Sinister Wisdom 130: We Teach Sex (to Everyone!)

Edited by Kristy Lin Billuni and July Westhale and featuring work from Catherine Crouch, Rage Hezekiah, Kimberly Dark, Vi Khi Nao, Morgan Gwenwald, and many others, plus a tribute to Elana Dykewomon!

Wherever I find queer women, I find sex educators. Wherever I find sex educators, I find queer women. We’re Dr. Seussian in our anything-goes sex-ed contexts. We will teach it in a car. We will teach it at the bar.

The work of sex—teaching it, learning it, diving into it, avoiding it, paying for it, being paid for it—is as pedestrian as anything. Even—and here is the point we and all the contributors to Sinister Wisdom 130: We Teach Sex (to Everyone!) make, over and over—when it is not commonly represented. Or, rather, is only represented when it comes to certain demographics....The baseline is this: communities learn by community. This is a fact driven by necessity and survival and scarcity, yes, but also driven by resilience and strength and the hard-won knowledge that comes with having to do it yourself. This is what the work is.

—From “Notes for a Special Issue” by Kristy Lin Billuni and July Westhale

(Sinister Wisdom 130: We Teach Sex (to Everyone!) published Fall 2023.)