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When a sexpert isn't an expert

When you work in sex, you get called a lot of names. For sex workers and porn performers, these names tend to be derogatory, playful or political, but in sex retail, titles can range from the banal "sales associate" to the often-misleading "sex educator". At Come As You Are, we don't identify as either.

In fact, since the time we opened our doors way back in 1997, we've struggled with all sorts of titles in all sorts of contexts. The members of CAYA are officially called worker-owners to underscore that we're not a bunch of fat cat absentee owners of this co-operative, but rather, we're actively working in the trenches every day. The government requires us to identify a president, treasurer, etc for their purposes, but within our collective structure, it doesn't make sense to have a president - although, I know that Cory thoroughly enjoyed his tenure as 'secretary' and I find much humour in receiving mail addressed to the 'president'.

Further, we've never been good at coming up with descriptions for our individual job titles. The folks who work in the store and in mail order (worker-owners included) certainly are not 'sales associates' and their training doesn't involve any sales training at all. Instead, we all receive training on sex-related books, sex education dvds, erotic dvds, sex toys and sexual health, as well as, sex and disability, anti-racism, sex and gender, and mental health. We aren't sales focused at all, but we don't believe in calling ourselves 'sex educators' because that implies that we have a formal education in sexuality. Of course, anyone can call themselves a sex educator, and often we've wondered if we should jump on that bandwagon for the sake of simplicity, but it feels disingenuous to do so.

For folks in the media, we're even more annoying with our refusal to be named. One of our core values is to be the anti-expert, which means that we reject titles like 'sex expert' or even worse 'sexpert', but in this culture of expertise, we're expected to have authoritative-sounding titles, and we just can't and won't budge on our core values. Nor should we.

We've been playing around with some new names lately, but they all seem either boring or exaggerated, so we're enlisting your help! Yes, this is the official Come As You Are Nomenclature Contest of 2010! Send us your suggestions and we'll be awarding prizes for the best names, as well as prizes for the most humorous names too. Send your entry to contest@comeasyouare.com by the end of September to have yours considered.