Community Presentation of Kim Ye's Film, The Sex Workers' Guide to Parenting

Thursday, July 23, 6–9PM
The Kult:LA:
251 Main St, LA, CA 90012
Max Participants: 200
Event is 21+
Free
Parking nearby ranges from $8-12, we suggest carpooling, rideshare, and taking transit!

As an extension of Kim Ye's work It’s not a whore house, it’s a whore home feat. The Sex Worker’s Guide to Parenting on view as part of Radical Kinship, we're hosting a community presentation of the film. Please join us at The Kult:LA for an evening that will include tabling by local organizations, including SWOPLA , a screening of the film, followed by a post-screening discussion with Kim Ye, Lauren Levitt, and Lotus Lain, as well as a reception with drinks and snacks in the lobby. This is also the Official Launch of the newly released Volume 2 of the ProMomme Zine, a community-driven publication and cultural project created by Kim Ye, which centers the experiences of people who are both sex workers and parents, and that are for sale!

In The Sex Worker’s Guide to Parenting, six parents in the sex industry — including filmmaker Kimberly Ye — reflect on how erotic labor shapes the ways they care for children, build community, and navigate stigma. Moving between intimate interviews, and collective research, the film follows the making of a parenting magazine by and for sex workers. This documentary overturns familiar narratives about sex work as a threat to “family values,” recasting its skills as ones that support intentional parenting. This project was funded by Kim Ye’s California Creative Corps fellowship, generously supported by the California Arts Council and administered by Community Partners.

If you'd like to join us for a walk-through of the Radical Kinship exhibit at Feminist Center for Creative Work with Kim Ye and Chloë Flores, you can join us on Thursday at 2PM and RSVP here.

Program Schedule

6:00–6:30PM — Arrival + Tabling 

6:30–7:10PM — Screening

7:15–8:00PM — Conversation

8:00–9:00PM — Reception + Tabling 

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

Kimberly Ye is an artist whose interdisciplinary research-based practice produces films, performances, writings, and installations rooted in her communities. As a queer first-generation Chinese American, longtime worker in the sex industry, and mother of two, she makes work for and with people whose lives are routinely misrepresented–using humor, autofiction, and pop cultural aesthetics to translate marginalized experiences into mainstream visual language. Currently, she lives between Ho Chi Minh City and Los Angeles, organizes with sex workers at SWOPLA, and slaves alongside her subbyhubby beneath their three and five-year-old. Her writings can be found at Ladyscumbag.substack.com

Lauren Levitt (all pronouns) is a postdoctoral researcher at the XCITE Center for Teaching and Learning at the University of California Riverside. Her book, Sex Worker Solidarity: Networks of Caring and Sharing – forthcoming on NYU Press – examines how sex workers and sex worker organizers in New York and Los Angeles develop non-biological kinship structures and engage in non-capitalist caring and sharing practices to manage precarity, stigma, and criminalization. Their current project explores how sex workers create cultural content to represent themselves, build community, and organize politically. Lauren is on the editorial board of The Journal of Femininities and the advisory board of the Sex Workers Outreach Project Los Angeles, and she regularly acts as a sex worker advocate at public and academic events and in the media.

Lotus Lain is a globally recognized influential public figure in the realms of consent, sex worker’s rights, self advocacy & intimacy. Throughout her 12+ year career she’s been a Dominatrix; Hall of Fame Adult Performer; a Published Writer, Guest Speaker, Producer and now Intimacy Coordinator for Mainstream TV and Film.  Lotus has appeared at SXSW and on Showtime and Netflix for her work. Most recently, Lotus has spoken at the UN in Geneva and New York to inform the Human Rights Committee of the US Government’s failures to prevent trafficking and discrimination against people of LGBTQ identity.