Sex and rage: A night in the ring at a lesbian wrestling party

Right now it seems as though you can’t swing a strap-on without knocking into a new moment of lesbian excellence. Most recently, on July 26 wrestlers Black Venus, Alexis Luna, Maddie Sexy, Sabrina Jade, Goth Delilah and Miss Nairobi descended on east London to perform at a sold-out wrestling gymnasium of exclusively lesbian, bisexual and trans people, for a lesbian wrestling event hosted by events organisation Sex & Rage.

Black Venus has earned her moniker “muscle mommy” for more than just dominating in the ring. She started Sex & Rage in October 2019, aiming to bridge “conversations between sex workers and civilians.” You may have seen the Sex & Rage team wrestling at a Gal Pals event or stripping alongside Queer House Party, but they also host many of their own nights to showcase the talents of sex workers. 

When Black Venus started hosting events, she was “adamant it [needed] to be for lesbians and bisexuals” exclusively. Speaking to Dazed, she explains that lesbians and bisexuals can get “lost in the deluge of the queer label, which can be quite damaging” and that these spaces can often “quickly [become] very male-dominated.”

The wrestlers that have been invited to join her in the ring are all sex workers, who regularly perform kink wrestling for male audiences. But this night was different: a chance for lesbian and bisexual women (trans-inclusive) to experience kink wrestling without performing for the male gaze. As Sabrina Jade aptly put it: “Queer people find it hard to experiment if some guy is breathing down their neck.”

Kink wrestling follows much of the same rules as regular wrestling, but instead of hiding the muscle worship and fetish nature of the sport under a thin veneer of spandex and machismo, everything is laid bare in the ring. There was even a sex wrestling match in “celebration of sex work and sex workers”.  And what better competitor in a kink wrestling match than a hyper-femme submissive like Maddie Sexy? She giggles and kicks her legs as the musclebound vixen Alexis Luna flips her over her shoulder and carries her across the matts, spanking her as she does so.

“I am very naturally submissive, so it’s quite fun to kind of play around with being submissive but also fighting back,” Maddie tells me. Most of the crowd would love to find themselves pinned beneath Alexis Luna, but the audience still encourages Maddie to fight back.

Maddie is the newest to the wrestling scene, having only started a few months ago. All of the wrestlers agree this event is a marked change from their regular work. As Maddie explains: “most sex work I’ve done [involves] using my body to make money off of men, so using it in a different capacity is quite refreshing.” Wrestling, even as a submissive in the ring, has taught Maddie to speak up for herself. “It’s made my boundaries stronger in terms of my other work and life outside of this scene.”

The positive impact of wrestling echoes throughout the team. Sabrina Jade says that working in a strip club has made them feel compelled to “perform femininity to a really high level”. They feared “not many people would fancy me because I’m muscular and tall,” but when they’re winning in the ring their “masculinity, power, and strength is celebrated.” Even when you lose, all the audience “want [is for] you to be as strong as you can [and] lose like a superstar,” they say.

Goth Delilah clearly loves playing the villain, as she spouts vitriolic tirades at every wrestler she shares the ring with and cackles the audience’s boos. For Goth Delilah, kink wrestling allows her to exaggerate parts of herself. As a “strong percentage of [her] personality is quite masculine”, she’s drawn to the way it allows her to be playfully aggressive. “It’s really primal,” she says. During a surprise threeway match she sits defiantly on top of Maddie Sexy and Sabrina Jade, flexing her muscles and pinching her arse for the fans who love to hate her.  

This night isn’t just for its attendees, it’s for wrestlers too. “Wrestling with men present and for men is our bread and butter, [but] a lot of us are queer,” Black Venus says, explaining that she set out to host this event because she “realised that we needed a space where it was for our pleasure and for our creative expression.” Alexis Luna adds that she relished being able “to look into the crowd and be proud. But more than that, feel respected and idolised [rather] than objectified.” For her, “kink wrestling is home. People always try to look at it through a self-defence lens. But it’s about empowering people physically but also sexually.” 

Sex & Rage and the wrestlers who performed last week should definitely be proud. The audience was a mixture of those long-time fans, pointing out and naming their favourite wrestlers and the friends they’d brought along ready for their initiation into the world of lesbian kink wrestling. As the gymnasium filled with a heady mixture of excitement and sweat, this audience was given what is still an irritatingly rare opportunity: a space specifically for lesbians and bisexuals. It was made even more special by the raw, explicit and oil-slicked matches from wrestlers who were clearly enjoying themselves as much as the audience. 

We may be living through a “lesbianaissance” but there are still very limited spaces for lesbians to be wholly themselves. We need more. Sex & Rage’s Lesbian Wrestling Party invite the community to share in what is usually an underground scene, breaking the stigma around sex work and encouraging people to investigate their sexual expressions in a space where shame is body slammed.