Strippers and Sages

Ze Royale (ze/they/them) is a writer, performance artist, sexual anarchist, social worker, and pleasure activist. Ze writes and performs in “post-pornographic” films for Aorta Films, performs chanting rituals in the musical duo Zoid^,  and curates erotic events at venues like Ps 1 MoMA as a part of the production team for KinkOut. They studied psychology and sculpture at Sarah Lawrence, and Gender and Development at the School for International Training in Kingston, Jamaica before receiving their Masters in Social Work from Columbia University. Ze worked for 12 years in youth development and started the international nonprofit Unified for Global Healing, which develops grassroots community health and art initiatives in Haiti, Ghana, and India. They are currently Director of communications for the Sex Workers Project at the Urban Justice Center.

Samantha Rose Hill is the assistant director of the Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and Humanities, visiting assistant professor of politics at Bard College in New York and associate faculty at the Brooklyn Institute for Social Research in New York City, where she teaches courses such as Pornography: Aesthetics, Politics, and Pleasure, Sado-Masochism: Economies of Desire and Recognition, Judith Butler: Gender, Sex, and Death, and Beyond Eros: the Philosophy and Politics of Love, among others. She is the author of a biography of Hannah Arendt (forthcoming, 2021).

Today I speak with William Winters about inclusivity and diversity in polyamorous and sex positive culture, consent as care, and the intersection of activism and erotic liberation.

In 2014, the San Francisco Chronicle named William Winters the "de facto king of the East Bay polyamory scene." He's been working to earn the title ever since. An activist, educator, and intimacy coach, William is the founder and co-producer of Bonobo Network, an Oakland-based organization that brings together folks who understand that monogamy isn’t right for everyone and that pleasure comes in many different packages to become more sexually informed, liberated, consensual, communicative, kind, and inclusive so that we can all get the pleasure, connection, and understanding we deserve.

William has also been an advocate for polyamory in the media, appearing in San Francisco Magazine, KQED's Forum, the San Francisco Chronicle, and the New York Times. He has facilitated conversations about polyamory and sex-positive culture in settings including university campuses, political conferences, living rooms, Burning Man, and beyond. A campaign strategist by profession, a culture nerd by avocation, and a philosopher by major, William lives with his wife and their stupid cat in Oakland, CA. 

Visit www.strippersandsages.com for show notes and transcript.

In this brief hiatus from our regular conversation series, Lianne waxes poetic on Wittgenstein, vaginal secretion, Beverly Hills 90210, the Encyclopedia of Sacred Sexuality, and the importance of relanguaging our erotic consciousness,

I interview Lazlo (president emeritus), and Shade (current president of Consensuality), two of the wonderful, big hearted humans behind the Orgy Dome at Burning Man. The Orgy Dome is the playa gift of the camp “..And Then There’s Only Love”.  Originally formed in 2003, the theme camp started out with a small group of sex positive friends, a six person tent and a few air mattress. Since then, it has grown into a 4500 square foot air conditioned structure, a camp of over 300 members, and a 501c3 non profit that provides education about and training in consent culture and consensual non-monogamy. In addition to the Orgy Dome, they host workshops throughout the year on topics ranging from erotic massage to the legal aspects of producing erotica. There is so much care that goes into creating this safe, sex positive, consensual play space for couples and moresomes during their stay at Black Rock City. Lazlo and Shade discuss the ins and outs of running the camp, share some raucous tories, and divulge the heartfelt mission behind the project. 

Michaelah Ivie, MA holds a masters in both Marriage and Family Therapy and Art Therapy and recently completed a year-long coaching program taught by Layla Martin at the Tantric Institute of Integrated Sexuality as a Love, Sex, and Relationship coach. She is a wordsMYTH, conscious comedian, relationSHIFT coach, and motivational speaker, using wordplay to re-program consciousness on and off the stage. Her SPELLcial linguisTRICKs and empoWORDing iMAGICnation inspires creative ways of influencing humanity into a universal Love language.

Dr. Kim TallBear is Associate Professor, Faculty of Native Studies, University of Alberta, and Canada Research Chair in Indigenous Peoples, Technoscience, and Environment. She is also a Pierre Elliot Trudeau Foundation Fellow and the author of Native American DNA: Tribal Belonging and the False Promise of Genetic Science. Building on her research on the role of technoscience in settler colonialism, TallBear examines the overlapping ideas of “sexuality” and “nature” in the colonization of Indigenous peoples. She is a regular commentator in US, Canadian, and UK media outlets on issues related to Indigenous peoples, science, technology and critical non-monogamy, and is a regular panelist on the weekly podcast, Media Indigena. She also is a co-producer of the sexy storytelling and burlesque show, Tipi Confessions. Dr. Tallbear is a citizen of the Sisseton-Wahpeton Oyate in South Dakota and is also descended from the Cheyenne & Arapaho Tribes of Oklahoma.

Transcript & resources available at www.strippersandsages.com

Misha Japanwala is a Pakistani artist and designer who creates stunning body casts of the female nude to critique and raise awareness about gender violence and the repression of female sexuality in Pakistan and around the world. Born and raised in Karachi, Misha moved to New York City to attend fashion school at Parsons School of Design. Her relationship to her own body and her complex identity as a privileged Pakistani, a woman of color and an immigrant are deeply woven into the fabric of her work. Misha’s debut collection, Azaadi, is an homage to the strength and agency of Pakistani women in the face of domestic violence, moral policing and taboos around female sexuality. Transcript available at www.strippersandsages.com. 

Ayden LeRoux is an interdisciplinary artist, writer, critic, and educator whose work explores embodiment, eroticism, and illness, in order to complicate narratives about gender, sexuality, and family structures. Her essays, fiction, and translation have been published in Guernica, Catapult, Electric Lit, Los Angeles Review of Books, Cosmonauts Avenue, Palimpsest, edibleManhattan, and Alchemy, among others. She is the Assistant Director of Odyssey Works, a collaborative performance group, and the author of Odyssey Works: Transformative Experiences for an Audience of One (co-written with Abraham Burickson, Princeton Architectural Press, 2016) and Isolation and Amazement (Samsara Press, 2013). Their work has been features in The New York Times, ArtInfo, Newsweek, BOMB, Hyperallergic, the Marina Abramovic Institute, Vulture, NPR's Studio 360, Fast Company, and San Francisco Magazine. She teaches Disability and Popular Culture at UCSD.

Leila Raven is a queer mama, organizer, and prison abolitionist from New York City. She is one of the creators of the #8toAbolition platform outlining specific, actionable steps that cities can take to move toward a world without police, and she has been a founding organizer with the DecrimNowDC and DecrimNY campaigns to end the criminalization of sex workers in New York and Washington, DC. She is also the former director of Collective Action for Safe Spaces (CASS), a DC-based grassroots organization working to build community-based approaches to gendered violence without prisons or policing. This is an extremely relevant and informative conversation given the recent events in the United States. Please listen and share widely! 

Transcript available.