Club of Amsterdam
Supporter
Waag Society
Marie-Louise Janssen, Lecturer, Department of political science, Gender Studies, University of Amsterdam
Paid Sex and Public Space
Since the debate on norms and values of Prime Minister Jan-Peter Balkenende, the returning Christian morality seems to have gained ground in the Netherlands. There seems to be a growing need to restrict sexual freedoms, as it appears to be from the call for stronger sex laws and the prohibition of sex in public space. Sex is replaced to the intimacy of the bedroom and paid sex has to happen again behind the closed doors of a brothel. “As long as it isn’t visible” seems to be the motto nowadays. This goes hand in hand with an increasing pathologizing of clients. But what is exactly indecent with the window brothels? And what is wrong with paid sex as long as it happens on basis of consent and in good working conditions?
Melissa Gira, Editor, Sexerati.com, San Francisco
“The Story of i”: Sex in the Information Age
Sexuality, as it is produced by social software, makes sexual networks visible and hackable. What has come to be known as Web 2.0 — microblogging, ubiquitous computing, tools to push continuous partial attention & presence, and the rise of social networking — powers a space where sex is simply another facet in our networked lives. Can the information age improve sex? What conflicts arise from social networking & managing online identity? Are we innovating sexual communities? And on what ethic is Sex 2.0 founded?
Luc Sala
Sexuality: the back door into our essence
Is there logic or ratio to morality?
Has philosophy or psychology helped us in establishing what is good or bad, moral or sin?
Has technology helped us to have better sex?
Is virtual sex limiting or expanding our sex life?
Has the illusion of sexual ownership changed because of science, technology, feminism or psychotherapy?
Have new psychedelic substances like MDMA/Xtc or 2CB sex-therapeutic value?
Presentation
by Luc Sala 
Sexuality: the back door into our essence (ppt)
19:00 – 20:00
Introduction by our Moderator
Mirjam Schieveld, Head of the Summer Institute, International School for Humanities
and Social Sciences
Part I:
Marie-Louise Janssen, Lecturer, Department of political science, Gender Studies, University of Amsterdam
Paid Sex and Public Space
Melissa Gira, Editor, Sexerati.com, San Francisco
“The Story of i”: Sex in the Information Age
Luc Sala
Sexuality: the back door into our essence
20:00 – 20:30
Coffee break with drinks and snacks.
20:30 – 21:15
Part II: Open discussion
Marie-Louise Janssen
Lecturer, Department of political science, Gender Studies, University of Amsterdam
Marie-Louise Janssen (1966) studied Cultural Anthropology at the University of Amsterdam.
After finishing her study she has worked extensively on prostitution and human trafficking. She is the co-founder of the Foundation Esperanza, a Colombian/Dutch foundation for the prevention and combating of human trafficking from Latin America to Europe. She obtained her PhD at the University of Amsterdam in 2007 with a thesis entitled: Sex workers on the Move. Latin American women in the European Prostitution. At the moment she is teaching at the University of Amsterdam gender and sexuality studies. Her research interests currently include Dutch Prostitution and the Sex Industry.
http://home.medewerker.uva.nl/m.p.c.janssen
Melissa Gira
Editor, Sexerati.com, San Francisco
Melissa Gira (and though the name is as much a tag as a name, the last can be pronounced “gee-rha”) is a writer, sex futurist, and human rights advocate. She is the editor of Sexerati, the award-winning blog about smart sex, produces The Future of Sex video podcast, writes on sexual education & pleasure for Good Vibrations, and is the co-founder of the sex worker rights blog Bound, Not Gagged. She is also a correspondent for Gawker Media’s Gridskipper and San Francisco Metroblogging.
Her work has appeared in print in $pread magazine, in the forthcoming WHORE! magazine, and in the anthologies Best Sex Writing 2008 (Cleis Press) and Dirty Girls (Seal Press).
Currently, Melissa is the Development Coordinator and Social Media Consultant for St. James Infirmary, a free community health care clinic for sex workers and their partners, and has consulted for the Desiree Alliance, Center for Sex and Culture, and the Open Society Institute’s Sexual Health and Rights Project (with the Tactical Tech Collective) in creating peer-based trainings in how to use information and communications technology for advocacy.
Other sex/tech notorieties include having been one of the first wave of webcam girl performance artists, delivering the first podcasted orgasm, and promoting “prostitution hacks” from Silicon Valley to Scandinavia as part of The Aphrodite Project.
She fully unpacked three times in the last year and would much rather work out of her purse-sized office: cell phone, wireless keyboard, and dv camera, wherever a cheap GPRS signal and fancy boots can take her.
Melissa is based in San Francisco.
www.melissagira.com
Luc Sala
His activities span from ICT businesses to esoteric poetry, he wrote a dozen books and engages in many cultural, scientific and entrepreneurial activities. Recent projects include solar crisis and magic wands.
On this very deep site of thousands of pages of texts, books, poems and imagery you will find archives and references to his Dutch language computer magazines (6000 articles), columns and mostly Dutch (and some English) articles about new age/edge, the Ego 2000 new age magazine (80 articles), the complete text of books about Virtual Reality (with contributions of JP Barlow, Leary, Lanier), magic mushrooms (Paddo’s), Fire rituals, RSI (Carpal Tunnel Syndrome) and hundreds of columns about new media, computers, ICT, new economy, life in Amsterdam, rituals and religion. Also his poetry in English and Dutch, sometimes poems about actual and esoteric subjects.
Editor/producer of around 3000 hours of television programs between 1995 and 2001 for Kleurnet, including some 500 hours of personal interviews, travelogues, political commentaries, documentaries etc. Part of this material will be internet-broadcasted via Tribler, in cooperation with TUDelft.
Luc Sala will try to deal with questions in his presentation from the perspective of the psychological separation of essence and mask, inner child and personality. In his view our sex life is, for many, a backdoor into our deeper core, our shadow or wounded child and thus one of the few remaining effective portals into letting go of that mask. He uses an intuitive method to develop a model and to gauge the sexual preferences, inhibition and enjoyment levels, potential and other aspect of sexuality.
He has worked with intuitives, psychedelics, hypnosis, many forms of relational and psychotherapeutic work and believes that for many of us releasing the inner child by facing our (half)-hidden sexual drives and problems will make us happier, healthier and live longer. His latest e-essay is titled “The inner child that kills us” offers a new view on psychotherapy and debunks myths about the use of NLP and other superficial methods that only adapt our personality mask and hardly deals with the deeper causes and traumas inside.
www.net.info.nl
Mirjam Schieveld
Head of the Summer Institute, International School for Humanities and Social Sciences
Mirjam Schieveld received her MA in anthropology from the Universiteit van Amsterdam in 1993. She is currently working as a programme manager for the Summer Institute of the International School.
www.ishss.uva.nl/summer.html
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