Pride & Pleasure

I love a good history lesson, and this one’s personal.

the words we use to describe ourselves didn’t appear out of nowhere — they were fought for, criminalized, buried, and reclaimed, often by communities decades ahead of the institutions meant to protect them.

this carousel traces a few of those words. where they came from. what was done with them. and how far behind the law always managed to be.

pride in knowledge, pleasure in practice. swipe through. 🌈

Today's Q***r S*x Ed Spotlight:
Tristan Taormino — author, s*x educator, speaker, and feminist p**nographer whose work has consistently treated pleasure, desire, and s*xual diversity as worthy of serious education.

Tristan has written eight books, edited dozens of anthologies, and lectured at over 100 colleges and universities — from Yale to Brown to Columbia — on everything from erotic empowerment to relationship structures. Her writing and films are regularly used in college courses to explore s*xual diversity, politics, and media.

And then there's the feminist p**n. Tristan founded her own production company, Smart Ass Productions, with a deliberate focus on real pleasure, real chemistry, and centering the desires of performers — because for her, that's not separate from s*x education. It's an extension of it.

She's also the creator of S*x Educator Boot Camp, a training program for s*xuality professionals, and co-editor of The Feminist P**n Book: The Politics of Producing Pleasure.

The idea that p**n can be a site of education, ethics, and liberation? Tristan has been making that case — and proving it — for decades.

This month’s Lunch & Learn will be all things PRIDE. Join us in a celebration of Q***r influences on the s*x education & s*xual justice world. Learn about q***r heroes past & present impacting this space & how you can support the incredible work they do.

Continuing our Q***r S*x Ed Spotlights with Carol Queen!

Carol's advocacy roots go back to 1975, when she helped co-found GAYouth — one of the first organizations for underage gay and le***an youth in the country. She went on to serve as director of education at a community-based AIDS education and support project, and co-founded the Center for S*x & Culture in San Francisco, which remains a hub for s*xual health education, arts, and advocacy.

She has spent decades writing and speaking about s*xual diversity, bringing accuracy, lived experience, and cultural commentary to everything she does. She's been Staff S*xologist at since 1990 — and yes, she also curates their Antique Vi****or Museum, which is exactly as wonderful as it sounds.

Her work helped lay the groundwork for the s*x-positive, shame-free education many of us are building on today.

this Pride month, we're keeping the 90s that gave us Lisa Frank — and leaving behind the 90s that failed us in s*x ed.

Lisa Frank gave us maximalism, the refusal to be subtle, the insistence that everything deserves to be bold and bright and a little bit magical. the complete rejection of the idea that joy should be toned down to make other people comfortable.

that's q***r joy. that's always been q***r joy.

and q***r pleasure? it's always been radical. claiming it — fully, unapologetically, without shame — has never been a small thing. it's an act of resistance. it's an act of self-determination. it always has been.

this June, we're celebrating that with a Pride Month series that does what our 90s s*x ed never did — honest, shame-free q***r education covering the history, the language, the practical stuff, and the joy that makes all of it worth fighting for.

follow along. 🌈

Are you new to Pride & Pleasure? Want to know more about what we do? Join us for a webinar where our founder, Rebecca, goes over how Pride & Pleasure came to be, what our mission & values are, & how you can get involved! This event is FREE. Link in bio.

the problem with bad s*x ed is it doesn't just stay in the past. it gets stuck on repeat.

most of us have been playing our old s*x ed on repeat without even realizing it. the shame, the misinformation, the gaps...

Pride & Pleasure exists to help you record over it. shame-free, trauma-informed, q***r-founded workshops in northeast ohio — for anyone ready to hear something better.

learn more at www.prideandpleasure.org

June is Pride Month, and for us that means more than celebration — it means making space for the q***r voices who have shaped and are shaping s*xual health, pleasure, and liberation. All month long, we're spotlighting educators, writers, and practitioners whose work deserves to be in your feed.

First up: .whitney — writer, somatic practitioner, and S*xuality Doula® whose work sits at the intersection of identity, trauma healing, pleasure, and embodiment. They're the author of Sensual Self and host of the podcast of the same name. Find them on Substack at Big Time Sensuality.

most of us didn't get the s*x ed we deserved.

Pride & Pleasure exists to change that — one workshop, one conversation, one curious person at a time.

Happy Pride Month! Our resident doggo, Zuko, here to remind you to register for Q***r S*x Ed! Spots are limited. Come celebrate q***r pleasure with us Friday, June 5th at 6pm with Cleveland Eclectic Dance.