Recent content in Samuel Killermann's Curriculum Vitae on by Sam Killermann
My last Now update was in March, so roughly eleven years ago in Covid Time. Wow: "Covid Time" — that didn't even exist then. What a wild seventy-five years these past six months have been. Somehow I've managed to get anything done, and now I'm working on other things. Here's what. First, my now is occupied by delivering the things I’ve already created and co-created: Facilitator Cards, obvs,…
Sam Killermann is an artist, author, and award-winning activist who focuses on themes of gender, sexuality, and global justice. Through his free online resources, books, curricula, and comedy shows, Sam travels the globe telling a story about a possible future where everyone is healthy, understood, educated, and safe. Killermann’s work (that he uncopyrighted in 2013) has been downloaded by…
The New York Times said, “[Killermann’s] perfectly O.K. with being known as the toilet sign guy.” And it’s true. I am. They said that because of the all-gender restroom sign I designed, that has been spread all over the world, and is now in use in thousands of communities. Truthfully, that project was an outlier, more than represetative of what I do. I’m not a…
“One day, not so long ago, a pair of co-facilitators had gotten themselves into trouble. Their three-day training was just one week away, and they learned their plan wouldn’t work and they didn’t have time to get the information they needed to make a new plan. (Oh no!) What were they going to do? They would have to create the training as it happened, using each activity to plan the next.
Kickstarters are a lot of work, but most of it's behind us at this point. After talking to dozens of manufacturers, testing out countless material samples and concepts, designing and tweaking and refining, and getting feedback from lots of our favorite facilitator friends, we're ready to make Facilitator Cards a thing. We just need a few hundred other people to want them as much as we do. All…
January was a month of public thinking. I wrote and published over 300 pages of a new book on my blog. February is for editing, solidifying, and lining up the publishing. This book will be the culmination of a lot of the work I’ve been doing for the past few years. Writing about social justice dogma at IPM, attempting a podcast, creating and launching a course, and more. It’s also, in…
You might as well call me Samta (no pressure), 'cuz I'm delivering presence all over the world. And it's not just IPM, I'm rummaging through the hues workshop and grabbing everything that isn't passed its expiration date. But it really started with IPM. I realized a few months ago how inaccessible IPM was, despite that being one of my core values. Sadly, IPM wasn’t accessible in three…
Yesterday, I sent emails to several thousand people, making the Social Justice, Minus Dogma Online Course + Community as official as it will ever be. Within moments, we had 7 people enrolled. Within 30 minutes, I was reviewing the first submitted response from a student. That was a little bewildering to me. Someone who, before getting that email, couldn’t have possibly been expecting to…
“If you’re willing to challenge your personal comfort, prioritize bravery over ideological safety, be humble with your learning & generous with your teaching, and push dogma, performance, & posturing to the side in favor of outcomes, action, & authenticity, this is the space you’ve been looking for. We’re thrilled to meet you.” Social Justice, Minus Dogma is a continuation of the work…
I am in the process of creating two big new projects. Both are well underway, with lots of things you can check out right now. One is a Social Justice, Minus Dogma Online Course & Community, which lives at www.sjmd.space. This was the result of asking people on IPM if it was something they’d want, and having (now) thousands of people reply “Yes!” I’m creating the project in…
Defining LGBTQ+, A Guide to Gender & Sexuality Terminology is a printer-friendly (8.5” x 11” format), short e-book (just 37 pages), that is better thought of as an elaborately annotated glossary than a book-book. It originated from the glossary of A Guide to Gender and my post Comprehensive List of LGBTQ+ Vocabulary Definitions, which evolved into a collaboration with Meg Bolger as the…
As part of our ongoing Train-the-Trainer Toolkit, Meg & I wrote and published a comprehensive retreat guide for Safe Zone Train-the-Trainers. It includes (from the blog post announcement): All the individual activities we’d recommend for a TTT, from the LGBTQ+ content knowledge to the facilitator skills Advice on logistics, participant selection, supplies, prep, etc. A retreat schedule with…
“In most cases being a good boss means hiring talented people and then getting out of their way.” — Tina Fey For 2019, I’m trying something new: I’m searching for bosses. 2018 was a year of intense reflection, and reorganization. I took baby steps to try to fund my online work directly (instead of how I’d been doing it before, by speaking & performing –…
Be My Boss(es) is a splash page for my Patreon profile, explaining how I am doing Patreon, and patronage, for anyone who wants to employ me. I built it with Hugo and it’s being served up with Netlify – just like this site you’re reading this on.
“Progress is born of doubt and inquiry. The Church never doubts, never inquires. To doubt is heresy, to inquire is to admit that you do not know—the Church does neither.” — Robert G. Ingersoll Now, in bullets: I’m working on my podcast, Heretic: Social Justice, Minus Dogma (Wanna help? Or suggest a guest? Click here.) Publishing regular content about gender, sexuality, and social…
With guest activists, authors, and artists who have who have been pushed to the fringes by the movement, spent their lives fighting for social justice, or fighting against it, Heretic is a light conversation about the darkness in society. It’s also the scariest thing I’ve ever done. I started writing about The Social Justice Dogma on It’s Pronounced Metrosexual in December of…
The Safe Zone Project 2.0 is what Meg & I have been saying to refer to the revamp of the online resource, so that’s what I’ll call it here. Highlights of Version 2.0: Online courses, with a seamlessly integrated learning management system A clearinghouse of resources for launching your own Safe Zone program (called the Train-the-Trainer Toolkit) Improved accessibility, site structure,…
My now is a lot of new. The first new – and this is 100% the most important thing I’m working on – is learning all things puppy. Training? Feeding? Pooping? Scooping? Yes. As any other expecting parent in 2018, I’ve turned to the internet for help. Good news: lots of people have great advice for me and my pup. Great news: I’m still not an anti-vaxxer. The new pup is a…
Welcome to the seventh version of samuelkillermann.com. At least – I think that’s right. One thing I’m sure of: it’s been a linear path of “Each one is better than the last.” Sometimes embarrassingly better. If you’re curious about what the old versions of this site looked like, by all means step into the Wayback Machine and take a tour. Don’t say I…
I’m writing from a coffee shop in Austin, TX where I just spent two hours trying to get this site to deploy on Netlify. Annnnd success? Success. This site is part of a huge life restructuring I’m currently undertaking. I wrote about it on my blog, but here’s the highlighted version: My primary org (hues) dissolved in its original vision at the beginning of this year I’m no…
“Every shirt is political. It’s not just about what a shirt says on the front; it’s about what you’re saying when you buy it or wear it. If you buy a shirt that was manufactured with unethical labor, you’re making a statement in favor of abuse. The same goes for the corporation who you buy it from, or the materials it’s made with.” (from the About Page)
I co-created the Columns & Shadows model with friend / sex educator / curriculum writer extraordinaire Karen Rayne. We put our heads together to help sex educators answer a question a lot of students struggle with: what makes a relationship healthy or unhealthy? Here’s a quote from article I wrote to introduce the Columns & Shadows Model: “It’s hard to define what a healthy…
“When many of us start facilitating, we find ourselves learning a new skill without a lot of guidance or direction. We are passionate about the information and content that we are communicating, but we’re often less versed in tips and techniques regarding how to communicate that information. This project is a free online resource that is to ensure that none of us have to navigate this world…
I co-created the Sexualitree model with friend / sex educator / curriculum writer extraordinaire Karen Rayne. We put our heads together to help sex educators introduce a popular concept to students: “comprehensive sexuality education.” From the About page: “The Sexualitree is a way to see how we experience sexuality in different ways. Sexuality affects us on different levels of…
This adorable, shareable, and oh-so-subtly-activist love poem was inspired by Everyone in the 90s’ experience in high school. “Writing with non-gender-neutral pronouns is a serious pain. Some prefer the Frankenword “s/he,” while others rack their brain. Some stick with a particular pronoun for one paragraph or chapter, then swap out the one they’re using; thers alternate “he” and “she” by…
“Have you ever been in a training and marveled at how quickly the time flew by? Genuinely enjoyed a meeting you were expecting to dread? Learned something powerful about a topic you thought wouldn’t engage you? Experienced an intimate, vulnerable, transformative moment with a group of total strangers? Then you’ve witnessed the magic of facilitation.” (excerpt from the book…
My third (and final) TEDxTalk, where I present a sort of unified theory of social justice, explaining what it means to “do the work,” and how we can do it. I performed this talk at TEDxYouth in San Diego for the theme “We Can’t Wait.” I combined theories from some of my favorite thinkers to create a road map for aspiring social justice advocates. Unfortunately, due to…
An experiment in gift economy and social justice, SJC is where I serve as Head Elf. The cards are all doodled and written by me, but that’s not the important part. What’s exciting about this project was the bar I set for myself: can I create a business that sells a physical thing that is 100% socially/environmentally/globally just. That is, that doesn’t create harm or compromise…
This is the project that led to The New York Times publishing “[Killermann is] perfectly O.K. with being known as the toilet sign guy.” Damn right I am, New York Times! Nothing would make me happier. You can read all about how this sign came to be on It’s Pronounced Metrosexual, and I won’t repeat myself here. What I’ll say instead are a few things that I don’t…
“A book about gender with no mention of the word ‘hegemony,’ but plenty of references to Star Wars, The Matrix, Lord of the Rings, and Star Trek– with less of a focus on overwhelming scholarship and more of a focus on enjoyable learning.” (excerpt from the book’s (first edition) description) I wrote this book because a bunch of people asked me to. It was a…
Meg and I created The Safe Zone Project in 2013 to serve as a free online resource for folks doing LGBTQ awareness and ally trainings (AKA “safe zone trainings”).
My second TEDxTalk, disentangling gender identity, expression, and sex in a fun and sometimes-rhyming way.
You have been told all your life that you’re unique, you’re special, like a snowflake. Nobody is like you, you’re one in 7 billion (or one in 108 billion, an estimated total number of humans ever, if you want to get technical), and nobody can take that away from you. Yet at the same time you’ve been told that you can guess that someone else will be like everyone else in a particular group based on…
I published my first version of the Genderbread Person, an adorable, digestible model for understanding the complexity of gender, to accompany an essay in 2011 (and made a more printer-friendly version early in 2012). I went on to create several versions of this model, improving and tweaking it based on feedback, and it’s been adapted and remixed by countless other educators and…
My first TEDxTalk, about the ideas of chasing your dreams, what’s at stake, and what we have to lose.
I wrote the show that became “It’s Pronounced Metrosexual” while I was in grad school. It was my “Plan B” for if I don’t find a job in higher education. We were still in a recession, and jobs were tough to come by. The online resource aspect of IPM, by about 100-fold the most popular byproduct of the site, was the result of a suggestion by my partner at the…
I’ve published a few books, written a few more, and contributed chapters to more still. Below are my books that are currently out and available for purchase. ⚠️ Hey there! I have a new book coming out soon. It's all about problematic activism and social justice dogma. Want an email when it's available for pre-order? Join the List → A generally important note: every book I’ve written (or…