A new student organization presented University of Wisconsin students with a cabaret-style art show Wednesday, featuring music, video, spoken word, striptease, poetry and other performance art. The show drew a full house in Memorial Union’s Frederick March Play Circle, with women accounting for the majority of the crowd.
The Sex Workers Art Show was funded by the new student organization Women Happily Advocating Masturbation and co-sponsored by the Ten Percent Society, Sex Out Loud, PAVE, the Rainbow Bookstore, and the Associated Students of Madison.
WHAM president Tori Lallemont said the purpose of the organization is largely to promote masturbation as a healthy, normal, and safe way of experiencing sexuality.
“[Masturbation] has numerous benefits such as improving sex with a partner, relieving stress, and can provide an individual with a great sex life in absence of a partner,” she said. “There is a taboo in Western culture against masturbation, especially by females, and WHAM seeks to dismantle this taboo.”
“Cultural discourse often suggests that women are often expected to rely only on heterosexual intercourse for sexual pleasure, and WHAM believes that this is an incorrect and dangerous way to discuss female sexuality,” Lallemont continued. “In fulfilling this purpose, it is important for WHAM to engage many diverse ways to discuss sexuality, and the Sex Workers Art Show is one event where this will take place.”
WHAM chose to bring the Sex Workers Art Show to Madison to combat negative stereotypes of sex workers and to address class and gender issues associated with the profession.
“The Sex Workers Art Show is important to looking at why sex workers are stigmatized as immoral and inhuman, as well as bringing up how violence and race affects this line of work,” Lallemont said.
Since its 1997 debut in Olympia, Wash., Sex Workers Art Show has become an annual event. However, beginning last month, the event went on its first 30-day national tour, with Madison as its last stop.
The show’s director and organizer, former stripper Annie Oakley, said she hopes the show raises awareness about the prostitution industry.
“I hope that it inspires the audience to confront some of their own ignorance and stereotypes about people in the industry. I am hoping that people can begin to see sex works as humans, rather than some sort of perverse ‘other’ undeserving of respect,” Oakley said.
At each show, the performers seek to open up a dialogue about sex work and related issues of sexuality, self-protection, labor rights, sexism and consumerism, while honoring the voices and options of the people who actually do the work.
The event featured 10 individuals, each with a compelling story about life in prostitution. Many of the performers are successful authors, actresses, speakers, and educators in the entertainment world.
Scantily dressed in a red-trimmed Chinese-lettered apron, black bra, and patent leather Daisy Dukes, Mistress Carmen Li, a Chicago-based professional dominatrix, performed on an electric cello. Accompanied by a recording of somber music and sexual cries, Li produced a cacophonic sound.
Li’s angry songs, raps, fire dance and spoken words delved into the issues of gender, race, class, and politics related to the sex industry.
“Use the thighs, lock the eyes, your body is on auction,” Li said in her performance. “Women are weapons of confession. They faint in our arms. One hour, let it go. The honesty of body will declare war. Whores declare war.”
