sex and culture wars....defense or offense?

today sociologist janice irvine presented "sex education and the politics of sexual shame" to a room full of hundreds at the 40th annual aasect conference in new orleans....

i almost wonder if she read my blog entry last night....here are a few of the highlights that helped kick home for me what i said in my entry yesterday about the need to put sex back into the sexuality education movement....

1. no matter how mainstream we try to be as sexuality educators....in order to be perceived as acceptable.....we continue to be demonized simply for talking about sex. "sex itself is guilty until proven innocent."--gayle rubin.....

2. we need to ask ourselves how we can ongoingly speak out in defense of sexuality AND sex.

i could not agree more with this--however, i wonder if perhaps one reason we keep losing this culture war is that we are being defensive rather than offensive about sex and sexuality? relying on science and data alone and not using emotion to connect with people? 

what would a sex and sexuality movement look like if we we stopped responding with defensiveness and started coming up with emotional, religious and scientific reasons why people should not fear sex but embrace it as the positive, beautiful gift that it is?