Human Sexuality

At CIIS’ 58th Commencement, the student speaker and the keynote speaker came from different worlds — and arrived at a very similar truth.
 

In her work, sex therapist and author Dr. Lucie Fielding seeks to move trans sexualities from the margins of gender-affirmative clinical practice to centering pleasure and sparking creativity and empathic attunement within the client-provider relationship. In the latest expanded second edition of her groundbreaking book, Trans Sex, she offers new concepts such as gender-pleasure and solidarity to bring theory to practice and features contributing trans and gender expansive authors working at the intersections of sexuality and gender.

In this episode, CIIS Human Sexuality faculty and Trans Sex contributor Dr. Roger Kuhn has a conversation with Dr. Fielding exploring tools and strategies for trans and gender expansive folks and allies for circumventing limiting understandings of the erotic and opening a potential universe of pleasure that celebrates our polymorphous bodies.

This episode was recorded during an in-person and livestreamed event at California Institute of Integral Studies on October 9th, 2025. A transcript is available below.

You can watch a recording of this episode and many more episodes on the CIIS Public Programs YouTube Channel.

Courtney Johnson-Benson shares how CIIS' Human Sexuality Studies Ph.D. program transformed her advocacy work and vision for her future career.

Explore how CIIS’ Human Sexuality degrees empower students to create social change through research, theory, and advocacy.

The Department of Human Sexuality marks 10 years.

A powerful event centering Black erotic divinity, healing, and spiritual liberation.

In the context of non-monogamy, compersion or the emotion of positive empathy is understood as sharing our partner’s joy regarding their other intimate relationship or relationships. Drawing upon her seminal research with consensually non-monogamous individuals, author and mindful dating and relationship coach, Dr. Marie (two-un) Thouin, unravels the complexity of compersion in her recent book, What is Compersion?, the first ever book to offer a comprehensive model of compersion and a practical roadmap to cultivating it.

In this episode, Dr. Thouin is joined by Poarch Creek Two-Spirit Indigequeer activist, artist, sex therapist, and somacultural theorist Dr. Roger Kuhn in a conversation exploring compersion as a roadmap for radical love in monogamous and non-monogamous consensual relationships.

This episode was recorded during a live online event on August 8th, 2024. A transcript is available below.

You can watch a recording of this episode and many more episodes on the CIIS Public Programs YouTube Channel.

For over 40 years somatic sex educator Dr. Betty Martin has explored the nuances of consent. In her framework and book, The Wheel of Consent, Dr. Martin traces the fundamental roots of consent back to our childhood conditioning. As children, many are taught that to be “good” we must ignore our body’s discomfort and be compliant. As adults, this conditioning remains with us until we unlearn it. The implications of this approach to consent education extends beyond touch and intimate relationships. When we forget how to notice what we really want, we lose our inner compass. When we continue to go along with things we don’t feel are right, we lose our ability to speak up against injustice.

In this episode, Dr. Martin is joined by Poarch Creek Two-Spirit Indigiqueer soma-cultural sex therapist, sexuality educator, writer, activist, and musician Dr. Roger Kuhn for an empowering conversation on the psychology of consent. Drawing upon her life’s work and The Wheel of Consent, Dr. Martin shares deeply nuanced ways to practice consent as an agreement that brings integrity, responsibility, and empowerment into human interaction—starting with touch and relationships—and further expanding our understanding of consent to social issues of equality and justice.

This episode was recorded during a live online event on October 30th, 2024. A transcript is available below.

You can watch a recording of this episode and many more episodes on the CIIS Public Programs YouTube Channel.

Last fall, Human Sexuality doctoral students and faculty members presented two panels at the National Women's Studies Association (NWSA) meetings. 

A panel hosted by the Department of Human Sexuality gathered notable alumni from the Ph.D. program to discuss their change-making work and research.

Non-binary therapist, certified sex therapist, and transgender diversity and inclusion educator Rae McDaniel has spent decades exploring gender. Their recent book, Gender Magic, is a first-of-its-kind practical guide to achieving gender freedom with joy, curiosity, and pleasure for transgender and non-binary individuals, gender explorers, and those who love them.

In this episode, Rae is joined by Poarch Creek Two-Spirit Indigequeer soma-cultural sex therapist and sexuality educator Roger Kuhn for an empowering conversation about stepping into our fullest selves and imagining a life beyond gender binaries.

This episode was recorded during a live online event on June 28th, 2023. A transcript is available below.

You can watch a recording of this episode and many more episodes on the CIIS Public Programs YouTube Channel.

Kai Cheng Thom grew up a Chinese Canadian transgender girl in a hostile world. As an activist, psychotherapist, conflict mediator, and spiritual healer, she's always pursued the same deeply personal mission: to embrace the revolutionary belief that every human being, no matter how hateful or horrible, is intrinsically sacred.

Her latest book, Falling Back in Love with Being Human, is a transformative collection of intimate and lyrical love letters that offer a path toward compassion, forgiveness, and self-acceptance. Whether prayers or spells or poems—and whether there’s a difference—she writes to affirm the outcasts and runaways she calls her kin.

In this episode, Kai Cheng is joined by qwoc expressive arts therapist and CIIS Counseling Psychology programs professor Jenna Robinson in a conversation about love and what it means to truly embrace the beauty of being human.

This episode was recorded during a live online event on October 19th, 2023. A transcript is available below.

You can watch a recording of this episode and many more episodes on the CIIS Public Programs YouTube Channel.

What role does dominant culture play in how we experience the sensations, thoughts, feelings, and deeper existential mysteries of our bodies? Dr. Roger Kuhn, a Poarch Creek Two-Spirit Indigequeer activist, artist, sex therapist, and somacultural theorist, believes that Two-Spirit people hold a unique and valuable perspective. Straddling colonial imposition and tribal significance, Two-Spirit identity offers a powerful decolonizing framework to achieve freedom and navigate the toxic systems of domination that impose upon the precious truth of who we are.

In this episode, Dr. Kuhn is joined by queer nonbinary therapist and mediator Jay Tzvia Helfand for a conversation illuminating the ways our bodies offer portals to our own liberation and how viewing our bodies through a somacultural lens can help us better understand how dominant culture informs and, all too often, misinforms our relationship to our bodies.

Dr. Kuhn discusses his latest book, Somacultural Liberation, based on his revolutionary mode of inquiry, Somacultural Liberation, an embodied practice that helps people connect with the intersections of their identity. Dr. Kuhn’s approach illuminates the full impact of our cultural reality in shaping both our individual and shared sense of self.

This episode was recorded during a live online event on June 20th, 2024. A transcript is available below.

You can watch a recording of this episode and many more episodes on the CIIS Public Programs YouTube Channel.

Sonya Renee Taylor is a world-renowned activist and thought leader on racial justice, body liberation, and transformational change. Her best-selling book, The Body Is Not an Apology, offers a radical framework for self-love and has helped many to identify and dismantle bodily-based hierarchies to build new worlds of possibility and justice.

In Sonya’s newest book, The Book of Radical Answers, she provides honest, empowering and age-appropriate answers to real questions from young readers about health, sex, gender, race, and justice.

In this episode, CIIS Dean of Faculty Development, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Danielle Drake joins Sonya for a healing and transformative conversation that explores how we can open ourselves to seeking radical answers to the world’s most pressing and painful questions, and how we may find our own liberation through the journey.

This episode was recorded during a live online event on October 25th, 2023. A transcript is available below.

You can watch a recording of this episode and many more episodes on the CIIS Public Programs YouTube Channel.

Alice Wong is an acclaimed disabled activist whose work and writing has shaped the modern conversation around disability. As the founder and director of the Disability Visibility Project, her work foregrounds the stories of those living with disabilities and paints a vibrant picture of disability media and culture.

In her latest book, Disability Intimacy, Alice uses her distinctive voice to highlight and curate stories of intimacy. More than sex, more than romantic love, the pieces in her stunning and illuminating new anthology offer broader and more inclusive definitions of what it can mean to be intimate with another person.

In this episode, Alice is joined in a conversation with writer, educator and trainer for transformative justice and disability justice Mia Mingus. Their conversation about Alice’s life and work will free your thinking, invigorate your spirit, and delight your desires.

This episode was recorded during a live online event on June 18th, 2024. A transcript is available below.

You can watch a recording of this episode and many more episodes on the CIIS Public Programs YouTube Channel.

Historically, the field of sexuality research in the United States has not included the experiences and wisdom of racialized sexologists, educators, therapists, or professionals. Instead, sexuality professionals have been trained using a color-free narrative that does an injustice by both excluding their work as well as failing to offer a fuller examination of how they expanded the field and held it accountable.

In this episode, educator and sexologist Bianca I Laureano is joined by Founder and Executive Director of Sacramento Peers on Prevention Dr. Ericka Burns for an illuminating conversation highlighting the voices, experiences, strategies, and solutions from sexologists that have been excluded and yet have still emerged as vital contributors to the U.S. and broader North American sexuality field.

Bianca shares insights from her recent collection, The People’s Book of Human Sexuality, a futuristic textbook that offers a significant shift in the way we learn and understand sexuality by featuring an expansive array of past and present leaders in the field committed to liberation, healing, equity, and justice.

This episode was recorded during a live online event on June 5th, 2024. A transcript is available below.

You can watch a recording of this episode and many more episodes on the CIIS Public Programs YouTube Channel.

Groundbreaking collection of essays reveals how Critical Sexuality Studies and Lavender Languages and Linguistics combine to analyze language use, sexuality and gender, and discourse on authority and power.

Decennial Kickoff Event: 
10 Years of Mindful Contribution to Critical Sexuality Studies
San Francisco, CA 

CIIS breaks ground with its new, one-of-a-kind M.S. in Critical Sexuality Studies

When Florida laws threatened queer scholarship, CIIS provided a new home

The term Two-Spirit is translated from a Northern Algonquin word and is used by some Native peoples of North America to signify variations of gender and sexual orientation. The term gained popularity in the 1990s as a counterpoint to colonial terminology used by anthropologists and academics alike to signify practices of nonbinary gender and sexual orientation among the Native peoples of North America.

Despite over five centuries of ongoing colonial terminology and ideology, Two-Spirit people have survived. Now, they are coming together and returning to values and traditions that existed prior to the invasion of the land we now call North America. But what does Two-Spirit and the transition from surviving to thriving mean to Two-Spirit peoples?

In this episode, Chickasaw Two-Spirit activist, drag queen, and community organizer Landa Lakes is joined by Poarch Creek Two-Spirit artist, activist, and educator Roger Kuhn for an inspiring conversation on Native American ideas on gender, cultural expression, and art as a platform for—and a pathway to—activism.

This episode was recorded during a live online event on November 10th, 2022. A transcript is available below.

You can watch a recording of this episode and many more episodes on the CIIS Public Programs YouTube Channel.

In this episode, poet and scholar Cameron Awkward-Rich discusses his work, which broke new ground in Trans, Queer, Black, and American poetry. He was joined in conversation by writer and curator James Fleming.

This episode was recorded during an event on May 31, 2018 in front of a live audience in San Francisco, California.

Author, Black feminist, and social justice activist adrienne maree brown has been talking, writing, and celebrating the intersection of pleasure and activism since her much-lauded 2019 book, Pleasure Activism: The Politics of Feeling Good.

In this episode, CIIS professor and restorative justice expert sonya shah joins adrienne for a powerful and joyful conversation exploring how to tap into the full spectrum of our sensual desires and emotional needs while organizing for justice.

This episode contains explicit language. It was recorded during a live online event on February 12, 2021. A transcript is available below.

You can watch a recording of this episode and many more episodes on the CIIS Public Programs YouTube Channel.

It is well known that mental healthcare and therapy are not systems that are readily accessible to everyone, especially those from marginalized communities. Created and maintained by white men, most traditional therapeutic practices do not address systematic oppression, ancestral trauma, LGTBQIA+ mental health and wellness, and the general mental, emotional, or physical plight of BIPOC and marginalized communities.

Psychologist and CIIS alumni Dr. Jennifer Mullan has spent much of her career addressing these inequities and providing spaces for healing through the use of decolonizing practices like centralizing historical and intergenerational trauma, which she identifies as ancestral trauma.

In this episode, educator and sexologist Bianca Laureano joins Dr. Mullan for a warm and powerful conversation exploring how we can tend to our emotional and mental health while also holding systemic oppression accountable.

This episode was recorded during a live online event on March 11, 2021. A transcript is available below.

You can watch a recording of this episode and many more episodes on the CIIS Public Programs YouTube Channel.

Carol Queen has been on the frontlines of the sex-positivity movement since the 1970s. A cultural sexologist, author, and co-founder of San Francisco’s Center for Sex & Culture, Carol is a long-time advocate for sexual health and pleasure. In this episode, Sex Therapist and CIIS Sex Therapy Certificate Program Lead Zoe Sipe joins Carol for a lively conversation exploring the state of sex in 2021.

This episode contains explicit language and, as the title suggests, discussions of sex. It was recorded during a live online event on June 9, 2021. A transcript is available below.

You can watch a recording of this episode and many more episodes on the CIIS Public Programs YouTube Channel.

Fat Black people in the United States are subject to socio-politically sanctioned discrimination, abuse, condescension, and trauma. In their writing and work, Da’Shaun Harrison—a fat, Black, disabled, trans writer and community organizer—offers an incisive, fresh, and precise exploration of anti-fatness as anti-Blackness.

In this episode, Afro-Caribbean photographer, herbalist, and multidisciplinary artist KaliMa Amilak joins Da’Shaun for a conversation about their latest book, Belly of the Beast: The Politics of Anti-Fatness as Anti-Blackness, their life and work, and how we can all work to dismantle our cultural programming to create real change.

This episode contains explicit language. It was recorded during a live online event on August 19th, 2021. A transcript is available below.

You can watch a recording of this episode and many more episodes on the CIIS Public Programs YouTube Channel.

As a body justice advocate and leader Dr. Joy Arlene Renee Cox believes that the spaces carved out by third-wave feminism and the fat liberation movement fail at achieving true inclusivity and intersectionality. She believes that fat Black women need to create their own safe spaces and community—instead of tirelessly working to educate, chastise, and strive against dominant groups.

Dr. Cox’s latest book, Fat Girls in Black Bodies: Creating Communities of Our Own, breaks down the myths, stereotypes, tropes, and outright lies we’ve been sold about race, body size, belonging, and health.

In this episode, educator and sexologist Bianca I. Laureano talks with Dr. Cox about rejecting the myths and lies that hold back fat Black women, and ways for their communities to flourish.

This episode was recorded during a live online event on October 7, 2020. A transcript is available below.

You can watch a recording of this episode and many more episodes on the CIIS Public Programs YouTube Channel.

What exactly is sexual attraction and what is it like to go through life not experiencing it? What does asexuality reveal about gender roles, romance and consent, and the pressures of society? In her latest book, Ace, journalist Angela Chen set out to further understand her own asexuality by examining the perspectives of a diverse group of asexual people.

In this episode, Angela is joined by journalist Sabrina Imbler for a conversation about what it means to be asexual in a world that’s obsessed with sexual attraction, and what the ace perspective can teach all of us about desire and identity.

This episode was recorded during a live online event on October 29, 2020. A transcript is available below.

You can watch a recording of this episode and many more episodes on the CIIS Public Programs YouTube Channel.

Feminists have long challenged the ways in which men tend to sexualize women.  But pioneering activist, biologist, and trans woman Julia Serano argues that sexualization is a far more pervasive problem—it’s something that we all do to other people, often without being aware of it. 

In her latest book, Sexed Up: How Society Sexualizes Us, and How We Can Fight Back, Julia examines how the stereotypes of sexualization push minorities farther into the margins, and how even the privileged are policed from transgressing, or they also become targets.

In this episode, Julia is joined in a conversation with writer and editor Abeni Jones that exposes the harmful ways we are all sexualized and shares ways of seeking a bold path for resistance.

This episode was recorded during a live online event on July 21st, 2022. A transcript is available below.

You can watch a recording of this episode and many more episodes on the CIIS Public Programs YouTube Channel.

Modern-day sexual ethics has held that “anything goes” when it comes to sex—if everyone says yes and does so enthusiastically. So why, even when consent has been ascertained, are so many of our sexual experiences filled with frustration, disappointment, even shame? In her book Rethinking Sex, reporter and Washington Post columnist Christine Emba calls for a more humane philosophy, one that starts with consent but accounts for the very real emotional, mental, social, and political implications of sex.

In this episode, Christine is joined in a conversation with CIIS Professor and Program Chair of the department of Human Sexuality Michelle Marzullo that invites us to reimagine sexual intimacy, and in turn, attain greater affirmation, fulfillment, and satisfaction for ourselves.

This episode was recorded during a live online event on May 11th, 2022. A transcript is available below.

You can watch a recording of this episode and many more episodes on the CIIS Public Programs YouTube Channel.

Disability is often described as a tragedy, a crisis, or an aberration even though 1 in 5 people worldwide have or will have a disability. Why is this common human experience rendered exceptional? Disability studies scholar Jennifer Natalya Fink argues that this originates in our families.

Weaving together stories of members of her own family with socio-historical research, in her latest book, All Our Families, Jennifer illustrates how the eradication of disabled people from family narratives is rooted in racist, misogynistic, and antisemitic sorting systems inherited from Nazis. Inspired by queer and critical race theory, Jennifer calls for a lineage of disability: a reclamation of disability as a history, a culture, and an identity.

In this episode, autistic Mestiza, critical educator, and disability studies scholar-activist Sara M. Acevedo joins Jennifer for a conversation that challenges us to reconnect disability within the family as a means of repair toward a more inclusive and flexible structure of care and community.

This episode was recorded during a live online event on April 7th, 2022. Access the transcript below.

You can watch a recording of this episode and many more episodes on the CIIS Public Programs YouTube Channel.

Renowned certified Gottman therapist and author Elizabeth Earnshaw offers a culturally tuned-in, LGBTQIA+ friendly approach, and an accessible guide to healing relationships and creating enduring intimacy for unmarried and married couples in her work and writing.

In her latest book, I Want This to Work, Elizabeth shares her expertise and presents for today’s generation the most effective and proven steps for relationship success. In this episode, CIIS professor and licensed psychologist Margaret Boucher joins Elizabeth for a conversation about how to navigate difficult relationship issues to create stronger and more resilient partnerships.

This episode was recorded during a live online event on December 9th, 2021. Access the transcript below.

You can watch a recording of this episode and many more episodes on the CIIS Public Programs YouTube Channel.

Through his yoga teaching and writing, Jacoby Ballard explores the intersections of yoga, capitalism, cultural appropriation, and sexual violence. He offers a queer-centered, fully embodied, and equity-rooted practice with meditations and sequences for processing and healing from trauma both individually and in community.

In this episode, queer, transgender, autistic author and educator Nick Walker talks with Jacoby about his latest book, A Queer Dharma and the possibilities for finding an unapologetically queer path towards true healing and transformation.

This episode was recorded during a live online event on November 18th, 2021. A transcript is available below.

You can watch a recording of this episode and many more episodes on the CIIS Public Programs YouTube Channel.

Scholars in queer linguistics, language, and sexuality share about their experience going to the Lavender Language conferences of the past

For most of his life, Boston-based artist P. Carl lived as a girl and a queer woman, building a career, a life, and a loving marriage, yet still waiting to realize himself in full. After fifty years, he embarked on his gender transition amid the rise of the Trump administration and the #MeToo movement—a transition point in America’s own story.

In this episode, recorded shortly after the release of P. Carl’s memoir, Becoming a Man: The Story of a Transition, CIIS Human Sexuality Program Chair Michelle Marzullo talks with P. Carl about his personal journey, as well as gender, power, and inequality in America.

This episode was recorded during an event on March 19, 2020 in front of a live audience in San Francisco, California.

Abby Chava Stein is the tenth-generation descendant of the Baal Shem Tov, the founder of the Hasidic movement. In 2015, she came out as a woman, and she now works as a transgender activist.

In this episode, Keshet LGBTQIA+ education specialist Randi Reed talks with Abby about her book Becoming Eve: My Journey from Ultra-Orthodox Rabbi to Transgender Woman.

This episode was recorded during an event on January 16, 2020 in front of a live audience in San Francisco, California.

Author Nishta J. Mehra is the daughter of Indian American immigrants, the wife of a white woman from Texas, and the mother of an adopted black child. Her life is a series of intersecting boundaries—of race, gender, sexuality, and religion—and her essays have examined the ways she navigates the various communities and ideologies that make up her family's life.

In this episode, Nishta is joined by integral psychology professor and therapist Daniela Koenig for a conversation about family and motherhood, race, and raising a black child in America today.

This episode was recorded during an event on November 28, 2019 in front of a live audience in San Francisco, California.

In her book, For the Love of Men, award-winning journalist Liz Plank offers a witty, insightful, and deeply researched guide for what we can all do about toxic masculinity.

In this episode, Liz is joined by therapist and Bay Area men’s group leader Sarwang Parikh for a conversation about the future of gender roles and how finding a new way forward for men has the possibility to change the world.

This episode contains explicit language and was recorded during an event on November 14, 2019 in front of a live audience in San Francisco, California. 

In this episode, Bay Area author and organizer Kim Tran has a brash and enlightening conversation with reporter and linguist Amanda Montell about gendered language and the way it shapes us.

This episode contains explicit language and was recorded during an event on October 10, 2019 in front of a live audience in San Francisco, California. 

CIIS Professor and psychologist Nicolle Zapien discusses her recent research into cases of infidelity, and how we can reframe the way we think about infidelity and sexuality in our relationships.

This episode was recorded during an event on January 9, 2019 in front of a live audience in San Francisco, California.

In this episode, transgender activist and pioneer Theresa Sparks is in conversation with Dr. Jamison Green.

Theresa Sparks is an internationally recognized leader in the human rights community and the first openly transgender city department head in the history of San Francisco.

This conversation, which explores how local communities impact global LGBTQI voices, was recorded during an event on November 11, 2015 in front of a live audience in San Francisco, California.

Artificial intelligence research scientist Julie Carpenter, and human sexuality researcher Brianna Booth explore the future of human-robot sexual interaction, considering the subject from both robot and human perspectives.

This episode was recorded during an event on January 24, 2019 in front of a live audience in San Francisco, California.

A wide-ranging discussion with the Human Sexuality Ph.D. program's new faculty member

The CIIS Dean offers insight into her new book on infidelity and clinical approaches that are helpful for a broad range of contexts and people.

Elisabeth Bolaza, Human Sexuality Ph.D. student, presented on Oppressing Birth: A Discussion of Systematic Violence and Denial of Rights

The Trans in SF series included filmmakers, visual artists, writers, and deepened the conversation started in 2014 with Laverne Cox.

The transgender frontier icon spoke at CIIS

Read the full article, featuring a short interview with program founder and CIIS Professor Gil Herdt