Risk! — Tina Horn

Transcript for episode 9 of Free Sex podcast

Tina Horn

Listen to this episode on your podcast player of choice.

Adam

What does free sex mean to you?

Do you ever think you’d have more sex, or better sex, if only you could change one thing? What is that thing? 

From Aunt Nell, this is... Free Sex... with me, Adam Zmith. 

I’m a writer, podcast producer, walker, talker, thinker, wanker. I started having sex at 29, TWENTY-NINE, and I’ve been obsessed ever since. What stopped me? I’m on a mission to find out how, as a society, we hold each other back in sex. What could a world of ‘free sex’ look like? 

For me: free sex is a world with more places to fuck AND without sexually transmitted infections. How bout you? What you into?

Every episode I speak to a different human with a unique idea for what free sex could mean.

This podcast is fully pansexual and gender fluid: from mild to wild, everyone is welcome. 

Let’s go! 

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My guest in this episode is Tina Horn. Yeah, I know, great name for a sex person, right?

I came across Tina when she hosted a Wondery podcast called Operator, about the sex workers who ran sex phone lines in the 90s. Operator is a gripping documentary series, you should check it out. I fangirled Tina in her DMs, and it turns out she’d read my book on poppers. It’s a match. She’s also the host-producer of Why Are People Into That?, a podcast about sex, kink, gender and love. And she’s a writer of articles and books about underground sexual politics, AND the sci-fi rebel comic book series SFSX, Safe Sex.

I LOVED talking to Tina - so let’s get right into it…

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Adam: Tina Horn, welcome to Free Sex.

Tina: Hi Adam, I'm so happy to be here.

Adam: Oh, I'm so glad you're here to talk about this with me because I think that you can really help me out and help me to imagine and dream and wonder about what Free Sex is. I'm here to help. Let's just dive right in. What does Free Sex mean to you?

Tina: Okay, so when you asked me this question, A couple of things came to my mind, but the first thing that I want to talk about is the idea of risk, right? And risk is something that we talk about a lot in harm reduction in the harm reduction work that I do in the harm reduction framework that I bring to a lot of my Literary work and also the movement work that I'm a part of, especially with the sex worker rights movement and Essentially the that is the idea of the risk aware assessment, right?

So instead of having an institution like the church or Medical institution or the state telling you this is what you have to do This is how you have to do it. This is why you have to do it. This is what you can and can't do. This is what's normal. This is what's abnormal. Supporting people making risk aware assessments is essentially respecting their dignity and autonomy to make their own choices, which includes making their own mistakes, right?

And making our own mistakes, right? So when we're talking about harm reduction, Yeah. And sexuality, something that I think almost anyone can relate to is the idea of safe or safer sex, right? So if the church or the state or even a medical institution or even a school or community says to you we're going to practice abstinence only education. We're not going to teach you about pleasure. We're not going to talk about identity. Just do this and don't do this and you won't die. And you won't get it.

Adam: You will get a horrible disease. 

Tina: You won't get a horrible disease. You won't get knocked up when you're, you'll only get knocked up when you're supposed to or knock someone up when you're supposed to.

And God forbid that you have a kind of sex that doesn't knock people up. Cause you like, don't have the like proper bits for that or whatever. And And then, and so then harm reduction is the idea of giving a comprehensive education about what are, what is the reality of the risks that are involved in different kinds of sex and then providing resources like barriers like condoms even like lube you free and affordable and accessible testing so that you know your status, encouragement to share your status with your partner or partners.

So that's harm reduction, right? And and but more broadly speaking, even taking the idea of risk out of the idea that like, when you have sex, you're risking getting an STI, you're risking getting knocked up you're risking the original sexually transmitted disease, which is feelings.

Adam: Yeah, it's not just physical, right?

Tina: You can, you could catch feelings at any moment. I think that if I try to imagine a world where Sex is free, as in freedom, as in liberation, as in we're all getting free together. I think that while we, it's useful to, it's a useful practice to conceptualize a utopia where there's No risks and there's no dangers and there's no edge.

And like abnormality is not defined by normality and like , nobody thinks nobody like eroticizes themselves being a pervert because no one is accusing them of being a pervert. I don't know. I guess like as much as I like to. Live in my imagination and conceptualize that sometimes and I know that it can be politically useful.

I'm also very concerned with the world that we have now and that we're living with now and what I can wrap my mind around and I don't know my legs around now and risk is a part of that and Yeah and, so when I say risk, trying to imagine for my myself and my comrades and my loved ones and also like young people coming up who need a different kind of education than what I got.

I don't know about you. Like in school or from family or for, from communities and especially the way that we as queers, I think have a duty to look out for one another and look out for to impart the gay agenda onto young people. The gay agenda of pleasure and liberation of pleasure.

Adam: Exactly. So if I could summarize then this answer of free sex from you, it's free sex is sex that is not without risk because That's not really possible, as you're saying, free, or at least it's just, it's not it's not imminent. So free sex is not sex that's without risk. It's sex that, where people have the tools and the capacity and the understanding to understand what risks they have.

And and feel free enough to make their own decision with their body about what risks they're open to taking in order to have their pleasure.

Tina: Exactly that, and even hearing that Oh, yes, and. Yes, and, but hearing that reflected back from you was something that is a crucial part of this that I haven't mentioned yet is what happens after you take the risk, which is a consequence and accountability to your actions and your choices, right?

So that's also something that we have a responsibility to our communities to, to Teach processes of accountability to interrogate which ones are working and which ones aren't. To talk about ideas like Sarah Schulman's idea that conflict is not abuse. And to, yeah, and just to teach consequences and to teach the, I don't know, the sort of choose your own adventure conditions. If this happens, then this might happen. This might happen. What are you going to do if that thing does happen? And what what are you going to do since this thing did happen since you you hurt someone, you you did contract an STI, even the idea that I have herpes, it's not the end of the world and, and also the Just vital importance of actually of spreading like good information about HIV AIDS and PrEP and I it like this scenario comes to my mind that People have this idea of this person seems clean or this person seems dirty or even, People are like, oh, I don't want to go to a sex party.

I'm gonna I'm gonna catch a bug. I'm gonna get - There's dirty people there. Yeah. Yeah or the, if you're a slut Statistically you're more likely to be XYZ thing, but The truth of the matter is that people who are getting comprehensive education about sexuality, about science, about medicine, which is often peer based, right?

Or even coming from culture. Coming from literature and events and and pamphlets and zines that we're giving to each other, like to from podcasts. Yes. Even though obviously there's a lot of disinformation out there, but like some of the most insidious disinformation is coming from institutions that we're supposed to trust.

Adam: That are supposed to be doing the right thing. Yeah.

Tina: Yeah. And yeah. And for the record, I trust some institutions, like the ones that say, take this vaccine. But but we, if you are having sex with someone and that person, Let's just actually say that both of you are getting tested for STIs and you know your status and you also have had the peer support and community and cultural support to feel Not ashamed to bring up those conversations to say like I'm HIV positive But like my viral load is XYZ like these this is the cocktail that I'm on.

I'm on PrEP Etc, etc and then Once you have that information you can make a risk aware assessment about whether whether you want to do anal with that person, whether you want to use condoms, whether, like all of these different things, whereas if you just think that you can tell by looking at someone that they're clean and that person doesn't know their status, they're not on meds, they're not educated, they're not comfortable and educated about using a condom and using lube and all of these different things, then You could you could be more, I'm not a scientist, but my social science understanding and also my common sense tells me that STIs don't spontaneously erupt between queer sluts, yes.

Adam: So that is a horror movie yet to be made.

Tina: I think that's the horror movie that we've been living in since the eighties.

Adam: In terms of, what people think of it.

Tina: Yeah. No, but that's what I'm saying is that The mirror that institutions are holding up to us is that horror movie?

Yeah. So I don't know. I think that even, and even thinking about the emotional side of all of these things, I think that free sex is also accepting that rejection and heartbreak and heartache and like having your heart broken and breaking hearts and being disappointed and like actually living your fantasy and seeing how it's different experientially than it is in your head.

Those are also, yeah, of course those are also risks that are... That are part of the sexually liberated world that I want to be a part of because if people are not putting themselves out there and having experiences, including the good, the bad and the ugly, then they're not Developing like emotional intelligence and critical thinking skills and that they're then like bringing to their other relationships and hopefully learning and growing and talking to their friends, whether they're friends that they.

fuck or like platonic friends like having open dialogue about sexuality and the relationships and not being isolated into little nuclear units.

Adam: So yeah. Yeah. So I want to talk about the prospects of this idea then the harm reduction idea that you're talking about because you've mentioned a few things which ring bells for me as to where I see this kind of thing happening this kind of conversation, definitely peer to peer among other queer men who I speak to a lot about sex and, slightly broader queer and LGBTQ plus community that I'm a, and family that I'm a member of, I see that peer to peer conversation happening, I also see zines, I also see community run organizations and charities et cetera, doing this kind of work, organizing events and workshops and building websites and social media accounts, spreading this kind of information and this kind of approach that you're talking about.

And if I'm being cynical. Coming back to you, Tina, on this point, I want to say that all of those things, all of those places where I see it in the grand scheme, they're tiny. These are like, this still feels like a niche idea. And I'm, I am on board. I'm paying you my two dollars a month subscription for this idea.

You're getting it. Do you know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Hit subscribe. I am there. That's my read of it. That's my cynical read of it that that this is nowhere near getting into a dominant conversation around this, and it's not getting into the institutions, it's not overhauling the sex education system in the school system in the UK at least, I don't know about the US, so what, so that's me being cynical, so I want to ask you, what are the prospects Of this idea of free sex coming from a greater education around harm reduction and around risk.

Tina: Fuck, man. I don't know. I'm just one guy. I'm sorry. No, I'm just like one,

Adam: A lot about movements you're connected. I'm just wondering, you're connected to quite a few movements in the U S especially around sex. So I'm interested in, yeah in like practically where you see that happening and how it can snowball. Cause that's what, it sounds like we're allies here. We want that to snowball. Yeah.

Tina: Yeah. Snowballing. I guess my answer is a little tautological, which is that if we want to help our communities, we have to help our communities. I hear you saying that you want to shift the dominant paradigm and I want that too. You mentioned the movement work that I've been a part of, and I've really just been a very small part of a lot of sex worker rights movements here in the US. I... I try to focus my efforts in terms of, spreading my freaky ideas, or the freaky ideas of the that I share with others through culture and through fiction and nonfiction and journalism and podcasting and zine making and, like yelling at bars. Yeah, but I've changed, so many minds at bars.

But, I have, I have very dear friends and comrades who are doing the really grueling work of trying to influence policy on larger scales and of also doing mutual aid. Yeah. And,

Adam: And is the harm reduction idea around around sex is that that's part of that work that those amazing folks are doing.

Tina: It absolutely is, and I'll tell you why, because one of the rallying cries of the sex worker rights movement is rights not rescue. And so much of what going back to institutions versus community, this sort of binary that I am creating and that maybe we can collapse. Because they're both made of people like Soylent Green, presumably. But so many of the institutions that claim to, Be putting energy into helping sex workers achieve their goals, have a very I have a very rescue approach, a very seeing us all as victims and part of that is a political strategy and part of that is ideological, right? Because part of the reason that whether it's Church organization or or certain journalists or coalitions of the religious right or second wave feminists, TERFs and SWERFs or like all kinds of different groups and organizations.

Part of the reason that they see all. sex workers as victims to be rescued is that they ideologically cannot allow themselves to believe that this might be a choice. And. A choice.

Adam: I knew you were gonna say choice, and to be very. Yeah, that a person would.

Tina: Choose to do that. Yeah. And to be very clear, I'm talking about choices in the context of capitalism, right?

So the choice might be just the like lesser of all evils that is available. It does not have to be an empowered choice. It does not need to be a I'm, I, like I'm going to be. Such a slut anyway, I might as well get paid for it. That can be true for some people and that's okay.

But there isn't, there's a big sort of like pendulum swing between don't see us all as victims. See us as empowered, happy hookers. And it's it's actually. Everybody is somewhere on that spectrum, right? And there's, as much as I, in the past, have tried to speak out about the difference between people who are victims of human trafficking versus consensual sex workers those lines can be quite gray sometimes.

Sometimes people are trafficked, and then... They choose to continue to do sex work when they're not necessarily under the direct control of a manager or an abusive partner. Some people choose to do the work and then they end up in a forced labor condition. It's not it's murky and that is part of the reason that when these...

Institutions try to sweep in and say we're going to rescue all of these damsels in distress and by the way, of course, this is like all about white purity. This is all about the idea of Oh, the modern day slave trade is like gasp defiling pure young white girls. That's.

What it's really all about. But also they're like swooping in and being like, oh yeah, we're gonna save you from this thing that the worst thing that could possibly happen, which is our idea of like your like, purity being violated by being put in these demeaning situations, but poverty is the thing that we need to be Fighting like the circumstances

Adam: because, as you mentioned, this is all happening within the context of capitalism, which, as we know, creates poverty continues to create poverty and

Tina: also enables abusers interpersonally and in groups.

And. And so over and over again, what I have seen firsthand, anecdotally, in my life, with my friends, with my co workers, in my communities, and then also what I see written about when people are, like, actually know how to do the social science and actually know how to do the direct services, is that sex workers want services.

Sex workers want access to their basic needs that they are not getting met, whatever those basic needs are. And they also need. support and culture and community so that they are in a position to decide, is this the work that I want to continue doing? And that's where the harm reduction element of it comes in.

It's going out on the stroll and giving. Instead of saying, Hey, like Jesus doesn't want you to be a whore anymore. Saying like here's condoms, like here is a place that you can come get a cup of coffee and a hot meal. Here's a way that you can get involved in helping others all that stuff.

And, and then also thinking about what are the. Like larger circumstances in our world that means that if people want to patronize a sex worker, whether that is for any kind of intercourse or a blow job, or whether that is for fetish services, or whether that's for watching a show or something digitally mediated, whether it's like, to what degree it's about sex and pleasure and that kind of satisfaction, to what degree it's about companionship and emotional labor What are the circumstances that we could create where like people who are prepared to provide those services and the people who want to patronize those services can meet in a circumstance where there's not an atmosphere of just crushing Shame that that continues to enable conditions of poverty and also enable continues to enable situations of abuse, because I have a lot of Because

Adam: so much is underground, and people feel the need to keep it underground, and then that can facilitate...

Tina: And that's why the other rallying cry of the sex worker rights movement globally is for decriminalization and many, international known human rights organizations like amnesty international, are calling for decriminalization of sex work. And it's not going to be easy because even Decriminalization, which is the removal of bad laws also then creates a circumstance where okay, so now who is in charge of doing the regulating around, around this

Adam: commerce?

Who's looking out for safety, yeah. But decriminalization

Tina: would help us to do that for one another because then we're not spending all of our time fighting surveillance, fighting policing fighting, Sex workers aren't a protected class. So when banks don't want to take our money because we have an only fans like we, we have.

We have no there's no legal precedent for yeah. That's just like one of many examples of the ways that stigma and criminalization work together to keep sex workers from living the lives that we want. And that is going to be different for every person every worker.

Adam: And it's so interesting because if we track this all the way back to where we started on risk and your approach of harm reduction, which is something that you're applying.

to sex education. But also like everything, everything is from that standpoint. It's like this, this episode is called risk. This the, everything is from that standpoint, what you're saying. And when you look at decriminalization of sex work through that lens, you can see how deep decriminalization of sex work is essentially a prerequisite to having.

For us all embodying and enjoying that harm reduction approach in, in how we relate to each other over sex in a way. First of all, sex workers are already taking that approach. They're already thinking about risk all the time in a way that you're talking about. They have to, that's, they're experienced in that.

You can probably say more to me about that. But also just in general, it seems like you have to decriminalize sex work if you are going to finally deliver on this idea of this harm reduction approach around sex, which is all encompassing. Yeah

Tina: It's a first, yeah. And it's decriminalization is going to be the first step and there's going to be so much work, political and ideological work to be done after that.

And so let's, we should get started with that first step so we can figure out all that other stuff and going all the way back to your question about like how are we going to change the world? I really, on a bigger scale. I really do actually believe that we have to take care of ourselves and take care of our loved ones and take care of Our communities and the like subculture, especially if you are like a part of a subculture or counterculture like take care of your own and I'm not a separatist.

I'm not saying that we should like, say, Like the whole system is irredeemable. Make a free sex island. Yeah, listen, free sex island sounds great. Unfortunately, it also sounds like a reality show. Capitalism will come for us on

Adam: our free sex island. That's the next stage of this podcast. 

Tina: Yeah, we get, get at us. Who are the reality TV people? Anyway,

Adam: I don't know who would do that Bravo or something.

Tina: Yeah, Bravo. Exactly. Oh my God, perverts on an island. I don't know. I've got my credit card out.

Adam: Yeah. Wow. This is, this has been so interesting and how it's drawn on the themes that you work with all the time, your own experiences, the communities that you come from, but then also pulling all those together into this big, quite grand idea, which, on the one hand, I can be cynical about and say geez, Tina, we're like a million miles away from that. And on the other hand, the way that you talk about it just makes me. Feel very like empowered and like positive that we could get there because I feel like we have the tools.

Do you feel like you have the tools, ?

Tina: I feel like I have the tools. You positive about this? I'm 100% sure that we just have to love each other. I don't know. Okay. Yeah. Like I,

Adam: I think that's also what the anti sex work Christians say, by the way.

Tina: Oh, yes, but they're hypocrites, so we all know that.

Yes, exactly. Yeah, sex is dangerous. And, I get asked sometimes because I do a lot of fetish work in a lot of different mediums over many years. And I get this question a lot. If people weren't ashamed of their abnormal interests, then, would pro doms be out of a job?

Would we even have...

Adam: How do you answer that when people say that?

Tina: I, it goes back to the question of will sex work exist after the fall of capitalism? I don't know. I'm trying to, I'm trying to get us free now. And by the way, I'm also trying to not just get us free, but I'm trying to like, respond to crisis mutual aid asks because, someone, because there's like a nor'easter coming through the northeast of it's a big storm in in In the Northeast in the States, there's like an immediate crisis.

Yeah and somebody like needs enough money to get a room for the night. Because they like, there's no Johns out on the street and they like, like I'm trying to like sex workers need. Rights and services and our basic needs met now, and we also need resources to fight, the tech plutocrats that are struggling to figure out if the internet that we that has been built on our backs that like we designed for them is a place that we should be allowed to work anymore, or be ourselves anymore.

That's, yeah. Check out the work of an organization. I work with Hacking Hustling if you want to learn more about that. But yeah...

Adam: Actually, I think we we should wrap up this conversation and I'll let you get back to everything else that you've got to do today.

But before we do that thinking about that little plug there do you want to, what do you want to plug? Where do you want to send listeners to your stuff?

Tina: Yeah. My website is tinahorn.net. On Instagram, speaking of tech plutocrats @Tinahornsass.

I am on the website that I guess is formerly known as Twitter under the same handle. Yes. What a world. And. Yeah, so a couple of my projects that I'd love to tell you about, one is my podcast, Why Are People Into That? which I'd love to have you on to talk about feet or poppers or any, or anything else that...

Adam: Let's talk about my foot fetish and other people's.

Tina: Oh my God. I, yes. Oh, okay. We'd be here all day if we start talking about toes. But yeah, so Why Are People Into That is a fetish podcast that I've been doing independently since 2013. You can listen to that wherever you pod. I got a literary nonfiction book deal to write a book version of the podcast, which I managed to trick Hachette into letting me write a book of cultural criticism where essentially every essay takes a different fetish and treats it like a text. So it's like secretly a book about like movies and music. 

Adam: I’m just so excited about that book. When I heard about it, I was like, this is the book. I'm going to read the fuck out of this book.

Tina: I am. I'm so thrilled with your, I quoted you in it because I deeply love Deep Sniff.

I took it, I took the sniff. I took a deep sniff. But but yes that book is gonna be like, yeah, just blood rushing back and forth between your junk and your brain and stopping at the heart or whatever. And then I also have a. Comic book series called SFSX, Safe Sex, which is a misnomer. It's a book about dangerous sex and that's like a queer sex worker, leather pervert, sex rebel dystopian sci-fi series. That is out from image comics. There's two volumes out now, and I'll be working on the third soon. And those are the, Things that I do. Oh, yeah, I did a podcast with Wondery called Operator, that's about phone sex.

Adam: Yes, which is awesome.

Tina: Yeah, so you should follow me if you feel like it And thank you so much for having me on your freedom pod. 

Adam: Thank you, Tina, for giving the time and these this really big idea, which is also at its heart, quite simple, and it's, it is really about taking care of each other.

Yes. And I think that's so important in sex. So I really appreciate you bringing that to the podcast. So thank you very much.

Tina: Thanks for taking care of me today.

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Adam

Thanks for listening to this episode! 

Let me know what you think of FREE SEX  - the idea or this podcast! 

Leave me a review and a star rating if you can!

On social media I’m @adamzmith, yes that’s Smith but with a Z, yeah Zmith, mmm it feels good in the mouth hahah. You can find more Aunt Nell productions on our website auntnell.com and on social we’re @auntnell_.

The theme music is TransLife by Othon

Hosted, produced and edited by Adam Zmith

The Executive Producer for Aunt Nell is Tash Walker

To all you loves and lovers, good night x