Queer Whore Collective: For International Women’s Day We Demand Erotic Equity
There are two groups who know perhaps better than anybody the dangers of the contentious and highly fragmented nature of feminist rhetoric around sex and desire: sex workers and lesbians. (When I say lesbian, I mean to include those who also identify as bisexual, as I do myself, and pansexual. In this article, I’m specifically talking about same-sex, not gendered, desire.) Universally, the histories of both sex workers and lesbians are hard to find. Tantalising glimpses of us exist within the historic record. What remains poignantly absent from not just mainstream portrayals of these lineages, but from LGBTQ+ narratives both in contemporary scholarship and activism, is an understanding not just of the essential relationship between these two demographics, but how desire itself forms the basis of a critical discourse the foundations of which are ethics, morality, individualism and community. For the many of us who identify as both sex workers and queer, it is clear that the relationship between being both an object of desire, and desiring the object, is at once a controversial, subversive and radical space in which to belong.
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Our communities at once seek to dismantle the perpetuation of the male gaze in our activism, whilst working as independents to satisfy it and, therefore, sustain ourselves. On the other hand, we seek to fulfil our sexual desires and create our own erotic landscapes in which we see ourselves emerge as figures grounded within our bodies, our sexualities and our power. Yet for many feminists, existing within communities expounding conflicting ideologies about what it means to be both politically and sexually free, identifying the conditions under which we can and should explore the realms of our innermost desires can become a journey riddled with feelings of shame, guilt and classic sapphic yearning.
When it comes to the embodiment and intellectualisation of sex, what lesbian’s heart doesn’t beat to the complex syncopation of Cardi B’s WAP and Audre Lorde’s Uses of the Erotic? How would the brilliant, sensual and radical Lorde and her rejection of the “plasticized sensation” of contemporary eroticism have responded to the eye-popping, mouth watering Cardi and Megan Thee Stallion’s 2021 Grammy Performance of WAP? It’s a conundrum that lives, however secretly, rent free in many of our minds.
As many sex workers will tell you, the advocacy that is most meaningful to us is not theoretical discourse around morality or acceptability of the work based on our contributions to society. Typically, these discussions can lead into a dangerous area that ultimately further stigmatises and puts us even further into harm's way. We are all acutely aware that we spend our working lives fulfilling the desires of, for the most part, men.
“It means celebrating both Lorde and Cardi, in all their paradoxical expressions of female, queer erotic desire. And while it’s not always possible to both have your cake and eat it, when it comes to sexual pleasure, it’s important to know you’re getting your fair share of the sexy pie.”
Instead of attempting to deny our legitimacy and politicise against us because of this, a more proactive and radical approach to balancing the dominant forces of patriarchal desire is to spend more energy in creating spaces that resist the homogeneity, ubiquity and dominance of the male gaze, and instead centre the desires of sex workers and lesbians who have had to fight tooth and nail for visibility and acceptance through millennia of erasure and stigmatisation of sex work, lesbian and queer sexualities. Advocating for erotic equity means creating space for the expression of our desires, and for being desired. It means celebrating both Lorde and Cardi, in all their paradoxical expressions of female, queer erotic desire. And while it’s not always possible to both have your cake and eat it, when it comes to sexual pleasure, it’s important to know you’re getting your fair share of the sexy pie.
Words: Black Venus | Photos: Imogen Cleverley
Black Venus is a professional Afro-disiac with over ten years experience in the industry. Martial artist, writer, performer and facilitator, her work is an exploration of pleasure, power and agency. She is founder of Sex and Rage, a sex worker and activist led organisation resisting stigma and shame through