The people at ArcMtl, responsible for Expozine and the Distroboto project, which repurposes cigarette machines to sell art instead, are unveiling a new endeavour this month that examines the Anglophone arts scene in Montreal. “Making It Montreal” brings together Anglophone artists in Montreal who’ve chosen to make this city their home and place of work. Louis Rastelli, one of the organizers, explains that “These artists both chose to ‘make it’ in Montreal and, in the process, are making Montreal through living here and contributing to the arts scene.”

      The project features bands, visual artists and writers who have chosen Montreal as their artistic home.  MakingItMontreal launched their website last Thursday at Divan Orange, with a musical showcase featuring Tony Ezzy and Lake of Stew. I spoke to Ezzy, an electro-funk musician being showcased by MakingItMontreal, about why he chose to move from Maine to Montreal and the tensions that exist between Franco and Anglo art scenes here.

McGill Daily: Are you a transplant to Montreal? 
Tony Ezzy: Yes. I grew up in the state of Maine, but I was born in New Brunswick. I never lived there, though. Just like how Keannu Reeves was born in Beirut. 
MD: Why did you chose Montreal as the city you and live and work in as an artist? What makes this city so attractive to artists – or is just the promise of cheap rent? 
TE: The possibility of cheap rent is one thing, yes. This is also where I came immediately after graduating High School, so I had a good foundation of friends. Montreal is also an attractive city, as far as urban planning goes. The Un-American-ness of it is very attractive, and the relaxed attitude towards the rat race. It’s definitely not perfect, though. 
 
MD: Can you describe Montreal’s character to me? 
TE: Somebody who is naturally really smart and does well in school without having to study. Since they do better than the people around them they think they are truly intelligent, so they turn off their mind and stop learning, and become very cynical. This is what Montreal would be like as a person. 
 
MD: Do you think Montreal comes through in your music at all? 
TE: A little bit. The Bibliotech Nationale has done an excellent job at fueling me with research materials that constantly inspire me. 
MD: Have you found there’s a strong community for the arts and anglo artists in Montreal? 
TE: There is a very strong sense of community here, and an appreciation for art that goes beyond commercialism and/or maket-ability. That is very nice. People need to appreciate their city and their community for what it is and not become frustrated because it’s not another New York or L.A. or Toronto. 
MD: Do you think the anglo and franco art scenes in Montreal are different? How do you think they work together? What sort of cultural, lingual, or political barriers have you encountered as a working artist in Montreal? 
TE: The franco scene gets more funding, but has much less international  crossover appeal. As far as I can see, they don’t work together too much, except when they’re thrown together for political reasons. The Francophone appreciate the english stuff way more than the average  Anglophone appreciates French stuff. Actually, the Francophones seem to appreciate the Anglophone stuff more than the Anglophones do. 
 
MD: As an Anglophone, what’s your perspective of language politics in Montreal? Is there a lot of tension? Does the tension come from specific generations? What do you think could be done to help resolve tensions/barriers between these two linguistic groups? 
TE: Any kind of politics is an abomination and a form of tyranny. It negates the natural potential for happiness and peace in humans. I personally experienced tension once from a soundman at a place on Papineau and Laurier. He literally sabotaged my show and I had no idea what I had done to offend him. I found out after that it was because I was performing in English. It made him look bad. If somebody is having a bad day or wants to be negative, they can use the language dispute as an excuse. 
      That’s it. People need to change their way of seeing things individually. Nothing can really be done on the collective level. People need to relax. It’s just talking. Half the time it’s incomprehensible, no matter what language they’re speaking. 
You can find out more about MakingItMontreal on their website:  www.makingitmontreal.org

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The Internet meme features two girls shitting into a cup, feeding it to each other, and then puking in each other’s mouths. The video is often posted as a flame on Internet boards, where a clueless surfer may click the link without knowing what’s in store. For most viewers, 2girls1cup compels us because of our fascination at our own disgust. The girls in the video are transgressing bodily boundaries and consuming one another’s feces, things ejected not only from their bodies but also from our society. However, 2girls1cup is actually a trailer for a scat-fetish film called Hungry Bitches. One woman’s Internet junk is always another woman’s treasure.

That cyberspace is full of weird shit isn’t a surprise to anyone who’s grown up in our information age. In fact, trolling the web for strange, glorious, and disgusting things is a common hobby among the young and the stoned. In terms of content, the Internet is mostly an unregulated space, and surfing it can be the equivalent of visiting your city’s seediest bar – without the physical risks. Online, you don’t have to leave your couch to be a voyeur or an exhibitionist. Our society’s fascination with the marginal is given free reign by the Internet’s vast archives of niche sexualities. As much as we revel in our own disgust at 2girls1cup, we must wonder at those who get pleasure from it.

The video also inspired a series of reaction videos. The manner in which the video has been passed around suggests that the people circulating the video take pleasure in other people’s reactions. Trust me, people’s reactions of disgust, shock, and horror are often the most titillating aspect for the fetishizer; the flasher or the exhibitionist get their rocks off on shock and surprise. Surfers passing around 2girls1cup for hilarious reactions are not as removed from the video’s target fetish audience as they may like to think.

Marshall McLuhan argues that all media is a narcissistic circuit. Narcissus, staring into his pool of water, didn’t fall in love with himself. The pool mediated Narcissus’s view and obscured his ability to recognize himself. Our modern media work the same way. Our technologies trick us into thinking that we’re interacting with one another, when in reality, they are reflecting ourselves.

The ironic stance taken to video memes like 2girls1cup masks our own fascination and compulsion toward sexual and bodily transgression. Mediating this fascination through a computer screen allows us to maintain an illusion of distance to these grotesque and sexual spectacles. An ironic stance is often coupled with a repetition and affirmation of how “funny” or “sick” something is. Trolling the Internet, we get to experiment with strange and socially unacceptable aspects of ourselves.

Often this anonymous experimentation gets wrapped up in the rhetoric of liberation. Bodies can travel unmarked in virtual space, and thus can arguably free themselves from the burden of racism or sexism, which limit their mobility in corporeal space. Many web utopists view the Internet as a safe space, emancipated from the structural subjugations that inhibit material life. This is one argument for why so many young queers experience their first coming-out online.

A seemingly infinite and unregulated space, the Internet is an ideal home for alternative sexualities. A quick Google search for polyamory, queer, BDSM, or dog dates (where people try to find dates for their dogs!) results in numerous networking sites that reveal large online communities for each sexual niche. We think of cyberspace as a place of increased democratization and equal representation. The wide array of marginalized sexualities on the net is evidence that this open forum is most obviously used to explore sex and sexual identity. The Internet and sex remain close bedfellows: porn kickstarted the World Wide Web and “sex” is still the most commonly searched word.

However, new media often just reuses the content of old media. Though the Internet may help build communities and raise the profile of marginal sexualities, the web does not cause these identities. Even child pornography, which the Internet is sometimes demonized for proliferating, predates the web. By putting child pornography online, people are simply updating the sex they would’ve been fantasizing about anyway.

Cyberfeminists Sadie Plant and Akkucquere Stone argue that while the Internet allows marginalized people to move freely and safely on the Internet, it also grants bigotry the same anonymity. A racist on the Internet has no fear of recourse. Hegemonic structures of power are often simply remapped onto virtual space.

The groups that have the most to gain from disembodied sexual exploration – women, queer people, sex workers, and teens – are frequently the purported victims of the unregulated Internet. “The kind of harassment that often plagues women in face to face communication has, not surprisingly, become perhaps too frequently a fact of life in computer mediated communication,” writes Laurie Finke in “Women: Lost in Cyberspace?” Virtual harassment is real. Female bloggers can receive comments that threaten gendered violence; sexual predators meet children online; avatars on Second Life are victims of online rape; a girl on chatroulette.com (a site that connects users’ webcams at random) is confronted by demands to see her tits or shown a masturbating dick.

Because of these threats, women and children are told not to give out personal information online. However, advice cautioning on how to behave online can have the same drawbacks as the advice given to protect women from sexual violence in the real world: “Stay at home; avoid dark alleys, getting drunk, and wearing skirts.” While well-meaning, these warnings are misinformed and do little to protect women from sexual abuse. Sixty-nine per cent of rape survivors are assaulted by someone they know and sixty per cent of assaults occur in a private home, according to the Ontario Women’s Directorate. Fear-mongering about both virtual and realworld threats often does little to keep women safe, and only restricts their mobility on and off the web.

Zillah Eisenstein, a women’s studies professor at Ithaca College, writes of a woman student who entered a chatroom, gave a fake name to protect her identity, yet still felt uncomfortable – she was too worried about the possibility of sexual abuse.

The terror of virtual violence against women is a response to a variety of cultural fears surrounding the anonymity (and freedom) that the Internet gives to marginalized bodies. Our culture marks some strangers as more dangerous than others. One of the perceived dangers of the Internet is that we cannot classify and stereotype the “dangerous” and marked bodies of those who are raced, classed, or gendered as deviant or criminal.

Calls for increased regulation and stricter guidelines on Internet content can be to the detriment of the marginalized individuals they are intended to protect. For instance, the crimes of Phillip Markoff, dubbed the “Craigslist killer,” incited legislation in the U.S. that requires content on Craiglist’s erotic classified ads to be regulated.

Markoff has been charged with the murder of Julissa Brisman. Markoff met Brisman through her erotic services ads on Craigslist. According to an Associated Press article by Don Babwin, police believe Markoff may have been involved in other crimes against women who posted ads on Craigslist.

“This tragic incident will become yet another rallying cry for those who’d like to curtail freedom and openness on the Internet,” writes Leslie Harris, president and CEO of the Center for Democracy and Technology.

“A month after the killing of a masseuse who advertised on Craigslist, the classified ad site announced plans Wednesday to eliminate its ‘erotic services’ category and screen all submissions to a new ‘adult services’ section before they are posted,” writes Babwin, adding that under the new system, posting adult ads will also carry a fee. This legislation was passed in January 2010, but a quick browse over the Craigslist adult services section reveals that sex work and escort services are still regular content on the site.

If this legislation is enforced, it will put sex workers in danger. Craiglist provides a virtual space for solicitation that prostitution laws deny workers in the real world, and even a small fee makes the classifieds less accessible to those that need their protection the most. In Canada, while sex work is legal, public communication for soliciting sex is illegal. There is a correlation between the instigation of this law and reports of increased violence against sex workers. In both Canada and the U.S., online classifieds allow sex workers to make safe arrangements and decrease their chances of being put at risk. They can hash out who, what, when, where, and how much from the safety of their computer, and don’t have to worry about being apprehended for public solicitation. Sex workers can also request background checks and ask for references from their clients.

Increased regulation on erotic classified ads would force the sex workers currently online back onto the street, and would increase their risk of violence. “The Internet took a lot of sex workers off the street and created the entrepreneurial age of sex work. Now, it’ll drive them right back to where they came from,” explains Robyn Few, co-director of San Francisco’s Sex Worker Outreach Project.

The Internet, like real life, can be a site of both liberation and potential oppression. Increased regulation of the net will most likely harm those it’s supposed to protect. What’s really needed is equal access. Those who produce the software and hardware we use are a minority who make rules that govern the majority. A technocrati is currently being constructed as an elite club. Like most clubs of our society, it’s a boys club. Women are less familiar with computer technology – possibly in part due to the male-oriented computer game industry. In 2004-2005, less than 17 per cent of students enrolled in computer engineering, computer science, and software engineering were women, according to a report by the Software Human Resource Council. In order for the Internet to be a liberatory space for the marginalized, they must be instrumental in its construction.

Adrian Ringland, a 36-year-old man from the U.K., used his technical skills to force young girls to send him naked photos. He hacked onto their computers and threatened to crash their systems unless they obeyed his commands. The young women’s lack of computer programming knowledge increased their vulnerability.

Our media is a screen on which we can project both our fears and fantasies. Right now, we get to decide what we want the Internet to say about us – censorship and regulation or community building through the democratization of technical skills and sexual freedom? Let me put it another way: Do we want 2girls1cup to be erased from the Internet 4eva, or do we want 2girls1cup to be hacked on to a web broadcast of the Today Show?

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Little Brother: I want to poop back and forth.

Big Brother: What? What does that mean?

LB: Like, I’ll poop into her butt hole and then she’ll poop it back into my butt hole. And then we’ll just keep doing it back and forth with the same poop. Forever.

BB: Oh my god, I’m going to put that…. She’s gonna think we’re a crazy, perverted person.

Trust me, it’s cute when a little kid says it. In fact, it almost comes across as romantic. Of course, it’s the little boys’ innocence that makes it so endearing. He has no idea what’s “crazy perverted” about poop as sex.

In Freudian terms – let’s momentarily give the man some feminist slack – the little boy is going through a stage of development known as polymorphous perversity, meaning that he has yet to learn to locate his sexual libido in his genitals. For a little kid still figuring out where his body begins and ends and what pleasure can be given and received, any part of the body can be the locus of erotic pleasure, including the bum. To a small child not yet schooled in the ways of the world, a bum is not much different from an elbow or a penis – and poop is not that much different from cum.

People seem to have all sorts of hang-ups when it comes to the ass. A game of Never Have I Ever takes a delicate turn when ass-play comes in to the mix. Girls will sheepishly admit to it, straight guys almost never – as if the act instantaneously revoked their masculinity – and even gay men, for whom the ass is considered to be the primary site of pleasure, sometimes get all up in arms about whether they’re top or bottom.

When you think about it, the ass has a lot going for it. From anal beads, butt plugs, fingering, rimming, enemas, spanking, scat play, pinching, shaking, and shimmying, the bum sure is versatile. And how could we forget such famous bums as Bruce Springsteen’s – once considered the bum of America. So why are so many people worried about the fact they could be getting pleasure up the ass?

Of course, even beyond Brucey’s iconic bum, the ass has been acknowledged as a source of aesthetic pleasure for a long time. We all know that Sir Mix A Lot likes big ones, lots of women on sitcoms like cute ones, and some gym-prone people like them firm. What’s weird is that asses are so out of many people’s sexual field of vision. I mean, anal sex toys are even legal in Texas – Texas, where it’s against the law to advertise sex toys as sex toys and a vibrator is called a “personal massager,” but a butt plug is still a butt plug.

Pop-culturally speaking, it seems safe that women comment on men’s bums – a cute bum is almost desexualized. It’s a non threatening form of male objectification. Think about how bums are treated on prime time TV. A bum packaged in tight jeans has almost been sanitized: those women aren’t really talking about sex, they’re talking about bums! Just like babies’ bums! Men, on the other hand, have a more aggressive history when it comes to the bum – there’s usually a pinch or slap involved. Real men don’t just sit around talking about bums. Oh no. Real men go out there and touch ‘em!

Another thing real men apparently don’t do is get pleasure from their bums. I have no doubt that as we speak, there are plenty of people – straight dudes, women, trans folk – who are out there doing nasty things to asses. Yet there’s still a cultural stigma attached to the back door. For one, apparently it’s dirty. Way dirtier than the mouth, penis, or vagina. I mean, poop comes out of that thing, and, in the hierarchy of bodily excrements, it seems that pee wins out over poop every time. Once you get past the poop, there’s always the question of whether it’ll actually feel good. There’s lots of debate over whether the male G-spot actually exists. But really folks, who cares if it’s supposed to feel good “biologically”? Plenty of people get off without being touched at all – stone butches, objectophiliacs, those guys who like it when women sneeze. Sex is all about the mental. Of course, this doesn’t mean the physical isn’t important – the mind is still a part of the body, after all, and you’re still experiencing this pleasure in your body whether or not you’re being stimulated mentally or physically. What I’m saying is that sex and pleasure isn’t the sole domain of the genitals or some silly little spot, so why are so many people worrying about that treasure trove of pleasure that is the bum?

It’s time the ass got a little more respect. Remember that before feminists started to reclaim the vagina, female orgasms weren’t even on society’s bodily map; the penis was considered the sole giver and receiver of sexual pleasure. I think it would be great if we were all proud, polymorphous, crazy perverts – sex explorers of the bum.

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I’m not talking about the Internet and porn. Yes, those two definitely make good bedfellows – and more power to them – but that shit’s old news. No, I’m talking about sex with machines. I’m talking about devices like Real Touch which enable virtual reality porn, the OhMiBod, a vibrator that syncs up to the pulse of your iPod, Japanese sex machines, and maybe even that fit-looking cyborg in all those Svedka Vodka ads.

I’m all for people finding new ways to get off. I think sex is inherently a creative act, but I have to wonder what we’re losing or gaining when we replace flesh with machine. And I’m not talking about simple sex toys like strap-ons, but machines that are simulated to seem like they’re interacting with you – as if they were another person. Are we gaining anything when we gear ourselves up for some virtual sex ? Are we simply using technology to explore new thresholds of pleasure? Or, are we losing the body and the Other in the process?

Technology increasingly designs both private and public life – whether it be security cameras in public spaces or Youtube parties – and it is designed to be used in a specific way for a specific, pre-ordained, purpose. Take security cameras, for example. No one can actually be watching them all the time. In that capacity, they’re useless. However, simply the possibility of being constantly watched produces normative behaviour. The same goes for other technologies. When I interact with my computer, my interactions are not only limited but pre-empted. Whether it be the government or Facebook rifling through our Internet garbage, or the fantasy that our lives are just like The Truman Show – technologies give us a weird complex about being surveiled, thus circumscribing our range of natural actions. It isn’t only the information the Internet gives us that is controlled; its very design requires specific physical and mental acts from the individual.

Think about what happens to you when you find out you’re being watched. For instance, the way you experience your body changes when you’re sitting on the bus and you notice someone watching you – real intense-like. All of a sudden, your body language changes – you start to think: “Was I making a weird face?” “Was I subconsciously picking my nose?” “Can they tell that I’m horny?” “What was I doing to make them notice me?” Now, take that power and put it in some Big Brother-esque system in the hands of the state, or Mark Zuckerburg. Whether or not people are watching those cameras, or if they’re digitally recording your emails and chats, the idea of them noticing you causes you to act in a particular, self-conscious way.

When Narcissus looked into the pond of water and saw his reflection, he didn’t realize that he was enraptured with himself. He thought he was looking at someone else – otherwise he would’ve got the hell outta there and got laid. Technology is the same kind of interruption of this recognition. We’re encouraged to think of machines as other beings, something you can have a two-way interaction with. In reality, we’re completely controlling our experience – and only in the limited way that the technological design allows us to. Technology is premised on the idea of facilitating interaction with other peoples’ opinions, art works, and bodies, within a realm of the freedom of individual choice. But, beyond the guise of increased individualism, no one mentions the factors of control behind the experience of the Internet. Beyond Big Brother, it is even a self-control that is forced upon us by such technologies: you are bringing up the articles you want to read, the people you want to text, the items you want delivered to your door. There is no interaction with the Other – only the interaction with the extension of self that is the machine. Of course, you can say this same set-up exists in the physical realm: you walk among your class, you talk with people like you. However, in the physical realm this experience can be interrupted by another being; on the web, you can simply shut your laptop screen.

Thus, you lose both your body and the Other when you interact with a machine, since the machine, which is supposedly the Other is actually an extension of self. The self, therefore, becomes heavily regulated by the machine. The ultimate example is Real Touch – the idea of virtual reality porn. Your corporeal body becomes the body on screen which is interacting with the digital body of the Other. Thus, the digital body seems more real than your physical one – as it is the one actually fucking someone. The Other, however, is not actually another person, but a machine – a machine controlled by you, but designed with only a limited amount of possibilities for you to control. As such, your experience has become a regulated one; the creativity afforded to the body is lost. The idea of being uncomfortable, of finding a new locus of pleasure, of simply listening to your sex therapist and “trying new things,” becomes one limited by the hegemony, digital codes, and sleek ergonomic design of technology. Damn, my laptop is svelte.

I know this all seems a little bit like millenium-style fear mongering, but I’m not totally down on technology. I think it’s, you know, a young tyke with a lot of potential or something. Or maybe just a digital reproduction of our regulated social reality, who knows? I also think it has some ups. For instance, a world dependent on technology, where the body is nullified or augmented by machines, destabilizes ideas of what is “natural.” Homosexuality or trans issues may be evaluated as lower on the barometer of “natural” morality in the real world as it is inscribed with deep-seated social norms which may not have as great a currency in the virtual realm. As Donna Haraway argues, cyborgs are not faithful to their origins. So far technology has been integrated pretty well into Western narratives of progress, or maybe technology is progress runaway with itself – it usurps the currency of the natural. And hey, that could be a good time, too.

Send your sci-fi doomsday porn to Julie at gutturalmind@mcgilldaily.com. She loves that stuff.

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You’d be surprised at how many people don’t get this concept. The first time the lady and I ever hooked up was at a high school party. Some fortunate soul stumbled upon us, and instead of leaving, the response was something along the lines of, “Hey, I’m gonna watch this for a while and then tell everyone at the party that there is lesbian sex going on upstairs so they can come and take a gander.” I’m not sure how many people witnessed the consummation of our relationship, but that bedroom certainly seemed to employ an open-door policy that night. That night gave way to two major themes of our coupledom: great sex alongside some non-consensual voyeurism.

In the years since that fateful night, I’ve looked up from a street corner make-out session to: cat calling, guys asking if they can join, people telling us “not to stop,” grandmother’s gaping, and – on one particularly memorable occasion – a group of bros in a car videotaping us with their cellphone camera. Real classy, guys. I haven’t exactly compiled the data, but I’m pretty sure this doesn’t happen to straight couples. At least not with the same regularity.

While anyone doing their business in public should expect a rude aside or two from passersby, I feel like this kind of spectator sport is reserved for queer public displays of affection – particularly the lesbian kind. After all, guys watching girls kissing is the makings of a really good beer commercial.

The whole cultural acceptance of guys thinking lesbians are hot is a homophobic one. It’s a way for the patriarchy to assert control over something it has no place in: women-only sexuality. By appropriating these displays for men, lesbian sexual expression is once again safely contained in a heterosexual domain. When a guy catcalls my lesbian PDA, he’s inserting himself into my sexual experience. But buddy, this shit ain’t for you, it’s for us. What’s more, such reactions reestablish public space as heteronormative.

Physical space is not some weird apolitical twilight zone. It is actually inscribed with cultural values that everything around us – from architecture to design to our moral codes of conduct – serves to reinforce. This could mean something obvious, like the fact that stairs restrict wheelchair users from accessing a building; or it could mean that our normative values code the majority of public space as heterosexual. Of course, this demarcation is invisible. Heterosexuality is generally considered the dominant and naturalized form of sexuality in our culture, which means that it often gets a free pass. Thus, heterosexuality can flit through cafés and parks unscathed. It is only when our friendly heterosexual space is disrupted by a queer act that the heterosexuality of public space becomes apparent. For instance, just last May, a lesbian couple was asked to refrain from kissing at a Seattle Mariner’s Game because some mother complained that “there were children around.” Honey, those kids are downing corn dogs filled with toxins and who knows what percentage of rat remains, and you’re concerned about some same-sex tongue-on-tongue? Get your priorities straight.

What exactly is so harmful about the meeting of sex and public space anyway? Sure there are real dangers to sex – such as STIs or throwing out your back – but there are also real dangers to that “fork in the eye” magic trick where you put a creamer close to your eye and stab it with a fork and then you pretend that you stabbed your eye….yeah, that shit’s weird. Anyway, I digress. Public sex laws, designed to protect unsuspecting citizens from the danger that created them, often specifically target queer sex. Yet, the fact is that queers have a historical alignment with public sex. Before urban gaybourhoods were created, cruising grounds were often situated in public spaces such as cemeteries, parks and, most famously, bathrooms. As recently as 1998, George Michael was arrested for giving the cock-eye to a police officer’s private parts in a Beverly Hills bathroom. Sure, straight couples get arrested for having public sex, but I’ve never heard of a guy getting arrested for staring at a girl’s chest. Public sex is queer sex – in every meaning of the word. Sex, in its conventional definition, is private. Moreover, the gradients of acceptable public displays of affection for straight and queer couples diverge in the fact that queer acts cross over into the realm of exhibitionism much more readily than hetero ones. Exhibitionism is akin to fetishsm, and, in my book, fetishes are covered under that big umbrella term of queerdom.

What we’re really saying when we talk about moral decency and public sex, is that we want to maintain public space as heteronormative. It comes own to our culturally ingrained need to keep all these disruptive queer acts of girls kissing girls and George Michael ogling a fellow’s privates away from the public sphere, where they may make passersby question the norms and values written on the space. As such, public sex of any kind should be regarded as a political act. It’s certainly still a dangerous one. In 2005, a lesbian couple kissing on the corner of St. Denis and Mont-Royal were gay bashed in broad daylight.

I think it’s time we all answered the Beatles’ age-old question “Why Don’t We Do It In the Road?” by taking our sexuality to the streets in order to redefine public space as a safe one for everyone.

Guttural Mind will be back with more mind-blowing norm-bashing next week in the Mind&Body section.

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A division exists between the way we view women’s masturbatory sex toys and men’s. A woman with a vibrator or a dildo is “sexually emancipated;” a man who needs more than a dirty photograph and his hand to jerk off, however, is often seen to be falling short of an Alfie-style masculinity.

Blowjob imitators, fake vaginas, the fleshlight, and sex dolls are all objects of ridicule. Weird and creepy pervs have them; real men don’t. Men who resort to artificial implements for sex just don’t seem to have that natural magnetic masculine sexual energy the likes of James Bond. Or maybe they just don’t buy Axe deodorant.

A lot of this has to do with the way masculine sexuality is constructed in mainstream society – as insatiable and uncomplicated, needing only a hole and some lube to get off. Society does not think men require an emotional connection. Emotion? Pfft, that shit’s for women, alright?

This view is reinforced in all sorts of silly ways in society, porn being one of the main playas. For example, porn, marketed to men, focuses mainly on fucking and usually ends in more fucking. Erotica, on the other hand, which is marketed to women, generally focuses on relationships and ends in marriage. If men are taking their sexual cues from porn, then intimacy and sex don’t belong in the same bedroom. Intimacy is for girly girls; straight-up sex is for manly men.

Feminist arguments aside, if a blow-up doll is being used simply as a fuck toy, why do some think it’s so much creepier than a dildo, which basically reduces men to a cock? The fact is that owners of sex dolls often aren’t just using their lovely ladies for sex; many form intimate relations with them. This is much more problematic from the mainstream masculine point of view. Lars and the Real Girl, starring Ryan Gosling, is the story of a lonely man, his sex doll, and his emotional attachment to the intimate object. In the movie, Lars and his doll never consummate their relationship, but Lars still grows emotionally close to her. It’s supposed to be a heart warming story, yet Lars and the Real Girl parodies a real-life phenomenon where men do grow attached to their sex dolls, where they give them names, call them their girlfriend, and keep a picture of “her” in their wallet.

RealDoll is a California based company that manufactures life-sized, realistic looking sex dolls that are made out of silicone and come with a US$ 6,500 price tag. From RealDoll’s web site, a client may choose their doll’s hair style, breast size, pubic hair, makeup, and skin tone. The skin tones range from “fair” to “Light African.” Only “ethnic” tones like “Asian” are labeled by their nationality – Dark African or, say, South-East Asian are notable omissions. The FAQ on the site has tips for maintenance and care of the dolls, such as the proper way to brush and style the doll’s hair, how to protect their fingers, what makeup best suits the doll, and if it can be posed for doggy style. Apparently, just like children’s dolls, sex dolls require some tender loving care and affection.

Obviously, the sex doll is disturbing when being viewed from a feminist perspective, whether or not they’re being used as a substitute girlfriend. These arguments aren’t hard to draw out. Wait, your ideal woman is one you created yourself? Who has no opinion and never talks back? Who has a personality you not only created but also control? This is all not to mention the Barbie-like proportions of the doll (Barbie herself was originally created as a German sex doll, and in RealDolls her legacy seems to have come full circle), and the binary assumptions of gender and sex inherent in RealDolls. Did I mention that their male doll is out of production? RealDolls does offer a penis attachment for female dolls, but they problematically dub dolls with this addition “She-Male Dolls.” To me, this seems more like trans-fetishism than a queer-friendly option. The point is that all the aforementioned concerns are valid, and in this light, intimate relations with sex dolls are decidedly creepy.

But let’s put those thoughts aside for a moment and think about men cuddling their RealDolls in bed. There is no doubt that RealDolls, with their hairless bodies, vacant expressions, and open suggestive pumped-up lips mirror the female body emulated by the mainstream porn industry. However, the relationships many men cultivate with their RealDoll do not. As stated before, masculine sexuality is supposed to be about fucking, not cuddling. Yet men who love their dolls, self-titled “iDollators,” are not only bringing intimacy into porn on their own terms, but are also performing supposed acts of femininity – dressing their dolls, styling their hair, and doing their makeup. On one level this operates as the ultimate heterosexual male fantasy, wherein men have complete control over women. In doll world, women aren’t just objectified, they are objects. Yet this hyper-heterosexual fantasy is undercut by the erotic intimacy necessary to maintaining such a relationship. These acts are performed out of a strange sort of love for their doll. It seems that the men who love their dolls find that a wet hole isn’t enough to get them off, which leads them to give a personality to their sex toy.

What sort of culture do we live in where some men seek intimacy from dolls as opposed to people? Often in popular culture, women are seen as domesticating forces, attempting to marry and settle the Eternal Bachelor character. The “iDollators” narrative counteracts this; here men are domesticating themselves. As creeped out as I am by RealDolls (just looking at the site totally gives me the heebee jeebees), I think the phenomenon has some interesting implications. Just as vibrators have become symbols of women’s liberation, perhaps, by some twisted sense of logic, RealDolls are being used to liberate straight guys from the constraints of classical masculine sexuality, giving them a foothold on sexual intimacy. Maybe it’s even something along the lines of a good thing?

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Well, let me run with this for a second. Most of the photographers on Top Model are male, and all the models are female. According to the above logic, their jobs are of equal importance. Still, this set-up is only one example of the male voyeur relationship that is played out in many professions. As the fabulous Guerrilla Girls, a group of New York City-based feminist artists, point out, about five per cent of the artists in the Modern Art section of the Metropolitan Museum in New York are women, but 85 per cent of the nudes are female. Men like Man Ray, Matisse, Phil Spector, and yeah, Hugh Hefner, owe a whole lot of their career to photographing, recording, painting, and distributing female bodies, and these things are widely regarded as art. However, I think credit should be given where credit is due. The object of art – the model and her body – should be factored in to considering what makes art art, and what makes art great.

Up until fairly recently, women have been institutionally barred from artistic expressions – whether writing, composing, or painting. However, women are encouraged to involve themselves with certain art forms that are coded as inherently “feminine.” Generally, the artistic fields available to women are based around bodily communication – singing, dancing, modelling, and gymnastics all use the body as an instrument for artistic expression. These expressions, however, are fleeting; whereas a theatre actor’s performance would only be remembered by those who viewed it, the playwright can have his vision performed time and again. In this way, the actor’s brilliant performance gets swept away with time, while the playwright’s vision lives on. And since one criteria for a “great work” is that it stands the test of time, this means that body-art has often fallen outside the criteria for genius. Times have changed though, and with new-fangled technology, like film, we began to create archives of bodily art. Without recording technologies we wouldn’t be able to canonize the genius of women like Marilyn Monroe, Katharine Hepburn, Brigitte Bardot, or Pamela motherfuckin’ Anderson today.

Feminists have been reclaiming the value of women’s art work for decades. Riot grrl knitting circles and radical quilting bees have sprung up in activist hubs like Olympia, Washington and Portland, Oregon. However, there have been few attempts to reclaim the art of bodily expression that is porn – mastered by both males and females, but generally coded with a big fat F.

For feminists such as Dworkin and Co., porn is regarded as women living out male fantasies for the male gaze. And okay, there’s totally some truth to that. But ignoring the fact that some women chose to be porn actors and that these women worked really hard to be able to master these techniques – some may even call them “artistic” techniques – trivializes both their work and their choices. Is the male gaze the only thing that gives value to this form of bodily artistic expression, or does the object – the performer – add their own merit to the scene?

It doesn’t matter what end of the cultural spectrum we’re talking about – high or low, ballet or porn, soft or hard – women artists are generally measured by bodily expression that is often closely tied up with their sexual appeal. Too often in porno, a real genius of bodily expression is attributed to some sort of svengali dude pulling the strings behind the curtains – it was the lighting, the dialogue, the cinematography, the angle, the production, or what have you. But what about the actresses on screen? There’s something to be said for the mastery of moans, grunts, muscles, and cunts. When I go to a strip show and the girl on stage puts a banana in her vagina and then blows it past my ear, that’s a fucking skill, okay?

Since sexual expression is one of the art forms that has always welcomed women with open arms – as problematic as that reception may be – women may turn to sex to say things they might not have any other means of expressing. Because of their long-standing exclusion from the realm of major artistic achievement, many women still find bodily art as the form of expression most open to them. What’s more, women are often configured outside of language, and a lot of times they don’t have words to explain what they’re feeling. You think the Betty Everett shoop-shoop’ed all her way to a kiss for no reason? While “it’s in his kiss” may have been the most direct expression of her big hit, the shoop-shoops and doo-langs gave expression to a feeling she couldn’t quite articulate within the confines of male language. The dominant language of our culture is necessarily bound up with the long history of patriarchal domination, and this often doesn’t leave room for women to express themselves, so they have to invent. However, sexual language has been subject to women’s subversion ever since Adam and Eve did the dirty, and women know how to use it.

The potential for porn to let the subaltern speak has begun to gain recognition in the mainstream, and many artists have begun to wrestle it from the grips of that evil monster known as patriarchy. A new idea has emerged: perhaps the medium of porn can be reappropriated to say some pretty sex-positive and feminist things.

Still, the problem with porn is its repetition of the same heteroboring story lines. Good thing that women like Annie Sprinkle have been breaking the boundaries and genres of the medium by creating women-focused porn and documentary porn – movies which she calls “post-porn modern.” Meanwhile, groups such as Montreal’s Lickety Split smut zine or San Francisco’s Sharing is Sexy give porn back to the people by operating collectively and choosing to produce porn and erotica that deliberately subverts what can be found on the pages of a more mainstream, specifically male-centred publications like Hustler.

These groups recognize that sex and porn are mediums where the use of the body is one half of the artistic equation, and that our culture’s new ability to preserve these kinds of expressions means we have an opportunity to create a new canon that recognizes the way both men and women use their bodies creatively. Whether or not the foundational texts is something patriarchal like Gerard Damiano’s Deep Throat or something a little bit more wild and feminist like Maria Beatty’s Skateboard Kink Freak is up to us. So get your video camera and start she-bumping for the love of all that is slightly dirty.

Julie will be back with more patriarchy-bashing next semester. ‘Til then you can reach her at gutturamind@mcgilldaily.com.

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Important questions, dear reader, and today I will answer one of them: sex parties. They ain’t no Short Bus myth, but are alive and well in our city. Cirque du Boudoir and Against the Wall, a fetish night and bi-monthly party for women and transfolk respectively, are two party planners who are re-imagining your Friday night out.

The following are five tips on how to organize your very own sex romp.

The first rule about sex parties is that you can talk about sex parties – but quietly.

The main problem is that you don’t want a bunch of weirdos creeping up on your sex party. Word of mouth is the best way to advertise, with maybe a few blog posts or craigslist ads here and there if you’re feeling adventurous. You won’t see any fancy Jack Dylan style posters for Against the Wall, but if you keep your ears open, and maybe scan craigslist once in a while, you might be getting some later tonight. The point is that only people who actively seek out the party will know about it.

Bringing polyamory to, uh, poly-venues.

Against the Wall only announces the location 24 hours before the event, and Cirque du Boudoir never chooses the same venue twice. While sex parties aren’t exactly illegal, it’s best to keep things travelling to avoid raids by either cops or unwelcome visitors.

No effort, no entry.

In the spirit of keeping the environment sex-positive, Cirque du Boudoir refuses entry to those who don’t dress up in fetish attire or who haven’t bought a ticket in advance – basically randoms off of the street are not welcome.

Rule enforcement is key.

Keeping things safe, sane, and consensual – the three mandates of the BDSM sexual fetish community – are the most important aspects of any sex party. It’s as vital as having pizza or your dad dressed up as Darth Vader at your seventh birthday party. Against the Wall has different rooms for different play – including a cuddle room and a chill-out space. They also have active listeners available for anyone who may be negatively triggered by an event and needs a break; they are identified by pink bandanas around their arms. Voyeurs are asked to keep a polite distance, and the organizers reserve the right to kick out or ban anyone they deem disruptive, offensive, or abusive. Strict adherence to the rules means that others can continue to safely enjoy some light domestic discipline, ya know what I’m saying?

Safe(r) sex.

The Toronto Roller Derby League once gave a party with a back room where you could watch yourself being filmed having a fun time. Impressive bit of technology, yes, but the thing that impressed me most was that gloves were provided in the back room. If you’re docking your ship in different ports, condoms, gloves, and dental dams are of the utmost importance. Bring your own, and bring it up. STIs can happen to you too, bro. And remember, there’s no way to accessorize herpes.

To invite Julie to your next sex party email gutturalmind@mcgilldaily.com.

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For a certain sect of fetishists known as Vores – short for Vorarephilia – a carnal act is often the same as a carnivorous one. Vores get an erotic charge out of eating someone or being eaten. For some readers this may seem weird, sick, and remind them of waking up in cold-sweats after seeing Silence of the Lambs – understandable responses. For others, viewing Silence of the Lambs meant that Hannibal Lecter replaced Nick Carter as the pin-up poster above their bed.

The cannibal narrative is a common one: foreigner gets captured in a strange land, tied to a spit, and then threatened with becoming the main course for the whole village. A cauldron or a flame gets hotter and hotter, people start sweating, and usually a rescue occurs. It’s almost as generic as a Meg Ryan movie, and who doesn’t think she’s cute?

The Encyclopedia of Cannibal Movies On-Line has over 500 entries from a wide range of genres: horror flicks, porn, and French New Wave are all represented. A Google search of “cannibal fetish” yields about 393, 000 hits. Clearly, this fetish is not so niche as it may seem at first glance. As with any fetish, it’s actually fairly culturally pervasive. At least in my mind, talking about a sexual object as if it were a piece of meat is simply a hop, skip, and a jump from wishing someone was a piece of meat. Maybe people who find weird things sexy are just better at reading subtext than others. It is the sexualisation of the narrative and not the narrative itself which is deemed to be perverse.

Society draws lines when it comes to what’s culturally accepted as sexy. On closer look, these lines prove to be drawn in sand – constantly changing and easily washed away. Is there really that big of a gap between eating someone out and fantasizing about actually eating them? Vampires eat people all the time and boy, are they ever considered sex symbols.

Vore-ism stands at the crossroads of many fetishes. There’s your good ol’ bondage-style vore-ism, where the person who is served as the main meal is hog-tied or gagged with an apple, or it can go further, to humiliation fetishism, when the person is basted and stuffed. Furries may enjoy the idea of eating a certain animal; necrophiliacs may just like the fact that they’re dead. But as in most fetishes, the main theme is power. Vore fetishists who fantasize about being eaten talk about being completely subsumed. They liken it to returning to the womb. Those who fantasize about eating think of it as the ultimate submission. You do not simply control the other person; they become a part of you. These themes of power and submission resonate through almost all sexual encounters, mainstream or not.

The difference between fetishes that society commonly accepts and those it labels perverse is that one is ubiquitous and the other requires reading between the lines. People are rarely asked why they find lingerie sexy. It’s not that it’s natural (what’s natural about lacy undergarments and push-up bras?), but because it is constantly sold as the epitome of “sexy.” Someone with a fetish, however, is subject to questions. But I think a deep philosophical querying of why something makes you cream your panties is healthy. If you don’t have a fetish, or find vore-ism just too strange, go home and ask yourself why you think tying someone to a bed is sexy as opposed to tying someone to a spit. The answer may surprise you. For Freud, the only unusual sexual behavior is none at all. As long as it’s safe, sane, and consensual then I don’t see anything wrong with it. But hey, that’s just me.

Has Julie whet your appetite? Satisfy your craving every other Thursday in the Mind&Body section. Or you can send her your deepest philosophical querying of fetish to gutturalmind@mcgilldaily.com.

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Out of an informal survey of several female friends, I found that only some of them have ever had an orgasm – by their own hand or in the hands of others – and that too many didn’t climax on a regular basis during sex. The same question asked of guys, however, yielded very different results. All of my male acquaintances claimed to have come. Ladies and gentleman, steers and queers, this is a problem. A big one.

Sex talks with my lady friends often follow a similar pattern: they voice their frustrations, liken straight up, penis-in-vagina, penetrative sex to a form of Japanese water torture (they use more diplomatic terms, though, like “boring”) and then conclude by saying. “But I understand, I’m sure it’s very hard.” This conclusion needs to be examined: what, pray tell, is so difficult about female sexuality? Perhaps it’s just a case of mind over matter.

There is concrete, somewhat empirical, evidence to refute the myth that the female orgasm is difficult to attain. Many women have a 99 per cent return rate when it comes to sex. My lady and I, for instance, have sex basically every day, boasting an orgasm each. I guarantee we’re not alone. The holy grail of consistent female sexual gratification is in reach; the problem is knowing how to get there.

In labeling the female orgasm as difficult, if not impossible, the woman is almost erased from the sexual equation. Why is it that a female orgasm is viewed as a conquest, something attributable to the skill of her partner, but is never a given? A man’s orgasm is always a given. In this way, women are still encouraged to lie back and wait until the man gets his. This view of sex means that basically no matter what position you’re in, you’re still doing it missionary-style.

The problem is not biological, but cultural. The construction of the apex of intercourse as penis-in-vagina penetration (PIV for our purposes) is the main culprit. I am not knocking PIV as a sex act; I think it’s great, and I’m sure there are many women who can get their rocks off from it. I just don’t think it should be touted as the one and only “real” sex act.

The issue is not necessarily that PIV is boring or doesn’t stimulate the woman on any level, it’s just that the main goal of PIV is also the end goal of PIV: when a guy comes, he loses his erection, and the sex suddenly stops, usually well before a woman gets hers. It doesn’t have to be this way. As noted in Natalie Angier’s Woman: An Intimate Geography, a woman’s erogenous zones extend well beyond the vagina: the inner and outer labia lips, the vulva, the clitoris, and the g-spot if only to name a few, and many of these areas just aren’t getting enough attention during PIV. Remember that there are many tools for sexual gratification, not just your penis or your strap-on. Your tongue can go lots of places your phallus can’t, and let’s not forget your fingers, either. They’re basically ten really flexible pseudo-penises that can curve up over the vulva, around to the g-spot with the heel of your palm resting and pressing up against the clitoris. These sex practices need to be rescued from the side-lines of foreplay, and can even be combined with PIV using a bit of creativity.

Girls, the responsibility is not on your partner alone. You are master of your own body, and this means your own orgasms. Guys come all the time because they know what they like: they start masturbating young and they keep at it. Meanwhile, most women I’ve talked to have rarely even dabbled in masturbation, at least before they became sexually active. The general response is: “I’m not very good at it.” It’s important to find out what you like so that you can replicate it later, over and over again.

The problem is that it’s still hard for girls to take up the cause of their own sexuality. Women are rarely encouraged to negotiate their sexual identity on their own terms. Women are still often viewed as commodities, which reinforces their passive role. In order for women to come more, women have to be recognized as active participants in their own sexual experience, responsible for their own orgasm.

People, we have work to do. Every girl should take her orgasm into her hands and come: loud, hard, and hopefully often. And remember, practice makes perfect.

Julie’s column will appear every other Thursday. Send her your O-pinions to gutturalmind@mcgilldaily.com

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