Ep29 - "Woodhull Freedom Foundation" with Ricci Levy & Mandy Salley

Ep30 - "Woodhull Freedom Foundation" with Ricci Levy & Mandy Salley

Woodhull Freedom Foundation’s mission is to affirm sexual freedom as a fundamental human right. Established in Feb '03, Woodhull Freedom Foundation is a 501(c)3 devoted to education & public advocacy to support sexual freedom as a fundamental human right. Our work builds on affirmation of individual rights in the US Constitution, including the Bill of Rights, & the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. 

Ricci Levy (she/her) has been engaged in sexual freedom activism for several decades. In 2003, she helped found the Woodhull Freedom Foundation, dedicated to defending personal autonomy of all individuals. Executive Director, then President/CEO of the Foundation, Ricci has led Woodhull for more than 20 years.

Mandy Salley brings her passion for social justice and love for humanity to the Woodhull Freedom Foundation as its COO. Since 2014 when she first served as a volunteer coordinator, Mandy has played an integral role at Woodhull, now managing its day-to-day operations & community efforts – from its Human Rights Commissions to the Censorship of Sexual Freedom Series. 

• WoodhullFoundation.org 
• facebook.com/WoodhullFreedom
• Instagram.com/WoodhullFreedom 

Welcome to the SINagogue. they call me the Rabbi. I put the SIN in SINagoguge.and am a cisgender, ambimorous, gynesexual, sadistic bratty daddy-dom. Sex therapist by day and a kink educator by night, I help people make their kink a religious experience. I am a mental health professional, this podcast is for educational and entertainment purposes only and is not a replacement for therapy. Seek out the assistance of a trained professional for help with your situation.  

Reminder, we try to make our content as inclusive as possible regardless of gender, orientation, role in the lifestyle, etc., but we do inherently speak from our own point of view. We want to learn from our mistakes. If you feel like we said something offensive, let us know. Reach out via our website or call us at 469-269-0403.

Today’s show was brought to you in part by the letters S and M, and the Number 69. 

*San Dimas High School Football Rules*

Chapters

• 1:24 Introductions
• 10:10 Laws and Marginalized Communities
• 19:44 Dissertation On Porn
• 28:53 Monthly Censorship Program
• 36:33 Censored Words
• 44:52 We Still Exist
• 53:09 Final Thoughts

Transcript

1:14

Hosting with me today is my partner, my ADHD squirrel wrangler, my submissive, my brat, my little, my pony, or just my little pony. Awwww. The news to my Huey Lewis, little bit.[laughs] This is episode number 30, and with us today is Ricky Levy and Mandy Sally to talk about Woodhill Freedom Foundation. The Woodhill Freedom Foundation's mission is to affirm sexual freedom as a fundamental human right. Established in February, 2003, the Woodhill Freedom Foundation is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization devoted to education and public advocacy and support of sexual freedom as a fundamental human right. Our work builds on the affirmations of individual rights contained in the United States Constitution, including the Bill of Rights and in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. But first, a word from our sponsor.[shouting] Ricky Levy, she, her, has engaged in sexual freedom activism for several decades. In 2003, she helped found the Woodhill Freedom Foundation, a nonpartisan, nonprofit human rights organization, dedicated to defending the personal autonomy of all individuals. As the Executive Director, then President and CEO of the Foundation, Ricky has led Woodhill for more than 20 years. Mandy Sally brings her passion for social justice and love for humanity to the Woodhill Freedom Foundation as its chief operations officer. Since 2014, when she first served as a volunteer coordinator, Mandy plays an integral role at Woodhill, now managing its day-to-day operations and community efforts from its human rights commissions to the monthly censorship of sexual freedom series. Mandy is also a licensed social worker and has experience in inpatient hospitals, geriatric day programs, and rate crisis she is based in Brooklyn, New York. Thank you for being here in the synagogue. Let's talk about the Woodhill Freedom Foundation. Welcome. Thank you. Thank you so much. What a lovely introduction. First, let's give our listeners a match to a name and a voice. Okay, so I'm Ricky Levy and I am the president and CEO of the Woodhill Freedom Foundation. I'm also one of the founders. Hi there, this is Mandy Sally. I'm the chief operating officer at Woodhill and glad to be here today. Thanks for having us. Thank you for being here. So let's find out what is the Woodhill Freedom Foundation? So Woodhill Freedom Foundation is a human rights organization. We're unique in what we do because our work sits firmly at the intersection of sexual and human rights. How does this relate directly to the Kim community? Well, sexual expression between consenting adults is a human right and Kim is certainly under that umbrella. Okay, so how did the Woodhill Freedom Foundation come to be? Well, it's a great question. You could say that Woodhill had its roots in the Kim community since Woodhill was founded by people who saw a need for an issue-based rather than identity-based organization. And we had all come together after a shared time volunteering at the National Coalition for Sexual Freedom to make Woodhill Freedom Foundation a reality. It was a very deliberate decision to focus on human rights as a much more broad umbrella than the identity focus of an organization like NCSF. Both are very important. We just wanted a broader lens. What all falls under that lens for you guys? Yeah, I like to think of sexual freedom as an umbrella term. That encompasses a lot of different ideas and topics. It allows us to comment on a lot of different issues and take positions on a lot of different types of legislation. So what I'll say is there's been so many different things Woodhill has worked on over its 21-year history. But right now in the year 2025, the things were most focused on as a small human rights organization. Our anti-sensorship efforts, so really affirming the human right to your freedom of expression. Most often that comes to talking about defending our First Amendment right to sexual speech. And we do a lot of public education around free speech. We also work to defend and protect the LGBTQIA+ community. And dispel disinformation about sexual freedom. One of our big projects is actually that's its main goal. And I'm sure we'll talk about that in a minute. We talk a lot about adult and entertainment issues. And generally, we also do a lot of work around the decriminalization of sex work and supporting the sex worker rights movement. So lots of different things. But as I would imagine a lot of your listeners would understand those communities and issues have a lot of overlap as well. Sure. Oh yeah. What I was going to say, it seems as if, you know, just those those two things, they sound relatively simple. However, just because of all that they encompass and all that they reach and what they touch actually has like a much broader effect. And much broader scope and scale of supporting and influencing or not influencing, but supporting and being able to make positive changes for those that fall under the umbrella, which is way more than what people probably realize. Yeah. Absolutely. And one of the things we that's really integral to our work at Woodhall is collaboration and coalition building. We really believe that we can't get anything done if we're the only people talking about it. And so we really pride ourselves on working with organizations, focused on a number of different issues. Woodhall is nonpartisan. The human rights framework is of course nonpartisan. We can't apologize if you can hear those. It's okay. It's one of the hazards living in New York City. But yeah, so we work really hard to collaborate with others and work across different issues. Because we do recognize the ways in which all of these things overlap. For purposes of your organization, how do you define sexual freedom? That's a great question. It's one that we get asked quite a lot. And it's personal autonomy. And it at it's most distilled definition, it's personal autonomy. You are right to make the decisions about your body. What we do is we work to make sure that everyone can be themselves. To love who they love express their sexuality or gender anyway they wish. And to say what they believe without unfair rules or people trying to stop them. We think that's fair. Sounds fair to me. It does. Sounds very weird to me. You would think this would be an overriner, right? Right. But sex is one of the first targets in any campaign. Anything about sex and sexuality. And it makes people who are not always in the mainstream vision. Who was that painter? I can't think of his name. Who always painted the perfect family. It's Rockwell. Norman. Norman Raphael. Okay, well, there is no such family. There probably never was any such family. I never figured out how they did the 2.5 children. But that's another story. So when people, I'm probably jumping around. But when people want to pass a law to take away some kind of rights, the easiest thing to point to is a marginalized community. And the easiest activity, because we are still a puritanical society, the easiest activity to use as justification is anything that's sexual. And this isn't new. I mean, this, you know, the first book burning in Nazi Germany was Magnus Hirschfield's entire library and collection. That was all focused on LGBT sexuality. And they burned his library and destroyed his institute. And we see that today. That's a lot of our work around censorship. As somebody who absolutely enjoys books, that is like just heartbreaking to, you know, here again and know and all of that just because, you know, for me, you know, reading is considered knowledge and knowledge is power. And, you know, that is a type of erasure for me. And, you know, it can, it, it has a rippling effect of, of a lot of different things. It does. And we've, we've seen this with bookbanging, right? And, you know, to your, to your point, knowledge is power. And so limiting access to knowledge is a tool. It's often a tool of various authoritarian regimes throughout history. But it's something we've seen really sweep the nation over the past. You know, I'm going to say like four to five years. Pan-America is an organization that studies bookbans and educational gag orders. And in their most recent report, they cite, you know, not only books that talk about LGBTQIA topics, but also books written by marginalized authors, whether they be LGBTQIA plus identifying, or they're written by people of color, are the most frequently targeted for bookbans. And also labeled as pornographic, right? And to Ricky's point about anything sexual sort of being the first target for sensors, labeling something pornographic is a really easy way to get it removed from libraries, particularly school libraries. Because, of course, you know, porn is for adults. And so mislabeling something as pornographic is a really easy way to get it banned or get it removed. And we've seen that tactic used really, really effectively in communities all over the country for several years now. Mm-hmm. Yeah, it just reminded me of, you know, like with the school bookbans, and such like that reminded me of a conversation that I had had some years ago with somebody, and they had commented when they had moved to the southern part of the United States. They had learned that some of the aspects of history books, just even in school history books, was written slightly differently than what's being put out there. And it was like, what? I was like, yeah, a slightly different history is taught just down south, A, B, C, D, whatever, through history, yeah. And then through US history, yeah. All right, well, you know, yeah, they don't teach that that way down there. You know, they say that history will be written by the last author writing. I'm very angry by that. Yeah. Which is scary. And I mean, that could be a really good thing, but nine times out of 10. I'm going to go with, that's a really scary thing. For example, I've never, until I was like in my 30s, heard anything about, you know, the Nazis and, you know, attacking the LGBT community first, or sex positive first, or even at all. And then, you know, the Jews and concentration camps, you can alter the facts to suit whatever narrative you want, which I guess will lead into my next question. What is fact checked by Woodhall? Fact check by Woodhall is probably our new, well, not probably is our newest project. And our goal with fact check is to dispel the very common myths we hear about sexual freedom topics. So we have built the program out now where we've got a couple different categories, but we started with what are the common myths people are hearing about pornogue? Because what we noticed, you know, as people talking about sexual freedom, we get called by the press, you know, rather frequently to comment on these topics. And we were very frequently having to start our conversations by just dispelling very basic myths about pornography, right? You know, for example, watching porn increases violence, that's something we address in our fact check myth. And so we're like, you know, it doesn't seem like there's anybody out there that's actually done the work to look at the research and dispel these myths that are kind of like out in the ether, right? They're like out in the popular media. We're hearing them all the time. And so that's what we set out to do. So we have a we hired a researcher and she, you know, looks at the facts and writes them up in a very like easy to understand way. Each myth, not only debunks a popular or each fact check article, not only debunks a popular myth, but also answer some questions around those myths. And so we're up to, I think almost 10 actually fact check articles at this point, they are all available totally for free on our website, which is what hall foundation.org. And also very easily downloadable as a PDF. And we did this because we want people to be able to take this knowledge out into spaces, you know, for example, this past week I was in Albany talking to lawmakers educating them around various sexual freedom issues. And they actually got to hand one of our one of our senators chief of staff, a fact check article about the difference between sex work and sex trafficking. And it was this great moment of like listen, I can sit here and talk to you until I'm blue in the face and provide education. But sometimes you do need a piece of paper, right, to hand to somebody with citations to kind of back up what you're saying. And that's the goal of fact check. And also if you want journalists to use it, we want folks who are talking to their lawmakers to use it. Also if folks are going to events and tabling or just like doing education, we purposely made it very accessible and easy to understand and easily downloadable. So those are all available on our website. And also in the process of social media, in them, so if folks are if they follow us at atwoodhall freedom, you'll see on our page, we started to kind of distill them down even more for that very rapid social media attention span. And yeah, so and we're continuing to grow the program also. So I will say, you know, as we get through each module, we're sort of like, okay, what, you know, what should we start with next. And so I'll also put a plug out there are folks have ideas about myths that they hear all the time that they want to be debunked. Please drop us online at info@woodhallfoundation.org because we intend to continue doing this and create a really large database of different fact check programs or articles rather. Sorry, that was it. There's there's certain aspects of you know, having having the research and being able to back it up with documentation and proof like that. Just it's one of those like, oh hey, that is definitely some of us that do social work type stuff. Like yep, yep, that's what we do if we like to do this. Like no, no, I can talk to you about this, but you know here. Sorry, it's one, sorry, that's just a total random sign note. No, it makes sense. There's something about putting it on a piece of paper that just like makes it official. You know, not just that that's all we did with fact check. I promised these aren't no, no, I'm excited, but there's just something, I don't know, something special about getting it actually printed. So the goal of this program was as Mandy said, journalist, legislators, attorneys, you know, we want them cited in court, an unintended use. But something we celebrated, nevertheless, was a student proposing her graduate dissertation be on pornography. And the her, I guess it's an approval board said no, that she could not write about pornography because blah blah blah blah, you know all the lies and bullshit about pornography. And she took them the, the fact checks on pornography and they read them and they said, oh, well, okay, then you can do your dissertation on pornography. That is fantastic. It's hard to refute facts. I mean, it can be done by just calling them lies, but these happen to be facts. But that is absolutely fantastic. And a one of those like really, I mean, again, something small, but how many people, you know, by reading just, you know, by one student bringing it to, you know, her powers that be, or, you know, to be able to write a dissertation and to be able to defend it. Because I also know like typically when you defend your dissertation, you're going to be in front of a panel of people. How many people now have we influenced just by, you know, having what sounds like, again, one simple sheet of paper of, you know, being able to show and to be able to go through and to do, you know, things again and set whole rippling effect. Totally, you know, there was some, this is tangential kind of, it's that rippling effect. Maryland had an act and it was called one of those catchy titles, unnatural or perverted sexual practice act. And we testified as they were considering whether to repeal it or not. It turns out that this was great. Marylanders could receive a misdemeanor conviction subject to imprisonment or a fine. For and I'm going to quote, taking the sexual organ of another or of an animal in the person's mouth, placing the person's person, the person's sexual organ in the mouth of another or of an animal. Or committing another unnatural or perverted sexual practice with another or with an animal in our letter that we wrote, we pointed out that if we suspected that if the council's constituents were aware that oral sex was against the law, there might be issues in the next election. That's one of the fun things about working at Woodhall. And you know, it takes an organization like Woodhall to be able to point that out. They are always so good at giving these things hot button names. Like how can you be against, you know, the, whatever. A natural or perverted sexual practices. Right. How can you be against that until you actually read it? Right. That seems to be part of the aim. It is. That's why, you know, when you, you look at any of the current legislation, look at age verification. Who can stand against protecting children? Nobody, right? I mean, we certainly don't believe the children shouldn't be protected from material that isn't age appropriate. But we also know that this age verification tsunami sweeping the country has nothing to do with protecting children because there were other ways of dealing with this. This is about blocking access to pornography and adult content. That's all that's about that's why nothing that's been proposed has, has gained traction. None of the arguments have gained traction with legislators because we're arguing the stated goals instead of the real goals. And for, for those who aren't familiar with age verification legislation, I just like give you a very quick 30 second. Run down. Starting in 2021 in New Orleans, they pass a bill that said any website that had had 33.3% or more of a quote material harmful to minors would have to age verify their users. And the way that they would have to do this is by using a software company not owned by the site. So, you know, like let's just take any porn site couldn't develop their own age verification software. They would have to employ a company to do this. And that company would have to verify the user's age using their state issued identification. So this means in order to access a porn website in Louisiana, a user would have to submit their information from their license to access the website. So you can imagine, you know, if you're in the privacy of your own home and logging on to a website to watch porn and all the sudden you could ask for your license. A lot of people were understandably a little freaked out by the. Particularly living in the climate we are now where we've got all sorts of data breaches and leaks happening all of the time. And so it's created a massive chilling effect where people, you know, will just exit out of the site or they'll find a site that doesn't age verify users. But the point of this legislation was to like Ricky said, quote unquote protect children by making it harder for them to access these explicit websites. So it's starting Louisiana in 2021 the bill was introduced. It has since been similar bills have been introduced and passed in 19 states. So there are 19 states in the US where you have to issue, you know, some sort of form of identification to access a website. And I will mention that the way this legislation works, sorry, this is longer than 30 seconds, but it's my last, my last point on this is it's all about where the user is. So it doesn't matter if I'm creating my content in, you know, a state that doesn't have an age verification law or even outside of the US. And so the user is accessing it within one of these states that has the age verification laws on the books, the host or the website owner can be find or in some instances, they're actually criminal charges for the websites who don't age verify. So it's pretty scary. We have a lot of concerns about free speech related to age verification laws as well as privacy concerns. Just a little quick, quick intro on these laws. Gotcha. What are some of the other facts that you guys have checked? Yeah, well, we did do a fact check on age verification. We've done two of them. One answers the question of is age verification online the same as flashing your idea to liquor store as I'm kind of just explained. No, it's not. We have also done, we have a series we've started about fact checks related to sex work. So we have one about is sex work the same as sex trafficking. And we have more coming. We also released one recently. This was sort of like a special edition fact check around the Super Bowl because there's a myth that sex trafficking increases during major sporting events like the Super Bowl. And we talked about the harms that happen when there's increased media attention around sex trafficking. So those are some of them, but definitely encourage folks to head on over to our website because they are all there for folks to read. What other projects does Woodhall work on besides the fact check? So we actually we work on a lot of projects. Sometimes it's a little overwhelming. We have as I think Mandy mentioned earlier, we have a monthly censorship program. It's called the censoring of sexual freedom. And each month we highlight a different impact of censorship on some area under that broad umbrella of sexual freedom. So the program is is it two years old, Mandy? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Wow. Into our third now. The programs are fantastic. And the speakers are so diverse and well educated and experienced in the various issues. It's an extraordinary. The program that we make available for free. We have a here at Woodhall, we have a core commitment to accessibility. And that includes financial accessibility. So every program, every recording we do, we provide ASL. And every program that we record is free. So we're very proud of that. That particular program it it's just astounding. We do a program in collaboration with new moon network. It's called Spokes hub like a Spokes hub, you know, of the wheel and the spokes. And it is for people with experience. Current or former in the sex trades. And it's an education program. And the goal of the program is to arm. People. With the information and the skills they need to go out into the world and talk about their lived experiences and. And to create change around sex and sex markets. It's an academy. And it does support people with those lived experiences. So through there's a class. I mean, there are several classes. We have graduations each year. Last year we had two graduations. It's a very exciting program as well. One of the things that makes it unique is that after you graduate from Spokes hub. You become eligible to participate in rewards for. Paying people. Compensating people for their time and for their skills. And the classes are led almost exclusively by people with lived experience in the sex trade. So it's, it's what we call hard skill trainings like media readiness and public speaking. But it's also subject matter deep dives and group discussion spaces. So that's a program. And the staff. What else are we doing? Well, it's not a formal program, but we are consistently commenting on legislation, whether that be sending our lawmakers letters or actually doing testimony where we can. You know, we are, we are in the state houses talking to lawmakers about sexual freedom issues and really making that connection very apparent. The connection between sexual freedom and human rights. So that of course means that we're also monitoring that legislation. So we are tracking legislation all over the country at the federal state and local levels. And commenting and making our voice heard where we can. We are big on supporting local communities in those efforts. So, you know, very often if we see an alarming bill in a particular state, I'll just name Oklahoma because there's a senator and Oklahoma who's introduced eight bills this session that are all pretty horrific. When we're talking about human rights and sexual freedom. You know, we try to reach out to folks who are on the ground living there and say like, hey, we see this. We're concerned about it. You know, what can we do to support? You know, like I said, we're big on collaboration. We don't need to be riding in on our white horse trying to take over anywhere. So if folks do have an issue in their community, please reach out to us via our website. We have a legislative support request there. So if there's a particular bill, you know, even if it's at the city council level or you know, parish level or whatever. If folks, you know, give us a little bit of information. We can do a little bit of research and decide whether or not it makes sense for us to comment and support. Because we know that sexual freedom and human rights are not very often at the forefront of our lawmakers minds. So we're trying very hard to make them pay attention and listen to these issues and communities. So not an explicit project of the foundation, but definitely something we're doing. We expand on just one thing that I realized I left out, which is our human rights commissions. Yeah, sure. So the human rights commissions are another educational tool we have where we will take a particular issue and we will ask folks who have experienced human rights violations related to that to testify. We're bringing together experts and leaders in that particular field to provide our attendees with information on how we can change that particular issue and that we tie this all to a call to action. So a few years ago, we hosted a human rights commission actually about censorship and we had six different folks talk about how the censoring of sexual freedom topics impacted their life. And we have a human rights expert who analyzes their testimony and highlights the specific human rights violations present in their testimony. And then these are an evergreen tool to be able to talk to, you know, sort of the powers that be not only our lawmakers, but maybe folks in nonprofit organizations, community groups and say like, hey, you know, here is a personal experience of somebody who's experienced this. And here's what you can do to change it. And I just want to mention in addition to all of our programs being free to attend, they also live on our YouTube page. So all of the human rights commissions that we've run are on our YouTube page available for people to watch and share in addition to all of the censorship of sexual freedom programs and a good number of the spoke subclasses are available there for people as well. So, you know, they can access them at access them at any time, you know, as long as they have an internet. I mean, we've mentioned, you know, a lot of the censorship going around lately. I am going to read from an email I got from you guys last week. It's been reported that the words, "Buy-pock, Black, Latinx, cultural differences, disability, diverse group equality, gender, female, historically inclusive LGBT racism, trauma, and women have been flagged for cuts to federal research spending." That's a scary list of words to be censored. Like, some of those I can understand why they're going after, but historically, that's, I mean, it's terrifying. Well, remember back at the beginning of the conversation, we talked about the wide net and the rewriting of history. And if you're going to re-write history and it's going to be a lie, then you have to destroy evidence of the truth, right? Oh yeah, that's why not see Germany have bookburnings just destroy the evidence. Now, the list, this list, by the way, is an effect. If you go on Instagram, you'll, or LinkedIn, you can tell there's only two I go on. You will see post-ector, post-ector, post from researchers talking about how they lost access to funds in the middle of the research project. Wow. That email was for actually a censorship of sexual freedom program. I interviewed three different researchers who research various parts of sexuality is really interesting. I learned quite a bit from them, but one of the researchers, her name's Dr. Nicole Prousey. She does a lot of work around porn and sexuality in general. And she said that the week, I believe that first came out in an executive order. And the week that that came out, she had just supplied for a new grant and it was totally blocked. Now, I will say a lot of these executive orders are being challenged in court. And so there's a lot of information coming at us, right, all of the time in the news. And a lot of this stuff is happening and being challenged. But the side effect when these things happen is sometimes there's not even a policy or a rule change at a particular institution. But an institution may be afraid that they could be at risk for losing funding. So they're going to make a decision not to support this kind of work before anything actually officially changes. So there's a lot of that happening in the air too. You know, that's referred to as the chilling effect. So I would just say to folks who are listening like, yes, it's scary. Yes, be aware. And don't obey in advance. Don't chill our speech before we need to. And also, there is a lot of like, we have to do a lot of our own research to figure out what's actually happening. When it comes to these things as well, just because of the flurry of stuff coming out of Washington. That executive order was executive order number one, four, one, five, one. And it was ending radical and wasteful government, DEI programs and preferences. So let's talk about something a little more positive. What is something that Woodhall Fiedham Foundation has done or accomplished that you're particularly proud of? I'm proud of everything we've done. That was my simple answer. I'm just being a crash. Nothing wrong with that. Yeah, honestly, everything we have done has helped to create the kind of world to move us toward the kind of world we're hoping to create. And there are things that stand out, like back in 2008, we actually testified in Congress. Against the censoring of pornography. In 2011, we went to Geneva as part of the United Nations Universal Periodic Review of the United States. First time it ever happened in history. And we were able to get a recommendation passed recommendation 86. This is one of those things where it's like no, seriously. There was so much lobbying involved in getting that passed. And what it essentially says is violence against sex workers is a human rights violation. That's another one of those where you think you shouldn't have to fight for that, right? But we did. We totally did. And in accepting that recommendation, the United States agreed to work on correcting that human rights violation. You see how well that's going. But I'm still proud that we did it. I'm incredibly proud of our longest running program, which was Woodhall's Sexual Freedom Summit. And in many, that's how we got Mandy, by the way. Mandy volunteered many, many years ago for the summit. And when you meet Mandy, you just know you can't ever let her go. Mandy, why don't you talk about the summit? Sure. So the summit ran for 12 years. It was a conference. It took place just outside of DC. And we brought together people from all walks of life to talk about how we advocate for sexual freedom. So it was really cool because you had folks from the King community. You had sex workers. You had sex therapists and educators. You had folks from the adult industry, you know, rubbing elbows for four days and really talking strategy around, you know, how we create this world. And I'm sure that we're sexual freedom is fully recognized as a fundamental human right. I was just thinking that it never fails. Sensorship comes in all forms. Yes, it does. But I am still speaking. You can't hear me. So the sexual freedom summit was great. It was an amazing event. Like I said, we ran it for 12 years in person. And it brought together all sorts of really interesting people. And I know you all have had Hardy Haberman on the podcast. And Hardy presented there every year. He was on our board for a number of the years when we held the summit. And it was great. You know, it was not. I think you're hard pressed to get all of these different communities together in one place. And so it was so special to have everybody together, you know, for four days. It always kind of felt a little bit like a family reunion of the family members you want to see not the ones you're trying to avoid. Yeah, it was it was great. And yes, Ricky mentioned I volunteered for the summit. And that was kind of it for me. I've been around ever since. Yeah, the summit was wonderful. What are you most proud of, Mandy, which probably? Well, I was going to say, you know, in 2025, I'm most proud that we still exist. And I'm not I'm not like joking when I say that because there's so many organizations we work with that have lost federal funding, you know, in the last couple of months or have been the subject of various attacks. And so I really am very proud that we're still here and we're still speaking up for these issues because the reality of the situation for Woodhall is we're not popular regardless of who's in power. You know, Democrats and Republicans alike don't generally like to talk about sexual freedom. So we're kind of used to having to deal with adversity and I'm just glad we're still around to keep talking the talk. I'm walking the walk, but I will say one thing you didn't mention, Ricky, that I do think is important is we do do some work in work. So yeah, I know I think I think we're trying to forget because we're scarred by the experience, but in 2018 we took on a law called Sesta Fosta, Fosta stands for the Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act. This was signed into law during Trump's first administration. And basically what it said is that any website provider, so I'm you know, I'm talking everything from Facebook to Craigslist. They were if they had content on their platforms that quote unquote promoted sex trafficking, they could be held liable for that content. And you know, again, similar to the age verification laws, we actually think Fosta is kind of a precursor to the age verification laws we're dealing with now, but created a chilling effect. So Fosta is the reason you don't see Craigslist with a personal section anymore because the owners decided to take it down because they were concerned that content there could be misconstrued as promoting sex trafficking. So in 2018, we convened a legal team and challenged that law in court. The lawsuit lasted six years, I think. And we made it. I thought it was 300. It felt like 300. Courts do not move quickly. Oh my gosh. So frustrating. The pace at which they move. But we made it all the way to the DC Circuit Court with that challenge. And ultimately the law was not overturned, but we did succeed in having the language narrowed quite a bit. So, yeah, and you know, we continue to submit briefs in various cases and work with other organizations to hold our legislators accountable in that way. So, yeah, but I think that the legal challenge to Fosta was a pretty big deal. Yeah, sure. I'm sure I say that. Yeah, it's one of those, like, even if you don't get what you set out to accomplish right away, you've still made a difference and a change to really, you know, really work on things. You know, even that in itself is a win. Yeah, you know, Nadine Smith, who is the executive director of the quality Florida. And we know wisely said we have to for our own sanity redefine what we consider success. So even if you're holding town halls to try to block a piece of legislation and you begin with one person and then each week the attendance grows and grows and grows until you have a community there. And if the legislation passes anyway, well, that sucks, but there's a huge success you mobilize to community that is now there and together to respond even more quickly to the next violation or proposed violation. This may sound like a silly question because there are so many, but what is the biggest challenge to your organization? Other than this administration fair. Oh, there was my smile. I mean, I almost said the same thing too, but. Honestly, I would say that our biggest challenge is support is the money to do and to continue and to expand in order to respond to this administration, the work that we've been doing for 22 years. I would say that's our greatest challenge. So how can people support you? How can people get involved? Well, it's easy to support us. You can just go right to our website, which is woodhallfoundation.org. That's W-O-O-D-H-U-L-L Foundation. That's one word dot org and click on the donate button. We don't accept any first point children. We don't want your car, but we would love your financials. No magic means. No magic. Oh, well, I know. I would also say for folks who are going to kick events, some of our best instances of support have been from the raffles or the auctions at those events. So if you're an organizer of one of those spaces and you would be willing to donate the proceeds to woodhall, we would be extremely grateful. And you can reach out to us if you would want some help supporting that. I'm happy to send you some woodhall swag. We have really, really fun door hangers, which would be really great during like a hotel takeover. And my email is mandy@woodhallfoundation.org M-A-N-D-Y. So, you know, that's another way if you are, if it's not feeling doable to individually support, we would welcome support from organizations or events as well. And spread the word. That's a good way because even if you yourself don't have the means to financially support the organization, the more people you talk to about the amazing work what woodhall does, the more likely it is that someone will have the ability to support us. Actually do it anyway, even if you do have the means to support us, please help spread the word. Yeah, it also really helps if you follow us on social media. We are the frequent target of shadow banning and down ranking, which means that folks are not able to search for our account or get the really good information we're putting out there. So, we're at Woodhall Freedom on all platforms and that's a really, really easy way to help support us is to follow, like, and share our content. And I'm seeing Facebook, Blue Sky, LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok. Yeah, we're not as active on TikTok, but all the other platforms you mentioned plus Instagram. I don't know if you mentioned Instagram or not. I think I missed that one, but well, as it gets to be about that time, is there anything else you would like everybody to know about or organization? I'd like to give everybody a little bit of hope. I feel like, you know, Ricky and I show up to an event and we talk about doom and gloom and how awful some of the legislation we're tracking is and that can be really hard to hear. But we are not going anywhere and everybody has a place in this movement, whether you're kinky or not. So, if you are interested in getting active in your community in any way, shape, or form, I encourage you to do so. Everybody has a skill. I'm really good at spreadsheets and that's how I help my community by helping them organize things. So, I just want to leave everybody with that note is that we're not going anywhere and we are really trying to positively change things. And if you're feeling like there's an org out there that doesn't represent your needs, please reach out to us so that we can help support you. Very good. Can I add to the, it's not all doom and gloom. I mean, we're talking 99% to 1% here, but still, there is light where we're seeing more and more legal challenges being filed by organizations that have almost seemed dormant in prior years and they're stepping up and they're filing lawsuits. We just got a positive decision in one of our lawsuits. It was the where we filed an amicus brief. It was, which is a friend of the court brief, which is meant to educate the court on the issues from the perspective of the people filing. And this was where grinder. I said that. I'm sure I did. Grinder was sued because an underage. Who lied to get into the site ended up getting raped on a date. And they wanted to hold grinder responsible for what happened to the young person. And we prevailed and grinder was not held level. To me, it was a bit like suing ways. WZ, ways because they gave you directions and you got an accident. The site had clear guardrails to keep underage people out. So, so there's a positive too. Very good. Really positive, because even, you know, even if the light is small, they're still light and more light. Even just a little bit of light can actually, you know, bring about more. Oh, here's another big light. This is way more than 1%. The midterms are in 2020. Oh, that's even better. And the Republicans have lots of seats up for reelection. We can take back control in 2026. So, if you're not registered, please register. If you don't want to go to the polls, get an absentee ballot and mail it in. Just make sure you vote. And if you're voting, please vote for sexual freedom and human rights. Absolutely. Which does not have a party. I will just add that. Yeah, it does not have a party. It has the local freedom. I'm of the, you know, voting for human rights does not take away from anyone. It actually still supports lots and lots of people who think it does not affect them. Exactly. Because once you allow, as you said, you know, monitoring the censorship and trying to make those changes, but once you allow some of that, well, it's easy enough to curtail things that, you know, you think don't affect you. And they widely will. Yeah, I am a very strong believer that participation in kink is inherently a political act. It is against the norms. And therefore you can't separate your politics from your kink. And I am very appreciative of all the work that you guys do and organizations like you do. And I am glad to help spread the word by having you on this podcast. And, yeah, thank you for being on the show. Absolutely. Thank you for having us. All right. Well, you've been a great guest. I've enjoyed learning all about Woodhall Freedom Foundation for our listeners upcoming synagogue in person and virtual classes include perfect strangers negotiating scenes with strangers at cons and dungeons. Leave your mark, self-popping, quills and Gwasha and chain fisting for more information on those classes. Visit our website. Remember, your kinks are nothing, movie ashamed of. Unless, of course, you have a humiliation fetish in which case you should be very, very ashamed, you dirty little pervert. But that's it. That's our show. Say goodnight, little bit. Goodnight, little bit.(incomplete thought)