This blog post is part of “All the World,” a sixth promotion originally inspired by the three I did in 2024 with Harmony Corrupted and Romantic Rose: “Brace for Impact,” “Searching for Secrets” and “Deal with the Devil” (2024), as well as “Make It Real” for Volume One and “The Total Codex” for Volume Zero. Those promotions sought to promote and provide their respective volume’s individual pieces for easy public viewing in single-post form; re: for the Poetry Module, Undead Module and Demon Module, followed by my PhD and manifesto. “All the World,” by comparison, caps off my book series with a promotion for Volume Three; re: my Praxis Volume. As usual, this promotion was written, illustrated and invigilated by me as part of my larger Sex Positivity (2023) book series.
Click here to see “All the World’s” Table of Contents and Full Disclaimer.
Permissions: Any publicly available images are exhibited for purposes of education, transformation and critique, thus fall under Fair Use; private nude material and collabs with models are specifically shared with permission from the original model(s). For more details about artist permissions, refer to the book disclaimer (linked above).
Concerning Buggy Images: Sometimes the images on my site don’t always load and you get a little white-and-green placeholder symbol, instead. Sometimes I use a plugin for loading multiple images in one spot, called Envira Gallery, and not all of the images will load (resulting in blank white squares you can still right-click on). I‘ve optimized most of the images on my site, so I think it’s a server issue? Not sure. You should still be able to access the unloaded image by clicking on the placeholder/right-clicking on the white square (sometimes you have to delete the “?ssl=1” bit at the end of the url). Barring that, completed volumes will always contain all of the images, whose PDFs you can always download on my 1-page promo.
Chapter One: Sex Positivity. “The Seeds of Rebellion”—Sex Positivity and the Tools of the Trade
“It is greater than treasure. We have thousands of such water caches. Only a few of us know them all.”
—Stilgar, Dune (1965)
Picking up where “Foreplay: Introduction, Before the Plunge, and Thanking Harmony (again)” left off…
This chapter explores most of the tools of proletarian praxis, including the linguistic difficulties in materializing sex-positivity under Capitalism when using them—i.e., illustrating empathy through mutual consent as something to imagine when looking at sexualized media as often-imperfect and needing to be reimagined through Gothic Communism and its main Gothic theories. Performed in opposition with canonical variants, they can critique Capitalism in revolutionary ways. Let them be your hammer and sickle.
(model and artist: Harmony Corrupted and Persephone van der Waard)
- “Illustrating Mutual Consent: Empathy” (included in this post): Introduces the first of the creative successes of proletarian praxis, and considers how empathy factors into illustrating mutual consent on all registers; i.e., through popular media of different kinds discussing empathy as something to illustrate ourselves; e.g., the “draw me like your French girls” scene from Titanic (1996) and the art lecture scene from Sense8 (2011).
- “Half-Real: Recognizing And Performing Empathy” (feat. Meowing from Hell and Sean Jones): A follow-up to “Illustrating Mutual Consent” that focuses on empathy as something to recognize, mid-illustration; i.e., as “half-real,” vis-à-vis Jesper Juul’s idea of “the realm between fiction and the rules” as further taken, by me, between fiction and non-fiction, on and offstage; e.g., between sex workers like myself and Meowing from Hell, but also actress Sean Jones and her own abuse on and off the Blade Runner (1982) set.
- “Informed (Ironic) Consumption and De Facto Educators Using Parody and Parallel Space“: Explores informed consumption according to informed/mutual consent as enacted by sex workers; i.e., as de facto (extracurricular) sex educators educating through iconoclastic art, but especially parody and parallel space; e.g., Monty Python, H.R. Giger and New Order.
- “Reversing Abjection: Describing Sexuality vs Prescribing Sexual Modesty” (feat. Alien): Discusses reversing abjection vs prescribing sexual modesty in Gothic stories; i.e., on the same half-real stages; e.g., Alien and its own 1970s rape fantasies borrowed from older times and transported into newer retro-future ones.
- “‘Get Nervous!’; or, an Early Stab at Cryptonymy: The Fur(r)tive Rebellion of Body Hair and the “Toxic” Shock of Critical “Trash,” Zombie Capitalism, and “Monster Mash” Rock Operas” (feat. Mercedes the Muse): Our holistic examination of the above ideas; i.e., combining them cryptonymically through body hair and whistleblower counterculture/schlock media (re: Mercedes) to conceptualize development: as an active, playful means of critical engagement/thought and poetic expression conducive to developing Gothic Communism.
(artist: Harmony Corrupted)
Illustrating Mutual Consent: Empathy
Je est un autre (source).
—Arthur Rimbaud, excerpt from an 1871 letter regarding his “derangement of all the senses”
(artist: Annienudesart)
Sex work is often hauntological, generally of past things that could become the future as already written—ghosts of a sort, operating in opposition through what is constructed and abjected, mise-en-abyme. However, whenever the past is shown, it is reimagined to some extent—not just for the viewer of a previous creation, but in the mind’s eye of artists making new artwork as well. This includes sex, which is often hauntologized (often through Gothic romances, space wars, Grindhouse-style revivals/Rob Zombie’s trashy Camp remakes, underwater dystopias—seriously, take your pick) in ways that make consent difficult to illustrate, thus imagine. Despite all the fractals, much of canon is sex-coercive, making their hauntology carceral, their cryptonymy complicit, their chronotopes capitalist, their laborers abject, their mode of expression sex-coercive. Empathy—as something to illustrate through the Gothic imagination—can challenge sex coercion by opposing its abject xenophobia and general bigotries with consent through context; e.g., Gothic xenophilia and reverse-abjection.
While this book’s focus are the more overtly hauntological/monstrous variants, even so-called “historical fiction” creates a gendered hierarchy inside of itself, one reinvents the past and sells its updated sexist “dress code” to audiences based on older versions of the past already tied to Capitalism: For a more literal example, consider Pam Am (2011) and its reimagined, conspicuously chic commentary on women’s sexist treatment and dress code under the then-fledgling company (the centrist “victory” of reliably snarky Christina Ricci’s backtalk being presented as acceptable rebellion under Patriarchal Capitalism, frozen within a controlled, corporate narrative). Under such stories, consent becomes mythical, the stuff of fairytales conveyed by billionaire, “Hollywood” Marxism like James Cameron’s Titanic (1997). Tremendous wealth becomes essentialized as the sole arbiter of fairly basic truths: women (for starters) have basic human rights.
If only audiences knew, you don’t need a billionaire to draw a woman consensually! In fact, artists from all walks depict sex in hauntological ways. Whether through drawings, photography or performance art, showing sex is easy. Mutual consent is far harder to illustrate in general. For one, those in power police its use, discouraging mutual consent (which we’ll explore later in the book). In terms of raw execution, mutual consent requires empathy towards context, which is easily divorced from art (especially digital copies) regardless of intent. The rest of this subsection will explore illustrating mutual consent through active empathy as something to imagine—literally to reify by material means that encourage future emancipatory endeavors when examined and interrogated.
For various reasons, artists and invigilators can’t always be interrogated. Maybe they’re dead; maybe they’re bad-faith or allergic to interviews. Whatever the case, the context of their disseminated media must be pursued without their help more often than not. This book pursues context through dialectical materialism, viewing context as tied to historio-material conditions; in particular, context as something to actively investigate through art as a prescriptive or descriptive tool, which operates regarding sexuality and gender through two ongoing relationships:
- the relationship between sex workers and the bourgeoisie who own them (and their art) through the means of production; but also the bourgeoisie advertisement of canon while concealing its illusory role-as-Superstructure: the illusion of freedom and ethical treatment for workers
- the relationship between art and the viewer
First, let’s examine how canon prescribes sexuality within Capitalism, as explored through the anomalous sex-positivity of Sense8 (2015):
In season two of Sense8, homophobia in the workplace—specifically for Mexico’s producers of heteronormative action cinema—leads to Lito (the gay man playing a closeted, Mexican version of Antonio Banderas’ Spanish heteronormative export: the straight action hero) being evicted. Clearly the result of sexism-as-a-business, its toxic mentalities are exposed most nakedly in the classroom: Lito’s lover is a queer art professor named Hernando. When a jealous gangster outs them as gay by publicizing revenge porn between Lito and Hernando, Hernando chooses to reclaim this hateful act by seeing the compromising image as liberating. “Art is love made public,” he explains, referring specifically to mutually consensual love as something to empathize with through material creations—not abstract ideas nor strictly oral arguments, but technological/written, xenophilic arguments that enable art to be invigilated and observed long after the artist is dead. More than this, he deliberately views it as iconoclastic, calling his approach “political.”
The politics lie in how iconoclastic art returns descriptive sexuality to the fore; Hernando’s sexuality is descriptive and empathetic, but also reviled by canonical defenders: a homophobic student who calls the photograph “shit-packer porn.” Clearly aimed at Hernando, the student’s childish, xenophobic barb demonstrates canonical art and its sexist attitudes as apathetic. They’re also hostile, generally depicting sexuality—but especially descriptive sexuality and its appreciation—as wholly segregated from daily existence. Hernando calmly points this out, highlighting the student’s consciously hateful interpretation, then waiting for him to respond (a sex-positive variation of the police interrogation method: “stop and stare”); the more open-minded students laugh at the bigot, who bows his head in shame. He has self-reported, outted/demasked, thus unable to keep fitting in with his peers.
The lesson, here, is communal: The gay teacher—but also the homophobic dunce, classmates, and revenge porn—collectively demonstrate tolerance or discrimination as active, informed choices within an ongoing socio-material exchange. Despite heteronormative bias weighing dialectically on the choices that are made, sex-positive choices can still occur if xenophilic empathy is present. Most of all, Sense8 demonstrates how empathy requires teamwork and cooperation, which override or discourage individual competition and self-promotion at the expense of others. Hernando’s message isn’t merely that canonical sexuality is prescriptive, a means of enforcing heteronormative control; he’s demonstrating artistic subjectivity’s role of upholding or rejecting canonical norms. Artists who depict sexuality and gender—and those who (re)view their artwork—are thereby given a choice: to describe or prescribe sex, with or without empathy as something to cultivate. Many stigmas surround the practice in either case, including the idea that sexualized artwork is inherently non-consensual. It’s not, but the abjection of descriptive sex still needs to be challenged for mutual consent—and empathy—to exist.
Mutual consent determines if artwork is sex-coercive or sex-positive. While that might sound obvious, less obvious is what actually amounts to mutual consent in visual terms—especially in sex-positive artwork whose mutual consent won’t be visually obvious short of spelling things out. In other words, mutual consent isn’t self-explanatory. As Sense8 shows that, whether in a gallery or in the workplace where art is often produced, mutual consent still needs to be inferred. Any inference occurs through empathy towards or from the sexual content on display as inherently ambiguous. This ambiguity stems from several factors—bodies being natally complex (which we’ll explore more in Chapter Three); but also sex being simultaneously taboo and encouraged by the elite in hauntological forms (which we’ll examine at the end of the chapter, and in Chapter Two). While discussions of sex are tightly controlled, they’re financially incentivized to unfold in highly conventional ways. The goal of these conventions is to sell sex without spelling those conventions out (at least not too much; Brassed Off, 1996). When they are spelled out, it’s generally treated as a joke, especially when the conventions themselves become absurd:
(source: Do Chokkyuu Kareshi x Kanojo, 2017)
The joke, in the above manga, isn’t simply to break the Fourth Wall. Nor is it two people, simultaneously aware of the conventions of the larger mode, pursuing sex purely for themselves. Rather, it’s how they’re doing it: in a healthy way without manufactured drama. This stems from mutual consent, which describes sexuality through all people: as deserving of empathy regardless of how they identify, perform or orient. By comparison, canon treats descriptive sexuality as taboo, prohibiting empathy at a social-sexual level by manufacturing consent through heteronormative arrangements that compel coercive sex. These bylaws operate through audiences steadily conditioned to view canonical norms—however unhealthy and unethical—as ordinary.
By presenting the sacred as secular, neoliberal canon conceals the extent to which it codes its representees. More than showing people as they actually exist, though, canon advertises hauntological gender roles that people tend to perform under Capitalism at any imagined point, be that the past, present or future; or someone in between—work. Corporations use hauntological canon to visually assign human property to specific tasks tied to a sacred past, instilling workers with sexist attitudes that keep them productive, divided and unimaginative. While not limited to sex work, its particular division of labor—the siphoning of men and women into specific, unequal roles (clients and workers)—translates into any working relationship. The system tends to reward men with higher-paying authority positions, while women are chosen for lower-paying secretarial roles (Unlearning Economics’ “Jordan Peterson Doesn’t Understand Gender Discrimination,” 2022; timestamp: 17:17). Meanwhile, workplace sexism devalues mutual consent over profit within employment relations more broadly.
However, just as canon cryptically conceals the parasitic nature of its own code, it lionizes top performers wherever they find themselves. This includes carceral-hauntological forms, but also in recreational/social venues, wherein workplace values—specifically neoliberal market attitudes previously codified through canonical art—easily affect the social-sexual exchanges that occur (treated as literal and figurative “rewards” for men, a concept known in horror and war pastiche [especially movies and videogames] as “getting the girl”—whose workplace sexism we’ll explore in videogames and war pastiche in Chapter Four). This dehumanizes workers by over-quantifying their social and sexual lives, treating each social-sexual encounter as raw social currency through the neoliberal tenant of infinite growth (Sisyphus 55’s “Journey Into The MANOSPHERE,” 2022; timestamp: 17:11). Whether they’re on or off the clock, productive workers serve bourgeois interests by cultivating a dutiful worker mindset, a constant mode of appeasement.
Unfortunately worker productivity doesn’t translate to worker happiness; it merely displays a willingness to maximize productivity through a trickle-down mentality inside an unequal system. This leads to disgruntled workers who are never, ever satisfied, who grow increasingly apathetic during the endless climb to the top: to become the ultimate man, the Man (we’ll explore this phenomenon in Chapter Three, when we examine the strange phenomena of weird canonical nerds and “Man Box” culture with Caleb Hart).
Note: According to my research (gender studies, sex work, an-Com Marxism and speedrunning videogames), such things often overlap. For a good real-life example of this—i.e., of someone who is both a gamer and bigot who “game-ifies” social exchanges to mask his own predatory actions/enrich himself and lie to others during a complicit cryptonymy approach—consider Karl Jobst; re: as mentioned during my “Those Who Walk Away from Speedrunning” 2025 retrospective and subsequent Metroidvania corpus: a sex pest, but specifically a pickup artist with Neo-Nazi ties that he’s tried to disguise behind his rising YouTube channel, which he founded in bad-faith (re: DARVO and obscurantism). See “On Karl Jobst: My Final Say; or, Full Timeline Breakdown + His Bigoted Past” for the entirety of my coverage on Karl; i.e., from his less-than-humble beginnings to his first appearance in my book series (re: “Modularity and Class“) to his Scooby-Doo-style unmasking after Billy Mitchell sued him for defamation and won. —Perse, 4/24/2025
Pickup artists, for example, emulate an unrealistic overachiever mentality within the heterosexual dating scene. Presenting competition as the key to happiness, what they’re actually doing is treating any social setting like a capitalist game: the pursuit of infinite growth through efficient profit. Pickup artists assimilate these neoliberal creeds by relating to production in lateral terms; i.e., gaming the system through manufactured competition and scarcity. Both devalue cooperation, pro-worker structures and welfare mentalities (Kay and Skittles’ “Thatcherism: What We Get Wrong About Neoliberalism,” 2022; timestamp: 11:08) by seemingly help pickup artists “stack the odds” against women. In truth, they’re con artists selling bad education to other men, robbing those persons of their own labor and money and decreasing their own odds for success (which resorts to poisonous double standards; e.g., spiking a drink with date-rape drugs to quote their quotas).
Whether in real life or in famous, neoliberal canon that ties the future to a dated notion of the past (e.g., Sheep In The Box’s “The Concerning Politics Of Harry Potter,” 2020), love-as-labor manifests through a smaller game (chercher la femme) inside a bigger one (Capitalism); i.e., heteronormativity encouraging men to actively pursue women by treating them as passive sex objects. It becomes a question of cheating luck inside an unfair system. The system is unfair but men do not critique it; they take out their frustrations against their prey (cis-het women, but also queer people; e.g., femboys or intersex persons). To hunt, acquire and discard, there’s nothing being made when players score—no positive, lasting relationships or signifiers thereof—and yet they run their sex lives like a business: to advertise and sell themselves as the coveted “top performer” (usually an emulation of someone higher on the pecking order, maybe a CEO or wealthy shareholder).
Advertisements like these dehumanize everyone, making the pursuit, sighting and achievement of fabled success entirely hollow, but also something to sell in carceral-hauntological ways: to the next generation of workers, affecting what they imagine in socio-material terms—i.e., turning the fruits of their labor into nostalgic art as something to buy or create, but also teach through the metaphor of playing games. To be “the best,” then, is an illusion that forces a privileged existence—e.g., the top dog, the MVP, the best, bar none—as being at the top of “their” game. Doing so is framed as being traditionally masculine, dominant, unstoppable; i.e., the world is their oyster but only theirs. Its power cannot be shared with anyone else. Such arrangements are deceptive by entertaining an idea of fair play and power exchange that is ultimately false, versus one that allows for the appearances of “abuse” or “rape” inside a ludo-Gothic BDSM ritual where no harm is actually present; i.e., the aesthetic of peril, unequal power and death, but not the unironic function of these things that is normally present inside heteronormative systems. Despite the appearance of inequality and trauma, then, power is actually shared through paradox during sex-positive play to achieve praxial catharsis by interrogating trauma through what we enjoy as a means of good de facto (extracurricular) education:
(exhibit 62a1: Model and artist, top left: Mikki Storm and Persephone van der Waard. Despite the appearance of rape and gagging “bondage with tentacles,” the asphyxia on display is an ironic rape fantasy that doesn’t advocate for genuine harm. For one, it’s how Mikki wanted to be depicted as during our negotiation, saying that “beasty” demons and tentacles are their kink. Furthermore, the shoving of tentacles down one’s throat is no different in practice than a cock down the same pipe, or hands clasped “tightly” around one’s throat (the appearance of tightness is for the viewer while a gentle-enough grip in reality is important for the recipient). Even portrayals of “actual” bodily harm could be allowed, so long as their portrayal puts “harm” in quotes; i.e., is symbolic and cathartic as a kind of nightmare expression of trauma that helps the subject process their own abuse. As always, the context behind the drawing’s negotiation and expression of power exchange remains an import part of the entire exhibit. The water, smoke, and volcano exemplify the same chaotic, seemingly Numinous power being embodied by the monster “ravishing” Mikki, and Mikki consents to a ritual that cannot harm her by virtue of these things serving her complex needs; they can excite her and help her heal from trauma through a BDSM arrangement that addresses trauma as something to live with, thus interrogate through the performance of power in paradoxical ways: calculated risk. The Numinous, in this sense, becomes palliative despite its psychosexual nature.)
For example, trust is a tenuous proposition in BDSM scenarios where the dom has total power. “Total,” in this situation, means a complete inability to share power or negotiate behind the ritualized theatrics before, during or after. Doing so is unwise, as makes mutual consent a total illusion for the submissive should they completely surrender their power to the other person in totality. In realms of actual mutual consent, the dom is beholden to the sub as someone who trusts them, granting the sub a considerable degree of power within a negotiated game. This makes the domination ritual one of service unto the sub, who has all the power provided trust is upheld and their boundaries respected. Their word goes, meaning the dom cannot harm them if the game is played according to their agreement. But Capitalism doesn’t engender agreements; it gives people a false choice through a disguised ultimatum: play or die. It’s a Morton’s Fork.
For example, the owners of Squid Game call their game “fair” in bad faith. In doing so, they force people to play through manufactured material conditions that provide reliable “sport” for an elite class bored stiff with their own advantage: the poor as killing themselves, mid-match, but also the rule keepers whose enforce the rules with bullets. Despite having a gun, slightly better food and a mask, their function is no less-oppressed than the “actual” players because the game is a prison that gives both a jumpsuit and rules to play with faithfully less failure spell an early death. Both are fucked over for the elite’s benefit, pitted against each other by them.
The above examples should hopefully demonstrate that trust is always a casualty under total power as part of a coercive game design practice; i.e., games that hide the arrangement throughout. Popularized games under Capitalism do just that, leaving no room to negotiate should players change their mind and abuse the power given to them. Indeed, Capitalism’s manufacture trifecta incentivizes players to use everything in their power to “win”; i.e., to abuse other players inside abusive games that rig power exchange to favor bad play tactics, which teach unhealthy relationship practices and power dynamics by virtue of “winners” applying them to their social-sex lives (whose abuse we will unpack more in Chapter Three, when we examine weird canonical nerds, Man Box culture, and Caleb Hart).
Such a grand façade ultimately works to compel the appearance of being in control through a singular champion whose rigged metaplay is downplayed; i.e., they did this “all on their own.” They didn’t; the system and its abusive rules make it seem as though they had. Through a “mastery” that is really them playing by the rules to get what they want, their “domination” over the game is really a ludic relation that forces them to compete with others and dominate them: to be in control of other players while still being a slave to the system and those who run/own it. Their success leads to a grander deception—that this is how things are supposed to be; i.e., there can only be one winner and that said person must force their way to success by defeating everyone else in highly punitive, unequal ways disguised by the gameplay as “fair.” The champions relationship with the game becomes something to lionize, which negates the ability of mutual consent within realms of play that would otherwise supply the other parties a say in what happens. Instead, it’s simply winner-take-all, but the “win” is forced.
By comparison, iconoclastic art appreciatively represents marginalized people excluded from canonical norms by implying mutual consent as a positive, egalitarian freedom. This is empathetic, insofar as it articulates performative and representative options to people who are typically oppressed in the workplace, therefore the world, by the so-called “best” as a posse of heteronormative enforcers. This oppression actually includes all workers (even those with relative privilege, like cis-het white men). The end goal isn’t to be the biggest philanthropist, employee-of-the-month, or player with the most “game”; it’s to enact positive change: to let workers choose how to (re)present themselves, bucking systemic labor as sacrosanct (re: Weber’s notion of the Protestant work ethic). This happens by rejecting harmful mentalities in ludic metaphors, but also broader poetic expressions with actual ludic components; i.e., redesigning the game and power exchange as something to literally play with. Doing so increases the odds for better relationships by raising class consciousness as something that intersects with racial, gendered, and religious struggles. Combined, these can change material conditions on a societal level, increasing the odds for better treatment for various marginalized groups.
Worker solidarity is vital, the process starting by teaching privileged allies how to empathize with those without privilege; i.e., how to play nice with handicapped players. Regarding sex work in particular, mutual consent grants the subjects on display a choice they can make if they want to, thus empathize with as fully-autonomous beings with actual human rights: “I choose to be drawn or photographed as I decide, to perform as I want, to exist for others to see as proof of my agency. As I play and make my own rules and boundaries, I am not merely something to exploit.” By using of previous iterations of the world-as-fantasy or -science-fiction, emancipatory hauntology helps bring public empathy about, improving sex worker conditions based on how they’re treated: as members of respected, long-standing franchises that can change in sex-positive directions through humanizing artwork. Again, though, these creative successes are “doubles” (a Gothic and general trope, as explored in Chapter Two) of pre-existing forms. They won’t always be viewed in a friendly way—especially if they embody sexuality in a provocative, indecent manner; i.e., the “woman in black,” the witch, the shapeshifter, etc. Canon’s reactionary proponents will actively attack anything that threatens the status quo (a form of white fragility/playing dirty we’ll examine more in Chapter Three, when we examine weird canonical nerds).
(artist: Disharmonica)
Sex-positive artwork improves sex worker conditions by denoting mutual consent through empathy as something to cultivate—not just through shifting material conditions, but copies that conflict with one another in ambiguous ways (we’ll examine this idea when we discuss appreciative irony for Gothic ambivalence in Chapter Three). Even when the workers themselves aren’t the authors (are under someone else’s employment), mutual consent should be conveyed through a shared sense of collaboration and mutual respect by all parties involved. A sex-positive artist drawing a sex worker, for example, is respectful[1] on both sides. Everyone approves, fostering empathy for the sex worker as someone whose basic human rights are advertised through the entire exchange and its visible result. Sexism, by contrast, is coercive; it deprives sex workers of their rights, manufacturing consent and enforcing apathetic heteronormativity through prescriptive, exclusive canon that dehumanizes/objectifies sex work.
My book focuses on sex work because certain groups are systemically coerced into positions of material disadvantage that force them into unsafe, unfulfilling sex work—in particular, women or people forced to perform as women. Whether cis, gender-non-conforming or asexual, Capitalism exploits AFABs for their sexual labor, including their constant objectification in canonical media of any temporal inclination. This occurs doubly so for women of color, whose apathy is compounded by racial stereotypes and fetishization; and triply so for trans/enby people of color who often become stigmatized for doing sex work just to survive; and since systemic abuse is intergenerational, many sex workers start young and work into old age (LADBible TV’s “Old Sex Worker Meets Young Sex Worker,” 2021). While sex work is a valuable way for some people who normally can’t work to make money (the immunocompromised or physically disabled, but also people publicly denied work opportunities), it’s also a kind of work that, while always in demand, is stigmatized as worthless by SWERFs (outside of the canonical fetish personas used to objectify out-groups; e.g., the xenomorph or Slan the succubus [re: exhibit 51b1, “Dissecting Radcliffe“] during xenophobic narratives). Such Nerve tweets an applicable sentiment in that respect: “If you want a living wage, get a better job” is a fascinating way to spin, “I acknowledge that your current job needs to be done, but I think whomever [sic] does that job deserves to be in poverty” (source tweet, 2019). The labor of these force-feminized workers within the colonial binary is both precious and cheap, the Whore to raise up the state’s next generation of men, then sacrifice in the interests of patrilineal descent.
(exhibit 62a2: Source, top: Fired Up Stilettos; bottom: Kate D’Adamo’s “Decriminalization by Any Other Name: Sex Worker Rights in Federal Advocacy” [2020].
“Seize the means of seduction.” As property that advertises itself and as something that is profane in the eyes of the public, the sex worker who fights for their rights is both a slave, a demon, a mother and a billboard come to life and clamoring for change. Like radical graffiti, the body-as-profession becomes a picket sign of a street punk aesthetic, one out of necessity that is reclaimed from sell-out variants [exhibit 100c6] to humanize rebellion and rights through signature, often campy ways [e.g., camp, Rocky Horror pastiche; re: exhibit 10a, “Prey as Liberators“]. Their collective aim is to catch the eye and stand out in a very theatrical sense; but also be a thorn in the side/eyesore to the polite whitewashed streets of the moderate activist’s world to expose their own bigoted treatment of protestors as “rabble.”
This sentiment, during anti-labor synthesis, is expected to make SWERFs, general prudes and so-called “real activists” coldly shrug their shoulders at abusive practices outside of the perceived, imaginary ones typically touted within the public imagination as “real sexism” [rape]. Unlike rape and physical/emotional abuse, the denying of funds isn’t just the 1970s pimp brutalizing his workers, but the corporation incentivizing the same process by discouraging cash tips through a process dubiously called “funny money,” which for years, numerous strip clubs have offered a special form of payment exclusive to the industry thereof:
Despite its colloquial name, funny money is more than just fake money like the kind you play with in Monopoly. Instead, it refers to a specific type of currency exchange. For example, a customer can have a club charge $500 to their credit card. In exchange, they get $500 worth of in-house dollars, often named something corny relating to the club itself — think “Cheetah Bucks” or “Sapphire Dollars.” That customer then has the freedom to more easily distribute that money as they wish, all without having to continuously charge their credit card. Funny money can come in a variety of denominations, too: ones for throwing, 20s for tipping, 100s for buying dances. At the end of the evening, the workers who’ve received funny money can exchange it back to real cash.
[…] as some dancers have previously reported, funny money can easily allow for some unfair labor practices to flourish. “If a customer pays for a service like a VIP room via credit card, us dancers get our cut through ‘Dance Dollars,'” says Poppy, a dancer in Illinois. “For example, a 30-minute room is $350 cash, and our cut [as dancers] is $250 cash. If you pay with a credit card it’s $414, because the club taxes extra for cards, but we still get $250 in Dance Dollars,” she says. The club then takes an additional 15 percent off of that $250 when it comes time for Poppy to get paid out, leaving her with $212. In other words, when someone pays for Poppy’s time in her club’s dance dollars, she makes less than she would if they were to pay cash, despite actually costing the customer more out-of-pocket [source: Magalene Taylor’s “Strip Club Funny Money Is No Laughing Matter,” 2022].
In short, the relationship between the two defends capital, “accommodating” the customer by allowing corporations to tack-on hidden fees and extort sex workers in the same breath—all with the empty grace and tacky manipulation of a mobile phone game.)
Forced into dangerous, stigmatized jobs, the upholding of sex worker rights—including defending their bodies and their lives—falls entirely on the workers themselves. They must actively assemble and protest the abuses committed against them. Already targets, those actively asking for their rights will motivate the elite to silence them out of self-interest. No one wants to be martyred, but those asking for equal treatment must do so knowing they’ll be viewed as material threats to the current power structure. To preserve their hold within this arrangement, the elite vilify social-sexual activism by automatically condemning it as violent. In doing so, they trap activists into a corner. If they stay silent, the abuse will continue; if they speak up but fall silent again, the abuse will worsen (and they will be gagged); if they grow louder, they will be attacked and undermined by elite-condoned competitors: reactionaries and moderates (we’ll explore these groups more throughout the book, but especially in Chapter Four).
Despite its many dangers, activism remains vital to worker safety through class consciousness, solidarity and cooperation. Bourgeois greed knows no bounds, including the human rights abuses that result. While these atrocities are legion, and while individual cases of coercive sex work also happen (see: Caleb Maupin; the original Medium article has been removed, but Bad Empanada 2 covers it on his 2022 video, “Caleb Maupin OUTED As Spankaholic Cult Leader, CPI EXPLODES”), the systemic coercion of sex work specifically occurs through privatization; the elite own the means of production as a tool to marginalize and exploit target groups for efficient profit and infinite growth. By keeping poor people poor, these persons have no choice but to (re)turn to sex work (a historically stigmatized and criminalized profession—re: Kate D’Adamo) to supplement their income. This amounts to wage slavery (assuming they’re even paid, which some forms of sex work, like marriage, are not) but also the death of imagination by abolishing alternate labor models that encourage non-canonical, non-carceral depictions of sex work (whose underlying context can be explored later).
All is not lost. Iconoclastic praxis allows for a variety of safety measures, manifesting as dated clues to interpret inside and upon whatever the past leaves behind. Our aim as Gothic Communists is to take these antiquated lessons and apply them to our lives, such as we always have. The difference is doing so now lies in active reimagination, dropping apathy in favor of empathy. However, to consciously challenge what’s normal in favor of a more empathetic workplace and world, we must first recognize empathy when inspecting the past. Turns out, the past can be a pretty weird place. Let’s take a look!
(artist: Harmony Corrupted)
Onto “Book Sample: Half-Real: Recognizing And Performing Empathy“!
About the Author
Persephone van der Waard is the author of the multi-volume, non-profit book series, Sex Positivity—its art director, sole invigilator, illustrator and primary editor (the other co-writer/co-editor being Bay Ryan). Persephone has her independent PhD in Gothic poetics and ludo-Gothic BDSM (focusing on partially on Metroidvania), and is a MtF trans woman, anti-fascist, atheist/Satanist, poly/pan kinkster, erotic artist/pornographer and anarcho-Communist with two partners. Including multiple playmates/friends and collaborators, Persephone and her many muses work/play together on Sex Positivity and on her artwork at large as a sex-positive force. That being said, she still occasionally writes reviews, Gothic analyses, and interviews for fun on her old blog (and makes YouTube videos talking about politics). Any money Persephone earns through commissions or donations goes towards helping sex workers through the Sex Positivity project; i.e., by paying costs and funding shoots, therefore raising awareness. She takes payment on PayPal, Patreon, and CashApp, etc; all links are available on her Linktr.ee. Every bit helps!
Footnotes
[1] My own portfolio commonly features sex workers, the arrangement founded on a professional, informed exchange between both parties. Sometimes I do fanart (aka labor as tribute), but the general consensus is labor in exchange for payment, be that money or work. The context behind the artwork I produce is agency on behalf of sex workers negotiating for themselves, which I wholeheartedly promote (so much so that I write reviews for sex workers that I’ve drawn on my website; the current number of sex workers I’ve worked with is over seventy).