Jamye Waxman, former rockstar Babeland employee, wrote a fantastic article for AVN News about how sex education has moved away from traditional venues and is now done by stores or individuals that may not necessarily have MDs or PhDs but are still knowledgeable. The article discusses sex toy stores, workshops, videos and more, providing a great overview of where the field as come from and where it's going.I love that sex education is something that people can do without a degree. Why should any one group of people have a monopoly over information that is so central to our lives? I might defer to someone if I need to learn about cell biology but when almost everyone has had or will have sex, we can all be experts and share our knowledge.Plus, as Jamye notes, it's terrific to see that people are less afraid of admitting there are things they don't know. We're all raised with the expectation that we'll know exactly what we're doing in bed but no one ever actually teaches us what to do! It's pretty incredible that anything gets done at all. I applaud the people who attend our workshops for wanting to learn new things, possibly make mistakes but have a whole lot of fun.Jamye's article also mentions Ducky Doolittle (pictured), another former Babeland employee and one of the coolest people I've ever met. Here's what Jamye and Ducky have to say.

Ducky Doolittle is the type of sex educator Taormino was talking about. A former peep-show girl, dominatrix and nudie magazine model, Doolittle now finds herself in the spotlight as one of the nation's top sex educators and the educational coordinator for For Your Pleasure. She's trained with Planned Parenthood and is a certified sexual assault and violence intervention counselor. Doolittle teaches workshops in private settings and at public venues like the New York Museum of Sex.She also worked at Babeland, eventually going from sex educator to lead workshop facilitator. That's where she became the education coordinator, "building the workshop program and training others how to teach," she says. "I never sought out to be a sex educator. It was just the natural path for me."Doolittle says her retail experience provided some of the best sex education she received. "Working at Babeland was one of the best training situations a budding sex educator could find themselves in," she explains. "All day, you answer sex questions from random strangers. If they stump you, chances are there is someone else on staff who has the answer and who you can learn from."

I couldn't agree more. There's no better place to hone your skills as a sex educator than at a place like Babeland where you get literally every question possible. Whenever I don't know the answer to something, my coworkers are always there to help. Sometimes I learn from the customers which is a lot of fun.