We speak to Sai jaiden Lillith and Eve X about Assfest, a brand spankin' new (no pun intended) sexuality festival coming to Sydney next week and Melbourne in early 2024.
Can you tell us a little about Assfest - What inspired the festival, what are you hoping to achieve, who can attend, and who’s involved?
ASSfest started as a joke about how we could put on a festival called ASSfest, and thus the Australian School of Sexuality was born!
But seriously, we wanted to create a container that could hold all the amazing educators and collectives that we love and believe in. We have an educational collective called Sacred Primal Arts, but that’s more suited for single facilitators, and those who need a hand with administration and marketing. ASS was designed to be capacious enough to contain entire collectives, hence Sacred Primal Arts is a collective under the banner of ASS.
We want to platform educators providing valuable knowledge on topics that we’re passionate about and to provide a space where a variety of voices are platformed - the diversity of views and practices is something that we value and want to promote. We frame our membership and conduct around a rigorous Code of Ethics that we’ve put together. It’s a living document and one that is informed by our collaborators and community. Within this Code of Ethics we embrace a diversity of views and practices, and also value non-hierarchical behaviour, compassion and restorative justice practices.
We’re aiming to bring together different parts of the Australian sexuality community to offer diverse and accessible educational spaces to the general public as well as networks of support and growth for sex-positive culture in Australia.
We welcome everyone over the age of 18 who wants to learn more about consent, their own sexuality and the possibilities open to them! It is an inclusive event, meaning ALL are welcome, and none will be judged. All we ask is for the participants to maintain a compassionate and curious mind, and also to respect their own consent and boundaries as well as those of others!
Currently the Australian School of Sexuality collective includes Sacred Primal Arts (Sai Jaiden Lillith and Eve X), Mistress Tokyo, The Erotic Edge, Somatic Intimacy, von Riga, EJ Love, Anna Morrigan, Anne O Nomis, Mistress Electra Amore, Intimate Horizons, The Eroticurean and Mistress Danielle Rubber. We’ve got others interested, but we’re refining our Code of Ethics before expanding.
What are some of the events running at Assfest that you’re excited about?
Our inaugural event is ASSFEST23 in Sydney on the 23rd and 24th of September. We’ve got a diverse lineup of eight facilitators across six workshops, encompassing consent education, embodiment, kink and sacred sexuality. Our facilitators include past and former sexworkers, professional BDSM providers, sacred sexuality practitioners and sexuality coaches. We’re committed to bringing together aspects of the sexuality industry, for a broader conversation on how to create a sex-positive society.
We’re very excited to be platforming Mistress Tokyo’s Mindful Consent workshop, as we’ve seen the powerful effects of framing consent as an internal process and check-in, as much as it is an interactive process with the other person involved. We’ve got a heavy emphasis on consent from a variety of views, with Somatic Intimacy providing touch based exercises designed to explore deeper into consent practices. The Erotic Edge, EJ Love and Anna Morrigan will be providing pathways for integrating a variety of alternative spiritual practices and philosophies into BDSM, for those seeking to venture further down this path. We (Sacred Primal Arts) will be launching a new workshop, Erotic Flow, which is about learning movement practices and philosophies to deeply integrate flow with your existing skills, and Von Riga is teaching a unique take on Shibari patterns!
We’re also hosting a Temple night on 23 September which will be a guided, interactive space for participants to engage with each other and the practices that they’ve learned in a juicy, ritualistic, fun, and safe environment.
We’ll be bringing ASSFest to Melbourne in March next year, and we have plans for festivals dedicated to consent, shibari and sex work. We have plans for research, activism, and developing spaces for peer support and development. If all goes well, we’ll reach out internationally. We’d love to be in touch with other sex-positive communities and organisations around the globe!
Why do you think it’s important for sex workers to be involved in the sexual education space?
Sex workers have a unique insight into intimacy and sexuality issues. The work itself is a learning process, and for some it becomes work they teach.
We believe that Sex workers have been at the forefront of much sexual awareness and education and that their voices have been overlooked and invalidated in the past. We believe that sex workers have always been involved in the sexual education space, and we want to bring the wealth of knowledge that sex industry professionals have and their unique viewpoints to a wider audience. We aim to platform the voices of individual workers with the amplification that our platform and alliances can bring to the wider sexual education landscape. Our knowledge can be incredibly valuable to the broader community, but it often remains unseen because of the stigma of our work.
We also believe it is important that sex workers have access to education that can further their praxis, and provide pathways of accessibility for this. Our collective is composed primarily of current or past sex workers, and we’re proud to prioritise and platform those who have worked and continue to work in the industry.
We are also committed to education about sex work including labour rights, philosophy, history, politics, and spirituality. Our vision of ASS is to platform the voices of those in our industries, specifically around our attitudes to sexuality, the industries which support it, and erotic censorship to a wider audience. We believe that in Australia we have a unique position of being able to openly speak about sex work due to the decriminalisation and activism of our peers and forebears. We fully intend to use this position to bring stronger activism to the places in the world which struggle under criminalisation and harmful policies such as the Nordic Model and FOSTA SESTA.
What are some things which are commonly overlooked in the sex education and sexual wellness space?
The sexuality industry is COMPLEX! Sex work comes in many different flavours, including full service, stripping, pornography, online work, and BDSM. Sacred sexuality and the coaching areas are similarly complex. There’s medical and psychological interfaces with sexuality education, as well as the pleasure industry, which includes adult toys. There are academics, writers, bloggers, and media experts interfacing with this subject. But we’re often all talking wildly different languages about similar concepts. ASS is a space for these different discourses to come together and learn from each other.
In sex work there’s a concept called the whorearchy, where we ascribe more or less value to individuals based on the type of sexwork they engage in. One of the issues that we see cropping up often in sex education and wellness spaces is the platforming of one point of view as the “one true way”, often by punching down onto another belief system or practice. We’ve found that while some practitioners are preaching freedom of choice and opening up sexuality, they are replicating the restrictive and judgemental codifications of the worst and most patriarchal parts of the judeo christian frameworks they claim to be moving away from. The same thing happens across the broader sexuality community. In a truly sex positive culture we seek to understand the reasons these different parts of the industry exist, acknowledging and seeking solutions for the negative aspects, and being open and willing to new or different ways of being and thinking.
We’re very passionate about being non-judgemental, non-hierarchical, and inclusive with the way that we present our praxis, holding the viewpoint that no one person or practice can possibly hold all the answers!
Can you speak about your own experiences with sex education and how you got involved in the space?
Sai: In some ways I’ve had a very open sex education for my entire life - my parents never shied away from sexuality. Scientific and educational texts around sexuality were always readily available to me, ranging from medical encyclopedias to popular culture sources such as Cleo, authors like Tracey Cox, and personal experimentation and open discussions with my peers.
I returned to the sex education space because of sex work and my desire to upskill; through attending Shibari workshops with my rigger when I first entered the BDSM scene, and then holding space for educators through my work as event manager for Sanctuary (now defunct) in Sydney. I realised I had unique knowledge and methods of transmitting that knowledge. One of my strengths is to be able to communicate clearly to a wide range of people by understanding the differences in communication styles and being adaptable in my communications to most effectively convey knowledge. I first entered the education scene as a presenter at OzKinkFest, and now here we are!
There was also a period of my life where I had considered a pathway as a teacher, as there was always something about holding a safe, adaptable and non-judgemental space for the transmission of knowledge that appealed to me. It’s funny that we’ve come full circle to be able to also honour this part of myself in a way that I never would have anticipated!
Eve: I entered the sexuality industry 25 years ago, initially as a stripper. I followed many other passions including books, food and academia, but have worked consistently in the sexuality industry for the last six years. I’ve worked as an escort, ProDomme, pornographer, sacred sexuality practitioner and embodiment coach and have been regularly performing ritual shibari theatre with Sai Jaiden Lillith as Infernal Desire Machine since 2019.
I’m deeply passionate about knowledge, and the application of academic rigour to all of my practices; be they hard BDSM skills, psychological analysis, or the spiritual and unseen. Moving into the education field was a natural extension of this rigour and obsession with diving deeply into the fields that I occupy – in this case, sexuality.
We founded Sacred Primal Arts in 2019, moments before the pandemic. In early 2023 this project was renewed - and we now run regular workshops in Melbourne and Sydney across a range of sexuality and embodiment topics, and the cohort has expanded to include other independent educators. ASS was born from a desire to collaborate with other educational collectives, creating connective networks of both support and exploration.
🍑 Check out the Australian School for Sexuality's website for more info about the workshops taking place at Assfest Sydney and Assfest Melbourne and how to get your tickets! 🍑
Are you a sex worker with an event you'd like to share? We'd love to hear from you!
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