Erotic Resisters & Ecosexuals Unite! with Gigi Otálvaro-Hormillosa at the Tenderloin Museum

Erotic Resisters and Ecosexuals Unite!

Authors Gigi Otálvaro-Hormillosa, Annie Sprinkle, & Beth Stephens in-person! Moderated by Dr. Joy Brooke Fairfield

Saturday April 27, 2024 | 3-5pm

At the Tenderloin Museum | 398 Eddy St. SF, CA94102

Free or Suggested Donation ($10) | Register via Eventbrite

In celebration of the recent publication of Gigi Otálvaro-Hormillosa’s new book, Erotic Resistance: The Struggle for the Soul of San Francisco, Tenderloin Museum hosts the author for a double-header book talk with Annie Sprinkle & Beth Stephens, fellow activist-artists and scholars of human sexuality, who will discuss their latest latest, Assuming the Ecosexual Position:The Earth as Lover.

A celebration of the erotic performance cultures that have shaped San Francisco, Erotic Resistance: The Struggle for the Soul of San Francisco (UC Press, 2024) explores a milieu that is indelibly intertwined with the Tenderloin’s history: the city’s bohemian past and its essential role in the development of American adult entertainment by highlighting the contributions of women of color, queer women, and trans women who were instrumental in the city’s labor history, as well as its LGBT and sex workers’ rights movements. Otálvaro-Hormillosa utilizes visual and performance analysis, historiography, and ethnographic research (including participant observation as both performer and spectator), and interviews with legendary burlesquers and strippers to share a remarkable history and to frame an intersection of art, activism, performance, and human sexuality. Otálvaro-Hormillosa explores how, in the 1960s, topless entertainment became legal in San Francisco for the first time in the US, even while cross-dressing continued to be criminalized, and how, in the 1990s, stripper-artist activists led the first successful class action lawsuits and efforts to unionize! She writes, says Annie Sprinkle, “courageously and eloquently from her perspective as a performance artist and scholar inspired by the tradition of sex-positive feminists since the 1960s who have resisted patriarchy by reclaiming and celebrating their sexuality.”

On Saturday April 27th, Otálvaro-Hormillosa will present her work and new book at a TLM public program in conjunction with her friends and fellow artist-activists Annie Sprinkle and Beth Stephens, who also work in the space where scholarship, sexuality, activism, and the arts intersect and have in fact helped shape the field and discipline of human sexuality studies. Both have long and storied careers as artists and academics, and since 2002 have been life partners and “50/50 collaborators” on multimedia projects. In 2008, Annie Sprinkle and Beth Stephens married the Earth, which set them on the path to explore the realms of ecosexuality as they became lovers with the Earth and made their mutual pleasure an embodied expression of passion for the environment. Ever since, they have been not just pushing but obliterating the boundaries circumscribing biology and ecology, creating ecosexual art in their performance of an environmentalism that is feminist, queer, sensual, sexual, posthuman, materialist, exuberant, and steeped in humor. Their latest publication, Assuming the Ecosexual Position: The Earth as Lover ((U. of Minnesota Press, 2021), describes how the two came together as lovers and collaborators, how they took a stand against homophobia and xenophobia, and how this union led to the miraculous conception of the Love Art Laboratory. 

Join us for these complementary book talks, both of which explore subjects that resonate with the Tenderloin’s history and culture, in a program moderated by professor at Rhodes College, media-maker, and Sprinkle/Stephens collaborator Dr. Joy Brooke Fairfield. Free or suggested donation ($10); please register via Eventbrite to let us know you’re coming! This program is one of many happenings for “I Love Tenderloin Week,” a celebration of the neighborhood and its people, businesses, and culture by a coalition of local individuals and organizations.