Bio
samantha bitty (she/her) is Canada’s premier sexual health and consent education drag queen. A long-time community-based practitioner, anti-oppression anti-racism facilitator, public speaker, harm reductionist, media personality, educator, coach, advocate and award winning web show host.
A quintuple fire sign, daily napper, sexy clown, survivor, sober person in lond-term recovery, pleasure-seeker, forever learner, and a first generation immigrant/settler of Afro-Caribbean and Northern European descent, samantha’s life work centralizes addressing injustice, erasure, and limiting beliefs.
Miss. bitty is the host of SEXY SEXUAL HEALTH TRIVIA, as well as many other expansive, intersectional, and comprehensive sexual health and consent interventions that deploy games, humour, art and media to push the boundaries of propriety and facilitate entry into challenging conversations. She is known for creating sites of transformation grounded in accessibility, relationality, liberation and joy that prioritize pleasure, racial and disability justice, survivors of gender-based violence, sex positivity, and affirmation of gender and sexuality diversity.
Based on Treaty 13 Territory, samantha is the host of web series SEX SESSIONS (SliceTV), podcast what would samantha bitty do, is the founder of Inner Development Project and represented by the National Speakers Bureau.
She develops and facilitates workshops, seminars, and trainings locally and internationally for universities, colleges, youth groups, private companies, non-profit organizations, trade unions and more.
2. Goals
Cultivate creative spaces for empowered, comprehensive, joyful and critical learning.
Promote curiosity and self-reflection.
Facilitate healing spaces for healing experiences.
Have a nice time.
Visibility for survivors and others marginalized by systems of oppression.
3. Approach
Art, Emotional Intelligence, Joy, Humour, Systems of Empowerment Focused - ie. what do we want vs what are we trying to avoid, Pleasure-Based, Accessibility through proactive and passive learning opportunities, Curiosity, Harm Reduction, Safer Spaces.
4. Values
Anti-Racism/Anti-Oppression
Collectivism
Sex Positivity
Teachability
Accountability
Transformation
5. Origin Story
With a long, diverse, and unconventional education/career path, Samantha Viarruel has held many titles. From customer service agent in a sex toy shop, to catering chef, to abortion counsellor, to dive bartender, to nationally recognized relationship expert - using each opportunity to hone her intelligences.
Samantha was drawn to the field of sexual health, through her own negative experiences of insufficient, and at times harmful, access to education and healthcare. Vowing to be the person she never had on the other end of young women and people’s engagement with sexual health care, she obtained a volunteership as a Peer Educator at Planned Parenthood Toronto.
Discovering a passion and talent for connecting with individuals in client-centered, intersectional care, as well as mentoring others to so, she began exploring program development for community health promotion locally and internationally.
Patterns identified through this work, led her to founding Inner Development Project, a Toronto-based outreach program, facilitating workshops with young women/femme spectrum non-binary youth. Namely the connection between low self-esteem, challenges with communication in relationships, anxiety, and negative sexual health outcomes; including self-doubt and consent related sexual violence.
Chronically “not a good fit” in formal institutions, Samantha was pulled away from the clinic/health care sector and into entrepreneurship in a variety of community focused practices aiming to create educational spaces that address injustices, the erasure of communities marginalized by racism, homophobia/transphobia, ableism and classism. Critical to this work is changing the ways these communities access arts, education and resources, through an emotional intelligences and anti-oppression framework.
Through many iterations, failures, and self-limiting beliefs, Samantha began experimenting with a highly aestheticized, dramatized, comedic drag queen version of herself to present her work. Deploying and learning new creative and technical skill sets, this ‘femme armour’ made way for samantha bitty, and she has since been presenting her out-of-the-box (and out-of-pocket), pleasure centered and comprehensive sex education to youth, post secondary and adult audiences across Canada, the United States and beyond via virtual engagements.
bitty is represented by the National Speakers Bureau, and is a contributor to Global News, Slice, CBC, Best Health, Refinery29, and has been featured in Flare, the Toronto Star, PRIDE Toronto, numerous podcasts, articles and platforms nationally and globally.
Current projects include: podcast what would samantha bitty do? and weekly segment Sex Etc. on The Last Show with David Cooper
Classique projects include: 2021 Best Blog Column/Videocast/Podcast Gold Canadian Online Publishing Award-winning Sex Sessions a 10 part web series on sex and relationships produced by SLICE TV; SEXY SEXUAL HEALTH EDUCATION - which is her ongoing practice with Post-Secondary and youth audiences - comprised of her unique trivia game show, numerous workshops, and a 10 part comprehensive video series on sex, dating, body image and mental health in the context of consent culture; Sex Ed - a weekly segment on iHeartRadio Late Show with David Cooper; Inner Development Project - youth focused workshops on a range of topics to strengthen inter and intrapersonal skills.
Aside from her work as a public speaker/media personality, samantha provides individual and partnered sex/relationship emotional intelligence coaching, equity consulting for a range of private and non-profit clients, project manages public artworks, does drag and fundraises through events and advocacy.
Samantha is a sober person in long-term recovery, a survivor of sexual and gender-based violence, a lifelong learner, and career volunteer.