Reading Sex Tarot With Annie Sprinkle

Here’s Emily Nagoski on what it’s like when the famous and fabulous Annie Sprinkle comes to campus to give sex tarot readings:

I expected her to be fabulous. She was. But beyond the fabulous was the warmth, the welcoming, the openness, the inclusiveness, the eagerness to connect, to give something of value to each of the students who swarmed around her perimeter, watching, attendant, like damp, frozen children waiting for cocoa after an afternoon in the snow.

So it was The Annie Show all the way, but she noticed that and she created space for us other sex educators to read Tarot with her, see, because she’s a cup of cocoa after playing in the snow; she is the mittens drying on the radiator; she’s whipped cream on the tip of your nose. And so I sat next to Annie as she engaged with each student, limitless in her welcome.

She would explain a card and then say to the student, “What do YOU think?” And then she would look at me and say, “What do YOU think?” And she would smile and say, “Wow, you’re good!” And I would get all warm inside. Because cocoa.

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Sex, Defined

Whatever they pay Emily Nagoski to be a sex educator, it’s not enough.

She starts with a definition: sex is “an evolutionarily adaptive reproduction strategy involving the recombination of two individuals’ genes.”

Friends, and I’m telling you straight: present that definition to me and I WOULD NOT CLICK THE LINK. Fuck no. Boring city.

But she unpacks it, explains it, walks it through gametes and peafowl and Alfred Kinsey and busy bonobo apes and her own beloved twin sister until she’s completely explained it, not only how that dry biology definition is sex, but why it’s the definition that explains not only romantic love but also every kind of kink you ever heard of:

And thus humans come with our ball gags, golden showers, foot fetishes, Catholic school girl fantasies, whips, cages, breath play, sensation play, group sex, monogamy, polygymy, polyandry, jealousy, gays and lesbians and bisexuals and asexuals and queer folks and folks who don’t claim any identity and transfolks, and LOVE ITSELF — and also assault, abuse, rape, pedophilia, and wide and daunting array of harmful uses to which we put sex, all the dazzling and heartbreaking variety we witness in humanity — vast, limitless. As Kinsey said, “The only unnatural sex act is one you can not perform.”

It’s the joyful work of a skilled professional. You really ought to go go see.

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