The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

Improv Actress With BFA Degree in Theatre — or Sex Education Expert?

Posted on | February 21, 2013 | 35 Comments

Apparently, it’s not an either/or choice. The qualifications to become a “sex education expert” seem to be pretty flexible, so that studying acting in college (along with such experiences as writing novels and hiking in Spain) will suffice as credentials.

What inspired this discovery was an article by Katie McHugh of The College Fix about “I Heart the Female Orgasm,” a special event that Alleghany College hosted in the school’s Ford Chapel:

The two sex educators, Marshall Miller and Kate Weinberg, talked students through a variety of masturbation techniques during the event.
“Sometimes it can be difficult finding your G spot by yourself, because it involves inserting a finger or fingers inside the vagina into the front wall of the body, and that kind of results in an awkward, kind of clawlike hand position,” Weinberg said, demonstrating with a pawing motion as the audience giggled. “Obviously, there are better ways you can position your body. Or if you’ve got a partner, you can get your partner to insert their finger or fingers inside your vagina in the front wall of your body in a sort of a J curve.” . . .
In statements to The College Fix, the college’s chaplain defended the event’s location, calling its theme “responsible,” and a campus spokesperson said it offered a “great message.” . . .
“Some people figure out masturbation and orgasm as teenagers, some people figure it out later than that,” said Weinberg, describing her lifelong fascination with pleasuring herself. “And some people figure it out earlier than that. Like preschool age. I was part of that last category.” . . .
Weinberg later held up two books titled I’ll Show You Mine and Petals, encouraging students to flip through them after the program: “We’ve got two amazing books up here with pages and pages of art photographs of vaginas and vulvas.”
The event was hosted by Allegheny’s student government and Allegheny College’s Reproductive Health Coalition, along with Young Feminists and Queers and Allies. It was funded by student activities fees.

All-righty, then.

You can read the entire article at The College Fix, and there are a lot of angles worth considering about this story, but one of those gut-hunch impulses prompted me to wonder, Exactly who is this Kate Weinberg person? I mean, besides being someone who’s been diddling herself since “preschool age.” Well . . .

Kate Weinberg
Kate graduated from DePaul University in Chicago. She describes a “lightbulb moment” she had while taking an intensive HIV/AIDS course in college, when she realized how sexuality “is a thing so intimately connected to politics, religion, guilt, expectation, Kate Weinbergthe ways in which we live and are allowed to live. It’s one of those things that seems to explain the world around it.” Little did she know at that moment, but she had begun her journey toward becoming a sex educator.
In addition to reading nearly every sexuality book she could get her hands on, Kate trained as a teacher of the Our Whole Lives comprehensive sex education program for adults and college students, and now teaches sex education workshops for inner-city youth through a Newark, NJ nonprofit. She’s a certified yoga instructor and the author of an acclaimed young adult novel. Kate lives in Brooklyn, NY, and has long wished that she could be a mermaid. She co-presents our Female Orgasm program.

OK: “DePaul University . . . young adult novel . . . Brooklyn.”

Keep those reference points in mind, because Google turns up more than one result for Kate Weinberg:

Kate Weinberg grew up in exotic Baltimore, Maryland. She Mid-Westernized at the tender age of seventeen to study acting at The Theatre School at DePaul University in Chicago, as well as feed her burgeoning interests in poetry, improvisational comedy, and the visual arts. In 2009, she walked across the north of Spain and ate lots of cheese sandwiches on hard bread despite her body’s cruel intolerance to lactose, worked on farms in Spain and Ireland, moved to Brooklyn, and refused to eat a cheese sandwich ever again. She has published a few weird little poems using her real name, and a Young Adult novel under the opaque, gauzy disguise of a top-secret pen name, and is a firm believer in the power of impromptu, improvisational dance and song, as well as road trips, to unite all the world in peace.

Same person, right? But no reference to her enthusiasm for sex education, and why? Because this is from her profile as an instructor at the 2012 Vermont Governor’s Institute of Art, a “2 week intensive program for high school students.” And here is Kate Weinberg in the 2011 cast of the improvisational show Tambourine at the Magnet Theater in New York:

Kate Weinberg grew up in Baltimore and received her BFA in acting from DePaul University in Chicago, where, additionally, she messed up a lot in an African Dance class she had to take, had a really creepy landlord, and studied at IO. She has worked at an outsider art museum, walked across Spain, published some poems, written a novel for young adults, and also likes to draw weird naked bird-ladies and make shrinky-dink jewelry. She is so grateful for the very wonderful, welcoming Magnet community, and for every teacher, performer, and audience member she has had the chance to encounter as a result of its stunning, stellar, gorgeous existence.

So, two years ago, Kate Weinberg was performing in an improv troupe, last year she was teaching theater to high school kids in Vermont, and this year, she’s teaching a female orgasm seminar to college students in Pennsylvania!

Busy and versatile performer, this young Ms. Weinberg and, in addition to her “young adult novel” (which became “acclaimed” rather recently it seems), she’s adept at writing the quirky/clever type of autobiographical profile of herself.

You’re probably asking yourself, “With her busy career as an actress — and also the novel-writing, hiking in Spain and so forth — how did Kate ever find time to train as a teacher of the Our Whole Lives comprehensive sex education program”?

Does the phrase “three-day weekend” ring a bell?

Yep: That’s how long it takes to undergo the training sessions for “Our Whole Lives,” a program of the United Church of Christ.

This is the kind of top-notch expertise student fees at Alleghany College were paying for, and you’ll probably not be surprised that the organization that brings the highly-qualified Kate Weinberg to campus has also provided similar services for dozens of colleges and universities, from Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College (Tifton, Ga.) to Worcester State University in Massachusetts.

Can you say Higher Education Bubble, boys and girls? Good.

One more thing, kids: If you’re in college and don’t know what a vagina looks like, you’re probably too stupid to be in college.

 

Category: Education, Sex

Comments

35 Responses to “Improv Actress With BFA Degree in Theatre — or Sex Education Expert?”

  1. dkmkc2000
    February 21st, 2013 @ 10:21 pm

    RT @smitty_one_each: TOM Improv Actress With BFA Degree in Theatre — or Sex Education Expert? http://t.co/Ymocq3AdLf #TCOT

  2. MrPaulRevere
    February 21st, 2013 @ 10:41 pm

    We are living in an age where massive cultural deconstructionism and its cousin nihilism are now the norm. Ideas that were considered strange bizarre or beyond the pale rarely raise an eyebrow nowadays. Buckle your seatbelts folks.

  3. JeffS
    February 21st, 2013 @ 10:45 pm

    Nether. She’s a scam artist.

  4. McGehee
    February 21st, 2013 @ 10:51 pm

    I hope I may be excused for wondering how a preschool-age little girl “discovers” how to play with herself? Did it involve a coach? I wonder what brand of film was in his camera.

  5. jakee308
    February 21st, 2013 @ 10:53 pm

    I’m guessing the only real light bulb moment for her was when she tried one for fit.

  6. jakee308
    February 21st, 2013 @ 10:54 pm

    The only incouraging thing? None of these people will survive the end results of their idiocy.

  7. Down On Your Luck? Hey, Why Not Become A Sex Education Expert? | The Lonely Conservative
    February 22nd, 2013 @ 12:01 am

    […] trouble making ends meet. But if you’re down on your luck these days, don’t despair. You can always become a sex education expert. It only takes a few days of training and I hear there’s quite a market for it on college […]

  8. Steve Skubinna
    February 22nd, 2013 @ 12:10 am

    What’s impressive is the giddy self absorption she displays. I wonder how well she can teach or counsel or instruct when she writes as though the entire universe hangs breathlessly upon her every cheese sandwich. Or do her students only serve as mirrors for her own special awesomeness?

  9. Adjoran
    February 22nd, 2013 @ 12:31 am

    Her parents must be SOOOO proud!

  10. sablegsd
    February 22nd, 2013 @ 1:04 am

    Stupid slut.

  11. K-Bob
    February 22nd, 2013 @ 1:32 am

    You’d think the obvious point of college would be to teach that there’s more to life than masturbation.

    But if you need to go into debt for the next twenty years of your life to learn something that most folks had, ahhh, mastered by the end of middle school, then I’m not going to interfere between a con and his mark.

  12. K-Bob
    February 22nd, 2013 @ 1:33 am

    They’re only going to do it until they need Obamacare.

  13. FenelonSpoke
    February 22nd, 2013 @ 1:36 am

    The fact that the lesson was taught in the chapel of the college tells you all you need to know.

  14. FenelonSpoke
    February 22nd, 2013 @ 1:39 am

    And that the fact that the college chaplain defended it as taking places in the chapel is the only other thing one needs to know. Pathetic.

  15. richard mcenroe
    February 22nd, 2013 @ 1:56 am

    Wow, and it took me over 50 years just to figure out Sex Makes You Stoopid. She must be very precocious.

  16. richard mcenroe
    February 22nd, 2013 @ 2:13 am

    “You’d think the obvious point of college would be to teach that there’s more to life than masturbation.”

    You sit through enough humanities lectures and you just know there isn’t…

  17. Danby
    February 22nd, 2013 @ 2:17 am

    I was an actor once. Actors are the most thoroughly broken group of people on the face of the earth.

    Blum: Have you lost your mind? What are you talking about? Kill the actors. You can’t kill the actors — they’re not animals, they’re human beings!

    Bialystock: They are? Have you ever eaten with one?

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UYyc1Ib9LuI

  18. Kevin Trainor Jr.
    February 22nd, 2013 @ 2:27 am

    Kevin Trainor Jr. liked this on Facebook.

  19. rmnixondeceased
    February 22nd, 2013 @ 3:06 am

    Too many big teeth for my taste …

  20. Cube
    February 22nd, 2013 @ 5:27 am

    Pro Tip: If you have to ask yourself whether an activity is appropriate to do in a church, ask yourself if the Religion of Pieces would be okay with it in a mosque. If you can imagine getting your head cut off for asking the question, that’s what we call a clue that it isn’t OK for a church either.

    One of the very few things I respect about Islam is they aren’t afraid to say what they consider right and wrong, unlike this chaplain. Of course those guys have some weird ideas about what’s OK to do in a mosque.

  21. Bob Belvedere
    February 22nd, 2013 @ 8:27 am

    Stacy wrote: Yep: That’s how long it takes to undergo the training sessions for “Our Whole Lives,” a program of the United Church of Christ.

    The UCC?…hmmmm……ain’t there a connection with Barry ‘Bathhouse’ Obama???

  22. Rich Vail
    February 22nd, 2013 @ 9:24 am

    “If you’re in college and don’t know what a vagina looks like, you’re probably too stupid to be in college.”

    On that one, I had to laugh…then agree. Liberals, if we let them, will destroy themselves. NOW, we have to regain controll of our education system, and remove the propaganda imput of idiots like this one. Want sex ed? go watch xhamster dot com….that’s all the education you’ll ever need and it’s free dammit!

  23. GAHCindy
    February 22nd, 2013 @ 9:54 am

    United Church of Christ? Oh, Lord, forgive us.

  24. Roxeanne de Luca
    February 22nd, 2013 @ 12:04 pm

    Are these the people who start to scream about how women are more than their ladyparts, that we have brains, etc.?

    I just get confused as to which meme the modern ‘progressives’ are touting at any given time.

  25. Steve Skubinna
    February 22nd, 2013 @ 1:09 pm

    Now don’t trouble your pretty little head with man thoughts, MIssy. Tend to your vagina.

  26. keith petersen
    February 22nd, 2013 @ 1:46 pm

    Wow! And, WE Catholics get accused of being sex obsessed! Sheesh…

  27. Around the Blogosphere In 80 Seconds | Daily Pundit
    February 22nd, 2013 @ 2:03 pm

    […] Improv Actress With BFA Degree in Theatre — or Sex Education Expert? : The Other McCain […]

  28. David Gillies
    February 22nd, 2013 @ 2:06 pm

    This woman’s whole life has been devoted to wanking herself silly, whether literally or metaphorically. It really does make one wonder for how much longer we will feel happy devoting the surplus value created by the productive segment of society to supporting these bone-headed solipsists.

  29. FenelonSpoke
    February 22nd, 2013 @ 3:13 pm

    What’s wrong with you?!!. ;^) Not using your ability to project your voice to do sex education lectures at colleges chapels? I know. I have an UG acting degree too and I missed that scam too.

  30. theBuckWheat
    February 22nd, 2013 @ 3:14 pm

    “Our Whole Lives,” a program of the United Church of Christ? WWJS (What would Jesus Say) you ask? I hate to be seen as being “judgmental”, but long ago Jesus said that nobody who practices sexual immorality can enter into the Holy City (a metaphor for entering into eternal life). Revelation 22:15

  31. TomC
    February 22nd, 2013 @ 3:41 pm

    “Too stupid to be in college.” Is that still possible?

  32. Campus Sex Educator’s Qualifications Scrutinized
    February 22nd, 2013 @ 5:23 pm

    […] Writing about co-host Katie Weinberg, he notes: […]

  33. J May
    February 24th, 2013 @ 12:36 pm

    While I think I share Stacy McCain’s point of view here, there’s an interesting contradiction hidden in this piece. I think we can assume, barring correction by Mr. McCain, that he wants us to view the modern American university with skepticism, and that this piece is an example of how far education has gone astray of what the typical alumni donor thinks of when gazing on brick and ivy. I think we know what Mr. McCain thinks of most degrees in areas of study that didn’t officially exist a generation ago, and I’m sympathetic to this point of view.

    I also suspect that Mr. McCain and I agree that, partially as a result of the crumbling of the university, the informal private marketplace is often a better determiner of qualification, so that an expert in, for example, mobile application development is not necessarily someone who studied this subject in school.

    If all the above is accurate, then Kate Weinberg’s training resume is not the point. She is derided for being a long-weekend graduate, but would she not be equally laughable, or more laughable, for having studied orgasm coaching in a graduate program? Would Alleghany be better off, in Mr. McCain’s view, if they decided that the field of orgasm coaching requires more rigor, and corrected this with a new sub-department of Women’s Studies?

    It’s a well-written and funny piece, but surely this issue is not about academic commitment.

  34. Landon FIG
    February 27th, 2013 @ 3:26 pm

    The fact that most of these comments are directed towards attacking the presenter rather than the quality of subject matter just further demonstrates the problems with sex education and inequality in this country. Lets please ignore a program that seeks to empower women’s and men’s sexuality, that focuses on positive body image and communication between partners. Instead I think it a better use of our time to focus on the Curriculum Vite of the presenter– and you know it’s always good when 70% of the article you are reading has been cut and pasted from various google searches. Because as we know–people are not multifaceted, especially women, we only occupy one identity and camp counselor, writer and actor are really just too much to tack onto sex educator. Never mind that most of these comments are from men, never mind that no one is discussing the subject matter of the presentation, never mind that no one seems interested in her co-presenter, co-author of “I Heart Female Orgasm,” graduate of Brown University and who has worked as a sex educator for over a decade. Did anyone bother to listen to what the presenters had to say? Did anyone commenting and/or the author of the above article even attend the presentation? You all must have been off having consensual and positive sexual experiences that left you feeling fulfilled, beautiful and like a worthwhile human being.

  35. thiswebsiteissodumb
    February 27th, 2013 @ 3:41 pm

    wow this blog is so fucking stupid, the blogger and 90% of the comment writers are making themselves look the biggest idiots, no wonder the republican party is in shambles