confidence in Intimacy. For our final week, we’ll cover ways to stay safe when you’re meeting and playing with people, including shame-free and medically accurate information about STIs and how to talk about risk with your partners. We’ll also cover how to dive deeper and get more information on any topic that has sparked your interest including ways to get involved in Portland’s sexuality communities.