Profile of Gabriella

Gabriella Cordova: Loving Without Fear
by Suzanne Burdick

I watched her as she walked around the living room.

 Gabriella Cordova is a strikingly beautiful woman: tall, slender, naturally curvy in all the ways prized by our culture, with flowing black hair and penetrating brown eyes.   The way she moves and talks  radiates a sense of comfortability and enjoyment in being alive.  She is an intimacy and relationship coach, as well as a sex positive activist, teacher, and community organizer. 

I had rubbed shoulders with Gabriella on various occasions prior to today through our mutual association with Portland’s ecstatic dance scene.  I already had a general sense of who she was, but today I was visiting her in her house to get the full scoop.  Having come from a conservative Christian background laced with cultural sexual shame and fear, I was curious to learn about someone so dedicated to this cultural oddity called “sex positivity.”   

So what is "sex positivity" anyway?  I asked her.

She responded that it is a view of human sexuality as something life-enhancing, sacred, and to be enjoyed—rather than something to be feared, shamed, or repressed as it generally has been for centuries in many cultures.  Reclaiming a positive, sacred view of sexuality creates positive social change, she explained.

“If we can take back our sexuality from the patriarchal dominator system—which was supported for centuries by both men and women—I really believe we will solve a lot of the world’s ills,” she said.  

In the “patriarchal dominator system,” sexuality—especially female sexuality—was regarded as deviant and sinful.  Gabriella promotes a different, positive ideology in which all sexuality is seen a fountain of nurturance, connection, pleasure, and calming peace.  She argues that greater sexual openness and sharing would “mitigate deep loneliness” and deter people—particularly men—from “going and blowing things up.”  

Gabriella doesn’t just talk about these ideas.  She’s taken impressive steps to make them a reality.  The list of her recent projects is staggering:

·        In 2009 she was the visionary and director of ErosFest NW, a festival dedicated to celebrating the erotic and the sacred.

·        In 2010 she created the Lotus Heart Center as a community space dedicated to the study and exploration of eroticism, sexuality, and relationship.  People come to the center, located in Portland’s up-and-coming Mississippi neighborhood,  for workshops, discussions, and events focused on questions such as:

       * How might healing the second chakra (the energy center related to sexuality, connectivity, and creativity) help humanity? 
*What are the differences between Eastern and Western Tantra?   
*Is eroticism just about genital sex or might it also encompass the sensual, the imagination, the creative?
*What is erotic and how does that feed us?   

·        In 2011 she headed up the Sex, Love, and Spirit Coalition of sex positive organizations and labored to bring Christopher Ryan, author of New York Times bestseller Sex at Dawn, to Portland to speak.  Through her leadership the Coalition will soon be bringing psychologist and author Marty Klein to town as well.

·        In spring of 2012 she organized the first annual EcoSex Symposium featuring workshops led by teachers from around the globe and an array of event focused on the concept of ecosexuality. 

·        Also in 2012 she created an online meet-up group entitled Sex Positive Portland whose mission is to advance sex positivity.  The group now has over 500 members and recently sponsored its 200^th event!  

·        Soon after, she launched Sex Positive LA.  (She splits her time between living in Portland, OR and Malibu, CA).  This group has already grown to over 260 members. 

·        And now she is busy creating Sex Positive World, an online group that will enable people around the world to connect and organize around the Sex Positive Movement.  

If all this online community creation and event organizing weren’t enough, Gabriella recently completed her first book, a personal memoir, that is currently in editing and slated to be published in 2014.  And she has already begun work on her second book, entitled Sex Positive World.   

Most people feel inhibited talking—let along acting—so openly about sexuality.  Do you ever feel that way? I asked her. 

She looked me in the eyes and answered softly, “I’m just not afraid anymore.”

Maybe that’s what frees her to love so openly, I pondered. 

In that moment, I sensed—despite supposed ideological differences—a beautiful overlap between the “liberal” world of sex positivity and the “conservative” realm of my evangelical Christian roots.   The words of 1 John 4: 18  came to mind: “There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear…”