Forget coupling up this Tuesday (February 14). We may actually heed the advice of Justin Bieber this Valentine’s Day and go and love ourselves.

At least, that’s what The Bad Academy founder Amanda Kao (and a group of eager students) will be doing at the Feelin’ Myself: Self-Pleasure workshop on Tuesday evening.  

Presented in collaboration with Rolla Skate Club, the Feelin’ Myself workshop promises to touch on the basics of a healthy, happy sex life “whether it be with yourself or with a partner or partners,” facilitated by clinical sexologist Dr. Ashleigh Turner and author Kat Stark.

“The Bad Academy has always been about taking care of yourself,” says Kao. “Investing in yourself and your mind is the best and smartest thing you can do in terms of your own personal development. And learning is fun, [especially] if you let yourself be bad at it.”

Established in 2019, The Bad Academy is the brainchild of Kao, who started putting together a series of workshops for women and non-binary folks in hopes they’d find both education and camraderie. There have been 89 different classes since its inception—from car and bike maintenance to rock climbing to skateboarding, self defense and taxidermy, just to name a few. 

So why self-pleasure, why now?

“The whole ethos of Bad Academy is to make sure women are self-reliant and self-confident. Start with the basics of pleasure—which is such a primal, animalistic behaviour of ours. If you can accomplish that and you can master it, I just feel like it can open so many avenues or open parts of [your] mind that [you] didn’t know were available.”

This workshop also comes off the heels of another Bad Academy session: the Sex Re-Education class, which saw people signing up in droves, including folks working in the sex industry who wanted to understand what consumers were curious about and what their questions around sex were.

“I think there’s a misconception that we should all feel pleasure through sex or a certain kind of sex, when in reality, everyone is completely different and the way we experience pleasure is completely different,” Kao says.

Through Turner’s experience as a sexologist, she’ll explore topics like what constitutes a healthy sex life, body confidence and, of course, self-pleasure. Meanwhile, Stark will be using their extensive knowledge of sex toys, and bringing their personal toy chest, to walk participants through the basic types of toys (vibrators, dildos, butt plugs, suction devices, and accessories like harnesses and lube).

There will also be a fishbowl where people can drop questions anonymously and the facilitators will answer them.

“We want to make sure that this is an environment for everybody, but also my goal is to make people who are timid about it, feel comfortable,” Kao explains.

“Not only is it not shameful to experience self-pleasure, there are ways to make it better for ourselves. What I’m trying to accomplish with workshops like this is just to make sure that women understand how important it is that they feel pleasure, for themselves, and they can get it from themselves. They don’t need to rely on other people for it—especially men,” Kao says with a laugh.

Feelin’ Myself: A Workshop on Self Pleasure takes place Tuesday, February 14 at 8 PM. Register your spot at https://www.thebadacademy.com/product/feelin-myself-a-workshop-on-self-pleasure. 

Check out The Bad Academy‘s new website and merch store and stay tuned for more exciting programming updates.

Feature photo credit: Sid Baar of Say Hey