Help Support Queer Sex Positive Artists.

Hello lovely people,

As you may or may not know, I not only perform in some of your favorite adult films and bondage sites but I'm also an artist and activist who runs a progressive art gallery in San Francisco, Femina Potens Art Gallery (www.feminapotens.org)

Femina Potens has provided hundreds or art exhbits, spoken word events, mulit-media programs, film screenings and educational work shops over the past 8 years that reflect the experiences of women,transgendered, kink, and sex worker communities. We need all of your support in order to continue to provide such resources to the community and create visibility for cutting edge artists.

With our new sustainer program you can donate as little as $10 a month, a tax deductible donation, and at the same time become part of a movement of artists pushing boundaries around identity, sex, feminism, public health, and queering how together as a community we engage with art.

Help support visibility and connection of the queer community through the arts. Nurture your community by sustaining the only non-profit art gallery in the Castro and the country's only queer public arts program.

Femina Potens is an all ages community funded gallery and is a reflection of all of us. We encourage you to become a member. Connecting Communities by Queering Concepts of Art and Sex.

Go to http://www.feminapotens.org to become a sustainer today. Sustainers also recieve such benefits as free tickets to Femina Potens events, VIP art events, and discounts on art purchases.

Thank you so much for your support.

xo
Madison Young

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.

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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