![]() ![]() It’s one thing to say something is shit, another to work and make something better. He came back with paper, a pen and a stapler and said that he was going to write his own book!Įxactly. My friend’s kid walked out during my first informal reading of it. One day, Jake asked, “What is the least bad book you can recommend, or better: have you written yours yet?” I realized that it would be great to write books for kids, so that’s what I did, and after two years of bad drafts, I had a pretty good book, What Makes A Baby. Queers around me started to have kids, including my friend Jake who is a trans Dad and whose son I am close with. What lead you to become a queer children ’s book author? I can’t imagine my life or work without that community now. I was finally living in a community I felt comfortable with. Fast forward: at twenty-seven, I co-founded Come As We Are, a cooperatively run feminist, queer, sex-positive sex shop in Toronto. I was suicidal, and a lot of it had to do with gender. I had all the books and privacy sex that educators today suggest would be helpful, but nothing fit. Yes, and “feminist.” There was a time when my mom taught consciousness raising groups for women. ![]() It’s the same with the word “trans.” I have an awkward relationship to the question of who I am, but the best answer is probably that I am, apologetically, Cory.īut you did hear the words “gay, ” “lesbian ” and “bisexual ”? The word “queer” was not something that was in my life until I was fifteen or sixteen. I identify as queer, which has a little bit to do with my sex life, and a lot to do with my gender. A lot of people thought that I was gay, and that would have been fine, but that’s not who I was. I know now that I was a gender non-conforming kid, but that’s not something we ever talked about. My mom was a children’s librarian, and my dad was a sex therapist. In the conversation below Silverberg speaks with Theodore Kerr about the meaning of the term “gender creative,” how he became a children’s book author, what justice has to do with sex, and the specific anxiety that comes for a queer person making culture for kids. What good is a cultural shift if it is not experienced in public? If we are getting better at understanding that change comes via an ecology of movement through books like Sex is a Funny Word, then we also have an opportunity to see how to animate and live out that change. Beautifully illustrated by Fiona Smyth, the book uses comics, open-ended questions and engaging characters to help kids ages eight to ten to better understand their bodies, gender and sexuality.įree from the casual and unquestioned sexism embedded in almost all other sex education, Silverberg’s book is an opportunity to see how gains made need to be incorporated into people’s lives to reach maximum positive impact. In his new book Sex is a Funny Word (Seven Stories Press), sex educator and author Cory Silverberg provides a road map to emerging and future generations to better understand one of the most dominate yet poorly understood aspects of the human experience: SEX! Building off the success of his radical approach to sex education in his first book What Makes A Baby (2013, Seven Stories Press), in Sex is a Funny Word, he synthesizes advancements made in the last few generations around gender, race, sexuality and other issues to offer a jumping-off point for parents and caregivers to talk to kids about sex. But what about the other side of those tipping points? What sustains change? We, even if it is just some of us, are getting better at understanding landmark moments are the result of connected networks of effort. ![]() had been doing long before that summer and the Compton’s Cafeteria riot three years earlier. ![]() Similarly, many people can’t think about those hot nights at the end of June 1969 and not consider the liberation-of-the-mind work that gay men and lesbians across the U.S. There are communities and schools of thought that understand and celebrate the fact that there would not have been a March on Washington were it not for Ella Baker’s one-on-ones with people in her community and Bayard Rustin behind the scene organizing. We know these moments are the result of many lives sacrificed and dedicated to change. Cory Silverberg : On His New Book ‘Sex is a Funny Word’ and Sex Education for KidsĪug“I get to present sexuality and gender in a way that I hope gives kids more options than I felt I ever had.”Īs has been well problematized, our culture has a bad habit of narrowing down social change to a single moment-Martin Luther King’s “I Have A Dream Speech” and the Stonewall Riots, for example. ![]()
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