The National Sexuality Resource Center (NSRC) is a San Francisco-based organization which advocates the positive representation of human sexuality

Human sexuality

Human sexuality is the awareness of gender differences, and the capacity to have erotic experiences and responses. Human sexuality can also be described as the way someone is sexually attracted to another person whether it is to opposite sexes , to the same sex , to either sexes , or not being...

, creates educational content, and provides training about human sexuality. The center also counters what it views as negative representations of sexuality while fostering dialog of sexuality issues as a natural part of being human.

NSRC opened in 2003 and is directed by Gilbert Herdt

Gilbert Herdt

Gilbert H. Herdt is Professor of Human Sexuality Studies and Anthropology and a Founder of the Department of Sexuality Studies and National Sexuality Resource Center at San Francisco State University.-Biography:...

, an anthropologist who pioneered the cross-cultural study of sexuality. He authored Guardians of the Flute, an examination of sexual rituals in New Guinea

New Guinea

New Guinea is the world's second largest island, after Greenland, covering a land area of 786,000 km2. Located in the southwest Pacific Ocean, it lies geographically to the east of the Malay Archipelago, with which it is sometimes included as part of a greater Indo-Australian Archipelago...

. The center is affiliated with San Francisco State University

San Francisco State University

San Francisco State University is a public university located in San Francisco, California. As part of the 23-campus California State University system, the university offers over 100 areas of study from nine academic colleges...

 and is supported through the Ford Foundation

Ford Foundation

The Ford Foundation is a private foundation incorporated in Michigan and based in New York City created to fund programs that were chartered in 1936 by Edsel Ford and Henry Ford....

’s Global Dialogue on Sexuality.

NSRC activities have included an Internet-based "sexual literacy campaign" called SexLiteracy.org, the University Consortium for Sexuality Research and Training, an annual Summer Institute, and the Sexual Health Literacy Project in partnership with College of the Redwoods

College of the Redwoods

College of the Redwoods is a public two-year community college whose main campus, comprising , is located on the southernmost edge of Eureka in Humboldt County, California. This sprawling site is spacious and distinctive in its modernistic use of massive, exposed wooden support beams in each...

 in Eureka, California.

In 2006, NSRC hosted the first annual Champions of Sexual Literacy Awards commemorating former Surgeon General David Satcher

David Satcher

David Satcher, M.D., Ph.D. FAAFP, FACPM, FACP is an American physician, and public health administrator. He was a four-star admiral in the United States Public Health Service Commissioned Corps and served as the 10th Assistant Secretary for Health, and the 16th Surgeon General of the United...

’s call to action on sexual health and "responsible sexual behavior". Awardees were thinkMTV

MTV

MTV, formerly an initialism of Music Television, is an American network based in New York City that launched on August 1, 1981. The original purpose of the channel was to play music videos guided by on-air hosts known as VJs....

, B. D. Wong, former Surgeon General Joycelyn Elders, Bernard Goldstein, and Anke Ehrhardt of the HIV

HIV

Human immunodeficiency virus is a lentivirus that causes acquired immunodeficiency syndrome , a condition in humans in which progressive failure of the immune system allows life-threatening opportunistic infections and cancers to thrive...

 Center at Columbia University.

NSRC publishes the journal Sexuality Research and Social Policy. The Center has also published the magazine American Sexuality.