Questions and answers from Good For Her regarding my Love Lab: DIY Lube and Mojo Oils
1) How, why and when did you start teaching workshops?
I started teaching workshops from my Anarres Natural Health Clinic at College and Ossington two years ago. I found that I had lots of clients and friends who wanted to learn about plant medicine and how to make things for themselves. Workshops formalized what I have been doing for 20 odd years: sharing information we should ALL have access to, concocting healthy potions and collaborating with others.
2) What draws you to work in sexual education and health?
Sex education is part of my heritage - my mother was a health educator, had a sex ed radio show and hosted Planned Parenthood meetings in our living room back in Nova Scotia. As a teenager, AIDS hit my radar as my queer community became threatened. I was an Ambassador with The Works Needle Exchange Program, an AIDS activist and a presenter and activist at the 5th World Conference on AIDS. My first video collaboration was called Please Adjust Your Sex. Before I finished my Honours Degree in Fine Arts Studies at York University, I had a full time job making safer sex and safer needle use videos with street involved youth through a social service agency - we made STD Street Smarts and Street Wise Women.
3) Can you tell me a bit about why you are passionate about this workshop topic?
I shudder when I think of the chemicals that we have been allowed to be exposed to through sexual lubricants, and products we put on or in our bodies in general. In cynical moments, I imagine that regulators and manufacturers out there are punishing us for being sexual by poisoning us. Propylene glycol comes to mind. It causes ingredients that accompany it to penetrate cells walls and even into our blood streams. It basically leaves use WIDE open literally to sexually transmissible infections. Meanwhile, we've been robbed of our traditional knowledge around sexual health. It's my mission to bring this healing knowledge back to living practice.
4) Do you have a website? A blog? A place where I can learn more about you?
I invite you to visit my site at www.anarreshealth.ca . I blog. I answer questions. I write articles. I tell folks about my upcoming workshops. I have a store for essential oils, my products, my services and DIY ingredients. I have a one-per-month handy-dandy 1 page newsletter that I'd love you to join or try out! Just ask me at anarreshealth@gmail.com .
5) What's something interesting about your career that I might not know?!
I worked with people who are chronically homeless and agencies who serve them for a total of 18 years! My last salaried job was as the Red Cross' Manager of Homeless and Disaster Operations for the Toronto Region - they laid me off just before my maternity leave ended. Natural health is a return to my lifelong passion of making potions and medicine foods. Also, my grandmother came from Buenos Aires, starting a health farm to heal diabetics and polio victims in Edmonton alone with her four sons, and upon her death was acclaimed as Canada's first physiotherapist! My mother won a lifetime achievement award for her contributions to occupational health and safety as a nurse practitioner. I'm not sure if my work is going to top any of that for its impact, but I come by my passions honestly!
If you read this far down, you might be interested in my Australian College Radio hit "Sex Trade Worker" immortalized on the Internet Archive. "Free Whores" is a music video featuring Tracey Tief and Mourning Sickness from Canada, singing "Sex Trade Worker." This was performed at the San Francisco Anarchist conference in 1988 and is also part of Die Yuppie Scum by Scarlot Harlot. This also features the World Charter for Prostitutes' Rights. (6 minutes-1992) Director: Carol Leigh Producer: Scarlot Harlot
"Free Whores" is a music video featuring Tracy Tief and Mourning Sickness from Canada, singing "Sex Trade Worker." This was performed at the San Francisco Anarchist conference in 1988 and is also part of Die Yuppie scume by Scarlot Harlot. This also features the World Charter for Prostitutes' Rights. (6 minutes-1992)
Right click to open the video in a new window so you don't lose your place here.
https://archive.org/details/freewhores
Right click to open the video in a new window.