DECONSTRUCTING SEX & SHAME
The sex and shame panel is an audience-based interactive workshop. Our panel will be leading discussions on the deconstruction of sex and shame from their personal experience and also getting the audience to interact with their own. Our perception of sex and shame come from many varying factors, and there is no unipolar solution. The purpose of this conversation is to give people a safe space to shed their shame, love one another, and share their lived experience without fear of rejection. This is a safe environment. Having voice from a variety of different communities is vital for a proper discourse.
NADINE CHEMALI (She/her/they)
Nadine Chemali is a writer, researcher and social worker. She is dedicated to creating and nurturing communities, facilitating discussions on identity, sexuality, displacement and representation, discourse she feels was missing from her own refugee upbringing in Australia.
Nadine owns and operates a community, art and tattoo space, Thrillhouse Tattoo, which has partnerships with mental health and suicide prevention organisations, facilitates transgender self defence workshops and raises funds to support community using a mutual aid model. Nadine's online groups known as "femmo" use online spaces to create safer spaces to combat things like gender based violence & marginalisation and to educate and unite communities.
As a writer and editor she worked with publications like SBS Voices, The Big Issue, The Guardian and has spoken at events like Melbourne Writers Festival and most recently, APT10 as part of GoMA’s storytelling project.
Heidi LeFay (she/her)
Heidi LeFay is a Trans woman who has worked in community sexual and mental health, LGBTIQ+ education and community development for 8 years. She is also a sex worker, burlesque artist and co-owns a wig styling business that supports trans and chronically ill members of the local Brisbane/Meanjin community.
Find Bizzi on social media platforms @bizzilavelle
Bizzi Lavelle (she/they)
Bizzi Lavelle is a Queer and Wakka Wakka writer and burlesque dancer. Her work has featured on The Guardian, IndigenousX, Junkee and Vice AU. She was also a speaker at QAGOMA’s Queerstories event as part of APT10.
In the Burlesque world, she has competed as a state finalist in Floorplay QLD and in The Apprentease QLD and her acts are always glittery, high energy and camp. Her writing primarily focuses on Indigenous issues and her areas of expertise are Blak Feminism, Queerness, sexuality and sociology. She is currently undertaking a Masters of Sexology.
Elena Jefferys (she/her)
Elena is a queer sex worker and part of #DecrimQLD, a committee of sex workers who have joined with Respect Inc, to remove the harmful licensing laws and achieve decriminalisation of sex work in Queensland.
Elena is the former State Coordinator at Respect Inc, past-president of Scarlet Alliance, skilled sex worker peer educator and writes broadly on HIV, trafficking policy, peer education, feminism and ethical research methodology. She holds a PhD in Political Science and International Studies, University of Queensland 2018 exploring how sex worker organisations in Australia and Thailand maintain political autonomy while receiving funding from external sources.
Elena is a founding member of Debby Doesn't Do It For Free, the sex worker arts collective celebrating 20 years in 2023. She has done sex work since 1998 all across so-called Australia including regional and rural towns and licensed brothels in North Queensland and Victoria, illegal brothels, private and street based sex work in Perth, peep-show stripping and decriminalised brothels in Sydney and much more.
Claire Moran (she/her)
Claire holds a PhD in Health Psychology, from the University of Queensland. My PhD examined social constructions of women’s sexuality, and the implications for sexual health with a particular focus on non-relationship sex, representations of sex in the media, and genital cosmetic surgery. She was awarded the Dean’s Award for Outstanding Research Higher Degree Thesis for this body of work. Her research interests include gender, sexuality, sexual health, women’s health and qualitative research methods. Claire's work has been published across a range of academic fields including psychology, sociology and bio-medicine.
She is a highly experienced educator, with 20 years teaching experience across a range of areas including undergraduate and postgraduate tutoring and lecturing in research methods, psychology, sociology and domestic violence. She holds a lecture on the Graduate Certificate in Domestic Violence at QUT and also holds an Honorary Research Fellow position at the University of Queensland.