Photographer Jill Freedman’s love affair with Ireland started with music. Before she became a photographer, she was a 20-something making her way through Europe in the early 1960s as a performer. She sang in bars and on the BBC's Tonight show. While in Ireland, she checked out a traditional Irish music festival, the Fleadh Cheoil, in Dublin. She didn’t know the music well but was moved by its traditional instruments, simple vocals, complicated rhythms, and sense of community.

Moreover, Freedman was touched by the kindness of the Irish people, which surprised her since she'd grown up fighting with Irish-American kids in Pittsburgh, who tormented her on the way home from school because she was Jewish.

Back home in the States, she found herself missing Ireland, and more generally, the music and the accents of the British Isles. While working as a copywriter in New York City, Freedman started seeking out Irish enclaves like Malachy's Donegal Inn, a lively bar owned by Malachy McCourt, a charismatic local figure known for his storytelling. It would be many years before he and his brother Frank would become internationally known for their books about growing up poor in Ireland and trying to make it in America. The most famous of their books is Frank's bestseller, Angela's Ashes, published in 1996 and made into a film in 1999.

Malachy McCourt became a friend and would humor Freedman with talk in the Irish brogue, but it wouldn't be until 1972 that Freedman would return to Ireland. By then, her budding fascination with photography had turned into a vocation. She was immersed in the West Village's art scene, spending most of her time on the streets shooting photos or holed up in her dark room. When she would go out, it would be to the literary hub of the Lion's Head Bar, or "the Head," where she'd often see Frank McCourt, who was still a teacher and aspiring novelist. James Baldwin supposedly told the novelist Robert Ward that the Head was the last place that "felt like the old days." Freedman remembers that the only music on the bar's jukebox was jazz, with the volume set very low, which they "wouldn't turn up for anybody."

At the Head, Freedman made a transformative connection with a young man named Jack Deacy. Raised in Brooklyn by Irish immigrant parents, Deacy was jobless but aspired to write, and he would go on to become a journalist and political spokesman. When Deacy sauntered up to Freedman at the bar, he complimented her on her book about the 1968 Poor People’s Campaign. Continuing to talk, they became fast friends, and soon Deacy would take Freedman deep into Ireland.

Every summer, Deacy visited Ireland to lend a hand on his Uncle Paddy's farm in County Leitrim in the village of Drumkeeran. As Freedman made plans to go back to Ireland, camera in hand, she and Deacy made plans to meet. In Drumkeeran, Deacy introduced Freedman to Paddy, and knowing she was searching for the music she'd fallen in love with in Ireland, referred her to a pub owner named Angela Moloney, who ran Moloney's Pub on the south side of Listowel. Moloney also took Freedman under her wing, and let her stay in the pub's upstairs guest room while she visited.

Ensconced by this welcoming group of friends, Freedman had access to the rich cultural corners of Irish society. Freedman later reminisced that she was seeking "the old ways"—homespun, intimate traditions passed down through generations. Seeking these magical moments brought her back to Ireland six more times between 1973 and 1988.

Her photos from this time show the beauty and grace of Ireland—she chose not to photograph the political violence surrounding The Troubles, which was tearing Northern Ireland apart at the time. One notable exception is a seemingly mundane street scene. But the handwritten sign on the table in it encourages passerby to express their condolences for Michael Devine, one of the founding members of the Irish National Liberation Army (INLA) who died in prison during a 1981 hunger strike. Freedman had no idea that at the height of The Troubles, Deacy had gone to the epicenter of the violence in Northern Ireland to cover it as a conflict reporter.

During one of our recent conversations, she learned of Deacy's involvement and was frank about her disgust of the violence. “I didn’t go North. I didn’t want to be around it," she said. "I had the violence of the streets [in New York], so I didn’t need to go looking for it. Besides [...] I really hate terrorists. I mean, blowing up a pub with kids in it? Fuck you! You’re nothing but a murderer."

Instead, Freedman took photos of peace, affection, grace, and the music. One of her strongest is her iconic shot of fiddler Johnny Doherty bathed in light, while accordionist Joe Burke shares a laugh with a friend behind him. The images canonize the camaraderie and celebration found in Irish pubs.

But traveling to Ireland so frequently and shooting on analog film had financial drawbacks. One day, while visiting with her friend the photographer Aaron Siskind, Freedman confided that she wanted to go back and continue working on her Ireland series but didn't have the money to do so. By this time, Siskind was comfortably established, and with little fanfare he wrote Freedman a check for several thousand dollars and told her to go finish the work.

By 1987, Freedman had amassed enough photos for a book, and she published A Time That Was: Irish Moments under the imprint Friendly Press. The photos were also presented in a 1988 show at the International Center of Photography. Unfortunately, Freedman said the book got little publicity, and she felt adrift not knowing if the work was as affecting for other people as it had been for her while shooting it.

A second chance for the Ireland photos came in 2004, when Abrams Books agreed to publish an expanded selection of works if Freedman could get Frank and Malachy McCourt to write a foreword. The brothers accepted, and Ireland Ever received a much wider release. Still, it would be several more years before Freedman felt the photos made the impact she wanted, albeit in a small and personal way.

In 2000, NYPD Officer Rita Mullaney saw Freedman give a talk at the National Arts Club. An aspiring photographer herself, Mullaney had been intrigued by Freedman since learning about her book Street Cops. Unbeknownst to the duo, they already shared a connection: Mullaney was close with Malachy McCourt's son Conor, who was also an NYPD cop.

When Mullaney introduced herself to Freedman afterwards, she wound up standing next to Deacy. As Mullaney explained that she was Irish-American and grew up in Bay Ridge, Deacy realized Mullaney's father owned one of the neighbourhood's original Irish bars, which seemed to be fading away. The conversation flowed naturally from there, and over time Freedman became like adopted family to Mullaney—with friends and relatives coming to call her "Aunt Jill.”

Fast forward to 2017: Mullaney's cousin Theresa Hamilton was in love with a man named Dan Scales who was vacationing in Ireland. One night Scales sent Hamilton a short video of traditional music in O’Connor’s Pub in the village of Doolin, which she shared with Mullaney, who then shared it with Freedman. Watching it together, the two women were shocked to recognize a familiar photograph in the background. Framed on the wall of O'Connor's Pub is Freedman's group shot of musicians at Moloney's in 1981, decades earlier.

That's how, more than 50 years after Freedman fell in love with traditional Irish music, her work was now presiding over the nook in a bar in Ireland where only musicians are allowed to sit. Displayed in this setting, surrounded by strangers practicing the art form that had so enchanted her, Freedman felt that after all the trekking and exploring, her work shot in Ireland had finally struck the right chord. The photo was claimed by the music as its own.

Jill Freedman's works are included in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the International Center of Photography, and the George Eastman Museum, among others. With photographic interests in both social science and humanism found in the streets, Freedman makes regular posts to her Instagram account @jillfreedmanphoto and is represented by Steven Kasher Gallery, New York. She has recently released a new photobook of her documentation of the Poor People’s Campaign with Grafiche Damiani, and intends to publish more books to augment works like Firehouse and Street Cops, which were featured in Cheryl Dunn's 2013 documentary on street photographers, Everybody Street.

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This article originally appeared on VICE US.

The man who murdered six Muslim men when he shot up a Quebec City mosque last January says he’s not Islamophobic.

Alexandre Bissonnette, 28, walked into the Islamic Cultural Centre of Quebec during evening prayers on January 29, 2017 and killed six men: Azzeddine Soufiane, Khaled Belkacemi, Aboubaker Thabti, Abdelkrim Hassane, Mamadou Tanou Barry and Ibrahima Barry. He critically wounded five victims, including Aymen Derbali, who is paralyzed after Bissonnette shot him seven times.

Bissonnette, a University of Laval student, pleaded guilty to six counts of first-degree murder and six counts of attempted murder Wednesday, after initially pleading not guilty. In a statement to the court, he said he doesn’t know why he committed the heinous crimes.

“I don’t know why I did something so foolish,” he said, according to the Montreal Gazette. “I’m not a terrorist, nor an Islamophobe. I was taken over by fear, by negative thinking, by desperation.”

He also asked for forgiveness.

"I'd like to ask for your forgiveness for all the harm I caused you, even though I know what I did is unforgivable.”

Bissonnette said the was pleading guilty to save his victims and their families “from going through a trial and reliving the tragedy.”

After Bissonnette was arrested, a picture emerged of him as a right-wing troll who admired French nationalist Marine Le Pen, who has been vocally Islamophobic.

According to friends and acquaintances, Bissonette is also a vocal supporter of Donald Trump, and trolled a Facebook group for refugees.

Despite the fact that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and other politicians referred to the shooting as a “terrorist attack,” Bissonnette was never charged with any terrorism-related crimes.

Mohamed Labidi, the former president of Quebec City's Islamic Cultural Centre, told the CBC Bissonnette words don’t explain why he did what he did.

"A lot of victims, a lot of suffering, at the end, for nothing."

Psychiatrist Sylvain Faucher told the court Bissonnette’s mental state has improved in recent months, and that he’s been medicated for depression and suicidal thoughts.

If made to serve consecutive sentences, Bissonnette could face a minimum of 150 years in prison.

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Note: some readers might find the following article and photographs upsetting.

If you’re into S&M, you’ll know Fetlife. It’s an online community for kink enthusiasts who share stories, photos, and videos, and generally bond around a shared love of whips. And like any social media site, certain members become known for certain proclivities, which brings us to a Fetlife member known as Jilf. In certain corners of the internet Jilf is famous for pushing kink and body modification to the point where it becomes something else—and something that’s genuinely unsettling.

Originally from Brisbane, Melbourne-based Jilf photographs these pain rituals and uploads them to both her own website and Fetlife, where she aims to force onlookers to evaluate their understanding of pain, disgust, and how social conventions shape both. Her partners regularly begin with the phrase, “Today, I will suffer for your art,” and what follows is the kind of imagery that gets taken down from almost every other platform.

Jilf, who is a graduate in Psychological Sciences, says her interest in pain and disgust began at the age of 12. Her latest project involved peeling open her partner’s shin, which compelled me to reach out and ask about her process and thesis. Our discussion reveals that behind each macabre and surreal photo is a complex process of research, consent, intimacy, pain, and psychological pioneering.

VICE: Hi Jilf, tell me about your first experimentations with pain.
Jilf: From a young age, I've always enjoyed extracting something from my body that was supposed to be concealed. It was interesting to watch the blood run down my body and I found it fascinating. It seemed like a very intimate process for me and only me; waves of peace would enter my brain. I had no idea what it was called back then, but it was not self-harm. In fact, it was totally the opposite—I felt such a deep connection and love with my brain and physical body.

How did that evolve into the way you engage with pain now?
It grew into a deep love and respect for where pain could take me; both in my body and my mind. I decided to seek it out. I wanted to see if there was anybody else like me out there. I wanted to share that intimacy. To engage in this level of trust with another person leaves absolutely no room to hide from yourself or them, whether during negotiations and planning or the actual act of sadomasochism itself. When we “play”—for want of a better word—there is no escape from being in that moment. You cannot possibly be anywhere else but with that person sharing a mutual love and respect for the entity that is pain.

What does “pain” mean to you? And how does it feel?
Pain is complex and complicated. It is something to be nurtured and respected, almost deified. Pain is a way of pushing myself, of finding self. When you engage in hard Sm it’s that feeling of knowing what you’re capable of both physically and emotionally.

There is fierceness in it. It is a way of being present; it can also relieve that crushing feeling of existentialism. It can provide recalibration and it is a cathartic release. This is a way of feeling purpose and knowing that I can act on my agency, of having feelings that are not about paying the bills or going to work—the mundanity of everyday existence.

On the subject of pain, check out this VICE documentary:

How do you label your work?
My Sm intersects with identity, sexuality, and gender—this is a way of documenting all those intersections. My long-term partners and I do this together—we are quite the well-oiled machine. We do not document everything we do; sometimes it can be a spur of the moment thing during Sm or it can be Sm done to document feminist queer sexuality and BDSM.

Do you find that gender politics often inform your work?
My Sm, from whatever process I am engaging, is my way of subverting dominant paradigms and radically distorting belief systems. I liken it to a giant “fuck you” to the quiet, subservient female and the historic subjugation of women. We embrace our wants and needs by actively and consensually participating in these perverse acts. We play with power structures within our relationships on our terms, and not what society dictates. I find it confronting and empowering that women are actively engaging in subversive and transgressive acts. It is a display of queer female sexuality.

And nihilism, how does that inform your work?
Life is absurd and there is no intrinsic meaning, so it means finding and creating meaning in the absurdness. I want to build a subjective creation of meaning. This might mean taking what some would perceive as risks. As a society, we are so conformist—my nihilism leaves room to let go of that conformity.

Speaking of nonconformity, you practice an extreme form of BDSM. What are some things you enjoy doing to the human body, and what has been the most extreme?
I like contorting the female body—making it grotesque. I like being confronted and uncomfortable. I like playing around in filth. I like blood. I like intrusive acts. Both body and mind. I like heavy CT (cunt torture). Doing 4g labia hooks was an amazing shared experience. Breast skewering. Suspensions. We did 4,700 needles in my partner once. I crave Sm that stretches and challenges my brain. The creation of consensual trauma and violence. Things that require unpacking and introspection. The apex of my Sm, though, would be peeling my partner, K. That blew my mind.

The strip of shin flesh Jilf and her partner ate

Talk me through the process of peeling her, from inception to recovery.
It has been nearly three months since “the peeling”. The whole physical and psychological process from inception to recovery has been incredibly rewarding and absolutely exhausting. It stretched both my partner and myself in ways I could never have imagined. It has deepened our relationship.

We first put the process on the table about 18 months ago. Both the people involved, K and myself, did extensive negotiations. Informed consent and risk mitigation are paramount. Technically, we spoke to a very open-minded doctor regarding physical recovery and body trauma. We planned both physical and emotional recovery in advance. Finding stainless grade tools proved difficult. We ended up finding a specific peeler from overseas, but strangely enough, I could not find any info on how to peel a human.

Research involved looking at skin grafting techniques, etc. We researched anatomy, adding to our prior knowledge. We did the actual peeling in front of our close Sm family. We started off creating a flap of skin that could be inserted into the peeler while leaving enough of the skin flap exposed to be held taught. A friend held the flap, and then I basically peeled a layer of skin back up the shin towards the knee. We cooked it, and then we ate a little bit of it. I think it’s one of the most intimate things I’ve ever shared with a human.

The realness of knowing that I was going to heavily scar a woman—how do you put into words—what it felt like to sit with your “chosen” family and share such a brain blowing intimate moment? All while inflicting excruciating pain and consensual trauma on somebody that you love. The next day sitting in the space was emotionally overwhelming. I think even now, nearly three months down the track, it is still raw. It has been complex to unpack.

How do people usually react to your work?
With fear, disgust, confusion, horror, and intrigue. Some have said it makes their brain “tingle.” Others have felt turned on by the work. I try not to interpret how people feel about my work—whatever you feel is how you feel—I prefer to let people make their own personal interpretations. But a lot of people have thought it beautiful and empowering, most being women, which I have found very interesting.

It appears that all we do as a society is avoid and avoid: we do not like discomfort, we avoid pain, we seem to want everything so clear-cut and clean. We want humans tidy in their skin-bags. When I look at art, in whatever form it takes, I want to walk away feeling like my brain, chest, and stomach have been ripped out and absolutely trampled. I like the feeling of wanting to escape and having to sit there uncomfortably, almost like needing to have invisible bondage that forces me to engage in the work. I want to think and unpack it years later. People sometimes write to me saying, “You triggered me!” Personally, I want to be triggered.

What would you say to people who find your work as pathological or perverse?
Pathological would suggest lack of thought process and consent; no active engagement and desire on both sides. Conflating consensual Sm with pathology is the easy way out. It would suggest that there is some negative or detrimental underlying reason for what we do. To observe what I do at a deeper level and to sit with the thought that somebody has actively sought hard Sm out can be deeply challenging.

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This article originally appeared on VICE AU.

The NRA is nominally a gun rights organization, but in recent years it’s swerved toward embracing a hardline version of conservatism, with all the racial ugliness that that entails. The NRA famously refused to speak out about the 2017 death of Philando Castile, a black gun owner who was shot to death by police (on Twitter, NRA spokeswoman Dana Loesch defended the police). On NRA TV, hosts have warned that Black Lives Matter is racist and violent and want to kill white people and frequently discuss racist tropes like black on black crime. The NRA TV host Chuck Holton has written that “there is plenty of proof that black culture is inherently more violent than other cultures.”

A look at polling data of NRA members suggests that comments like these from NRA personalities are more than just coincidence. Social scientists have become increasingly interested in the ways that attitudes about race influence attitudes about guns, and my analysis suggests that racial animus is strongly associated with joining the NRA.

The link between racial resentment and attitudes about gun ownership and gun control is well established in the academic literature: Whites who agree with statements like “if black people would only try harder they could be just as well-off as whites” are more likely to own guns. However, there has been less study of whether membership in the National Rifle Association is connected to such racial attitudes. Using data from the Voter Study Group survey, I found strong evidence of a relationship. The Voter Study Group survey includes a baseline survey that was conducted in 2011 with 8,000 respondents, which included a question about which organizations the respondent was a member of. Among the possible organizations was the NRA, an option which 8 percent of respondents selected.

So how do we look at the racial attitudes of those NRA members? To begin, I examined some simple demographic and partisan characteristics of NRA members found in the Voter Study Group survey. I find that whites are somewhat more likely to be in the NRA, with 78 percent of those reported NRA membership being white, compared with 71 percent of non-NRA members. NRA members are also more likely to be Republican, with 70 percent identifying as Republican compared to 35 percent of non-NRA members. Eighty-one percent of NRA members reported voting for Mitt Romney, compared to 41 percent of non-NRA members. And while the NRA has attempted diversity pushes and tried to put forward black pro-gun commentators at times (as the group did when it aired an interview with rapper Killer Mike), the VSG data indicate that fewer than 2 percent of individuals who identified as NRA members were black.

To begin exploring whether racial animus is associated with NRA membership, I use a battery of questions scholars refer to as racial resentment, or symbolic racism, which I combine into a scale. The scale consists of the following four questions:

1. Irish, Italian, Jewish, and many other minorities overcame prejudice and worked their way up. Black people should do the same without any special favors.
2. It’s really a matter of some people not trying hard enough; if black people would only try harder they could be just as well-off as whites.
3. Over the past few years, black people have gotten less than they deserve.
4. Generations of slavery and discrimination have created conditions that make it difficult for black people to work their way out of the lower class.

The results are unambiguous. Holding other variables equal (race, ideology, age, gender, education, ideology, and party identification) the predicted probability of an individual at the low end of the resentment scale identifying as a member of the NRA is 4 percent, compared to a 17 percent predicted probability for an individual at the highest end of the resentment scale. Here's what that looks like:

Some scholars have objected to the idea that racial resentment is an accurate measure of racial animus, instead claiming it measures conservatism. Of course it does, since racial attitudes and ideology are deeply intertwined and the symbolic racism measures were explicitly designed in reaction to Reagan’s masterful combination of white racial animus and fiscal conservatism. However, even examining only Republicans, I find that relationship between resentment and NRA membership meets traditional thresholds of statistical significance.

To further test the relationship, I examined another measure frequently used in the social science literature, the white-black feeling thermometer gap. The Voter Study Group survey asks respondents where they place their feelings for white people on a scale from 0 to 100, with 0 being coldest and 100 being the warmest. It asks the same question about feelings for black people. By subtracting an individual's score for black people from white people, we can get an estimate of their racial animus towards African Americans. It would be difficult to argue that such animus was related to deeply held ideological beliefs about meritocracy in society and rugged individualism. NRA members, on average, have 19 points warmer feelings towards white people, compared with 8 points warmer among people who are not in the NRA.

Given the NRA’s increasing extremism and heated rhetoric, these results are not particularly surprising. But they do show that the ugly racial stereotypes often peddled by the NRA’s shows and spokespeople are not just a product of an extremist leadership. When the NRA says something shocking and seemingly racist, it may be because it knows what its membership wants to hear.

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Sean McElwee is a researcher and writer based in New York. Follow him on Twitter.

This article originally appeared on VICE US.

Since starring in 90s films like What's Eating Gilbert Grape, Romeo + Juliet, and Titanic, Leonardo DiCaprio has switched gears into environmental activism. The Oscar-winning actor has started his own climate change prevention charity, urged politicians to address global warming, and produced a powerful documentary to address how close we are to trashing the planet beyond repair.

Strange, then, to find environmental scientists in Thailand forced to step in and save a habitat made unsustainably popular by one of DiCaprio's movies. The country’s National Parks and Wildlife Department decided on Wednesday that Maya Bay on the island of Ko Phi Phi—the stunning beach that played a starring role alongside DiCaprio in The Beach—will close to tourists for four months every year.

According to the Associated Press, pressure from so many travelers looking for the Danny Boyle–directed film’s unsullied paradise has put the area's coral reef and marine life in serious jeopardy. The once-idyllic cove has been open all year round since the big screen adaptation of Alex Garland's novel came out back in 2000. It now sees 4,000 tourists and 200 boats a day, on average.

"Overworked and tired, all the beauty of the beach is gone," marine scientist Thon Thamrongnawasawat told AP. "We need a timeout for the beach."

The annual summer shutdown at Maya Bay begins this June. When it reopens, only 2,000 people will be allowed access each day and boats will have to anchor on the other side of the island. As well as helping the local ecosystem recover, the restriction on numbers might actually help the spot recover some of its allure again. Some young backpackers have been sadly disappointed to find it jam-packed with fellow human beings.

As for DiCaprio, he hasn’t quite given up on chasing utopias. Talking to President Obama at a South by South Lawn event in 2016, the actor appeared enthusiastic about Elon Musk’s idea of colonizing Mars. Let's hope we don’t end up spoiling our neighboring planet the way we have with this one.

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This article originally appeared on VICE US.

For Emerencz Merkle, one thing was always clear from the moment they developed breasts: having them did not feel comfortable or right.

But three years ago, Merkle was denied healthcare coverage for top surgery because they did not want to transition into a man.

Twenty-six-year-old Merkle identifies as non-binary, a term that refers to genders that are not exclusively masculine or feminine. Merkle uses “them” and “they” pronouns. Healthcare in both Alberta, where Merkle lived at the time of the consultation, and their current home of BC lists gender dysphoria as a reason for top-surgery coverage. But these choices are made on a case-by-case basis during a consultation with a government-assigned gender psychiatrist. Merkle was turned down for healthcare coverage for the operation.

So they chose to go outside the government route and booked top surgery with plastic surgeon Dr. Hugh McLean in Mississauga, Ontario.

When they were around 21 years old, Merkle began using a binder to lessen the appearance of their breasts. “When you get a new binder and put that on, it’s so tight and painful,” said Merkle. “The capillaries in my breasts started breaking. That’s not healthy.”

People can develop chronic pain and breathing and lung issues when they bind for too long, according to Lu Lam, a Vancouver-based clinical counsellor. Merkle wanted to get the top surgery so they could feel more comfortable with their body and have a healthier option than binding.

“Most doctors think you’re either a woman wanting to be a man or a man wanting to be a woman.”

Many doctors who perform these operations see them as essential for health. “I don’t see it as a cosmetic operation, I see it as a reconstructive operation,” said McLean. “It’s one of the most gratifying surgeries.”

But many top-surgery hopefuls end up waiting a long time, both for a consultation and then, if approved, for surgery. Some never get the surgery approval. Procedures are performed by surgeons chosen by the government. Available surgeons are limited, so patients do not get to be selective.

McLean Clinic was attractive to Merkle because the clinic is known for being respectful of non-binary patients.

That attitude was a relief for Merkle, who said the government-assigned gender psychiatrist in Alberta did not seem to have that mindset.

“It was a really traumatic experience for me,” said Merkle. “He was trying to prescribe me testosterone right away. I left there feeling very lost and like nothing was going to happen for a really long time—and it was really stressful. But I still felt very much like I wanted to do it.”

A fellow non-binary Vancouver resident and a friend of Merkle’s, Skylar Love, is currently on a one-year waiting list for surgery. But they too have concerns that the trans healthcare system does not properly serve non-binary individuals.

“Most doctors and people think you’re either a woman wanting to be a man or a man wanting to be a woman,” said Love. “The medical system is very binary and that’s a hard place for non-binary folks to navigate.”

While Love is going through the government route to the mastectomy, they are tempted to save up the money for a highly skilled surgeon outside of the public healthcare system.

Emerencz Merkle after their top surgery in February.

Last year, Merkle’s girlfriend, Vancouver-based fashion designer Lillea Goian, began designing and selling T-shirts to raise money for Merkle’s top surgery. Up until meeting Merkle in January 2017, Goian identified as straight. But her androgynous fashion style often caused people to call her a boy, or caused partners to try and make her more feminine. Merkle was instantly accepting of Goian, and Goian of Merkle.

“Emerencz has never once told me that I can’t wear something because it looks funny or wrong,” said Goian. “Never commented, which I really like. That’s something I’ve never experienced.”

Many non-binary individuals deal with anxiety over their bodies and the inequities they face on a daily basis like housing, education, work and in bathrooms. After some unhealthy relationships, Merkle met Goian through Instagram. The two immediately felt comfortable with and supportive of each other.

The surgery cost $9,080, and with flights, accommodations and recovery time, the total Merkle paid for the surgery was about $11,000. Goian and Merkle raised $3,500 in T-shirt sales and received an additional $1,000 in donations. Merkle was required to pay for the surgery upfront and used a credit card. They are currently approximately $9,000 in debt after the procedure.

McLean performed Merkle’s surgery on February 12 and says 18 percent of the McLean Clinic’s top surgeries are for non-binary patients. Many of his patients are covered by Ontario’s healthcare program, but not every province has high-quality surgeons available for those under healthcare coverage. Like Merkle, top-surgery hopefuls from BC and other provinces often have to travel out of province to get the procedure done.

McLean believes that every community in Canada should have a qualified plastic surgeon who can perform top surgery.

“I don’t think that people should be required to travel distances to have what they need. And this is truly a need,” said McLean. “If you believe in medicare then it’s obvious that this operation needs to be covered by healthcare. I’ve interviewed so many people that want top surgery and their motivations are high and their need is great.”

More people, whether they are trans or non-binary are seeking out top surgery. According to Trans Care BC, there were 312 top surgery referrals in BC in 2017, up from 174 in 2015.

Merkle sees a future where any non-binary individual can access quality top surgery, regardless of their financial situation or geographical location.

“If I wasn’t living in Canada, being visibly white and coming from a middle-class family … this would not be possible for me,” said Merkle.

A version of this story originally appeared on The Thunderbird.

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When she walked into the work room for the second season in a row, Eureka was not only dressed like the San Diego Baseball Chicken, she also had a lot of fan support. After leaving early last season due to a knee injury, RuPaul immediately invited her back to season ten so she could compete without a shoddy limb. But now that she’s back, it feels like something might be wrong with Eureka.

We got our first glimpse during the mini challenge. The great doyenne of reality television, RuPaul, put on a Stetson and welcomed the great doyenne of Real Housewives, Andy Cohen, and they, for some reason, had the contestants put on cowgirl drag and do their version of a hoedown (or maybe ho-down?). Eureka, in a big red wig and maroon lipstick all over her teeth, decided that she was going to forego the do-si-do in order to twerk. Now here is a girl who described herself as “countrier than a motherfucking biscuit” but decided to do moves more reminiscent of Big Freedia than Dolly Parton. She seemed a little off her game.

Ru awarded the wins to Asia O’Hara and The Vixen and they were appointed team captains. Each had to pick a group of girls to lip sync in a parody musical called the PharmaRusical. Eureka was picked last and got to choose which team she would join. She picked Asia’s team. Eventually we found out the reason no one wanted her wasn’t because she can’t dance on her bum leg, but because she never shuts up and offers all sorts of unconstructive suggestions. Asia knew exactly what was going to happen and Eureka drove her insane in every single one of her membranes.

The girls were doing little songs for fake drug products like Badonkadonx, which gives queens a bigger butt, and Flaccida, which helps with “restless tuck syndrome,” an ailment I hope to never be struck with.

Drag Race alum Alyssa Edwards served as the choreographer for the challenge, and she was, as always, a delight.

Alyssa held Eureka after class like this is a very special episode of Saved By the Bell to ask her what’s wrong. Eureka said she’s scared to dance because it was in the second episode last season that she hurt herself and she’s afraid that she’s going to go home again.

Alyssa was especially harsh on The Vixen’s team, who didn't seem like they'd prepared as much as Asia's team, even though Asia and Eureka were at odds on account of Eureka never shutting up and offering all sorts of unconstructive suggestions. Having Alyssa be mean to them seemed to work for The Vixen’s team because they came out on top and she was named the winner.

I was a bit surprised because, honestly, I thought both groups were lackluster and I couldn’t really tell the difference between the two. Anyway, The Vixen and all of her teammates—Kameron Michaels, Monét X Change, Miz Cracker, Blair St. Clair, and Mayhem Miller—were safe. That meant two of the standouts on the runway, Dusty Ray Bottoms, who looked like a dancer in a Deee-Lite video, and Aquaria, who looked like the angel who meets you at the gates of Hell, were in the bottom.

The bottom of the bottom ended up being Eureka, who the judges said didn’t know any of the words to her songs, and Kalorie, who guest judge Padma Lakshmi said was “really out of her league here.” It’s sad these two had to go up against each other because they even had a cute theme song: “Big girls, big girls coming through. Better watch out or we’ll eat you.”

On Untucked we got to see Eureka freak out even more, repeatedly walking away from the group and trying to describe what the judges said to her. “They just pretty much read me, I mean not read me, I mean they really didn't read me, they did read me, but..." she said. This girl was so up in her head that she was basically Ram Bahadur Bomjon (he's a Nepalese guy that meditated for ten months, allegedly with no food or water).

She said at one point that she was upset because, if she beat her buddy Kalorie, she’d be taking away her dream. This is something that's happened in the last few seasons of the show where these queens know that being on this program is going to launch their drag careers into the stratosphere, and the longer they can stay on and the more likeable they can become then the more Instagram followers they’ll amass which they’ll be able to transform into merch sales, ticket sales, and longer lines at their meet and greets.

This isn’t the pressure of just winning a competition like on Survivor or Big Brother—these two girls are literally lip syncing for their careers. You could almost put a dollar amount on how much staying for a few more episodes is going to be compared to shuffling off the show early. That’s what I think is wrong with Eureka. She doesn’t want to mess up her second shot, but she also doesn’t want to mess with her bank account and her longevity in the burgeoning worldwide drag scene.

Finally we got to the lip sync. Eureka was dressed like a two-toned scarab that fell to Earth from space and Kalorie was dressed like, well, a drag queen in a sheer bodysuit with some jewels on the private parts. There’s not even anything interesting or silly to compare it to. Maybe a coaster at an upscale boutique? I don’t know.

Kalorie was sent home and, if we’re being honest, it was only a matter of time. She’s a great drag queen, but not as great as her competition and wasn’t really doing much to stand out. It’s funny because last week’s evictee, Vanessa Vanjie Mateo, is already a meme but Kalorie will probably go a lot more gently into that good night. But the real verdict will come in several months, when we see just who has the longer line at DragCon.

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Last year, the White House announced a blanket ban on transgender service members in the military. The policy was quickly found to be unconstitutional by multiple courts, but the Trump administration promised that it would return in six months. And last week, it did.

On March 23, the White House issued a memorandum reinstating the ban. Under the guidance of Defense Secretary General James Mattis and Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen, Trump stated that "transgender persons with a history or diagnosis of gender dysphoria—individuals who the policies state may require substantial medical treatment, including medications and surgery—are disqualified from military service."

Broadly's Diana Tourjée, who has been following the Trump administration's attack on the trans community, discusses the impact of the latest memo, and what could happen with the policy on this week's episode.

You can catch The VICE Guide to Right Now Podcast on Acast, Google Play, Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts. And sign up for our newsletter to get the best of VICE delivered to your inbox daily.

This article originally appeared on VICE US.

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Unpresidented. Consensual presidency. Covfefe. President Donald Trump makes so many glaring typos on Twitter that it’s part of his political brand. People compile lists, pick favorites, and and roll their eyes—Trump’s keyboard errors, like George W. Bush’s malapropisms, are low-stakes enough that, even as we obsess over them, we can just laugh them off. But these sorts of mistakes aren’t limited to just Trump. His White House and wider administration make an unprecedented (unpresidented?) number of typos, grammos, and other errors, ranging from misspelling the names of officials and foreign dignitaries to repeatedly using the term "attaker."

Both Trump’s personal errors and the administration’s bloopers are subject to similar types and levels of glee or derision by critics. But while we can safely shrug at Trump’s thumb slip-ups, the other errors have the potential to be far more troubling.

As the English language and spelling historian Simon Horobin pointed out to me, although they have long been used as proxies for intellect, personal spelling and grammar errors almost never truly matter. They rarely affect our ability to discern meaning. English spelling especially, Horobin noted, is utterly illogical. So using it “correctly” is more a sign of memorization skills than anything else. Especially in the digital era, where so much of communication is rapid and informal, such errors are rarely taken to be meaningful. So when Trump boffs something on Twitter, that may amuse some observers, but it can’t tell us, in isolation, anything about the him. “In general, my view is that we should not take spelling mistakes too seriously,” stressed Horobin.

“Our reactions tell us more about the reader than the writer who produced the error,” added Julie Boland, who studies how people process language, especially others’ linguistic snafus.

However institutional errors cannot be dismissed as easily. Rightly or wrongly, Horobin notes, spelling and grammar errors are often associated with fraudulent or fly-by-night operations. As such, most institutions make it a point to stay on top of the language in their official texts, often putting multiple sets of eyes on them. When those oversight systems begin to fail, for whatever reason, the resultant errors potentially carry more weight or significance.

Individuals with experience in White House communications or document drafting operations in recent administrations point out that the federal government has developed strong systems and norms for vetting everything it produces. That doesn’t mean the system has ever been perfect—no matter how many rounds of fact- and copy-checking may exist, errors always slip through from time to time. The Obama administration misspelled “Feburary” and Ronald Reagan’s name in a few official documents, for example. But in the past these systems have ensured that far fewer errors show up in official documents than we’ve seen in the Trump era. “It is surprising,” admitted Horobin, “that more care isn’t taken to ensure a higher standard of accuracy in formal documents coming out of the White House.”

No one I’ve spoken to knows exactly why or how the conventions checks in this administration seem to fail so often. Horobin notes that most of the errors “suggest too much reliance upon spellcheck,” which only recognizes non-words and turns them into real words. This would explain statements about the Trump administration pursuing “the possibility of peach” in the Middle East, or common misspellings of individuals’ names. Spellcheck reliance could stem from several root causes—relaxed vetting policies, for example—that may lead to “unprofessional” results, but not point to serious concerns about the administration overall.

However, many official texts also include errors that even spellcheck should catch. Sometimes officials appear to be “spelling words as they sound,” said Horobin, like “honered, rediculous, or unpresidented.” Other times, it seems like someone was just typing carelessly, like when president became “predisent” or energy became “enety.” The same applies to instances when the administration uses the wrong title for someone, usually a head of state. Some documents make both types of errors—with alarming frequency. When the administration tried to issue a list of terrorist attacks it believed had received little media attention, for example, it used the term “attaker” almost two dozen times, as well as spellings such as “San Bernadino” and “Denmakr.”

This too could come down to staffing issues or looser vetting policies. But it could also, as Boland pointed out, suggest these documents were produced in a rush, so much so that they bypassed vetting systems or were subjected to cursory and inexperienced vetting at best.

Boland believes that even errors made in haste by the administration are still often overblown. The final results are still almost always legible and unambiguous. But this rush and sloppiness does have an effect on how seriously elements of the public takes this administration, which officials seem to realize—they do often catch errors after the fact and correct them quietly. And it raises legitimate questions about how carefully official statements, or even executive orders and presidential memoranda, were thought through before being released into the world.

“The number and nature of the errors found in the White House documents suggests a lack of due diligence and concern that undermines the credibility of the message and the office from which it originates,” said Horobin. “If you are unsure about the spelling of a word, or the name of a head of state, all you have to do is look it up. Getting it wrong suggests a poor grasp of detail, and a worrying unwillingness to invest in insuring details are accurate.”

“A lack of concern for detail,” he added, “often points to a poor grasp of the larger picture.”

In rare instances, this inattention to detail can have serious, practical implications. Boland and Horobin both note that linguistic ambiguities or grammatical goofs can, when parsed by legalistic minds, complicate the implementation of an order, or open opportunities to use it in a way the authors may not have intended. Errors can also cause friction with individuals, groups, or even other nations as well. We’ve seen examples of this, whether in boneheaded references to the “President of Palestine” (rather than the “President of the Palestinian Authority” that America actually recognizes) or in the tortured efforts to implement some of Trump’s confusing, clearly rushed early executive orders, especially those concerning immigration systems.

All of which is to say that when Trump writes a stupid tweet, well, who really cares? But when the wider administration puts out documents that make boneheaded errors, we should be placing them in a separate category and calling them out clearly and often. They may not matter often in a practical sense, but they are legitimately worrying.

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Photographer Sarah Bahbah’s saturated, cinematic photos seem optimized for the Internet. Lithe young people lounge on beds and in swimming pools, eating pizza and swigging champagne from the bottle. A dark undercurrent runs through her work with moody captions in the style of foreign film subtitles evoking the heartbreak, pain, and malaise of adolescence. It’s a combination that’s been a hit, earning Bahbah a legion of followers on Instagram.

Bahbah is a storyteller at heart, and the pithy text that accompanies her photographs is as meticulously crafted as a screenplay. With recent IRL exhibitions in Miami and LA, and her first New York solo show currently at Castle Fitzjohns Gallery, Bahbah is challenging the art establishment to accept work that’s egalitarian and designed to be freely shared on social media. As her Instagram bio notes, “You’ve probably seen my art on someone else’s account.”

VICE recently chatted with the Palestinian artist, who was raised in Australia and now lives in LA about navigating the politics of the Internet, the nature of intimacy, and the importance of emotionally vulnerable men.

VICE: What inspired the title of your show, Fuck Me, Fuck You?
Bahbah: It’s the heart and core nature of modern love. If you look at the entire body of work, you’ll see all my protagonists have such an ambivalence towards love and heartbreak. In one piece, one character says, “I need love.” And in another piece they say, “Fuck you, I hate you.” This title really captures that influence.

You’ve been exhibiting a lot more recently. What sparked the fire?
Seeing friends do so well on their own inspires me, and there are so many women entrepreneurs that are just slaying it. It’s important to be as boss bitch as possible. I just started to do what I wanted to do. I had bigger goals for myself and just started representing myself, created my team, and funded all my own shows. I wanted to have solo shows everywhere. I started in Miami, and even though I invested a crazy amount of money, I believed in myself and was motivated to keep going. So I had a show in LA, and now New York. I plan on doing a whole European tour over the summer. I don’t want to depend on anyone to achieve what I want to achieve.

What has the feedback been like?
There’s a great appreciation for the messages in New York. The feedback I’ve gotten here has been so strong. People tell me I’m giving their heart and mind a voice. That’s my favorite. It’s been very meaningful to know that what I’m doing is making such a difference in the way that people express themselves.

What’s the difference between looking at your work up close versus on a screen?
Fans have told me it’s so different seeing my work in person rather than online. There’s a difference between swiping on a phone and being able to stand in front of a photo and actually take in what’s being said: a beautiful message at a scale larger than your head.

Has exhibiting earned you more credit for your work?
Absolutely. If someone shared my photo [on social media] without credit last year, I would say that 70% of people would get away with it. This year, only like 5% are getting away with it. I stopped giving a fuck a long time ago, but my followers are actual spies. I love them.

Dylan Sprouse was one of the first men you shot for your series. What was that like?
To me, feminism is about making women stronger and allowing men to feel vulnerable. We need to give men permission to cry and be soft and say what they feel. They don’t have to be such a strong figure.

How do you capture such candid honesty?
Everything you see, from the pictures to the dialogue, comes from my thoughts and feelings. I internalize conversations or things that I want to say, and then I create and I write it down. I’ve been trying to practice transparency for a few years now with my thoughts and emotions. Women have been silenced too long about saying what they feel when they want to, but it’s more important now than ever.

So what’s next for you? What are you hoping to share?
There’s a lot of messages that aren’t being communicated in society and a lot of taboos that aren’t being addressed. I want to use my platform to raise awareness about conversations that aren’t really out there. In this day and age, we need to be able to feel comfortable communicating the things that we subconsciously repress. I’m working on a new series. It’s already shot and written. I just have to edit it.

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For those of you who need reminding: Smirnoff Ice is a bottled malt beverage. It is cloyingly sweet, looks like murky winter sludge, and tastes like something a pharmaceutical company might concoct to conceal a chemical flavor. It also gets you drunk. But Smirnoff Ice's primary popularity seems to come not from actually drinking the vile stuff, but instead forcing others to guzzle it down, frequently on one knee, while you bask in their misery.

This, dear readers, is called "Icing." And while it is a game played primarily by drunken man-boys slogging through business undergrads, it turns out that Icing is popular somewhere else, too: in some corners of the Trump White House.

According to a new report from the Washington Post, the Presidential Personnel Office (PPO)—the office that vets and hires Trump's appointees to the administration—spends its time in-between filling staffing gaps from the highest turnover in recent presidential history by, well, forcing one another into drinking Smirnoff Ice.

The section in question starts like this:

PPO leaders hosted happy hours last year in their offices that included beer, wine, and snacks for dozens of PPO employees and White House liaisons who work in federal agencies, White House officials confirmed.

So far, pretty normal. A lot of workplaces have work parties and happy hours and whatever, right? But then comes this particular tidbit:

In January, they played a drinking game in the office called “Icing” to celebrate the deputy director’s 30th birthday. Icing involves hiding a bottle of Smirnoff Ice, a flavored malt liquor, and demanding that the person who discovers it, in this case the deputy director, guzzle it.

The White House confirmed that PPO officials played the Icing game but said it and the happy hours are not unique to the PPO and are a way to network and let off steam.

Let's pause for a second here and unpack what this scene might have looked like, shall we?

It starts with the deputy director, the birthday boy, stumbling across a murky white bottle of Smirnoff Ice in a cupboard or desk drawer or something. He laughs, then, knowing what he must do, and the other PPO employees stream in, surrounding him, filling the cramped kitchen as he takes a knee. His Adam's apple bobs, ferrying the citrus malt down, gulp after gulp, as the huddled throng of his employees closes in tighter around him—everyone desperate to see their boss on his knees with the bottle in his mouth and finger-lengths of liquid draining with each successive gulp. The room is almost humming, and the crowd roils in unison until the Ice is gone, and the birthday boy, no, man, finally rises to his feet once again. The entire room lets out a unified sigh, none realizing they had been collectively holding their breath until that very moment, and...

OK, maybe we're embellishing things a bit here, but still. The guy got iced. An adult male working in the Trump administration. This is a thing that happens, everybody.

But wait! They also vape!

Even as the demands to fill government mounted, the PPO offices on the first floor of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building became something of a social hub, where young staffers from throughout the administration stopped by to hang out on couches and smoke electronic cigarettes, known as vaping, current and former White House officials said.

And then, between the Icing and the smoking of electronic cigarettes known as vaping, they get around to selecting the people who will run our country.

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For Robbie Barrat, beauty is in the AI of the beholder. OK, beauty might be a stretch, but these neural network nudes are definitely strangely fascinating.

Barrat, a recent high school graduate in West Virginia, made the images by feeding thousands of classical nude paintings scraped from WikiArt into a Generative Adversarial Network (GAN). The GAN, uses a system of two neural networks called a “generator” and a “discriminator,” to create convincing versions of the works using data from the paintings and machine learning.

When he previously tested this technique with landscape oil paintings, Barrat (who you might remember from his viral Kanye West neural network project) says the GAN was able to produce fairly convincing compositions with some surreal accents. In the nude portrait experiment, however, the neural network refused to move past its Dalí period.

“The GAN didn't successfully learn how to make realistic nude portraits,” the 18-year-old Barrat told me via email. “The discriminator part of the GAN isn't really able to tell the difference between blobs of flesh and humans, and once the generator realized it could keep feeding the discriminator blobs of flesh, and fool it this way, both networks just stopped learning how to paint more realistically.”

Though people might immediately recoil at these doughy beasts, Barrat hopes that people see the potential in art made with the assistance of AI. He said, “I believe that one of the next great art movements will be AI-created art. Just like how when the camera was introduced, art shifted from being focused on realism and accurate depictions of events to being more abstract and impressionistic.”

Barrat lives in San Francisco and has been working on AI projects with tech company Nvidia since he graduated from high school. He says he’ll soon be moving to work in a research lab at Stanford University, but he also hopes to one day attend art school.

You can see more of Barrat's AI generated nude portrait project at his Github profile, and follow him on Twitter here.

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From an early pan of twilit palm trees to scenes of rocky shorelines and greasy spoons, Aaron Katz’s Gemini presents Los Angeles as a glam-noir hillscape of psychological whiplash. It's a slicker Vertigo made for the modern era. The film is Katz's first to offer serious star power—Zoë Kravitz, Lola Kirke, and John Cho—which is fitting given its themes of privacy, fame, and entitlement.

Gemini follows Jill Lebeau (Kirke) as she morphs from a homey celebrity personal assistant to superstar Heather Anderson (Kravitz) into a platinum sleuth on the run from the law. On one level, Gemini plays like a traditional murder mystery, with John Cho turning up mid-way as the solicitous Detective Edward Ahn. But the real thrills come less from the story and more from the chemistry that Kirke generates with the rest of the cast. She is at once Heather’s bestie and loyal bodyguard, and both target and rival of Detective Ahn. By the end of the film, she remains a kind of cipher, as sympathetic as she is enigmatic.

Katz—who also wrote the film—tempers Gemini’s overt style with grounded conversations that betray his mumblecore roots (Dance Party, USA and Quiet City). As Heather and Jill banter over the merits of Seventeen magazine and a lone Mello Yello waiting to be mixed with St. Germaine, their obvious comfort with each other sometimes adopts subtle erotic undertones. The fact that Heather is being hounded by the paparazzi for a fling with pop star Tracy (Greta Lee) further mires their romantic possibilities in a way that reminds one of how queerness can still jeopardize a film career.

Ultimately, amidst its doppelgänger intrigue and a narrative as twisted as the streets of the Hollywood Hills, Gemini applies whodunit logic to today's social-media driven celebrity moment, exposing its victims without ever fully critiquing the culture itself.

VICE spoke with Katz, Kirke, and Cho on the phone about the film, which hits theaters in New York City on March 30. Here's an edited and condensed version of our conversation.

WARNING: Potential spoilers ahead.

VICE: From the title on, the concept of twins and doubling utterly fills this film. At times, it feels a bit like Hitchcock. Were you influenced by a specific movie of his?
Aaron Katz: Interesting. I actually wasn’t thinking too much about Hitchcock or that era of filmmaking when writing the script. I was more thinking of 80s and 90s thrillers—like Single White Female—but these may be riffing off Hitchcock. I was also thinking of the detective literature of the 30s and 40s, which often involved people who looked like one another, or bodies that are not found or identified properly, which of course means that body is going to come back in ways that may or may not surprise people.

What was the catalyst behind the "twinning" concept for you?
Katz: We definitely wanted to reflect some different ways that the title applies to different characters in the movie. Lola, was the script called Gemini when you first got it?

Lola Kirke: No, it was called Heather! A twin to the movie Heathers. [Laughs]

Katz: But that title was confusing—because we didn’t want this movie to seem in any way related to that movie. My movie revolves around Heather Anderson and the evolving relationship that Jill has with her—and the imbalance of power that shifts throughout the movie. I tried to change the name, but nothing else felt right. Then our director of photography, Andrew Reed, suggested something astrological—something that sounds like a Showtime movie you might see late at night in the early 90s. With Gemini, we realized there are all these different ways and layers that you can interpret that title—and ultimately it’s a stronger concept.

The Gemini symbol not only becomes a clue at the end, but connects to the ambiguity in the relationship between Jill and Heather. Lola, I got this wonderful tension between the two of you, and wondered how you cultivated your characters offset.
Kirke: It was kind of funny because Zoë was shooting Big Little Lies while she was making Gemini. Aaron and I would be working really hard and she would come on and do her day and then leave and go back and be fabulous. In a way this achieved precisely the dynamic of “Zoë has a lot of things to do and we don’t." [Laughs] That’s also what you see with Heather onscreen.

Katz: Yeah, like, “Zoë has Yves Saint Laurent parties to go to.”

Kirke: And then she had to go on tour in the middle of the movie. Like, “You have one take and then I’m leaving.” [Laughs] Of course, I’m kidding. Zoë was amazing. I think it was a testament to her excitement about the movie that she did it at all because it was not that easy for her to do it.

Katz: One thing the three of us also did was spend a lot of time together before we actually shot the movie. We would just sit around and talk about movies and talk about these characters. And I would rewrite scenes based on what we’d talked about. When I wrote the characters, even though I had Lola in mind, I didn’t know her yet, and I didn’t know who would play Heather. Bringing the characters of Jill and Heather into the specifics of who Lola is and who Zoë is—that was a really exciting process.

At the beginning of the film, there’s an intriguing line from one of Heather’s fangirls: “There’s a theory going around that the two of you are together.” When you were playing Jill, did you think there was some type of romantic tension between her and Heather?
Kirke: I like that it’s an ambiguous element of the film, but it wasn’t at the fore of my mind. John [Cho] and I were talking about this in another interview and John astutely said that he thought maybe Aaron had perhaps intentionally left that open-ended.

John Cho: You can amen this or not, Aaron, but I thought maybe you planted that seed with the shot of Zoë and Greta kissing, which then cuts to Lola looking at them. It seems like perhaps you were trying to create as many possible motives for the crime that happens.

It seems that Jill feels a sort of love for Heather, but also a sense of frustration. The fact that Jill doesn’t have any romantic context or relationship possibilities of her own also opens up that idea that there may be something between them.
Kirke: I also think that’s reality for a lot of these Hollywood assistants—or assistants who work for really powerful people. They have no context of their own. It disappears because they’re so involved in the life of somebody else. I also think that female friendship, when it’s deep enough, can become this very multifaceted thing: You become the friend, platonic lover, mother. It can become a really dynamic, rich sister-type friendship.

Cho: At the heart of it, what their relationship has in common with other relationships of import is intimacy. Jill and Heather are very intimate with each other. In the Venn diagram of relationships, there’s overlap between romantic intimacy and sister intimacy and even parent-daughter intimacy. The motorcycle shot at the end of the film, for example, can be read in a romantic way, but also as parental. That’s the whole upside-down palm tree of the assistant-actor relationship. The employer sometimes cedes power to the assistant, like, “You take care of me, even though I’m your boss.” It can become a type of self-infantilization.

And of course, in the beginning of the film, the palm trees are presented in a double row, going back to the twinning idea.
Cho: The Gemini reference also connects to a cliché of Hollywood—going back to Annie Hall and talk of astrological signs. But people here really do talk about astrology in casual conversation and there are tarot card readers all over the city.

Katz: I know that Lola had to have her tarot card reader on set everyday. [Laughs]

John, during the course of the film, Jill plays a kind of detective twin to your Edward character—a kind of girly Columbo in a trench coat. Edward’s character is so cryptic, I wondered how you envisioned his backstory.
Cho: I saw Detective Ahn as a kind of doctor testing reflexes—poking different spots to see when the knee jerked up. His trick is to reveal as little about himself as possible in order to get you to reveal as much about yourself as possible. His identity is very fluid to me. He’s very shifty, and I don’t know how much of what he says is true.

In a way, it seems that the whole film questions this fabrication of truth and fabrication of celebrity images—specifically through social media platforms. The phrase “This is real life” shows up in the film several times in a way that seems consciously ironic.
Katz: I definitely have a lot of anxiety about that, but I don’t mean the movie to be a critique of Hollywood, or social media platforms, or paparazzi, or any of that. Yes, they’re part of the plot, but what’s more important is exploring what happens when real humans have to live in these circumstances.

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A long time ago, the complied wisdom and morality of a society would be passed down through an oral tradition that would teach the next generation through stories, songs, and ceremonies. With written language came the ability to inscribe these stories onto stone or papyrus, and it gradually became easier and easier for these sacred texts to spread widely. But fewer and fewer people look to old stories for real enlightenment these days, and for many, questions of right and wrong can seem old-fashioned. But that's not to say there isn't a hunger for a discourse that can teach us what behavior is praiseworthy. Now, we look to Twitter. More specifically, we look to this Twitter story about a stolen lunch that contains a surprising amount about workplace etiquette and ethics:

This comes from Zak Toscani, a comedian, and though it is unverified (like all the old legends) we can still draw lessons from it. According to Toscani, his coworker bought a thing of shrimp fried rice at 11:30 AM and put it in the fridge so it would cool off by the time he took his break at noon. (I don't know why you would do this, but let's not fixate on that.) In that narrow half-hour window, the shrimp fried rice vanished. The perpetrator was captured on camera, however, and the wronged coworker saw the tape:

This is the most important part of the story, the element that transforms it from a gossip-y office tale to a genuine moral lesson. The question here is not whether stealing a lunch from the office fridge is wrong—it obviously is. The question is, what do you do with a fridge thief? What kind of punishment is appropriate?

The most libertarian among us might argue that it is not the place of office authorities to police the fridge. They might ask, "Well, was your lunch labeled?" They might tell you that the proper course is to write an angry note on the office messageboard (if such a thing exists), or tape a NO STEALING sign to the fridge. Why involve HR at all? Was the fried rice really that good?

The more law-and-order perspective posits that the perpetrator should be disciplined in some way—if not fired, then given an official warning. Or at least have to compensate the wronged party for his lunch. You can imagine an office (or a society) where there is a set punishment for a stolen lunch. The thief not only committed a crime against the fried rice–haver, she broke the covenant of the office fridge, the fundamental idea that if you put food in it and it is either clearly labeled or obviously your food and not a communal item, then you can rest knowing the food is secure. An office community that cannot trust the rules of the fridge is a broken office community—so that community should have the right to punish violators.

On the other hand, a society may also way to pay attention to the victims of crime and factor that into the resulting penalty. Here, the victim demonstrates not a desire for vengeance, but a loyalty to his fellow office workers as a group—he knows that a firing would upend the perpetrators life, and would not want that disproportionate penalty to be handed down. Instead, he just wants his curiosity satisfied.

In the United States, the idea that victims should have an expanded role in criminal court proceedings—often referred to as "victims' rights"—is controversial, with some arguing that it can put defendants at an unfair disadvantage. You can imagine a scenario where a more vindictive would-be rice luncher demands that the thief be fired, or where a prior relationship with the thief colors the punishment process unfairly. But the victim here has opted for a more informal punishment process:

So while the perpetrator hasn't been officially sanctioned, clearly everyone in the office knows that she stole a lunch. This is clearly a form of punishment, as the office as a whole knows that she is untrustworthy.

So here we have a second violation of the office code. No one expects a thief to admit their crime in public, but here we might have expected a half-admission: Oh was that your lunch? I'm sorry I thought it was garbage and threw it out. Or else a confession with a exculpatory factor: I am deathly allergic to shrimp. I needed to get rid of it. I will buy you a new lunch. The lack of shame is what has the office "about to start screaming."

Further, she hides behind the "no snitching" code of conduct, which posits that victims of and witnesses to crimes shouldn't involve the authorities. In fact, the victim here follows a version of this principle—he could have demanded punishment, but he didn't. The offender, not knowing this, continues to make herself look foolish.

Indeed.

So here we come to the end of the story, and it's final lesson, which is that sometimes punishment does not even involve letting the punished know it is punishment. Here, the penalty for her crime is almost symbolic—she has to eat the exact sort of food she threw out. More importantly, she is seen eating the food and likely being mocked, not just in this office, but in offices across the world, thanks to this viral thread. That is, if she even exists. The whole thing might just be fake.

But fake or not, the viral story affirms the values that so many office workers hold dear, and codifies them: The office fridge thief is the lowest of the low. It's wrong to wish someone else be fired for a petty offense. And informal, community-driven punishment can be more effective than judgments handed down from on high.

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Like most women, I’ve been sexualized more times than I can count, both with and without my permission. I’ve been told by bosses to wear a skirt next time—the shorter the better. Like nearly every woman I know, I’ve sat down in a coffee shop with a book only to find myself held hostage by some man, striking up what could pass as innocent conversation. Not wanting to be rude or assaulted, neither physically nor verbally, women engage with our harassers just as long as we have to. I’ve had hot coffee thrown at me for not smiling back at a cat caller. I’ve had male friends, classmates, and coworkers stun me silent with an out-of-nowhere comment about the shape of my ass or size of my breasts.

When I became a sex worker, I had a sort of ah ha moment: putting up with men was work, I realized—and I didn’t have to do it for free. Whether I was working as a table dancer in London, a gown club in New York City, or some hole in the wall off a freeway in the midwest, the men were the same. More than dances, they wanted me to sit silently and listen while they complained about their jobs or talked shit about an ex. I was therapist, marriage counselor, career advisor, priest. The emotional labor men feel entitled to that women are expected to perform for free, I got paid for. And—unlike other service jobs or the real world—if a dude was particularly awful, security would step in while I walked away.

Some years later, when I went back into sex work as a call girl on craigslist, it was similar: much of the job was emotional, rather than physical labor. The sex itself was not very different than encounters I’d had as a civilian. Sometimes pleasurable, it was, so much more often, unmemorable. Men’s needs took priority, whether I was engaging with them for free or for pay. By the time I started having sex for money, like many women, I'd had a lifetime’s worth of fucking that had left me feeling fucked. At least, as a prostitute, I was getting paid.

To believe all sex workers are inherently victimized by their profession invalidates the experiences of those who have been. Sex workers, though at greater risk for victimization due to the criminalized and stigmatized nature of their work—are, on an average day, no more or less harassed or put upon than any other woman living in this sexist world. That said, to believe the sex industry doesn't have an effect on the private lives and identities of its workers—as some pro-industry advocates argue anecdotally—is equally obtuse.

I’ve spent the years since transitioning out of the industry coming to terms with the complicated sexual experiences I’ve had in my lifetime. Now, it seems women who haven’t traded sex for cash have begun to engage in a similar reckoning: from the #metoo movement and Harvey Weinstein to the New Yorker short story, Cat Person, and the much-read (and debated) story about a bad night out with comedian Aziz Ansari, we’re talking as a culture about sexual harassment and the meaning of “bad sex” in broader terms. We’re talking about consensual experiences that have left us feeling unsatisfied and taken advantage of. Consent, we’re collectively realizing, is sometimes not enough.

The #metoo movement has gone a step further, and complicated our understanding of ethical sex. Ethical sex isn’t just consensual—it’s non-exploitative, it’s protected, it’s honest, it’s pleasurable. Something can be consensual and still really fucked up—exploitative, dishonest, unsafe, not pleasurable. We’ve finally gotten to a place where we’re talking about more than just “rape” or “not rape.” I got to this place myself when I left the sex industry. I reconciled myself to the fact that the sex I’d had for money, though consensual, was unethical in other ways. It was exploitative. It was joyless. I had nothing in common with my clients. Sometimes I hated them.

When I transitioned out of sex work, I began seeking everything my intimate life was missing: I wanted sex that was pleasurable and non-exploitative. I wanted a romantic partner I could be honest with, and who shared my values. I wanted someone who treated me with concern and respect. To be sure, some sex workers are capable of finding this while working in the business—and some privileged sex workers may even find this with their clientele—but most sex workers, I’d imagine (like most women) are used to far less.

So accustomed to abuse, I fell into a codependent relationship with a man who took advantage of me financially while using my sex work past against me. After I left that relationship and started meeting men online, I often rushed too quickly into bed. Sex too soon meant I fell hard for men I felt sexually compatible with, but with whom I had nothing else in common. I had to put aside all the shame-based reasons women are encouraged to delay having sex in order to break my bad dating habits.

Eventually, I learned to weed out what I’d call the “client” types—men so engrossed in themselves that my presence barely registered. Men who'd choose a bar as our first or second date, even though I’m sober. Men who talked on and on about their novels, never asking what I did for work. I stopped giving time to just anyone and held out for men I actually found interesting. I began demanding men give me as much space as they took up.

I learned to factor sex into an emotionally fulfilling relationship. Casual sex with strangers had been easy, whereas sex in the context of a relationship presented certain challenges. I didn’t know how to act—or, more accurately, I didn’t know how to “not act,” I had grown so used to performing. Although I’d been a professional at providing pleasure, like many women, I felt ambivalent about expecting it in return. After literally hundreds of partners, I couldn’t have told you what turned me on.

From the beginning, the man I eventually married was an attentive partner. As far as emotional labor, he does his fair share. One of the first major differences between sex with my husband and sex with a client is that the former checks in. In the beginning, if he thought I wasn’t enjoying myself or sensed that I didn’t want to continue, he’d stop. We communicated, constantly, verbally or otherwise —before, after, and sometimes during the act. At first, to be honest, this kind of attention was off-putting. I learned that if I wanted intimacy I would have to tolerate being seen.

These days, I’m still cornered into doing emotional labor. The other day, after a man helped me carry the stroller up the front steps of my building, I listened politely as he gave me childrearing advice. When he offered to return with a box of gently used baby clothes, I politely refused. Sometimes, I’ll be polite. He’s only being nice, I’ll tell myself. He knows where I live. Last night, when some guy at the gym insisted I remove my headphones so that he could compliment my routine, I asked to be left alone. Men will be men, and in my experience, most are after the same thing: they want a little attention, they want some company, they want an ego boost, they may want to fuck. Sorry, gentlemen, that’s no longer my job.

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A few weeks ago, I attended a screening of Surfer: Teen Confronts Fear at the Laemmle in Beverly Hills, the same chain of independent movie theaters where The Room first screened 15 years ago. It wouldn’t shock me to see Surfer find a similarly enthusiastic audience.

As with Tommy Wiseau’s midnight movie favorite, Surfer is a self-funded indie filled with non-sequiturs, passionate performances, unexplained diversions, and bizarre dream logic. And like The Room, describing Surfer doesn’t do the movie justice; it’s a film that needs to be seen to be understood.

Douglas Burke, Surfer’s auteur, has crafted a fascinatingly absurd drama about a boy who must rediscover the courage to surf again with the help of the ghost of his father. His real-life son Sage plays the titular “Surfer.” Burke plays his father, “Father of Surfer.” The movies has overt Christian themes, including multiple oral tellings of Bible stories. It also has a dead whale, some truly incredible green screen, and one of the most uncomfortable portrayals of a mentally incapacitated person ever committed to film.

Burke served as the movies star, writer, director, producer, financer, and composer. In his 50s with a square jaw and long dark hair, Burke looks a little like Wiseau and a lot like comedian Richard Lewis on Curb Your Enthusiasm. When he’s performing at his most heightened, he reminded me of Robin Williams doing a Billy Graham evangelical voice.

Around the midpoint of the movie, Burke delivers a full-throated monologue, moaning and shouting, “God put me together with squid and electricity! We don’t have a lot of time... I’m gonna melt back into the ocean. I wasn’t supposed to FEEL!!” He pauses, then vomits black liquid as his son watches in silent horror.

The monologue lasts a full ten minutes before his scene partner, his son, speaks. This is within a 12 minute single take, with no cuts or camera movement. Later, Burke told me it’s the longest single-take movie monologue ever. It feels like it.

Surfer only played for a week in Los Angeles (to satisfy the requirements for Academy Award considerations), but the movie attracted attention in a similar way to The Room in the pre-YouTube era of 2003—comedians discovered it, then told their friends.

“I saw the trailer before Nic Cage's new movie and I could barely concentrate on it because I couldn’t stop thinking about Surfer,” comedian Brandie Posey told me.

“So bad it’s good” is the label for these types of films, but that description seems inaccurate. Hollywood studios release bad movies every month like clockwork, but nobody’s doing midnight screenings of, say, Monster Trucks. On the other hand, movies like Surfer and other “so bad it’s good” indies like The Room, Birdemic, and Ben and Arthur are bizarre, opaque, and surreal. A “bad” studio film is a chore, but a “bad” indie movie can be an unintentionally revealing look into another person’s soul.

A few days after the screening, I met with Surfer's star/director/writer/etc for an interview. We met at his office at USC, where Dr. Burke is a professor of physics. As an obviously smart guy, I wondered if he was maybe attempting to emulate Wiseau’s success, but besides being vaguely aware of The Disaster Artist, Burke said he wasn’t familiar.

I explained that The Room is a movie that but most audiences find to be funny, but was originally envisioned as a drama. I pointed out that, at the Surfer screening I attended (which Burke spent sitting directly behind me), the audience was laughing throughout the movie.

Burke suggested that the audience might have been laughing because they were in awe of his performance. “I think people at some point have to laugh if the actor is doing a good job,” Burke reasoned. “It’s going to make the viewer feel a little bit insane, and start to laugh a little bit. But there’s also a lot of deep, deep tragedy.” Burke explained that his inspirations were more classical than modern, citing Richard Burton and Peter O’Toole. “I love to write poetry and perform it as though I’m on the middle of some Shakespearean stage,” he said. “No other producer would ever let me do that.”

Surfer is Burke’s first film, so seeing his work on the big screen was important. “For me, movies go to theaters, then they go to TV, then they go to home video. This movie could run on ESPN films. It could run on NBC. It could run on Trinity Broadcast Network. Each of those is a separate deal.”

It’s true that the faith-based circuit has become increasingly profitable for independent films. In the past five years, the amount of Christian-themed movies released theatrically have more than doubled. “I don’t know that you can make The Bible cool to people, but maybe [ Surfer] makes it cool, in a way,” he said. “I don’t know that there’s been a movie that can appeal to the faith audience, to the teen audience, and also has a cool factor [like Surfer].”

One scene features Burke shouting another monologue to his son in front of a dead whale. “That’s a real whale,” he told me.

Burke read online that a whale carcass would be washing to shore near them, so he quickly pulled together a shoot for the same day. “It stunk. It smelled. Imagine the worst sour milk you’ve ever smelled. That’s what it smelled like.”

“To me, it was a gift from God,” he added.

Burke said the discomfort seen on Sage’s face in the scene is real. “If you watch his face, you can see it in his face, this foreboding feeling,” he said. “I don’t think he’d been around a big dead whale before.”

Now 16, Sage appears to be a talented surfer, but I wondered how interested he was in acting. “He hasn’t done any other acting,” Burke said. “It shows his innocence. He’s not older than 14 through the whole movie. He’s only six in the first scene where he’s speaking.” I was curious if Sage knew what he was signing up for, being in his dad’s movie.

“He enjoyed it,” Burke insisted. He explained why he felt defensive about questions regarding Sage, who was unavailable for interview. Burke recounted reading a review that described Sage as “mortally embarrassed.” Burke recounts all of this to tell me that Sage’s reaction to the review was, “How does this guy know I’m embarrassed?”

I reminded him the review was a positive appraisal that ends with a recommendation to see the film. This led to a broader discussion about the film’s perception.

“What some adults don’t understand, as a film critic, they might not like it, but the film’s not for them,” he explained. “It’s for teenagers, and teenagers love it. It’s a father teaching his son. If the boys in the audience don’t like it, then you’ve failed, because the message is for them.”

“I’m sure there are people who don’t want to teach their son the Bible. That’s okay. They would not like the movie, I guess,” he added.

It felt like Burke thought criticism of Surfer meant the audience was either attacking his son, failing to understand the Christian themes, or have a bigoted view of Christians.

"Is there a fear that audiences might get it and not like it?" I asked.

“I don’t know. That’s tough,” Burke said after a long pause. “You know, if the critics stick all their knives in it, okay. Then they’re sacrificing a lamb, and you know what happens after that.”

After we parted ways, I tried to sort through his lamb metaphor on the drive home. Was he suggesting that criticizing Surfer is necessary for the common good? Did he mean it in reference to the “Lamb of God,” as if to say, criticizing Surfer is similar to killing Jesus Christ? Would that mean the movie starts over again for the critic after three days but with a 20-minute single-take monologue? Like everything else about Surfer, I’m not entirely sure it added up to anything more than well-intentioned eccentricity. In cinema, that’s a virtue.

Surfer is screening April 6th—12th at Regency Lido Theatre in Newport Beach. Future screenings will be announced on the film’s website . No date yet for digital release, though Burke told me it would happen “eventually.” I recommend a viewing when you have the opportunity.

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While the life and teachings of Christ are the root for some people's sexual hangups, shockingly little of it is explored in the realm of porn. Although the industry thrives on low-hanging fruit, parodying popular narratives and pushing big, shiny taboo buttons, what exists of "the greatest story ever told" uses Christ in limited, deracinated capacities. For example, in Him, the lost 1980s gay porn about the Son of God’s sexual self, Jesus only shows up as a figure in a lustful young man’s fantasies. More recently, 2015's In The Flesh features a man who is clearly Jesus returning to the Earth to preach a new gospel of sexual indulgence (“go fuck yourself!”), but he's only skittishly referred to as “Aman.”

It's easy to understand why even pornographers might pull a few punches when it comes to sexing up Jesus. On one hand, earnest, mainstream artistic projects depicting a sexual and explicit Jesus have been violently attacked by perturbed believers. On the other, there may not be much demand, the core force that truly drives porn productions. "Jesus porn" isn't a key search term at times when one might expect it to spike, like Easter or Christmas, meaning it's safer and likely more profitable to just lean into, say, Easter Bunny or Santa smut.

But while Jesus porn, especially explicit and biblically grounded content, is shockingly rare, Rule 34 remains true (for now at least). Which is to say, there is at least one notorious professional hardcore porno about the life of Christ. In 2007, a recently formed gay porn studio, Dark Alley, released Passio, a "cockbuster jam-packed with unrepentant religious ecstasy."

Art by Lia Kantrowitz featuring film still of Passio

The film opens on a rooftop in LA. Surrounded by candles, a man in a toga writes "Passio" on a laptop. The screen indicates it's a new gospel.

The laptop screen bridges four vignettes that open basically right before the sex begins. The first features two disciples before the cross—supposedly post-crucifixion—who show their respect, then fuck on a bed in front of it. The second sees Pontius Pilate topping Caiaphas, the high priest who supposedly conspired to kill Jesus. Next is the Last Supper, opening somberly, but pretty quickly moving into the disciples sensuously feeding each other over grapes and bread (and bagels, for some reason), until suddenly everyone's clothes pop off as if by magic—a jump cut—and they all start fucking in a free-for-all gangbang. The final scene features a priest whipping Jesus on the cross with a leather flogger. He then starts to worship Jesus's cock, with a bit of light ball torture mixed in. Soon after, he unties Jesus, who immediately leaps down off of the cross and begins dominating the priest. This ends with a cumshot on the ass/back of the priest.

Basically, the film depicts key scenes from the life of Christ, like the Last Supper and the Crucifixion, and finds some pretense to turn them into hardcore fuckfests. Passio garnered serious attention in outlets like The Stranger, but most of the commentary was fairly critical, painting it as a shameless attempt to rile up religious conservatives in a way that could potentially send dangerous backlash towards the wider gay community. (Devout Christians, on the hunt for any attempt to make a gay porn film about the life of Christ since a 1984 chain letter emerged claiming one was imminent, seem to have ironically missed or ignored the film entirely.)

Was Passio just a flagrant attention-grab from the same studio that brought the world, also in 2007, such openly provocative titles as Gaytanamo? This Easter, I caught up with two of the individuals behind the film, director Matthias von Fistenberg (a pseudonym) and Dark Alley owner and producer Rob Felt, to ask them exactly how Passio came to be and what they meant to achieve with it. These are their words:

Matthias von Fistenberg: The idea came from my frustration with hundreds of years of art. I love Renaissance art, how it is very sexy, except for one topic: Jesus. When you see Jesus in art from that period, you see attempts at sexualizing the body, but they were tiptoeing around it. I always thought we should just make him sexy. You cannot draw people in with only suffering and pain. You need something people can connect to on a subconscious level, which is sexuality.

There was no particular trigger [that led me to turn that idea into a movie]. It just hit me one day. I felt like: Enough tiptoeing around the subject. I want my Jesus sexy! That’s it. I called my partner because I knew we had a shoot that weekend and it wasn’t particularly defined. I said, “OK, we need 50 meters of fabric and lots of bread. We’re going to do the Last Supper and the Jesus story. We’re going to show that it can and should be like us. It should be sexy. It shouldn’t be miserable.”

Since Jesus was a mythical person, we can all imagine what he looked like. So I thought it would be a good idea to put our spin on the classical story [laughs]. I felt like we were in the best position to sexualize it, because we were porn producers.

Rob Felt: When you’re an upstart, under-funded porn company, you can’t do things on a big scale, but you certainly can afford two pieces of wood and some rope to make a cross, and some pieces of cloth. So it basically came from figuring out what we could do with the resources that we had, that could get our name out there into the world. That was the commercial aspect of it. It’s an attention game. You’re trying to get a brand going and doing things that get a lot of attention.

Von Fistenberg: I didn’t write a script. The Bible is full of stories that lend themselves to reinterpretation, but the Crucifixion and the Last Supper were the easiest targets because they’re the most somber and holiest. So these are the scenes we went after. There is an element of violence or masochism in the scenes on the cross, whipping Christ, and such things. So we played with additional S&M undertones: The priest whips Christ. Then Christ comes down off the Cross and rapes the priest. It was a crazy spin on things that I thought were going to be completely wrong. But at the same time, I was going to make it sexy. You’d watch it and feel disgusted by it, but also turned on because it was done with super-hot models, and obviously they’re having fun.

We made it in New Jersey. Religion is a little less intertwined in life there than in Europe, [Note: von Fistenberg is Polish], but we got a little pushback from people on set. They felt like it was something we shouldn’t really be doing. Many people had a slightly distasteful look on their faces.

Each element of it felt forbidden. But each time I felt that, I felt more like: OK, we should do this. And everybody went with it… Everybody understood it was a crazy idea. Some people thought it was going to be a huge flop, a waste of money, but they needed the model fee. On another level, maybe the idea seemed so crazy that people thought, “Oh, maybe it’s going to be good.”

Felt: To promote the movie, we worked with a well-known promoter in New York. He did a gay pride parade in New Orleans where he had this model—not the model from the movie, because he was from Europe—who walked the parade carrying the cross. He recreated, like, this scene out of The Passion of Christ, but it was to help us promote this film. The Jesus tradition is so rich with symbols that there are many promotion avenues you can go. And Easter comes around every year...

Von Fistenberg: We tried to just have a few bloggers write about it. And they did. We had a news agency in Italy, who thought it was valid to cover, too. They spun it as distasteful, like, "American pop culture: Look what they’ve done now." Still, I was happy to see it taken seriously. When you make gay porn, x number of scenes are made everyday and nobody really cares. But making something like this, for me, was a real effort. I tried to be serious when making the film, even though I didn’t expect to be taken seriously. That someone did take us seriously meant that we touched something that resonated.

Felt: We had high DVD presales. People were curious to see the film. But our main streaming partner, usually they put our movies on the front page, and they wouldn’t put this one on the front page. A guy who worked for the company later told me the owners said, “I know we’re selling porn here, but we have to have some morals, right?” I was surprised because on the front page you see, like, I Fucked My Stepmother. In this industry, we’re not the moral safeguards of the world. We’re here to press buttons and push boundaries. So it’s interesting when you find them.

I remember as a teenager reading things like, "We’re going to march on Washington, but no drag queens or guys in leather because we want to look like respectable, tax-paying Americans." The reality is that respectability politics has never gotten anybody anywhere. It’s a stupid argument that gets dusted off anytime anyone gets uncomfortable with something another gay person is saying.

We’ve been having that argument in the queer community for, like, a gazillion years. And the bear never got poked. I don’t think that’s what we were trying to do… We might’ve gotten one email, but nothing that sticks in my mind. When we did Gaytanamo, we certainly got more.

Von Fistenberg: We got a lot of followers out of the movie. But, no sequels. I think I got it out of my system. I proved the most sacred topics can be portrayed as flesh-and-blood sexy, not just pain and suffering. That was it… I’m not crucifying anybody on video now [laughs].

Felt: When you experiment, play with these things on the edge, for the most part, your customers don’t care. A lot of the times, they see it like, “Why are you gratifying your urges to do this stuff rather than just giving us what we want?” They’re clear with what they want. It’s not experimental stuff. So with projects like Passio, we were just amusing ourselves—otherwise we’re just in this creative vacuum that is pornography, which can be infuriating if you have any kind of creativity.

But the industry is not based on films so much anymore. Our space to do these things is limited. We haven’t given up on that as part of our mission, if you will. But we don’t have any plans to do anything like Passio: The Second Coming. Which would be the obvious title.

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Inside the Cannon House, the oldest congressional office building on the stately federal campus in southeast Washington, DC, a reserved room came alive in late January with melodious chatter between more than 100 black women. With plates and cups in hand, the women fell into easy conversation about the work of the day, the news of the moment, and universal subject matter on which many black women can bond: haircare and fashion, food and travel, and weariness of Donald Trump’s manipulations of power.

Even among such a small segment of Capitol Hill’s thousands of staffers, many did not know each other, at least not outside of occasional email exchanges or passing name recognition. Still, there was a palpable love in the room.

Keenan Austin Reed, DC chief of staff to Congressman Donald McEachin from Virginia, co-organized the event with four friends and fellow staffers. They dubbed it “Hidden Figures on the Hill,” a play on the Oscar-nominated movie and an acknowledgement of the general anonymity that shrouds the work black women staffers do there every day. Even if these women and their contributions have gone chronically unappreciated in their offices, this was an intentionally carved-out space where they were not only visible, but extolled.

Keenan Austin Reed, DC chief of staff to Congressman Donald McEachin from Virginia

The event started with an email: "If we get a deal on the big four—the budget caps on defense and domestic spending, CHIP/health centers, the Dream Act, and disaster support for the storms in Florida, Texas, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands—we’ll have plenty to celebrate,” Reed recalled writing in her initial message. “Looking forward to meeting many of you! Feel free to share with other current staffers/fellows.”

More than 140 responses poured into her inbox, she said. Word of mouth is still magical, and the meeting attracted a montage of black women, a multi-generational representation of interests, backgrounds and experience levels, from senior staff to interns.

Ten years ago, Reed had no idea she might be working anywhere near Capitol Hill. “It’s one of those things: You end up doing what you’re intended to do, no matter what type of decisions you make for yourself,” she said. Her first job out of college was corporate buyer for Macy’s, followed by a successful stint as a pharmaceutical sales rep for GlaxoSmithKline. But she was enticed into politics in 2010 after helping her Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority sister, Congresswoman Frederica Wilson of Florida, win her seat. Reed got hooked on the feeling that she was helping to effect change. “There was nothing that inspired me like politics, especially working for a candidate I believed in,” she said.

Feel-good work is one thing, but personal income is another, and the move away from big pharma meant Reed took a mighty big pay cut. “You have to come from a place of inspiration, otherwise you’re looking at your bank account like…” At this she made a face, letting her sentence trail off before bursting into laughter.

The numbers tell the joke: The median Capitol Hill staffer salary is about $52,000 a year and, in Washington, DC, where the cost of living ranks among the highest of all US cities and the pay disparity for black women compared to white men is 53 cents for every dollar, the skills and talent that could ostensibly translate to higher earnings in other sectors are sacrificed to service. During the Obama administration, diversity increased at companies like Johnson & Johnson and PricewaterhouseCoopers. But in the federal government, where the historic significance of a black president was particularly monumental, Obama's presence seemed to serve as a token of a de-racialized system that doesn't exist.

Now as they focus largely on pushing back against Trump, his policies and his amen corner of self-serving cronies, black women staffers and the members they work for have been knuckling up for daily warfare to implement the good they believe in, protect what they know is right, and build a sister circle of support well-articulated for action.

It’s difficult to say exactly how many black women are currently working on Capitol Hill. Turnover is high and lateral career moves happen often. For perspective's sake, in 1974, there were 18 black women staffers in "top-drawer, prestigious" jobs in Congress, Ebony reported that June. Forty years later, there's been real progress, as the January event at Cannon House showed. But not nearly enough, according to Margaret Angela Franklin, legislative director for Congressman Al Lawson of Florida.

“I started off on the Senate in 2011, and there were not a lot of African-Americans—we were mostly staff assistants and legislative correspondents on the policy team,” she said. “More black staffers are being promoted, including women. Jennifer DeCasper is chief of staff for Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC), and there are two African-American legislative directors now. There's always been a little bit more progression on the House side because you have more Congressional Black Caucus members who serve there and they tend to hire people of color.”

What the Hill really needs, she added, is more black and brown folks on the Senate side. It’s true: In 1974, there were just 15 African-American staffers, men and women, on that side of the aisle, according to Ebony—and a report released by the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies revealed that, in 2015, just 0.9 percent of top Senate staff was black.

The absence of diversity is even more alarming now that America is under the direction of a president who sympathizes with white supremacists and remains fixated on undoing Obama’s legacy. Representation has always been important, but under Trump’s uniquely toxic turn in the White House, it’s taken on a new urgency.

The problem is that the push for inclusion and diversity has been distracted by what feels like weekly outbreaks of White House-originated chaos, according to Izmira Aitch, legislative assistant to Wisconsin Congresswoman Gwen Moore.

“Things have become so much more unpredictable in terms of our course of direction,” she told me. “What that means for us as staffers is the inability to be proactive and creative in our projects and incapable of having a long-term game plan for the legislative calendar or direction because things are so in flux and abruptly changing.”

Aitch has been on the Hill for three years, and the constant reactionary state of things since 2016 affects her at work and her peace of mind in general as an informed and conscientious black woman.

“I’m supposed to be crafting long-term, future directional legislation and policy, but my job has sort of shifted to answering the phone and trying to aide very worrisome constituents—not just from our district but random districts around the nation—about their frustration and fears because of rumors coming out of the White House or media reports about what could be coming down the pike,” Aitch said.

As part of a bipartisan delegation in 2017, Aitch recalled, she traveled to Brussels with her colleagues, including another black woman and three white men. “It was a rare opportunity to mix, take off our official titles, and really have some candid discussion,” she explained. “Some of my fellow delegates were from Republican offices and they had been very isolated in their ideology—very hyper-conservative, very right wing.” As the evening went on and got more relaxed, she said, an older white man at the table felt comfortable unleashing very pointed questions. “He asked me why black people think the Confederate flag is racist, then we talked a little about why black people don't deserve reparatory justice but Jewish people do,” Aitch told me. "Internal Izmira turned into this raging black woman but, of course, I had to maintain my diplomacy, hide the pain of insult, educate these grown-ass white men—top-tier staffers—and turn it into a teachable moment.”

This is a suffocating but not isolated experience for black women in all sectors. It’s one reason why Reed conceptualized Hidden Figures on the Hill as a place for black women to re-energize in order to keep showing up, sometimes as the “only” in the room: the only African-American, only woman, only person of color, only graduate of a historically black college or university instead of a predominantly white school. There is affirmation in spaces when you don’t have to explain or apologize for yourself.

Margaret Angela Franklin, legislative director for Congressman Al Lawson of Florida

At the Hidden Figures on the Hill event, staffers clustered to capture their good time with a selfie. They held up small, colourful signs with sayings significant to black women: “coconut oil and policy,” “yasssss,” “reclaiming my time,” a statement knitted into pop culture by Congresswoman Maxine Waters. Elsewhere, a senior staffer offered a junior staffer a tip about a job opening, and one woman even confirmed an interview for a better position the next day as a result of a contact she made there.

The networking was just part of the support Reed and other black women—including the founders of African-American Women on the Hill, an organization established to connect staffers—created to keep each other empowered to continue the long hours of sometimes thankless work. They are not the recognizable names on a ballot but the cadre who, in true black woman fashion, see the work that needs to be done and do it. Their ability to shape policy might be limited as long as Republicans have a stranglehold on Congress, but they are determined to make working there worthwhile and meaningful all the same.

“I’m definitely not one who tries to assimilate and shrink into the background and not be seen,” Aitch told me. “That’s something the women of the Congressional Black Caucus reiterate to us all the time—don’t feel compelled to blend in with drab colours and straight hair. Feel confident to be your vibrant, beautiful, kinky, colourful self. I’m happy to do that.”

Follow Janelle Harris on Twitter.

This article originally appeared on VICE US.

We are in the midst of a cultural shift. Men are confused. "How are we supposed to know what’s OK if you don’t tell us?" they wail, tearing their shirts and bellowing at the moon. Here’s a solution: just ask! Send me your questions about romance, relationships and sex. I’m a woman, ask me anything.

What's the problem?

A question sent to me on Curious Cat: "What are the ethics of S&M for feminists? How can a woman be submissive to men and a feminist? How is it OK for me to get off on dominating or humiliating women but consider myself an ally outside the bedroom?"

What am I not getting here?

You're a good guy, right? Kind, sensitive, determinedly right-on in a way that can be a little annoying at times?

I can see that you're trying, because you describe yourself as an ally rather than a straight-up male feminist – you probably knew I would make fun of you for pulling that. And I can see how exhausting this topic must be for a well-meaning man who wants to believe in the right things but also wants to have good sex.

Because, omg, this issue is a never-ending conundrum for so many politically concerned women and the men who fuck them. I've spent the last ten years trying to puzzle it out and I'm still not really sure what I think, but I have spent enough time considering it to square it with myself day-to-day.

WATCH:

What do I need to know?

Here are my basic rules:

1: Do whatever you want in bed as long as it’s between consenting adults.
2: But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t question what turns you on.

My practical short-term advice is that if you're happy sleeping with someone who likes to be dominated and humiliated – well, we should all be so lucky. It can be difficult to find someone you really like with compatible kinks, so enjoy it. Don't question a woman's ability to be dommed and still a feminist. That isn't your place.

Your second question riled me up a bit for this reason, because I’ve had men ask me that, often while tenderly stroking the hair they’d finished pulling moments before. It's like – I don't know, man. How come you just choked me for ten minutes but I'm not calling the police? Because things are weird in bed, and if I had to enforce my political beliefs every time I had sex, a man wouldn’t be allowed to look at me without my permission, let alone have control of my body. But, unfortunately, desire isn’t really capable of being intellectualised – at least, not in my experience – and, sadly, that means accepting I am turned on by things which are politically abhorrent.

This leads me to my second rule. The fact that I don't advise you to go in a training programme of jerking off to vanilla porn until you don’t want to dom anymore is born of purely selfish reasons. I love sex and am not willing to live without it. Life is already vile enough without giving up one of the very few free, healthy, fun things to do with another person.

However (and this is a big however), I don’t think that means you or I get away with indulging these preferences without seriously considering them. Because I don't think gendered sexually-violent play is an innocent fantasy or a fetish that can be written off as the same as being into feet, or balloons, or latex, or whatever. There’s an episode of Sex and the City (sorry) where Samantha and her boyfriend are doing a home invasion/rape fantasy role-play, and she dismisses it by saying, "So what, it’s just fantasy, it’s just play." The idea was that it didn’t matter what was played out – anything goes in fantasy.

I remember that striking me as odd even as a goggle-eyed, innocent 13-year-old watching in 2003. Because it’s not unrelated to real life – rape, gendered violence and domination are all so real that it seems mad to me to pretend they are just meaningless preferences that can be shelved away neatly when we aren't having sex. I think they do mean something – even if I also think you should allow yourself to indulge in them anyway.

When I started to think about why I like what I like, I came to think maybe it all began because being submissive worked to allow me to override the basic Catholic schoolgirl shame of having sex at all. If I was being bossed around and physically controlled, it worked to alleviate my own responsibility for what I wanted to do, the fact that I wanted to do it so badly. This isn’t the whole reason why I like it, of course, but it’s one thing I valued considering. Maybe you will come to some interesting conclusions, too, if you can stand to look at yourself for long enough.

I think it’s important for you and everyone to wonder just why this is such a prevalent sexual dynamic. Because I think what makes your dick hard is important. It isn’t just irrelevant play – it's worth considering, even if it makes you feel ashamed.

Would I change what I like, if I could? Well, yes, probably. It makes me worried and sad when I look at the front page of PornHub, even if I’m there to partake in it. I wonder and would desperately love to know what my sexuality would be if I grew up in some blank space devoid of all of that.

So there’s my advice to you: be a hypocrite, like I am. Be concerned about the eroticisation of female helplessness which surrounds us culturally; but go home and do what you like in bed with a willing partner.

Be a good ally, speak up for women, make a difference, but allow also that life is short; a brief exercise in pleasure.

@mmegannnolan

This article originally appeared on VICE UK.