The B Side: Exploring Bisexuality is a 10 week group for people who are exploring their attraction to more than one gender or struggling with what their bisexuality means to them and their lives.

Mondays, 6:30-9:00pm
September 29 – December 8, 2008
Sherbourne Health Centre
333 Sherbourne Street

Topics: **exploring attraction ** bisexual myths & stereotypes ** relationships ** labels & identity issues ** coming out to friends, family & others ** bisexuality & our other identities ** finding support ** sex & safer sex ** biphobia ** health & well-being ** bisexual communities & resources **

The group will provide:
* Opportunities for self-reflection, personal sharing, connecting with others and learning new skills and information.
* Respect for the diverse possibilities of identity and a wide range of life experiences.
* A safe and supportive environment for exploring each person’s unique relationship to bisexuality, with a focus on group members’ needs and experiences.

Facilitated by:
* Cheryl Dobinson, a bisexual activist involved in bi-related education, health research and community development, and
* David Yeh, an LGBTQ community educator and expressive arts therapist.

Registration: Space is limited and pre-registration is required. To register, please contact Fatema Mullan at (416) 324-5256 or thebside@sherbourne.on.ca

Our very own fantastic Anna Leventhal has just released a brand new anthology with Invisible Publishing, titled The Art of Trespassing, and we here at Shameless recommend everyone use this handy link to get themselves a copy. We’re certainly not alone in our endorsement:

“An anthology of new writers that sparkles with imagination, energy, and flashes of poetry. And perhaps most importantly, it’s an awfully fun read.”
-Jonathan Goldstein, Author of Lenny Bruce is Dead

Here’s some more info about our beloved Anna and her brand new book:

The Art of Trespassing explores the systems and structures that frame our everyday lives. Contributors imagine networks, neighbourhoods and relationships, exposing them as both confining and liberating.

Anna Leventhal’s fiction has appeared in Geist and will be published in the forthcoming anthology Journey Prize Stories 20 from McClelland & Stewart. She lives in Montréal.

Don’t school administrations ever learn? 12-year-old Amelia Robbins has been suspended after dying her hair pink as a tribute to her late father who died of cancer.

Broadsheet sums it up:

Administrators argue that the dye job is a “distraction” to other students, but with the full support of her mom, Amelia’s choosing to fight the suspension rather than adopt a more conventional hair color. “I don’t feel like I should have to, because i’m expressing myself as an individual. Because they constantly tell us be different, don’t follow the crowd.”

Nice one, kiddo! It’s never too early to start calling out your superiors’ hypocrisy!

According to the CBC, Stats Can is reporting a drop in the number of teens who say they’ve had sexual intercourse at least once.

The decline occurred due to young women. For them, the proportion who reported having had intercourse decreased from 51 per cent in 1996 to 43 per cent in 2005. Among young men, the proportion stayed unchanged at 43 per cent.

There’s also some information in the report about increased condom use.

Sex education seems to be paying off among younger teens in terms of greater condom use, said Alex McKay of the Sex Information and Education Council in Toronto.

The report is based on interviews with about 4,500 teens in 1996, and about 10,000 teenagers for 2003 and 2005. Read more here.

(Apologies for being a bad blogger as of late. I’ve been a bit busy with some life stuff, but I’ll be back in regular rotation shortly. For now here’s a shameless plug.)

On Saturday August 23 at 8 p.m., with the invaluable help of Nightwood Theatre and the emerging actors program, there will be a staged reading of Fear of Fighting, a short, fifteen minute play based on my upcoming illustrated novel. (Put out by the same publishers who put out this amazing book by our very own Thea Lim.) The play will be staged, along with five others from Nightwood’s Write From The Hip! program, at Nightwood Studio 315 in the Cannery Building at the Distillery District in Toronto. Tickets at the door are PWYC (with suggested donation of $10).

I have to say I’ve been so very proud to work with the five other writers who also have staged readings the same evening - Briana Brown, Michael Reynolds, Marika Schwandt, Christina Wong, and Lukas Sidaravicius. Their talent is immeasurable, their help invaluable, and I’ve been consistently blown away by their insight and the awesomeness of their finished works. The evening is a great opportunity to see some fresh talent.

The following day at 4 p.m. Nightwood will also present works from their Busting Out! program, a free theatre program for girls aged 12 to 16. The goal of Busting Out! is to provide a forum for young women, through a series of theatre-based workshops, discussion and collective creation. The participants of the program will have the opportunity to work with professional playwrights, actors and directors on their own writing projects, as well as a public presentation of their own creation.

If you’re in Toronto this weekend take the opportunity to experience some exciting new works by emerging youth talent. More info after the jump.

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As some of you may know, a week from now I’ll be a married woman. Since my partner and I decided on Valentine’s day earlier this year that we wanted to be wed, I’ve navigated the strange world of the “wedding industrial complex” and tried to figure out, on my own terms, what it means to me to be a married feminist. That meant dissecting the tradition bit by bit and disposing of things that didn’t feel right for me (changing my name, my Dad giving me away, legal paperwork, a white dress), but it also meant having to justify a lot of the things that did (bridesmaids, a limo, an expensive pair of shoes, and a hair and makeup appointment.)

Here at Shameless we’ve talked about how it can sometimes be difficult for feminist writers to talk about their healthy relationships, and we’ve also talked about wedding pressures on women that seem to supercede love, and one’s feminist beliefs. (And then there’s marriage traditions that supercede sanity, but that’s another post entirely.) In the end, I feel like both of us have been true to the things we love and hate about declaring your lifelong partnership to your community, and although at times it’s been hard to negotiate satisfying our own needs and the needs of those we care about (okay Mom, we can have flowers), I think overall we’ve done a pretty good job. Getting married and planning an event to celebrate that transition has been a wonderful way to solidify not only my feminist beliefs in the context of my relationship and my community, but to understand the value of compromise and understanding. I’ve always been very anti-marriage for a variety of reasons, but I realized that it is possible to make a public promise to the person you love without sacrificing who you are or what you believe.

Sure, there will still be people who will be disappointed because they didn’t get a monogrammed wedding favour or a chicken or beef option, and there will be folks who don’t think we’re “really married” because we didn’t go the legal route, but what really matters is how we view our (personally defined) committment to each other.

So in honour of the planning being close to over, I thought I’d post a video of one of my favourite married couples singing about exactly what I think marriage should be.

Extra special wedding-related bonus from our beloved Joss Whedon (which will likely make it into a wedding speech) after the jump.

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My pal Marika Schwandt, who I met through Nightwood Theatre’s Write From The Hip program, let me know about a production she’s involved in that sounds fantastic. Bonus? Our fabulous Shameless art director Sheila Sampath did some design work for them. Check it out:

The First Movement: How We Forgot Here
Aug 14-16, 8 pm and Aug 17, 3 pm
@ Walnut Studio Loft
83 Walnut St. (south of King, west of Bathurst)
We regret that this venue is not wheelchair accessible.

Tickets $10-20 sliding scale in advance, or $20 at the door an hour before show time (if still available). Only 50 tickets available for each date! Advance tickets available at Toronto Women’s Bookstore (73 Harbord St.)

Whose stories move the city?
Whose movements are remembered?
How do you move?

What happens when power and control switch hands? Starting August 14, The Movement Project invites you to board Ojibway Airlines. While on board, you will be immersed in pulsating multi-artistic memories - a series of arresting multi-media stories that reveal the depths of migration and settlement in Toronto. Using visual projections, film, theatre, live electronic music, spoken word poetry, audience participation and taiko drumming, numerous encounters will be presented that reveal knowledge and voices from the land that are lost in the city hustle.

With special guest artists: Rosina Kazi & Nicholas Murray (LAL), Eva Rose Tabobondung, and Ryan Symington.

Some of you might know that McCain camp somehow made a “celebrity” connection between Obama, Paris Hilton, and Britney Spears in one of the most ridiculous attack ads I’ve ever seen. I have all sorts of problems with the ad, that I won’t go into now, but let me summarize the overall idea behind it: Obama is pretty, girly, pampered, arrogant, and not ready to lead, much like the common perception of (female) starlets like Hilton.

Well, Paris responded. And I have to admit, regardless of what I think of her or what she represents, I chuckled.

Go check out Planned Parenthood’s latest website, takecaredownthere.com, which tackles the “Ins and Outs of the Ins and Outs” and is filled with “nontraditional” PSAs targeting sexually active teens and young adults. The Christian right hates it, but I love it, especially the “Down There Song.”