JUSTICE, EQUITY, DIVERSITY & INCLUSION STATEMENT

As an organization, SSSS is committed to conscious and concerted efforts to ensure that our professional community and organizational structure reflect the values of justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion. Toward this mission, SSSS professes that sexuality scholarship and practice should be 1) relevant for, 2) representative of, and 3) responsive to the experiences of people of color and members of other historically underrepresented and marginalized populations. Such an approach to our work is essential for the well-being and public impact of sexuality professionals on all people, especially those who have been minoritized, marginalized, and oppressed. As such, SSSS has established a standing committee charged with the task of further enabling an inclusive community. The committee will work to advance science and practice concerning people of color and members of other underrepresented groups and by proposing policies and practices aimed at reducing institutional barriers to representation of such groups in SSSS. This committee and its actions reflect SSSS’s values of Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion.

MISSION STATEMENT

To create an inclusive community of scientists and practitioners where people of color and members of other underrepresented groups experience no institutional barriers to representation and full participation.

This document exists to operationalize SSSS’s values of justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion within SSSS. They are a call to action, and each is understood as follows:

Justice is the public acknowledgment of historical practices and policies that have marginalized the experiences of people of color and members of other groups that are underrepresented within SSSS. Furthermore, it is the work to intentionally establish better organizational practices to elevate professional work that corrects, addresses, and/or avoids these historical practices.

● Toward this aim, SSSS will:

• Promote science and practice that addresses power and privilege, including, but not limited to critical theories (e.g., critical race and intersectionality), and anti-racist, liberation, and decolonization frameworks
• Include among its leadership members whose scholarship and/or practice reflect these critical perspectives (on race, gender, ability, and the like)
• Promote comparative science that is grounded in an understanding of relevant histories and systems of oppression
• Promote science and practice that use nuanced understandings of group membership (e.g., includes an analysis of culture and/or personal identity or de-centers white, Eurocentric, and Western experiences as “normal”)
• Change practices, policies, and procedures that prevent innovation in order to reflect SSSS’s values of justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion as outlined in this document.
  
  
  

Equity is the fulfillment of a promise that each of our members, and those who would like to become members, are able to access the benefits and professional development opportunities of SSSS on an equitable basis.

 

● Toward this aim, SSSS will:

• Reduce financial and other barriers to access and participation in SSSS activities, particularly recognizing that equity requires flexibility rather than a “one size fits all approach”
• Provide greater transparency about how SSSS ensures ADA accessibility at all events.
  

Diversity is the broadening of our membership by recruiting people of color and members of groups who have been historically underrepresented or marginalized within SSSS.

● Toward this aim, SSSS will:

• Prioritize increasing the representation of people of color and other historically underrepresented or marginalized communities en masse and disavow practices of tokenism
• Promote the visibility of SSSS to communities of color and other historically underrepresented or marginalized communities
• Recruit new members from communities of color and other historically underrepresented or marginalized populations within the various sexuality-related allied fields
• Support efforts to incentivize membership in SSSS for people of color and members of other historically underrepresented or marginalized groups
  

Inclusion is the broadening of the presence of people of color and members of other historically underrepresented or marginalized communities in the governance and operations of SSSS, as well as within the recognition structure of SSSS.

● Toward this aim, SSSS will:

• Establish transparent practices in the nomination and election of Board members Recruit for, and retain among, the Board of Directors people of color and members of other historically underrepresented or marginalized groups
• Establish practices that more effectively lead to the nominations of people of color and members of other historically underrepresented groups for SSSS awards
• Establish practices for the inclusion of people of color and members of other historically underrepresented groups on all committees within SSSS
• Elevate the status of experiential knowledge and expertise when evaluating and considering contributions to the field.
  

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