Radical Soul

Antonieta Paco, AKA Sonia Sass, views her sex work as priestess work. A part of the sacred lineage that extends back to temple priestesses. In this episode, we talk about how she became a mind/body/soul healer, how she explored her own indigenous roots and those of the communities, all around the country, that she found herself connected to. She also explains her work as a sex worker activist, and why it's such an important topic right now.As discussed in the episode, here's Antonieta's list of sex worker advocacy organizations to support:

St. James Infirmary

Sex Workers Outreach Project (SWOP)

Amnesty International

Red Umbrella Fund

PLAPERTS

European Sex Workers' Rights Alliance

And more about my guest:In 2010, Antonieta attended the Southwest Institute of Healing Arts in Tempe, AZ. She then graduated and became a certified Mind Body Wellness Practitioner, 200 Hour Registered Yoga Teacher, Hypnotherapist, Past-Life Regressionist, and Life Coach. Antonieta, also known as Sonia Sass, has been an important ally and activist for sex workers and human rights for 13 years. She has been involved in various forms of SW and is a proud BDSM educator, nude model, and dancer. She focuses on a variety of styles that include Latin, tribal, pole dance, hip-hop, and burlesque. Antonieta is also an activist, dancer, poet, and strong woman of Maya and Meshika roots who embodies the strength of a warrior and the essence of the Goddess here to restore the ecology and the people through her teachings and her magic.

Learn more at priestessa.com or follow Antonieta on Instagram @priestess_ap

Follow Jera on Twitter: @thejerabrown or Instagram: @thejerabrown. Check out Jera's newsletter Radical Soul for news, profiles, and musings about modern spiritual movements that center justice, offer healing from religious trauma, and reject white and Christian supremacy.

Transcript to this episode.

Chicago-based burlesque artist Jenn Freeman, also known as Po'Chop about burlesque as a spiritually healing tool, the erotic as the holy spirit, and Jenn/Po'Chop's work creating sacred spaces and art on the Chicago South Side. As their artist statement so beautifully explains, "Our work is a reimagining of Lord as (Audre) Lorde where worship is a space where the erotic is regarded as the highest knowledge and ancestors are whispered into walls made of brown bags. Our healing is urgent. Through edifying the legacies of Black women and femmes we heal from the lessons we learned between pews."

Learn more at itspochop.com or follow Jenn/Po'Chop on Instagram @itspochop.

Follow Jera on Twitter: @thejerabrown or Instagram: @thejerabrown. Check out Jera's newsletter Radical Soul for news, profiles, and musings about modern spiritual movements that center justice, offer healing from religious trauma, and reject white and Christian supremacy.

Transcript of this episode.

Tristan Taormino’s new memoir A Part of the Heart Can’t Be Eaten combines her relationship with her father who died from AIDS, coming into her own queer identity, and becoming the sex educator and porn creator that she is today.

As her astrologer who read her birth chart explained, Tristan is living in her dharma.

There’s a beautiful theme of learning to trust her intuition throughout the book, and I asked Tristan about this. How do we learn to build a sense of intuition? You’ll find some of the highlights about this topic below.

Listen to the full episode for more about relationships with dykes, acknowledging and exploring power dynamics, what it means to be a spiritual leader, and more.

About My Guest

Tristan Taormino is a writer, speaker, sex educator, and host of the podcast Sex Out Loud. A former syndicated columnist for The Village Voice, she is the author of numerous books, including Opening Up: A Guide to Creating and Sustaining Open Relationships, Down and Dirty Sex Secrets, and The Ultimate Guide to Anal Sex for Women. She is the founding editor of the annual Best Lesbian Erotica anthologies, editor of The Ultimate Guide to Kink: BDSM, Role Play, and the Erotic Edge, and coeditor of The Feminist Porn Book: The Politics of Producing Pleasure. Taormino has won four Lambda Literary Awards and eight Feminist Porn Awards. She lives in Los Angeles.Follow Tristan on Instagram or Twitter @tristantaormino. Follow Jera on Instagram or Twitter @thejerabrown.

We all get to define what spirituality is for us. Jimanekia Eborn, also known as the Trauma Queen, has done this for herself. One of her spiritual practices is a bath with different oils—something that connects her to her body. And on this episode of the podcast, she encourages listeners to figure out what unique spiritual practices work for them.We talk about relationships and trauma, femmes and the unhealthy expectation to trust quickly, and building self-trust.More about my guest:Jimanekia Eborn is a Queer Media Consultant, Comprehensive Sex Educator, and Sexual Assault & Trauma Expert. With a Master's in Health Psychology, she has worked in mental health for the past 13 years in sex education and sexual trauma support. Jimanekia is the host of Trauma Queen —a podcast for survivors of assault and our allies, and the Founder of Tending the Garden, a non-profit for sexual assault survivors of different marginalized identities. In 2020, Jimanekia co-founded Centaury Co., bringing increased representation to the field of Intimacy Coordination in the film industry.

Learn more at traumaqueen.love or follow Jimanekia on Instagram @Jimanekia.

Follow Jera on Twitter: @thejerabrown or Instagram: @thejerabrown

Check out Jera's newsletter Radical Soul for news, profiles, and musings about modern spiritual movements that center justice, offer healing from religious trauma, and reject white and Christian supremacy.

Transcript for this episode here.

Janet Hardy has a very public body. As a traveling kink educator and public player, it’s no leap to believe that thousands of people around the world have studied her body in public scenes or demonstrations. And as an author, much of Hardy’s work has centered around her own embodied experiences. As such, she has given us access to her body in a profoundly intimate way.

Now in her late sixties, Janet reflects on her aging body and her changing relationship with pain, sex, gender, time, and mortality.

She opens the book by talking about how she used to teach classes on pain processing which teaches you to divorce “pain from all the feelings that usually accompany it, such as fear, anger or worry.” Learning to process physical pain is exceptionally helpful for kinksters who use pain in their play, not to mention anyone living with chronic pain, preparing for childbirth, recovery from injuries, etc. But she found the same advice could be applied to emotional pain and learning to process feelings like “jealousy, displacement, or insecurity.”

“But all my techniques and practices fall short when I think about my own aging and especially about its inevitable endpoint — which is to say, death,” she writes. “That may be one sensation that’s too big for me to process.”

The book is an attempt to process it all, from how her body is forcing her to slow down and change what she enjoys to the aging of her partner and the death of her father.

Listen to the interview for more on ageism and accessibility issues in alternative communities, Janet’s warning to folks exploring kink and other intense embodied practices, and more.

And pick up a copy of Notes of an Aging Pervert for a humorous reflection on aging as an alt-lifer.

About the Guest

Janet W. Hardy is the author or coauthor of more than a dozen groundbreaking books about relationships and sexuality, including The Ethical Slut, which has sold more than 300,000 copies to date.

She spent the first three decades of her life believing that she was the only person in the world who got turned on by thinking about spanking. She wrote her first book, The Sexually Dominant Woman, to help create a world in which nobody else would ever be that clueless.

Janet has traveled the world as a speaker and teacher on topics ranging from ethical multipartner relationships to erotic spanking and beyond. She has appeared in documentary films, television shows,and more podcasts and radio shows than she can count. She has narrated audio versions of many of her books, and looks forward to doing more.

Janet spent a quarter century as editor-in-chief of Greenery Press, the firm she founded in 1992, which went on to publish dozens of books about alternative sexuality and relationships. While she has retired from being a publisher, she goes on writing, drawing, editing and educating about sexuality.

Janet lives the life of a kinky poly queer genderbent geezer in Eugene, Oregon, with her spouse and a whole lot of pets.