The Dominion - sexuality

Valentine's Play

Maya Rolbin-Ghanie — Sun, 19 Apr 2009 06:06:04 +0000

Reflections from a women’s bathhouse

As we step past frosted glass doors into a small, well-lit foyer, my heart is pumping. The sound of excited voices through a second set of doors leaves me wondering what to expect. Feeling exhilarated by the space and slightly flushed by two glasses of wine, I notice my palms are clammy. This is my second time at Shedogs Bathhouse.

An older, very butch lady meets my friend and me at the front window. While taking IDs and tickets, and offering towels, she relays the rules: respect, consent, confidentiality. Allowing our entry through the interior set of doors, she directs us to room four, where we can change and leave our belongings. All the lockers are taken because it is a full house tonight.

My only question, “Have we missed the fisting workshop?” is met with, “Starts in 10 minutes.”

The veneer of security is understandable. Bathhouses have long been targeted as hotbeds of homosexual activity. In 2000, Toronto police raided Pussy Palace, a women's bathhouse night at Club Toronto. Police, almost all of them male, entered the establishment and walked around, taking the names and addresses of some ten women and questioning volunteers.

Traditionally, gay bathhouses are places where men can go to have sex with other men, regardless of sexuality or social status. Bathhouses for women are much more rare. Twice a year the local Halifax men’s bathhouse, Seadogs, hosts a queer ladies' night for woman-identified people. Tonight is the ladies' Valentine's Day bathhouse.

Room four is one of many small rooms off a long, dimly lit corridor. Each is equipped with a small bed, wall-to-wall mirrors and a handful of condoms and little lube packages scattered like candy on the clean, white sheets. In one room there is an erotica-reading party, while others are occupied by lovers. We are told that the rooms on the main floor have a “doors-open policy.” Private rooms are in the basement; ten dollars for a key.

After stripping down to our underwear in room four, we continue down the hallway. Guests are asked to change upon entry, which can be interpreted any way we like. Others don bathing suits, lingerie, tops, bottoms, or nothing at all. In the hallway someone passes us wearing only a harness. The sauna, hot tub and showers are all occupied by lounging ladies soaking up the steamy air and sultry sights.

Down a narrow stairway at the back is the basement. It consists of an open hallway, more small rooms, and an S&M dungeon where tonight’s workshops are taking place. Tonight there is a fisting demonstration.

The volunteer lies in a sling in the small dungeon packed with eager learners. Self-identified “Sex Geek” Andrea Zanin is gloved with black latex, promoting safer sex as she offers her tips and techniques. We learn that typically, fisting does not involve forcing a clenched fist into a bodily orifice. Instead, all five fingers are kept straight and held as close together as possible, then slowly inserted into a well-lubricated vagina or rectum. Once insertion is complete, the fingers either naturally clench into a fist or remain straight.

”It may seem extreme, but fisting is in fact one of the most intimate and sensual kinds of penetration two people can enjoy,” Zanin encourages, while caressing her eager volunteer.

I am told by a friend that the volunteer had met Zanin only 20 minutes before the workshop. She had attained the position during a Bathhouse planning meeting because of a deep enjoyment of extreme penetration and fisting. An obvious fan of public play, the volunteer appeared relaxed despite the 40 of us eagerly crowded around her. She gives in to her pleasure, allowing all to observe an intimate display between strangers.

The Bathhouse is filled with women of all makes and ages who appreciate and are affectionate with one another. Halifax is a small city and all the faces here are familiar. Admittedly, running into the lady who sat next to me at last night’s organizing meeting, or the waitress at my local coffee shop, is a bit of a rush. However, regardless of these relationships we all seem to be able to transcend the barriers built in our daily lives in order to create a safe and positive sexual space for ourselves and each other.

For me, participating in this space fulfills different needs: on one level it is purely sexual; on another it is deeply social; on another level it fulfills the need to resist. Our daily lives are controlled on many levels. Society tells us what and who to desire. These desires are then commodified and sold back to us through a plethora of bodily products. Through challenging our comfort levels and pushing our own boundaries we are able to regain some semblance of a collective power—the power of femininity, of raw pleasure and fluid desire.

The air is alive with intrigue, which for some leads to kisses, touching and even hot sex. And everyone is allowed to watch.

Jill fights the right in Halifax and works to oppose capitalism and all forms of oppression.

Seadogs

Equal Porn for All

Stuart Neatby — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 19:54:11 +0000

The 2007 Feminist Porn Awards

This past June, the second annual Feminist Porn Awards took place at the Gladstone Hotel in Toronto, reminding the public that the porn industry has a creative side beyond mainstream expectations. Chanelle Gallant, the manager of Good For Her, a feminist and trans-friendly Toronto workshop centre and sex boutique, spearheaded The Emmas (named after iconic feminist-anarchist Emma Goldman). “We created [the awards] in response to the difficulty we had communicating to our distributors what we wanted when requesting videos that represented actors of color,” explains Gallant. They weren’t looking for films that portrayed minority actors as sexually fetishized objects of desire, which is what they were getting. Contemporary feminism works to privilege the agency and, in this case, the viable and nuanced sexualities of marginalized groups. The staff members at Good For Her were frustrated over their inability to point their customers to a decent variety of “sensitive” queer, transgender, ethnic and even mainstream porn. So in an effort to track down and promote the pornography with positive representations of sexuality, gender, body type and ethnicity that they knew must be out there, they inaugurated the Feminist Porn Awards.

By holding pornography up to certain standards of artistic and representational integrity, The Emmas spotlight it as a form of contemporary cultural production. Because the porn industry is usually an invisible and unpublicized system—that nevertheless fulfils the demand of a large, generally un-polled audience—feedback between producers and viewers is difficult. If an enterprising viewer wants to research made-by-women-for-women porn on her own, for example, productive information is hard to come by. Just try googling "good porn." A viewer has little choice but to muddle through the publicly available options, which tend to be an education in restriction and subjugated gender roles rather than a representation of creative, sensitive, joyful, or empowering sexuality.

Fuelled by the need to establish a standard of ethical representations of women and other minorities in porn, Gallant came up with three criteria for feminist pornography. A film has to meet at least two to be eligible for The Emmas. One: women have to be substantially involved behind the scenes. Two: the film must promote and represent genuine female pleasure. Three: the film must expand on the traditionally accepted range of women’s sexual expression.

As for the opposite of feminist pornography, “any film made with female coercion” would qualify, says Gallant. She stresses that feminist porn is not a genre. You can’t identify it by pointing to certain aspects of storyline, sexual content, or its status as soft or hardcore. Feminist porn does not look like something in particular; it acts like something in particular. Because of this, there really is no “feminist porn community,” and the filmmakers met each other for the first time during the award ceremonies. Gallant hopes the annual event will help foster such a community, or at least collaborations between filmmakers.

For the second annual Emmas, the selections came mainly from Good for Her’s stock, since the store actively seeks pornography that represents minorities without exoticizing them. Gallant says they may post an open call for submissions in the future. The members of Good For Her’s staff, from the cashiers to the manager, served as the judges.

The store’s holistic approach to sexuality also extends beyond its selection of pornography. Not only does it offer transgender and women-only shopping hours, but Good For Her also hosts the largest number of sexuality workshops in Canada. Besides expected topics like “Muff Diving for Men: The Art of Cunnilingus,” you can also find “From Swinging to Polyamory: Guidelines for Open Relationships,” and “Sex for Survivors: Sensuality and Pleasure,” all on a sliding pay scale. Like the crews responsible for the films featured in The Emmas, the staff members at Good For Her make it their business to arm the public in its quest for healthy sexuality.

A Sampling of the Winners:

Hottest Group Sex Scene:
Under the Covers.
Candida Royalle; Femme Productions, USA.

Royalle is the founder of Femme Productions, a member of the American Association of Sex Educators, Counselors and Therapists (AASECT), a founding board member of Feminists for Free Expression (FFE), and also works as a mentor for emerging female directors. Under the Covers is a comedy about women who work and inhabit the sex industry.

Hottest Trans Sex Scene:
In Search of the Wild Kingdom
Shine Louise Houston; Blowfish Video, USA.

Houston is a lesbian porn producer, the founder of Pink and White Productions, and the only queer woman of color currently with a distribution deal. She made her first film in 2005 in response to the difficulty she had recommending hot women-on-women sex to lesbian customers that wasn't made for or directed by men while she worked as a sex shop clerk. In Search of the Wild Kingdom is a humorous mockumentary about lesbian sex, complete with a dysfunctional film crew, spoofs on typical “lesbian” porn and “behind the scenes” footage.

Hottest Bisexual Sex Scene:
The Bi Apple
Audacia Ray; Adam and Eve Pictures, USA.

Audacia Ray is a sex-worker-rights advocate, the executive editor of $pread magazine, an art curator, a sex worker, and an academic. The movie’s official tag line is “New York girls like boys doing boys who like to do girls,” and includes a scene that illustrates Gallant’s mandate to expand the range of women’s sexual expression, in which a woman clearly derives voyeuristic pleasure from watching two men together in a shower. Both the depiction of male homoeroticism in a film not specifically meant for gay men and the portrayal of a woman being aroused by male homosexual activity while not physically participating are rare in mainstream pornography.

Hottest Gonzo Sex Scene and Hottest Diverse Cast:
Chemistry 1
Tristan Taormino; Adam and Eve Pictures, USA.

Taormino has a degree in American Studies, co-edited A Girl’s Guide to Taking Over the World, and wrote The Ultimate Guide to Anal Sex for Women and Pucker Up: A Hands-on Guide to Ecstatic Sex. Chemistry 1 is another genre-bender, this time in the vein of reality TV. The scenario: seven porn stars have a house to themselves for 36 hours. No script, no stunts and no bad “porn acting.” There are even confessionals.

For more information and for a full list of winners, you can visit Good For Her online at www.goodforher.com

Feminist Porn Awards 2007