The Sexual Health Exploration Project

@sexploreproject

A community-led collective conducting research, producing public-facing education, and supporting ongoing advocacy work on issues related to sexual and reproductive health, 2SLGBTQIA+ equity, and disability justice.

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The Sexual Health Exploration Project@sexploreproject· 14d

Today’s symposium reflections call you in to an experimental writing workshop centered around Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper." Take a 15 minute break from work with us, and, share what emerges: www.sexplorationproject.com/symposium-reflections/yellow-wallpaper

A bright yellow square image with neon pink, orange, red, and green flower graphics. Text reads, “Madness as a way of seeing” in the middle.

The Sexual Health Exploration Project@sexploreproject· 16d

You’ve seen the heat maps. You know it’s not great lately for 2SLGBTQIA+ people in the U.S. (well, it’s never really been great has it). But, do you want to learn more? And, are you curious about how “today” is related to the broader history and trajectory of rights in the U.S? We’ve got you.

The Sexual Health Exploration Project@sexploreproject· 20d

It’s International Self-Care Day! ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ While self-care alone will not save us, sometimes self-care is as “easy” as learning as much as you can. Unfortunately, reliable, safe, and accurate health information is harder and harder to come by. 1/4

The Sexual Health Exploration Project@sexploreproject· 22d

Cara-Julie Kather reflects on one of our most highly attended panels. "Data is not fiction, but nor is it some sort of hard fact that is bestowed onto us straight out of the platonic heavens… data is created through research and research is a process of making." Up now: tinyurl.com/HSKSymposium

$A graphic of various numerical items, rulers, some pie pieces with fractions on them, and dice. In the middle of the image it reads, “data is power?"$

The Sexual Health Exploration Project@sexploreproject· 23d

Wow! Up now on our website @lchad.bsky.social created these *amazing* graphic recording notes from our panel “Critical Approaches to Reproductive Health & Justice). Check them out: tinyurl.com/HSKSymposium

A flyer with bright green, yellow and pink sun-like squiggles on a black background. Screenshots of the graphic recordings are shown (small, unreadable) with the words “reproductive justice” in orange on top.

The Sexual Health Exploration Project@sexploreproject· 27d

Davina Frick reflects on her workshop, “Using Values to Expand What is Allowed to Be Healthy.” Now up on our website! www.sexplorationproject.com/health-virtu...

A bright neon pink background is peppered with black, green and orange eyes surrounded by hearts and cloud shapes. In the middle, text reads, “Using your values."

The Sexual Health Exploration Project@sexploreproject· Jul 14

Now up on our website: our team's reflections on the long road to our first ever multi-day virtual symposium. New contributions and reflections on all of our sessions, in written and visual forms, will magically appear throughout the next 7 weeks… stay tuned for more! tinyurl.com/HSKSymposium

A checkerboard background image featuring bright neon orange wavy stripes vertically along the right and left sides, some bright neon flowers sprinkled around, and a black circle in the middle with neon green text that reads, “some reflections from the team…"

The Sexual Health Exploration Project@sexploreproject· Jun 30

Happy IT’S ALWAYS Pride Month! As we wrap up our yearly celebration of all things queer, we invite you to explore our newly released quarterly report on Queer Futures: Beyond Celebration, Toward Liberation. Viewable on our website: www.sexplorationproject.com/quarterly-sp...

The front page for our June newspaper on Queer Futures: Beyond Celebration, Toward Liberation. A screen reader compatible version is available on our website, linked in the post text.

The Sexual Health Exploration Project@sexploreproject· Apr 15

⏰⏰ We’ll see you there! ⏰⏰ ************** #AcademicSky #PhDSky #HigherEd #EDUSky #SexualHealth 🍏🧠 🛟 🩺 🧪😷 🌈🎓 ‍🌈 🏳️‍⚧️ 🩺📊 #MedSky #FeministSky #LGBTQIA+ #LGBTQPoliSky #LGBTQSTEM #ReproductiveJustice #Reprosky #STS #PhilSci #HistSci #Metascience #Bioethics

Flyer for the Authority & Health-Science-Knowledge Virtual Symposium, indicating there are only 2 days left to register! The flyer reads, "FULL PROGRAM AVAILABLE ONLINE! Join us for a free, virtual symposium, featuring work from the biomedical, social, behavioral, philosophical, humanistic, and historical sciences, using auto-ethnographic, public and community-engaged, archival, quantitative, and mixed-methods approaches.

Sessions include:
Critical Approaches to Reproductive Health & Justice
Navigating Discourses of Stigma and Harm
Challenging Public Health Communication and Promoting Cultures of Health
Problematizing Diagnoses, Diseases, and Disorders
Considering & Contesting Data
And three unique, multi-disciplinary, hands-on, applied, and experiential workshops!”

Register now at tinyurl.com/HSKSymposium

The Sexual Health Exploration Project@sexploreproject· Apr 13

Now, you didn’t think we were done just yet, did you? 😏😏😏 Our Conference Guide is officially up on our website! Explore the full abstracts for all papers and workshops across all three days of the Symposium at tinyurl.com/HSKSymposium And, don’t forget to register before Friday to join us!

The first page of our Conference Guide, feating a special thanks and shoutout to our sponsors: VCU’s Humanities Research Center, College of Humanities & Sciences, Media, Art, and Text PhD Program, English Department, and Office of the Provost.

The Sexual Health Exploration Project@sexploreproject· Apr 10

🌟🌟Our final Symposium Workshop!🌟🌟 Beyond Research Papers: Co-Creating Public Knowledge About Bodies, Autonomy, and Healing facilitated by Yael Rosenstock Gonzalez, Lizzy Colon, and Bidania Criscuolo of La Cura-duría: Intergenerational Latine Healing Museum Register: tinyurl.com/HSKSymposium

Flyer for our final symposium workshop happening on April 19 from 10-11:30a PT 1-2:30p ET 6-7:30p GMT. The session description reads, "This session explores how testimonios from Caribbean Island Hispanas about bodily autonomy, pleasure, and agency can function as health knowledge. Drawing from original qualitative research and an ongoing community-engaged museum project, this session examines how lived experience can be ethically translated into public-facing health education. Participants will be introduced to an evolving process in which research participants are invited back into the work to co-curate how their stories are represented in museum exhibits. This approach challenges extractive research practices reframing consent as ongoing, relational, and embodied. The session highlights how community storytelling can resist fear-driven health messaging, restore trust in embodied knowledge, and redistribute authority over meaning-making."

The Sexual Health Exploration Project@sexploreproject· Apr 8

⚕️💉Day 3, Day 3, Day 3! 💉⚕️ Navigating Discourses on Stigma and Harm Facilitated by Steph Cull, VCU PhD Candidate. Featuring: Ryan DeCarsky, University of Washington; Marquisele Mercedes, University of California - San Francisco; and Jason Contino, UCLA. Register now: tinyurl.com/HSKSymposium

Day 3 full schedule, which you can view on our website, linked in the original post text.

Flyer for the final panel of the symposium, on April 19, from 7:30-9a PT 10:30-12p ET 3:30-5:00p GMT. Titled, “Navigating Discourses on Stigma and Harm,” "Our final panel of the symposium asks us to reconsider what we think we know about “risk” and harm. From analyzing how interventions such as PrEP and DoxyPEP are interpreted through queer cultural norms, to interrogating what it means for health science to “solve” oppression in relation to weight and HIV, and tracing how actors rearticulate the relationship between harm reduction and biomedicine within drug consumption, you really won’t want to conclude your symposium attendance until you’ve seen this session!"

The Sexual Health Exploration Project@sexploreproject· Apr 6

We’re down to the final week of announcements and less than two weeks from the symposium! Who’s excited?? 🙋🏽🙋🏿‍♂️🙋🏻‍♀️ Are you intrigued by medical and psychiatric diagnoses? The etiologies and genealogies of diseases? The trouble with health-related decision-making? Join us! tinyurl.com/HSKSymposium

Flyer describing the fourth panel of the symposium and the third and final session of Day 2: Problematizing Diagnoses, Diseases, Disorders, and Decision-Making, happening on April 18th from 12-1:30 PT 3-4:30 ET 8-9:30 GMT. The description of the session reads, "This panel features work that asks us to grapple with a number of historical and modern diagnoses, so-called diseases, and the ways in which we make health-related and medical decisions. From reframing menopausal rage as an embodied response to social stress and historical exclusion, to the underlying colonial narratives within the Female Sexual Interest/Arousal Disorder (FSIAD) diagnostic criteria; including the privileging of biomarkers and biopsy confirmation over lived experience in the evolving classification criteria for Sjögren’s syndrome (SS), and uncovering how humanities methodologies expose the historical, cultural, and ethical dimensions in medical decision-making that purely biomedical approaches obscure, you won’t want to miss this!"

Full Day 2 Schedule, which you can view on our website for the symposium, linked in the post text.

The Sexual Health Exploration Project@sexploreproject· Apr 2

✍🏾💛 Day 2 Workshop Announcement! This one’s for all you medical/health and experimental humanities folks. 💛✍🏾 "Madness as a Way of Seeing: An Experimental Study of Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s The Yellow Wallpaper" 🍏🧠 🛟 🩺 🧪😷 🌈🎓 ‍🌈 🏳️‍⚧️ 🩺📊 🖋️📚 #FeministSky #LGBTQIA+ #PhilSci #HistSci #LiteratureSky

Flyer image for our symposium’s second workshop, titled, "Madness as a Way of Seeing - An Experimental Study of Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s The Yellow Wallpaper” and happening on April 18th from 10-11:30a PT 1-2:30p ET 6-7:30 GMT. The description reads, "fACILITATED BY CARA-JULIE KATHER, PHD (Leuphana University Lüneburg), Independent Scholar, THIS WORKSHOP ASKS “What is seen, heard, AND experienced in modes routinely understood as mad? What do we find out when we engage with madness as a way of perceiving?” In this workshop we experiment on this matter together by engaging with reading and writing collectively. The short story - The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman – will guide and inspire us as it is a story of a “woman gone mad” dating back to the patriarchal diagnosis of ‘hysteria’ common in the Victorian era. We will read parts of this story and let it wash us into our own writing on mad seeing."

Full Day 2 Symposium Schedule flyer. You can view this on our eventbrite registration site and our conference website, linked in previous posts.

The Sexual Health Exploration Project@sexploreproject· Mar 31

Aaaaaaand, we’re back! Day 2 begins with a panel that explores the complicated and complex nature of “data." Featuring Jorge Manuel Chia, Gabriel Ancil Rangazas, @alexisrmiranda.bsky.social, Heather Welty, Melanie Jeske, and @avmenon.bsky.social. Register now: tinyurl.com/HSKSymposium

Flyer describing our third panel of the symposium and the first of Day 2: Considering and Contesting Data. The description reads: "This panel’s presenters explore a number of ways in which we must be critical of and challenge our preconceived ideas about health data. From exploring the true effectiveness of PEPFAR in reducing global inequity, to underscoring the importance of disaggregating sexual and gender identities in data collection efforts for teen dating violence; including how epidemiologists develop case definitions and the associated challenges to generalizability when it comes to disability, and examining the underlying values in the design and emergence of health wearable technologies, don’t sleep on this panel!"

The Sexual Health Exploration Project@sexploreproject· Mar 30

📻📰🌐We interrupt your symposium news broadcast with this special announcement from our sponsors: The March 2026 Quarterly Special Report on Bodily Autonomy is now available! www.sexplorationproject.com/quarterly-sp... **Screen reader compatible version linked in the ALT.

Cover page for the March Newspaper on Bodily Autonomy. It features a Table of Contents and describes the report as follows, "While often framed as an individual right, bodily autonomy is shaped through systems of power, including law, medicine, and culture, and is unevenly distributed based on identity and social position. In this issue, we center perspectives that reveal how autonomy is negotiated in real time. For queer and trans people, this includes ongoing struggles for recognition and self-definition. For disabled communities, autonomy is often mediated through systems of care that can both support and restrict. For intersex individuals, bodily autonomy is frequently compromised early in life through medical interventions made without consent. And within reproductive justice movements, histories of racialized control continue to shape who is afforded the right to make decisions about their own body. Through community voices, legal and historical analysis, research insights, and creative contributions, this issue holds space for the complexity of embodiment while highlighting the collective work required to protect and expand bodily autonomy for all.” You can find a screen reader compatible version of the report at the following link: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1qIq7S0tbJajfJ-voH6iAz78WOFaGlDUX/view

The Sexual Health Exploration Project@sexploreproject· Mar 27

Our second panel and third/final event of Symposium Day 1 features work on Reproductive Justice and Bodily Autonomy! See the full schedule in our original post and register to attend here: tinyurl.com/HSKSymposium ************ #SexualHealth 🍏🧠 🛟 🩺 🧪😷 🌈🎓 ‍🌈 🏳️‍⚧️ 🩺📊 #FeministSky #LGBTQIA+ #Reprosky

The flyer for our second panel on Critical Approaches to Reproductive Justice and Bodily Autonomy, occurring on April 17th from 12-1:30p PT 3-4:30p ET 8-9:30p GMT. The description reads, "These presentations navigate the often tense and tricky terrains of reproductive justice and bodily autonomy. From situating herbal abortion within traditions of ecological, spiritual, and vernacular knowledge, to contemporary medical tools, techniques, and beliefs involved in IUD insertion and other gynecological practices; including the development of graphic, interactive public education modules to demystify sexual health, and a short film exploring the power of reclaiming the body and the gaze for oneself, this session is a must-attend!"

The Sexual Health Exploration Project@sexploreproject· Mar 25

✨💖 Excited to share the first workshop of the Authority & Health-Science-Knowledge Symposium! 💖✨ Facilitated by KD Frick, Professor at The Johns Hopkins University Carey Business School. Register today: tinyurl.com/HSKSymposium

Flyer describing the workshop “Using Values to Expand What is Allowed to Exist as Healthy” on April 17th. The workshop description reads: "This workshop will begin with brainstorming the values of participants, methods to develop trust among individuals and groups, and opportunities for promoting ethical innovation and remaking morality to include values that would be consistent with the acceptance of 2SLGBTQIA+ people. Next, the workshop leader will present a basic framework for using data to bring about change. The workshop will conclude with additional brainstorming/ discussion of how to bring messages about values, trust, and innovation to the right population in the right place at the right time."

The Sexual Health Exploration Project@sexploreproject· Mar 23

🔥❗ANNOUNCING OUR FIRST SYMPOSIUM PANEL❗🔥 ***stay tuned for panel announcements all week/month long*** Register now to save your seat: tinyurl.com/HSKSymposium

Flyer with greens and pinks, announcing the first day of the virtual Authority and Health-Science-Knowledge Virtual Symposium. April 17. With two panels and a workshop in between them. You can view this schedule and the featured speakers on our eventbrite registration page.

Flyer describing the first panel of the first day of the symposium. Happening from 7:30-9a PT 10:30a-12p ET 3:30-5p GMT. Titled "Challenging Public Health Communication and Promoting Cultures of Health,” these presenters offer unique insights into the ways in which communication—broadly understood—can either hinder or promote cultures of health. from indigenous public health campaigns during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, to the contemporary communication channels advancing health in the Big Bend Region in Far West Texas; as well as the media’s role in the representation of scientific evidence in gender affirming medicine, and how TikTok operates as an epistemic actor shaping understandings of Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder... you won’t want to miss this robust panel!

The Sexual Health Exploration Project@sexploreproject· Feb 1

Tonight is the priority deadline! We welcome submissions that are research-oriented (basic, applied, clinical, translational, humanistic, theoretical, etc.), real-world/community-oriented, and/or based in lived experience. No limits to disciplinary or topical focus area! tinyurl.com/HSKSymposium

The Sexual Health Exploration Project@sexploreproject· Jan 15

——————> Out now! <—————— ✨ Our first ever Quarterly Report ✨ Community Engaged Research Read it here: www.sexplorationproject.com/quarterly-sp...

The Sexual Health Exploration Project@sexploreproject· Dec 19

I guess it’s as a good a day as any (I mean, they all give us such bounties, right?) to announce our co-sponsored Health, Science, and Knowledge Virtual Symposium, April 17-19, centering diverse, divergent, displaced, and targeted points of view! More info and submit: tinyurl.com/HSKSymposium

April 17-19, 2026 Health-Science-Knowledge Virtual Symposium Open Call for Submissions

A checklist describing the essential components of each submission type for the symposium, including:

Individual and co-authored papers, oral and virtual/pre-recorded presentations, and posters:
-A title
-An abstract or description of up to 300 words max
-The names of all contributors/authors
-The broad areas(s) the work fits into (e.g. research, policy, practice, other)
-The fields, disciplines, lives experiences, and/or areas of knowledge that reviewers should have to help when reviewing the submission (we’ve pre-populated a general list, but you’re welcome to list your own additional areas)

For panels, roundtables, moderated discussions, workshops, tutorials, trainings, and author-meets-critic sessions:
-A title
-A description (500 words max) that describes the session’s purpose, with a clear connection to the symposium theme, and what you hope people will gain from attending/participating
-The broad areas(s) the work fits into (e.g. research, policy, practice, other)
-The fields, disciplines, lives experiences, and/or areas of knowledge that reviewers should have to help when reviewing the submission (we’ve pre-populated a general list, but you’re welcome to list your own additional areas)

For creative expression submissions:
-A title
-An artist statement (500 words max) with a clear connection to the symposium theme
-The names of all contributors, if applicable
-The broad areas(s) the work fits into (e.g. research, policy, practice, other)
-The fields, disciplines, lives experiences, and/or areas of knowledge that reviewers should have to help when reviewing the submission (we’ve pre-populated a general list, but you’re welcome to list your own additional areas)

The Sexual Health Exploration Project@sexploreproject· Apr 3

Beyond thrilled to announce Lori Younissess, Program Coordinator for The Pleasure Project as our final speaker! The Pleasure Project is global education and advocacy organization working to eroticize safer sex by building bridges between the public health world and the pleasure and sex industry.

The Sexploration Project is pleased to annouce our final town hall speaker: Lori Younissess of The Pleasure Project. Lori is standing in a green grassy field, wearing a green jumpsuit and a brown belt.

About the Pleasure Project: The Pleasure Project is a global education and advocacy organization working to eroticize safer sex by building bridges between the public health world and the pleasure and sex industry. We promote sexual health and agency through an emphasis on ‘good sex’ and by focusing on one of the primary reasons people have sex – the pursuit of pleasure. Because sex education is rarely sexy and erotica is rarely safe.

The Sexual Health Exploration Project@sexploreproject· Mar 31

ONE WEEK AWAY!!! We’re excited to share our next speaker: Natania Ortiz from Students United For Reproductive and Gender Equity at UCLA! @urge-org.bsky.social Head to the Google Form in our bio to sign up for registration notifications! #ReproductiveJustice #LGBTQIA+ #FeministSky 🛟 🩺 🌈🎓 ‍🌈 🏳️‍⚧️

The Sexploration Project is pleased to announce our town hall speaker: Natania Ortiz of Students United for Reproductive and Gender Equity at UCLA!

About SURGE:

UCLA SURGE cultivates strength and nurtures a youth-driven movement for reproductive justice, emphasizing the pivotal role of young individuals from marginalized communities, including women, queer, trans, nonbinary, gender nonconforming individuals, and those with limited financial resources. SURGE mobilizes students at UCLA, offers a political haven for young people, champions impactful policy reforms, and drives cultural transformation. UCLA SURGE is a chapter of the URGE national organization.

Be sure to join us on April 7th at 11am pt to hear more from Natania Ortiz!

The Sexual Health Exploration Project@sexploreproject· Mar 24

We’re so excited to have Iyana Roane from The Honey Club at Virginia Commonwealth University joining us! This is VCU’s first Black Queer organization working to empower and foster community for Black Queer students on campus. Sign up to join us today! tinyurl.com/SexploreTownHall25

The Sexploration Project is pleased to announce our town hall speaker: Iyana Roane of The Honey Club at Virginia Commonwealth University!

About The Honey Club!

Our purpose as The Honey Club at VCU is to unite all Black queer people and serve as a voice for the Black Queer community and its allies. We affirm that Black Queer students, like all people, deserve the right to a quality education, employment, affirming healthcare, housing, religion, financial security, freedom from imprisonment or police violence, joy, and a voice in the deliberative process of their universities and government.

Be sure to join us on April 7th at 11a PT/12p MT/1p CT/2p ET to hear more from Iyana!

The Sexual Health Exploration Project@sexploreproject· Mar 20

Welcome Tara Jones, Founder and Executive Director of The Youth Sexpert Program - a "fundamentally pleasure centered and radically honest, as opposed to fear driven” semester-long, virtual training program for youth ages 14-18 across the US. Link to register for this town hall is in our bio!

The Sexploration Project is pleased to announce our second town hall speaker: Tara Jones of The Youth Sexpert Program. Tara is pictured in the middle of the image. She has shoulder length black hair pulled back into a loose ponytail, with long whispy tendrils pulled out to the sides and long bangs parted in the middle. She’s wearing a white tank top and large gold hoop earrings.

About The Youth Sexpert Program:

The Youth Sexpert Program is a non-profit, sex education training program for high school aged youth across North America. For the past two years, we have offered a semesters worth of comprehensive sex education as well as communications training each fall, so young people can take on the role of “sexual health expert” in their own communities. Teens often turn to their peers when they feel like they cannot talk to the adults in their lives, our program equips them with the knowledge needed to ensure these conversations are accurate.

Be sure to join us on April 7th at 11a PT/12p MT/1p CT/2p ET to hear more from Tara! Link to register is in our bio.

The Sexual Health Exploration Project@sexploreproject· Mar 7

We are so excited to announce our first speaker: Joshua Baker, LMSW, Youth Program Coordinator with @tkoalabama.bsky.social! The Knights & Orchids Society builds the power of TQBLG+ Black people across the South by providing a spectrum of health and wellness services. Link in our bio to register!

Flyer announcing our first speaker: Joshua Baker of The Knights and Orchids Society, Inc. Joshua, depicted in a black, grey, and white picture, is in middle. Joshua is a Black person with short, curly black hair. They are wearing a black, sleeveless turtleneck; have long, pointed, “if looks could kill” nails; and are finished in high-glossed lips and a smoky eye.

About TKO!

The Knights and Orchids Society (TKO) envisions a future where Transgender, Queer, Bisexual, Lesbian, and Gay (TQBLG+) Black people are empowered to live full and healthy lives free from harm. Our mission is to build the power of LGBTQ+ Black people across the south by providing a spectrum of health and wellness services.

Be sure to join us on April 7th at 11am PT/12p MT/1p CT/1p ET to hear more from Joshua Baker!

The Sexual Health Exploration Project@sexploreproject· Mar 4

📢📢NEW DATE CONFIRMED!📢📢 Join youth leaders from across the U.S. who will explore how this current sociopolitical moment is impacting sexual health and bodily autonomy and shaping 2SLGBTQIA+ young people’s lives. We’ll be announcing new speakers each week! tinyurl.com/SexploreTownHall25

Flyer for the upcoming Sexploration Project Town Hall on April 7th from 11a-12p PT, 12-1p MT, 1-2p CT, and 2-3p ET. Topics include: unlearning shame, navigating sociopolitical stigma, consent, boundaries, reclaiming pleasure, and comprehensive sex ed. Speakers will be announced soon!

The Sexual Health Exploration Project@sexploreproject· Feb 10

POSTPONED! While we work with our student speakers to reschedule, we'll be releasing reels and clips from previous events, and highlights from our ongoing community conversations, here on the feed. Eventually, we’ll share more about this event, the speakers/orgs, and the topics. Stay tuned!

A greyed out flyer for the first annual town hall series put on by The Sexploration Project, with “POSTPONED” written in bright red over the top.

The Sexual Health Exploration Project@sexploreproject· Jan 12

We are thrilled to invite you to our first town hall on February 11th. This series focuses on young people guiding conversations around sexual health. Our esteemed panelists will be announced shortly. RSVP using the link in our bio or website. #MedSky #FeministSky #CollegeSky #SexualHealth #LGBTQIA+