Contributing writer Finn Dunton recently spoke with comics creator Tina Horn about SFSX (Safe Sex) Vol. 1 Protection, a trade collection that hit shops last year. Below you can find a transcript of their conversation…enjoy!

INTERVIEW: Tina Horn

FINN: Thank you for meeting with me for the Comics Bookcase interview. It’s really lovely that we get to have this time, so I’ll start the interview. So for preparation for this interview, I actually listened to a couple episodes of your podcast, ‘cause I’m a podcast kind of person. And I thought it was really interesting as a kinky, sex-positive queer person. And I noticed that you do a lot of work in other media, so my question is what about the format of the comic book was so appealing for you to tell the story of SfSx?

TINA: Totally. So it was a — I mean I’ve been a comics fan since birth, basically, and all the different stages of my life, and there are a lot of different comics that I love. And it was an opportunity — you know I’ve sought out a lot of the mediums that I’ve worked in. Like in the case of the podcast. I was like, well I want to have a podcast so I’m just going to start this. I didn’t wait for someone to ask me to do it, and I didn’t pitch it to networks. Honestly I was doing it, you know, I started doing it seven years ago and that was like before anybody could do that, or people were making money from podcasts. And, you know, when it comes to the nonfiction work that I’ve done, I’ve always sort of DIY’ed it. Comics, as a medium, and also like fiction writing as a craft, and genre fiction writing as a craft, was sort of maybe like the last thing that I’m a huge fan of but hadn’t yet tried to professionalize, and luckily I have a lot of experience professionalizing things that I love and figuring out how to do that without draining all of the juice of out them. And I’m happy to say I still love comics and I still love sci-fi and horror and erotica and genre fiction and I think I figured out how to do that.

And I love that comics is a collaborative medium. I’m really not a visual artist, except maybe in the sense of being a performance artist, but that’s a very intuitive medium, performance. It’s about more my feeling in the body and playing off of an audience, which I hope to do again one day! So being able to collaborate with people who have a skill where I just feel like I can just leave it to them. And that’s really nice for me as someone like me who’s like super ‘Type A’ and always trying to be a one queer band and do everything myself. It’s kind of nice. I guess — I haven’t thought about it this way until this moment when you asked this question, which is like — I guess it’s nice for me to work in a medium where there’s just no chance where I am ever going to try to draw my own comics. So, that really sets me up to trust my collaborators, which I try to do anyway even when I do know what I’m doing, it tempers the control freak side of me. Of course, part of being a creator like I am with SfSx also has to do with art direction, but then for me that’s like a learning experience. I’m learning from visual artists how to use language, cuz like we’re communicating using language, but we’re also using Google image searching and making moodboards, and with the new SfSx artist G. Romero-Johnson on the next volume, volume 2 of SfSx, and getting to know an artist who I haven’t met in real life, who I hope to when we can travel again and go to conventions again and everything, but like being able to sort of say — I’m a very pop culture oriented person, and I tend to like compare things to pop culture moments a lot, and sort of have like an obsessive memory for like literature and music and TV and film and comics or even like fine art or modern art — so it’s been a really great learning experience for me to be like, ok, we want this moment to be reminiscent to like, this burlesque move, so I have to Google search that and find the best like the best example of that in video or a still image. But I also want it to have an element of body horror and so I want it to be like this moment in this David Cronenberg movie and like, this commercial. Or like it reminds me of this thing I saw in a museum once and then I have to search for that. And just kind of like, learning how to communicate about visual storytelling by collaborating with visual artists is really great for me.

And when it comes to this story in particular, there are elements of SfSx, of this sort of political subtext, and the philosophy and attitude about sexuality that I have written about in nonfiction form, in long form, in reporting that I talk about on the podcast — it’s a conversational podcast — and like, I’ve made porn, which of course is a visual medium, and you know, and there are so many different things that I can show and explore. But with comics, it all has to be in the service of telling an entertaining story, and I like that as craft exercise. And I’m not being didactic, it’s not a manifesto, it’s not a piece of cultural criticism. Everything has to have an allegory and everything has to activate the proper parts of the body in the readers. It has to make them laugh and cry and get turned on and feel scared. So being able to tell a science fiction story about all of the things that I really care about in a comics medium has been like a learning experience and a growing edge for me. But also, I feel like everything in my career was building towards this project and I didn’t know it so it’s nice to be surprised, to be able to be surprised by the world and what you can do in it.

FINN: I’m an actor and I totally agree with you about the whole performance thing. That’s why I actually like acting, because it’s a collaborative experience.

TINA: And that’s actually an example of something that I’ve learned, that I don’t know that I would have known how to articulate it this way as a comics fan, as a lifetime of being a comics fan, but there are some artists whose acting is really good. ‘Cause like the visual artist is sort of doing the job of an actor in their character work. They’re taking my scripts that I write and creating the bodies and the blocking and the scenarios and interpreting that dialogue and those emotions in the way that an actor would. And that’s like, that's such an exciting, such a magical thing to see. And it's also cool that the artist can be like hundreds of different characters: more than one actor could ever possibly play.

FINN: Yeah, as somebody who comes at comics from the world of performance, I have been a scriptwriter, a director, but I’m mostly an actor. And I always thought the artist was like a super-actor because they had to like portray all the emotion, and do the set, and interpret the writer’s words and also add something to it.

TINA: I totally agree with that, that’s fascinating.

FINN: Yeah I’m glad we have a similar perspective even though we come from different worlds of performance, it's so interesting to see that applied to a work of art that is not performed but has a similar collaborative sort of setup. It’s honestly really lovely — I also miss theater a lot so it’s nice to talk about theater with somebody.

TINA: Dude, I miss theater too, you know! I’m so glad we’re on the subject now because I don't feel like this is something that I’ve ever really talked about in any of my comics interviews, the fact that I have also been a theater kid as long as I’ve been a comics fan. I’ve been a naturally theatrical person. I love going to live theater but I’ve also been super performative, like razzle-dazzle little queer my whole life and I’ve been like writing scripts and putting on, directing plays with like the kids in the neighborhood since I was like five years old. And I guess I had not until this moment thought about how being the creator of a comics series where you’re — ok so I’m the writer but I’m also the creator so I’m doing a lot of the production and the management which is sometimes the really banal spreadsheet and like email coordination and calendaring and sometimes is like creative art direction and publicity which I enjoy for the most part. But anyway I hadn’t even thought about the fact that it puts me in this role that I’ve just gravitated towards since I was very young of like, “Let’s put on a show! Let’s put on a show: together!”

FINN: And the book is very showy and flashy like the costumes and the colors and it’s just like it really works. It has the great aesthetic of a show.

TINA: I’m really happy to hear that.

FINN: That leads me to another one of my questions. One of the things I noticed in the book was the importance of sex worker fashion. Like, Avery’s clothing is important to her. When she’s asked about ‘what makes you feel empowered’ and there’s a flash to her in the pushup bassinet bra and the leather outfit. Or how when she goes to the Dirty Mind again she puts on the leopard print pants and the off-the-shoulder sweater. And then there’s all the talk about the heels. I’m just curious more about the stylings of each character and the relationship between sex work and fashion and empowerment you put in this book.

TINA: Oh my god, I'm so glad about this too. The first thing I’ll say is that everything I know about fashion I learned from being a sex worker. I had literally never owned a pair of high heels until Craigslist foot fetishists took me out to buy some, these cherry red pumps from the discount shoe store on Market Street in San Francisco. You know, I learned to walk in heels, and I learned the difference between different kinds of high heels and boots from being a sex worker. And I learned how to tell a story with fashion, like how to tell a sartorial story with my body as a sex worker, ‘cause I needed to figure out what’s my style, what’s my angle, what’s my personality, my persona that can translate to clients in a way that makes me feel centered and powerful, while also thinking about appealing to the client. And I learned all kinds of things about fetish clothes, not just shoes, but all different kinds of clothes, and I learned my taste. Like, I learned that I prefer natural materials to synthetic materials, which is not something I had ever thought about. But I learned through realizing that I really prefer leather, the aesthetics of leather, the sensory experience of wearing leather, of playing with people who are wearing leather, much more than like rubber or latex, and that made me realize that oh, I actually prefer that in my everyday clothing. And I’d never been able to articulate before that I didn’t really like synthetic materials at all. And so when it came time to do the character design for SfSx, so much of the symbolism of what the characters are wearing for me came from from how do sex workers communicate themselves to the world and also to a certain degree how when you’re queer you have to ask yourself these questions about the symbolism of clothes.

FINN: Oh, absolutely!

TINA: So much of the symbolism of clothing is about gender, whether we’re embracing it or queering it or rejecting it or making a fusion or a hybrid of it. The meaning of so many things is about gender so learning how to work with that is a huge part of being queer. From there, it just became kind of like, so this is fun because I’m not just dressing myself, I get to dress all of these people that I invented and work with the artist to figure out what are the characters communicating with their clothes. And also there are characters who are like, deliberately going undercover, like Nick and Sylvia or characters who are forced to conform, like Avery. Poor Avery has to wear that ugly-ass feminine standards outfit for most of issue one and two. And yeah, when she gets to go back to the Dirty Mind, they give her some free box clothes to wear, and that was definitely a tribute to Patricia Arquette’s character in True Romance. Obviously leopard print and animal print is iconically connected to sex workers in so many ways already but that was one particular sex worker in cinema we wanted to pay tribute to. And of course there's the political and dystopian context of femme glam clothes being considered illicit and the idea of a — I really wanted to critique the second wave feminism tendency towards femmephobia which is a very slippery slope towards transphobia as well.

FINN: Yeah, that makes perfect sense. I also noticed the parallels between like, “queering the outfit,” and to somebody who’s recently come out as transmasculine, it's not really safe to go out and shop and I’m on a college student’s budget, so like wearing things I already own in a masculine way has been really interesting and even though it's not the same as what Avery is going through, I think it’s a really interesting parallel. And I also noticed another parallel between the sex worker community and the queer community that kind of comes up in the book: the chosen name of the sex worker, like Simona Salacious. How does a sex worker’s chosen name play into the sense of identity and community, and how does that apply to the thought you gave Avery’s character while writing SfSx?

TINA: Another amazing question. I wouldn’t want to overstate the similarity between sex workers choosing their name and queer people choosing their names because first of all, I’m cis, and I definitely don’t want to make a comparison in a way that is appropriative. But with that caveat being said, I do feel like I can say confidently as a queer person who started doing sex work in my mid-twenties that the ability to make a name for myself — which is a name I still use professionally, artistically, and socially — did give me an opportunity to try on a different skin. Anecdotally, a lot of trans and gender-nonconforming friends of mine I think also feel a comparison. Let me put it this way, when it comes to like, oppression and like, systemic discrimination, I think that there’s a comparison to be made. Actually, this is totally how I want to put this. Look at social media, if you will. Queer people and sex workers have both been on the vanguard of what it means to have a social media profile that is both you — and I don’t want to say ‘not you’ — but is both you but also has a context and a box around it. And sometimes it is because you are exploring who you are in public through social media and sometimes it’s because you’re aware that the persona you’re putting out on social media is marketing and actually every person is contributing to marketing, like even civilians are contributing to marketing with their regular, everyday social media profile. But sex workers are the ones who are like, but we’re going to be the ones who get something. And those are the people who are victimized by the system. And by the system I mean like, capitalism, tech plutocrats, coming up with terms of service that marginalize us and shut us out of the things that we have pioneered the use of for them. I hope that answers your question.

FINN: I asked the question because I recently finished Pose and noticed that so much of the trans women who picked their names were also their sex worker names and part of their performance names and I know that there are parallels in the origins of the sex worker and queer communities, so I thought I would ask as someone who is not terribly familiar with the sex worker community but is very interested. That leads me very nicely to my next question: I noticed that you handled a lot of topics that, for example, a trans woman of color, a nonbinary person, that maybe don’t reflect your identity but at least in regards to the things that I could speak about, they seem like they were handled with a lot of tact. So I was curious about what kind of research you did to tell these stories fairly and with that level of tact I felt while not necessarily experiencing it directly yourself.

TINA: Well thank you for that! I think that I don't know if I — there wasn’t really like a period of research for me. It was more like, when it comes to the characters that I’m writing about that I don’t share an identity with, I just look towards members of my community that I know and in many cases people who I love on how to write those characters. I think that the further research that I did or consideration that I made from the work that I already do and further knowledge that drew from that I already had comes from paying very close attention to the political and cultural criticism that is coming from those who do have identities different from mine. When it comes to tropes that I know that nonbinary people are really sick of, it’s like, cool, I’m not gonna do that.

FINN: I just want to say that I appreciated the nonbinary character Denis being fat because that is not something you see within mainstream nonbinary spaces with the idea that theres often a focus on — and even though I don’t personally identify myself as fat — I’ve always struggled with the idea of the nonbinary person as a skinny, twinky, person with the round glasses and how I just did not having that body. It was such a relief to see a character, even though I don’t personally identify with them completely, it was just so good to see that trope being broken.

TINA: I’m so happy to hear that. And yeah, I feel that way. Basically anybody who isn't built like Tilda Swinton is going to feel relieved by a character who isn't built like Tilda Swinton in fiction. Although I love Tilda Swinton, she is sort of the archetype of androgyny that is considered acceptable. I think that the same definitely applies to the characters of color even the fact that, for me as a white person, deciding that — I could have made these characters any race I wanted to and making the ensemble have so many POC characters first of all is just an accurate reflection of the sex worker community, and then is also a calculated effort on my part to be like, ‘Well what can I do with the ways I benefit from white supremacy and so people will listen to me? What are the ways I can leverage that so that we have more representation of POC characters in comics?’And maybe one day if SfSx is developed into a TV show or a movie that means more money for real people of color. These characters are wonderful and I love them but they are not real. And they don’t get any money when the book is successful. But if, potentially, SfSx is an intellectual property, that translates into more good showbiz for other people and I want that to include as many marginalized people as I possibly can, especially people who are more marginalized than me. I do feel like that’s my responsibility. Any opportunity that I have to create an opportunity not only for my people — who are women, queer people, sex workers — but also people who are more marginalized than me.

FINN: That is really noble. Also, I couldn’t watch the SfSx movie with my parents, I think it would be a little awkward. The SfSx movie is not one I will be tackling with Jennifer and Matthew. Thank you! One thing I noticed is that in your podcast you talk a lot about FOSTA/SESTA (Note: the Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act and the Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act). From my understanding, FOSTA/SESTA stops third party companies from hosting and advertising sex worker content but I noticed in your book there was an absence of a discussion, or it wasn’t as overt, the discussion of the role of corporations and those third party companies. It was a more direct oppression by the state of sex workers. I was very curious about that absence. And I understand the next book is called Terms of Service so I suspect that it’s going to be touched on in the next one.

TINA: I wanted to make the allegory of SfSx really personal and really — in this sense, it would feel really personal to all the readers and be really emotional. And my strategy with that was to make the big bads these sort of people who had a second wave feminist in the case of and a cis white gay man in the case of Powell and kind of like, illustrate, in the sense of being brainwashed, Jones, as a sort of a dyke comrade. I wanted to use their villany to really ground the story in the emotions of loss and betrayal and sort of deliberately make the intentions of the Party more obscure so I guess that maybe one consequence of that is that there is not as acute of a critique of the relationship between the state and corporations and the relationship between tech, terms of service, and like, Congress or the Supreme Court. But yeah, the next volume is going to be more about tech and more about the ways in which tech can be weaponized against people. It’s like Zoë Quinn, who is a great writer and a great comic book writer, often says: The internet is people, and the internet is made of people. And I think when it comes to telling a really emotional story about sexual oppression that even when talking about the internet, I wanted to ground it in the way that people behave.

FINN: That makes sense, I was really curious about that and I'm glad that it’s going to be touched on in the next one, I think that it was hinted at in volume one, like with the bracelet he uses to log the amount of appropriate sexual activity, and I’m excited to see that expanded upon.

TINA: Yeah, and I’m very inspired by the work of a lot of my sex-worker-movement-building friends doing a lot of work in the tech space in the ways that sexual freedom is — in the way that the tech space both in terms of money and politics, and socio-cultural climate it becomes a place where standards of sexual freedom are made for better or for worse. So my friends who run an organization called Hacking Hustling are very much an inspiration to me and I learn a lot from them every day about all the fucked up things that are happening to sex workers. Speaking of terms of service, Instagram is getting a new terms of service this week that could represent even more of a loss of income for sex workers and those material concerns are connected to more of the freedom of speech stuff, because if you are constrained in what you’re allowed to say and do in relationship to your livelihood and job security then you are constrained in what is safe for you to do and say in every part of your life.

FINN: Absolutely. I also kind of relate it to — the repression of sex workers it draws questions of what is the line between sexual content and artistic content that uses the human form, what is the difference between a burlesque show and a drag show and how is that going to end up marginalizing people. The fact that it oppresses and makes it harder for sex workers to do their job is bad enough, but when you start drawing those epistomological lines it gets even scarier.

TINA: Totally.

FINN: So we’re wrapping up. I just have one final question that we actually did touch upon. I saw today you announced your new book, the next volume of SfSx.

TINA: Yes!

FINN: Congratulations. Comics seem a very difficult industry, so congratulations!

TINA: Thank you!

FINN: What themes on top of the ones you talked about do you plan on addressing in the sequel? Any sort of idea you want to elaborate on from the first book that you’re going to push in the second?

TINA: Yeah! So, volume two is — ok, let me put it this way: volume one was a jailbreak, right, of our underground rebel heroes infiltrating the government center to try to release their friends. So volume two is going to be a bit more of a deeper exploration of what the Party, the government organization, is up to, sort of from the inside. And then there’s also going to be, we’re going to continue the pattern of having the big bad that represents some sort of social program or social movement weaponized by the Party in order to control people. And in this case, that social movement, as it were, is Men’s Rights Activists and incels. so we’re going to see Inspector Wilder, who is the police officer from all the way back in issue one who gets stilettoed in the eye by Avery is this sort of like, charismatic leader of a sort of incel movement who are getting resources from the Party to implement a program of a redistribution of intimacy which is like a real thing incels say that they want, and we’re going to see how that is related to technology. And we’re going to see how, to your earlier point, how the government exploits — I use that term very deliberately — people to serve their needs while alienating sex workers from getting their own needs met.

Yeah, I think that that is what I want to say about it for now. Yeah, and it's also going to be a continuation of the tone that I think we really managed to achieve with the first volume of like, super sexy and horny while also being super terrifying and horrific and gross and a fun propulsive action-adventure that also has some political moodiness to it and is also sometimes quite funny and also just has like fun cool costumes and that kind of thing that is sometimes just the fun part of comic books. And we’re making it happen!

SFSX (Safe Sex) Vol. 1 Protection

SFSX (Safe Sex) Vol. 1 Protection
Writer: Tina Horn
Artists: Michael Dowling, Jen Hickman, Alejandra Gutierrez
Colorist: Chris O’Halloran
Letterer: Steve Wands
Publisher: Image Comics
Price: $7.99
From notorious kink writer TINA HORN and featuring a diverse group of artists comes SFSX (SAFE SEX), a social thriller about sex, love, and torture. It's SEX CRIMINALS in Gilead, Hustlers with a SUNSTONE twist.
In a draconian America where sexuality is strictly bureaucratized and policed, a group of queer sex workers keep the magic alive in an underground club called the Dirty Mind. Using their unique talents for bondage and seduction, they resolve to infiltrate the mysterious government Pleasure Center, free their incarcerated friends, and fight the power!
Buy It Digitally: SFSX (Safe Sex) Vol. 1 Protection

Finn is a queer, disabled fiction writer, essayist, playwright, and director. They have a passion for all things queer and neurodivergent, and enjoy looking at media using a queer lens. They also are passionate about genre fiction especially sci-fi and horror. Feel free to ask them about keeping chickens, Animaniacs, the X-files, or how their (mixed) attempts at cooking are going. Find more about them on their Twitter or on their Carrd.