Sex Questions from the Twittersphere: Route to become a Sex Educator
By Dr. Carol Queen • Jun 24th, 2009 • Category: Blog, Carol Queen, Good AdviceA question for Dr. Carol Queen’s “Tweet with the Queen”:
@GoodVibesSF What is the best route to becoming a sex educator?
Great question! The simple answer is, major in sexology or sex ed in a recognized program. But that answer is actually way too simple, because there aren’t very many of these programs, and there’s more than one kind of sex educator. The sexologist is clearly one. Many of these programs are pretty academic and ready you mainly for academic careers — which is great, if that’s what you had in mind. If you’d rather live the swashbuckling life of a sexpert, who may have no formal training but lots of real-world experience and knowledge, start amassing (and evaluating) your real-world experience! These folks often wind up teaching classes, writing books, and often being pretty big deals. My own experience and background straddles both sexology and “sexpertise.” The one big caution I have for would-be sexperts: never assume other people’s experience is just like your own, or that it should be done the way you do it without variation. Untrained sexperts’ worst mistake is not sufficiently understanding other experience which they do not share, and without this respect for and understanding of sexual (and gender) diversity, sexperts can, in a worst-case scenario, actually do harm.
Then there’s a middle path of focusing in any direction that might cross-cut sexuality studies: doctors, anthropologists, biologists, and therapists can all start with a platform on which to develop sexual expertise. So can Planned Parenthood workers, safer sex educators, OWL program trainees (that’s Our Whole Life sex ed curriculum, for readers who aren’t Unitarian/UCC folks). The American Association of Sex Educators, Counselors and Therapists has a sex educator certificate, though it is so far a bit underutilized. Eventually I hope the Center for Sex & Culture, which I direct (www.sexandculture.org), will be able to interface with it and offer relevant classes to allow folks to get one. Bottom line, stay curious and interested about sexuality, and get info from every direction you can, weighing the community-based, sexpert-driven info with the academic and professionally-derived… all these elements are part of being a well–rounded sex educator today.
I’m going to have an essay about the differences between sexperts, experts and sexologists this fall in Adult Video News magazine — once it’s published they’ll probably let me put it onto my Facebook page where people can see it, if you don’t have access to AVN. Also, the last question on this page — http://www.carolqueen.com/pages/faq.htm — might help put your options into perspective. Thanks, and I look forward to welcoming you into the sex ed fold!
xox–CQ
Related at Good Vibrations:
O.S.S.E. (Off-Site Sex Education)
GVU (Good Vibrations University)
Bay Area Afterhours Sex Ed Workshops
Brookline Afterhours Sex Ed Workshops
Products
Sex and Relationship Education
Sex Education and Parenting Issues
Sex Tips and Techniques
Sex Education DVDs and VOD
Dr. Carol Queen >> Carol Queen is a writer, speaker, educator and activist with a doctorate in sexology. First as an organizer in the lesbian/gay community, where she helped found one of the first gay youth groups in the United States, and later in the emerging international bisexual community, as a sex worker and a practitioner of alternative sexualities, she typically teaches and writes from her own experience and that of her communities even as she references academic thought on these subjects. See her website: www.carolqueen.com.
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