We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Steph Zapata a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Steph, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Can you talk to us about a project that’s meant a lot to you?

creating and organizing my own/ the “first” virtual BIPOC-centered sexuality education conference. I consider myself a product of shitty sex education in so many ways – more bad than good, when I had the took a chance on my vision for sex education I knew it had to come from an intersectional lens or not at all. creating the S.L.A.M. Conference (Sexual Literacy As Medicine/Movement) has changed the way hundreds, maybe thousands of people view/teach sexuality education around the country – but it has also changed me and my own relationship to sexuality, identity, education, community, and self. it’s person and professional – social and policial.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I like to say that the universe is responsible for getting me into sex education. Truthfully it’s something that I never knew was a career until it fell in my lap. I was the president of the GSA and we were really active on campus and held lots of transformative events for queer people and through those events I was offered a job teaching sex education to young queer people of color in New York City and I immediately jumped at it because how cool is that! After maybe nearly a decade of working through other nonprofits I created my own sex education consulting LLC and this is really where I was able to branch out creating the sex Ed that I wish I got both as a young person as a Puerto Rican person as a queer person as a trans person and even now as an adult. I sell things that range from education lesson plans and frameworks to professional development webinars and trainings on white supremacy and colonialism’s impact on education especially sex & education and how we view that as a society. Eventually I was able to branch out and start doing adult specific measure and kink work, this is where I trained folks on things like impact and spanking, the importance of an Eroticism of safety within kink and **** and everyone’s favorite how to talk dirty. I don’t think that I solve any problems for my clients, I think that my clients do that for themselves, I view my role as a guide, helper, sometimes a leader, but never one who does the work for the client that credit belongs to them I help them innovate and I helped them to reframe these problems to look at it through different lenses to regulate themselves to become someone who can do this type of work or pleasure or play. Whether we’re talking about the traditional sex education or the adult specific pleasure and kinks education my pride is the same in both facets and it really comes from watching the transformer with impact that I have, watching people realize new things learn new things get curious about old things ask really hard questions get super vulnerable with themselves with me a complete stranger and then at a larger level with community to see a weight almost fall off their shoulders when they realize that they’re not a bad person for wanting the things that they want and they’re not hypercritical when they acknowledge and name that their job site can do things in a more ethical and inclusive accessible way. I am most proud of the sense of safety and growth that people feel with me and that I feel with them. What I want people to know is that it is entirely possible (and chaotic and magical) to forge your own path and do things As your most authentic self without self criticism and betrayal. I view education and teaching and community building as an art form, akin to poetry or spoken word, your favorite longest sonnet or if you’re a sex educator the vagina monologues. And no one gets to tell you how to create your own work of art- whether a curriculum, a speech, or a solid spanking session.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

Part of the reason that I view education and especially sex education as an art form is because I think that to be an artist is innately who you are, it’s not a job that requires a uniform or something that you put on for a certain amount of time and you take it off you’re no longer on the clock or schedule. I think that artists are some usually incredibly authentic because their art relates to how they see the world how they move through the world how they learn about the world the systems that they do and don’t challenge the privileges that they do and don’t hold and what we make of those things. For a really long time I assumed every sex educator also was an artist from the heart and I thought that liberation and justice and bodily autonomy and inclusivity meant the same thing to all of us in the field and unfortunately I had to learn the hard way that some people do this work in the same way that folks clock into a McDonald’s cashier job, it is a source of money and nothing more, it is not a part of who they are but a uniform that they put on and take off when the clock starts and stops. Unfortunately for me I could never do that I could never and I I definitely tried throughout my life to be a person who could switch their ethics on and off or who could turn their feelings on and off but that never worked out for me. And over the last two or three years I’ve really had to unlearn the notion that everyone who does this work is doing it for the same reasons or has the same values And sometimes that is really heartbreaking and incredibly isolating, but as I have come to grow what I’ve come to learn is the most important thing for me is being at peace with myself. I won’t fight against my spirit in the name of performativity.

For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?

Sitting in the experience and interpretation of how others feel as they interact with my art

Contact Info:

• Website: https://stephaniespeakshere.com
• Instagram: risewsteph
• Other: TikTok: risewsteph