photos taken by @aardvarkshoes 2024
most of you know me as a sex worker, a dommx, a pup, a sadomasochist—but I am also an organizer and part of the movement for national democracy in the Philippines. I don’t always know how to integrate this into my sex work, but it’s important that I try:
I love kink because it provides space for play: to play with pleasure and pain, with the power dynamics that we live within and struggle against everyday, with the very idea of what it means to be human. I love the trust and communication between myself and those I play with, and I’m so grateful that I was able to do this scene with Boy Mischief –– it took a lot of planning and preparation, but it’s important that we use our platforms to draw attention to these issues.
this scene is a statement on the embodied nature of trauma, how this trauma is passed down generationally, how so many of us live with this everyday: we cannot put it down. this is a statement on the importance of international solidarity and our shared struggle against imperialism and neo-colonialism.
did you know that israel, the united states, the ROK, and the Philippines governments all share resources and tactics to suppress the people’s movements for self-determination and national liberation? that israel is the one supplying the Philippines with defense tech that is then used to terror-tag and murder activists and environmental land defenders? that the surveillance tech used on sex workers and activists globally were first tested on Palestinians? that, for those of us living in the belly of the beast, it’s OUR tax dollars that are funding the bombings and genocide of people overseas?
for this scene, we used 48 needles to represent the Palestinian right to return to their own land, as it was before the Nakba of 1948 when the settler-colonial state of israel was officially established, displacing over 750,000 Palestinians from their ancestral land. we used a keffiyeh to catch the blood: the keffiyeh has become a symbol of Palestinian resistance, and we wanted to draw attention to not only the genocides currently being enacted, but the violence that all colonized people experience as a result of imperialism.
we used christian imagery for two reasons––on the one hand, it has been used as a tool of colonialism and the violent subjugation of colonized people. the Philippines itself was colonized by the sword and the cross. yet, at the same time, the birthplace of christianity is Palestine. many of those dedicated to the national democratic movement in the Philippines are dedicated because they feel that it is their duty as christians to fight for our collective liberation. isn’t it ironic that its birthplace is occupied, under siege, its people actively experiencing genocide?
as anti-imperialists, we continue to (we MUST continue to) be steadfast in our resistance and unity. the u.s. occupies the Philippines, Korea, and Palestine all because they serve as strategic geographical footholds in East/Southeast Asia and SWANA (Southwest Asia / North Africa). the imperialist powers know that our resistance movements for national liberation not only strengthen one other, but threaten the imperialist partition of the world.
because of this, it is our duty to support colonized people fighting back against their oppressors using any means necessary. it is the imperialist war mongrels who are the true terrorists.
because of this, it is our duty to organize in our communities, to continuously educate ourselves on the interconnectedness of our struggles, to stand in active solidarity with one another.
because of this, it is our duty to continue to put pressure on the fascist, imperialist state to end all military agreements and aid for the zionist state and to end the occupation as a whole.
together, we must build a mass movement to take up the long and arduous struggle for the freedom of Palestine and to break the chains of imperialism globally.
i’ll end with a quote by Palestinian revolutionary and martyr of the Palestinian struggle, Ghassan Kanafani:
The Palestinian cause is not a cause for Palestinians only, but a cause for every revolutionary, wherever they are, as a cause for the exploited and oppressed masses in our era.
FROM PALESTINE TO THE PHILIPPINES
STOP THE U.S. WAR MACHINE!
FROM THE RIVER TO THE SEA
PALESTINE WILL BE FREE!
Works Cited
Ehrlich, R. S. (2020, February 18). Israel lends Philippines a helping strategic hand. Asia Times. https://asiatimes.com/2019/07/israel-lends-philippines-a-helping-strategic-hand/
Goodfriend, S. (2022, February 21). How the occupation fuels Tel Aviv’s booming AI sector. Foreign Policy. https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/02/21/palestine-israel-ai-surveillance-tech-hebron-occupation-privacy/
Nashif, N. (2021, December 10). How Israel turned Palestine into a surveillance tech dystopia . Middle East Eye. https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/israel-palestine-surveillance-tech-dystopia
Nodutdol. (2023, October 20). Nodutdol 노둣돌 Palestine Solidarity Statement. Instagram. https://www.instagram.com/p/CynzyCFNhuf/?img_index=4