Sex-positive Community Europe

sex+ Front Line brings you the people and groups on the front line of sexuality, doing what they love and changing the world for the better. For this edition we caught up with Janina Vivianne who has been a driving force behind the sex positive project called Sex-positive Community Europe.

Who are you?

We are a sex positive community in Europe, a non-profit association that tries to build a network between people that are working in this field – professionals and event organisers as well as activists and multipliers – people that reach other people.

What are you doing?

We are creating a website that provides people who are interested in sex positivity with a portal to information about sex positivity in Europe and those working in this field, and where to find their work and events.

We started with a Facebook group and two networking events in 2018 called Incubators, one in Vienna and one in Berlin, and from there on we started to grow a core team where we now have a flat hierarchy called Sociocracy 3.0. We now have some working circles, which we are ambitious to grow, and where some are stronger than others at the moment with the focus at first being on sex education and awareness. We are interested in spreading open-source information and creative commons.

Our dream is that little communities will pop up throughout Europe so that we grow the network together. Ultimately we aim to be one large community for Europe. It is also our aim to represent the full diversity of sex positivity on one website. Often it is the experience (and it was mine 7 years ago) that new people come to sex positivity through a focus on only one aspect of it and it is difficult to see the whole spectrum.

Why does it matter?

We believe that sex positive values can change the world. It makes sex positivity accessible to the world when we explain our four main values – consent, being open towards others, safer sex and inclusivity and diversity – people realise that they share these values and can connect with the sex positive label.

We bring our values of sex positivity to the world but It is also important to bring a face to this work – in the past sex positivity was about hidden spaces and people. There is a cultural change now as people are getting more open and proud about being sex positive. Our Facebook group has more than 4000 people putting their identity with their support for this movement.

Our values will also be important as we reconnect after this pandemic - allowing people to go at their own pace will be very important and we have good tools for this. In a recent event we ran this summer we created two workshops – one for those who wanted to get close and one for those who wanted to stay further apart and that worked well.

On a societal level it is so important to get awareness and stand behind our values but also on the personal level. Being in sex positive spaces or groups gives you a tool box and a community to support you. The website can help you to find your communities as it builds a network between the different cities and projects.

It is important that this is for Europe because in the different cities there are different hot spots of sex positivity but it is our dream to create a network that allows us to connect remotely but also in person when we are able to travel. We are living in a very globalised society – travelling was very common around Europe and will be again.

What do you think is going to be your most exciting development in the near future?

The new website is nearly finished, including all the tools that we want to put out into the world such as ‘how to make a workshop safely’ or ‘how to organise a sex party’ so that people can be ready to restart events when they are able to. Maybe there won’t be any big events this year, but possibly we will be able to begin bringing together micro-communities soon. We are also hoping to start running Incubators again this year and maybe another fundraiser to support this work.

How can we show you some love?

Come along to our sex positive Munch, held on the first Thursday evening each month, online. Here we are now coming together to collaborate with you, sex+ Magazine, as you join us to offer Sexuali-Tea as part of the program. You can follow us to show support and to find out what we are doing on Facebook at S+ Community Europe and on Instagram at sexpositive_ or have a look at our website at sex-positive.com where you can subscribe to our newsletter. You can support our work directly with a donation via PayPal .