Let’s talk about sex, baby

“…this panel of three female authors at the Art Gallery of Ontario…considered what it’s like to write about sex.”

As an analogue TV owner without cable, I’m behind on contemporary programming. Because I have seen exactly one episode of 30 Rock while visiting relatives, I missed the reference in the title of last night’s panel discussion organized by Toronto artist, Margaux Williamson; I mistook ‘I’m a Very Sexy Baby’ for a discussion about the sexualization of baby girls in Western culture (a classic case of projection since that’s the focus of my own art). As it turned out, this panel of three female authors at the Art Gallery of Ontario moderated by Darren O’Donnell considered what it’s like to write about sex. That’s also a topic close to my heart: I’m very aware of what boundaries I don’t want to transgress in writing a blog containing words like ‘masturbation’, ‘labioplasty,’ and ‘sexting.’ To clarify, these entries in Artist in Transit are always written in the name of art, librarianship, or feminism. Still, it makes me nervous that a colleague at the academic institution where I started the blog described it to his class as an ‘erotica blog,’ though that may say more about the lens through which he views the world than it does about my writing. It’s a concern that is paramount for me today, writing this post and knowing that tomorrow I assume another academic position. I feel like a hybrid of the 30 Rock characters, Abby Flynn and Liz Lemon, shown in a clip at the AGO event. As Abby says, why is it any worse for Abby to use her sexuality than it is for Liz to wear glasses to look smart?

The passages read by the authors proved invariably that language and sex are intertwined. Tamara Faith Berger read a passage in which a female character defends her sexual choices to a friend while smoking a joint; Chris Kraus read a sex scene from the female point of view in which “words come out as they do,” but she is tongue-tied post-coitus; and Sheila Heti read about a woman distracted from playwriting because of a task assigned by her lover, to write a report on an elderly man’s voyeurism.

If this seems like an unlikely event for the AGO, allow me to share some details about the writers: Sheila Heti collaborates with Williamson, and she had artist Shary Boyle read a draft of her first erotic novel before it contained x-rated passages. Chris Kraus started reviewing art in the process of writing her cult classic, I Love Dick, because the object of her desire was an art critic (1). Berger, meanwhile, went to art school, and was always interested in sex as a subject but couldn’t find a way to address it visually. “Going to art school helped…with writing porn,” she said, eliciting laughter from the audience.

O’Donnell asked what was at stake for the authors in writing about sex. Although their initial responses indicated it was relatively risk-free, the comments they made later suggest otherwise. Kraus, who called the art world puritanical, felt that I Love Dick was written off as “exhibitionism and narcissism,” and that she was only respected as a writer when she took sex out of her books. Heti removed her email address from her website when her writing took an erotic turn because she was worried about receiving perverted comments, and Berger had someone walk out of her recent reading at a public library. Liz Lemon was right on the money when she said, “Society puts a lot of pressure on us [women].” The Madonna/whore complex is alive and well in writing, and kudos to these women for staring it down.

The prickly topic of feminism came up on multiple occasions. Williamson noted that she has watched a lot of television while doing her residency at the AGO, and she was intrigued that 30 Rock addressed “such insane feminist politics” (re. Liz trying to correct the behaviour of the threesome-loving, pigtail-wearing Abby, all the while indulging in reading a website “where women talk about how far we've come and which celebrities have the worst beach bodies” [2]) without fixing problems. The three authors are similarly unapologetic about the explicit passages in their published works. Even when the sex scenes are degrading in some way or are the outcome of obsession, as Berger says, “You can’t devalue the bond” or dismiss its role in paving the way for self-awareness. In the authors’ books, a single male character unlocks female desire, so even if that desire is not female-generated, as far as feminism is concerned, at least it’s not at the mercy of the entire male sex. “That’s what’s hot about it,” Heti says. An audible gasp went around the room when audience member Misha Glouberman raised the notion of male-generated desire. It was a reductive moment that reminded me of something I heard Moe Tkacik, co-founder of Jezebel (see Liz Lemon quotation above), say two years ago at the Elizabeth A. Sackler Centre for Feminist Art, which has been burned in my brain ever since: “Men. F*#! ‘em. They’re the problem.” As a feminist, I feel that attacking men for being thoughtful about female sexuality is counterproductive, and as a librarian, I have to say that making observations about fictional characters does not constitute agreement with their philosophies. There must be a better use of our collective energy.

Sources:

(1) Guthrie, Kayla. Performing is Storytelling: Q+A with Chris Kraus. Performing is Storytelling: Q+A with Chris Kraus.
(2) TGS Hates Women, season 5, episode 16, aired February 24, 2011