Bisexual Women as Emblematic Sexual Healers and the Problematics of the Embodied Sacred Whore 1 1This article was originally published in the Journal of Bisexuality, Vol. 2, Numbers 2/3, pp. 205-226, 2002, by Harrington Park Press, an imprint of the Haworth Press, Inc. View all notes

摘要

The image of woman as Erotic Priestess or Goddess—sometimes seen also as Sacred Whore—is a central part of new popular sacred sex cosmologies. The Sacred Whore, as we know her, originated during the second wave of feminism during the 70s. She was imagined as an archetype evocative of ancient times when Erotic Priestesses plied their sexual healing arts in temples dedicated to female deities. Since the 1990s an expanding range of people—from sex workers to nurses, massage therapists, ministers, counselors, and New Age tantra practitioners—have all begun to call themselves holy prostitutes or something similar; taking their place among artists, activists and philosophers redefining contemporary cultural constructs of sexuality, spirituality, and the connections between them.