Carolyn Gage Written Interview
Interview with highly prolific and highly insightful lesbian playwright Carolyn Gage
DJ: I had the privilege of seeing a stage reading of The Abolition Plays: Head in the Game and The Intimacy Coordinator that was on youtube for a limited time. The plays really got into the details of what prostitution is on an analytical level as well as showing how women in the sex trade can themselves deeply internalize its logic. The owner of the "boxing girl" fighting ring believed that she was offering a more compassionate alternative to other fighting rinks in Head in the Game. I've personally had a hard time explaining to people without direct experience with the sex trade about what it psychologically does to people's moral sense. I'd love to know what inspired you to not only write on this topic but to take an analytic lens in deconstructing the power exchange of prostitution.
CG: The first play, Head in the Game, was inspired by an interview I saw on the Internet with the author Rachel Moran, a brilliantly eloquent anti-prostitution (“abolitionist”) activist and author (Paid For: My Journey Through Prostitution) who was prostituted for seven years, from age fifteen to twenty-two. Here is the excerpt that inspired this play:
Interviewer: You describe it [prostitution] as a form of sexual abuse. Tell me why.
Rachel Moran: Because unwanted sex is unwanted sex…
Interviewer: Even if you’re being paid for it.
Rachel Moran: Oh, yes. Money doesn’t have any kind of magical quality that can remove the feelings that you feel in yourself when you’re having unwanted sex… and I always make the comparison if I was to hand somebody twenty quid and give them a smack in the mouth, that wouldn’t do anything to take the sting out the slap, you know.
Interviewer: And I suppose some people might say, “Well, there is a difference there in that a woman might offer herself for paid sex rather than offer herself for a slap in the mouth.” You know… is there another side to that argument at all, in your mind, Rachel?
Rachel Moran: Well, no, because—the funny part about it is receiving violence for money is part of prostitution. There’s plenty of men out there who’d pay you to do exactly that.
[Excerpt from RTÉ’s Morning Edition, 2013. Interview of Rachel Moran by Keelin Shanley.]
Rachel’s analogy is brilliant, and I decided to build a one-act around the conceit of males buying access to women’s bodies for “boxing.” Obviously, what is going on is not boxing. Just because the male is throwing punches as if he were boxing, the lack of freedom or reciprocality on the part of the “sparring partner” make it clear that she is in no way a partner, in no way boxing, in no way recreating—and that what is actually going on is paid abuse. Only in a patriarchal culture would the activity resulting from paid access to a woman’s body be given the same name as an intimacy that is mutually welcomed and mutually reciprocated. Even outside of prostitution, “sex” has traditionally been defined by men, from their perspective, and 2 serving their interests. This is evident from the continued use of the word “foreplay” to describe activities that are overwhelmingly main events with regard to women’s arousal and orgasm. The myth of the vaginal orgasm still holds sway in a popular culture that routinely misapplies the word “vagina” to refer to the “vulva”—in effect, performing a linguistic clitorectomy. For millions of women, clitorectomy is literal. I want my audiences to consider why they would characterize prostitution as the selling of “sex,” when only one person is desiring it. The second play, The Intimacy Coach, was inspired by an accidental posting I made on the Facebook page of a group of women and other members of underrepresented genders who all work in theatre. Someone had posted about how awesomely enlightened young women are today. Thinking this was a group of older lesbians, I automatically typed… “except about prostitution and pornography.” As soon as I posted this, I realized where I was and thought “oh, shit.” (This group has almost 30 thousand members.) Within seconds the pile-on began. These awesomely enlightened young women were alternately patronizing and shaming me… accusing me of being out-of-touch (“Did I realize that prostitution was legal in Australia today?” “Didn’t I know that it was oppressive of me to impose my puritanical/religious standards on other people?” “Do I not understand how important prostitution is to people of color and how racist my position is?”) Within minutes there were dozens of posts. I think the most generationally telling comment came from a young woman who actually admired my work. She was compassionately offering an old lady some career advice: “Carolyn, this is not a good look.” I took a day or two to let the pile-on play out, and then I responded with statistics, citations of writings by exited women including first-person narratives about prostitution in Australia. I cited the work of a friend and colleague, an exited Native woman who is doing incredible activism around the trafficking of women and girls, especially indigenous, on the ships on the Great Lakes. I’m pretty sure I referred them to the research foundation of Melissa Farley and to Rachel Moran’s book. And I shared a very personal narrative regarding a prostituted woman who had been my roommate. She was disappeared/murdered. No one posted anything after this. Zero engagement. They had called me out, and I had showed up… and there was not a single apology for the pile-on of agist assumptions and false accusations. I’m thinking, “Not a good look, Gen Z and Alphas.” This lack of accountability stuck in my craw. Now one thing that this Facebook group is, is very enthusiastic about the new industry of intimacy coordinators in theatre in film. I am enthusiastic about this also. It is the job of the intimacy coordinator to ensure the safety and comfort of the actors who are being required to perform sexual or romantic scenes, and they do this by assuring that the actors are continually consenting to all scenes of intimacy and that all scenes of intimacy are performed according to a previously agreed-to choreography. These agreements are put into writing. These FB group members are very clear about harassment, sexual abuse, and rape that happens in theatre. They are the first to scream “oppression” in a scene involving a kiss if there is not an intimacy coordinator on board. I mean they are scrupulously aware of boundaries and legal rights in the arena of being paid performers in theatre. But what about prostitution? The prostituted 3 woman is performing. As Rachel Moran has so clearly explained, the sex is not welcome and not desired by the prostituted woman. Obviously, she is performing. What about her rights? And this massive disconnect in the minds of these awesomely enlightened young women disturbed me. It still disturbs me. I wrote The Intimacy Coordinator to highlight that disconnect and that contradiction. What about hiring intimacy coordinators in brothels, where 70% of the women report being raped at least once a year? So that’s the long story behind The Abolition Plays. I also wrote them because we have 40 years of statistics on the harm of prostitution and it has apparently not changed the culture here in the US. What will it take? I have always maintained that an ounce of culture is worth a pound of politic. These plays are fifteen and twenty-five minutes… perfect for classrooms and conferences, because they leave a lot of time for the audience to discuss and process the radical paradigm shifting that has just occurred.
DJ: When writing plays about the sex trade, do you find yourself writing for an audience who has direct experience or an audience without direct experience? In "The Abolition Plays: Head in the Game and The Intimacy Coordinator" it felt very much like this was content people with direct experience could deeply relate to but also like something I could show people without such life history.
CG: I write for both. I want to bear active witness to my friends and colleagues who are exited and who are activists. And, as I said, I want to give activists cultural tools that can radically “rearrange the furniture” in the brains of my audience in terms of how they frame the issue.
DJ: Do you incorporate Marxist analysis of the sex industry into your work/research? If so, what books/theory do you recommend to others interested in this topic?
CG:Well, if you mean, do I apply a Marxist model of “workers controlling the means of distribution” to prostitution, no… because I understand it to be paid abuse. If you mean, do I look at the oppression of women and the demographics of who is being trafficked and prostituted as an outcome of class oppression, then the answer is a qualified yes. It’s not white, upper-middle-class women being exploited. Do I believe that prostitution will disappear if or when capitalism is overthrown? No. That reminds me of Students for a Democratic Society back in the 1960’s, when they were confronted on their anti-feminism. They took the position that sexism was some kind of side effect of all these other “real” oppressions, and that it would naturally disappear as socialism prevailed. Wisely, the women walked out, and, lo, the Women’s Liberation Movement was born. Male sexual predation and sexual entitlements don’t, in my mind, fit neatly into a Marxist framework. Women need to walk out of the left, out of the liberal feminism, like our foremothers did.
DJ: What is it like to produce stories about lesbian lives over the course of decades? Do you find that other audiences are receptive to your plays?
CG: I could write volumes on this subject. In a nutshell, the censorship and shunning/scapegoating have been consistent across the decades. About every ten years, there is a new excuse for why lesbian-feminist work must not be allowed… but what has never changed is the essential white-out of the work and the witch-burning of those who, in the words of blacklisted playwright Lilian Hellman, “cannot and will not cut our conscience to fit this year’s fashions.” When my plays are done, regardless of venue, they have a long history of being very well-received. My issues are never with the audiences. 4 That’s my wheelhouse. That’s about my craft. My issues are with the gatekeepers. And that’s going to take a strong and separate culture of lesbian theatre.
DJ: You explore the realities of women in the art world in "Artemisia and Hildegard." One thing that stood out to me was Hildegard's experience of spiritual abuse in a Christian mystic context. In the play Hildegard was depicted as having rationalized the experience to herself and Artemisia advocates for her to understand what happened as torture. As someone who has been involved in spiritual art spaces, I have seen many women who use metaphysics and some forms of psychotherapy to rationalize abuse they have been put through. Can you say more about your decision to include that part of Hildegard's history in the play? What would you like women who are currently rationalizing having been torture or abused in the name of religion to know/reflect upon.
CG: Well, religious abuse is traumatic, and all of us—not just victims—need to be enormously more trauma literate in this culture. And, hand-in-glove with that, also addiction literate. We are a culture of the walking wounded. There is a reason why the TV series “The Walking Dead” has made it to eleven seasons. We are living an analogous psycho-social reality. Victims find ingenious ways to protect ourselves from emotional overwhelm, and these syndromes (denial, projection, amnesia, fusion with the perpetrator, dissociation, etc.) often can and have saved our sanity and our lives. I respect that… and I also submit that these are individual strategies that will not move us toward a feminist and childnurturant culture. So perhaps we can all study up more on trauma, locate ourselves on various axes of survival strategies and begin with the baby steps to transition to healthier and more socially aware understandings of our situation… which will lead us to more informed responses. I know that’s a very vague answer, but religious abuse is a tricky thing. It’s like a tumor that has wrapped itself around the body’s aorta. Religion is very intertwined with authentic spirituality and just ripping it out because one has had a sudden realization about the patriarchal abuses… well, that can be extremely dangerous. It’s like taking down the disc operating system of a computer before you have uploaded a new system.. I know… mixing metaphors here. But I think it’s important for victims of religious abuse to do a very thorough inventory of what was good, what was helpful, what was beautiful… and what was toxic, what was deceptive, what was predatory in their former religious experience. And make very conscious choices about transferring the good into new practices, new ethical philosophies… and especially in locating new communities. Because of the lack of accountability that I experienced with religions, I deprogrammed and still deprogram with Alanon (26 years and counting) and with cautiously curated elements of Dianic Wicca.
DJ: There has been a massive increase in interest in sex trade abolition due to "sex positivity" deeply hurting many young women of my generation. People are beginning to understand that things such as BDSM, prostitution etc are often sites of extreme violence. There is an increased awareness that prostitution is not trans liberation but is actually one of the violent forms of oppression for trans and gender non conforming people. There is also an increase in people who formerly identified as queer questioning queer theory. Can you recommend some of your plays and publications for this new generation?
CG: All of my work attempts to reflect a strong lesbian-feminist perspective. My entire catalogue of plays is online (I have something like 90 plays and 9 collections of plays) and everything can be ordered with links from my website… or Kindle, or Amazon. You can get PDF downloads, paperbacks or eBooks. Many of my plays center lesbian butches and/or survivors of sexual abuse and there are two indexes on my website for these. One is titled “The Butch Visibility Project” (Google it!) and the 5 other is the Special Index for Plays that Deal with Sexual Violence Against Women and Girls… and this is sorted into categories like “incest,” “impact on intimacy,” “link between sexual abuse and suicide,” and so on. And you can always email me with what you’re looking for. I do also have a book of daily meditations, which is titled Like There’s No Tomorrow: Meditations for Women Leaving Patriarchy. And I have four volumes of sermons from The Lesbian Tent Revival… I also sell these in audio format… more than 24 hours of lectures that are hilarious, searing, incisive, and so on. It is difficult to describe the Lesbian Tent Revival. But it’s a unique combination of comedy, deep feminist politic, communal ritual, and riotous high spirits, intended to revive that old-time feral lesbian hilarity, feel-good sisterhood, dyke ferocity, and Amazonian truth-telling.
DJ: You wrote a musical about lesbian sadomasochists vs "land dykes." (Women who wanted a lesbian separatist back to the land movement) Firstly, that's amazing. Second, what inspired this idea and how has it been received by audiences?
CG: You are referring to Women on the Land. I wrote book and lyrics and this has never had any music attached to it, so, understandably, it has never been produced. I wish I had music and I do think it’s a very solid show with strong musical theatre chops. It is however a show that puts lesbian separatism—practice and theory—front and center. And that has never historically been for the faint of heart. Yes, you can order it from my website. I highly recommend it.
DJ: What are your thoughts on the narrative that sadomasochists and pornographers "won the lesbian wars?" CG: Well, I can hardly answer it better than to quote the first woman to hold federal office in the United States and the only member of Congress to vote against war with Japan in 1941… So here is our lesbian foremother, Jeanette Rankin: “You can no more win a war than you can win an earthquake.” We will continue to tell the truth of our experience and we will continue to document the harm. And when we do this, we are defending our homeland. Historically, invaders have trouble holding foreign lands.
DJ: As someone in her mid twenties currently witnessing how queer theory and sex positivity has utterly failed my generation, I have to ask, how does it feel to be right about so many for so many decades? I can find very old plays of yours that read as though they could have been written this year.
CG: Well, I am autistic, and autism certainly informs my answer to this. Writing these plays is my area of special interest, an interest I began to develop with dollhouses and dolls when I was very, very young... maybe five. And if you know anything about the “special interests” of those of us on the spectrum, it is that these interests are really wired in. “Takiwatanga” is the Maori word for autism and it means “In their own time and space.” These plays constitute that world of my own time and space. It is profoundly joyful for me when other people, via my plays, are actually able to enter my world of time and space. I live in an appalling state of isolation, as do most neurodivergent people in this neurotypical world. The wall between us becomes semi-permeable whenever my work is produced. I don’t think it’s so much a matter of being right, as it is being validated. As you have just done with these incisive questions. Thank you for that. Deeply appreciated!
DJ: What are you currently working on?
CG: I’m so glad you asked! It’s a play called Starpattern, and the context is the 1966 mass shooting at the University of Texas at Austin… but it’s also about “How do we face a situation over which we 6 are completely powerless and where wanton destruction is ongoing—as with our present climate catastrophe and ecosystem collapse? That’s a tough, tough question, and so far, the answer has been denial, dissociation, and distraction… oh, and leaving the solution to those who are incentivized by the carnage. The sniper in Austin carried on his rampage for 90 minutes before he was killed, and during that time hundreds of students and townspeople stood on the periphery, just out of his range of fire, helplessly watching. One of the first victims was an eighteen-year-old woman, Claire Wilson, who was starting her eighth month of pregnancy. She lay wounded on the broiling pavement under the sniper’s tower, and nobody had the courage to rescue her. Suddenly another young woman came running out, directy under the eye of the sniper, and lay down next to Claire. She kept Claire conscious and talking for almost an hour. Finally Claire was rescued, and she attributed her survival to this woman’s presence. The woman was Rita Starpattern, and in this metaphor for patriarchal hell, in the shadow of a phallic tower and pinned down by a deranged madman who had just murdered his wife and mother, Rita established a feminist beachhead. Rita was a lesbian, and she initiated and sustained a stunning counternarrative, an alternative paradigm to a scenario of unimaginable terror. This play is a tribute to the courage of Rita and Claire, intended to offer encouragement to those of us who find ourselves immobilized by the scope of devastation we are all facing in 2021.