Meitar Moscovitz and Emma Gross
What actions are you taking to promote and protect the health and rights of women and young people worldwide?
One year ago, Meitar co-founded KinkForAll, a series of grass-roots sexuality education conferences that celebrate inter-community spaces. In the last year, we have participated in the organization of 5 distinct conferences in 4 cities across the United States, which together attracted hundreds of people. The self-organizing conferences require little to no investment, are highly social, free to attend, and are totally participant-driven. Among the highlights, a video of Meitar’s presentation at the Washington DC conference has received over 2,000 plays online since November, 2009.
Additionally, we co-host an Internet radio talk show featuring roundtable discussions of current events and topical sexuality-related items of an incredible variety. The show, called Kink On Tap attracts a weekly live listenership of several dozen people and hundreds of podcast listeners in more than 45 countries. We invite sex education experts such as Megan Andelloux, queer personalities and sexuality writers such as Sinclair Sexsmith, and other scholars and community members to join us for fun, unscripted conversations.
Both KinkForAll and Kink On Tap provide free sex-positive media accessible to anyone with an Internet connection. We believe strongly in such accessibility, and we believe SexEdEverywhere furthers this goal. We think nothing should stop a good idea, so we’ve already begun to move on the project, but winning the IWHC grant money will help us immeasurably.
What is your vision of lasting change for yourself and for the world's young people?
Our vision of lasting change is to create a world in which accurate information about sexual health and freedoms reaches more students and young people than suffer from misinformation or a knowledge deficit. By engaging young people in the creation and distribution of knowledge, we hope to help them recognize their power to enact social justice in their local communities. This would be a world in which women and young people are aware of their sexual and reproductive rights from an early age, and are empowered to make informed decisions for themselves and educate those around them.
Today, rumor and misinformation about sexual health, often received from trusted but unreliable sources such as siblings and friends, religious leaders, and local governments, spread rapidly and take root firmly in the minds of otherwise uninformed people. This lack of accurate information is what causes young girls to believe they cannot get pregnant the first time they have sex or that doubling-up on condoms makes them safer. By enabling these same young girls to share such stories we can transform misinformation into an opportunity to further the spread of truth in its place.
We want to see a world in which all people, but especially young people, contribute to a self-sustaining educational platform that connects them and their knowledge with the knowledge of their peers, mentors, and allies.
If you could tell world leaders one thing, what would it be?
We would remind leaders that knowledge is power and to succeed in any goal they must first educate their populace.
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By the way, for those interested, the video of my presentation at the KinkForAll Washington DC unconference was called "Sexual Adultism: The tragedy of youth sexual oppression."
First congratulations for the donation. Now, let's hope to promote and protect the health and rights of women and young people so quickly and effectively.
Now, let's hope to promote and protect the health and rights of women and young people so quickly and effectively. thank you