The Sex Workers’ Art Show: Making Sex Arty

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


The other night, I sat on the cold floor of the San Francisco arts organization CellSpace listening to a woman with red, neon hair announce the first act of the evening to a packed house. She introduced herself as Annie Oakley, curator of The Sex Workers’ Art Show, an event that originated in Olympia, Washington, in 1998. The cabaret-style show, comprised of everything from spoken word to burlesque and multi-media performance art, is made by people who work in many areas of the sex industry. It tours the country every year busting stereotypes about sex work and sex workers (and by extension, about what constitutes art) town-by-town and college-by-college. The show’s aim is “to dispel the myth that [sex workers] are anything short of artists, innovators, and geniuses!”

The artists and innovators who I witnessed perform at the San Francisco show didn’t try to make art sexy, but rather they made sex arty. Some of the performances, namely the burlesque acts, were presented with a quantity of glamour, while others exposed the realities of sex work in a more sobering manner. An eloquently rendered story entitled “Melho’s Place,” by writer and performance artist Amber Dawn started the evening off by shedding light on the humanity of sex work. Burlesque performer Miss Dirty Martini wowed the audience with her stylized fan dance. The art in the show really came to light when the fleet-footed performer hailing from Japan who calls herself Cono Snatch Zubobinskaya danced her way onto the stage with a humorous drag king number. San Francisco author Kirk Read delivered a raunchy yet tender spoken word piece about the closing night of the Circle J sex club in San Francisco’s Tenderloin neighborhood. He presented this little piece of history to the audience like a gift, revealing aspects of a community those who are not gay men in San Francisco will never have occasion to be a part of.

If the goal of the show is to illuminate the intricacies of sex work while revealing sex workers as artists, the group of individuals touring with this year’s show certainly have accomplished a few things. The performances are varied and nuanced, portraying sex work in a way that transcends either positive or negative representation. At times the show was steamy and funny, and at others it was serious or sad. Like most things in life, sex work contains a complicated set of experiences that this set of performers articulated through story, movement, and song.

— Rose Miller

WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

payment methods

WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate