Persephone's (Gothic) Insights

This interview is for "Hailing Hellions," a Q&A series where I interview sex workers (or ex-sex workers) who have modeled for me and my  Sex Positivity*  book project. Today's interview subject is Ashley Yelhsa! This is the SFW version;  click here  for the SFW-version interview compendium! *The longer title being  Sex Positivity versus Sex Coercion, or Gothic Communism: Liberating Sex Work under Capitalism through Iconoclastic Art  (2023). Part of an overarching movement that connects sex positivity to what I call "Gothic (gay-anarcho) Communism,"  Sex Positivity  essentially provides a hybrid; i.e., one established between academic (Gothic, queer, game and Marxist) theories, and wherein  applied  theory towards  universal  liberation is achieved by challenging Capitalist Realism (the inability to imagine a world beyond Capitalism) at a grassroots level. To it, Gothic Communism specifically occurs through direct mutual wor...

Despite it being April Fool's, this is not a joke: the " Total Codex " promotion, aka the online 2025 blog-style series promoting my 2023 thesis volume, is fully online! With it, a new  second  edition of the volume (v2.0) has also been uploaded, which you can access for free  on my book series' one-page promo . To learn about the changes contained  within  the second edition, read the new 2025 foreword, " A 2025 Foreword: On Volume Zero’s New Edition Focusing on Ludo-Gothic BDSM "!  Below is a copy-and-paste from my website, but with the nude images swapped out for non-nude ones, instead. —Perse  A 2025 Foreword: On Volume Zero's New Edition Focusing on Ludo-Gothic BDSM Marx argued that Capitalism alienates everything (and sometimes invoked the language of monsters); I argue it sexualizes everything as alien through the language of monsters. Per Hogle's ghost of the counterfeit, the elite use capital to further the abjection process; i.e., to fu...