Infiltrating the Mainstream with underground subversive feminist art

A couple of weeks ago I received a phone call from the Independent Film Channel. They were interested in filming performance art performances around blood play at Femina Potens for Dave Navarro's upcoming tv show "Deeper". "Deeper" involves Dave diving into different edgy subcultures acting as both a voyeur and participant in some way. I feel like gaining larger wide spread exposure for queer and feminist art work is essential to destroying stigmas around different subcultures that lack visibility in the mainstream media such as queer culture and the sex worker community. IFC had come across Twincest's performances online and were interested in focusing on their work with some additional performances that also referenced the use of blood in performance and art. Enter performance artist Sadie Lune, who did some wonderfully creative blood portraits of the evening's performers. Dave also requested a portrait of himself which was painted using a combination of both Sadie's blood and Dave's blood.

I also contributed to the evening along with my dear friend and rope artist/collaborator, Lochai. Together we orchestrated a bloody rope suspension performance involving a ritual of dirt, cleansing in water and my body bound to the central post of the gallery and becoming drunken on rope in a beautiful suspension.

Twincest started off the evening by performing a very intimate piece involving the two artists drawing one another's blood filling up shot glasses with their fluid and swallowing in one big gulp. The air was thick with tension,fear, anxiety,eroticism and at the same time a sense of playfulness as Jez (who is actually afraid of both needles and blood) was instructed by her partner on how to find Shawn's veins and how to draw the blood and stick the needle. And then we watched as Shawn stuck the woozy Jez and filled the viles full of her blood.

The audience was all personally invited by the gallery and included local artists and friends such as Susan Forbes and performance artist and activist, Keith Hennessy as well as the fabulous writer and blogger, Violet Blue. All in all the evening could have been mistaken for any other performance evening at Femina Potens with the exception of the camera's and lights and producers running around making sure that we were all ready for Dave and that we continue to act natural when Dave entered the gallery. It was rather funny. They were a joy to work with but it's just the nature of inviting a little bit of Hollywood into our Queerdom of San Francisco.

Regardless of my feelings toward evil that is Hollywood, when it comes down to it we are choosing to create visibility for women and trans artists. If Hollywood is interested in helping us to further that visibility and getting queer performance art out not only to the mainstream but also to all of the emerging queers who are stuck in the suburbs of the midwest with only the tv as a window to civilization that exists outside of their small town, then maybe I'll believe in Hollywood this once. When queer youth are having a hard time finding communities to relate to, are failing to find resources in their small town, at least they can turn on the television to IFC and find a little bit of queer San Francisco in their living room, and that might just get them through the high school years.

Anal Health education at Folsom St Fair

Every September in San Francisco in a public celebration of community,leather culture, and every thing Kinky people gather from all over the world for the Folsom Street Fair. Kinks that are normally kept behind closed doors are invited in to the gated off streets. I feel like I have come home surrounded by fellow puppies, ponies, rope sluts, masochists, queers, slaves and owners. It is a family reunion of sorts. I split my time between a booth that Center for Sex and Culture shared with my gallery,Femina Potens and doing a suspension performance for Kink.com. I peddled my porn in exchange for getting fliers out regarding my feminist art space and a couple of bucks to put toward the gallery rent. Sitting at the gallery booth I was able to chat with passersby, fans, and community members. I met a beautiful Dominant woman and her very well behaved submissive who acknowledged me but was obviously in protocol. It made me tingle all over to see her behaving, to see her being the good girl that I so love to be. One gentleman came by to get his photograph taken with me and an autographed dvd. He later came back with a question. He was hesitant to ask. But he said he didn't know who else to talk to.

"So do you enjoy anal sex?"

Yes. I love it. I can orgasm more easily from anal sex than vaginal. Often in vaginal sex I feel like my cervix is being pounded but in anal sex I receive immense pleasure and can even receive g spot stimulation from my anus.

He had been wanting to engage in anal sex with his girlfriend but was worried about hurting her or causing an infection. He was too embarrassed to talk to anyone about it and didn't know who else to talk to. I feel like as sex workers we have an obligation to be educators. To educate ourselves, our clients, our customers, our web site members, our fans, our friends, our public.

We talked about cleanliness, the use of lube, ways to warm up a woman or man for anal play, different toys that can be incorporated. And that anal sex can be a very pleasurable experience for women and men.

It felt incredibly rewarding directly educating the public around anal pleasure. Below are a couple great web sites and tips on having pleasurable and safe anal play.

xo
madison

- Anal Tips from Madison Young

If you are having anal sex later in the evening have a light dinner and skip the alcohol,caffeine,burritos or anything that goes through your system quickly. Protein and carbs is a good bet.

Before sex prepare with an anal douche of luke warm water to rinse away any trace amounts of feces that might be in your rectum.

Get hot and bothered. Before any penetration it is nice to have some warm up. Do what ever you like to do that gets you hot. Make out. Oral Sex. Spanking. Flogging. Use a vibrator.

Lube is your friend. Use lube on your butt hole and on your fingers. Warm up with a finger then two, then three. I like to use my whole fist to warm up and I also have found a very nice lucite toy that works well for me. Experiment with what toys are your best warm up. Sometimes the toys are all I need. Sometimes there is a cock involved. Make sure to continue to use lube through out your anal adventures. Just because you had plenty of lube when you started fucking doesn't mean that you have plenty once you have been penetrated. My philosophy is that you can never have two much lube. I prefer silicone. Eros is an excellent brand.

Always make sure that fingers,toys,fists,cocks do not enter the vagina after entering your anus as you will be spreading bacteria. And bacterial infections aren't very fun. Condoms are a great way to keep things clean. Also latex gloves can be helpful for keeping hands clean so if you want to go back to the pussy after warming up with fingers you can just remove your glove.

• Tristan Taormino the Official Anal Advisor -
  

http://www.puckerup.com

Tristan and Kirk sexual revolutionaries.

About a month ago I saw Kirk Read's "So this is the thing" performance in San Francisco. The day after coming back from shooting for sex educator and activist Tristan Taormino.

I had an amazing time at Tristan's shoot. She is directing videos for Vivid's educational line and I was featured in her Guide to Sensual Bondage. Sensual is the key word, it was challenging and fun at the same time to hold back from playing as rough as I would have liked. But there was something naughty in all it's innocence. Revisiting a time when I first started bdsm and would put on furry leather cuffs and a hand on the ass was all I needed, not the touch of a 2x4 :)

It was so amazing being in LA but still being surrounded by intelligent queer sex positive community that was nuturing and educating the public's sexual interest with hot sexual performances and under the guidance of excellent bondage rigger Midori.

We were guiding couples through taking those first steps in to the sometimes intimidating world of bdsm. And at the same time Tristan was countering the LA porn normative by portraying honest sexual connection, talking with the talent about who they would like to work with, making sure everyone was comfortable, hydrated, and that dietary needs were taken care of. These may seem like simple things but to have an environment created where the performers basic needs are taken care of and that their desires are heard, well this is empowering. And this is an act of revolutionary porn.

The next evening my partner and I joined fellow writer and bondage model Lorelei Lee and her partner for dinner and theater where we enjoyed Kirk Read's "This is the Thing". This is the Thing is Kirk Read's multi media performance which explores his apocalyptic fantasies and sex work. Kirk's performances are always innovative, compelling and keep me captivated from the moment he walks onto stage to the moment he exits. His gentleness and honesty and ability to love and open his self up to the audience with in his stories is truly beautiful. He delves into his history as an evangelist and goes into a story regarding a protest outside of the Sex Workers Art Show. Crowds of press and mobs surrounding the venue in which they were about to perform. Evangelists were singing and lighting candles and Kirk decides to join them in song. It was really touching and beautiful. I recall at a previous SWAS hearing a piece Kirk performed about the last night that a historical gay sex club in SF was open. The end of something beautiful. He is able to capture the magic of the evening along with the depth,history and lineage behind sex culture. He captures this sense of compassion with his work with in the sex world that reminds me of Annie Sprinkle. He can be talking about something so dirty and raunchy and hot but at the same time there is something magical, historical, groundbreaking and compassionate in his words. Something wholesome and gentle and disturbed and innocent and brilliant. Yes. I am a fan and Kirk Read is most certainly one of today's great sexual revolutionaries which is evident in the name of his non-profit organization Army of Lovers.

Viva la Porn Revolution

I'm sick and bed ridden, sore throat and dizzy with fever but I can't escape the thoughts floating around my head. Thoughts of the porn revolution. Thoughts of our growing forces and increasing visibility.

I've directed scenes for 3 different queer porns this month. And time and time again I'm wowed by the amazing dedication of my fellow performers and crew. Hiking up hills in San Francisco weather to get naked and have hot sex under a tree in a park. Spending long days on set studying lines, researching characters,connecting with performers and crew not only on set but in queer activism, in artistic collaborations, in fundraising, in building a community around sex positive activists,artists,queers who are coming together in porn. This world, this community is so completly different from that which I have come to know in LA where it truly feels like everyone is only there for a pay check and where I feel isolated from any kind of real community. The performances generated from community members incorporates depth and genuine connection and orgasms rather than just a hollow image of sex.

In my latest film "Art House" sexual revolutionaries such as Sadie Lune, Trouble Royale of NoFauxxx.com and Twincest (www.twincest.net) all were in attendance and collaborating on a major level. Twincest offered up a hot sex scene that referenced 70s feminist performance artists Yoko Ono's "cut" piece and Carolee Schneemann's "Meat Joy". The performance art couple had sex over a bed of lunch meats while wearing long blonde wigs which they piece by piece cut locks of hair from as they jointly suckled on hot dogs and came in each other's mouths while being sploshed with tomato soup, a sexual act we have now coined as being the "warhol".

In another scene Shawn of Twincest distracts me by performing sexual acts as I'm being asked personal and prying questions by a Warhol like character who appears off camera played by the remarkable Sadie Lune. This scene references the Warhol film "Beauty #2" which you can check out on You Tube if you are unfamiliar. Photos from the scene are now available at www.NoFauxxx.com. And Art House will be available in early September.

Daily Acts of Sexual Activism

Peeing in Public and/or semi - public places

On Friday night after the San Francisco Trans March I marched my way into San Francisco's premier dyke bar, The Lexington, with my friends Donna and Lorelei. We proceeded to lend our selves to debauchery and a cocktail which we slurped in the corner of the bar. But what does a girl do when it is time to visit the little ladies room and there are 25 ladies standing in line all trying to do the same? My solution - grab two plastic cup which have been discarded after the consumption of alcohol, walk into the ladies room, stand in the corner, unzip your pants, squat as needed, and release urine. I was amazed at how many girls in line were amazed by my action. It seemed quite practical to me. Why is it that we think we must pee behind closed doors? That we must pee in a porcelain receptacle and not a portable plastic one? Men feel confident in their bodies and genitals and pee in front of one another on a daily basis. Their sex hangs outside of them on display to be viewed by all while women's sex is hidden under jeans or dresses and we squat over toilets barely making contact with our genitals - if at all - in this ritual which we perform every time our bladders fill. The women's jaws dropped, some of them smiled, a couple girls said I was their hero, and one woman said "I thought I had seen everything in San Francisco." All this over exposing myself in a ladies room to urinate.

At the Trans march Donna pulled down her panties as she squatted in the grass like a perfectly manicured spaniel and her friends circled around her to shade her from the public gaze. It was a friendship circle. A circle of protection and love that supported her in her decision to make her private act public.

At the AVN Porn Awards Annette Schwartz sits next to me talking to our agent while she casually hikes up her evening gown and pees into a plastic cup. Her confidence in her body and sexuality fills a room. She is powerful and in control of her body and in know way afraid of her fluids.

Perhaps as porn stars dealing with fluids,fluid exchange, bodies and sexuality on a daily basis have made us immune to the social commentary on where our fluids belong and just how we should dispose of them. So much of the private has become public and we have come to embrace our bodies and fluids and not fear them. Instead we roll around in them in celebration or in the very least we capture in a cup.

Being the other half

It takes a strong being to hold our hands, to hold our hearts and hold our bodies close after we come home from our day at the office. As porn stars we open ourselves up to those around us, giving part of ourselves to the scene, connecting with new individuals on a physical and sexual level. Yes we all know it is work when the camera is rolling and for the most part everyone is very professional, but that doesn't mean that we remain mechanical creatures and that we aren't emotionally exposed as we are connecting with these individuals on a very personal level for your enjoyment. So how do we create that boundary? That boundary that lies between our personal and business relationships. This is the constant struggle that exists internally for adult performers.

Sex work is part of my sexual identity. It is a part of who I am. I had no idea how my professional life would impact who my personal partners would be. Some partners find it novel at first that there girlfriend is desired by millions of fans. But that can quickly wear off and be replaced with overwhelming jealousy. I had just begun my career as a porn star when I fell in love with my last girlfriend, Gauge. And although Gauge seemed supportive at first, when the constant travel kicked in and letters from fans, interviews, media and photos all over the internet of other people giving me orgasms, it was no longer something that she could handle. She felt that she was losing me to them. And although my love for her never faltered she was unable to handle being the partner of a sex worker. At the time we would scoure the internet looking for partners of sex workers support groups. And we found nothing. We were never able to find her the support she needed in order to deal with the emotions that she was having as a result of my career. One of my first porns that I produced is entitled The Tail of a Bondage Model and it is the story of the internal struggles of a sex worker and maintaining a lover in your life while you are working.

I now find myself on both sides of the fence. I'm still an adult performer and so is my partner. We have learned to communicate honestly about what are boundaries are, what we know that we can handle and what we know that we can't. We have learned to create sacred sexual activities that are only meant to be between the two of us and that are not for sale for entertainment. And we have learned to negotiate and that nothing is ever in stone, that people change, boundaries change and that we must allow for that. And although this may sound all well and good and perfectly healthy it has taken plenty of therapy and fights to get us to this point. And it would have been so nice to have tapped into a community of dialouge around this subject while in my relationships me and my partners are grappling to create some sort of language that works for communicating around a relationship in which sex work is added to the equation. And now there is.

Sexual revolutionary and artist Sadie Lune has been creating dialouge,art and activism around just this subject. Her new blog Working Hearts
is addressing issues such as how does your personal life effect your work and if my partner fucks or uses sexual energy at work will they have enough left for me at home? These are questions that run through our minds as partners of sex workers. She discusses the creation of emotional and physical boundaries around sex work. And gives a voice to both partners of sex workers that she holds dialouge with and gives voice to a myriad of different sex workers. Having these voices illustrated for us on her blog gives birth to a community of sex workers and their partners and lets us know that we are not alone. Sadie Lune is building connection amongst partners that can often feel isolated and ashamed of their insecurity, jealousy, and frustration.

Not only is Sadie writing about the boundaries between personal and work but she will also be exhibiting a site specific installation examining tokens of affection from lovers and clients, during the month of September in the windows of Madison Young's Femina Potens.

I Touch Myself - To Know Myself

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