The whore gaze as the world burns: A conversation between PJ Starr, Monica Jones, The Incredible, Edible, Akynos and Bambi Katsura

ABSTRACT

This illustrated conversation between The Incredible, Edible, Akynos, Monica Jones, PJ Starr and Bambi Katsura unpacks how we use media to continue our sex worker activism during the multiple pandemics of COVID-19, police violence and environmental disasters. We each bring our histories and theoretical innovations to the table including the framework of the 'Whore Gaze' developed by PJ, Monica’s approach to documentary that ensures trans people narrate their own lives, Akynos' scripted film series Chronicles of a Black Heaux that may re-imagine the 'melomentary form' for sex worker representation and Bambi's experience as a filmmaker and curator. In our conversation, we discuss how we use film, photography, film festivals, animation and other forms for our activism to promote social justice. We also describe how we are systematically unlearning the codes of representation of research and human rights documentation, so that we can create materials that are accessible to our communities, to people with disabilities and be freed from the dead-end of respectability politics.

KEYWORDS:

• Sex worker rights
• whore gaze
• Black Heaux
• Black trans justice
• Red Umbrella

Introduction

The Whore Gaze as the World Burns is a conversation between four creators and sex worker rights advocates confronting the patriarchy, racism, whorephobia, transphobia, xenophobia and the limitations of speaking via the Internet. We each bring our histories and theoretical innovations to the table. Monica Jones is the founder of the Outlaw Project in Arizona and is a media creator who ensures trans people narrate their own lives. Bambi Katsura is a filmmaker in California who is directing Under The Red Umbrella, their first feature-length documentary. PJ Starr is a filmmaker and photographer who developed the framework of the ‘whore gaze.’ The Incredible, Edible, Akynos is the founder of the Black Sex Worker Collective, performance artist and director of the forthcoming scripted film series Chronicles of a Black Heaux. Pre-pandemic, PJ and Akynos outlined an economic stimulus package plan for sex work and the arts published in the Routledge International Handbook of Sex Industry Research (Starr & Francis, 2019).

From the isolation of our personal bubbles we stretched our minds out to each other in late March 2021, one year into the COVID-19 shut downs. All have been required to draw in our communities and strength during these times because this pandemic has been used as an excuse to take back any gains sex workers might have attained fighting for their rights (Akynos, 2021; Scarlet Alliance, 2020). In the last year our world burned, with activists rallying to rage about the injustice of anti-Black racism and state sanctioned murder of Black people. During and in the wake of these events, Black sex workers and Black trans sex workers have had to struggle once again to be recognised as worthy of protection.

Beginning the conversation

PJ Starr:

Good afternoon friends, we are working across four time zones so I will add, good morning, everyone. In our conversation we will discuss how we use art for our activism to promote social justice. We will also describe how we are systematically unlearning the codes of representation of research and human rights documentation so that we can create materials that are more accessible to our communities, to people with disabilities, and be freed from the dead end of respectability politics. Firstly, please introduce yourself. If you feel comfortable speaking about this, please also share what personal, familial or social history is part of your perspective and your art.

Monica Jones:

My name is Monica Jones. I'm based in Phoenix, Arizona. I'm part of the documentary, The Manifestation of Monica Jones (Starr & Jones, forthcoming). My personal history includes my work as a sex worker activist. My degree in social work influences the way I navigate the system. Here is how I view the portrayal of the whore gaze in film and media. I come to this work as a Black trans woman and I have the dynamic of being Black, but also being trans, and looking at material that is for people like me, but not really.

Caption: Monica Jones in downtown Phoenix, Arizona. Photographed by PJ Starr, 2013.

Bambi:

Hi, everyone. My name is Bambi. I'm an artist and filmmaker. I was part of the curatorial team for Not Your Rescue Project, a virtual film festival hosted by HIV2020 that celebrated the fierce activism of sex workers (Jones et al., 2020). My current documentary is Under The Red Umbrella (forthcoming) which explores the history and current day landscape of sex worker rights in the US. I have the hardest time talking about myself. So I'm going to skip the second part of that question.

Akynos:

My name is The Incredible, Edible, Akynos. I am America's top whore. I've got the best pussy on five continents. I've blogged about my Black whoredom. I talk very openly about my long veteran history in sex work and being a ‘sex worker glorified stripper’ also known as burlesque show dancer. I've got way too many degrees to be this broke. But I do like luxury items. Currently I am buying a Fendi dress and bag. I'm just happy to be here.

PJ Starr:

Akynos your audio is a little bit lagging.

Akynos:

Oh, no.

PJ Starr:

Maybe turn off your video for future questions. I'm sorry. You look so great. I'll do the same for myself. So we're all in solidarity.

Akynos:

How is it now?

Monica Jones:

It's so perfect Akynos.

Akynos:

Should I start over?

PJ Starr:

It is okay and the audio seemed good enough for the transcription.

Akynos:

But I want to say again that I've got the best pussy on five continents.

PJ Starr:

Thank you for sharing and perhaps for not showing. I'm going to introduce myself now. I'm a photographer, organiser, filmmaker, writer, parent, and I make films primarily about the different experiences of sex work. My personal experience that I bring to this, is that I am an immigrant. I grew up on welfare in a remote part of Australia. That informs my perspective every single day. It is so fundamental to have been raised by a single woman with a bunch of kids living on welfare and everything that entailed, including the plan that the government had for my total failure. Well, look who's out here, writing about the whore gaze right now? So that's where I'm coming from.

Respectability politics

PJ Starr:

Let's move to the next question. Let's get this out of the way, have you ever attempted to be respectable?

Monica Jones:

No, I have not been trying to be respectable. We are told we always have to play those respectability politics to be deemed worthy in this day and age, right? Today, it's all about respectability. It's all about what you do. Are you a sex worker? Then you must have been asking to be shot and killed at your place of work. We're not going to take you serious because you're a sex worker. The thing against that is to say, ‘Fuck you. No matter what I do I deserve respect. No matter where I'm at, no matter what I'm doing, no matter if I'm on the corner sucking dick in broad daylight. I deserve to have respect, because what I am doing is my work’. Yeah. So, that's it. I don't try to be respectable, but I do try to give respect to people and honour their truth, the way they work, and how they work.

Akynos:

Well, I have been pushing back against respectability my whole life. I remember growing up and being seen as the wild one. When I did start to calm down in my mid teens, I remember people saying, ‘Oh, she's growing up to be a nice young lady’. That would piss me off. I really am kind of quiet and mild natured, but I deliberately act a lot wilder than I am because I want to disrupt people's idea of who they think is worthy of love, care, respect. I want people to see the different sides to how women particularly can be presented in the world and how dynamic they can be, regardless of also being wild.

Bambi:

I love it. This is something that I've struggled with for a lot of my life.

Bambi:

In my childhood I was in an environment that I felt was very stifling. It was constantly reinforced that my behaviour reflected on my family. I feel as I grew older, obviously I, yes, pushed those boundaries more. But yeah, it has been a struggle for a larger part of my life than I would have liked.

PJ Starr:

Thank you. I hadn't thought of the idea of my behaviour reflecting on my family because my mother was so absolutely dead set keen that I would not buy into anyone's idea of being respectable. In fact, my mother would give me lectures saying, ‘If you ever get married, I won't come, okay? I'm not doing that, my darling’. She would educate me every day on how to live my life differently. My mother was a low income single parent raising us in a remote area of Australia. She was a self-taught radical, not a mainstream feminist. She wasn't anything like Gloria Steinem. Unfortunately, as a grown woman I have been accused of being respectable. Some people misunderstand who I am because of the way I speak or present. That's not true.

At the end of the day I think we've all suffered from this in that our work is deemed not respectable, or we don't play respectability politics. We're not polite enough. Not nice enough. Just by existing, we're not nice enough. Just by speaking, we're not nice enough. So all of our work has been affected by the desire to erase who we are and what we do. I think that will frame the rest of our conversation because we will not be erased.

Theory and innovation

PJ Starr:

I'm heading to the next question: jump in, take this conversation any direction you want to go. Let's talk about the theory. What theoretical perspectives inform you and your work? Have you innovated from a theoretical perspective? (The Incredible & Starr, 2021).

Akynos:

My theoretical innovation confronts the melomentary script which is a combination of the idea of melodrama and documentary. The term melomentary was invented by Carol Vance (2012) to critique the format of primarily anti-sex trafficking films.

So I am the anti-victim. All my work is about dismantling victimhood, dismantling the ‘helpless whore’. Well, I like the ‘disgruntled whore’ as an idea. In essence, any idea that represents upholding patriarchy, then my work is completely against it. All my Black whore narratives and talking about how I've got the best pussy on five continents are true. They are actually, really true. It's really all about that, because the patriarchy doesn't want you to have sex. It wants you to be puritanical. It wants you to not be a whore. It wants you to appreciate struggle. It wants you to be barefoot, pregnant, and to be abused. I'm trying to document the full lives of sex workers. Not just about the work, but who sex workers are. As parents, as people, as artists, whoever the hell they are. So me even having the nerve to put it out there that whores are also all these other things and not just sex workers: It's very disruptive to the patriarchy. All my work and all my existing really is about this. So even if I'm not actually engaging in sex work, which I haven't for some time, I still refer to myself as a whore because I embody that all the time. I'm a whore because I refuse to even engage with the ex wives, as I call them, unless there is something really in it for me and wholesome for me.

PJ Starr:

In 2018 Akynos and I had a chance to perform and curate films for an exhibition at MoMA PS1 in Queens, New York (Sex Workers’ Festival of Resistance, 2018). Navigating this space, I started to think about the way that we present films and performance. The concept of the Whore Gaze came to me because I had heard about the theoretical concept of the male gaze developed by Laura Mulvey in the 1970s. Male film directors and male viewers/spectators are participants in the creation of visual forms that are oppressive to women (Mulvey, 1975). They create and consume images of women and their bodies, objectifying them and judging their behaviour in a patriarchal way. This results in women’s lives and choices being limited. As I explored the concept of the male gaze in film, I started thinking, ‘sex workers are always being looked at’. Should there not be a concept of the ‘whore gaze’ to have an overarching theoretical construct about the particular place and meaning of the ‘whore’ in visual representation? This would not be limited to being looked at but situate sex workers as active participants in creation and resistance. Whores *are* being looked at but whores are also looking. As much as women in the 1970s were upset about how women were represented, sex workers are upset about how sex workers are represented, dialoguing with that and creating change. As I read more about the male gaze as written by Laura Mulvey, I discovered that it is based on hatred of sex workers. Her objection to the male gaze was really that women are sexualised like burlesque dancers or strip teasers. I thought, ‘Well, that's what sex workers often want to do. That's who sex workers are. Sex workers are not ashamed of this. Sex workers are performing nude for men to look at them’. And so this concept of the whore gaze must be very different. Then I learned about bell hooks’ concept of the oppositional gaze (Hooks, 1992). bell hooks noted that Blackness is used as a foil by both white women and white men to construct the feminine. The terms of the debate developed by white people both relied on Black women and stifled their voice. In bell hooks theorising Black women are the spectators that are constantly critiquing, resisting and creating another world that is not concerned about any of that white debate. I thought, ‘Yeah, that's true for sex workers too’. Laura Mulvey erased sex workers. She implied that sex workers were not legitimised as women and were not present in feminist debates. So the idea of the oppositional gaze is fundamental to the whore gaze. My headline is the whore gaze confronts the coloniser at every point. The whore gaze is a site of resistance. The whore gaze is about the complete lives of sex workers however they want to do it. It can be applied to all forms of art.

Monica Jones:

I have a strong perspective on trans people narrating our own lives. I also think about how we are surviving and thriving for our economic success, and how these struggles are portrayed. I really do like Pose (2018–2021), a TV show based in New York that is made by trans and queer black people talking about Ballroom culture.¹ But once you delve into the show, it is all about passability and portraying trans women as if we don't know how to fight, right? And so many times that is the narrative that is out there that ultimately leads to more violence against trans women. It is a double edged sword where we are beginning to have visibility, but media is not showing trans women as strong, powerful women who can fight. We are mainly shown as victims of violence. I know that in its way the show tries to be truthful, but it is not our whole truth. Many trans women can fight and uplift themselves and we don't need to play as weaker. In one scene one of the characters is held up by some bellman in a hotel, I was like, ‘What the fuck is this?’ This person could have fought back. It gets you mad. On the other hand the show has opened up a lot of platforms for trans actors to play trans characters, thrive as those characters, and build a platform.

Pose is unique in the way that the show touches on sex work. In the series they say, ‘sex work is a way to thrive. It's not something that you look down at’. It talks about HIV in this way that it's more intimate to trans people. In one episode a trans woman goes on to become a dominatrix. It's all about empowering this individual in a way. We know that in everyday life trans women are thriving due to sex work. It has given us a platform to have the economic means to travel. It has given us the economic power to buy property. To own things that are ours. To pay for our rent and everything else. And so I think sex work in this way is the great equaliser, because it is non discriminatory place of employment. You can be a person with a disability and still thrive in sex work. You could be someone who's deemed obese and might be told you can’t be considered attractive. The reality is, you're working, you're making money, no matter your size. And so sex work is a non-discriminatory type of work because there's always someone out there who's going to pay you for sex, or pay to dominate them, to pee on them.

PJ Starr:

This is essential to underline. Some media makers decolonise some elements and change some of the tropes by including the strong dominatrix and addressing sex work, but then they still didn't free their minds that in daily life trans people are also strong. The victim narrative is seductive and insidious. You would not have made the TV series in that way, it would have been different.

Bambi:

I am following up on the question. What's big in my work is kind of deconstructing, and breaking down, and blowing up those traditional narratives and the preconceived notions that people have.

Creative work and organising

PJ Starr:

Thank you. Now a question to situate our work. How is your creative work part of seeking justice and rights? How have we interacted together for these reasons and had our work be in dialogue? I'm thinking the films we're making together and the 2020 Black Sex Worker Collective global event Who’s Allowed to Make Money? (2020)

Bambi and Monica, last year under extremely difficult circumstances we curated for the HIV2020 Film Festival. We had lost Lorena Borjas to COVID by the end of March 2020 (Gentili, 2020). We were all struggling through illness ourselves as a collective of curators and, as the months of curation went by on Zoom, we had to mourn the murder of Black people by the police (Symes, 2020). We incorporated all of these events, emotions and intersections into our curatorial practice. The reason I'm involved in curating is I want the best intersectional representation of what sex workers are being active about right now in film festivals. Bambi, I think that was the first opportunity we really had to work together.

Bambi:

It was such a wonderful experience. It had a great title, Not Your Rescue Project.² So much of my creative work is intertwined with seeking justice, and rights. People aren't going to put together a good project about sex work that is solid unless they have some actual knowledge or experience about sex work. So I'm glad we got to do it. I think it's really important.

Monica Jones:

It is unique. I was just thinking about different movies that people might come to the table with, right? The movie Promising Young Woman (2020) that just came out for example. For me it was a good film, but there is a critique relevant to how sex workers are portrayed. The filmmakers who created Promising Young Woman are trying to be liberal and have a feminist viewpoint but they fall short. I agree with people from my community who are saying, ‘Hey, this is not really a feminist viewpoint’. The film is still about the triumph of masculinity, not to give the end away. When people come to see this film they are drawn by the title, by the subject matter, and then they are fed other messages that erase women’s power. This is how being white and liberal operates. This is the same in terms of documentaries about our communities that draw viewers in because our communities are supposed to be featured, but they actually erase the resistance of sex workers and trans people, and set heteronormativity back in place. We need to dig deeper into representation so that films become way more, what's the right word for this? Authentic. And everyone's truth is heard. When I went to go see Moana (2016), we liked it, and PJ’s like, ‘Hey, it looks like they really did some work with Pacific Islanders and the historic way that they show characters and everything else’. And so it's always unique when we have the opportunity to give insight into movies, ensure that we are portrayed in a proper way, given our dignity about the way we work.

PJ Starr:

Thank you Monica. Akynos, did you want to say anything about why you choose to use art, film, creativity and performance in the Who’s Allowed to Make Money? global festival that you hosted last year?

Akynos:

People love art. People are super influenced by art and music. I'm determined that sex workers be at the forefront and be recognised as deep thinking artists contributing to the societal narrative. Even though it's not always positive, we're there being represented in music, in fashion, in movies, in writings where we're like muses. Even if we're muses to some negative storylines, we are the muses. We need to be recognised as that. We need to be recognised as innovators of so many things from language, to art, to music. It's that whore spirit in a lot of the sex workers that have existed that is where a lot of important art has originated. Not necessarily they had to be a whore, but they had to have that kind of whore spirit within them. For a lot of these famous artists to find models to pose nude, or pick up certain roles at film, or even in dance, it was the whore spirit that was the innovation of ballet and just somebody bold enough to show their legs. Once upon a time ballet was kind of risque. It's like, ‘What is this bitch doing on stage with some tights on, showing her legs so bare like that to the audience’.

So I'm determined for that narrative to be strong. Right now we have one of our good friends who is an academic who is being recognised as an innovator and an influencer in sex. That's fantastic. She's great, but she's not a sex worker. Really the work that I'm trying to do is to have people recognise just how amazing we sex workers are and how influential we are. Because that good friend of ours could not be getting the honour that she's about to receive if it wasn't for us being the subjects, being the muse, and being the influence. So when I'm doing all of this work I'm trying to put out all the art, and the activism, and whatnot. It's because I'm really, really fighting for us. For people to see what we do and who we are. It is a good time to be Black right now. It is a good time to be a whore right now. So I'm just trying to ride that train. It might not get me to Hollywood, but maybe it will get somebody there. It might allow some dark skinned Black sex worker to be recognised, and be held up, and be honoured.

Disability and challenging stigma

PJ Starr:

We are in a period of time where we are taking every issue to task, challenging the presumptions of the oppressors. In that spirit, let’s speak about another topic. So many of our community members have different ways of seeing and disabilities, how does our work engage with these issues? How do we as people also with disabilities bring that to our work? How do we include different ways of seeing that have been stigmatised?

Monica Jones:

Oh, thank you for that question. I really want to highlight that the term ‘disabilities'‘ is a broad category, right? I have a disability that you cannot see, I have a learning disability. And so jobs that are out there for me to attain are not economically secure for me as a Black trans woman with a disability. In these jobs, I might face more harassment. I might be able to get a job at McDonalds and my daily interactions with hundreds of people a day would lead to me facing transphobia. Or I have the option as a Black trans woman who's a sex worker to do sex work and make enough money to survive in this world. I started off as a 20 year old sex worker who failed my first year of college then going back when I'm 21, to finish my degree in social work. I am able to thrive in these places and attain my degree as a sex worker, right? People with disabilities have the right to engage in sex work. We have the right to get a job anywhere we want to and not be limited by our disability, or be told that like, ‘Oh, you can't do this job because you're disabled, or you have a disability’.

In terms of engaging with the media, writing and creation, I would like everyone to understand that there's a lot of programmes, computer software that really help people with learning disabilities to thrive. I want to shout out a couple like Kurzweil 3000, which is reading software. You just copy and paste on the screen and it reads your books to you. Or you can have it read your ebooks online. You can speak into Dragon software and it dictates what you're saying, and it puts it into a print format. And so those two resources go hand in hand with being able to navigate the written word, when you are a person with a disability like mine. But also sex work goes hand in hand with accessing these resources to address disability in my life, this is my story. I have the option to pay $1500 for Kurzweil so I could own it myself without going through a school. I have the platform to buy Dragon software and buy a computer that is compatible for that software because of sex work. I had the luxury to get an extra tutor to help me in math because I had the money from sex work. There's a way where we talk about disabilities, that also includes learning disabilities, that acknowledges that people may need sex work to thrive.

PJ Starr:

In the film that we're making, which is The Manifestation of Monica Jones, the most exciting film title ever, there are scenes where you're navigating through this world using precisely those forms of software that you've mentioned. It's an integral part of the film. The representation is of someone who has a disability on film, not using a victim narrative on any of the issues. It's just that you gotta do what you got to do to engage with organising that's primarily via email and raising social issues that are now on social media. You need these interfaces in order to do that. These are the tools of the trade of your activism that a person with disability needs. And as you have said, sex work is another tool of the trade that you have employed to have access to these interfaces.

Monica Jones:

Yeah, I think of it like this movie you told me about called Nights of Cabiria (1957) about the sex worker who ends up getting robbed at the end of the movie by her lover. He runs off with her money, but she picks herself up and walks back to town. Be like, I gotta do what I got to do to survive.

Representation of family

PJ Starr:

Monica we also wanted to discuss how you see your work addressing sex work and family. In particular, we would like to hear about trans representation, i.e. the representations of Black trans families and Black families supporting their kids?

Monica Jones:

A lot of films that are out there deal with a white family supporting their trans, their LGBT youth, their white child. When films address African Americans and people of colour, it's not that. It is about how people of colour say to their queer childern, ‘Oh, get out of my house’. But that is just a snippet of different communities, right? A lot of trans people that I know have families that love their trans daughter or love their sex worker family member. For me in my own personal experience, I look at this and I'm like, ‘My family really does love me’. Yet, it is not portrayed. So much of the current media is based on this myth that Black people are way more homophobic than other people, but not addressing the root causes of internalised transphobia, internalised homophobia, internalised colourism and like this place where Black people were not handed the guidebooks. African Americans were enslaved people who were taught to be homophobic and transphobic from their white masters, from the slave owners, because it was inherently in white people’s best interest to strike fear and to slay people.

So when you had enslaved people coming over from Africa, and they were obviously flamboyant, and queer, and trans, and did not meet to their white Christian God standards, the reprisals were sickening. That's where you saw the mutilation of genitalia. The horrific hangings of Black and Brown bodies across the American South and any where where slavery existed. And so when you take that on and you see that what is happening historically is that our Black and Brown communities may have said, ‘Don't be this because this will happen to you’. And so yes, there are some Black families who have issues accepting that, but we're not getting the whole picture of why this is ingrained. But there's also Black families who are loving their young trans daughters. Look at celebrities like Dwayne Wade and Gabrielle Union, who are loving their trans daughter, Zoe Wade (see, Srikanth, 2021). And so I really want Black families to be portrayed in this more culturally grounded way and not just like, ‘Oh, Black families are just over there and they're transphobic’. No, Black families love their trans kids. There should be movies talking about that. There was a really great movie with Mo'Nique called Blackbird (2014) where she's dealing with these conversations with her child who is a gay black male.

PJ Starr:

Hey, thanks Monica. We know you've got to run.

Akynos:

I do want to say as Monica is leaving that it really is a racist myth. I hate when people they talk like Black people are so much more anti-gay, or anti-trans, or anti-anything than say anybody else. It really gets under my skin because it really isn't true, you know? I can't really speak to the whole history of gayness, and different gender identities, and so on and so forth within Black culture because I haven't really looked it up. But with a little I do know we definitely had it. There's lots of history in it because different people, gender identities, so on and so forth have existed throughout everyone. So it's really just very anti-Black. Particularly, when I hear Black people repeat it like it's true and it's like, but so much of this anti-gayness did come from colonisation. So that frustrates me.

PJ Starr:

To dialogue on this let me share that when I first came to the US all the time white people would say to me that it's really a problem in Black communities to accept sex work as work. They would say that it's more conservative in Black communities. But scratch the surface and there are so many ways that Black families engaged in different forms of sex work down at the brothel, music coming out of brothels, family members being sex workers and supporting everybody else. It feels like when white people make these narratives, or the dominant cultural players make these narratives, it's a punch down, you know? Black people do this, we don't. And also it's a way of absolving themselves from their own beliefs, whether it be about sexuality or sex work. Just throwing that out there.

Akynos:

Yeah, that's what it is. Yeah. It's like just say you're very anti-trans, anti-gay, anti-anything that's not hetero. Just say that and stop being like, ‘Oh, Black people. Black people really have a problem with the gay community’. No, you do. Just say you do baby. Even in mainstream art white people aren't depicted as being anti-gay, and anti-trans, and anti everything as fuck, you know? They always want to try to pinch shit on us. But we're not the innovators of this. I think for me it's not that we're not, it's that we're not the only ones. When I hear language like that it kind of makes it sound like we're actually not human beings. we're not allowed to have the same kind of feelings, and experiences that everyone else does. Because it's not just us that's like this, you know? We're all human beings with similar ideas. We all come from all similar beings because we're here, we're existing at the same time. So it frustrates me to hear language like that. Because not only is it not true, you're also acting as if we're subhuman at the same time.

PJ Starr:

I think those tropes operate on all those levels, they're doing all that work.

Bambi:

That's why it's so important that we have a part in creating our own narratives, to combat all the problematic and racist and transphobic shit that's out there. If I may, I wanted to plug a movie I worked on a couple years ago called Transfinite (2019) by Neelu Bhuman. The focus was on the trans experience. There were seven stories by seven trans authors, and they really made an effort to hire everyone behind the scenes also as being trans or queer. It was hands down one of the best film sets I've ever worked on. It's a really great movie.

Art in these disastrous times

PJ Starr:

Here is another topic we said we would explore. Everyone here is likely exhausted. How are we thinking about our art and the multiple pandemics of COVID-19, police violence and environmental disasters? Hint, Hint, don't forget to speak about water. That was for you Akynos, because you've been talking a lot about access to water being a fundamental part of our organising as well.

Akynos:

What? What are you talking about? I've been saying that?

PJ Starr:

Let me put it towards this. The title of our article is The Whore Gaze While The World Burns. And so our world is burning now environmentally, because of the pandemic, and because of the epidemic, or pandemic, or whatever you want to call it of police violence. So how is that work engaging with all of this? We're gazing as the world burns. What are we thinking about right now? What are we doing? What can we do? Are we just lying down? That's what I do a lot of days everyone. So I'd love to hear your thoughts.

Akynos:

I want to lie down, but this dumb ass pandemic I don't know, I'm exhausted. It's been a year. I'm becoming antsy. I want to go sit on somebody's beach and have my vagina salute the sun. Now, we have this new Delta variant and the fear mongering that's happening with the new variant, vaccines not working in Brazil. Oh, that's what's happening in Brazil? Okay. The vaccine is not really holding up to the variants in Brazil. I think it's done. So I think I should get that Fendi bag.

PJ Starr:

Let me just jump in on this and make this so theoretical. You're saying pleasure is more important now than ever, as the world burns?

Akynos:

That's what I'm saying. I'm saying pleasure is more important. I'm saying eat the cake, work out as much as you want, get everything you've ever wanted to, now's the time to do it. Because I think we going down. I think this is it. This is my personal opinion, this it. Don't go down without the fight, you know? Bringing it to water, stack up on your water, okay? Because at the very least you could die trying to drink your last drop.

Bambi:

PJ when I saw that in the notes, I thought it was a reminder to drink water. It's like, ‘take care of ourselves’.

Akynos:

Right? I'm like, ‘Should I go get another bottle of sparkling water?’

Bambi:

It's true though. I'm tired, you know? I thought year one was going to be the hardest year and then it's year two and I'm even more tired and more over it. It just sucks. Yeah, I think it is about self care. Something that I've been doing more is trying to just root down more in community which has been made more difficult by the pandemic. But yeah, I don't think we're going to get through this without building and strengthening our communities. Because yeah, it's rough.

Caption: Still from Fosta Sesta Fone Calls (2018).

PJ Starr:

Well, one observation that I had about creating art in these times is we were already doing it. Everybody said to me at the beginning, ‘Do you all have a way of running your organisation remotely?’ And I said, ‘We already do that, because we were cut off from resources long ago’. For my whole lifetime there were no resources that I knew about. We were already prepared for this. It was quite funny, Bambi when we were working on curating the HIV2020 fest and I included my film Fosta Sesta Fone Calls (2018).³ It's an animated piece with me, Monica and Akynos speaking on the phone. I animated telephones over it and other pictures. I remember one of our co-curators saying, ‘Oh, wow. It looks like you made this after the beginning of COVID-19 shutdowns, but you made it before’. And I said, ‘Yeah. Yeah. I was already making online digital animated films, like they're telling us to make now in the shutdown and keeping our art going’. Because we don't usually have the resources to go and fly, and get together, and speak to other people with great microphones. We had to make do. So we were ready for these pandemics.

Bambi:

Yeah. True. I remember that. I also remember Akynos that I believe a video of yours closed out our festival called Subliminal Messages (2020), which I thought was so fun. It just makes me smile when I watch it and you're like getting across really important information.

Akynos:

That was PJ's invention actually. I recorded a video for an online drag show on Twitch.Tv (an interactive streaming service) during the pandemic last year and I was very tired. I had to do something. So I recorded this thing. When I sent it over to the host he was too afraid to show it because Twitch was giving them hell and threatening to shut down the channel because female quote unquote nipples are a danger to society. Any form of woman flesh or flesh that can be inappropriate for the poor children who've never seen flesh before that play games on Twitch. So we had to come up with something fast, I didn't know what to do. I'm like, ‘I am not recording anything else’. So I had to send it to PJ because the person that was supposed to edit it for me, gave me hell as well. So I sent it and she was the mastermind behind those subliminal messages. It was not my invention. I wish it was dammit.

Caption: Still from Subliminal Messages (2020)

PJ Starr:

But the thing is we couldn't do it apart. We have to do it together.

Akynos:

Together.

PJ Starr:

Together. Because yeah, there was a problem. The invasion of the nipples and other parts.

Akynos:

Nipples invasion.

PJ Starr:

I decided to make subliminal messages every time the viewers, such as the whore gazing spectator of a man out there or any interested person, were drawn to a body part they would get an important public service announcement in that spot. Plus it serves the purpose of blanking out those areas for the sensors. It's a win-win.

The economic stimulus: exceeding expectations

PJ:

So, the world is burning, and what is our economic stimulus plan for sex worker rights and the arts?

Bambi:

I think it's the same that it always has been which is giving sex workers money in community and passing the same $5 back and forth. When we come together we have a lot of tremendous buying power. Were you guys following Tamika's story about her house in DC?

Akynos:

Please share.

Bambi:

Oh, yeah, so Tamika Spellman an organiser with HIPS, a harm reduction organisation in the District of Columbia, her landlord was being horrible and trying to get her out of the house. I think the property manager put it on the market without telling her even though she and local trans housing organisers had mentioned that they were interested in purchasing the house should it ever be on the market. The landlord was doing a quick turnaround sale. So the NJNP Housing Collective only had a handful of days to raise as much money as they could to get this house (Talarico & Spellman, 2020). As we know sex workers have been left out of getting any stimulus money from the government during COVID, which is fucked up. We raised enough so that they were able to put an offer in. Sadly due to several technicalities I don't believe this happened. Still, the community raised almost $150,000 and that's impressive. Tamika's search for a house continues.

PJ Starr:

Wow. Genuine economic stimulus. One thing I've noticed in the last year under these conditions is the intensive organising by communities of sex workers even in the face of tremendous doubt. Sex workers saying, ‘government has failed, human rights advocacy is excluding us, economic plans are excluding us, so we will build our own road’. Recently someone said to me, ‘Sex worker led organisations can't have a webinar and expect an audience. You cannot get 100 people to show up’. I thought, ‘But everyone wants to look at sex worker rights and sex workers presenting their rights agenda’. Literally the most fascinating thing in the world right now. So I will be damned if we can't get 100 people on our webinar and I made it. Do you remember that Akynos?

Akynos:

I do.

PJ Starr:

I was so driven because they said, ‘No one's interested! And sex workers, you're not organized’. Actually, sex workers were organised all along. People say, ‘there's not enough mutual aid’. Oh, wait, sex workers were already doing that, and expanded these efforts to save communities, restaurants, families, and possibly entire local city councils. I do find it frustrating that sex workers, the most criminalised, stigmatised, hated people had to do this grassroots economic bail out, sharing for everybody. Oh, who's your friend now? It still didn't change people's points of view, but sex workers did it.

Akynos:

Yeah.

PJ Starr:

I think that people want to look at sex workers performing, sex workers speaking about sex work as much as ever. My economic stimulus plan is that exactly like Bambi said, there shall be payment for these performances, there shall be more money than you could imagine going into these creative works because they are the best. Quite often everything comes from that. It's sex workers, communities of colour, trans-people, or all of the above who are driving these creative innovations.

Akynos:

Yep. Very true.

Bambi:

It just makes me so mad that we have to continually advocate to get this money because we've all probably applied for grants and every grant is like, we want to help tell these really great stories. And then like, oh, but not about sex workers. It's just frustrating. It sucks.

PJ Starr:

Well, but Bambi I think it's very true in the sense of if you're trying to fundraise for a film about sex trafficking, there are so many funders there. There are so many people prepared to open their wallets for the melomentary form that Akynos is organising against. The melodrama, which whore will be saved? Which ones will be killed because they were not prepared to reform? Their lives were too risky, they were forced to cross borders, it's the whole drama. People are still very motivated by that format which is what makes Akynos's work so important.

Akynos:

I try to be important. My frustration is that I have a ground-breaking feature documentary proposal about Black sex workers, we have submitted it to so many funders and not a single drop of interest.

PJ Starr:

We will know that a profound change has come when your documentary is fully funded and made. This is the change we need to see. We are decentering trafficking narratives right now, because, oh dear, we ‘forgot’ to talk about trafficking and we are not going to do it now because we're almost out of time. On to the future, now that we've had this conversation have any new ideas come to formation for you? Where will you and your art be heading next?

Akynos:

To Carnegie Hall, television, mainstream TV.

PJ Starr:

Are you telling me you want to be a household name?

Akynos:

Very funny, I do.

Bambi:

Akynos, I thought you were already a household name? My household knows your name.

Akynos:

Careful what you wish for, you just might get it. I am a household name. Well, I guess that will make me an international household name. My art is headed to mainstream TV and fame. It's not going to just be my pussy that's famous, it is also going to be me, and my stories, and my art. I'm actually going to be alive to enjoy it. I'm not going to be dead. They're going to be praising me. I'm going to be alive. I'm going to get all the perks that come with being a famous artist like Issa Rae (a performer who has received widespread attention for her work on the YouTube web series Awkward Black Girl and the TV series Insecure, see Issa Rae, n.d). I'm going to meet Issa Rae and she's going to help me produce my long awaited television series. May be Black Girls Rock will honour its first sex worker and it'll be me goddamnit.

Bambi:

I have a future direction. It's forwards, onwards, and upwards. Yeah. I am continuing to work on my documentary projects. It's forever ongoing. Yeah, I have a series of creative shorts that I want to work on with a friend. So I'm really looking forward to doing those.

PJ Starr:

Good. I'm still working on my second feature film, which is The Manifestation of Monica Jones (forthcoming). I've used the last few months to make so many assemblies and put so much of it together. So it is imminent. I very much value having all of you as creative partners. I hope that we can hang out more. Perhaps this publication will be another step in our domination of the form as it were, codifying that we wield the whore gaze for the benefit of all. We will destroy the melomentary form. Trans narratives are and will be revolutionary. We'll see you all at the premiere of Bambi’s film, Under the Red Umbrella (forthcoming).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Ballroom culture creates safe spaces for Black and Latinx LGBTQ people to express gender diversity through competitive 'drag' ball events and through Houses that provide support and stability for House members who view each other as families (Hidalgo-Ciudad, 2022).

2 The festival name is based on the hashtag #notyourrescueproject. N’Jaila Rhee, one of the co-creators of the hashtag, has used it to critique media representations of sex workers of color saying, "I reject your attempts to use my body as a woman of color for your tragedy porn. #notyourrescueproject" (Smith, 2014).

3 FOSTA-SESTA (Fight Online Sex Trafficking and Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act) is a bipartisan bill passed in the United States by Congress in 2018. While the stated intent was to stop online sex trafficking, reports show that it complicated sex trafficking investigations, led to dangerous working conditions for sex workers and chilled free speech by creating a loophole to Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act (Grant, 2021).