Godless Perverts

Sex, Atheism, and Other Heresies

Godless Perverts Book Club: “Eloquent Rage”

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The Godless Perverts Book Club has been on hiatus for the last few months, but we’re making our return in July with a new space and new date. From now on, we’ll be meeting at our beloved Wicked Grounds, 289 8th Street in SF, on the fourth Monday of every month to talk about books, sexuality, secularism, and social justice. All orientations, genders, and kinks (or lack thereof) are welcome.

On Monday July 23, we’re discussing Eloquent Rage: A Black Feminist Discovers Her Superpower, by Brittney Cooper. Cooper is a Black feminist scholar and activist who co-founded the Crunk Feminist Collective. Eloquent Rage intertwines personal narratives and political analysis as Cooper discusses race and gender as embodied by white tears, Beyoncé, hip-hop, Judy Blume — and of course, why black women’s anger can be a valuable tool for justice.

The book is available in print, ebook, and audiobook. You can also check out this video of Brittney Cooper speaking on Why Feminism Needed Beyoncé. If you’ve ready part of the book but haven’t finished it, please don’t let that stop you from coming.

So please join us at Wicked Grounds, the kink cafe and boutique, at 289 8th Street at Folsom in San Francisco (near Civic Center BART). 7-9 pm. Admission is free: if you can’t afford cafe prices, Wicked Grounds customers have bought coffee and tea for you, just ask for your beverage to be paid “from the wall.” Wicked Grounds has beverages, light snacks, full meals, and milkshakes made of literal awesome sauce. Godless Perverts is committed to feminism, diversity, inclusivity, and social justice. We seek to create safe and welcoming environments for all non-believers and believing allies who are respectful of the mission, and are committed to taking positive action to achieve this. Hope to see you there!

DATE CHANGE! Godless Perverts Book Club: The Technology of Orgasm

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DATE CHANGE! This event is now on Friday, Nov. 17!

Godless Perverts Book Club is reading The Technology of Orgasm: “Hysteria,” the Vibrator, and Women’s Sexual Satisfaction by Rachel P. Maines. Friday, November 17, at Borderlands Cafe in SF. All orientations, genders, and kinks (or lack thereof) are welcome. Please join us!

From the time of Hippocrates until the 1920s, massaging female patients to orgasm was a staple of medical practice among Western physicians in the treatment of “hysteria,” an ailment once considered both common and chronic in women. Doctors loathed this time-consuming procedure and for centuries relied on midwives. Later, they substituted the efficiency of mechanical devices, including the electric vibrator, invented in the 1880s. In The Technology of Orgasm, Rachel Maines offers readers a stimulating, surprising, and often humorous account of hysteria and its treatment throughout the ages, focusing on the development, use, and fall into disrepute of the vibrator as a legitimate medical device.

The Godless Perverts Book Club is at Borderlands Cafe, 870 Valencia St. in San Francisco. That’s on Valencia at 20th: it’s near the 24th and Mission BART, and it’s close to the parking garage on 21st and Bartlett between Valencia and Mission. Friday, November 17, 6:00 to 8:00 pm. It’s free: we ask that you buy food and/or drink to support the cafe if you can — and tip the cafe staff generously — but we understand that cafe prices are prohibitive for some people, so please don’t let that stop you from attending. We will be meeting at a large table in the back of the cafe.

All orientations, genders, and kinks (or lack thereof) are welcome. Community is one of the reasons we started Godless Perverts. There are few enough places to land when you decide that you’re an atheist; far fewer if you’re also LGBT, queer, kinky, poly, trans, or are just interested in sexuality. And the sex-positive/ alt-sex/ whatever- you- want- to- call- it community isn’t always the most welcoming place for non-believers. So please join us!

Godless Perverts presents and promotes a positive view of sexuality without religion, by and for sex-positive atheists, agnostics, humanists, and other non-believers, through performance events, panel discussions, social gatherings, media productions, and other appropriate outlets. Our events and media productions present depictions, explorations, and celebrations of godless sexualities — including positive, traumatic, and complex experiences — focusing on the intersections of sexuality with atheism, materialism, skepticism, and science, as well as critical, questioning, mocking, or blasphemous views of sex and religion.

Godless Perverts is committed to feminism, diversity, inclusivity, and social justice. We seek to create safe and welcoming environments for all non-believers and believing allies who are respectful of the mission, and are committed to taking positive action to achieve this. Please let the moderators or other people in charge of any event know if you encounter harassment, racism, misogyny, transphobia, or other problems at our events.

Godless Perverts Book Club: Ghostland: An American History in Haunted Places

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Godless Perverts Book Club is back from summer vacation! We’re reading Ghostland: An American History in Haunted Places by Colin Dickey. WEDNESDAY, Wednesday Wednesday Wednesday, September 20, Borderlands Cafe in SF. Please note that it’s on Wednesday this time. All orientations, genders, and kinks (or lack thereof) are welcome. Please join us!

An intellectual feast for fans of offbeat history, Ghostland takes readers on a road trip through some of the country’s most infamously haunted places — and deep into the dark side of our history. In this secular exploration of the belief in ghosts, Dickey embarks on a journey across the continental United States to decode and unpack the American history repressed in our most famous haunted places. With boundless curiosity, Dickey paints a version of American history left out of the textbooks, one of things left undone, crimes left unsolved. He conjures the dead by focusing on questions of the living — how do we, the living, deal with stories about ghosts, and how do we inhabit and move through spaces that have been deemed, for whatever reason, haunted?

The Godless Perverts Book Club is at Borderlands Cafe, 870 Valencia St. in San Francisco. That’s on Valencia at 20th: it’s near the 24th and Mission BART, and it’s close to the parking garage on 21st and Bartlett between Valencia and Mission. WEDNESDAY, September 20 (it’s normally the third Tuesday of every month, this month only it’s on Wednesday), 6:00 to 8:00 pm. It’s free: we ask that you buy food and/or drink to support the cafe if you can — and tip the cafe staff generously — but we understand that cafe prices are prohibitive for some people, so please don’t let that stop you from attending. We will be meeting at a large table in the back of the cafe.

All orientations, genders, and kinks (or lack thereof) are welcome. Community is one of the reasons we started Godless Perverts. There are few enough places to land when you decide that you’re an atheist; far fewer if you’re also LGBT, queer, kinky, poly, trans, or are just interested in sexuality. And the sex-positive/ alt-sex/ whatever- you- want- to- call- it community isn’t always the most welcoming place for non-believers. So please join us!

Godless Perverts presents and promotes a positive view of sexuality without religion, by and for sex-positive atheists, agnostics, humanists, and other non-believers, through performance events, panel discussions, social gatherings, media productions, and other appropriate outlets. Our events and media productions present depictions, explorations, and celebrations of godless sexualities — including positive, traumatic, and complex experiences — focusing on the intersections of sexuality with atheism, materialism, skepticism, and science, as well as critical, questioning, mocking, or blasphemous views of sex and religion.

Godless Perverts is committed to feminism, diversity, inclusivity, and social justice. We seek to create safe and welcoming environments for all non-believers and believing allies who are respectful of the mission, and are committed to taking positive action to achieve this. Please let the moderators or other people in charge of any event know if you encounter harassment, racism, misogyny, transphobia, or other problems at our events.

Godless Perverts Book Club: Blueprint for Revolution

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Godless Perverts Book Club is reading Blueprint for Revolution: How to Use Rice Pudding, Lego Men, and Other Nonviolent Techniques to Galvanize Communities, Overthrow Dictators, or Simply Change the World by Srdja Popovic. Popovic isn’t just being glib with the title: He was one of the founders of Otpor!, an anti-Milosevic resistance group in Yugoslavia during the late 90s and early oughts. Please join us!

This book opens us up to alternate forms of successful protests and actions. For those of us who remember the days of pieing as an effective form of protest, this should help expand our views further. For new people, why not learn new uses for rice pudding?

The Godless Perverts Book Club is at Borderlands Cafe, 870 Valencia St. in San Francisco. That’s on Valencia at 20th: it’s near the 24th and Mission BART, and it’s close to the parking garage on 21st and Bartlett between Valencia and Mission. Tuesday February 21 (it’ll be the third Tuesday of every month), 6:00 to 8:00 pm. It’s free: we ask that you buy food and/or drink to support the cafe if you can, but we understand that cafe prices are prohibitive for some people, so please don’t let that stop you from attending. We will be meeting at a large table in the back of the cafe.

Community is one of the reasons we started Godless Perverts. There are few enough places to land when you decide that you’re an atheist; far fewer if you’re also LGBT, queer, kinky, poly, trans, or are just interested in sexuality. And the sex-positive/ alt-sex/ whatever- you- want- to- call- it community isn’t always the most welcoming place for non-believers. So please join us! All orientations, genders, and kinks (or lack thereof) are welcome.

Godless Perverts presents and promotes a positive view of sexuality without religion, by and for sex-positive atheists, agnostics, humanists, and other non-believers, through performance events, panel discussions, social gatherings, media productions, and other appropriate outlets. Our events and media productions present depictions, explorations, and celebrations of godless sexualities — including positive, traumatic, and complex experiences — focusing on the intersections of sexuality with atheism, materialism, skepticism, and science, as well as critical, questioning, mocking, or blasphemous views of sex and religion.

Godless Perverts is committed to feminism, diversity, inclusivity, and social justice. We seek to create safe and welcoming environments for all non-believers and believing allies who are respectful of the mission, and are committed to taking positive action to achieve this. Please let the moderators or other people in charge of any event know if you encounter harassment, racism, misogyny, transphobia, or other problems at our events.

Godless Perverts Book Club: “My President Was Black,” Ta-Nehisi Coates

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Godless Perverts is starting a book club! Want to talk books with other nonbelievers interested in sexuality and social justice? Come to the very first Godless Perverts Book Club, Tuesday January 17 at Borderlands! We’ll be discussing a wide variety of books over the coming months, about sex, gender, atheism, religion, science, activism, resistance, and other topics in the Godless Perverts wheelhouse.

For our first selection, we decided to read a hefty article instead of a book, since part of the first meeting will be devoted to getting things off the ground and choosing the next book. We will be reading the Ta-Nehisi Coates article in The Atlantic, “My President Was Black.” The article addresses issues around identity politics (a.k.a. civil rights), respectability politics, and the role and functions of the President. While this is not specific to godlessness and perversion, it should lead to some good discussions regarding the current political climate, what we expect from politicians (whether friend or foe) and how we should hold politicians accountable. The article is about a 2 hour read (17000 words).

The Godless Perverts Book Club is at Borderlands Cafe, 870 Valencia St. in San Francisco. That’s on Valencia at 20th: it’s near the 24th and Mission BART, and it’s close to the parking garage on 21st and Bartlett between Valencia and Mission. Tuesday January 17 (it’ll be the first Tuesday of every month), 6:00 to 8:00 pm. It’s free: we ask that you buy food and/or drink to support the cafe if you can, but we understand that cafe prices are prohibitive for some people, so please don’t let that stop you from attending.

Community is one of the reasons we started Godless Perverts. There are few enough places to land when you decide that you’re an atheist; far fewer if you’re also LGBT, queer, kinky, poly, trans, or are just interested in sexuality. And the sex-positive/ alt-sex/ whatever- you- want- to- call- it community isn’t always the most welcoming place for non-believers. So please join us! All orientations, genders, and kinks (or lack thereof) are welcome.

Godless Perverts presents and promotes a positive view of sexuality without religion, by and for sex-positive atheists, agnostics, humanists, and other non-believers, through performance events, panel discussions, social gatherings, media productions, and other appropriate outlets. Our events and media productions present depictions, explorations, and celebrations of godless sexualities — including positive, traumatic, and complex experiences — focusing on the intersections of sexuality with atheism, materialism, skepticism, and science, as well as critical, questioning, mocking, or blasphemous views of sex and religion.

Godless Perverts is committed to feminism, diversity, inclusivity, and social justice. We seek to create safe and welcoming environments for all non-believers and believing allies who are respectful of the mission, and are committed to taking positive action to achieve this. Please let the moderators or other people in charge of any event know if you encounter harassment, racism, misogyny, transphobia, or other problems at our events.

If you want to be notified about all our Godless Perverts events, sign up for our email mailing list, follow us on Twitter at @GodlessPerverts, or follow us on Facebook. You can also sign up for the Bay Area Atheists/ Agnostics/ Humanists/ Freethinkers/ Skeptics Meetup page, and be notified of all sorts of godless Bay Area events — including many Godless Perverts events. And of course, you can always visit our Website to find out what we’re up to, godlessperverts.com. Hope to see you soon!