Sex Talk in the city

“[Our work has] given us an understanding of just how vast an arena sex and sexuality is.” (Andrea Dobbs)

 Some thoughts from Womyn’sWare – a Sex Talk in the City Project Ally

As the retail design and display manager of Womyns’Ware I wear a lot of hats. Sometimes I’m buried under a pile of catalogues trying to select tasteful, safe, quality sex toy amidst a sea of cheap, tacky, or disturbing products. Or I’m trolling industrial design sites in Europe looking for innovative approach to sex toys design. I support customers and staff, collaborate with our founders to design and produce fixtures and displays that support our wares, and I participate in the communication efforts. When all is said and done, I feel I’ve developed the skills of a researcher, an educator, and an artist.

So when Womyns’Ware was asked to participate in the MOV Sex Talk in the City project I was overjoyed! Helping to create a visual and tangible feast for Vancouverites to engage in with the goal of enlightenment at its core is right up our alley. What can we bring to the table? How about 17 years of front line work with women and their partners in search of sexual empowerment. Our customers have fundamentally informed our approach to what we do and have given us an understanding of just how vast an arena sex and sexuality is.

As an organization we’ve faced censorship, unwarranted legal barriers, black listing, and fear mongering — and it’s left us keenly aware of society’s fears around sexuality. We’ve encountered wonderful allies over the years such as Options for Sexual Health, midwifery clinics, progressive faith organizations, sex educators in North America and abroad, cottage industry proprietors, and physicians in private practice. Through these welcomed (and even the not so welcomed) engagements we’ve enjoyed an exchange of ideas and information that has made for layers of knowledge difficult to parallel under any other circumstance.

And yet there is so much to learn! We have experiences to share and artifacts to loan —we arguably have a collection of vibrators that rivals even the best sex toy museums! From the early 1900 Hamilton Beach New Life Vibrator donated to us in the very early days of our business by an aged man who understood right away that we’d be the place to appreciate and display his family heirloom to the 1956s Sonoid Spheroid Action vibe (complete with packaging and instruction manual) donated to us by a lovely woman whose mother had passed away and who couldn’t bring herself to sell it at the yard sale!

We’re very much looking forward to seeing the first iteration of the exhibition design concepts, and to continuing this discussion of sexuality and sex education over the upcoming year.

Andrea Dobbs has worked as Design and Display Manager at Womyns’Ware since 2004.

Incorporating Videography in the Exhibition Narrative + Space:

Looking back at my adolescence in Greater Vancouver through the 1980’s, one of my more poignant recollections of sexual education was that of my Junior High School physical education teacher uncomfortably explaining to our class the reproductive aspects of our developing bodies.

It isn’t the content I remember so much as the awkwardness of the whole affair; the unstated recognition by everyone in the room that there was a great deal being left out about sex, sexuality, and the very experiences many of us were already starting to explore for ourselves. I’ve often felt that what was absent from the lesson has had more impact on our lives than what was presented to us.

Presently, I find myself revisiting my queries about the pedagogy of sexual education through a filming contract with the MOV for the upcoming exhibition Sex Talk in the City. I’ve begun filming Vancouverites as they recall their early sexual education and burgeoning sexualities, recounting how the ways they’ve learned about sex at school, home, and in peer groups continue to influence their level of comfort with their bodies, as well as their sexual expression and the safe and unsafe practices they have engaged in. What enthralls me is hearing how these experiences have led various interviewees to reexamine social norms around sex in order to approach their individual sexualities in a more self-affirming, healthy, and proactive manner.

In tandem, I’ve begun pouring through numerous sexual education films that date as far back as the 1940s. The vintage ‘sex ed’ footage is not only relevant in its documenting of social attitudes towards sex over the decades, but also in our growing understanding of how past teachings continue to have an influence on folks of all ages, including the lessons and perceived taboos that we often unintentionally pass on to younger generations.

As a documentary filmmaker with a whimsical style, I’ve begun editing together the sexual education films with the interviews we are currently conducting. The intention is to create a series of playful and thoughtful video installations that provide commentary on our approach to sex education in Vancouver through the years. It will also look at what we’ve been left to learn by our own devices. To me, it feels like the perfect antidote to the lacklustre Junior High School lesson I recall from my youth!

Gwen Haworth is a Vancouver-based filmmaker best know for her documentary She’s a Boy I Knew (2007). She works part time at Vancouver Coastal Health delivering workshops on LGBT inclusion and policy implementation.

Hanging the Hang-Ups? An exhibition idea

Options for Sexual Health, the organization for which I work, has a vision of a society that celebrates healthy sexuality, its diversity of expression, and a positive sexual self-image for individuals throughout life. I’m someone who passed from adolescence to so-called adulthood with a truly inadequate knowledge of sexual expression and little understanding of how to build and maintain a sexual relationship. Thankfully, looking back, I learned something helpful from each relationship I had and shed some hang-ups that were rooted in ignorance, misinformation and, yes, sheer ineptitude. As my comfort zone grew, so did my sense of confidence and self. 

The exhibition Sex Talk in the City will examine how we, as individuals and communities, have dealt with sexuality, the ways we have matured, and the challenges and contradictions with which we still live. It would be great if everyone coming to the exhibition could experience some expansion of their comfort zone.

So here’s my idea. I’d like the people who come to write down a hang-up they have about sex — quite literally on one of those paper-covered hangers we get at the dry cleaner’s — and hang it up in a kind of closet at the door. Anonymously, of course.  If they still have the hang-up when they leave the exhibition, they’ll be encouraged to take it home.  Otherwise I’d like them to leave it behind.

Although I work in a sexual health organization, I still have one or two little issues I’ll be hanging up. Now, how can I contribute to planning the museum’s exhibition so I can leave my hangers behind?!

Greg Smith, is Executive Director of Options for Sexual Health in British Columbia and is a member of the Sex Talk in the City Advisory Committee.

The new 3Ps: Pleasure – Politics – Pedagogy

They may not stick around forever, but these three “P” words are helping me think through the exhibition concept and zoning. I want to start imagining how we will divide up our 3600 square foot gallery space into zones that will focus on a few key ideas. It definitely helped to fuel conversations at the meeting last week with the Sex Talk in the City advisory committee:

• Pleasure: Everybody agrees (at least in our committee) that sex is good, fun and healthy and that sexual pleasure will mean different things to different    people. As Scarlett Lake suggested at one of our meetings: “Sex should be    understood like a buffet at a restaurant: you pick and choose what you want.  Some people will have adventurous tastes whereas others will come back for  the same thing every time!”

• Politics: This is really about how power is acquired and applied by groups of   people to make collective decisions. And there are plenty of examples where  groups in position of power make decisions that affect the way we  express our sexuality publicly and privately. The committee definitely wants to further explore the private/public nature of sexuality.

• Pedagogy: It may not be the most fitting term to capture my idea but I really wanted to stay with the “P”! This theme has to do with identifying ways to talk about sexuality to people of all ages in ways in which we enable and empower them to critically engage with the mass of information (good and bad) that’s out there and make educated decisions about their sexuality.

These are interconnected themes that could be emphasized or intersected in different areas of the exhibition. Take sex toys for instance: they accessorize our sex lives to support sexual exploration and pleasure; they can increase our understanding of our own sexuality – real teaching moments—and they have recently been at the centre of heated debates over legislation (or lack thereof) surrounding the manufacturing and distribution of sex toys.

I’m in the process of negotiating the loans of some interesting historical artefacts with other museums and local stores. I‘ll let you guess what they are …

A huge MERCI to Andrea, manager and Janna & Otter co-founders of Womyns’Ware for a most inspiring afternoon conversation about the poetics and politics of locally designed and manufactured sex toys.

Viviane Gosselin is curator of contemporary issues at MOV and project lead for the Sex Talk in the City project.