Activist, author, and feminist Allison Moon
Allison Moon is an author, feminist, and independent publishing advocate. She teaches workshops on creativity, writing, sexuality, and social justice issues, and many of her talks and writings illustrate how these things deeply intersect. She is also innovating sex education one book at a time with the help of illustrator kd diamond, dozens of sexuality experts and educators, and hundreds of Kickstarter backers.
The concept of Girl Sex 101 evolved from Moon’s desire to broaden the reach of sex education, making it more inclusive of those who don’t fit into heterosexual, cis-gender molds. Through her workshops, Moon has become increasingly aware of the limited information available about sexuality and sexual health. She explains, “I decided that I wanted to transform the workshop into something more accessible, because everyone doesn’t have access to a sex-positive, feminist, sex toy store in their town in order to get this information.” Thus, the concept of Girl Sex 101 was born, an idea that has since been realized with help from the Girl Sex 101 Kickstarter campaign.
Girl Sex 101 is a complete guide to consent, pleasure, and sex for women. By combining fiction, illustrations, and sex education, author Allison Moon and artist kd diamond have created an innovative new avenue to discuss sex and sexuality. Because “not all girls have vulvas and not all vulvas have girls,” as Moon explains, it was imperative for the author to create a project that was much more inclusive of all women than many Sex-Ed programs tend to be.
“Girl Sex 101” is full of awesome illustrations by kd diamond!
Although its title reaches out to “girls,” Girl Sex 101 will benefit anyone who reads it, including straight men and women, and especially genderqueer, queer-identified, lesbian, transgender, bisexual and curious women. Moon intended for the book to be non-intimidating and approachable for women of all ages and levels of experience. The combination of honest, engaging narrative and invaluable sexual information helps to elevate the book from a purely educational tool to a resource that one can actually have fun exploring.
Moon explains that the book contains “feminist, pleasure-positive, and consent-oriented sex education to help women of all orientations and experience levels understand their bodies and those of their partners.” Sex education programs generally skim over complicated subjects such as consent, and very rarely discuss female pleasure, which is often pegged as too controversial and in some cases, inappropriate. Similarly, many Sex-Ed programs, as well as popular media, completely omit conversations about lesbian sex, transgender bodies, and sex positivity in general. Moon seeks to reclaim these detrimental notions about sex in order to get women excited about exploring their bodies, and their options.
She says, “I think there’s a lot of misrepresentation of queer feminine sexuality. I think that our gender expressions are far more diverse than are represented and I feel like the diversity of how we have sex is much greater than traditional media portrays it.” Girl Sex 101 is an important resource because it fills the gap where important discussions about gender, safety, sexual identities, and pleasure are misconstrued or omitted in conversations about sex.
For Moon, a more equal world is one that offers progressive, diversified sexual education programs, and it’s one she’s carving out on her own terms. Read more about her work to create dynamic, inclusive awareness about sex education and about Girl Sex 101 on her website.
Images via Kickstarter.com