Dear readers, As I write this letter in my bitsy Southeast Austin apartment, my roommate’s cat licking his paws across the living room, an autumnal candle from my grandmother blazing in its oversized jar, the feeling of helplessness overwhelms me as I realize I have so much to say that it’s almost easier to say nothing. Trying to put into 200 short words what this magazine means to me this time around seems frivolous. There are a great many things I tell myself I’ll accomplish during the day-to-day. Goals like spending more time writing in my diary or calling my parents more often seem to be ever-present but never really manifest. Because I, like most early college graduates, enjoy mistreating and treating myself too much to be precisely self-disciplined. What I have found the strength to do though, time and time again, is work on this magazine. And for that I am grateful. So, please actually READ IT! Thank you from all of us over at Smear Mag for supporting us with your ever-loving ways! You’re the reason we can find that strength to keep on creatin’. - Mary K. Cantrell, Editor-in-Chief
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1/Mary K. Cantrell founder/editor 2/Darby Kendall managing editor 3/ Nathan Burgess art director 4/Crystal Garcia art director 5/Stephanie Lawrence illustrator 6/Cody Bjornson photo editor 7/Mason Endres staff photographer 8/Tinu Thomas writer 9/Andrew Cooke illustrator 10/Audrey Larcher writer 11/Lana Power writer 12/Grant Hickman illustrator 13/Thea Robinson photographer 14/Jessica Vacek photographer/illustrator
Vibes Over Everything
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Unhomely
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Sustainable Anarchy
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Flows Before Bros
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Inter(sex)ionality
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Comic Section
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current events
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Austin Filmmaker B.B. Araya Entertains with Dynamic Roles for Women of Color Written By Darby Kendall An inability to belong; struggles with artistic drive; living in an oppressive society; dealing with an addiction to hot cheetos. These are the relatable troubles of an aspiring photographer in B.B. Araya’s short film “We Are - Artists.” In the film, Evelyn, played by Evelyn Ngugi, is “dumped” by her self-absorbed therapist, only to find more discouragement from a bookstore employee ringing up her purchase of books on photography. He carelessly tells her the anecdote of a friend that finally gave up on being a professional photographer, and “has a dead look in his eyes like, all the time now.” Though the cringe-worthy scene sounds far fetched, Araya pulled inspiration from her own past awkward conversations when writing the script. The 24-year-old Austin-based indie filmmaker often looked to her own experiences as a young woman of color with an artistic dream while working on her six-part film series, “We Are.” The series focuses on subjects from sisterhood to romantic encounters, while telling the engaging stories of seven black and latinx women trying to make it in Austin. I was first drawn to the films by their hyper-realistic, humorous portrayal
of young womanhood and all of the issues and doubts that come with this period of life. Pulled once again from “We Are - Artists,” Evelyn’s defeated declaration of “I thought by this age I’d have a convertible, a boyfriend, a flat stomach at least!” hits home all too well. But, while finding viewers’ vulnerable points, “We Are” features characters and authentic dialogue that can’t help but elicit laughter. I met up with Araya at Thunderbird Coffee, a fitting location considering how much “We Are” features East Austin, to discuss the inspiration for her work and how the series came to be. After growing up watching countless early 2000s movies that starred mostly white women, Araya says she felt the need to make films that give dynamic roles to women of color. She sought to use “We Are” as a medium to give black and latinx women the realism that is often not shown in popular culture. “Throughout history you see brown and black women onscreen and they all have this monolithic experience. I know many women of color who are different; they dress differently, they think differently,” Araya says. “I wanted to show all these different women, but also to say we are everything that everyone else is. We deserve to be a part of those conversations about mental health and One-on-Ones/05
Pictured, from left, “We Are” cast members Ronnita L. Miller and Evelyn Ngugi. [Courtesy Photo]
angst and family dynamics, and not just be relegated to our experiences as women of color.” In order to bring her ideas to fruition, Araya has learned to play many roles. She serves as the creator, director and writer of the series, alongside her co-producers Jessica Vasami and Tamar Price. “We Are” first premiered in September at the North Door to a standing ovation and has since been uploaded in full to the Youtube channel of Issa Rae, co-creator and actor in HBO’s “Insecure.” Araya says having such a large platform for her work has been a wildly beneficial experience, especially in regard to receiving feedback on the films. “I think it’s really beneficial to have access to that, because those people don’t know me so they’re going to be completely honest.” she explains. “Also, on an emotional level just helps me feel more connected. There are other people out there who these subjects resonate with! It’s really nice.” In 2014, prior to the series’ inception, Araya was shooting films on her iPhone 4 with friends in her backyard while finishing up her business administration degree at UT Dallas. 06/One-on-Ones
Though she put aside the urge to do creative work during her early collegiate years, her love of movies along with the support of her father soon motivated her to pursue a professional career in the filmmaking industry. “I always had that creative itch, but when I was younger I stopped tending to it and I kind of lost it. Then, in college there was a lot of time alone, a lot of time watching movies and a lot of time dreaming,” she says. “Making movies in my house was just a really great way for me to get my toes wet in every aspect of filmmaking. I would write it, shoot it and edit it. Then I was like, ‘Ok, you know what, I want to do this for real.’” So after graduating college, Araya moved to Austin in 2015 and landed an internship with Detour Filmproduction. “Interning for Richard Linklater was amazing; such an eye opening experience,” she says. Araya continued making her own films with friends in the new city, but initially she struggled finding communities for people of color in Austin. “When I moved here I was like, ‘Where are the black people? Where are the people of color?’ So when I did start
immersing myself in communities that had women of color and black and brown people in them, I was overjoyed,” she says. Because Araya struggled to find these communities initially, she made a point to highlight their presence while filming “We Are,” by setting many of the scenes in East Austin hangouts. “I wanted to show that crevice of the city that I came to know and love after having the panic attack of ‘Where is everyone?!’ This community is thriving,” she says. “I’m talking music, writers, artists; in every corner people of color are making and putting out consistently amazing work. Austin isn’t seen from that angle in the mainstream for whatever reason, so I just wanted to show the city through the eyes of me and my friends who experience that part of it.” Amongst her newfound friends, she met some of the actors that she would later feature in “We Are,” including Ngozi Kim of YouTube’s GoziTV, Andie Flores and Taji Senior of comedy show “Doper than Dope,” and Ronnita Miller of “BETA,” Araya’s first film to premiere on Issa Rae’s Youtube channel. According to Araya, collaboration between the actors and herself during the creation of “We Are” was a naturally flowing process, leading many of the cast members to contribute to the writing of the series. “Every episode is different in terms of how much of it is based on my life and how much of is group discussion,” Araya explains. “I outlined all of these stories with these actors in mind, so we just started getting together and talking about where we could see these characters going, making sure it felt right and it felt authentic. It was personal experience, talking with the actors and some of it was entirely fictional, so the inspiration for “We Are” came from all over the place.” Using humor to tell the truth is an essential part of “We Are,” which portrays womanhood in an unblinking,
head-on but still wildly entertaining manner. According to Araya, she was able to tell the stories so truthfully because she had no studio or greater entity to answer to regarding the content of the films. “We got to tell the stories exactly how we wanted to, and that’s kind of the magic of the internet and putting content out without gatekeepers,” she says. Having the chance to make such open, honest and progressive films has been a therapeutic experience,
“We deserve to be a part of those conversations about mental health and angst and family dynamics, and not just be relegated to our experiences as women of color.” according to Araya. When asked about the future Araya mentions the upcoming screenings for the series both in Austin and internationally, but adds that in regard to future projects, she’s just waiting to see where the wind takes her. For now, Araya is enjoying the success of her first series after the hectic schedule of writing “We Are” and then shooting it in just five days. “Honestly, making this has not only been the best creative experience of my life, but probably the best experience of my life overall, because I just got to learn and feel so much,” Araya says. “You go from sitting around at your dining room table talking about these ideas to actually making them and putting them on a screen and sharing them with people, and seeing it resonate. It’s a long journey, but when you look back at it you get to say, ‘We did that! We did that!’”
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Photography By Jessica Vacek “These photos were taken in places I grew up around. Many of the photographs were taken wandering around fields in the dark or going somewhere nobody would want to photograph. Low income communities and perspectives often get left out of the artistic discussion. For me, creating artwork is about making something I can relate to. I am my only frame of reference for viewing the world. My goal is to show the beauty that I see in things that have been left behind. Everything is always going on, but something will always be falling apart.� @operation_jessica
Student-Run Organization Aims to Keep West Campus Streets Safe Written By Audrey Larcher When Austinites flooded the streets resisting the inauguration last January, a litany of Donald Trump’s enemies made their voices heard. Women, people of color, Muslims and countless others shouted to let him know the resistance was ready. Trump has been sure to test all of these demographics throughout his first year in the Oval Office. But as of late, one group of enemies has fallen under particular scrutiny — the radical left. The Trump presidency marks most Americans’ introduction to antifascist politics, but leftists have existed well before the 2016 election. Despite the executive branch’s insistence that radical anarchists and communists are rabid boogey-men, many of these groups support sustainable programs to protect the most vulnerable in their communities. Autonomous Student Defense is one of these groups working in the streets of West Campus. ASD is a group of anarchists challenging the very framework of law enforcement and how their communities keep one another safe. They do so by attempting to prevent 10/Current Events
violence in their neighborhood by offering to accompany people who may feel unsafe on their walks home. Their mission is to step up where the University and police often fail. Over the past three decades, Austin has watched massive change sweep over West Campus, the primary residential area for UT students. Sterile boxes of apartments replace townhouses; chain restaurants supplant favorite cafes. But beyond the topical transformation, crime is a constant threat. Anyone who lives south of UT between 21st and 29th streets can tell you about it. Not only did a Neighborhood Scout study rank the area among the worst 15 neighborhoods for property crime rates in the nation, but West Campus is also a hotbed for interpersonal violence. Bleach balloons thrown at minorities in 2012 still sting students’ memories and the threat of sexual assault is everpresent. ASD works to combat these dangers with a fairly simple operation. On Friday and Saturday nights, ASD meets at 10 p.m. to roam until 2 a.m. the next morning. Groups of three or four students follow predetermined routes through West Campus. They
Illustrations by Grant Hickman
pass areas they’ve deemed potentially volatile, film any police interactions they happen across and offer help to anyone intoxicated, lost or otherwise disoriented. According to Harry*, one of the founding ASD participants, the group is an entirely de-escalatory force. “We come out to recognize that sometimes students need self-defense, but our focus is getting people through the night.” All the while, a solitary comrade works remotely, monitoring social media and notifying the group of any anonymous tips they receive. But the ideas behind the operation? Not as easy to boil down. The program’s origins lie in cop-watching campaigns. ASD is interested in keeping West Campus residents safe, but their methods are ideologically rooted against how most young adults think about staying out of trouble. They doesn’t trust the institutions that have always claimed to protect citizens. In fact, ASD thinks those institutions are designed to fail the highly vulnerable when it matters most.
The tension in West Campus is palpable. From violent graffiti to the unavoidable flash of cop lights, conflict permeates every intersection, and law enforcement doesn’t always reassure residents. Michael Sanchez, a UT student who frequents West Campus, has doubts
“Not only did a Neighborhood Scout study rank the area among the worst 15 neighborhoods for property crime rates in the nation, but West Campus is also a hotbed for interpersonal violence.” about whether beefed-up police strategies are working. “An increased policing of an area almost becomes like a feedback loop. It starts to feel tenser because you notice more police going by,” Sanchez says. “What’s happening here? Why do [graffiti Current Events/11
tags] say people are going to get bullets, and why are there so many police to make sure that that doesn’t happen?” Beyond frightening students, ASD thinks police are ill-equipped for confronting hate crimes. “It’s systemic consequence that police actively don’t respond to white dudes throwing bottles at black women in West Campus,” Harry said. “Those aren’t the people that they’re here to protect. The white dudes aren’t the people that they’re here to arrest. Even in the assignment of dedicated West Campus police officers announced last August, the stated mission was to combat the presence of homeless people and graffiti. At no point is any part of the force equipped to respond to assault, abuse or harassment.” Be Safe, the UT organization that coordinates with police in campus areas on student safety, did not respond to comment requests for this article. The University isn’t exactly a failsafe that ASD wants to rely on, either. Student Government and campus administrators feverently promote solutions with SURE Walk, a volunteerrun program designed to walk and drive students home at late hours. But ASD sees SURE Walk’s bureaucracy entanglements as a roadblock to helping students most in need. The Daily Texan even reported that volunteers have refused to drive inebriated students home in the past. When SURE Walk officials responded to questioning over this quagmire last April, they cited a policy that deems drunk people are a liability. ASD noticed SURE Walk’s failures, so they started patrols last March. SURE Walk declined to comment for this piece. “The idea for ASD came into being as students providing each other safe walks home, and self-defense against attacks and abuse, without relying on the police. Looking back to models like Take Back the Night programs and looking to efforts from queer anarchists, like 12/Current Events
Bash Back programs, which emphasize militant self-defense against hate crimes and queerbashing,” Harry explained. It’s understandably much easier said than done. For ASD to truly rival SURE Walk or any other institutional safety initiative would require mass involvement far beyond their current numbers. These activists envision a network of physical spaces (including co-ops, churches and mosques) where students could look for help. Quicker means of transportation, dedicated cop-watch teams and more expansive communication systems are all goals ASD is working toward accomplishing. Without these facets of the program, students aren’t so sure to trust ASD’s services. Activist and longtime patrol member Ashley* noticed that responses vary while handing out informational fliers. She says some people think an alternative to SURE Walk is a great idea; others won’t even make eye contact when she says hello. “It’s obviously very complicated to hand fliers to random people on the street, especially when you’re walking around in the dark in a large group of people,” she says. “There’s constantly kind of the question where this person is alone, so it’d be good if they knew that we were here to walk with them. But also it’s intimidating to be approached by five people. And so it’s definitely a balancing act of does this person look like they would not appreciate at all if I approached them right now.” But the roadblocks aren’t stopping ASD. Since the Fall 2017 semester began, they’ve been out every weekend to offer any resources, or help that might be useful. A lot of the time, it’s just being there that counts. ASD helped comfort two people, one seemingly drunk and mentally unstable, another after an encounter with the police. The patrol searched for and found some of their belongings in the street and made
sure they knew about legal services that could help in the aftermath. “ASD in no way has the capacity to replace the police itself,” Harry says. “But I think that creating a place where students can come to an understanding of their collective power to protect each other, that there are other possibilities, sets the foundation in tandem with other efforts to construct a movement that reduces police presence around UT, to build independent student institutions that are self-governing, that respond to marginalized students. We will not see a cop-free West Campus before we graduate, but we could likely see not relying on the police as much.” Some may call the resistance a waste of time. Protesting Trump’s election didn’t delay his inauguration. ASD patrols won’t single-handedly rid West Campus of crime. The reign of Trump isn’t ending anytime soon, and
vulnerable, marginalized people around the world won’t be able to escape the impacts. But programs like ASD aren’t going anywhere else, either. In the face
“We will not see a cop-free West Campus before we graduate, but we could likely see not relying on the police as much.” of oppressive forces, making your ideas and values visible is a prerequisite to meaningful change — and these social movements are gaining momentum. *Some names have been changed to protect the privacy of individuals.
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Illustration by Nathan Burgess
Chulita Vinyl Club Drops the Needle on the Austin Music Scene Written By Tinu Thomas Amidst a crowd of plaidwearing, mustachioed, craft beerwielding men, a group of ladies gathered in front of the stage at the Austin Beer Garden and Brewery, dancing to beat of their own turntables. The grooving women are a part of Chulita Vinyl Club, the Austin-based all-girl vinyl club and DJ collective. “There’s like pictures of me in a diaper basically, playing records,” says Xochi ‘Mira Mira’ Solis, an Austin native and three year member of Chulita Vinyl Club. “They were like the Sesame Street records, but still.” The Austin chapter of CVC first broke ground in December 2014. Since then, the club has grown to include seven national chapters across the country in Los Angeles, San Diego and San Antonio, to name a few. The chapters of CVC aim to be inclusive; doors and arms are open to any “self-identifying womxn of color.” “We’re self-identifying women, we’re women of color, we’re latinx,” says Solis. “We’re coming from different 14/Jams
cultural backgrounds, whether it be ethnicity, race, sexual orientation, mixed up together.” Despite their unique backgrounds, the members of CVC are united through their passion for DJing. Claudia Gizell Aparicio-Gamundi says her vinyl collection began at the tender age of six.
“We’re coming from different cultural backgrounds, whether it be ethnicity, race, sexual orientation, mixed up together.” “My first actual tactile music was vinyl,” explains Aparicio-Gamundi. “I started buying it because of the record covers, like horrible stuff but beautiful covers, and then eventually it just became a thing. I love digging and finding [records].” Many other Chulitas say their obsession stemmed from an initial attraction to the artwork at a young age.
Photography by Cody Bjornson
CHULITAS
They were eventually hooked by the music as adults, which led to the hobby of record collecting. Every CVC chapter brings something different to the table, literally. Combined, the girls of Austin Chulita
“It’s been a really important way for me to reconnect with my family that still lives in Mexico and to kind of tease out the culture in my parents a little bit.” have an expansive and diverse collection of cherished records from various genres that some members have been collecting for over 25 years. “Each Chulita has different collections that range from norteño or tejano to psychedelic or progressive,” says Camila “Cienfuegos” Torres-Castro.
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“We are pretty eclectic, I think that’s what gives CVC such a wide spectrum and fun vibe when it comes to setting the dance floor on fire.” Other members of CVC joined the club as a way to reconnect with their latinx roots. Erin Gentry says since joining CVC a year ago, she’s felt more connected to her Mexican heritage than she ever did growing up. Her parents were eager to raise her and her siblings as American citizens after immigrating to the U.S. from Mexico. “It’s been a really important way for me to reconnect with my family that still lives in Mexico and to kind of tease out the culture in my parents a little bit,” Gentry says. “Now, my mom and I talk more about music and culture than we ever did when I was growing up, and my dad’s finally speaking to me in Spanish.” CVC Austin recently experienced an onslaught of media attention after the group spoke out against discrimination they encountered at a
local venue. The group was 30 minutes into their set at newly-opened Congress Avenue venue, Upstairs at Caroline, when the assistant manager requested they pack up and leave. Despite having played over half their set and following a similarly themed latinx band, Superfónicos, the venue reasoned that CVC’s vibe was not what the hotel was aiming for. “There’s always microaggressions,” Aparicio-Gamundi says. “This was just the first time we made a public statement to our followers and our community about something like this. But no, it’s not the first time it’s happened.” CVC says that although the instance was disheartening, they are proud to have used the opportunity to shed light on an important problem and empower others to do the same. According to Solis, other chapters also experience similar micro-aggressions, but they don’t often pursue the issue. Fortunately, the Austin CVC’s speaking out inspired them to do so in the future. While most who heard CVC’s message shared similar stories of discrimination, Solis says that others told the ladies they were not surprised. “People said, ‘Oh that’s just Austin, what can you expect?—Austin hates brown people’,” Solis says. “We expect a lot more because we are citizens of this city.” Gentry adds that onlookers who generalize the city of Austin as non-inclusive towards “brown people” and minorities are largely overlooking the fact that Austin’s music scene and Texan influence as a whole has greatly contributed to the existence of Chulita. “The culture of Austin brought about what Chulita is,” Gentry says. “There’s a lot of people who came from the [Rio Grande] Valley and move to Austin, and that’s a quintessential latina experience for people living in Austin.” Regardless of negative experiences, the group intends on
persevering and setting the path ablaze for other aspiring female DJs by creating a safe space for their shared interest.
“We are pretty eclectic, I think that’s what gives CVC such a wide spectrum and fun vibe when it comes to setting the dance floor on fire.” Each of CVC’s members have their own aspirations and goals within their shared interest of vinyl and DJing. Sara Zavaleta, a year-long member of CVC, expressed after being a radio DJ for several years CVC has inspired her to become a ‘scratcher,’ a DJing skill of physically manipulating the sound of records by ‘scratching’ or ‘scrubbing’ vinyl as it plays on a turntable. Another Chulita is studying to be a music engineer. “We’re all like, ‘Get your degree, get your degree! Like we need you to be out there.’ Right now she’s at home doing her homework,” Solis says.“We tell her, ‘You need to get out there and be a sound engineer, you’re gonna be so badass’.” As the members of CVC chimed in to finish eachother’s sentences, it was apparent their love and support for one another goes far beyond the turntables they share. “The Chulita Vinyl Club is not just an organization,” Solis says. “It’s familia, it’s a community–Our fellow latinx DJs are always looking out for us, and we’re looking out for them.”
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Visuals by Stephanie Lawrence
Be the Porn You Want to See In the World Written By Lana Power I’ve loved porn since I was 7 years old. My first encounter was a black and white image of a reclining male nude on an Internet Explorer pop up. After seven years under the pressure of our sex and body-negative dystopia, I knew immediately that I wasn’t supposed to be looking, but the allure was tantalizing. He was unabashed, self-assured. He was my first encounter with a world I had always been suspicious of. My pre-pubescent sensibility was so rattled with excitement that I hoped my older brother would be equally enthralled about my Adonis. He ended up tattling to my mom, but it didn’t stop the development of my obsession with this online taboo world, where I had access to what everyone was doing, but what no one was saying. Time went on and my tastes in carnal culture expanded. I started seeing things that made me feel recognized and validated, violated and depressed. My understanding of feminism, patriarchy and misogyny evolved. I learned about the feminist pornography debates, where porn is either “the essential sexuality of male power: of hate, of ownership of hierarchy, of sadism, of dominance” as feminist Andrea Dworkin theorized, 18/Opinions
or an amoral paradise where any porn performer is a liberated heroine. It is undeniable how capitalism, patriarchy, racism, cisnormativity and misogyny impact the capital “I” porn Industry, but neither of these explanations seemed to be consistent with the way that I had learned to navigate the pornosphere. To me, porn disclosed the taboo of the human body, its libidinous nature, and the possibilities of my own body and mind. Porn’s general disregard for the supremacy of pleasure policing and censorship felt radical to me, not oppressive. It broke the supernatural rationale of these cultural taboos and saved me from a groundswell of shame about my own “perversions” as a selfdescribed freak. Curiosity decided to overwhelm me, so this summer I interviewed friends, foes and comrades about their porn consumption to learn about the influence of porn on their sexual expression. For my friends who are queer, kinky or otherwise deviant, I learned that porn served as an education for vital information that is violently excluded from our lexicon of cultural understanding. For my friends who are more skeptical of porn’s merit, I realized their criticisms weren’t misguided. Either way, the verdict of my findings stands: Porn matters.
Dan, fervent gay porn collector and scholar, first recalls discovering homoerotic literature in a collection of Hustler magazines under his bathroom sink at a young age. He says the dating pool for a sprite gay latino in Albuquerque was narrow in the ‘90s. “Porn really opened the doors to affirm [me] like, ‘Oh my god I fucking exist and I matter.’” Upon uncovering these archives, Dan realized his lusts were welcome in the world. “I’m not alone, I’m not a freak. This is a thing, and it’s happening everywhere.” He also recalls learning about AIDS awareness and equal rights through gay porn publications. “Your porn is also access to information,” says Dan, and for certain communities it can be the authorship of a culture and a lifestyle, a way of being.
“As a kid, I was super confused. I knew certain things aroused me and I didn’t understand why. Porn was how everything came together. It helped me understand my own sexuality.” I learned more about Leo, an old drinking buddy, from our hour long interview than I ever did after two years of friendship. From a ripe young age, he’d been aware of his “perverse” sexual inclinations for kink, latex, female domination and male submission, but didn’t start to understand his desires until accessing an online catalog of this deviant behavior. There was a sense of relief upon realizing his proclivities were a shared experience. “As a kid, I was super confused. I knew certain things aroused me and I didn’t understand why. Porn was how everything came together. It helped me understand my own sexuality,” Leo says. I contend that access to a healthy and fulfilling sex life is a sorely
disregarded human right, which includes the ability to recognize yourself and your desires within the range of possibility. Therefore, combating our distorted and discriminatory socio-sexual education system with brazen representations of the full range of the human sexual capacity is a necessity. It’s undeniable that much of the porn “I”ndustry has adapted to our culture’s twisted paradigm of sexuality that perpetuates misogyny, phallocentric power and even a disconnection from genuine eroticism. This doesn’t erase the value of erotic media, but makes it all the more important. Kinky and queer homegirl, Sonja, recognizes the range of what porn can represent for us. “Because our society is so constraining around sexuality, you need some sort of culture to investigate [your] feelings and that is porn for most people. It just is; maybe that’s not the best thing. I don’t want to be an idealist. At the current, and as far as I can see in the near future, [porn] is an invaluable outlet for people to sort of investigate these feelings. It’s definitely the way I’ve made a journey with my sexuality. It wouldn’t have happened without porn. It hasn’t all been positive and it hasn’t all been negative.” Queer and fat feminist porn actor, producer and superstar, Courtney Trouble, has been leading the radical inclusivity charge with merciless abandon, hoping to create changes in the pornosphere that consumers like Sonja want to see. “By leading a feminist movement that includes all bodies in sexual work by a strong pornographic activism, we are directly challenging the powerful system that reduces women to their desirability and ability to succeed in our thin-obsessed hunger games. We must prove that we are objectifying ourselves in the good sense of the definition, by giving expression to our form that others can identify. For those of us in the world who aren’t cis, white, Opinions/19
thin, able-bodied, representation in porn is absolutely 100 percent essential.” In its historical entirety, pornography has been a powerful archive of knowledge about some of the most curious, but marginalized aspects of human nature. If we had more queer, trans, non-binary, dark, big, hairy people in front of and behind the camera, we could create and affirm the intersectional communities that we want to see actualized in the world through our sexual media. I’m coining “inter(sex) ionality” as the use of sexual expression and representation to actualize radical inclusivity and render the acceptance of marginalized bodies at the deepest root of our beings. The decompressed sexuality of the oppressed and the underrepresented, is the liberation of us all. The inclusion of non-traditional bodies into our understanding of embodiment lightens the weight of normativity on all of us. To the friends I spoke to in the “no-fap” tradition (anti-pornography and/or anti-masturbation) there is a place for you too in this new sexual culture. We can all bring ourselves into porn, no matter where our identities stand. This doesn’t mean that we have to post our 20/Opinions
sex lives online, but that we use sexual media as a tool for self-exploration and self-awareness. We can question and challenge the ways that our sex education and our consumption of normative sexual standards impacts the ways we engage with the world around us. My first recommendation for untangling the knots of our indoctrination is to immediately stop feeling guilty and shameful for your desires. Find porn stars and directors that excite you. Engage with them, pay them and allow yourself to feel good about it. Support DIY work; support queer and feminist porn. Watch condoms and gloves used in porn; watch stretch marks, jiggles and hear conversations about other partners or health concerns. “The ultimate goal of sex education should be to free our minds and bodies for pleasurable exploration, not further oppression and damage,” says sexologist Dr. Chris Donaghue. Porn is the sexual education system of the 21st Century and our health depends on this education working for the totality of us all. Porn isn’t going anywhere, so be the porn you want to see in the world.
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Illustration by Jessica Vacek