To our fabulous Effing supporters,

Thank you for sticking with us in what has been a monumentally challenging year! For this last newsletter of 2020, we'd like to ask you to make a donation to support the Foundation as we prepare for the 2021 grant cycle.

Happy October, everyone!

From left: J Mase III (he) and Wendy Phillips (she) join the Effing Advisory Council!

TLDR for this month:

• Welcoming J Mase III & Wendy Phillips to our Advisory Council
• We'll be at PolyDallas Millennium Nov 6-8
• The HEAL Project: getting real + a $5k fundraiser
• Level Ground's SKEW Magazine curated by a team which includes our grantee Lola Rose Eros & Effing Board member Leslie Foster
• Strange Lusts / Strange Loves erotic interactive fiction anthology the spiritual successor to Effing-funded Honey & Hot Wax
• It's almost time for end-of-year giving!?

This month, we've got a grantee book publication to share, and we want to officially introduce you to The HEAL Project, an amazing org the Foundation started working with this past fall.

Image: Marsha P. Johnson handing out flyers at NYU

Pride is a Black-Led Protest

This June, we’re looking back on the legacy of Pride. It began in the late 1960s, when LGBTQ2SIA+ community started pushing back against police-led oppression.

The uprising at Compton’s Cafeteria in San Francisco kicked off when a trans woman resisted arrest by throwing coffee on a cop, as recounted in the documentary Screaming Queens. Three years later, The Stonewall Riots continued the fight thanks to leaders like Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera.

Ever since, the Pride movement has continued as protests, demonstrations, and community-led events that center the human rights of all trans, queer, bisexual, gay, lesbian, intersex, two-spirit, asexual, and gender-variant people worldwide.

All Black Lives Matter: This includes queer Black people, trans Black people, disabled Black people, Black sex workers, and particularly Black people who live at the intersection of these and other marginalized identities.

The Effing Foundation for Sex-Positivity supports efforts to demilitarize, defund, and dismantle the US police system. We offer full solidarity with the Black community and recognize that dismantling systemic and institutional racism is necessary to affirm the fundamental human rights of Black people.

Hello Friends of Effing,

Sending wishes for health, wellness, and solidarity to all of you as we continue to collectively struggle with the impact of COVID-19. 

Given the toll this has taken on our broader sex-positive community, our Board has agreed that the best thing The Effing Foundation can do is shift our funding opportunities to 2021, rather than open applications in the fall.

The Foundation will continue to provide financial support for our 2020 grantees and deliver resources to you on social media, including regular features from our whole community of 37 sex-positive educators and artists. Much of this work is done by Dom (our Communications Manager) and Li (our Administrator), and we're working to continue to provide them with much-needed income as well.

Photo credit: @ericalovejones

As another Black History Month comes to an end, let’s look to the future by celebrating the Effing grantees who are creating sex-positive resources and a whole lot of joy for the Black community.

Afrosexology

Society gives us a lot of messages about sex, how to have sex, when to have sex, who to have sex with, and how Black bodies should be having sex. To break through these barriers we must be open to conversation. That’s why Dalychia & Rafaella (pictured above) are creating education, exploration, and reclaiming of Black sexuality. through online resources featuring Black people of varying genders and sexual orientations discussing their sexualities.

Afrosexology just launched The Intercourse Project, with the goal of ending generations of secrets, shame and trauma. Watch the latest videos from Afrosexology here.

#BlackTransPrayerBook

The #BlackTransPrayerBook is an interfaith, multi-dimensional, artistic and theological work that collects the stories, poems, prayers, meditations, and incantations of Black Trans & gender non-conforming contributors. The co-editors Lady Dane Figueroa Edidi (she/her) and J Mase III (he/him), as Black Trans people, are looking to have a theology that incorporates the fullness of who we are. As beings deserving of care, Black Trans community wishes to claim a radical theology which is honest about our sexual practices.

Pre-order Black Trans Prayer Book today!