Pride Month 2022 Interview Series: What Does Pride Mean to You, Amon?
This month we are chatting with LGBTQIA content creators, sex educators, sensual artists and overall inspiring folks! We are exploring how their identity journey has influenced their work and involvement in sex education. We chatted with My Sex Bio Studio discussion facilitator and writer Amon.
My Sex Bio: What does having Pride in your identity look and feel like to you?
Amon: Pride looks like unabashedly expressing myself to the fullest. To me that’s super loud, covered in imaginative outfits and glitter, with a dash of (very) public displays of affection on the side. And I will serve all that without apology. It feels like unhindered breath, full and all encompassing.
My Sex Bio: At what point in your life did you begin to openly identify as queer?
Amon: Oh, I am one of the lucky few that never had to hide. I grew up with a cousin who came out long before I could remember. Everyone in my family treated her no differently than anyone else in front of me. So one day, in high school I think, I just brought a girl home instead of a boy, and to me it wasn’t a big deal. It’s not as if I made a habit of bringing people home, so it may have been my second or third time bringing anyone by the house. My immediate family treated her just as they would anyone else.
It wasn’t until much later that my mother revealed she wished she’d gotten a ‘proper coming out conversation’ so she could dish to all the other parents of LGBTQIA kids at work. Who knows? Maybe one day I’ll stage one for her. We’ll make it a party.
My Sex Bio: Do you recognize any defining moments from your life that influenced or informed your identity/gender expression?
Amon: I had this horrible habit of falling for straight women. We’d end up in these quasi faux relationships and have never-ending, romantic, platonic sleepovers for days. Or we’d end up on a string of awkward ‘hang-outs’ that were very clearly dates. I wasn’t a great communicator back then, so I kinda just dated women the way I dated men and created situationships. But when the other person is heterosexual, a lot of obvious signs are pushed into the “really great friends” category. Fast forward to many years later and each and every person I was in a quasi relationship with has now come out as well. Some have even gone as far to contact me and let me know that hindsight is 20/20 and that they recognize that we were definitely more than friends in the past. It’s all water under the bridge. I’m incredibly clear about who I want to be involved with now.
My Sex Bio: How do you feel your identity and self-expression has potentially influenced your personal work?
Amon: In my personal work, my identity needs to be acknowledged in every way possible. I will always choose Black, Queer, Femme, Non-Binary, fat or disabled bodies to learn from in any long term capacity. If that means I have to wait before pursuing a goal, then I do so or I create the space I need to see in the world. Any work I do is usually grounded in feminine energy, and meant to celebrate all bodies, especially mine. Intimacy and sex coaching have a lot to do with body positivity, uninhibited self love and radical acceptance.
If I want to give marginalized and under-resourced people access to their highest pleasure then I need to lead by example, right?
My Sex Bio: Why do you feel it’s important for the queer community, especially, to have access to better sex education?
Without access to better sex education, people who identify as LGBTQIA are missing necessary knowledge to make informed decisions about their bodies.
As an already under resourced group, having a wealth of information allows for deeper study into queer relationships and offers safety within our community. Inclusive sex education needs to be offered alongside heternormative sex education, requiring individuals to do further reasearch on their own allows for widespread misinformation and further others us as a population.
My Sex Bio: How do you feel your identity influences your work in sex education?
Amon: I prioritize intersections of the LGBTQIA in all of my examples, or at the very least make sure that multiple sexualities are considered before I provide information. I also make an effort to clearly express when there is a lack of diversity in knowledge I’m presenting. I choose to work with organizations that amplify these voices or have large numbers of these voices on staff.
Intersectionality creates inclusion, so I make sure
that whatever I do is loud about all my identities and
in doing so, creates space for others to do the same.
My Sex bio: Is there anything that you wish people would view differently within the queer community?
Amon: I wish people would view the community as ever-changing and constantly evolving. I wish they felt invited to explore, even if just hypothetically, what their gender means to them individually and decide to choose it.
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