The Leather-Feather Whip

For the Horse

Imagine a horse standing quietly with its head lowered, unresponsive to normal social and environmental stimuli, and moving away only at the release command or following the directive of the handler. 

To learn helplessness or the submissive posture is considered basic training in certain Western shows and working disciplines for horses. The horse as animal perfectly embodies the deserted reflection of human desire for submission. Many of the observers of horse behaviour use their knowledge and experience to compare horses in domestic and wild settings. The slippery departure point of this assumption is the observation of the horse that we know as submissive, and that the non-submissive is wild. Is it wild when we simply abandon domestication efforts? How do horses deal with resources in their original environment and not domesticated stables in which humans place them? 

For five years, Joel Berger observed wild horses of the Granite Range breed on ranches. The Spanish brought horses to the United States 400 years ago. It was exactly then that Granite Range horses became domesticated. This specific breed has been living and reproducing freely in the open ranches of the Hudson since then. Consequently, they managed to maintain their autonomy to a great extent. The breed is considered one of the clearest examples of wild horses that live communally outside a human structure. 

After having observed the breed, Berger concluded that under natural any sparks of aggression or even single individual tendencies to control limited food resources were rare. Granite Range horses follow a complex and nonlinear hierarchical order. Roles of leadership and defence are exchanged between them depending on the situation in relation to the overall profit to their community. 

I find fascinating Tyburczy’s argument that all museums can be compared to the sex museum in terms of performing heteronormative displays. Displays that force the viewer into a closed-off reading. In contrast, a practical example of a queer curatorial methodology could be captured in the following anecdote. Tyburczy worked at the Leather Archives & Museum, which holds a collection dedicated to the compilation, preservation and maintenance of leather, kink and fetish lifestyles. A whip was found in storage, not really a sex toy, as it was used in Louisiana during slavery to threaten and punish. What to do with it posed a real dilemma for the curatorial team. Eventually, it was decided that the object should be visible and displayed together with two A4 sheets of paper on two different historical linearities of BDSM and slavery. The whip was the same but the texts were referenced accordingly on the display information. As a result, the viewer could create associations between the objects and their use on bodies in different historical times under mechanisms of oppression and submission based on whether there was consent. For Tyburczy, this display approach was an act of bringing queer theory back to its practical utilizations. Tyburczy proposes queer curatorship as an experimental display tactic that stages alternative spatial configurations for two distinct purposes: 1) to expose how traditional museums socialize heteronormative relationships between objects and visitors; and 2) to cope with ethically fraught objects of queer cultures, which on paper take the form of leather whips historical in both gay leather / kink culture and slavery.

A friend who lives in Brussels visited Antwerp’s Leather Pride where he bought a sex slave, a cute young man from London, at auction for forty-five euros per hour. Instead of sexual intercourse, they engaged in a long conversation regarding voluntary representation of slavery under wage from a master. He shared the following story: 

Once I really wanted to be locked in a cage, I was only nineteen. In the end I found this guy in Norway that had a basement with no light and a cage. I went there for three months with no light, locked in this cage that was not big at all, having a minimum amount of water and the same food everyday. I found it a deeply revealing and relaxing experience. I did not have to take decisions for anything. Everything was planned, executed and provided. I just had to stay there. No sex ever happened, just this form of care.

SM practitioners suggest we see relations of submission in analogy to everyday life conditions such as our co-relation with the state and the dynamics it enacts upon us, from  educational models to the army to healthcare providers to law enforcement and border control policy.

For the Prep

In 2015, the question of availability of pre-exposure prophylaxis medication against the Virus was developed in the Dutch gay community. Prep medication, the pill for daily use can reduce the risk of contraction by up to 95 per cent. A small group from the community came together to reflect on how the Dutch healthcare and insurance system treated the subject in comparison to other countries. Prep looked to be a promising weapon against the Virus, but the Dutch system was simply not proactive enough. It was not approved in the EU due to deficient pharmaceutical data on long-term use. On the other hand, Prep was approved by the US Food and Drug Administration and widely available there. The group formed a strong activist attitude and focused on developing strategies to debate governmental arguments. The informative campaign PrEPnu, meaning Prep in Dutch, promoted the new weapon, establishing the urgent need to gain access to this drug. The campaign addressed the gay community, politicians, sociologists and doctors. 

Prep’s legalization was indeed a victory by the gay community, but the cost was rather high: 560 euros per month per person. It needs to be taken every day and followed up by frequent check-ups. The Dutch government replied negatively to PrEPnu’s call to reduce costs by having the medicine fully or at least semi-covered by health insurance arguing condoms were already available. PrEPnu argued that the drug was not an alternative but a necessity for those who were not wearing condoms due to sex involving particular types of drug consumption known as chemsex, being misinformed and young, being gay asylum seekers without sufficient education or sex workers. The debate remains active. Jennifer Hopelezz, member of the PrEPnu, discovered, with the help of doctors, that importing the medicine from other countries was cheaper than the price available in the Netherlands or elsewhere in Europe. Jennifer established a link with a gay doctor named Dr Deyn from Thailand, who was researching distribution rights and willing to help export it to the Netherlands. The cost would be 50 euros per month, substantially cheaper and indicative of how much profit European pharmaceutical companies sought. 

In January 2017, Jennifer, together with the PrEPnu group, and Aidsfonds organized a debate evening at Club Church in Amsterdam. We hosted a panel put together by a sociologist specialized in popular culture named Linda Duits. Many political parties were invited to discuss their policies, as well as Dr Deyn. The debate was received positively by the gay and drag community. It was an effort to bring an objective retrospective on the two year trajectory of PrEPnu. The public generated their own conclusions, given the chance to hear various opinions on the subject. In July 2017, the municipality of Amsterdam invited the PrEPnu group to announce some good news. The amount of 200,000 euros became available in the budget to be distributed for necessary check-ups for people taking the medication.

Against Branding Activism

What I find the most problematic is how the AmsterdamDiner distributes funds. The Dutch health ministry assumes there will be no AIDS / HIV epidemic by 2030, at least in central Europe. Consequently, AmsterdamDiner together with Aidsfonds – the largest organization in Netherlands providing regular funding against the virus – focused on helping third world countries like Kenya. Ironically a video of a Kenyan woman was shown during the evening, delivering accolades to the donors. 

At the House of Hopelezz table, a long conversation considered whether the epidemic was indeed finished. Is it truly solved for Dutch society? Do we have an educational model to propose to the younger generations? How would that relate to the Virus? Have we efficiently explored the availability of prevention medicines against the epidemic in the Dutch medical system? The answer is simple. No, we did not do the above. But in this country, in 1811, the Napoleonic code was introduced, decriminalizing sex with the same gender. According to sociologist Gert Hekma, the Netherlands was the only non-Catholic country with Napoleonic laws, which lead later to widespread tolerance and a flourishing gay community. Therefore in the 1950s we get the first leather bar Argos and the only place in Europe where same sex couples are allowed to dance together. On the other hand, during Pride, ING, Rabobank, ABN AMRO and the municipality of Amsterdam gentrify the public water and dictate what form of expression can be shown and if a voice can be raised how it can sound.

It’s all about sex. If the activity itself can be performed further than just reproduction without being moralistically charged. In any case reproductive sex is the most prominent model. Are all forms of other sex by their nature just Dionysian? How does that demonize it? What are the motives behind the demonization?

The previous examples of queer activism took place in public spaces. However, artists or curators also desire to place the Virus in spaces of representation such as art spaces. Art historian Douglas Crimp formulates a strong critique in this respect. He finds it highly problematic that art institutions and / or artists claim to raise funds or generate, representationally, political methodologies against the Virus while their work supports the very state that represses such struggles. He believes such mechanisms more harmful than helpful in ending the Virus struggle, as they polarize and discriminate against victims. 

We don’t need a cultural renaissance. We need cultural practices that actively participate in the struggle against the Virus. We don’t need to transcend the epidemic. We need to end it. We can also ask ourselves: how many careers have been constructed on the back of the AIDS / HIV struggle?