SAN FRANCISCO — Two organizations that promote sex education and lively discussions about sex and culture will join forces next month to entertain, inform, and raise funds. CatalystCon will welcome San Francisco's Center for Sex & Culture to the East Coast and host a benefit evening of performance and more on behalf of the West Coast non-profit. This event is open to the public (18+), not only attendees of the conference.
CatalystCon, marking its second year at the Crystal City Hilton in Washington D.C., brings sex educators, bloggers, academics, students, and community activists together March 14-16 for three days of panels, keynotes, and passionate conversation and networking. The CSC benefit, "Center for Sex & Culture: Traveling," launches the conference on March 13.
Featuring performances from sex educator Ducky DooLittle and CSC founder Dr. Carol Queen and hosted by CSC co-founder Dr. Robert Morgan Lawrence, the event also offers an opportunity for attendees to peruse or purchase Safe Sex Bang, CSC's first publication — a full-color catalog of the Center's recent show of HIV/AIDS safer sex posters from the '80s and beyond. More detail about SSB below.
Queen will present an excerpt of her solo performance, "Peep Show," about her time working as a "real live nude girl" at San Francisco's notorious Lusty Lady theater. In it, she brings her audience backstage and into the "talk booth" of the historic peep show, which closed last year after several years as a union house and later as a worker-owned cooperative. Attendees will get to meet her co-workers and customers in this intimate tour.
Queen is the author of Exhibitionism for the Shy, Real Live Nude Girl, and The Leather Daddy and the Femme; she has edited many other books about sex and eroticism.
Doolittle will perform her own peep show tales; while Queen held down the fort in San Francisco, at the tender age of 19 Doolittle was having adventures at Show Follies on the other side of the continent. She plans to share insights about the thousands of men she saw there — and the way the other peep show girls helped her learn the ropes and grow up. Doolittle is the author of Sex With The Lights On: 200 Illuminating Sex Questions Answered and is currently the education coordinator for the New York Academy of Sex Education. She is also the education coordinator for adult retailer Tantus Inc.
In addition to the performances showcased at "CSC: Traveling," the Center for Sex & Culture will have a strong presence at CatalystCon. Queen and Robert Morgan Lawrence DC, EdD will participate in several panels: Queen will present "Consent: It Takes A Village," "Promiscuity: Virtue or Vice?", and "Real to Reel Sex." Robert joins her for "Consent: It Takes A Village."
CSC board member Metis Black will present "Creating Change in the Sex Toy Industry." Many others who have presented at the Center for Sex & Culture will also participate in CatalystCon, including Annie Sprinkle, Betty Dodson, Jackie Strano and Shar Rednour, Melissa Gira Grant, and Siouxsie Q.
Queen will also host an evening of readings as part of CatalystCon's Saturday night program, "Off the Page: Sex Talk with Carol Queen and Friends."
"Thinking about curating a literary night for CatalystCon," said Queen, "I wanted to extend the focus of the panels and events, but also especially of the many hot and heavy conversations about all things sexual that the conference inspires. I've invited some of my favorite writers to participate, and I'm sure that together they'll create one terrific reading!
"This also gives me a chance to bring some of the energy of the Center for Sex & Culture to share with CatalystCon, since many of our readers are friends of CSC, have appeared there, and create the kind of discourse that CSC exists to promote."
"Off the Page" showcases the literary talents and perspectives of Lawrence, Twanna Hines, Lilith Grey, Gram Ponante, Tina Horn, Annie Sprinkle, and Veronica Vera.
Additionally, Queen will help close CatalystCon with an historic conversation with "the Mother of Masturbation," Betty Dodson.
Queen will appear at CatalystCon courtesy of Good Vibrations.
