Positive Sexuality Day 2026

Jessa Davis is the Executive Director of OPEN.

Presentation: OPEN’s 2026 Community Survey
Highlighting their upcoming legal victory in Seattle, our 2026 Community Survey, and the launch of both our OPEN Store and Community Portal.

Presentation: Shame or affirmation? Transgressive queer joy
When we say “Queer Joy for Every Body,” do we really mean everybody? What if one’s experience of queer joy appears antithetical to the norms of sex positivity? What about those who cannot or do not want to extricate themselves from self disgust, shame, and extreme transgression? What about those who derive pleasure from that which is deemed “too extreme,” even within their own marginalized communities? How can stigma, disgust, pleasure, and disability become entangled and blur the distinction between queer affirmation and shame?

Drawing from Crip Theory, Strain Theory, and my research on fetishes that my collaborator, Dr. Kirin Wachter Grene, would describe as existing at “the margins of the margins.” I will discuss what some stigmatized people do with deeply held disgust, shame, and abjection, and how that abjection can be transmuted into a source of potent, albeit fraught, sexual agency and pleasure.

Mia Action is an independent scholar, alternative sexuality consultant, dominatrix, and artist based in Southern New Jersey and Philadelphia. She is a current research fellow with CARAS studying how disgust and stigma can animate sexual arousal in fetishism. Affiliations: Community Academic Consortium of Research on Alternative Sexuality (CARAS), Dr. Brad Sagarin (Northern Illinois University’s Science of BDSM Research Lab.)

Eros is an Erotic Educator, an advocate for sexual exploration and a promoter of how ethical sex can bring wellness to our lives. Focused on creating a holistic erotic approach, Eros is also an passionate explorer of Sensual Shibari as a tool to teach people how to develop communication skills and discover their desires, needs, and boundaries for fulfilling sexual experiences.

Activity:Erotic Meditation
Do you dare to embody your erotic fantasies?
We often believe that for a fantasy to be complete, we have to bring it into reality... but that's not always the case. When a fantasy becomes concrete, it often loses that tension, that electricity, that mystery that made it so alive. Something spills over, gets lost. But when you inhabit it from the body, when you recreate it with detail, with presence, with breath, the fantasy isn't lost; it expands, becomes more intense, more sensitive... more... yours. It's not about making it real, it's about feeling it real in your body. That's where the alchemy happens.