by Mx. Chelsey Morgan
I work toward a goal that is not achievable: a vision for a future where to be radically, compassionately and transformatively human is to just be human. When I entered the sexuality field, I entered selfishly. My only goal was to find answers to questions that I lacked the language to properly ask. I wanted to understand, to accept and to feel empowered in my body and to connect to my eroticism in a way that could liberate me from our cultural narratives of shame. Through this work, I’ve learned the words that made up the questions that I once had. I’ve found the answers to what kept me disconnected from my body and to what systems oppressed my mind. Expectedly, I achieved my initial goal. Though what I did not expect was for my work in the sexuality field to show me where my ‘selfishness’, also known as ‘my quest to be radically and compassionately human’, would lead me to infinite opportunities to liberate my community from the shameful and oppressive systems that had once left me powerless.
During my first Sexual Attitude Reassessment, I was overwhelmed by the realization that I had never been gifted the space to process or to release my sexual shame. So now, as a sexuality professional, I work toward a goal that is not achievable. I strive for a vision for the future where conversations around sexuality are plentiful, where comprehensive, inclusive and pleasure-based sexuality education is accessible for all people of all ages, and where the erotic is revered in all of it’s forms. It’s a vision where humanity is gifted the experience of embracing themselves holistically, freed from the limitations caused by systemic erotophobia. In order to live in that vision, my work also acknowledges and centers the collective need to be free from the white supremacist systems that bind us to oppression.
In that way, I work toward a vision that is not achievable. I work toward the greater goal of dismantling the structures that uphold white supremacy culture, anti-blackness, ableism, the prison industrial complex, and the cisheteropatriarchy, amongst other oppressive systems that dehumanize the global majority. I hold the central philosophy that for sexuality education to be radical, inclusive, and comprehensive, it must also be anti-racist, justice-centered, trauma-responsive and accountable. My work places frameworks for justice at the forefront of conversations surrounding sexuality. It centers approaches to accountability based in interdependence and in collective care and it sheds light on the members of our community which often find themselves erased by darkness. I work toward a goal that is not achievable: a vision for justice that I will not see in my lifetime, but that lives in an erotic, expansive and compassionate future liberated from collective oppression. This time, I don’t expect to achieve my goal. However, my philosophy as a Sexuality and Justice Educator is this: If I can convince one person, any person, to envision a world free from oppression and to live compassionately in that vision, I can personally move the world toward liberation. Spoiler alert: I’ve done it before.