Our work is dedicated to the erotic liberation of all beings.
We believe that sexual violence, shame and repression have been central tools in the systems of power hoarding that have dominated global human relations for the past few thousand years.
White supremacy, capitalism and colonial empire rely on the dehumanization of others. Systems of oppression require humans to be divorced from their embodied empathy, erotic love and sexual freedom.
Central to the work of erotic liberation is the re-humanization and reclamation of the fundamental skills of caring for and loving one another as human beings.
Our Social Positions As Sex Educators
PleasureMechanics.com is the life work of Chris Maxwell Rose and Charlotte Mia Rose, born Christine Jill Fawley and Charlotte Elizabeth Goodman-Smith. Chris has also worked under the name Chrys Curtis-Fawley.
We are both white and raised in dominantly white environments. Our genetic lineage is from England, Ireland, Russia and Belgium. We are both third or fourth generation of citizens of the United States. We recognize that our ancestors were part of global colonialism and benefitted directly from these systems of white supremacy and the military occupation of multiple continents. Charlotte grew up primarily in Hong Kong and attended international schools. Chris grew up in Philadelphia, the youngest of three daughters raised by a single mom with anti-racist and feminist principles.
We both benefit from intergenerational wealth and live with financial security. Funded by a combination of financial aid and scholarships (Chris), and family contributions (both) we both attended private primary schools and universities and graduated without student debt.
Charlotte is a cisgender queer woman (she/her pronouns). Chris is a non-binary queer human (they/them pronouns).
We are parents to one child, created in collaboration with a beloved member of our extended queer family, Jeremy, who is an indigenous latinx man. Our extended queer kin includes beloved POC from all parts of the global majority. We are actively practicing anti-racist, sex-positive parenting and queer family community ethics.
Charlotte is a physically abled cancer survivor. Chris lives with chronic disease, chronic pain and invisible disability and is dependent on medical devices.
Statements of Accountability and Actions In Progress
Areas where we are actively working on improving to better align our work with our stated mission include but are not limited to:
- In recognizing our inborn privilege and the ways that privilege has given us unearned gifts, and made it materially possible to start this business, we actively share the resources we generate to the fullest extent possible. We center our support on direct action and fund BIPOC led social justice movements that focus on restoring the inherent dignity and equity amongst humans. Track our giving and participate here.
- We self-produced our video guides, which feature us and two other white women as demonstration bodies. The silicone replicas we use to demonstrate erotic touch techniques are also white skinned. We recognize that our videos do not meet our intention of representing and celebrating all bodies. All future video productions will be more inclusive, and we will purchase new replicas for future demonstrations. We will seek to collaborate with POC erotic educators and compensate them for their shared knowledge and time.
- In communicating about the complexities of human sexuality with a mainstream audience, and by nature of recording over 300 hours of podcast episodes over many years, our published language is not always 100% inclusive of the full gender spectrum and the sexual embodiment thereof. We sometimes say “on the woman’s vulva” or “when men think about their penis” for example, when we know that the lived reality is much more nuanced. With a mission of radical inclusivity, we will constantly strive to use language that reflects the complexity of the lived human experience. We will try to be specific when we are speaking about the socialized aspects of male and female sexuality vs. the anatomical nuances between the vulva and the penis.
- We use stock images for our podcast images and other design elements, and thus have overused images of white, thin, heteronormative bodies. We are actively seeking out more inclusive photography, and also using more non-body images.
- Due to limited financial resources, we did not pay for transcripts to be produced for podcasts until 2019. We are now paying for professional transcripts of all new podcast episodes produced, as well as retroactively producing transcripts for our most popular episodes. We will continue to take steps to improve accessibility across our platform.
- Charlotte first met Chris as a student in the Sexological Bodywork training. Chris maintained strict professional boundaries as a facilitator of that training and they had no personal, sexual or romantic contact for many months after the training was complete. Charlotte then pursued a friendship with Chris which developed into a mutually consensual and equitable romantic partnership. While we feel there are NO breaches of ethical conduct in our love story, we disclose that we did first meet within the container of a teacher/student relationship.
If you are aware of any way we can be more aligned with our mission, please be in touch with us via email, chris (a) pleasuremechanics.com . It is our intention and daily mission to be part of the global movement of liberation, and we will spend our lives learning, practicing and embodying the values of social justice and liberation.