I think what I learned is there’s so much sexual expression that I just didn’t consider, know about, or come into contact with previously. It was exciting as a researcher and a human to learn about the different kinks out there, the ways people engaged in them, and how sex workers can use those interactions for their own healing. Sex work can be really empowering for people in a million ways.
I imagine that research must have been difficult, since queer and trans sex workers are both marginalized and heavily policed. Where there any challenges in your research or gaps in what you could find?
Even though I spent five years doing this research, I would often find POC organizations in archives only to open their files and see one or two newspaper clippings. Juxtapose that with filmmaker and photographer Pat Rocco’s archive at ONE, which had 30 boxes. They’re just totally erased or not recognized at all. I’ve been thinking a lot about survival, and the people who are on the margins that are doing so much of the important work whose history disappears. Even in artwork, a lot of the art doesn’t represent trans women of color, particularly the older work.
One of the ways we’re including these people is through a wall of elders, a list of names that was organized by the advisory committee with a few recommendations from sex worker artists in the show. These 38 names will be represented by an artist Pluma Sumaq, who is a sex worker of color in California. She makes beautiful money altars that are a combination of her own religious tradition and sex worker identity. The altar will be fused with the wall of names, and there’ll also be an opportunity for visitors to contribute names of sex workers into a jar. At the end of the show, a group of queer sex workers will do a ceremonial burning for the names in tribute.
One significant theme that develops through the show is community building. Sex workers create community amongst themselves, as well as through sex work itself. I’m thinking specifically of artist, activist, and sex worker Annie Sprinkle’s Sprinkle Salon that she organized in her New York apartment.
Annie was a huge influence for me, and I learned so much about her community building in the Sprinkle Salon, which ran from 1980 to 1994. In that time, she created Club 90, which was the first support group for porn performers. She organized healing circles for people dealing with HIV/AIDS. She did Sluts and Goddesses workshops to teach women about their own sexuality. She had piercing and tattoo parties. She did porn films there, and PONY (Prostitutes of New York) had their first meetings at the Sprinkle Salon. And then, of course, there’s her artwork, photography, newsletters, etc. I said to her recently, “How did you have time to do all this?” She said, “I just did it. It was important, and what we did for fun. We’d get together, create together, and talk together.” Obviously, she had privilege as a white woman who came from a stable socioeconomic background with education, which gave her permission that I’m not sure she would have been granted had things been different. But still. The way the community held each other up is so inspiring.
