Pleasure Revolution Visits Vermont
“Does anyone know what the de facto sex education for people in the United States is today?” asks Andrea Barrica, the 26-year-old, Filipina-American CEO and founder of pleasure and sex education tech startup, O.school. Her audience is a room of approximately 60 wide-eyed Middlebury College students.
A young woman raises her hand: “Abstinence-only?”
Barrica smiles warmly, widely and involuntarily. “Good guess, but actually, it’s porn.”
My senior thesis is due at 10 the next morning, and I have a long, sleepless night ahead, but here I am, at a sex education workshop. Or more specifically, a pleasure education workshop.
Why am I here, despite preparing to birth my brain-child, nine months in the making, early tomorrow morning? I am here because not once during my four years at Middlebury College have I had an opportunity like this one. I am here because the extent of the school-sanctioned sex education I received was a hall-meeting held by my Resident Advisors during my freshman year. They told us that under the influence of alcohol, it is impossible to give or receive consent. “So… does that mean we just can’t drink?” I had asked. The RA’s had no further advice or information and I left feeling thoroughly confused and unsafe. I am here, and not in the library, because I’ve never even heard of “pleasure education.”
Barrica tells the story of how she found her way into venture capitalism, and then social entrepreneurship. She tells us the story of O.school, and why she believes it is so imperative that women and gender-diverse folks are centered in her company’s mission and work. Not only should they receive access to sex and pleasure education, but they should receive that access in a safe online space. Safe online spaces are hard to come by, she points out. O.school will be that space.
We learn that over two-thirds of O.school’s thirty “pleasure professionals,” or instructors, are queer, and one-half are women of color. The content they share will be trauma-informed, shame-free and pleasure-centric.
A student raises a hand to ask how Barrica reconciles her for-profit company with her commitment to accessibility. Barrica has already anticipated this question, and nods understandingly. She has thought a lot about this. As long as capitalism is the system in which we live, says Barrica, she intends to “infiltrate” that system. Furthermore, Barrica envisions O.school as an avenue through which previously established sex educators can make a living. Later, I will notice that the word “infiltrate” has stayed with me long after the workshop.
By the time Barrica begins to talk about the personal and political benefits of orgasms, my mind is spinning. So too, I think, are the minds of the 60 other students in the room.
Faces are lit up. Hands are raised. After the workshop, a line of students waiting to talk to Barrica crawls around the room. Students want to know where they can buy sex toys. Tips for orgasm? And when, they want to know, can they sign up for O.school?