Talks & Interviews

These speakers bring different viewpoints which helps approach issues like sexuality with an open mind. Whether you agree, like it or not we hope that they challenge your own understanding of the subject.

Rethinking Infidelity 

Relationship therapist Esther Perel starts off this TED Talk with a simple question: How do we begin to unpack infidelity, something that is universally condemned but also universally practiced? 

This Is What LGBT Life Is Like Around The World

As a gay couple in San Francisco, Jenni Chang and Lisa Dazols had a relatively easy time living the way they wanted. But outside the bubble of the Bay Area, what was life like for people still lacking basic rights? They set off on a world tour in search of LGBT people who were doing something extraordinary in the world. 

Are we sexual omnivores?

An idea permeates our modern view of relationships: that men and women have always paired off in sexually exclusive relationships. But before the dawn of agriculture, humans may actually have been quite promiscuous. Christopher Ryan walks us through the controversial evidence that human beings are sexual omnivores by nature, in hopes that a more nuanced understanding may put an end to discrimination, shame and the kind of unrealistic expectations that kill relationships.

A Little-Told Tale Of Sex And Sensuality

"If you really want to know a people, start by looking inside their bedrooms," says Shereen El Feki, who traveled through the Middle East for five years, talking to people about sex. While those conversations reflected rigid norms and deep repression, El Feki also discovered that sexual conservatism in the Arab world is a relatively new thing. She wonders: could a re-emergence of public dialogue lead to more satisfying, and safer, sex lives?

Make Love, Not Porn

Cindy Gallop speaks from her personal experience. She argued that hardcore pornography had distorted the way a generation of young men think about sex. She talked about how she was fighting back with the launch of her website to correct the myths about porn, sex and behaviour.

We should all be feminists

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is a renowned Nigerian novelist. She is the author of Half of a Yellow Sun, which won the 2007 Orange Prize For Fiction; and Purple Hibiscus, which won the 2005 Best First Book Commonwealth Writers' Prize and the 2004 Debut Fiction Hurston/Wright Legacy Award. In 2009, her collection of short stories, The Thing around Your Neck was published. She was named one of the twenty most important fiction writers today under 40 years old by The New Yorker and Time Magazine has elected her as one of the 100 Most Influential People in the World. 

It's time for porn to change

Erika Lust is an independent erotic filmmaker and author based in Barcelona. She graduated from Lund University in 1999 with a degree in Political Sciences, and founded Erika Lust Films in 2005. A staunch feminist dissatisfied with the portrayal of women in mainstream adult industry, Erika is committed to infusing intimacy, modernity and beauty into her explicit films. 

The birds and the bees are just the beginning 

Think you know a thing or two about sex? Think again. In this fascinating talk, biologist Carin Bondar lays out the surprising science behind how animals get it on.

What young women believe about their own sexual pleasure

Why do girls feel empowered to engage in sexual activity but not to enjoy it? For three years, Peggy Orenstein interviewed girls ages 15 to 20 about their attitudes toward and experiences of sex. She discusses the pleasure that's largely missing from their sexual encounters and calls on us to close the "orgasm gap" by talking candidly with our girls from an early age about sex, bodies, pleasure and intimacy.

One woman, five characters, and a sex lesson from the future

In this performance, Sarah Jones brings you to the front row of a classroom in the future, as a teacher plugs in different personas from the year 2016 to show their varied perspectives on sex work. As she changes props, Jones embodies an elderly homemaker, a “sex work studies” major, an escort, a nun-turned-prostitute and a guy at a strip club for his bachelor party. It’s an intriguing look at a taboo topic, that flips cultural norms around sex inside out.

Why I Stopped Watching Porn

Ran Gavrili writes and lectures about emotional and physical safe sex; porn and porn-influenced cultural damages; gender and power relations; and sex and intimacy. He lives in Tel Aviv and studies gender at Tel Aviv University. He works with youth and adults all over the country in sex and gender studies and in building positive self image in a world inundated by sexual imagery with negative connotations.

The laws that sex workers really want 

Everyone has an opinion about how to legislate sex work (whether to legalize it, ban it or even tax it), but what do workers themselves think would work best? Activist Juno Mac explains four legal models that are being used around the world and shows us the model that she believes will work best to keep sex workers safe and offer greater self-determination. "If you care about gender equality or poverty or migration or public health, then sex worker rights matter to you," she says.