TW discussion of sterilization, and mentions of rape and incest.

Today, I’m rambling about the Woodhull Foundation and Tantus – and how they’ve messed up big time.

• Twitter moment
• Thread one
• Google Doc
• SFS 17 racism
• SFS18’s accessibility issues

And, finally, on a happy note: Kate over at Girly Juice wrote a great post about the 25 Sex Educators/Writers of Color You Should Follow Right Now.

PS my sound gets crappy. I’m not sure why, but I’m going to look at a new mic today.

Transcript

Welcome, so the chronic sex podcast, chronic sex talks about how self love relationships, sex and sexuality are all affected by chronic illness and disability. That’s not all though. We’ll also touch on intersectionality, social justice, empathy, current events, and much, much more. Given the range of subject matter. This podcast is not suitable for those under the age of 18 and unless you have headphones You probably shouldn’t be listening to us at work. My name’s Kirsten Schultz and I’m your host.

Happy Thursday, may lovelies. I didn’t really have a podcast topic planned today, but I have noticed that I haven’t always talked about as many things on here is I have on twitter (which my username is @chronicsexchat). Um, and it just made me realize that there’s been a couple of things going on on twitter that I would like to share with y’all. First things first because the second thing is really involved in long. The first thing is I’ve been having a lot of new guest posts going up on the site, chronic sex.org, and I’m planning on having some more people on the podcast to talk about what they do around sex and sexuality, which is really exciting.

Mmm coffee. Um, there’s a really great piece right now about, um, how to handle erectile dysfunction. There’s another around how bdsm helps someone manage their adhd symptoms and talking about consent with people with intellectual disabilities, etc. Like really fantastic stuff on the site. So pLease go check that out. The second thing is I kind of caused a kerfuffle on twitter at the beginning of the month. There was a sex toy company that, um, has engaged in some really uncool practices lately and it’s really a shame because their products are great from the outside. If you’re not looking into everything, the company seems like it’s good and like the ceo has given presentations at conferences and, uh, to the companies about how to own your fuck ups and to bloggers to call out problems. But you know, when it gets to be that they have a problem, they’re not addressing it correctly.

So over labor day weekend, Tantus was running some ads that were really weird, like burgers full of dildos or like there was one that was like a hot dog. It’s like ‘put me inside you.’ And it waS like, I mean, look, if that’s people’s taste in humor, that’s fine, but also like kind of general things for sex companies like sex toy companies, is to not make those ads your norm and also not make the coupon codes that go along with them. Things like cockburger, like these are just things you don’t do if you want people to take you seriously in the sex ed world.

I’m gonna apologize because I have a gianT cup of coffee and a giant cup of water here. so if you hear me sloshing, it’s to wake me up. But um, yeah. So this was all over labor day, weekend and I made a thread about how at Woodhull sexual freedom summit in 2017. the ceo of the company, um, Metis Black engaged in some really gaslighting behaviors towards those of us who were disabled and had taken issue with a lot of things at the conference. Um, and then she blocked a bunch of us so that we could engage in conversatIons, which was really unfortunate. Um, I had been an affiliate. Tanta is up until that point. They were the first company that I signed up to be an affiliate for because of their track record and the community. And um, after this whole episode I was at the airport waiting to come home from the summit and um, you know, sent off my note about I’m not going to be an affiliate anymore, like take all my information out of your system and this is why blah blah blah.

So I wanted to take a minute and kind of go through what happened during that summit last year. And um, just talk a little bit more about tantus in general and some of the issues that I’m having with them, you know, other than cockburger, whatever, like if that’s your sense of humor, funny, whatever, but like when that’s not been your norm, It’s very weird. Um, so, so I’m feeling a little nervous and I’m not entirely awake even though I’ve been up for three hours, you know, chronic illness life. But, uh, on the last day of the summit in 2017, a very prominent reproductive rights advocate, got up and was discussing kind of their journey through childhood and adulthood and becoming a reproductive rights activist. And she talked about a sibling who was sterilized because they, you know, quote unquote clearly wouldn’t be able to make adequate sexual decisions on their own because of their disability. And the way that this was addressed made it seem like the person speaking was happy with that, was okay with that decision being made. Even though she was young, would not have had any influence on the decision. It appeared to many people who were disabled in the audience and not disabled that, uh, this was awkward and

that it wasn’t necessarily, um, a rebuking of kind of eugenics ideas and sterilization and it was really upsetting.

I don’t even have the words to express how frustrating it was. Um, and that this person’s organization hasn’t addressed it at all and they don’t mention disability on their site at all, despite the fact that the, the founder of this organization has this tie in, um, it’s not there and they need to do better. They have to do better. Um, but when a few of us were like, ‘what the fuck?!’ Metis, um, you know, stepped into engage in some gaslighting, like, ‘oh, you’re just not understanding what she’s saying. Oh, like you’re making this a big deal and it’s not.’ Um, which was unfortunate, especially because at the time not only was Meits – and she still is the, the ceo, president, whatever of Tantus – um, she was also on the woodhall board.

Um,

which I then later pointed out was a conflict of interest because you can’t have this sex toy company sponsoring the conference and have the president of the sex toy company on your board. That’s not okay. Um, but it, it did not go over well. And as I said, Metis took steps to block us so that we couldn’t engage in conversations. We, those of us who spoke up about this and other issues at the conference around disability led to the creation of an accessibility panel for this, this current year’s summit that happened a month ago. and, um, I collected a whole bunch of information from past summits and people’s feedback and send it off to woodhull because, um, I was very upset. I was very upset. I was livid for this to be the one sexuality conference that people always say, oh my god, you have to go to this one for it to be the one that people always recommend that people from europe fucking come across to go to and have so many problems around accessibility and disability.

It’s absurd. It’s absolutely absurd. Um, I, I sent them this huge google doc of all of that information, which I will touch base on as I go through this. But, um, I had a call with a person at woodhull. We talked, I recommended, um, my friend Caz amazing set up of a, like, like accessibility guide specifically for conferences that they created. They said um, this person at what woodhall to me, they didn’t want to look at it because Caz is quote unquote an angry person. Um, Caz isn’t an angry person. Caz is upset and tired of this as am I uh, it’s ridiculous. Um, Woodhull promised a post shortly after that session went up to like, discuss because they were like, ‘oh yeah, like it seems like something’s missing. Like people are missing some things, so we want to post like a storify or something like that to clarify what had gone on.’ They never did that. Um, after I discussed with them all of these issues, they also promised to create a post containing steps moving forward to this year’s conference, which they again, did not do. Um, and this seems to be a constant, both from Woodhull as an organization and their conference as well as from tantus. They, you know, do the respectful thing and say that they’re going to take your complaints and your concerns under advisement and take care of shit. And then it just doesn’t ever get done at all. Um,

they also do this ridiculous thing where if you talk bad about them at all or you speak up, they unfollow you, like people from Woodhull and the organization’s twitter, they will unfollow you. They will, unlike your pages on facebook and then like you bring it up and you’ll get pity followed again or a pity liked. But there’s not actually a real. way to have a conversatIon. They don’t address anything on social media, whether through their private accounts, like personal accounts or, um, through the woodhull account. Like they have a policy where they don’t address shit on social media, which is absolute bullshit in this. Our year of 20 gay teen. Are you serious? um, it’s ridiculous. I pulled this giant google doc, which I will link to in the show notes. So that you guys can take a look at it because I am just am livid. I’m exhausted. ThIs has been like three weeks of dealing with this and it’s still not taken care of.

Um,

it’s ridiculous. So I did a lot of work on this google doc. I pulled, um, information from a wide variety of sources. I had, you know, conversations with really cool people I hadn’t met or interacted with yet that I like know now, which is fun. Um, that’s the only nice thing about this and I’m on the site right now, which I will link to it in the show notes as well. Um, there is a post from my friend avery and they attended this current year’s summit and wrote about the lack of accessibility that, um, ironically, you know, hasn’t changed. It’s just, it’s funny, it’s just funny. Um, and it’s just frustrating. So I’m going to go through a couple of things right now that kind of. I pulled in,

um,

in 2017 I attended this conference, but I spent a lot of time in bed. Um, I, they had, they had advertised and they had had signs up for a bit that talks about a low or no scent policy up at the registration table. And when I discussed this with mandy during my follow up call with her after woodhull, um, I was told that wasn’t a thing. They were going to be bringing it up for 2018 to discuss it, but it hadn’t been a thing. Um, if it’s not a thing, why did I see signs for it? Like, I’m not making this up. So now I’ve, I’ve already been gas lit by people at woodhubl and my Metis black. Um, honestly I think that summit was my first really big mcas flare and it was really bad. Like I wanted to go to all these sessions. I made some of ’em that I wanted to go see and Then the rest of the time it just was like in bed ordering grilled cheese from a restaurant and like ate it in bed and watched great british bake off. Like that was my life. Um, it did not help that the humidity was absolutely horrid, but like the rest of it was, I felt like shit because something that was supposed to be an accessibility feature was apparently not happening. Um,

it’s just mmm It’s just really bad

and I’m just trying to find the words. It’s very upsetting.

Um,

I am going to read some tweets that I will link to, um, from 2017, but I just, you know, you just need to know that this is upsetting and it’s going to be upsetting. But there’s. So these are tweets from my friend Caz. um a person at summit during this family matters round table. Told the room they had their quote unquote, severely disabled sister institutionalized and sterilized. No one visibly reacted to this horrifying anecdote. Sorry, person said their sister was quote unquote incapable of consent. Sterilization doesn’t prevent rape and if she can’t consent to sex, she definitely didn’t consent to sterilization. Why are so many of us not concerned with stuff like consent, access, wellbeing and pleasure when it comes to disabled people. And it’s unfortunate

because this is a continual issue

and I wrote this giant threat I’m going to read. after leaving woodhall, um, but it kind of goes through some of the things I was feeling at the time I said that I love the conference, but there was also a lot of casual ableism in people’s words, attitudes, et cetera. The assumption that we’re all able to put our bodies and minds on the line for activism the other night got me so worked up. There were comments made um, by this same person, by other people that like, oh, you’re not an activist unless you get out of here now And like put your body on the line. Some of us can’t do that. We have to recognize that it takes a bunch of different pieces to keep the puzzle going. and you know, what, if everybody’s gonna wear Axe, yeah, I can’t go march. if it’s a really bad day for me, I can’t go march. What I can do is boost people’s words and make donations when I’m able, etc. Like that is still valid activism.

So annoying. um, people wore very strong perfumes. And deodorants which set off those of us with migraines and other conditions or reaction led me to miss everything from lunch the day before on, so I missed like a whole day of the conference as a community. People need to do better about accessibility and compassion For those of us who are disabled. Like I said, I loved it, but it also didn’t bode well for a cost benefit analysis RE Returning next year, if I was ill the whole time. I’m very grateful I didn’t attend this specific family matters roundtable session because I would have gone completely off on whoever decided sterilization was okay. Disabled people need sexual autonomy. Many of us disabled peeps and sex ed, we do it exactly because of assholes sterilizing us without consent, etc. we need to highlight that casually discussing eliminating sexual freedom from our people is not the goal of the summit.

Why is it okay to discuss sterilizing those of us who are disabled? Why are people in this session okay with this? Did no one say, ‘excuse the shit out of me?’ to these comments? no allies or accomplices to stand up for us? Why is it okay for us as sexual and social justice conference to shit on the sexual rights of a group of very oppressed people? I hope that Woodhull takes note of those of us with disabilities that we are watching, attending and very cheesed off. I also hope there are more disabled people involved in future years who can highlight the problematic ness for them? I don’t think that’s a word. It’s fine. Um, work on eliminating your ableist language so you’re not us disabled people over stop or start calling this out when you see it. I don’t care if heir cheeto was there speaking. Call it out. Stop wearing things that makesspaces and accessible, stop acting, acting in ways that make spaces hard for us to be in and stop pretending we should worship the ground our elders walk on because they perpetuate is bullshit in our spaces.

And so Metis again comes into my mentions. Oh, it came up again today, But it was contexts to the era. The decisions were made like this person asked others about how it may not be done. The context matters. But when somebody is speaking as like a reproductive justice activist, you have to make sure that you’re saying, no, this is bullshit. This shouldn’t have happened. You shouldn’t be speaking as though um, you endorsed that. The other problem was all of these elders were supposed to be respecting, made very problematic, ableist comments throughout the conference. It was so sad to see it. I’m feeling, or what I was seeing at the time was those of us who are disabled feeling very uncomfortable with these things that shouldn’t be happening at woodhall. Um, and it’s, it’s really upsetting. Um, and that doesn’t even come close to addressing the racism that went on last year.

Geoffrey Stone who’s a legal scholar, author delivered a keynote address, um, and it was like a short version of his book entitled sex and the constitution. And I’ll put a link to this really great post in the show notes because as a white person, I don’t feel like I can speak to this the right way. Um, but a black woman, you know, wrote this great post about like, ‘oh, I thought he was going to bring up white supremacy. He never did.’ And they asked this person at the end what role they thought, um, you know, racism and slavery and white supremacy played in the laws made in the United States around sex and sexuality. And he said he didn’t think it did at all, which is bull fucking shit. The only person who ran into these issues, I’m not the only person that met us and people at woodhull refuse to listen to. They have to start making changes and it’s not okay. Um,

it’s not okay. I’m tired of uh, supporting companies and that don’t care enough about us to grow with us. And if you’re a conference and an organization that is set up to be about social justice but you can’t even bother to like pay attention to what people are saying on social media and respond to that or think about basic accessibility. ThingS like how far away is the elevator. I’m sorry, but you have a long fucking way to go before you sit there and act Like you’re some sort of mightier, holier than thou group of people. It’s ridiculous. Um, I honestly would love to see us create a different conference, embrace conferences like poly Dallas millennium, um, that are much better run, much more accessible and have leaders who are willing to listen and grow. I had an amazing time at poly dallas. It was absolutely fantastic. It was one of my favorite conferences I have ever been to and I would go back in a heartbeat. Absolutely. Um, so Metis took time after that thread to turn her twitter accounts are private to then post a response that

that was bad, like you put your shit on private and then you post a response to shit. Like that’s not okay. It’s not okay. Um, she also accuses me of blocking her, which I never did again. Um, so, so here are her words from this apology, Quote unquote, or, or this explanation, not even apology, we’re not even to that part yet. And this is from the 5th of September. ‘I got called out for defending a woman of color, a woman who founded sister song, a person of color sexUal rights warrior, when she told her story on the history of poc and sexual rights, or more precisely the lack thereof. This woman had told her tail, which included rape, incest. No one mentioned teenage pregnancy, and included her family’s decision to sterilize her institutionalized sister. A decision that was probably made as she was a child that she explained was coached by doctors.

It was a painful example of how poc were treated, but someone not poc heard it, that she was for eugenics of those disabled. And when I wrote I didn’t hear it that way. They attacked me. I have two years later been tagged with that curl piece of misinformation. One that was repeated over and over. It took them two years to misrepresent this.’ Again, it was 13 months just by the way. ‘Um, and to get traction response is futile – I’m actually blocked by them.’ Again, not true. ‘I sit on my hands and reset my settings. I’ve blocked no one’ Mhmmm ‘unfriended yes, reset settings. yes. Responded to them. hell no. the woman’s name, I use my privilege to defend at Woodhull was loretta ross. Google her, look for her books. I have no regrets. She is amazing and has done her own social justice work.

She spoke eloquently about call ins versus call outs. If you don’t know what to call it is. It’s a technique developed during the civil rights fight. It facilitates change. If you wanted facts, you’d have dm’d me, called me in. I learned a lot here. This was not restorative justice. I’m accused or I was accused of so much by so many. Mostly by likes and retweets. I will not be accessible in the future, but this was my biggest takeaway – Those of you who have issue with loretta ross, I pity you.’ So

I just, it’s been like three weeks and I’m still pissed. I’m still pissed. Um, yes. It’s loretta ross was the person who said these things. Um, yes. She and others from sister song were really ableist during the conference it was very upsetting. Um, yes, it’s an issue. Yes, we need to address it. Um, while I’m upset at them perpetuating ableism and that needs to change, I can also understand it a bit, but Metis continuing to be on some bullshit. I can’t excuse. People were actively upset about this talk. Um, about the lack of potential triggers shared when incest was brought up, when rape was brought up, there were people that left the room because they didn’t know that that was going to be talked about in that way, um, or mentioned it at all. And it was really alarming to them. It was not an accessible space.

Um, how things were stated was bothersome to say the least trigger warning should not be optional at a sexuality conference. And yet this happened several times there. Um, there was a point where in a, uh, a session, they showed a video tape of like abuse survivors talking very detailed about their abuse with like bruises and marks on them that was not mentioned at fucking all. Um, there were a lot of people that had to leave that room that were triggered or dissociated and like, don’t remember the rest of, you know, that day. It’s absolutely fucking look lutely ridiculous.

I don’t think – if Metis hadn’t come in with this gas lighting thing, I think we could have had a productive conversation around ableism with loretta and other sister song and others that would haul and that still needs to happen. Um, I think it’s important to recognize that we can do great things and cause harm. No one’s said that it was specifically like loretta endorses decision, although there are definitely people who see it that way from the way she was talking. Um, the wAy it was discussed was not okay and we should have spent time debriefing around that. Talking more about disabled per reproductive rights was a constant call during the speech. Like, we need to talk more about thIs. We need to talk more about this. Like, great, you’re bringing up this horrible thing that happened to your sister. Kind of like you’re endorsing it, but let’s spend more time talking about this.

Like, let’s talk about disability. On your site, let’s have disabled people within your organization, give presentations, etc. Um, it’s been 13 months, not two years. I find it interesting that Metis wanted call ins for herself, but in the past she’s asked for bloggers and sex educators to call out problems publicly to hold organizations and people accountable. But here she was over in that same accountability. Um, additionally, since she blocked a bunch of us, I don’t know how the fuck she expects us to like call her in. What are we supposed to do? Force friends to do that emotional labor for us.

I don’t know. That seems real shitty. I’m not going to put someone in that place. Call outs can be the start of restorative justice work too, but that’s only if the offending party responds with an adult should engage in discourse with people instead of hiding away and avoiding doing the work. This is not the first time this year that we’ve seen those within sex ed circles or the general sex industry to act like and say that if you wanted facts, you would have deemed me little calling me and other people who had a problem with ableism and gaslighting during this talk. Why yours? Telling disabled people we have no right to get upset. His tone, policing and incredibly ablest. If we’re gonna, talk about restorative justice. That means touching on possibly having an accountability team. I highly doubt Metis would involve herself in that work. Call ins have happened several times with Woodhull, with Metis. Despite this, they all refuse to engage with feedback on social media. They’re living in the 1990s colored version of denial and it’s ridiculous. I’m still just really upset. I want to reiterate too that in that in the threads were disabled, people were upset. Metis came into our mansions. We did not tag her in. We did not ask for her opinion. she came in white knighting herself and that was inappropriate

to have a major sex toy company. Ceo gaslighting bloggers is inappropriate

at this point. I think she’s either so disconnected or apathetic about this. She didn’t care to check how long it had been sense this or read anything any of us have had to say about it. Um, it’s just setting the fact that none of them care enough about our voices online and especially those of us who use social media to bring up issues because of our health is incredibly disappointing. Um, it’s all bad. It needs to change. Refusing to respond to social media is kind of able list if you think about it. I engaged with social media way more often than I do emails than I do phone calls. I’m the only person I talked to on my phone is my sister. So like, unless it’s getting a medication refilled or dealing with dr. Shit, I don’t talk on the phone. It don’t, it’s hard for me. It’s difficult. Uh, if I’m honest, I have a bit of hearing loss that is really becoming an issue. I’m like my right ear is way better at hearing the male left and sometimes I just don’t hear shit through my life. Like I can hear that there’s stuff going on. But like, I can’t fucking hear, so yeah, phone, not my, not my thing.

And here’s the thing that bothers me, like if people aren’t getting to the point where they listen to calls for change, the only way we can get to them is through our involvement with them. There were a lot of people who, because of me sharing this again, um, you know, have tossed out their tantus toys, have removed them as affiliates, have sent a strongly worded, very upset letters to them and have gone through and taken all their links to tantus off of their sites that have been running for 10 years. Um, this was a big issue. It’s a big problem and I’m grateful it’s getting no results at this point. But I think it’s important to remember, like, this conference only exists because we attend present and give money. tantus only exists because they make shit and we buy it. I think maybe the only way to get them to follow through on promises and be accountable is to deny them money.

Which makes me feel really gross. That that’s what our life is right now. Um, it’s, it’s just so upsetting and I created like a twitter moment that I’ll link to as well. I think it just has missed a bunch of tweets now. I don’t know if a moment can get too large. Um, and other, other people on twitter are brought up like, oh, like here’s a direct quote from 2016 when Metis gave her presentation about how to address things on social media. And she literally says, you recognize your fuck ups and you address them. Um, and it’s not what happens. Uh, in this case. And here’s the other thing, and I’m really grateful to erica lynae who brought this up – supporting Loretta ross’s work and standing up for disabled people hurt by her words are not mutually exclusive. Um, as I said a couple minutes ago, right? Good people who do great things can also do shitty things and it’s okay to hold those plurals in one person. It’s not okay to go, oh, but they did such great work. I can’t call them out. That’s how you get harvey weinstein’s. That’s how you get all of these fucking assholes and horrible people doing these things. Because you don’t call them out on it

and I’m tired of being quiet. It’s upsetting. Um, it’s also incredibly upsetting that we didn’t have these conversations about race or racial issues, um, not only at this conference but elsewhere. We’re not having these conversations about many things that we need to be talking about. Um, and the funny thing about this is this all just came up for me because they, something happened where they don’t have a great social media person anymore. And so they’ve been posting those gross cock burger ads, right? And then they’ll take it down as soon as someone’s like, oh, that’s kind of gross. And Then they don’t address the comments from people who like are affiliated with them. Like if I was an affiliate or if they were one of my affiliates. And I said, hey, that’s gross. They take it down but they don’t respond. And then there were posting the ads with like someone else’s affiliate Code too which is not okay. And they’ve been around to leg boost their own shit and retweet people who liked their shit, but they won’t address problems. It’s a deliberate nonresponse and it’s not okay. Um, it’s just absolutely ridiculous that companies are acting like this. Tantus also has a really, really long line of really bad habit of treating their workers like shit, like absolute shit. Firing them for no reason. I’m treating them like garbage and so they have a lot of turnover within the administrative side and then like, it sucks because then people don’t feel like they have a real connection over there except for Metis and with Metis being a shithead, like what do you do? You know what I mean? Um,

it’s just, it’s just really hard.

I think one of the things that really bothers me too is like, oh, like, let’s, let’s replace something else. And no, um, as my friend taylor said like, we don’t need like a smaller collection of great companies who are going to repeat this conversation later. Let’s flood the markets with small makers and saturated with good indie folk. And I love that. Like let’s boost and lift up organizations like funk it toys that are like made by one of us and promoted by us. And it’s naturally from our community and kenton is really listening to feedback, like he’s amazing. Um,

it’s really upsetting to that. We see – Caz looked up Woodhull’s financial information and it doesn’t look good. Uh, it’s not going the direction it should be, which is not great. Um, I’ll, I’ll link to that too. It’s a, you have to download them. They’re pdfs so they won’t work with screen readers, just fyi. And they are a little confusing at first, but like it takes a minute. And I really appreciated to kelly, shibari, um, chimed in on it and shared her thoughts and I thought they were really important. So I’d like to share them with you too. Um, because there’s just. She’s so smart and wonderful. And here’s the thing. We’re all human. We all make mistakes. But doubling down on your mistakes and not issuing a public apology followed by a publicly announced action plan to correct those mistakes is not how things should go.

Issuing a statement from behind an account that’s blocked. People who are most offended is not how things should go. There’s a place for redemption here. I hope this makes the right decision despite their track record to be another LELO, you know, don’t be that company that had become so concerned with the bottom line, they shun the very people who have been singing your praises. This has been my overall feeling about sexuality conferences in general at best. It’s a way for new educators and salespeople to connect with manufacturers and already established educators in that space. At worst, it’s an elitist circle jerk of quote unquote educators messing with ethics. There’s no real vetting process other than social media reach and superficial popularity. It’s a capitalist move, a means for conference to attract paying attendees that those attendees are often already in the same space of speakers, just not as commercially viaBle yet.

Trust me as the older quote unquote educators retire or otherwise move on. The conferences are quote unquote offering speaker opportunities to quote unquote up and coming speakers again, not paying them, not even offering a hotel room or stipend or anything. You’re being groomed by appealing to this basic desire to feel included. Conferences make it a business of stroking egos to get people to pay to attend. Just so they can say, they spoke at this event, a conference that rarely has the mainstream public attending a conference that is in fact a click. Yes. Many of these sexuality conferences offered scholarships and other such quote unquote enticing ways to apply to attend to these scholarships are limited to a tiny group of people, usually less than 10 per conference. That means you’re being offered free tickets to attend a conference which controls the price as in it doesn’t affect, uh, conferences bottom line in the slightest to give anyone in free passes to an eventual work, going to be able to attend any way due to cost.

Um, you know, she kinda goes on into the hotel room block stuff and I think it’s really important to. Kelly has really good background with Woodhull to kind of show how bad they are. She, um, did press release writing for them for a year for free and she was happy to do it. Um, they asked her to be a board member and she was like, oh, okay. Like, that’d be cool. And it was like a big ego stroke. She says the interviews were nice then along with official approval, I was told my requirements as a board member, which included payment, which most boards require people to pay in. Um, the local arthritis foundation wanted me on the board for awhile. They wanted me to give them $2,000. I don’t know who just has $2,000 to be able to give an organization. Uh, not my ass is just ridiculous. There’s no way that being on a board should be that important that like we’re making people pay, like let the people who want to do the work beyond the board. if someone wants to pay to make a donation, cool. But don’t force someone to do it. Um, the foundation does good work. Okay. Like, but the summit specifically as kelly talks about like is a problem and it’s an issue. Like

it’s still an accessibility issue because like, okay, so where are all the disabled people on your board then if we don’t have money, where are the people of color on your board? Then if we don’t have money, like what is going to happen is you’re going to get an echo chamber on your board. Uh, we, we have to keep pressure on woodhull. It’s really unfortunate at this point. um, Metis shared an apology. I’m not calling it an actual apology. Um, but this is what she shares.

Mm, okay.

I want to express how, sorry for this misunderstanding

with chronic sex chat. I needed space to not feel personally attacked. Someone reached out. Thank you and gave me constructIve criticism and I realize I owe chronic and apology. I thought mrs ross’s experiences were dark, says hales that led her to be the reproductive advocate. She became again, understand how those experiences could be triggering. I can understand how chronic sex needed her to come out and say these were horrible things. The realities of eugenics both to poc and to the disabled are never acceptable. I fully apologize for the pain it caused anyone and everyone chronic sex. I’ll be making a donation to sister song and rooted in rights.

Um, that’s not an apology – That’s basically like, ‘oh, I’m sorry. You feel like it didn’t happen the way you wanted it to happen.’ That’s not, ‘I’m sorry for gaslighting you or I’m sorry for tellIng you you’re wrong at all.’ It doesn’t go far enough. Um, she did unlock her account at that time and unblock me. Um, she doesn’t provide any way of followup. Like, by what date are you going to make a donation? How large is this donation? What other work are you going to be doing to, um, promote and lift up disabled voice says

I want us to take momentum that we had on Tantus and move it towards what whole, like, where’s their accountability team? Why aren’t they being accountable? Where is the line they draw for accessibility. Why do you have to pay to join their board? Um, but, but going, Metis’s apology, right? She’s centers herself. I needed space. I needed this and it’s fine to use ‘I’ statements in apologies. But that’s where her focus is and that’s inappropriate. It sucks. Blogging community and sex educator community helps make Tantus a huge success through promoting them, reviewing their products, and more. we deserve better than these shit Apologies. we are worth better. Um, I did a poll and had several polls and I’m going to read them.

God, coffee is so good. Um, how do you feel about Metis’s apology? 40 people voted 90 percent. Said it did not go far enough. Do you think she Centered herself, our community or others in her apology? Eighty percent said herself. Do you feel you have enough information on what steps Metis taking after the apology? Seventy seven percent said not at all. And the other 23 percent said kind of. Do you feel you saw things you wanted addressed and talked about from metis and Tantus or Woodhull? Sixty two percent. Not at all. Thirty eight percent. Kinda would you like to see Metis hire someone like Aida Menduley who does restorative justice work to get back on track? Eighty percent said yes. Three percent said no. I think that means there’s just one person and then 18 percent said unsure. Um, have you seen anything from Woodhull – also called out in these tweets – Addressing ableism? five percent said yes, which honestly I think metis’ followers saw this too. So 83 percent said no. Do you feel Metis addressed why Tantus has been deleting tweets that received net of negative feedback from their own affiliates? 80 five percent said no. Thirteen percent said, ‘wait, what?’ are you ready to accept a Metis’ apology as is about her part in the situation. Six percent said yes. Sixty one percent said not as it is, and 32 percent said not at all.

It’s the fact that Woodhull asks for money to join their board, but also avoids Accepting help from people in key areas because we’re too quote unquote angry is an issue that just leads to the echo chamber and Metis does the same thing. It’s inappropriate. You’re running a company like you make money because of us.

I wish you all could see my face when I’m making right now because it’s kinda like, like stink eye from. What was that, like, the new kid? Early 2000s high school movie. Anyway, um, the other than the bothers me is a lot of organizations and a lot of individuals have done a lot of labor to create accessibility, aids and guides. People don’t even care enough to search for them. That’s a problem. These boards are full of privileged. They don’t want to change. They’re not going to change unless we hold them accountable and has to stop. I don’t know about y’all, but I’m holding status quo in a foundation for sexual freedom and this 20 gay teen does not seem smart. We have to grow, adapt, and change with the times. That means responding to criticism and fixing problems. Especially if you’re not the only org doing this work. If people have other options, they don’t really need to bring issues to you to work on improving. They can easily move their donations and time to another organization that represents them Better. I’m guessing orgs and foundations don’t last long when they’re not funded.

It’s just interesting to, um, I asked the other day, god, I don’t even know what day this was. Um, I did like directly, iSh respond to Metis. I’m sure she asked me muted. So she probably didn’t see it, but I quote tweeted the for one of the, one of the tweets and her apology and did a little thread on that too. That I want to share, um, because I think this is important stuff, right? And it’s still happening. This is not an apology. This is essentially a sorry that it offended you post and that’s not acceptable. It is not hard to say I’m sorry for the part I played in causing harm. I take responsibility for my actions and will do better in the future. People thinking they can amend a situation by donating to organizations and not accepting full responsibility irk me to no end shows a lack of understanding of what went wrong here too, and you can’t have a reaL apology without that.

It’s clear to me that the sex ed and blogger community Doesn’t feel this apology one on or went far enough either like others. I too feel this apology didn’t center. Those of us met as gas lit and harmed without information or on the steps medicines taking. We cannot hold her accountable. Furthermore, there’s no part of this apology that is rooted in restorative justice or overall accountability. Metis also, in my opinion, did not actually read threads shoe as mentioned, and she chose to address the Woodhull situation, only not why Tantus deleting social media posts, receiving backlash without addressing said backlash. almost no one is ready to accept the apology eIther as is or any apology. I also want to address the fact that would still hasn’t addressed anything. They’ve not reached out to me or others and it’s indicative of their lack of accessibility and ability to take responsibility for anything.

People are often asked to do their own work when it comes to learning about marginalized communities, even when those of us marginalized put in were around giving feedback. People do not listen. They do not care, and that is what pisses me off the most. I will never, for the life of me understand why we’re constantly told making things accessible isn’t worth the work, especially when my disabled. I cried playing tomb raider yesterday as it lists accessibility features. We are worth the effort. When I see people, companies, and organizations refusing to fix accessibility issues that have been brought up several years in a row, it tells me we’re not important enough to them. Woodhull does not want disabled people at their summit. A lot of activists work involves sharing issues as they occur and sharing how they can be avoided in the future, when Woodhull continues to shrug off these issues that tells me they don’t want activists at their summits either. And that’s a damn shame. I have not officially done this, but in the light of nonresponsive should apologies meant to placate and disregarded disabled, disabled people’s time and energy. I’m calling for a boycott of woodhull.

So here’s the pool which you stand with. Disabled people to boycott would hold on until they make serious changes around accessibility and handling feedback. Seventy four percent said yes. Twenty one percent saId unsure. One person said no, but I know that they’re working behind the scenes to try to make it better. Um, but that’s what’s gone on lately with these people. Um, there’s still no response from woodhull, the aCcountability, likE task fOrce that they set up after my call with them a feel was only done to placate those of us who are like, hey, let’s an issue. Um,

you know, I sent them that google doc, I sent them information, I made myself very available to answer questions and to talk more about things. Um, and it didn’t happen. It’s a shame that would hold, wouldn’t utilize Caz because their whole area of expertise is not only developing accessibility stuff but enforcing it and you can’t, like, it’s great to say you had an accessibility task force, but if there’s no way for people like send a text to a phone that says, hey, like there’s somebody wearing acts in this session or something like there’s no way to actually make it actually accessible. I think it’s great to say you made it accessible, but if you didn’t actually do it and you didn’t follow through you, you are the problem. You were literally the problem. So yeah. Um, I’ve called for a boycott of what hall. I did not go this year because I knew they weren’t going to have addressed things and what you pay a thousand dollars to go to a conference. If my just say we’ll ask is going to sit in bed and eat grilled cheese. I can do that at my house for free. I mean minus the costs for the grilled cheese. Like, you know what I mean? Like it doesn’t make sense to go somewhere if all you’re going to do is suffer for it in a way that doesn’t promote growth, right? Like this isn’t like no pain, no gain. Like this is all pain. No gain.

Um, there’s just bad. It’s really bad. We have to do better. We have to keep companies and organizations and foundations and individuals accountable. This is bullshit. It should never have gotten to this point and it’s really upsetting to me that it did. Like why did it take cockburger ads for me to get people to listen. I mean, I know that many of my followers didn’t know, be at like this time last year, but we run in the same circles like we talk and hang out with the same people should have been seen last year and dealt with last year accordingly and it didn’t. And that’s upsetting because several of us who were disabled talked about it real badly and unlike the conference hashtag and all this other stuff, um, and it’s really upsetting to me. It’s really upsetting to see a company being hold in higher regard then the people from our community than the people who’ve been harmed by Tantus who’ve been harmed by Woodhull. Uh, they don’t care. They do not care. And it’s incredibly upsetting to know that Woodhull’s doing good work around, you know, lawsuits over SESTA/FOSTA

and know that if they realized how much I’m, I don’t know, it just feels like they wouldn’t be doing that work if there were more openly disabled people doing sex work or something. Like, I’m sure that that’s just me projecting and that’s just me feeling upset with them over continued able ism. But um, it’s really hard and I’m really upset and I did so much work for them last year for pulling things together and showing the shit to them and it’s a really hard to know that all the effort I put into that when I was feeling the worst I’ve ever, when I could barely speaks last year, well, it was doing all of this to know that I kept pushing and pushing myself so that I could try to get them to change and give them all the information they needed to so they could make these changes, give them fucking links to other conferences and what they’ve done links for further reading. All of this work that I put in was for not, it didn’t make any fucking impact. And that’s hard. I could have cooked dinner every day. Those weeks that I did all that work, I could’ve slept, could’ve showers. I could have tried to do something with pt.

It’s really upsetting that not only did they not listen, but that, that almost that they wanted to have this call with me, that we had to placate me. Um, and not to actually hear what I was saying, not to actually read what I had written and that’s upsetting. That’s really upsetting. I’m not someone that does well with, with people disregarding my shit. Like I lived with that for 21 years. I had a parent that did that, that I haven’t talked to in four and a half years. Like this is not the person to do this, to take it laying down unless I have to because of my neck. But still, uh, yeah. So there’s, there’s the update and everything has gone on with Tantus. And what hall,

uh,

Metis has gone back to not really respond in anything. Tantus still isn’t responding to bloggers over deleted shit.

Um,

If Woodhull was smart. They’d reach out to people. But then if I was smart I would have turned this into blog posts last year instead of saving that for a call with them. A. But now I have a podcast. So fuck it. I’m going to put links to the twitter moment I created. I’m writing these down. So I remember this time and some of the pieces that I mentioned, um, as well as the google doc in the show notes, I’m going to apologize to, for having this out little earlier than the last episode is just a couple hours, but I was exhausted and completely drained of energy earlier this week and it was just not gonna happen. So I set aside some time this morning to do it. Um, yeah, that’s kinda my big thing. I don’t know. I’m kind of what the future is going to be of that. I think what we might do is

write up something formal to send to woodhull and have people sign it, um, to say no, like you have to get your shit together around this stuff. Uh, I think that’s the only way they’re going to listen since they don’t give a shit about social media, even if they have hashtags for their conferences, which is funny to me. But what if and when that happens, I will update y’all. Um, yeah, and got some cool stuff in the works that I can’t tell you about yet, but I’m very excited about. Um, and some travel plans already for next spring that I’m working on finalizing, which is great. Um, and I’m just really excited for the things I’m being able to do, um, because of the platforms that I have and because you all listen to me and spend time he hanging out with me. You let you ramble.

One of the other things I’m going to go ahead and put in the show notes too is a list of um, really great sex bloggers and sex educators that are people of color so that you can go learn more about them because while I love having this podcast and I love the work that I do, I also want to recognize that my white privileged gives me more space to do some of these things. Like I can be the angry, angry white disable bitch when you know, someone like Dirty Lola gets kicked off a podcast for being the black girl who like will stand up for herself. So we should have her. Oh god. That would be the funnest, um, new plans. But that’s the big stuff this week. Uh, I will keep everyone updated on what’s happening and um, make sure to go to the site and sign up.

There’s like a signup thing on the side, design it for a newsletter because I think if I do go ahead and go with like an official petition, he type thing to Woodhull that would be where it goes. And so if you want to get involved with that or get updates on where I’m going, what I’m doing, you can either sign up there or go to Patreon if you have the ability to support the show on a monthly basis. um, because it gives me the ability to get transcripts done and take care of a lot of things that need to get taken care of so that this is as accessible as it can be. So yeah, I think that’s most of what I have to say. I hope and since I’m not editing this, I hope it’s been fun to listen to me say that like four times. Right? I love yoU guys

Chronic Sex is produced every two weeks by me, Kirsten Schultz. I use music from Paddington bear because they’re awesome. You can find show notes and more over chronic sex dot org. If you’re enjoying listening to the show. Please subscribe and that way you won’t miss a single episode. If you’re on itunes it’d be really chill. If you take a minute to rate the show too – not only does it give me great feedback, but it also helps the podcast get seen by people who may not know it exists and that’s pretty cool. You can support us over at patreon.com/chronicsex. As always, you can find links to everything at chronicsex.org, from social media accounts to resources, sex, toy reviews, and more. Until next time, please take care of yourself. And remember that you are a freaking bad ass.