Let’s Talk Sex: Chicago Style- By Amanda Torrey

Carol Marin is the Political Editor for the Chicago SunTimes.  I wanted a columnist from one of our major papers to be the conduit between Chicago universities and communities.  I wanted them to care about topics concerning gender and sexuality.  And I happen to love her just approach to uncomfortable topics. So, I wrote her the following knowing I’d probably never hear anything and if I did it’d be from some canned robotic response:

     What would it take for a newspaper columnist to collaborate with professors from Chicago’s world class universities and incredibly rich sex positive communities to clear away the confusion from our Gender & Sexuality Issues?My name is Amanda Torrey.  I am the Executive Director of The Deviant Minds, NFP attempting to assist the development of collaborations between Chicago’s universities with community activists.  We hope to establish reasonable attitudes towards gender, sex, intimacy, desire, etc. by creating events that ease the fear and perhaps move the perceptions of Chicagoans toward sexual topics.  This year I organized SexFest 2013 with the help of individuals from Northwestern University, Jane Addams Hull House, Center on Halsted and the Leather Archives & Museum.  In my mind Chicago is an extraordinary city whose character is partially etched from the plethora of renown academics who have built and are still building their careers here.  With an arsenal of information collected within the walls of our educational institutions, we certainly should be able to set up innovative structures for an enlightened society.  Each of us can’t help but follow our natures. There’s enough science here to prove it and enough philosophy to reason through it, so what’s the problem?

     To answer this question, Northwestern University has appointed Dr. Johanna Grisinger, lawyer and historian to be the expert of sex education.  I heard her speak for about 15 minutes during a luncheon at SexWeek and before I left she said she’d be open to discussing her participation in an event that could educate the public about reasonable approaches to sex.

     Lisa Junkin, acting director of Jane Addams Hull House collaborated with me and Sex Workers Outreach Project (SWOP) for a screening of The Scarlet Road, sex worker, Rachel Wotton’s documentary about her relationship with clients burdened with Cerebral Palsy and Muscular Dystrophy.  With us was Carrie Kaufman a person with a disability from Access Living to answer questions. People from all over the city came on Saturday night to see this screening.  Carrie said I could contact her about participating in another event to promote healthy sexual awareness.

     There was also “The Most Ecclectic Health Fair Ever” at the Center on Halsted to finish out SexFest where Veronica Lozano tabled for the Center.  Veronica has Cerebral Palsy and told me she wanted a badge that said “Hi I’m Veronica and I’m sexual” in response to people’s limited attitudes about her and her wheelchair.

     Out of the 20 tables at the fair, probably the most poignant for me was Emmaus Ministries’ table who serve unwilling male prostitutes in Boystown, many of which are reportedly victims of child abuse.  Tabling across the room facing them was Cassandra Avenatti MSW, a Social Worker from Children’s Hospital of Chicago and a member of SWOP’s board of directors.  There is a strong feminist movement reclaiming porn and prostitution that has a powerful response against slavery, diminishing choices and preventing the exercise of free-will. Cassandra got some email addresses from Emmaus which could be a productive beginning.

     Also interesting for me during this process was the heavy traffic on my website after moderate media attention.  A columnist interested in Chicagoans would quicken any process we devise.  Chicago is exactly the place to bring all its power together and quickly resolve some of these sometimes scary issues around sex.  I imagine our resources are strong enough to get past some of our perhaps medieval attitudes around being sexual and human.   What would it take to unite our city’s amazing academics, media and community to solve a festering social issue?  An annual Gay Pride Parade isn’t going to solve the problem.  I have some ideas that I’d love to share with you.  I appreciate you taking the time to read this missive and I sincerely hope to hear from you soon.

Amanda

www.thedeviantminds.org

my personal phone number

and personal email

     I found she had a corporation on-line asking for comments so I sent my letter there apologizing if she actually got it already.  She personally replied the following:

Amanda,
Thanks for this.
Have read it.
And find it interesting and important.
But the work that I do is primarily political in nature.
So would like your permission to forward this to some of my colleagues.
Best wishes, CM

She wouldn’t send me a personal note if she wasn’t serious, right?