Witch Institute

Queer Witcheries: Sex Magicks and Networked Hexes

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Stream began August 17, 2021 1:30 PM UTC
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This roundtable brings together three interdisciplinary and humanistic anthropologists to consider queer witchiness as tied to contemporary networked desires. Witchcraft, sorcery, and possession have long been objects of study central to anthropological inquiry. Here, though, we consider the witch in relationship to sex and networked queerness. Derided, exiled, and persecuted, the witch is a queer figure, one that circulates across social fields.


We offer three inter-related case studies: BDSM/kink sex magick, the labyrithine conspiracies of QAnon followers, and the seductive algorithmic hailings of digital sex work.


Queers have been famously inventive when it comes to sex, although secrecy and occlusion have long shaped queer sexuality (and in key ways, still do). There is a thread, dating from the 1970s, of understanding SM (BDSM/kink) as “sex magick”: in gay liberationist / radical fairy readings of SM, leatherdyke and trans practice, and pansexual “modern primitives.” The more recent visibility of queer sexual cultures, fueled by pornography and networked media, has led not only to a recognition that queer sex repertoires are vast and always in a state of transformation, but to the complex rules that govern then. BDSM sex magicks can be understood through the lens of spellcraft. There are ingredients: bodies, consent, instruments, And there are rules for the inducement of desire, consent to it, and recipes for the proper sequence for play.


In QAnon, dark forces weave labrythine webs, which are in turn deciphered by QAnoners through yet more, even more labyrinthe webs of desiring speculation, discovery, and alliance. QAnoners have and have not been spelled. They--a they comprised of an extraordinary diversity of believers, from hardcore conspiricists to yoga moms--have been subject to misinformation and algorithmically echo chambers. Yet Q has also magicked their realities into being. It persists not on its own strength, but on two key, quintessentially American elements: we are not living in “reality” and the authoritarian personality is rewarded regardless of ideological specificity.


An algorithm can function like a computational hex, a love potion (or something) for the digital age. While digital sexual labors have become commonplace over the last twenty years, algorithms are increasingly important to workers and the desiring alike. One magick leads to another--performers perform in videos released online. Those videos serve to expose performers to broad audiences, and that exposure leads in turn to the production of new, more independent media, including, among much else, NSFW Twitter and OnlyFans accounts. The algorithm is an instrument, or ingredient, for lusty seduction. During COVD-19, performers have had to extend their creative witching, as key income streams, tied to mainstream productions, as well as the escorting many workers engage in, have dried up. These are not the first plague years queers have faced, nor the first instance in which collective sexual inventiveness meets the moment.


Please Note: this event will be recorded.


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