Sylvie Hill

Ottawa XPress – Shotgun – March 10, 2005

So I read in the papers last Friday that the City could do more to lower the levels of chlamydia and gonorrhea among young people if it could bring safe-sex and testing programs into English Catholic schools.

But guess what?

The Ottawa-Carleton Catholic school board isn’t really down with that even though the associate medical officer of health, Dr. Dave Salisbury, says levels of venereal disease among Ottawans between 15 and 24 have doubled since the 1990s.

But hey, if the Ottawa-Carleton Catholic school board doesn’t think safer-sex education and testing for sexually transmitted infections (STI) in their schools will get the message across and protect youth, fine. But when hordes of Christ-loving girls and boys hold up the line at my family doctor’s office with their crotch rot this and their discharging that, they had better not blame it on STIs, right, because apparently Catholic kids don’t fuck.

And while I’ll expect a spike in panty liner sales for young girls oozing discoloured liquids from their privates, and sales of absorbent pads to boys whose dicks flare up with pus during a hellish bout of VD, I also predict the Catholics will continue barring Ottawa public health and Planned Parenthood reps from their supposedly sex-free establishments.

Tell me, if Catholic kids don’t have sex until they’re married, then how do you account for the increase in STIs? In the same way The Big Guy in the sky is watching us masturbate, maybe the horny Philadelphia Cream Cheese lady in the clouds swept down for some hibidy-dibidy during the night without our knowledge and left behind the itch? No, I didn’t think so either.

Seriously, come on Catholic School board! It’s bad enough you run your shop like a jail, so just admit there’s a few of your troops who bend over in the shower.

I had very few positive experiences attending Catholic schools. Public school was where it was at for me. In the Catholic school system, I always felt like an alien because I was from a divorced, single-parent family. On top of that, the more I learned about the Catholic religion and sex, the more things sounded weird to me – stories passed down in my family, for instance, of wives having to ask their priests if it was alright to give their husband a blow job.

As a teenager, if your parents weren’t terribly with it, you could end up looking to teachers and school to set you straight about sex. But there wasn’t a lot of opportunity for that in my Catholic schools. Outside of an offbeat French teacher named Madame Duchêne at St. Matthew’s High School who made us laugh by saying out loud that she liked sex, other teachers dared not go there. But she did, and the kids appreciated her for it.

Other authority figures weren’t so open. I’d begun losing respect for many of them as early as Grade 6 when the vice-principal at Convent Glen Catholic School reproached me for using the telephone after hours. I had the secretary’s permission to call my step-father to find out if my friend could come over to study. “You’re not supposed to be at school after 3 p.m., go home!” he barked. “But, I had permission to use the phone you dildo.” OK, I didn’t call him that. But I wanted to.

The next day, my mother was called in to the school. Meek, she did not defend me. I was forced to apologize to fuckface for “answering back.”

Then there was Grade 11 when I became an overnight goth all dressed in black. At 17, I had a mind of my own and had been re-thinking the prayer-time-at-8 a.m. routine that followed the singing of the national anthem every morning. So, one day I stopped praying – it was just no longer my thing to stand there in public and pray to God by thoughtlessly rattling off some memorized prayer.

The next day, my mother was called in to the school. They asked her if I was part of the Cult of Satan. She said no but that I loved the band, The Cult.

Looking back, and based only on those peculiar incidents, leaving Catholic school authorities in charge of understanding kids today is questionable. Sure, in many cases their rule may be appropriate. But, I just can’t see beyond my St. Matthew’s principal who in Grade 9 chucked my friend Allison out of school because she accidentally got pregnant. These are the same jokers who two girls named Jen had to fight to get a tampon dispenser in the girl’s washroom. As if feminine products would advertise the sinfulness of a woman’s bleeding orifice.

So join me in applauding the French Catholic school board which is among the three school boards to accept the Ottawa public health program. Parents, if your teens are gonna “do it,” make them make it with a Français(e) Catholique, oui? French Canadians are better in bed anyway, aren’t they?

But that, that’s another Shotgun…

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The Catholic district school board of Eastern Ontario requires a student support worker. Visit www.cdsbeo.on.ca for more information.

– Sylvie Hill

Ottawa XPress – Shotgun – March 3, 2005

…says who?

For starters, the kids themselves. Take for instance high-schooler and online XPress reader, D’Janau Morales. He argues that kids aren’t all bad as Shotgun portrayed them to be in “Tough Ass to Crack” (February 17) and cautions against generalizing about “kids today,” speaking out against my observations of foul-mouthed, overly sexualized youth.

“I can name a hundred or more kids just in my school doing something positive for the community,” he writes. “I’m so sick and tired of being stereotyped because I’m in high school and automatically am part of ‘those kids.'”

I like hearing youth speak up and defend their image. Last May 1, a guy named Felan Parker wrote the Ottawa Citizen to defend his peers against the paper’s portrayal of teenagers and “rainbow parties.” (A rainbow party is where guys get a selection of lipstick markings on their dicks from the many teenage girls who blow them.)

Like Parker, I too took issue with the choice of image that introduced the article – a provocative pre-teen girl with wet lips sucking on a lollipop. The picture and article sensationalized the issue without offering any solutions. Yet, feeling old and cynical, I kept quiet – until Parker spoke up about the same things. Then I wrote the paper to congratulate his efforts to clear the air and educate me along the way.

Enlightenment aside, I continue to support the position of people like online reader Erika Pipe who insists that youth today are indisputably more sexually demonstrative than ever before: “The only thing the kids in my Grade 5 class talked about was if they had been kissed yet.” She didn’t think about sex until her teens. She wasn’t the only one.

During my teen years, we didn’t have rainbow parties; we had Two Minutes in the Closet at parties. While they weren’t as explicit as rainbow parties, they carried all the mystery that could taunt and spook young, square kids like me.

My non-participation at those parties underlined my sexual inadequacy, and that took a while to get over. Young dudes had crushes on me, but that freaked me out. If we were boyfriend-girlfriend, I reckoned, we’d have to go to one of those parties and do stuff in the closet for two minutes and I didn’t know how. I’m telling you, if only someone in my peer group – or a ‘tuned-in’ parent – could have convinced me that the game was full of shit, then I likely wouldn’t have been so afraid of getting a boyfriend.

But would it have been a blessing to be more exposed to sex then, as are the youth of today? Or, would it have served only to intimidate the 1980s youth’s mind and mentality rather than to stimulate it? You could argue that access to sex via the Internet and teen magazines helps youth prepare for their (sex) lives, but as young people become knowledgeable at earlier and earlier ages, can they handle that knowledge? Are kids equipped “upstairs” to handle what they see in music videos and on TV?

Back in my day, a young girl’s main competition was Samantha Fox and Siouxsie from the Banshees. The former made you worry that your tits were too small, but the latter encouraged you to be artsy more than slutty.

Sort of like Hillary Duff versus Avril Lavigne?

“Same shit, different day,” online reader James Harbinson observes alongside Aaron Brown, who says that the generic teenager is “immature, insecure and full of shit.” But while it’s easy to say that “generic” is the mold of the typical teenager, and we shouldn’t take them too seriously, the context in which we’re living now is more complex than ever before.

Natalie Knight highlighted the more aggressive nature of our communities today: “Our streets are not safe anymore, no matter what time of day it is.” Nowadays, wrote Conrad Lévesque, kids are purse-snatching, mugging, swarming and terrifying other young and old folks. Clearly, not all teen cool-cat ways are benign.

To dismiss menacing kids as troublemakers, we risk overlooking that breed Steve Landry speaks of – those who “only use rough language to try to get respect and keep people at their distance as they go home to suburbs to finish their homework without any parental contact.”

Suddenly, being tough seems so sad. You only think the kids are alright.

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Women With Something To Say, a celebration of dance and poetry presented by the Sanctuary Series on March 4 and 5 at 8 p.m. at All Saints Anglican Church, 317 Chapel Street (at Laurier Avenue). The Sanctuary Series is an artist- and volunteer-run performance series that supports established and emerging artists. Tickets: $15, $12 for seniors and students.

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In celebration of International Women’s Day, The Carleton University Pauline Jewett Institute Of Women’s Studies presents a free lecture on March 8 by Dr. Saraswati Raju: Tensions And Resistances: Neoliberalism And Women In India. Carleton University, Dunton Tower, Room 2017 at 2:30 p.m.

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The Sitar School of Toronto will feature performances by Anwar Khurshid and his students from Toronto and Ottawa, with guest dancers from Upasana Dance School on March 5 at 8 p.m. at the University of Ottawa, 610 Cumberland Street (at Laurier), Perez Building, Frieman Hall. Tickets: $15, $10 for students. www.sitarschool.com/

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Check out Danny Michel-produced Leeroy Stagger (+3 bands) at Zaphod Beeblebrox’s third anniversary of Heard Before the Herd on Monday, March 7, 8 p.m., free.

– Sylvie Hill

Ottawa XPress – Shotgun – Feburary 24, 2005

Catching your partner checking out porn behind your back after he’s convinced you he’s not into that is a bit like laughing and vomiting at the same time. It’s both funny and disturbing.

Whether women are tapping into the nurturing part of their brain or prefer a more inclusive sexual experience, it’s my observation that, when faced with a partner who says he’s not into porn, a woman will cease and desist. She’ll put away her handcuffs, shelve the erotica, store her sex toys and block the dirty channels on the TV, resigning herself to the fact that her lover just doesn’t get off on that. Fine.

Many women these days are accepting of pornography, kink and fantasy and want to engage their man in honest exchange or appreciation of the stuff. But apparently, like “frigid” women, some men too take issue with this practice and potential pleasure.

But if a partner says he gets nothing from porn and has no fantasies, and then is caught one night with his pants around his ankles in front of the computer screen – frankly, the ensuing conversation should deal with his dishonesty and shame issues.

The usual routine for a lot of couples is heated dialogue centered on women’s disapproval of pornography rather than the fact she was lied to.

And so begins the boring debate about how the woman thinks the habit is dirty, distasteful and dishonest, while in cases like the above, that just isn’t the problem.

Still, to console her, the phrase “Guys are like that” may come up, or “That’s just what guys do.” The discussion ends with the final defence: in light of the woman’s blow-up, which had been anticipated all along, the guy couldn’t possibly have disclosed his pursuits – he knew she’d react like this!

A case in point: Check out sex expert Dan Savage’s response to the February 3 letter from Miserable, Mad, and Married. MMM describes herself as a “well adjusted hetero chick” for whom things changed when she got married recently. “Before we married,” she writes, “my hubby denied having any sexual fantasies. I have lots and enjoy some kinks. We talked, though, and he said that he would try. Now I find out that he DOES have fantasies and that he lied to me.”

She found her husband’s collection of teenage girls porn on the computer. Her issue? “His thoughts are like the rest of the fucking culture. However, he lied and I am now feeling like I am not someone he trusts! It took time for me to adjust to being with a man who had NO fantasies … how do I get over being hurt about being lied to?”

Savage’s response blames the woman for her bad attitude toward mediocre teenager porn and chalks the entire issue up to evolution. The husband didn’t share his sexual fantasies because he probably knew his wife would convict him as boring and predictable, explains Savage. Furthermore, checking out teenage girls is OK because that’s what society does and men’s brains are wired to thinking youth is “insanely attractive.” So what the guy was doing was perfectly normal according to Savage Love.

Dan Savage is not the only critic – an online reader’s response suggested that MMM “get the fuck over it” because porn is normal. Uh, yes, but how normal is lying about liking it? And even if lying is pretty common, is it acceptable? According to Savage, it is acceptable.

With merit, the online response made the distinction between porn and fantasies, saying that fantasies are usually more “weird” than watching naked chicks online. So it seems that what we got in Savage Love’s mistreatment of MMM’s feelings about her husband is simply semantics: Porn does not equal “fantasy.” The husband said he had no fantasies. Ergo, the husband checking out porn in secret means he was not lying about having no fantasies.

When someone says to me, “Sylvie, I’ve got a splitting headache and my head’s going to explode,” I don’t really think their head is going to literally blow up, and I don’t let semantics get in the way of figuring out what they’re trying to tell me. So apply a bit of that reasoning to MMM’s situation to override the distinction of porn versus fantasy and get to the core of the matter, which is something I don’t think Savage did.

The wife got shut out. It’s like she gave up butter tarts for her man but there he is tucked away in the closet shoving a box in his mouth. He’s probably the same guy who denies masturbating but leaves the soiled Kleenex hanging about.

Tell me, what is a reasonable defense for a man who conceals his urges knowing his partner wants to share her own dirty thoughts with him? Is there some kind of high one gets from being selfish and insular about sex? Seriously, is that a new kind of fetish we’ve overlooked while convincing ourselves that chicks don’t need a sex fix too?

My take – relationships are all about sharing. And if you fuck with that, you’re fucked.

– Sylvie Hill

Ottawa XPress, Feburary 17, 2005

Has this ever happened to you?

You’re sitting alone on the bus or waiting quietly by yourself on a bench for a friend when all of a sudden an imposing group of loud teenagers saunters in your direction. You immediately categorize them as a bunch of wannabe toughies and continue your reading and your waiting.

But then, as they strut past you all chill like that, you overhear some tough-ass wanker in the bunch, who’s gesturing his arms this way and that, boasting about how he’s going to fuck some chick’s ass real good tonight.

Your eyeballs about this wide now, you then hear the young female of the group fearlessly inform Mr. Macho that “a girl’s not going to get wet by fucking her ass, you have to fuck her pussy first.” The brighter marble, that one. I wonder whether the girl’s cool response will knock the punk off his high horse. Who knows?

“Kids today,” you say to yourself as you try to recall ever talking like that when you were their age.

My own experience as a grade school gangster stupidly smoking cigarette butts with my crew in the jungle gym at Queen Mary Public School was a pathetic performance that scared nobody in the way the foul-mouthed youth of today can.

In my day, the idea of a youth gang was pesky kids dressed up as skeletons in the movie, The Karate Kid, or those in movies like The Outsiders, Stand By Me and The Lost Boys. But those gangs weren’t as over-the-top sexualized as many teenagers I now observe in real life, at the Rideau Centre for instance. And I don’t recall that there were any girls in those gangs.

Nowadays, we’re hearing about all-girl gangs killing other girls. And outside of gangs, but keeping with the bullying and taunting, it was in our own province that a woman helped lure teenage girls to her house where together with her husband, Paul Bernardo, she raped and murdered them. Karla Homolka’s involvement in the killings hammered home the point that women – and not only men – are surely capable of sexual aggression and killing.

Initially the news media at the time painted Homolka as a victim, until it became clear she was into it as much as Bernardo was. Gender equality, folks.

Now it’s not only the Creepy Guy that women have to fear as they walk alone at night – it’s other females.

Over a month ago I overheard a girl downtown pointing out women’s asses for the males with her who were gawking predator-like at female passersby near the University of Ottawa. The girl’s sexual prattle was new to me. What do you think is going on here?

My guess: If you can’t beat them, join them. Think. As long as Homolka was on this side of the whip, then she’d never have to endure the other side. As long as the young girls are helping degrade or objectify other women, they may think they’re safe from being a target themselves. And if the guys won’t let the gals join them? Then chicks can beat the guys-off-using their mouths in a different way. In some circles, giving blowjobs may be how girls embrace and control the sex that could otherwise victimize them.

The Ottawa Citizen ran a story last year about “rainbow parties.” This is where guys get a selection of lipstick markings on their dicks from the many teenage girls who blow them. Girls are grabbing sexuality by the balls by offering up other services too. For example, some parents are asking a Texas school district to ban bracelets they say are being used by students as a code for sex games. The bracelet color determines the sexual act that will be performed. Black means sex. Orange means kiss. Green means outdoor sex. Clear means anything goes.

These are some of the things I think about as I try to figure out why some girls go along with guys as they talk publicly about what they’re going to do to women’s bodies.

Personally, I’m often compelled to blurt out to the guy: “You wouldn’t know your cock from a Hartman’s Pogo, asshole.”

And to the girl: “Do you think you’re cool now?”

But, out of fear of getting my own ass kicked, I shut up. I ignore the posturing and chalk up the aggression to immaturity. And hey, maybe the girls aren’t even bothered by it. Indubitably, being referenced as a hot bitch glory hole does wonders to a young woman’s self-esteem. You don’t think?

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Strip back your inhibitions and get out to Ottawa’s first Fetish & Fantasy Fair on Saturday February 19 from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. at the Embassy West Hotel on Carling Avenue. Check out workshops, demonstrations, vendors, and fashion shows. Ottawa’s MOIST erotic magazine editor, Liam Taliesin, will be among the many participants. A Fantasy Fetish Masquerade Ball will follow from 9 p.m. to 2 a.m. Fetish and erotic attire is encouraged but absolutely no street clothes. For more info visit www.MissJenn.org. The event will help support the Kid’s Help Phone.

– Sylvie Hill

Ottawa XPress, Feburary 10, 2005

There’s a place in my soul where
No one else can adore you
And like the poet-soldier says
I would spill my blood for you.
~ “Subversives,” by Lowest of the Low

Valentine’s Day is upon us, smeared with romance and chocolate marshmallow treats, with heart-shaped boxes and red velour ribbons. It’s meant as a time to celebrate our love for others – whether friend-love or hot-lover-love. But it’s mostly a time for lovers.

Single people either feel like shit or take over the damn thing and have a blast. But despite all the joyous celebration and recognition of love life, it sure does have a lot to do with death!

For starters, Valentine’s Day is celebrated in February, the dead of winter. Its marketing rep is Cupid, with his arrow poised to puncture your vital organ. Next, the colour signature of the holiday is red, which, besides being the colour of passion, is also the colour of blood and rage. Not convinced? Then consider how the good Saint Valentine himself came to be revered after suffering a terrible death by getting his head chopped off. Heady death, anyone?

Back in the days of Claudius II, the emperor was having a bitch of a time getting soldiers to join the military for his bloody and unpopular campaigns. He suspected Roman men did not want to join because they were too busy falling in love all over the place. So, while Stephen Harper – I mean, Claudius the Cruel – cancelled marriages and engagements in Rome, Valentine and Saint Marius were busy helping the Christian martyrs and secretly marrying couples. For this, the noble priest Valentine was apprehended and dragged before the Prefect of Rome, who condemned him to be beaten to death with clubs and beheaded. Saint Valentine suffered martyrdom on the 14th day of February, about the year 270 AD.

It’s clear: Saint Valentine’s death makes us think of love.

And relative to dying for love, don’t we all think about death a lot when we evaluate our love for our own special someone?

We blabber things like: “I couldn’t live life without you my fart blossom,” or “I’d rather get hit by a truck than spend one more minute with you.”

Our desperation at the thought of things we love one day ceasing to be, or the hope they’d go away faster once they cease to enchant us, measures our connection to that person or object. Alternatively, some peoples’ calmness when faced with losing a mate to death can be an indication of a solid relationship that will bring the survivor many comforting memories. Or just generous insurance benefits that will last until their own demise.

In many affairs of the heart, indeed death pops up again, to forge, rejuvenate or sanctify a bond, or to seal a fate (think Romeo and Juliet). Let’s take inventory. First up, “til death do us part” is a wedding vow. Next, in sex, our orgasm is described as “le petit mort.” Finally, the purest form of love is said to be God’s – and also the Dude in Whose eyes two people are wed –and what do we have here but His son getting bolted to a cross and left to die, all to show how much He cares.

But while Saint Valentine got the axe in support of our right to care for our partners as a wife or a husband, was it all worth it?

I mean, how many marriages end in divorce these days? While some people out there would just kill to get married, others would rather get killed than ever marry again.

I got a chuckle from a CBC Just For Laughs comedian who said when everyone around you is in love, and you’re not, it’s like there’s a big party going on that you weren’t invited to. He describes the lonely scene: a solo traveler wandering sadly past a noisy house full of people. Tears mix with rain as you wish you could be inside. Very sad.

Then there’s the people at the party: “I’ve been at this damn party for 16 years, where’s my coat dammit! I want to leave now!”

This last sentiment is quite popular in some of my favourite books. Take for example Kate Chopin’s protagonist in The Awakening. Facing a sink-or-swim relationship void of excitement, Madame Pontellier, a depressed wife, chooses literally to sink. Then, there’s the eccentric Calla in Joyce Carol Oates’ I Lock the Door Upon Myself, who faces a similar doom after she escapes an encrusted marriage to an abusive old white fart for the tall gentlemanly black Tyrell Thompson.

But despite these tales of people fleeing their marriages with deadly results, true to what the comedian said, there are those wanting to be let in to the perceived lovefest. For instance, the adventurous single Celia in T.S. Eliot’s play, The Cocktail Party, searches for love literally to (a cannibalistic-and-crucifixion) death. Now that’s dedication.

Truth be told, there’s a whole whack of characters throughout history, in addition to Saint Valentine, who’ve died in hot pursuit of the real deal. And while they don’t have a day named in their honour, we sure deserve a day off to read about them. On that positive note, happy reading, and Happy Valentine’s Death.

– Sylvie Hill

Ottawa XPress – Shotgun – Feburary 3, 2005

People use Internet sex sites to explore, escape, educate and ejaculate.

A Google search on the word “porn” returns over 80 million pages, and “XXX” provides more than 76 million. Each day, hundreds of thousands of individuals access the Internet to make a sexual contact with each other without ever having met eye-to-eye or having said a simple hello. They view pornographic photos and X-rated movies, or take part in chat rooms and interact with strangers via computer-cameras.

But while it does the job for some, for others, it’s never enough.

Craving more, cybersexers may grow obsessed with finding their next fix. And when the impatient start looking harder, faster, deeper to replace the usual with the new thing, compulsive behaviour overtakes them. An hour here and there turns into days of private absorption transforming the viewer into the addict.

Calling attention to this condition, Vancouver filmmaker Melanie Wood interviewed cybersex addicts and told their story in her latest documentary, o.com : Cybersex Addiction, airing February 7 on CBC’s The Passionate Eye, at 9 p.m.

It’s a cautionary tale of the Internet’s profound effect on human sexuality. “Our lives are becoming so entwined with the Internet,” Wood told Shotgun, “that it’s time to look at it, not to stop it, but to be aware. We don’t really think about how it’s changing who we are and what it’s doing in society. Choosing to focus on the addicts – the people at the far end of the spectrum – makes it easier to see what the problems are.”

The film o.com has already been screened at the Montreal World Film Fest, the Quebec International Film Fest and Toronto’s Rendezvous With Madness Festival (which screens movies about mental health and addiction). It was also granted a finalist award in the New York Film Festival’s international TV programming and promotions awards for 2005. For a film that hasn’t even hit the airwaves yet, it’s attracting a lot of attention, especially from therapy and addiction centres across North America, and as far as Australia.

“There has been argument about whether it is a true addiction,” Wood says. But saying ‘Pathological Internet Use’ wasn’t cuttin’ it in therapists’ circles any better.

Regardless of the agreed-upon term, on February 7 you could learn about people whose lives have been torn apart by this problem.

Speaking on film about chat rooms, 35-year-old Nicole admits, “The more time you spend in there, the more you figure out that it’s all about being raunchy and kinky because it’s anonymous.” The ability to act out repressed sexual fantasies on the Internet makes people crave cybersex in ways they no longer hunger for real-life sex.

Their most significant relationship becomes one with their PC.

Like Nicole who could not cope with being away from her computer lest she miss a new development in the chat room, Alan, a successful lawyer, was glued to his monitor hunting down the most recent video or images that could give him that rush. “Addicts are always searching for the pot of gold,” says Alan of his disorder. Always looking for the next fix, they seek out the more strange and bizarre.

The Internet becomes addictive because it offers sex on demand with no strings attached and provides a distraction from everyday stresses. All you need is a computer, eyeballs and a credit card. Engaging in a bit of cybersex can indeed enhance our real-life sexual selves.

But when the questions and curiosities are never satisfied, thirst seldom quenched, and pursuits no longer educational, behaviours that hide us from the real world become pathological. A recent survey estimated seven in 10 keep online sexual pursuits secret from others, and that’s where problems start.

o.com represents possibly the first compassionate exploration into cybersex addiction. Wood makes no moral judgment or pronouncement against the addicts.

“I didn’t choose these people because they were freaks or weirdos,” she insisted, “but because they are ordinary people and anyone of us can go down this road.”

Addiction doesn’t discriminate: a lot of people who are at the higher economic end are becoming hooked, “because they’re people who have the money and power in their jobs to shut the door and no one wonders what they’re doing,” she says.

The National Council on Sexual Addiction Compulsivity estimates that six to eight per cent of Americans are sex addicts, which is 16 to 21.5 million people. With documentary filmmakers in the United States such as Michael Moore addressing America’s political ailments through Fahrenheit 9/11, and Super Size Me tackling health hazards and convincing millions to turn down McDonald’s, I see Melanie Wood’s o.com as a powerful Canadian response to a sexual malady-one the documentary insists should be treated according to addiction criteria, rather than dismissed as a silly ol’ habit.

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Join Judy Rebick, author of Ten Thousand Roses: The Making of a Feminist Revolution on Wednesday, February 9 at 7 p.m. at the National Library of Canada (395 Wellington Street) to celebrate her book-a rich tapestry of stories told by more than 100 feminists from across Canada who organized, discussed, protested and struggled for change.

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Durtygurls hot lit-chicks read at the Mercury Lounge (56 Byward Market Street) for The Valentine’s Day Show on Friday, February 11 at 8 p.m., $7.

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Check out female comic Shannon Laverty at Yuk Yuk’s this weekend. Visit www.yukyuks.com for details.

– Sylvie Hill

Ottawa XPress – Shotgun – January 27, 2005

The guy who put the “Tony” in Tony’s Smoke and Roma Barber Shop at 233 Elgin Street passed away suddenly last week. A hand-written note on the door announced the sad news.

It’s a tiny shop where you can buy bus tickets, scan dusty old National Geographic magazines or get a barber cut while a TV buzzes overhead and a few old men chat about the daily news.

Thinking about what it means for a community to lose one of its local shopkeepers is like trying to imagine a movie without the main actors. Many characters in our communities play a part in our own personal histories. From the restaurant owners who already know your take-out order, to the doorman at your favourite club, the Rose Lady, the buskers in the Byward Market or the usual homeless faces, all these people make Ottawa feel like home. They give our lives context and things just don’t feel right when they’re missing. Do we take it for granted that these people will always be here?

Take my dentist for example. I’ve been going to him for 20 years. He’s older now and on leave, traveling the world, and it’s not certain he’ll be back. The new dentist is nice but the turnover dates me and that’s depressing. In fact, my entire dentist appointment got me down. With enlarged photographs of healthy white teeth everywhere, it’s easy to feel your own don’t match up. Crest whitening strips I saw advertised on TV could help. They would make my teeth whiter and everything would be OK. But too quickly after finding a solution to that problem, relief was displaced by discomfort.

It suddenly came to me, while forking over $194 for a cleaning, that it was inevitable: My teeth will someday be so beyond Whitestrips, they’ll turn yellow and it’ll be game over. I’ll have to get dentures. We’ll all come face-to-face with our mirrors and with a whole lot of gums.

One day your hair will turn grey and grow coarse and start growing out your ears and nose. Skin will lose its elasticity. Breasts will sag and a big rounded belly will be larger than your flattened ass. Next, you’ll walk slower and you’ll complain about aches and pains. Goodbye toenails, hello orthopedics. Incontinence next, then it’s Alzheimer’s and BAM! – we die.

But hold up. What about Freedom 55? My mom’s 60 and she isn’t gallivanting all over the golf course or jetsetting to a condo in Florida with a silver-haired hottie. Instead, she’s been checking out more funeral parlours than bingo halls these days. She lost her sister to breast cancer, her cousin to muscular dystrophy, and an admirer as well as a lifelong suitor, both to heart attacks. The other day her pipes burst and flooded her living room. Then an injured pigeon seeking refuge on her high rise balcony abandoned mom’s makeshift towel nest, and packed it in by jumping to its death, splattering bird brain on the street below.

Most people faced with a string of tragedies might jump off the balcony too! But mom always told me things are never so bad “if you can wake up and hear the birds singing.” That’s turned into my own adaptations, like “at least you have your legs” or your hearing or your bowels.

But some people have less and are still gleeful. Take the limbless man I saw propped up against a fence on Yonge Street in Toronto. A mere stump of a man chirping incessantly: “Happy Spring! Happy Spring!” to passersby. People dropped coins and bills into a ball cap next to him. With what hands and into what pockets he’d put the money, who knows?

I suppose associating misfortune and mortality with the corner shop or the dentist’s office is a bit of a stretch, about as bizarre as feeling really alive because of a trip to the gynecologist. The idea being that your enamel decay foreshadows the body’s overall deterioration but poking around in the womb suggests life-giving potential.

As for philosophizing about the cycle of life and death in our community, a tiny sparrow flittering overhead in the new neighbourhood Hartman’s store got me thinking – while in one Ottawa shop a little birdie is spared its death from the bitter cold, another creature just down the street will fly away from us suddenly.

In all cases, their appearance or disappearance inspire a story to be shared. And those stories remind us we’re alive, and how lucky we are to have known the departed, and how even on our wintry, darkest days a happy spring is always just around the corner.

XXX

Yeti Sightings! What you get when you cross Ottawa’s friendliest building superintendents with sensible winter clothing. Picture the fuzzy, white abominable snowman from the Rudolph cartoon and you’ve nailed the spectacular hand-made costumes that uber-sociable community personalities Rick and Jan Loveless of the popular Elphin Apartments complex, created to greet – and likely freak – Winterlude visitors. Last spotted at the Mayflower Pub. Is your camera ready?

– Sylvie Hill

Ottawa XPress, January 20, 2005

For a woman to tout the achievements of her gender with praise and admiration does not mean automatically she’s a feminist. And, far from being a judgmental anti-feminist, when one female points out another female’s shortcomings – such as cheating on a boyfriend or maybe dressing inappropriately for winter – she’s not suppressing women’s freedom to choose how they want to live their lives.

But are women really doing each other a disservice when they call each other “bitches” or “tarts”? After all, men don’t seem to get reprimanded when they “discredit” their gender by labelling an unfaithful guy a “prick” or calling a stylie dude a dim-witted metrosexual.

When it comes to voicing an opinion against a member of your gender, however unpolished, you may be doing them a favour.

Come with me to a women’s studies class. It’s 1993 and we’re at the University of Ottawa where I decided to try out the program. The course: psychology of women.

The topic: differences between men and women’s attitudes to domestic duties. The piss off: a barrage of wives bitching about their husbands’ lack of initiative with chores.

The outcome: me storming out of the class to bitch them out over the telephone to my boyfriend, who does his chores.

Consider how you would feel being 19 years old with a superb male partner, listening to all this professor-endorsed blather from older women about how shitty guys are. What a letdown. Even if it was the truth in some cases, I thought a psychology of women course would enlighten as to the fundamental differences between the sexes instead of reinforce a negative stereotype that bonds some ladies together with comedic anecdotal glue. Count me out.

“I leave a Dorito next to the toilet bowl, on the floor,” said one woman proudly, as others supported with fits of laughter this woman’s fascinating explanation of how she lures her husband into the bathroom to alert him that it needs some Lysol action.

I couldn’t figure out what was more idiotic, her, her husband, or the class. Can you imagine a psychology of men class promoting a similar vibe: “I leave a Toblerone and an Oprah magazine next to the telephone, far away from my super-deluxe gas BBQ.” Presumably to shut her up, keep her busy and out of his hair for a change.

I’ll never tolerate women who pick on men or, women who pick on the women who refuse to go along. For some, there is much comfort in sisterhood. For others, it’s about the peoplehood.

Class dismissed.

XXX

Cheers to on-line readers’ responses to last week’s “Bravetarts” column, responses which filled some holes that Shotgun left behind in targeting inappropriate dressers in arctic Ottawa. D’Janau Morales recollected famously the entertainment value of the one-piece snowsuit days: “If it was too damn hot for the snow pants, you’d just kind of wear the jacket part and the legs would flop around dragging on the snow. And did anyone say anything? Nope, but that’s only because you were five years old and everyone was much too entertained by that kid who ate glue.”

Valerie Augier reminded us about the magic of winter activities in Gatineau Park while Ger Madden considered the ramifications to the health care system when someone skips dressing responsibly for winter: “Think through your stupidity that when you do freeze something off, you will have to go to the hospital and receive treatment paid by mine and everyone else’s tax dollars.” Mr. Madden also smartly pointed out that improper dress is a genes, not gender, issue as did Kelly Martel and then James Harbinson, who ordered me out of my women’s studies class, off my high horse, and to realize men are just as vain and insecure as women when it comes to dressing for winter.

On that note then, sorry I didn’t mention the $800 leather coat-wearing non-winter ready Mr. Cool contingent. I was likely too busy checking out the thin-soled Converse, tuqued garage rocker boys in the tight $15 leather jackets, and scowling at their good-looking girlfriends as they tripped over potholes in their heels.

XXX

Did you hear the one about the doctor refusing to care for a sick woman as she began to undress at a Hull hospital? The doctor asked Cynthia Cousens to leave while she was still plugged up to an EKG monitor, wearing a full IV and heavily sedated on morphine for undiagnosed pain. In the background, nurses and orderlies giggled that Ms. Cousens, an active member of the Canadian Forces Reserves and retired police officer, is really a Mister (Capital Xtra, December 2, 2004).

Become a Trans Ally. Learn more about transphobia and violence against the trans community at the Trans Ally Workshop at Carleton University on Tuesday January 25. Join Queer activists Sarah Lamble and Jonah Marcovitz for an interactive introductory discussion on trans issues from 11:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. in Room 132, Azrieli Pavilion. The event is presented by the Carleton lesbian gay bisexual transgender queer caucus.

XXX

The submissive waitress, the lone diner, or the disengaged couple-check out Are You Being Served?, an art exhibit by Karen Bailey, at Arts Court, 2 Daly Avenue, until January 28.

– Sylvie Hill

Ottawa XPress – Shotgun – January 13, 2005

Waiting for the bus on chilly mornings, I really have to do something about the way I view presentable, professionally dressed women in winter. I fear I may be too critical of their gear. In my diligent study of women’s outdoor appearance – delightful hats, flimsy scarves, thin and fitted coats and gloves, dress pants, and elegant heeled boots – I often find my research interrupted by an abrupt, “Man, she must be cold!”

Yes, I usually skip to judging my specimen before the facts are even in. I’m sorry, but in well-below-zero weather, it seems like staying warm and being a bit dolled up at the same time is impossible. Which I guess aligns me with a dude I overheard the other day, who implied that men cope with winter better because they’re men, and they’re brave.

The guy was probably joking, but I felt it undercut my efforts in dressing appropriately for -25C temperatures. Have I been going fashionless in my Sorels – like clunkers and my Stearns parka in vain? Isn’t it brave to say the hell with looking good for the six months of winter?

It got me thinking: When it comes to handling winter, when men get to be robust bravehearts in the battle against the elements, why be just another “bravetart,” stoically forsaking warmth for the sake of style?

Am I unrealistically expecting praise for being so sensible? And am I too harsh on the female contingent that has figured out the trick to looking fantastic and staying warm? Yes and yes.

I did some investigating and found out that with places like Mountain Equipment Co-Op and a slew of others in Westboro, it’s easy for Ottawans to be warm but keep a cool image.

Go to www.mec.ca and check out their stylish and durable Tremblant jackets and vests, Baffin Mammoth, Snogoose or Musher boots, plus mitts, hats and scarves. And it’s at Mountain Equipment that I found the answer to how my sleeker sisters do it too.

The store has these thin, discreet light- and medium-weight silk long underwear things ideal for under business slacks; thermal shirts for under blouses or thin sweaters; Wigwam Ingenius Snowsports Socks in merino wool perfect for fitted dress boots; shapely fleeces for extra insulation over blazers and under long coats; and liner gloves for dainty leather gloves. Maybe that’s what some ladies are hiding under there. It appears you don’t need bulk to be warmer.

But even with this solution to keeping cozy under business attire, am I ready to get all lady-like and look professional?

Not when I don’t have to.

They say imitation is the best form of flattery, so, faced with the choice of paying homage to the outdoorsy male to whom I seem attracted during the season, or to the female fashionistas who maintain a sense of chic on downtown Ottawa streets despite Arctic temperatures, I prefer to feel hardy (and OK, sort of ugly then) in waffle-printed old-school Irving Rivers long johns and big hats with earflaps. Every day I expect people will find me so attractive compared to the next girl because I can wade through slush and have great traction on icy sidewalks.

Truth be told, after seeing the nine-time Genie nominated film, The Snow Walker (), starring Barry Pepper, Annabella Piugattuk, and James Cromwell, I became convinced that winterized women are superior.

OK, or maybe it’s just the fact that in that extraordinary story of two people struggling to survive the unforgiving elements of the Canadian Arctic (based on Walk Well My Brother by Farley Mowat), the only chance for survival the maverick bush pilot’s got when his plane goes down is his knowledgeable female Inuit parka-passenger, Kanaalaq.

There’s something magical about a woman who is winter-ready in Ottawa. It may not transform her into a caribou hunter like Kanaalaq, but she’ll trek through stormy nights hunting top DVD rentals and gather take-out Chinese food for her boyfriend as he keeps warm by the radiators.

So, again I say: Screw looking girlie and pile on the layers. It’s time to get down with that Nanook-of-the-North practicality, with poofy coats, head wraps and big-ass boots. Fully kitted, you’ll shiver less and you’ll save your first-born, the one you keep promising to God if He’d only make the damned OC Transpo arrive on time.

XXX

Got something to say? Get paid to write and perform it at the CBC Radio Poetry Face-Off on Tuesday March 1 at the National Arts Centre Fourth Stage. People across 10 cities will perform an original poem on a given theme and compete in front of a live audience who will choose a winner by secret ballot. The Ottawa winner’s poem will go on to compete over the airwaves against the nine other regional winners in April. Submit an audio sample of your poetry and a bio to CBC Ottawa Morning’s Julie Delaney by 5 p.m., Monday January 24. Submission info: Julie_Delaney@cbc.ca, 288-6498.

Ottawa Face-Off alumni include Nth Digri, Oni The Haitian Sensation, Matt Peake, Susan McMaster, Kris Northey, Megan Butcher, Dane Swan, Melanie Noll, Jim Larwill, Anthony Baldwin Lewis, Garmamie, John Akpata, Wanda O’Connor, myself and Segun Akinlolu.

– Sylvie Hill

Ottawa XPress – Shotgun – January 6, 2005

Growing up in the 1980s, the extent of my sexual education involved a book my mom had lying around called Our Bodies, Ourselves, and serious investigation into why dudes got retarded over Daisy Duke.

The book didn’t help.

Its content-depicting mammas with full, hanging breasts the size of my 12-year-old head-was terrifying. Those ladies only inspired me to sexualize my own friends by playing a game called “boyfriend,” all under the guise of heterosexual “learning.” As puberty dragged me on its rough journey, I was mapless until turning 20.

Since then, I’ve always thought that the people and places employed to teach us a thing or two about sex, and who do it exceptionally well, deserve a hand.

Jobs in this business of educating people about sex seem to fall in to two categories. The first are people, such as poet Oni the Haitian Sensation, businesses like Venus Envy and non-profit organizations like Planned Parenthood, who actively impart their message by visiting schools, offering instructive workshops or becoming an expert resource on all aspects of human sexuality. The other path is that of academia, where scholars research the lofty side of things in their analyses of the cultural, historical, scientific or political forces behind a sexual episode in a novel, or sexual trends in society.

In the May 17, 2004 issue of Maclean’s magazine that featured Canadian sex granny Sue Johanson, Ottawa’s own Oni grabbed some spotlight in a two-page article that detailed why she became a sex educator in schools: “There’s too much time spent in boardrooms, figuring out what we think kids need to know,” she told Maclean’s. Oni wanted to take her poems into schools after reading in the newspaper that sex education wasn’t mandatory across Canada and that the information wasn’t always sinking in.

To make things sink in for youth, organizations like the Kids Help Phone line (1-800-668-6868) use straight talk, like Oni does, in their ads: “Call if your boyfriend broke your heart. Call if your boyfriend broke your jaw.”

At Planned Parenthood, groups beyond youth can find the information they need about sex and relationships. For example, the DisAbled Women’s Network of Ontario (DAWN) distributes a brochure through Planned Parenthood to expose myths about disabled women and sexuality.

Outside of a general interest in helping people make informed choices for themselves, sexual educators often have an interest in the topic for personal reasons too. For example, growing up in “woeful sexual ignorance,” was the motivation for Alfred Kinsey to research and publish Sexual Behavior in the Human Male (1948) and Sexual Behavior in the Human Female (1953).

While my own Starfucking Tales of Sexless One-night Stands, a book documenting travels through the sexual landscape of Ottawa, may teach a few people a few things, the motivation is equally selfish. Consider it field research for a 1999 grad paper on masturbation, sexual frustration and artistic failure in James Joyce’s Ulysses.

Once called pornography and banned, this book is now a fixture in the academic world’s exploration of sex and sexuality. In the words of Sean Walsh, who directed its film adaptation, Bloom, Ulysses is “heralded as the most important literary work of the 20th century, [but] very few people have actually read it.”

Like Kinsey’s director, Bill Condon, Walsh deserves praise for making another of the world’s most influential stories involving sexuality accessible to the masses. Not everyone might thank him for it.

When the Museum of Nature premiered Bloom last summer, a few scurried off during the scene where Leopold Bloom is commanded to drink urine. But the detail isn’t gratuitous.

Walsh defended to Shotgun the sex in Joyce’s work: “Sex is a fundamental element of what we are. Joyce wanted to display and reveal the utter truth of our sexual make-up and fantasies. It didn’t matter to Joyce whether this was appealing or not to the reader-what was important was that it was real.”

Walsh is not alone in his contribution on Joyce-locally for example an entire course is devoted to Ulysses at Carleton University and the university has been active in working across disciplines toward the development of sexuality studies curricula.

According to Sapphic Traffic columnist Suki Lee in her article, “Queer studies: The rise of gay and lesbian academe” (Capital Xtra! September 9, 2004): “Increasingly, Canadian universities are offering … lesbian and gay studies. Also called sexuality, gender diversity or queer studies.” In March 2004, Carleton held a Symposium on Sexuality Studies to gauge interest in a potential program.

However, heterosexual sex took a back seat to queer issues, which made up 90 per cent of the symposium’s focus. Professor Jodie Medd explained to Shotgun: “The critical analysis of how power works usually/often first comes from those who have been most ‘oppressed’ or ‘regulated’ by that power; certainly much of ‘queer theory’ considers how heterosexuality works.” In effect then, the surge of interest in queer studies will in the end benefit the hetero world.

The range of talents in fields that teach or touch upon sex is as impressive as the understanding they further and the ignorance they dispel. And both approaches – the outreach efforts and the intellectual exploration – are necessary if people are going to become in the know about the know-how and workings of sex.

– Sylvie Hill