Intimacy and Scarcity

Our ability to give each other pleasure is a revolutionary force, said Audre Lorde in The use of the erotic, and Adrienne Maree Brown adds, that we should stop to work for an economy that is based on scarcity and destroys the abundand world we actually live in. Intimate contact should be abundant, as every breathing being needs, gives and shares it. But it is not. Many of us know that all too well. What are the mechanisms cutting this abundance short and transport us into scarcity? What are they from a hetera point of view? How does the distribution of intimacy work and how can we intervene in it?

There is the fact that capitalism cuts everything short – especially immaterial things – to then make us pay for them: Knowledge, attention, care. Why would it stop at love and sex. Of course, it doesn’t. However, you can’t really buy trust, can you. And for me it is really hard to come without trust. Many heteros I know don’t seem to need so high levels of trust to orgasm. Lucky them. Or maybe that isn’t even so lucky.

Of course, patriarchy cuts sexual freedom of women short. In so many different more and less obvious ways. Patriarchy does it out of fear of broken heart. I get that. So I was taught, that women are just more monogamous – for genetic reasons, while guys are inclined to spread their sperm. I’m sure you know the story. It worked in my case: I was mostly monogamous throughout my life. Because it is an intense and complex game to play, if just this one person has the key to your heart and to your orgasm. And also because I often felt so much empathy for my partner, that I couldn’t stand their crises of confidence, when I wasn’t mono for a moment. However, if the mono-relationship ends, your identity as sexual being somehow ends with it. And that sucks badly.  It’s like being put on dry land and being asked not to look so thirsty.

And then, if you go out there to be sexual, heteras have to face judgement on their bodies, have to face ageism and sexism still much more than their potential hetero lovers.  Society pitches them against each other and they have to fear to lose sisterhood in competition. Because the guys – having more contacts – often get to choose. Not to mention, that all spaces you can go to to be sexual as hetera are always already dominated by hetero desire. There is very little open space for hetera desire, instead we tend to have to perform in the scenarios of heteros. And as we all know, in those scenarios a lot of abuse is happening. And, yes, fucking hell, me too. So, if you can’t stand it anymore, or your vigilence is so high that you can’t feel anything anymore either, there are just no safe spaces, where you can play and get to know yourself as a sexual being again.

That’s how scarcity comes about. And sure, you always feel, it’s your own fault. We are too needy, victim, broken, fat, old, slutty etc. to get it. That doesn’t help in terms of confidence. And then people get lonely and stop to have intimate contact completely. Men and women, but many more women.

In the Heteraclub we are not selling what is scarce. What we do is not a service, it is an artform. The city of Hamburg pays for us to eat, while we try to create a different practice of intimacy and a place where there is just enough contact for all of us. The queens pay an entrance fee to a performance. But everything that happens between queens and performers in the one-on-one-studios is a gift.