DIY Sex Toy Workshop Bristol
if i had a hammer... | 26.10.2008 15:11 | Animal Liberation | Culture | Gender
Limited spaces so it is advisable to book your space, by emailing
bengigit@gmail.com. The workshop will cost between £8 and £10, including all materials
Venue:
Cafe Kino
3 Ninetree Hill
(just off Stokes Croft)
BS1 3SB
for a map see:
http://www.multimap.com/maps/?qs=BS1+3SB&countryCode=GB For more pics of the harnesss and other toys made by the workshop facilitator see:
http://s262.photobucket.com/albums/ii108/gurnisht/if%20...mmer/
if i had a hammer...
e-mail:
bengigit@gmail.com
Homepage:
http://s262.photobucket.com/albums/ii108/gurnisht/if%20i%20had%20a%20hammer/
Additions
Workshop in London too!
30.10.2008 07:03
xktanax
e-mail:
noaxktana@gmail.com
Homepage:
http://london.indymedia.org.uk/events/150
Comments
Hide the following 22 comments
Please remove this from the newswire
26.10.2008 17:31
This sexual liberalism anarchism stuff is mrely recreational and not political or anything to do with serious social change. In that sense (not per-say) it's a load of bollocks.
Dignified Rage
Don't see whats wrong with it
26.10.2008 17:55
JRFM
Neither do I
26.10.2008 19:10
Besides, what's being advertised is a workshop. It's really a workshop for once, as they're going to make things not just sit around talking. What people are going to learn is how to do is make a free, vegan alternative to an item which is otherwise expensive, not vegan, and produced for profit. I don't know, but I guess it involves recycling bike inner tubes. That in itself seems political to me, in a small but significant way.
I suspect your agitation about this is because it's to do with....oh, you know....err....SEX. Ooo..err..missus! Would you have posted a similar objection if the workshop was about making, say, vegan shoes from free, recycled materials? Do grow up and come out from behind the bike sheds.
Don't have much use for a strap-on myself, but I wish the workshop well. I couldn't possibly hazard a guess at who's running it!
Stroppyoldgit
Maybe
26.10.2008 19:46
This event is to be welcomed and I wish the organisers the best of luck. The sex toy industry is full of over priced poorly constructed crap and people should know that there is an alternative.
Mike
Let's see StroppyOldGit in one of these
26.10.2008 20:15
Got any snaps?
Tony Gosling
Homepage:
http://www.public-interest.co.uk
I don't see a problem with it
26.10.2008 23:23
Providing that support can be extremely expensive so they should be provided the opptunity to learn for themselves. After all you'd hate for them to be let down by the weakest link.
S
not serious
27.10.2008 00:58
Still, I suppose life goes on....I might do a workshop on making vegan fart cushions for those of us who enjoy the sound that emanates from one's rearside
a Dignified Mary Whitehouse
not sex starved....
27.10.2008 09:42
thanks for the support that person who's been to bristol - as a happy queer i can report that i don't struggle too hard to have a sex life (when i can fit one in amongst all those damn meetings) - but i do think this workshop is important and necessary.
important to allow a space for bristol queers and their mates to meet up, discuss various issues, make a vegan harness, make connections and be in a sex positive space.
necessary to make visible alternatives for us all to the heteronormative lifestyles that function as a method for controlling us all....queer, straight, homo, asexual - however you identify.
i personally don't think there's an issue with where it's been placed on indymedia - it's an open publishing newswire. for me it's no more unsettling than an article in the mainstream press about poverty and starvation next to an advert pushing over abundance, or an article about people whose limbs have been blown off by war next to advert selling perfume with an able-bodied air brushed version of beauty.
and maybe there were attendants on the march, those who have lost loved ones, who are also queer and recognise that our lives do not end with the tragedies we experience, and that there's a space in the world for solemn rememberance, and sex in all of its varieties. and maybe there were family members of queers who have been killed or sexually assaulted in detention....or who have queer friends inside or out on the streets who they worry about due to the higher risk of harm we are likely to experience because we're not very positively exposed in/to the wider world....
bristolian
A slightly worrying attitude
27.10.2008 10:35
Mike
Dignified Rage is a Festival not a Person
27.10.2008 11:39
However I would prefer it if 'Dignified Rage' did not use the name 'Dignified Rage' so blithely in this thread as it refers not to him/her but to the Intergalactic call to involve oneselves in the 'Other Campaign' events this December, either in Mexico or perhaps elsewhere - ie where you live - in solidarity with the Zapatistan Global Festival of Dignified Rage - see point III at 16.9.2008 Communique at
FYI a number of us are calling for people to do food sharing activities in their communities during this time with other individuals and groups interested in building a better world for all and in solidarity with the Zapatistan position of 'government from below and to the left", everywhere. Hope you can make it to the banquet.
Liberty and Justice for All
Guacamole
bias and bullshit
27.10.2008 13:50
i think we should tackle the obvious regional bias of a feature story about a regional indymedia getting a sexy new look. its been up since the London Anarchist bookfair and is causing me offence considering the large number of political activities that have happened outside of the m25 in the past week . such as awe today, pieing yesterday, Raytheon the day before, march against rascism, animal rights raids the day before that.............
or is this not the type of bias we should deal with just stuff related to sexual practices.
As someone who knows the social activists who are planning to run this workshop in a workers owned coop You may be interested to know that they overlap with the people involved in the “why prisons don't make our communities safer”well atended workshop in Kebele social centre last friday (kebele is in bristol, bristol is a small town to the west of london)
Dignified rage (person not festival) i think you have a heck of a lot of explaining to do. if your not going to leave me thinking you are a parochial homophobe.
@rchie
please tell...
27.10.2008 14:07
who or what is at the top of this hierarchy pray tell, and who or what is at the bottom? who of us is to decide this? is this hierarchy fixed for us all? or is it different depending on your social background, level of education, experiences of oppression, risk of death or harm, credentials as a "proper" activist etc etc...
...it's all very noble reminding "dignified rage" of the global call of the zapatistas - but tell them there's a hierarchy of importance and they''ll most often have experienced also being on that bottom rung..
...if there is a top and a bottom - this ain't my movement....
and if these are the assumptions that a posting about harness making uncovers on indymedia - then it was obviously a very necessary and not so unimportant so called "sexual liberalism" report
viral
No sex please, we're British!
27.10.2008 14:41
no gender, no state
the revolution is my fuck buddy...
27.10.2008 14:58
No revolution without sexual revolution!
No sexual revolution without homosexual revolution!
Out of the bedrooms into the streets, heterosexuality is the opiate of the masses!
Corporate hip hop is counter revolutionary!
Cornflakes are counter revolutionary!
Masturbation is counter revolutionary!
gudrun
putting the instructions online...
27.10.2008 15:13
instructions...
Tactical Hierarchies
27.10.2008 16:56
About hierarchies of importance (treading carefully) I'd like to suggest that if the movement is about the bottom rung rising up together then to succeed, ie if we are to mobilise effectively for collective power, land, freedom and justice then the example of zapatista is instructive and should guide us towards a tactical priority.
Hierarchies of power are out, in that we are agreed. Neither are hierarchies of *qualitative* subject importance acceptable. Your freedom is bound up in mine, and vice versa. What I am talking about is strategy. Am I allow to make my opinon on the stragey known without being accused of being a hiearchist?
It need not be either/or: there will be room for all sexualities and other issues relating to identity in a movement for greater - ideally total - autonomy, built from below.
I want to pick community, defined by a locality with an enormous diversity of human beings living in it as in indie contrast to however the state defines it as the highest priority. Community and collective support for all non-oppressive lifestyles. Not a ghetto. Actually work out your neighbourhood, where commonsense says its fluid borders rest, and therefore where the boundaries should be between us and the next future commune.
And then connect with others of like mind in that commune. And then find ways to broaden the connection to the rest of the people in the area - that bits the hard bit for activists who refuse to relate to people of a different outlook and be patient and trusting as to how the relatoinship can develop. But only then can we stand a chance of building a different world where all the other priorities can be included. And only then can we start to challenge the structures of power we are all faced down by together and all our petty selfish assumptions in solidarity together. Solidarity within each local community and federated across communities and towards a simultanous decentralised mobilisation.
Gazpacho
please tell me
27.10.2008 21:39
wide eyed innocent...
Unanswered question
27.10.2008 23:42
However DR still hasn't told us whether he would have objected if the workshop was about making your own vegan shoes from free, recycled materials. If not, I suggest he (I guess DR is "he") should consider the connectedness and inclusivity of his politics.
There's a post on here today from Warren urging support for Slough Town (with stocks) instead of QPR. Tut, tut -the politics of something which is "merely recreation". Can't have that! Take it down immediately! If that sort of thing is allowed on Indymedia, it'll get completely out of hand. Discussion of football politics could open the floodgates to all sorts disrespectful and irrelevant issues -such as sexual politics or even the politics of the sex toy industry.
Can't see the "disrespect"point at all. Reminds me of the thought processes of the cops who nicked me and others outside the High Court once when we turned up with banners and leaflets in support of squatters who had an eviction hearing. They had to arrest us, see, because over the other side of the entrance were some Sikhs protesting about repression and violence against Sikhs in India. If they'd allowed two pickets, we'd obviously have started fighting each other, wouldn't we? In fact, it was only them nicking us which prevented a friendly, information-sharing, chat between us.
I thought we had Indymedia for that sort of exchange nowadays. How naive of me!
Stroppyoldgit
I think Bristolians need to remeber where they're living
28.10.2008 00:01
And yes I'm familiar with Bristol it's that small town just east of cardiff that's full of old instituions and is where Cleopatra clasped an asp to her busom until it led to a long agony and death.
S
this thread is great
29.10.2008 13:17
lolzors
....
31.10.2008 22:42
if there isn't a top and a bottom, this ain't my movement ;)
my movement
Tony Gosling - action alert!
01.11.2008 13:27
Many people consider you to be "our" friendly Journalist. As such you have a duty to report on matters that are of interest to "our" community. It occurs to me that as this subject has generated over 20 comments it is clearly of interest to "our" community.
So, it may be a good idea for you to attend at least one of these workshops with a view to reporting, on indymedia, what you saw and experienced!
I look forward to reading your report....
bristol tellytubby