Contact Improv: a study in touch and consent

Yesterday, I had the opportunity to go to a contact improv lesson and jam, something I haven’t done in years. For the uninitiated, contact improvisation is a style of dance characterized by the words in its name: the dance is unchoreographed and improvisational, and the dancer strives to stay in contact with one or more

Somebody Hold Me

There’s a wonderful Kickstarter coming to a close today for a book called Somebody Hold Me. Epiphany Jordan (great name, right?) and her crew in Austin have started a touch practice, allowing people who don’t have enough contact in their lives to experience non-sexual, loving, and playful touch. I’m a big fan of this, as

Embodied Consent returns to Bound in Boston

I am pleased to announce that on Saturday, March 19, I will once again be teaching my class on Embodied Consent, this time at the much larger Bound in Boston convention in Norwood, MA! I’m excited to be doing this again, not least because I was specially asked to, which feels amazing. Secondly, though, I’m

So what is “embodied consent,” anyway?

For the past few weeks, I have been posting about different aspects of the workshop I will be giving this weekend at the Bound in Boston: Wicked Women conference, which is called “Embodied Consent: Finding Your Yes, No, and Maybe.” But what is it, exactly, that I mean by “embodied consent”? It’s an interesting question,

Embodied Consent: Where is your “yes”?

(Part 3 of my series on Embodied Consent, leading up to my talk on the subject at the Bound in Boston: Wicked Women Conference next weekend.) One of my favorite truisms about consent is that a true “yes” is not possible without the option for a true “no.” That being said, one of my primary

Embodied Consent: Where is your ‘no’?

(Part 2 of my series leading up to my talk on Embodied Consent, happening October 11 at the Bound in Boston: Wicked Women conference.) So I’ve talked in this space about how hard it can be to say no. But what about to feel no? In my work, Rubenfeld Synergy Method, we always come back to

Finding your yes, no, and maybe, part 1: No

In anticipation of the talk I’m giving the weekend of October 10 at Wicked Women, I want to write some posts that lay groundwork for the concepts I’ll be working with in that talk. The first of these is the very simple idea that saying no is hard. In last year’s talk, Sam and I

Embodied Consent Workshop at the Wicked Women Conference

I am pleased to announce that I will once again be giving a class at Bound in Boston’s Wicked Women event this year, over the Columbus Day weekend in October. This will be a revival and revision of the class I did last year with Sam at Safety Beyond Safewords, but I’ll be doing it

Hugs, but only if you want them.

More and more articles lately on consent culture and how to raise a generation of people who are secure in their own bodily autonomy, and respect others’ as well. Here’s one I liked this week: Why I Will Never Tell My Daughter to Give You a Hug. In short: forcing kids to hug and kiss or

“It should not take everything you have to turn down someone’s offer for sex.”

This article today struck me as important enough to post about here, touching as it does on consent culture, rape apologism, and most importantly, the clarity that we need to have with ourselves and others if we are ever to move beyond blaming victims and demonizing perpetrators to a model of restorative justice. Highlights, and