Sex: It's free, healthy and good for the soul!
When the Rev. MaryAnn Jansen was getting married in 1995, her friends threw a bridal shower. The guests included a doctor, a fellow minister, a psychotherapist, a teacher and her sister, Carlyle, fresh from a master's degree in whole systems design – the study of relationships from the personal to environmental. She had not yet found her life's work.
As they gathered in a friend's living room MaryAnn, a minister in the United Church of Canada, opened her sister's gift – unusual sex toys whose purpose had to be explained.
"It was all new to us," says MaryAnn, "and she was talking to us like it was Tupperware – there was nothing to be embarrassed about."
Carlyle spoke with such authority and ease, there was consensus: she should conduct workshops and teach people, women especially, about the pleasure of sex.
"I wanted the workshop not to be just information, but also so they would learn something about themselves," recalls Carlyle. "To be transformative.
"That really stuck with me. I didn't want it to be, `Here's a toy.'"
The shower turned out to spark one of many transformations in the life of Carlyle Jansen, who did become a sex educator and opened a sex shop, Good for Her. It has a discreet presence, with its slightly opened white shutters and small sign, on the south side of Harbord St., on the comfortable ground floor of what was a Victorian row house.
Tea is offered when you walk in. At the front, near the window, are two upholstered chairs, one facing a shelf that includes a velvety pillow shaped like female genitalia and books including the love poetry of e. e. cummings and Sex for One. At the back are an intimidating looking mocha-coloured phallus, an array of purse-size vibrators in vermilion and fuchsia and what Jansen calls "coffee-table dildos" in hand-blown glass.
Workshops are held upstairs. Last Thursday's was the popular Bigger, Better and Multiples: Orgasms for Women. "I've come to learn more about orgasms," most women seated in a circle replied when asked about their interest. Coming up in October: Advanced Brain Sex and How to Drive your Man Wild With Pleasure.
Recently Jansen's skill in normalizing conversations about sex has led to invitations from Toronto high schools, usually phys. ed. or guidance teachers who realize they don't have enough training in sex education. In the past 18 months or so, she's been to a dozen schools to talk about sexual health including the joy of sex – something different from charts showing diligent sperm swimming up Fallopian tubes and warnings about sexually transmitted infections.
"Teens say, `We're taught to death about STIs,'" observes Jansen. "`We want to know about relationships and sexual pleasure.'
"People get concerned when we talk about pleasure, implying that we are saying, `Go out and have sex.' But that's not what we're saying."
Jansen and her associates tell students that if they are going to have sex, here's how to protect themselves, and these parts of the body are pleasurable. They address questions such as what to do when, in the heat of the moment, your partner says he doesn't want to use a condom. (There are different styles and sizes of condoms, she explains, that may be more comfortable and less inhibiting.) "It's packaging information in a way they will listen," Jansen says. "It's embedded in the message."
Last year, she and some colleagues started the Sexual Health, Education and Pleasure Project (SHEPP), a non-profit that offers workshops for young people with an emphasis on pleasure. Last month the SHEPP website was launched.
Jansen, 43, who has an arresting, androgynous beauty, is the mother of two boys, 6 and 3. She had them through artificial insemination and now lives with Helen Kennedy, executive director of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and "trans-identified" rights organization Egale Canada. They live in a minimalist but welcoming Cabbagetown semi painted in shades of taupe.
Jansen comes from a long line of social pioneers. The women in her mother's family, which has Prairie roots, were impressive and visionary. Her great aunts pooled money so her mother, Margaret, could go to medical school. One of those aunts, Dr. Kathleen Wark Walters, set up the first psychiatric clinic in a general hospital in Toronto; another aunt, Nell West, a social worker, was awarded the Order of Canada for her work with immigrants. Jansen shares the same great-great-grandparents as Terry Fox.
Her father, a post-war immigrant from Holland and also a doctor, came from a science-loving background. His father, Berend Jansen of the University of Amsterdam, was a biochemist who helped to discover and synthesize the vitamin thiamine and was among a group of scientists who promoted the role of nutrition in overall health.
Carlyle is the youngest of three children, though she grew up feeling like an only child, since MaryAnn is nine years older and her brother, Clifford, eight. She was a disciplined, early rising competitive swimmer – at St. Clement's, a private girls' school, and the University of British Columbia.
She recalls an upbringing that was loving and supportive but tended toward the sober, with no restaurant meals, hand-made gifts and few open displays of affection. "I saw my mom kissing my dad once, when we came back from a trip."
As she got older, Jansen was quirky in her dress – wearing mismatched earrings – and in her social life. "She was the only person in our high school to bring a friend as a date, a woman, which you could paint as foreshadowing a sexual preference, though it didn't occur to me at the time," says her friend Shannon Thompson, executive director of the non-profit Greenest City. "It wasn't rebellious. It was more authentic – this is what I'm going to do and it doesn't concern me what other people think."
When Jansen came back to Toronto from Seattle, where she'd earned her M.A. at Antioch University, she was at a crossroads. She'd earned her first degree in commerce and had thought about accountancy. Her second degree led her to consider a career in planning, environmental education or organizational development.
But there were inner transformations bubbling to the surface. She'd worked on native land claims for Vuntut Gwitchin First Nation, living in Old Crow in Yukon Territory, and at university, had spent time with a variety of faith organizations including the Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship and L'Arche, the community for people with intellectual disabilities founded by Jean Vanier, who is Catholic. She also investigated paganism and settled at last in the Anglican Church, which she continues to attend.
Then there was her sex life.
Believing her figure was unfeminine, she thought herself unappealing. "I'd run away from relationships when sex came up." But at 21, a patient boyfriend helped her along. "`What do you like?' he asked. I said, `Aren't you supposed to know?' He said, `Well, it helps if you have a sense of your own body.'
"I didn't know how to express feelings," she continues. "I felt like an internal volcano – if I opened up, I would never get back together again."
She was 28 before she experienced her first orgasm, and then only with the assistance of a body massager. She learned that it takes a woman 20 to 40 minutes on average to climax, and that only 30 per cent of females reach orgasm through intercourse. And it was shortly after she discovered she was attracted to both men and women.
Jansen was discovering her path. Self-taught, she took courses and read about sexuality. She wanted her workshops to be feminist and women-centred and thought a retail store might solve the problem of where to hold the classes. "My heart really was in exploring sex. I thought I had something different to offer and something I'd enjoy doing for the rest of my life."
She didn't let her mother in on her plans right away. "I didn't think she'd approve. I had an M.A. and a commerce degree and I was doing workshops on sex – that's not what your education was for." If she'd been a doctor or a nurse who taught sexual health, her mother (her father had died in 1995) might have been less concerned. "But the truth is if you want to learn the techniques and skill of having sex, your doctor isn't going to be the one to teach you."
She found her place in Toronto's women's community – she was one of the founders of Toronto's bathhouse event for women and the transgendered, Pussy Palace, which takes place a few nights a year in a rented men's bathhouse. A former store manager had an idea for an annual Feminist Porn Festival, a two-night film event which draws about 400 viewers and which Good for Her continues to organize.
"She's phenomenal in what's she's done in an area that people don't want to talk about," says Jansen's partner, Kennedy. "She doesn't make a big deal about it, but it makes a huge difference."
Then there's the matter of running a sex shop. Images do come to mind – slightly tawdry, and not the sort of place, as Kennedy says, you'd take your mother.
"But she's made it very mainstream. Which is what sex should be – healthy and fun."
Even Jansen's mother has visited, though she wouldn't linger, stopping by to deliver articles in medical journals on female sexuality.
The women at Thursday's workshop did not look like sexual adventurers. There was a pair of sisters, one in a shawl, the other in a demure skirt. There was a 43-year-old mother of two young adults. She was examining a penis ring that would, she said, benefit both her and her husband. None of the 10 participants seemed averse to using sexual appliances. The mother of two liked Jansen's natural, witty and empathetic way of talking. "She puts it so no one has to feel self conscious. She opens it up right away with her own story, so no one feels embarrassed."
Jansen has observed that people sometimes take sex far too seriously. It should be creative and playful, she believes. "It's a free, healthy activity. It can be exercise. It's good for the soul. And it's a good way to connect with a partner."
As they gathered in a friend's living room MaryAnn, a minister in the United Church of Canada, opened her sister's gift – unusual sex toys whose purpose had to be explained.
"It was all new to us," says MaryAnn, "and she was talking to us like it was Tupperware – there was nothing to be embarrassed about."
Carlyle spoke with such authority and ease, there was consensus: she should conduct workshops and teach people, women especially, about the pleasure of sex.
"I wanted the workshop not to be just information, but also so they would learn something about themselves," recalls Carlyle. "To be transformative.
"That really stuck with me. I didn't want it to be, `Here's a toy.'"
The shower turned out to spark one of many transformations in the life of Carlyle Jansen, who did become a sex educator and opened a sex shop, Good for Her. It has a discreet presence, with its slightly opened white shutters and small sign, on the south side of Harbord St., on the comfortable ground floor of what was a Victorian row house.
Tea is offered when you walk in. At the front, near the window, are two upholstered chairs, one facing a shelf that includes a velvety pillow shaped like female genitalia and books including the love poetry of e. e. cummings and Sex for One. At the back are an intimidating looking mocha-coloured phallus, an array of purse-size vibrators in vermilion and fuchsia and what Jansen calls "coffee-table dildos" in hand-blown glass.
Workshops are held upstairs. Last Thursday's was the popular Bigger, Better and Multiples: Orgasms for Women. "I've come to learn more about orgasms," most women seated in a circle replied when asked about their interest. Coming up in October: Advanced Brain Sex and How to Drive your Man Wild With Pleasure.
Recently Jansen's skill in normalizing conversations about sex has led to invitations from Toronto high schools, usually phys. ed. or guidance teachers who realize they don't have enough training in sex education. In the past 18 months or so, she's been to a dozen schools to talk about sexual health including the joy of sex – something different from charts showing diligent sperm swimming up Fallopian tubes and warnings about sexually transmitted infections.
"Teens say, `We're taught to death about STIs,'" observes Jansen. "`We want to know about relationships and sexual pleasure.'
"People get concerned when we talk about pleasure, implying that we are saying, `Go out and have sex.' But that's not what we're saying."
Jansen and her associates tell students that if they are going to have sex, here's how to protect themselves, and these parts of the body are pleasurable. They address questions such as what to do when, in the heat of the moment, your partner says he doesn't want to use a condom. (There are different styles and sizes of condoms, she explains, that may be more comfortable and less inhibiting.) "It's packaging information in a way they will listen," Jansen says. "It's embedded in the message."
Last year, she and some colleagues started the Sexual Health, Education and Pleasure Project (SHEPP), a non-profit that offers workshops for young people with an emphasis on pleasure. Last month the SHEPP website was launched.
Jansen, 43, who has an arresting, androgynous beauty, is the mother of two boys, 6 and 3. She had them through artificial insemination and now lives with Helen Kennedy, executive director of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and "trans-identified" rights organization Egale Canada. They live in a minimalist but welcoming Cabbagetown semi painted in shades of taupe.
Jansen comes from a long line of social pioneers. The women in her mother's family, which has Prairie roots, were impressive and visionary. Her great aunts pooled money so her mother, Margaret, could go to medical school. One of those aunts, Dr. Kathleen Wark Walters, set up the first psychiatric clinic in a general hospital in Toronto; another aunt, Nell West, a social worker, was awarded the Order of Canada for her work with immigrants. Jansen shares the same great-great-grandparents as Terry Fox.
Her father, a post-war immigrant from Holland and also a doctor, came from a science-loving background. His father, Berend Jansen of the University of Amsterdam, was a biochemist who helped to discover and synthesize the vitamin thiamine and was among a group of scientists who promoted the role of nutrition in overall health.
Carlyle is the youngest of three children, though she grew up feeling like an only child, since MaryAnn is nine years older and her brother, Clifford, eight. She was a disciplined, early rising competitive swimmer – at St. Clement's, a private girls' school, and the University of British Columbia.
She recalls an upbringing that was loving and supportive but tended toward the sober, with no restaurant meals, hand-made gifts and few open displays of affection. "I saw my mom kissing my dad once, when we came back from a trip."
As she got older, Jansen was quirky in her dress – wearing mismatched earrings – and in her social life. "She was the only person in our high school to bring a friend as a date, a woman, which you could paint as foreshadowing a sexual preference, though it didn't occur to me at the time," says her friend Shannon Thompson, executive director of the non-profit Greenest City. "It wasn't rebellious. It was more authentic – this is what I'm going to do and it doesn't concern me what other people think."
When Jansen came back to Toronto from Seattle, where she'd earned her M.A. at Antioch University, she was at a crossroads. She'd earned her first degree in commerce and had thought about accountancy. Her second degree led her to consider a career in planning, environmental education or organizational development.
But there were inner transformations bubbling to the surface. She'd worked on native land claims for Vuntut Gwitchin First Nation, living in Old Crow in Yukon Territory, and at university, had spent time with a variety of faith organizations including the Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship and L'Arche, the community for people with intellectual disabilities founded by Jean Vanier, who is Catholic. She also investigated paganism and settled at last in the Anglican Church, which she continues to attend.
Then there was her sex life.
Believing her figure was unfeminine, she thought herself unappealing. "I'd run away from relationships when sex came up." But at 21, a patient boyfriend helped her along. "`What do you like?' he asked. I said, `Aren't you supposed to know?' He said, `Well, it helps if you have a sense of your own body.'
"I didn't know how to express feelings," she continues. "I felt like an internal volcano – if I opened up, I would never get back together again."
She was 28 before she experienced her first orgasm, and then only with the assistance of a body massager. She learned that it takes a woman 20 to 40 minutes on average to climax, and that only 30 per cent of females reach orgasm through intercourse. And it was shortly after she discovered she was attracted to both men and women.
Jansen was discovering her path. Self-taught, she took courses and read about sexuality. She wanted her workshops to be feminist and women-centred and thought a retail store might solve the problem of where to hold the classes. "My heart really was in exploring sex. I thought I had something different to offer and something I'd enjoy doing for the rest of my life."
She didn't let her mother in on her plans right away. "I didn't think she'd approve. I had an M.A. and a commerce degree and I was doing workshops on sex – that's not what your education was for." If she'd been a doctor or a nurse who taught sexual health, her mother (her father had died in 1995) might have been less concerned. "But the truth is if you want to learn the techniques and skill of having sex, your doctor isn't going to be the one to teach you."
She found her place in Toronto's women's community – she was one of the founders of Toronto's bathhouse event for women and the transgendered, Pussy Palace, which takes place a few nights a year in a rented men's bathhouse. A former store manager had an idea for an annual Feminist Porn Festival, a two-night film event which draws about 400 viewers and which Good for Her continues to organize.
"She's phenomenal in what's she's done in an area that people don't want to talk about," says Jansen's partner, Kennedy. "She doesn't make a big deal about it, but it makes a huge difference."
Then there's the matter of running a sex shop. Images do come to mind – slightly tawdry, and not the sort of place, as Kennedy says, you'd take your mother.
"But she's made it very mainstream. Which is what sex should be – healthy and fun."
Even Jansen's mother has visited, though she wouldn't linger, stopping by to deliver articles in medical journals on female sexuality.
The women at Thursday's workshop did not look like sexual adventurers. There was a pair of sisters, one in a shawl, the other in a demure skirt. There was a 43-year-old mother of two young adults. She was examining a penis ring that would, she said, benefit both her and her husband. None of the 10 participants seemed averse to using sexual appliances. The mother of two liked Jansen's natural, witty and empathetic way of talking. "She puts it so no one has to feel self conscious. She opens it up right away with her own story, so no one feels embarrassed."
Jansen has observed that people sometimes take sex far too seriously. It should be creative and playful, she believes. "It's a free, healthy activity. It can be exercise. It's good for the soul. And it's a good way to connect with a partner."
Good Stuff!!!
No comments:
Post a Comment