This week, I’m attending the Society for the Scientific Study of Sexuality’s annual meeting in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. Aside from being a beautiful place where the balmy ocean breezes are caressing my skin even as I type (and the sounds of Mexican karaoke are assailing my ears), it is home this week to a gathering of 250 sex researchers. Let me just say this… I have never felt so much at home.
These are people who would never talk about the “insertive probe and the receptive cavity.” These people know about sex and are not afraid to talk about it. Awesome!!
Today, the first day of the conference, saw two brilliant plenary speakers. I’ll only mention one here in passing – Richard Parker. Of course, Richard Parker is someone who I’ve been reading for years, and always thought was brilliant. You know, the kind of brilliant that means you don’t just walk up to him at a conference and say “hey, I love your work!”. But still, he was there, talking about sexual rights and sexual citizenship. The most useful thing I derived from his talk was the distinction between negative and positive rights – something I had thought of before, but that he articulated very clearly in the context of sexuality.