Bi-vailable. Pansexual. Bicurious. Heteroflexible.

“Is this just another bisexual chic moment or is this generation having its own bisexual revolution?” asked directors Brittany Blockman and Josephine Decker in their documentary Bi the Way, which was featured at Toronto’s Inside Out Film Festival on Sunday May 17th at the Royal Ontario Museum.

The director duo traveled across America, from New Orleans to Nevada to New York to Utah in order to find out if falling somewhere between gay and straight is possible or just a passing trend.

They followed the stories of five individuals while interviewing a slew of teens, adults, media professionals, sexual researchers and psychologists about whether being attracted to both sexes can be normal.

“I think they’re just half foot in the closet and half foot out,” said one woman on camera, laughing and widening her stance for emphasis.

Many interviewees agreed with this point of view, noting that popular culture practically began endorsing bisexuality with titillating same-sex moments on the programs like the O.C., and even more visibly when Britney Spears and Madonna kissed.

“MTV was holding a mirror up to their audience and giving their audience a blowjob,” said Dan Savage, The Stranger’s “Savage Love” sex columnist. Savage noted that youth who believe they are bisexual might realize otherwise in 10 years.

There are some examples in the film of youth who identify as bisexual but leave the audience unsure if they just haven’t figured out their identity.

David is one of those individuals. The 24-year-old had girlfriends in the past and now casually dates Kevin, but wants a stable relationship with him. His bisexuality is questioned by his parents, who accept him but don’t understand him.

Then there’s Pam, a former cheerleader who was expelled for getting caught kissing a female classmate and had to face the wrath of her conservative father when he discovered her bisexuality. “Girls are catty bitches and guys are pigs…Can’t get along with any of them but you can’t live without them either,” she said.

The film mentioned a study done at Northwestern University in the U.S. which tested how sexual responses to pornography factored into women’s sexual orientation. Those tested viewed both heterosexual and lesbian porn clips, interspersed with landscape scenes. A tampon-shaped probe in their vaginas measured arousal and found that regardless of the type of erotic videos, women responded similarly.

A related study was conducted the following year with men and showed that they were predominantly turned on by either straight or gay porn, but not both.

“My question is, what kind of films did they show them? Was it good porn?” asked a middle-aged, bisexual man, incredulously. “That study showed that I don’t exist.”

One thing the study may have revealed is that bisexuality, at least in the mainstream, is more common among women, said a female sex researcher at Northwestern. Or maybe they just prefer the scenery. “Watching a naked man walk on the beach is about as stimulating as watching a landscape,” she said.

Although there are those in the film who dispute it, Bi the Way showed that a new generation of young people have redrawn the map of sexuality and for many bisexuality is more than a roadside attraction.

“Why can’t I have my cake and eat it too?” asked Tahj, a bisexual 18-year-old from New York.

Dan Savage summed it up best, “Do what turns you on, because you can’t run away from yourself.”

*Published in the June issue of The Ryerson Free Press

Alleviate photography revealed

A stream of customers and artistic admirers wandered amid vibrators, porn and Alleviate, Jes Sachse’s erotic photography series, which hung inside Come as You Are (CAYA) on May 7, as part of Toronto’s CONTACT photography festival.

In a jean vest, with a blonde fringed faux hawk and a silver lightning bolt dangling from her ear, Sachse publicly addressed the negative reactions her debut Contact show received during its initial week of exposure. “If work is self- representative we often take the hit,” she said to the crowd on opening night.

Her collection will be featured at CAYA until June 15th, and focuses on visible disability and self portraiture through the lens of the subject, in an attempt to transcend the stereotypical gaze of disability. From freak shows to the medical text narrative, Sachse uses her own body to juxtapose clichéd imagery in playful and provocative ways.

She plays with gender ambiguity in a series entitled “Hair.” Standing at the foot of a basement with her breasts covered in tin foil and a surgical mask over her face or a pylon grasped between her legs, wearing a moustache.

Sachse was born with a rare condition known as Freeman-Sheldon Syndrome and has scoliosis which curves the spine.

Sarah-Forbes Roberts, one of the co-owners of CAYA said that last spring she invited Sachse to participate in CONTACT 2009 at their venue because she feels there needs to be a place to showcase diverse artistic images of bodies that aren’t mainstream.

“It’s sort of this moment that throws open the door to what is beautiful,” said Roberts, who feels Sachse’s work ties in with the store’s mandate of accessible sexuality.

Her eclectic hodgepodge of photography dates from 2006 up until this past December when she decided to invite viewers into the private space of the bathroom, as opposed to the “yes we can” public image of the wheelchair roving individual. One photograph in particular has generated quite a response.

Sachse stands nude in the shower, grasping the edge of a white plastic curtain as hair dye runs in between her breasts, over her short torso and in between her long legs. A heart reading “crooked” is etched on her chest as tattooed squid tentacles wrap around her arm. Her head is tilted, mouth open, eyes challenging the camera.

“It makes you uncomfortable because I’m naked but I’m also not looking at you in this very renaissance-woman-naked-on-a-couch kind of passive stare, I’m engaging you,” she said.
Audience reactions ranged from “Is that attractive?” to “Why would anyone want to see that?” Sachse worked with Cory Silverberg, part co-owner of CAYA to print an educational Q&A response to be posted in the store with copies available for visitors to take.

She realizes that feedback has less to do with her and more to do with the viewers. “You kind of plant a seed. In that act I’ve done my job.”

But backlash has erupted from more than one source. After submitting a blurb about her show to CONTACT organizers in December, which was published on the webpage and printed in distributed magazines, Sachse noticed it was altered without her notification.

The updated version indicated that observers of Alleviate would be extended an invitation to take a “fresh look” at physical disabilities.

“I felt like it really fucked with everything else I wrote because the whole point is to replicate the most tired archetypes that are associated with disability and to self represent and make new ones,” said Sachse, who felt the word “fresh” was a huge contradiction.

“Here I am trying to sell disability. Disability like you’ve never seen it before kind of deal,” she said in a mocking tone. “I was so mad.”

Last year during the Erotic Blender Art Exhibit at the Gladstone Hotel an Eye Weekly reporter who interviewed her commented on how articulate she was before remarking that “disability is so en vogue,” said Sachse.

This is the type of vibe she has received from the Toronto art scene. “Any media attention has had to do with the fact that disability is, I don’t now, the new black or something.”

But Sachse plans to incorporate these experiences into her art in a variety of different media. Currently in the works, a collaborative documentary will follow the responses her work has received over the years and include other politically like-minded artists. She will continue exploring ways to photograph the medical narrative, infantalization, iconography and censorship associated with disability.

“My method of dealing with stuff is tongue and cheek kind of humour. I’ve come to realize doing the work itself is enough in terms of addressing it. Adding to the dialogue is enough.”

*Published in the June issue of The Ryerson Free Press

The Closeline Project shares laundry

“I couldn’t say the word ‘rape’ for a long time,” said Larisa Storisteanu, a volunteer with the Clothesline Project (CLP) at Ryerson, which took place from May 1 to 4.

Hosted by the V-Day group at Ryerson, the project allowed women who have experienced abuse to share their stories, emotions and messages of hope on donated t-shirts. The t-shirts were then displayed publicly. According to the CLP, making and hanging that laundry can be part of the healing process.

Storisteanu, a former part-time visual arts student at Ryerson, first heard about CLP a few years ago. She was raped by a former employer and wanted to participate in an event she felt was a positive way of reconciling her experience with violence. Storisteanu is also assistant director of Canadian Artists Against Sexual Assault, a student group that has raised funds for the Toronto Rape Crisis Centre by auctioning artwork created by women who have survived violence.

“It’s definitely hard opening up about it but its harder keeping silent,” she said, sitting beside the growing clothesline, her mint colour eyes emphasized by wavy auburn hair.

Decorated t-shirts were strung between four trees alongside Kerr Hall South as women sat at tables and sketched out stories with markers. Traffic on the sidewalk stopped to converse with volunteers about the workshop and across the street more shirts swung in the breeze beside Lake Devo.

The first CLP event took place in 1990 as part of the “Take Back the Night” march and rally in Massachusetts. The founding group felt that hanging laundry, long seen as women’s work, would be a natural medium to express provocative, educational and constructive art. The project has now spread worldwide.

Virginia and Ashley Tran, who started V-Day at Ryerson, chose to organize CLP as a way of providing a supportive, artistic and activist workshop for the Ryerson community. In partnership with Ryerson’s Women’s Centre, they started collecting donated shirts for the clothesline in December.

Virginia, a freelance artist better known as “V”, sat beside the growing clothesline in a billowy white shirt and silver hoop earrings. She said that many women who participated or approached the tables of t-shirts had stories to tell, and V-Day volunteers were there to listen.One woman’s story stood out for Tran: “A lot of times women don’t know it’s abuse until it’s too late.”

For many women, name-calling by partners can seem like a silly or insignificant reaction. “It’s about noticing and identifying the early stages of it, and how it escalates into an abusive situation,” said Tran, who has experienced violence with men in the past.

“Not only are we acknowledging the victims, but we’re building them up as well,” said project coordinator Rehana Hirjee, in grey tights and jean shorts, who sat alongside the clothesline with Tran.
She feels that women lack the outlets to express their experiences with violence and can remain silent out of fear that an abusive significant other will discover their disclosure. The Clothesline provides a safe place to tell those stories.

“It’s a silent protest, I think. Once you read it, it has such an impact,” said Hirjee, with long dark curls framing her face.

Each shirt was colour-coded to symbolize the form of abuse and whether the victim survived.
“He spat on my face and he hit me…he called me a bitch and he kicked me…one black eye and a bleeding head…I vow never to go back and not to listen to what he says,” read a lime green shirt, representing a survivor of incest and sexual abuse, which hung near Lake Devo.

But women aren’t the only survivors of violence. Earlier in the afternoon a man who had been abused by two of his former wives asked Hirjee if there was room for men who were victims. “Why not?” replied Hirjee.

“I want men to know, ‘listen we’re in this together,’” said Tran, her hair pulled back in a low ponytail. “V-day isn’t a pro-woman, anti-men group. We’re pro-human.”

Jeff Perera, a social work student currently organizing Ryerson’s White Ribbon Campaign (RWRC), came out to support the CLP workshop on Saturday, and hopes to work with V-Day in the future. The RWRC is an organization of students, staff and faculty dedicated to ending men’s violence against women through awareness and education.

Perera’s aim is to create a space for Ryerson’s male population to discuss its role in violence without blaming. “It’s not the ‘oppressor, you are the enemy’ discussion. Let’s find how we can be part of the solution,” says Perera.

Perera’s mother was a victim of violence. He believes that remaining silent about the issue allows it to fester and grow. “You’re part of the problem or part of the solution,” he says.

V-Day also sold “I (heart) vagina” t-shirts and buttons and received donations for future campaigns, as well as for the Metropolitan Action Committee on Violence Against Women and Children, an organization that provides community education, justice and safety programs.None of the stories that were written on shirts will be lost, said Tran.

V-day intends to hold another CLP on campus in September and will reuse shirts created during their first workshop. She wants to spread the message that anyone can start a CLP, and hopes to collaborate with other projects across Toronto.

“We essentially want the CLP to be a Toronto collective that started here at Ryerson, and that’s beautiful. So we’re calling out to people,” says Tran.

Wearing a long, patchwork skirt, with a feather tied in her hair, Storisteanu sat beside the red t-shirt that she decorated the previous day, which symbolized rape.

“It is still a beautiful world. Be cheerful. Strive to be happy,” the shirt read, which came from the poem “Desiderata” by Max Ehrmann, surrounded by a circular design that branched off into curls. Underneath were the words, “I’m working on forgiving you…slowly…taking it day by day.”

Although she feels that many things have contributed to her healing process, Storisteanu says that witnessing the messages of other women was empowering for her. She knows that voicing what she went through potentially helped someone else.

“It doesn’t make you feel so anonymous, sharing your story.”

*Published in the June issue of The Ryerson Free Press