#44: Public service announcement
Hi to new subscribers and apologies for lack of Feb mailouts
[Image description: Text ‘Public Service Announcement !!!’ on a lilac background]
Public Service Announcement
Apologies for lack of mailouts, I got locked out twice this month.
Hello and welcome to all my new subscribers!
You’ve joined the community of readers a little way into Season 3 of ‘She Dares To Say’, which began in October 2023, firstly with a visual identity refresh (see ya navy blue, hey there rich lilac) by my long-time graphic design and illustration collaborator Visual-Ess (AKA Sarah Hamer). Sarah is brilliant at working with existing design elements to create assets that feel both fun and accessible.
So with my new branding elements uploaded, Season 3 launched with a rotating schedule of content:
– ‘Pleasure Principles with Almaz’
I write a column called ‘Pleasure Principles with Almaz’ for Female Health & Fertility, a new digital magazine and online hub created to support women and non-binary people who are affected by gynecological and reproductive issues.
[Image description: promo banner for Female Health & Fertility magazine showing an iPad with the magazine’s front cover on the right and text ‘Your body, your health, your magazine.’ on the left]
My column appears in the digital magazine each issue (now released quarterly) and I also publish it in full here for ‘She Dares To Say’ readers.
Previous columns: ‘#35: Tips for improving your physical relationship that don’t involve sex’, ‘#38: Self-pleasure can actually help relieve pain from reproductive health conditions’ and ‘#41: Tips for navigating gynae challenges in new relationships’.
And, I’m also proud to share that I received the ‘Top Sexual Health Writer’ accolade in the magazine’s its inaugural Top Contributor Awards.
[Image description: Headshot of Almaz wearing headscarf with text: ‘Almaz Ohene, BA (Hons), Dip TOP SEXUAL HEALTH WRITER’]
– ‘Authenticity Arena’
A return to the ‘Authenticity Arena’ sexuality survey interview series, I began in Season 2, where I gently encourage members of the public to open up about their views and personal experiences of sex. The interviews are formatted as verbatim text transcripts and I also include the audio recordings (with any identifying personal information bleeped out).
Previous interviews from this season:
‘#36: Authenticity Arena – No. 14’; ‘P’ who’s a queer/bisexual, white British, woman (cis), who, at the time of interview in December 2022 was 29, partnered, and living in London. ‘P’ works in a similar sexuality education field to me, so our conversations touched on the complications that can sometimes arise in social situations when people know that our jobs are sex-based and are looking for answers to personal questions.
‘P’ also shared an incident from her early adolescence where she was accused of sexually predatory behaviour towards a fellow school pupil and the harm that the allegations caused.
‘#43: Authenticity Arena – No. 15’; ‘O’ who’s a bisexual/pansexual, Latino, cis man, who, at the time of interview in July 2022 was 45, living with a female nesting partner in Tucson, AZ, US, as two-thirds of an open triad, and also has a few other partners and additionally co-parents kids from a previous relationship.
‘O’ shared with me his experience of having sex with someone else for the first time, which happened, when he was 14, with a young woman who was 18. (Almaz note: ‘O’ describes the experience as wholly consensual, but in regards to the law in lots of US states, under 18s cannot consent to sex). Our chat also covered the initial guilt that ‘O’ felt when he started doing sex stuff with men, and also the acceptance that came when he started reading lots of books on sexuality and relationship styles.
– ‘Considering my Crushes’
This content strand features personal essay where I share document my some of my juicy memories of crushing on celebrities, fictional characters and random men from my home town, and, I mean basically anyone who I found intriguing in some kind of way. Here’s the first in the series where I introduced readers to the interior world of 90s Almaz, when I was crushing on, not only a boy from school, but also Damon Albarn, Blur’s frontman, Billy Kennedy from Aussie soap Neighbours, Peter Pan from the 1990s animated kids TV show Peter Pan & the Pirates, Ernst Robinson from the 1960s Disney live-action film Swiss Family Robinson and, inexplicably US President Bill Clinton in the wake of the Lewinski Scandal.
[Image description: Almaz’s earliest crushes; clockwise: Damon Albarn, Blur’s frontman, Billy Kennedy from Aussie soap ‘Neighbours’, Peter Pan from the 1990s animated kids TV show ‘Peter Pan & the Pirates’, US President Bill Clinton and Ernst Robinson from the 1960s Disney live-action film ‘Swiss Family Robinson’]
Read in full here: ‘#40: Considering My Crushes – No. 01’.
The next in the series pick up things up around the millennium when I was 11. I’d just started making my way through the Harry Potter books and was finding the characters of Sirius Black and Kingsley Shacklebolt very, very crush-worthy. I also describe how much of an impact the music video for UK Garage smash hit single ‘21 Seconds’ (released in 2001) had on me. Seeing Harvey, Romeo and Asher D’s spit their bars, ferociously scowling at the camera had me all hot under the collar.
As these ‘Considering my Crushes’ personal essays take a lot of time to craft, I’ll now be making them available in full for paying subscribers only. Free subscribers will still received these mailouts, but will only be able to read the whole essay with a paid subscription. Adding a paywall to my work will help ensure that I can still make a living from writing. So, if this project is something that you value do please consider becoming a paid subscriber of ‘She Dares to Say’ (especially if you have the means to do so), which is either billed monthly at £3.79 or annually at £34.99.
– ‘What the notches said’
For these mailouts I reach out to various people from my sexual past and ask them to answer quick-fire questions about where they were at in life when we dated/hooked-up and how their views/situation have changed in the intervening years.
These interviews take place as informal chats over video call, and involved a fair bit of low-key flirting, which is fun. I record the audio so that I can pull the responses together in a Q&A format. First up was ‘Y’, who I met in the summer of 2017, when I was 28 and ‘Y’ was 47. We dated non-monogamously for around 18 month and have remained close friends ever since.
Next month, I’ll be releasing the second interview in the series, which is with ‘W’, a woman with whom I’ve only shared a couple of experiences, but they were so connected and intense that we both speak of them in superlatives!
[Image description: promo banner for Almaz’s Developing Sexual Expression and understanding intimacy workshops]
As usual, I’m reminding you all that I run a workshop series – Developing sexual expression and understanding intimacy.If you’d like to book me for an in-person event like a hen party or baby shower, or as a fun interlude at a sex ed/sensuality event, do get in touch via email. Here’s a link to a previous mailout where I described the raucous fun we had at a hen party where I ran the Improving Intimacy workshop for a group of women:
ICYMI…
With the help of the wonderful Visual-Ess (AKA Sarah Hamer) as creative consultant I had a new showreel made, which highlighs some of my work in sexuality education.
Some of my favourite frames are below:
[Image description: Almaz introduces a film screening event. She holds a mic and is saying “So, this evening is an opportunity to…”]
[Image description: Almaz and two panellists sit on Chesterfield armchairs on a stage covered in a large rug. Almaz holds a mic with one hand and gesticulates with the other, while saying “look around the world to see what other family setups…”]
[Image description: Almaz is talking on an online panel. There is a British Sign Language interpreter at the bottom corner of the screen. Almaz is saying ‘So the last couple of years have been so…”]
[Image description: Large text: ‘We’d do it standing up against his bedroom wall.’ Almaz sits in a coffee shop reading vignettes out loud from A4 printouts]
Watch the showreel in full here. I’m available for panel talks at events and festivals, podcasts, TV and radio etc get in touch via email to book me.
[Image description: Text ‘PRODUCED BY’]
I’m Almaz Ohene, a Creative Copywriter, Freelance Journalist and Accidental Sexpert.
Recent work:
– For SEXTECHGUIDE, I reviewed the sex toy ‘Namii’ by Obii
Content note: Review contains descriptions of me using the sex toy
Available for commissions. Info via almazohene.com/contact-faqs