Expert witnesses for Little Sister's challenged Canada Customs' claim of objectivity when assessing the legality of sexually-explicit material. It was pointed out that much heterosexual material flowed into Canada from American sources during the period when lesbian and gay male erotica was being intercepted on its way to Little Sister's. It seems unlikely that one particular bookstore would have been singled out for repeated government seizures of stock if its area of specialty hadn't been controversial in the first place.

As a small bookseller, formerly a member of the collective which ran an "alternative" bookstore, I was ordering similar material at this time. My main source was Bookpeople, a large distributor in California, and their boxes arrived at my door or the local post office without a hitch. I give credit to those who knew how to pack books discreetly.

In 1995, a Vancouver publisher (Press Gang) published RESTRICTED ENTRY: CENSORSHIP ON TRIAL, an account of the Little Sister's case to that point. The book was written by a manager of the bookstore, Janine Fuller, and a writer from Toronto, Stuart Blackley, and was sold as a fundraising project to help provide for Little Sister's ongoing legal costs. The authors mention the feminist claim that pornographic material degrades women, but they argue that concern for women does not hold up well as a possible motive for the seizures of material by Canada Customs. Like the birth control information which was taken out of circulation by Comstock and his allies in the nineteenth century, some of the material stopped by Canada Customs dealt with health issues, including the spread of HIV and the safe sex practices which minimize the risk of catching it.

At about the same time, a gay male writer of erotica, Stan Persky, wrote an editorial for THIS MAGAZINE, a leftist Canadian periodical, asking why material which describes male-on-male sex was so often identified as "porn" and banned accordingly if the problem with pornography (according to Dworkin and McKinnon and most other anti-porn "experts") was that it incited, or actually embodied, violence against WOMEN. Where was the threat to women in books or films with titles like "Boys on the Beach"? Indeed. But in general, Canadian feminist organizations either had an anti-porn policy or had nothing to say on the issue.

In 1996, the judge who heard Little Sister's suit against the Canadian government ruled that the bookstore had been discriminated against, BUT that the law that Canada Customs claimed to be applying at the time was not unconstitutional. Little Sister's appealed that ruling, and the appeal was heard in 1998, when two of three judges confirmed the 1996 decision. However, Little Sister's has been allowed to take the appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada, and is now waiting for a hearing date. Meanwhile, Canada Customs has continued to seize material earmarked for the bookstore. According to Janine Fuller, much of what offends the censors could be described as SM-related. Quel surprise.

Meanwhile, in the spring of 1993, I was recruited onto the Saskatchewan Film Classification Board. I was no longer working as a nude model OR a call girl, and I had finally achieved a Master's degree in English. I was in my forties. I wanted some degree of safety and respectability, partly for the sake of my daughter, who was now in high school. I was a volunteer board member of the Saskatchewan Action Committee on the Status of Women (SAC). I was marginally employed by the local university as a "sessional" instructor of first-year English. My salary from this was not enough to live on, so I juggled several part-time clerical jobs.

The recruitment offer was too good to resist. Another SAC board member, appointed to the classification board as a token feminist, had resigned on grounds that all the porn films she had to watch were giving her nightmares. I was asked if I wanted to replace her, and receive a "per diem" for watching movies six days a month. It was explained that the money I would receive was not to be regarded as a salary, and I agreed not to call it that.

I was also told that most of the movies I would be watching were current Hollywood releases destined for local movie theaters. The "porn" films available for rent in various stores was also supposed to be rated according to the Saskatchewan Film Act, but since this legal requirement was really impossible to police adequately, "porn" was only viewed and rated by the board if someone complained to the police, who were then obliged to hand the stuff to us, the Film Police.

Considering that I was not really in a position to halt the flow of sexually-explicit films into the part of Canada I lived in, my role as a film cop didn't trouble me much. I got paid for my time, local video stores did a thriving business, and life went on. I sometimes wondered whether I had been recruited onto the film board as a SAC board member because I was expected to be anti-porn, but the film board's apparent lack of power actually reassured me. I was obviously not in charge of the media or of modern culture, so no one could seriously accuse me of being Mrs. Grundy the art censor. So I thought.

Then the Hollywood movie EXIT TO EDEN, based on an Anne Rice novel of the same name, arrived in Saskatchewan in October 1994 for the film board to rate. The movie, like the novel, traces the relationship of Elliot, a male submissive, and Lisa, one of the "trainers" in the "Eden" of the title, an SM resort. The other four board members found the scenes of "s and m lite" (as one of the stars described it) more offensive than all the violent deaths in all the action movies we had watched. They agreed to give it a rating of "Not Approved," making it illegal for anyone in Saskatchewan to buy, sell, rent or view the piece. The legal basis for this decision was the "degradation" in the movie, something which, according to the Saskatchewan Film Act, COULD (but would not have to) be a basis for banning.

I offered to loan my copy of the novel to the other board members so they could make a more informed decision. One of the men accepted my offer, and what he read strengthened his resolve to ban the movie. The cops-and-robbers comedy which was added to the plot of the novel to give the film more mainstream appeal was the last straw for the other board members. They thought porn should stay in its place: far away from them.

The majority ruled. The chairperson (or chairwoman) of the film board asked the rest of us to refer all questions from the media to her, as the board spokesperson. Since I couldn't defend the decision to ban the movie and didn't want to trash my fellow board members in public, I agreed not to talk.

The banning of the movie was big news in the local media. The chairperson refused to speak in public, claiming that judges don't have to defend their decisions. For three days she was nowhere to be found, so the press came after the rest of us. Our names were shown on local TV. I could hardly have been more aghast if my transactions with johns in motel rooms in the early 1980s had been secretly videotaped and then broadcast to an audience of people I knew.

Articles appeared in the local press, the Canadian press, and the American press. We were described as a "shadowy board," but I didn't feel shadowy enough. My daughter was the center of attention when the issue was discussed in her English class.

I was phoned at my office at the university by a young woman I knew slightly, who worked for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC). I dodged her questions and refused an interview until she asked if she could come ask me to explain how the film board is normally run. I recklessly agreed.

"Aura," born in the early 1970s, came to my office dressed in hippie revival style, carrying a tape recorder. Her questions got sticky. She asked if I had pressured to agree with the ban. I said yes. She asked if the decision was based on certain controversial scenes. I said yes. She asked me to describe them. At that point I phoned the board chairwoman, who was only accessible to board members. She told me not to say anything to anyone. I told Aura I had given my word of honor not to talk, and couldn't give permission for my comments to be used. We argued about this, then she left quickly with the tape. Her supervisor phoned me, and I argued with him until he agreed not to air any part of the interview.

At 6:00 the next morning, the chairwoman woke me up with a phone call. My comments had been aired on CBC Radio at 5:00 a.m. and would be run again at 7:00. I offered to resign from the board. She told me not to do anything, and not to go to the film board office until further notice. I left messages for several higher-ups in the Saskatchewan Department of Justice. The chairwoman phoned me back to ask what I wanted, and to tell me that I was to direct all my questions and comments to her.

Two days into the media circus, the Saskatchewan Minister of Justice appeared on TV. He claimed that the provincial film board would soon be replaced by a regional board, possibly by December 1994. We lasted until October 1997, when we were disbanded; since then, the film board of another Canadian province, British Columbia, has had the job of rating films and videos for Saskatchewan.

The Appeal Film Board, called together on rare occasions, was quickly locked into a room to reconsider EXIT TO EDEN. They voted to overturn the ban. When the film opened in Saskatchewan, people flocked to see it. Were the hordes of voyeurs corrupted by what they saw? Your guess is as good as mine. If the viewing public was damaged by that movie, we who saw it first were the first casualties.

So bring on the dancing girls, I say. Let the rude and the crude flow freely across borders. After all, the devil has no nationality and can fit comfortably into every human culture. I am still haunted by questions about the relationship between sex and oppression which will probably never be answered conclusively, but as I approach my fiftieth year (the beginning of Cronedom in wiccan or neo-pagan terms), I know a few things that I didn't know before.

I don't want to be more of a hypocrite than absolutely necessary. I don't want to be ignorant or philistine while I still have a mind that functions well enough. I could live in the world of literature for the rest of my life, but ironically, the products of imagination pull me back into the joyful and suffering world of the senses. Sex is still messy (not only on a physical level), but I will never be a neat freak. Whatever ambivalent feelings or ambiguous messages are brought up by sex in art, we all have to live with them. The prospect of a morally "clean," sex-free culture is just too scary for a vulnerable woman like me.

Editor's Note: Look for Olivia 's interview with Jean in our Winter issue of girlphoria! Jean will be a regular columnist and reviewer for girlphoria. If you have an article, essay or feature you'd like to see in girlphoria please see our submission guidelines:.