I think that the power of a political vision is deeply engaged with the possibility of how you can live out the liberation that you seek and part of that vision is very much about desire, about the erotic.

Frankly, sex work and stripping is very good if you have radical politics. You can go to meetings all night long.

I think desire gives us - imagination - as well as actually often we pay a terrible price for it. Women are punished around their sexuality and perceived to be immoral if they practice a certain kind of promiscuous sexuality. It's a very different thing still if you're a guy, if you're a woman and you're straight.

My father is a gypsy. He traveled in caravans and was branded by the Ku Klux Klan. You know I have a history about race in my family that has very much to do with the other things that you name about poverty, about class, about access - or lack of it.

For a political movement to not understand that sexuality is a profound component of both how people are oppressed and how people dream, is not to recognize the reality of political power and where it's centered.

Everyone's always told about politics you have to be practical, but I actually think that's not true, you actually have to hold to a dream... and desire is part of that dream.

When people give up sex and give up love or they only have love in the context of tradition then I think we're missing the opportunity of saying to each other building community, building desire in community gives all of us the possibility of learning how to be who we always were terrified we'd find out we were, and then not be ashamed of it and to not have our desire and our love embedded in shame is a profound thing and it's part of what drives the movement.