Why Are We Here?

Pictured: Fawn O'Breitzman and Dr. Jeff Ogle (our karaoke host!) in graduation gowns

I never wanted to own my own business. I didn't want the responsibility or the long hours. I was happy being a care-free professor with summers off and a short work week. But it didn't last. At some point, I began thinking of creating my own sex museum. A museum where people could learn about their bodies and feel normal in their skin. I love a good sex museum. Hell, I love a bad sex museum. I love them all! But I always walked away thinking it could have been more. They lacked the educational element I had spent my life focused on. My problem, as I saw it, was I wasn't reaching enough people. Human Sexuality is a popular class, but at best I was reaching 60 students a year. That was not enough. It is such an important and potentially life-changing class. I had seen it work wonders in how people addressed their sexuality. I had also taught Death and Dying and saw the same effects. It's funny that the two most essential aspects of human life, sex and death, are the very things we weren't allowed to talk about. As good as the class was, I became frustrated that it wasn't required for certain majors. You don't have to take it to become a therapist or a doctor. The very people we think will be trained to deal with these problems, often have no education or exposure to sex education. When getting my Masters degree in Counseling Psychology, I had to go to the social work program to get a graduate level sexuality class. We fail to teach people the basics and then fail to teach the professional how to handle it. I used to teach for the Physician Assistants program. All they got was a 6 hour discussion of sex which primarily focused on when they needed to refer the patient to someone more well-versed in human sexuality than they were. Where do we go as adults to learn about sex? If it isn't a college class, it's most likely the internet. There are great resources online! For every well informed source, we have 100 sources that are less than optimal. How do we know what to trust? Who to trust? I wanted to make a place where everyone could learn. Where you didn't have to commit to weeks or years of education, but could pick and choose the subjects you wanted to learn about. I wanted to make a place where people could ask questions and understand that we all deal with some level of anxiety and shame, all the while understanding that we have the power to change those reactions as well. I want to help empower communities of people to get the most out of their sex lives and fully embrace their bodies. To meet those goals, I had to give up my cushy professorship. Even though I am highly risk-averse, I cashed out my retirement after 20 years of faithfully paying into it so that I could try to make that level of difference in people's lives. After 3 years of building the business and having thousands of people walk through our vulva doors, I can see the results. The senior couple who tell me that hadn't had sex in 5 years after medical problems and are now happily intimate again. The married couple on the brink of divorce before dealing with the deep shame that had infected their relationship and finding new ways to trust each other. The transwoman, whose hugs make my day, when she tells me how we positively influenced her journey of self-acceptance. Every day, I see the excited smiles of people who have just randomly found us and are so grateful we exist. My heart fills with joy every day I come to the museum and meet the amazing people that it has touched. I'm pretty sure that makes up for having to work in the summer.