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posted by gill on August 19, 2010

When you work in sex, you get called a lot of names. For sex workers and porn performers, these names tend to be derogatory, playful or political, but in sex retail, titles can range from the banal "sales associate" to the often-misleading "sex educator". At Come As You Are, we don't identify as either.

In fact, since the time we opened our doors way back in 1997, we've struggled with all sorts of titles in all sorts of contexts. The members of CAYA are officially called worker-owners to underscore that we're not a bunch of fat cat absentee owners of this co-operative, but rather, we're actively working in the trenches every day. The government requires us to identify a president, treasurer, etc for their purposes, but within our collective structure, it doesn't make sense to have a president - although, I know that Cory thoroughly enjoyed his tenure as 'secretary' and I find much humour in receiving mail addressed to the 'president'.

Further, we've never been good at coming up with descriptions for our individual job titles. The folks who work in the store and in mail order (worker-owners included) certainly are not 'sales associates' and their training doesn't involve any sales training at all. Instead, we all receive training on sex-related books, sex education dvds, erotic dvds, sex toys and sexual health, as well as, sex and disability, anti-racism, sex and gender, and mental health. We aren't sales focused at all, but we don't believe in calling ourselves 'sex educators' because that implies that we have a formal education in sexuality. Of course, anyone can call themselves a sex educator, and often we've wondered if we should jump on that bandwagon for the sake of simplicity, but it feels disingenuous to do so.

For folks in the media, we're even more annoying with our refusal to be named. One of our core values is to be the anti-expert, which means that we reject titles like 'sex expert' or even worse 'sexpert', but in this culture of expertise, we're expected to have authoritative-sounding titles, and we just can't and won't budge on our core values. Nor should we.

We've been playing around with some new names lately, but they all seem either boring or exaggerated, so we're enlisting your help! Yes, this is the official Come As You Are Nomenclature Contest of 2010! Send us your suggestions and we'll be awarding prizes for the best names, as well as prizes for the most humorous names too. Send your entry to contest@comeasyouare.com by the end of September to have yours considered.

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August 10, 2010

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July 8, 2010

This week's favourite sandwich board - smog or snog? We vote snog, for sure!

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July 6, 2010

But here's the thing - you folks transformed today into a really great day for me. Today should have been terrible - it should have been just the worst - but luckily, I got/had to cover a shift in mail order, and I got to email and talk with so many of you and you were all just the nicest, loveliest bunch of people I could've encountered. 

Today could have been a day of heavy breathers and non-consensual telephone jerker-offers, but instead every customer (I hesitate to call you customers, because it isn't really about the buying, right?) I interacted with today had awesome questions or just really interesting things to say - even the fellow (who shall remain nameless for confidentiality reasons) who was having troubles with Canada Post delivering his order was so incredibly courteous and said such nice things about Come As You Are that it truly made my day, and probably my week. Similarly, my email interaction about the legal designations of vibrators (see more here tomorrow on this) was equally flattering and just the nicest. Also, one of our favourite special-order-only customers called today, and I always enjoy those chats.

Anyhow, you folks thank us all the time for doing good work, and I just wanted to thank all of you for making it so worthwhile.

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June 15, 2010

Once upon a time there was so much to love about American Apparel. Well, there was the seemingly sweatshop-free cotton goods, and the... oh maybe that was it. Well, after years of accusations of sexual harassment and often over-the-line creepy porny advertising, American Apparel is, of course, being accused of discrimination in hiring. Shockingly, Dov Charney and company are said to hire store employees based on beauty and this is evidenced in former employee testimonial and the company's requirement for job applicants to submit a full body photo with their application. Sigh.

Initially, there was something kind of appealing about American Apparel's outward and explicit sexuality - possibly because it is so totally opposite to the co-operative culture at Come As You Are. Come As You Are is all about boundaries. My favourite CAYA inside jokes are about our parties ending promptly at 9:30PM before anything inappropriate could possibly happen, and about how we tend to wave at each other more than we hug or shake hands. Well, sometimes we high-five too!  We're really not into the professional come on.

American Apparel says that they hire based on personal style and that's not discriminatory. I'd like to think that labour policy works a little differently in Canada (and I'm probably mostly wrong in my idealism here) but it strikes me that what AA does is perfectly compatible with how labour rights and anti-discrimination works in the US. That is, how does Hooters even exist in the face of anti-discrimination law? If Hooters is any indication, AA is merely typical in their hiring practices.

In a press release, AA gave our CEO's Dov Charney's phone number, but there is no answer and voicemail doesn't work, but I would keep trying. The conversation to be had could be awesome. Ultimately, I don't think AA thinks there's anything wrong with how they do business and they probably think they're actually groundbreaking in making sex part of their corporate culture, but really, they're actually just reverting to the model we're all trying so hard to break.

Be sure to check out the American Able ad series Jes Sachse did a little while back.

More info: [American Apparel] [American Able]

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posted by gill on June 4, 2010

Has anyone else noticed how difficult it is to find a public washroom in Toronto? This may seem like an odd question for a sex shop blog to be asking, but it may surprise you to know that aside from our great customer service, high-quality toys, and educational approach to sex retail, we're also well known for our washroom at 701 Queen Street West.

So, what's so special about our washroom?

Well, before you get any racy ideas about the Come As You Are washroom, I should tell you that our washroom is primarily known as being one of the only truly public washrooms on this stretch of Queen West (that is, we don't make you buy something to use it) and further, it is the only public gender-neutral accessible washroom on West Queen West. Wow.

I hope I don't sound like I'm bragging because mostly it is just terrible that we're the only one. This is kind of like when Good Vibrations privatized and we became the world's only co-operative sex shop by default - I mean, it sounds nice, but it is not like we did anything extra to earn the title.  In fact, we wish there were more co-op sex shops AND public accessible washrooms!

So, what do you do when you're not hanging around Queen West in Toronto and you need to find a washroom? Well, as is the new norm, there's an app for that! Using the information submitted by users to Foursquare, folks have built an app to help you locate washrooms near you. Even better - when they have the information, they indicate whether the washroom is accessible.

I know it seems like I'm giving a lot of attention to Foursquare lately - despite my obvious privacy concerns - but as with all technology, sometimes the usefulness can be more important than the sacrifice. In the case of the Pee Free app, you don't have to be on Foursquare to use it, and you don't need to give a lot of information about yourself - just where you're looking for a washroom.

There's a free, ad-supported version and a paid version available for Android currently, and it should be coming to the iPhone soon.

Has anyone had a chance to play with this new app? Please do let me know what your experiences with it have been like!

[Pee Free]

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posted by gill on June 3, 2010

Join us this evening at Come As You Are for the opening of Annanda DeSilva's Indelible Femme art show!

Lust, daydreams, voyeurism, self-defense and period stains; Fishnets, dazed pigeons and the ever-revered bushy mons all come together in a spicy stew of vivid colours, layering the glitter and grime of our city lives. Indelible Femme lays out all the sass, lumps, bedroom eyes and megaphone-moans for your eyes only, rendered in a mixture of acrylic, oil pastel, collage and sequins.

June 1 - June 30
Art Opening: June 3, 2010, 7 - 9pm.

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posted by gill on May 17, 2010

Wow! You folks sure know how to rock a job fair! Thank you so much to all of the folks who came out last night for Come As You Are's first recruitment party. Big thanks to the current hiring committee for putting the whole thing together and for spending their weekend making beautiful cupcakes for us to enjoy.

Annanda collected some of what the current workers and worker-owners had to say about their work here at Come As You Are, and did an awesome job writing out our blurbs, and put them together so nicely in the store. Come by today to check them out, or take a look at the photos we posted.

We'll be sorting through all of the applications we received and we'll get in touch with potential interviewees soon! If you came by last night but didn't get all of the information you needed, or all of our answers about co-operatives provoked more questions, get in touch.

Thanks again to everyone who organized the evening and everyone who came to see us!

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May 11, 2010

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April 18, 2010

Like many folks out there, we rather resent having binary gender imposed on us, but sometimes gender can be an interesting (if narrow) tool for analysis. And sometimes, it just make for a fun web-based tool.

If you're someone who finds internet (and facebook!) surveys to be completely irresistible, you may get some enjoyment from this. The folks at uClassify (known for their web text classifier) have developed a text analyzer that proports to determine the gender of a particular website based on the text on the site. Much to our pleasure, comeasyouare.com was considered to be 'quite gender neutral' and was 53% 'female'.

To be fair, because we're a worker-owned co-operative and all of the worker-owners (and staff!) contribute co-operatively to our website and shop, it makes a ton of sense that our site reflects a variety of perspectives (gender and otherwise). Also, we've always consciously sought to include people of all genders and sexualities in our shop (and website) so I'm especially pleased that some arbitrary web-based gender analyzer has recognized this. As have many of you!

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posted by gill on April 8, 2010

Post this under 'nerdy fun'! If you've got a QR Code (Quick Response code) reader on your smartphone or iPhone, or happen to be really into awesome things that are (were?) major trendy in Japan, you already know the fun and general awesomeness that is the QR Code.  You can embed a phone number, website or short message in one compact code that is quickly read by a range of devices.  To satisfy the 'nerdy fun' requirement in my job description, I've created two CAYA-related codes.

QR Codes are like UPCs - you need a scanner to read them.  If you've got a smartphone with a camera, you're in luck - there's most likely already an app available for your device!  Search google or the iTunes store, and there are plenty of choices.

Want to create your own QR Code?  You can try a free web-based QR Code generator.

I can imagine that the sexy possibilities for this are probably pretty endless.  I don't want to encourage a lot of explicit talk around here (ha!) but if anyone's got a tale of interesting QR Code hot times - or even a UPC-related story - post it below in the comments, or get in touch.

Additionally, the first person to decode the CAYA codes above will win something awesome from us.  Send me an email with the content of the codes to enter!

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February 16, 2010

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February 2, 2010

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November 12, 2009

The Challenge of Putting Porn Into Little Boxes

Soon after opening in 1997 we found that porn was the product customers came in with the most baggage around. Being the first feminist identified sex shop in Toronto that also carried a range of porn -- from soft to extremely hardcore -- we had a lot of people coming to us interested in giving porn another try, but turned off by previous experiences and not sure where to start.

As a result, porn has been the product line that demands the most reflection and work from our collective membership. We probably spend more time watching, thinking, and debating porn than anything else we carry. All that talk came in handy when, a few years back, we decided it was time to devise a classification system for customers.

Which brings me to anal sex. Anal sex proved to be the first stumbling block. In our first draft everyone involved in the process agreed that anal sex would be a distinguishing feature of the raunchier content we carry (closer to five flames than one). But some members challenged this. What was it, they asked, about anal sex that makes it inherently raunchy or hardcore? Should a sexual activity taken out of the context of erotic energy, people's bodies, and all the non-verbal communication that happens during sex, ever be classified as essentially "hard" or "soft"?

It was a good question, and one we got stuck on for some time. In the end we agreed that when it came to an individuals sex life this didn't make sense at all. But when it comes to porn we feel like it does.

Porn is a kind of fetishization of sexual activity. With few exceptions, porn isn't about the subjective experience of the actors (one notable exception would Tony Comstock's films). So it makes sense in this context to identify porn both as it's produced, but also along the lines that customers most often ask for (and anal sex vs. no anal sex is a common request).

In the end we decided to make our rankings reflect both sexual activities and sexual energy in a film. Like everything at a worker co-operative, we consider our porn nosology a work in progress. Have a look and if you've got comments, suggestions, or controversies you'd like to suggest, let us know!

	Light and Breezy. Titles may titillate but keep the action relatively clean. No anal, no genital close ups, no external ejaculation.
	Penultimate Porn. Scenes feature light-hearted sex, actors understanding and responding to their partner's desires. Some external ejaculations, occasional anal sex, threesomes, and girl-on-girl.
	The Mid Point. Scenes feature light-hearted sex, actors understanding and responding to their partner's desires. Some external ejaculations, occasional anal sex, threesomes, and girl-on-girl.
	More Bang for the Buck. Sex that's raunchy and to the point. Expect multiple scenes involving anal sex, group sex, some power play, zoomed-in shots, and facial ejaculations.
	Hard as We Want to Be. The most explicit content we carry. Titles may feature power play and/or rough sex, multiple anal scenes, double penetrations and dirty talk.

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