Intimate Interactions

Representations of people of colour in the world of sex- why is it important that people of colour be in this space? What are some of the barriers to more people of colour being in this space?  What has been my experience as a poc being in this space?

Trinidad-born Ricardo Scipio has thus far garnered the reputation for making unique, multi-layered, provocative work in film and photography. His first feature film "When" was an irrepressibly brutal and comedic portrayal of dysfunctional struggling actresses in New York. His second feature film "Watershed" was the first independent feature film in North America to be shot in digital high-definition, breaking ground with its technical and narrative accomplishments. His third feature film "Finder of Lost Children," set in the Caribbean community of Canada, is a poignantly moving and humorous story of two half-sisters that meet for the first time at the funeral of the father neither one of them knew.

Ricardo grew up in Toronto and attended both The Nova Scotia College of Art and Design and The University of Waterloo. He started his art career as a fashion photographer and then later as a fine art nude photographer. He has had 14 gallery shows of his work and his first book of photographs- a collaboration with noted Canadian poet George Elliott Clarke, was published in November of 2005. His second book "The Goddess Project" was completed in 2010. A book of nudes of Black women entitled "Uzuri" was finalized in 2011. Never idle for long, Scipio has completed photographing his fourth book "The Goddess Project Book Two" in 2012. His fifth book "The Goddess Project Book Three" was finished in 2015. The Sex Goddess Project Book One was completed in 2016 He completed The Sex Goddess Project Book Two in 2018, Book Three of the series in 2019 and Book Four in 2020. Ricardo has recently started his his tenth book "The Intimacy Project." When not on tour, Scipio makes his home in Canada.

The Sex Goddess Project

sexgoddessproject.com

What would your life look like if you never learned how to talk to people? How would going to a party and sitting on the outside feel? Now imagine you had the cure to that problem, an inexpensive way to make yourself immediately likable to most of the people there - your gateway to being interesting: relationships, sex, intimacy. One catch though, it might kill you. No, this isn’t the plot to a new episode of Black Mirror. This is alcohol.

Lauren, a severe alcoholic in recovery, joins us today to talk about intimacy and how alcohol can be a gateway to that intimacy temporarily. She discusses how alcohol can lift this “oppressive fog of depression” and bring moments that feel intimate even if in the sober light of morning, they weren’t all that intimate or even connective.

When you’re disconnected from yourself, it’s pretty hard to be connected to others. Content warning for alcoholism and addiction.

Ash and I talk about our coming from under-resourced families, our academic performance, our feeling disposable to our parents, and our fear of having children of our own. I don’t mean that we don’t like children. I like hanging out with my nieces. As a non parent, kids are amazing for the first few hours, and then you give them right back to their parents, right?

Joking aside, I mean our fear of having children revolves around discovering our abusive parents have embedded harmful habits within us that we reproduce much to our probable shame and self resentment.

Stuff is complicated when you’ve experienced violence or abuse. If hurt people hurt people and currently you’re hurting, what does that say about how you treat others? What does that say about how you might treat your future children?

If you have a potentially fatal illness, treatment probably comes with risks and is probably anxiety inducing. Recovery is sort of like that except in order to be treated, you have to do intense, deep psychological work. If someone said you had to go to counselling and talk about the things that upset you the very most and that failure to do this just right would probably lead to your own death, how nervous would you be?

We talk about feelings, coping, fear of success, fear of failure, inner child work, catharsis, and more. Content warning for child abuse and alcoholism.

Do you feel a sense of comfort and security when you think of your heritage? Do you feel a sense of connection with a long line of ancestors? Are you sad about traumatized family members you never even got to know? Are you grateful to enormous and traumatic sacrifices your parents or ancestors made?

Connection is one of those funny things: essential to humans, but some start out with traditions of connection be that culture, location, or some other form of identity. Being third culture means your experience is radically different in culture - I’m talking heritage, race, language, or ethnicity-based culture here - radically different such that in many ways your parents don’t really understand why you’re not the child they thought you were, and society doesn’t quite understand why you can’t just be more like them.

According to InterNation, quote ”A third culture kid (TCK) is a child who has spent a considerable part of life or years of development outside their parents’ culture,” but that doesn’t do it justice. Have your parents ever come right out and questioned your ethnic identity? Or maybe asserted you aren’t authentically yourself?

Since I’m mixed, I’m not even of the same heritage as my parents exactly. I’m not entirely of my father’s British heritage, nor of my mother’s Tamil heritage. I’ve definitely heard on multiple occasions from my mother about how I’m not an Indian son.

Being mixed is a very complicated experience but you don’t have to be mixed to be third culture. Ash for example isn’t mixed. He’s Tamil through and through and yet raised in Canada. But what does that mean for your relationship with your parents, with your friends, with your culture? Country? Home?

Let’s find out together with Ash here on Intimate Interactions.

Today we meet someone new. Lauren was referred to us by Yana, so I hadn’t actually met her before this session. We talk about motivations behind addiction and the reasons that lead you down that kind of path. Socialization, bullying, parental coping strategies, validation, acceptance, trauma, and more. Sometimes you have to see yourself dying and make a choice. Fortunately, Lauren made the choice to still be with us, telling her story.

Content warning for severe alcoholism and suicidal tendencies.

Yana, my soon-to-be doctoral candidate for a doctorate in either Criminology or Theatre depending on how it all shakes out in the end, discusses her passion for True Crime. We talk about victim-centered approaches to True Crime that are respectful and informative while mentioning that fascination for the little mistakes in the system that when put together, can lead to horrific tragedies. Understanding how we go wrong is part of making the world a better place. Yana’s research on reducing recidivism and improving outcomes for incarcerated people is really fascinating but we won’t be touching on it this session. If you’re curious, I encourage you to go back and listen to those sessions. Enjoy!

Today, my friend Ash is back to talk about trust and safety. First, we talk about trust in recovery, and then move on to trust in oneself. We then talk briefly about trust and safety in relationships. We hit on how previous experiences can lead us to feel unsafe in circumstances that most folks would consider safe. Content warning, we are two BIPOC folks and as such racism we’ve experienced comes up a couple of times. Hope these conversations about addiction, suicidality, and recovery are as interesting to listen to as they were to discuss.

Yana is currently locked down with a government curfew. I had originally thought mandating masks would be enough. Of course some people didn’t respond. They kept partying. Almost a quarter of the population were what are called cynical spreaders, having not taken any steps what so ever to try to reduce spread. And here we are.

Fortunately we talk about more than just COVID-19 this episode although as a content warning we do spend a fair amount of time talking about unemployment and our situation.

My friend Ash is an addict in recovery. He’s relapsed multiple times and gone into recovery multiple times plus one. Content warning, we talk about drug addiction and suicidality. Harm reduction is a central focus as we discuss how he’s stayed away from using.