2025 Villainous Conference Streams
All of the videos on this page are recorded sessions from the Villainous Conference that took place between April 14 – 18, 2025. We encourage you to watch these streams on your own time, and be prepared to be mind blown. Please consider donating to the BSWC for the work that was coordinated and executed for this conference. We hope you enjoy and learn as much as we did.
Villainous Conference: Embodied Accountability Workshop by Care
Embodied Accountability is a transformative workshop designed to bridge the gap between inner awareness and external responsibility. This session invites you to engage in experiential practices that ground accountability in the body, fostering mindfulness, self-awareness, and personal growth. Through reflective exercises, group discussions, and movement-based activities, participants explore how aligning body and mind deepens the commitment to one’s actions and decisions. Moreover, the workshop emphasizes that if we truly desire abolition—a world free from oppressive structures—we must be accountable to each other. By cultivating a practice of mutual responsibility, we learn to challenge inequities and reimagine collective liberation. The workshop creates a safe, supportive space for genuine exploration, empowering you to live authentically and embrace a holistic approach to accountability for a better future.
Villainous Conference: Bismark Opening Remarks to CSW2025 Session – Trans and Sex Worker Rights
This presentation will explore the immediate and long-term consequences of the USAID funding freeze, focusing on its effects on HIV/AIDS prevention, harm reduction services, and the overall health and well-being of sex workers and LGBTQI+ individuals in Africa and Ghana.
Drawing on case studies and firsthand experiences, we will highlight the urgent need for alternative funding sources, international solidarity, and policy advocacy to mitigate these adverse effects.
Learn more about CSW 2025
Learn more about BPPP
Bismark on Instagram
Villainous Conference: Advocacy & Community Building by NatsHoney from Strippers United
This interactive workshop will provide strategies for navigating the industry while prioritizing Swerker safety, legal rights, and community resilience. Participants will engage in discussions, scenario-based problem-solving, and collective knowledge-sharing.
Learn more about Strippers United
Villainous Conference: Liwonde Female Sex Workers Alliance Talk by Yankho Mkwapatira + Bertha Majawa
Yankho is a founder and Executive Director of Liwonde Female Sex Workers Alliance-LIFESA and she started the organisation after noticing social injustices that she and her fellow female sex workers were facing by state and none state actors in Liwonde township, Malawi, Africa. She is joined in this talk with Bertha Majawa.
The organisation (LIFESA) was initiated to promote the rights, dignity, and well-being of sex workers in Liwonde and other surrounding areas in the eastern part of Malawi with a vision of seeing a society where female sex worker’s rights are respected, valued, and empowered to live freely and authentically. Our mission is to advocate for legal and social recognition, access to health care and education, and protection from violence and discrimination from any form of abuse.
Villainous Conference: Communicating with Social Media Platforms by Dr. Carolina Are
In this online talk and Q&A, I will introduce my experience of being an intermediary between platforms and censored users, sharing strategies, do’s and don’ts and routes for positive activist impact on the governance of platforms.
This will conclude with a call to action to empower sex workers to demand change and be in charge of their own communications with platforms in
times of crisis.
Villainous Conference: The Impact of USAID Funding Freeze on Sex Workers and LGBTQI+ Health Outcomes in Africa
The full title: The Impact of the Trump Administration’s USAID Funding Freeze on Sex Workers and LGBTQI+ Health Outcomes in Africa and Ghana by Beyonce, Erika + Bismark
This presentation will explore the immediate and long-term consequences of the USAID funding freeze, focusing on its effects on HIV/AIDS prevention, harm reduction services, and the overall health and well-being of sex workers and LGBTQI+ individuals in Africa and Ghana.
Drawing on case studies and firsthand experiences, we will highlight the urgent need for alternative funding sources, international solidarity, and policy advocacy to mitigate these adverse effects.
Villainous Conference: Keynote Address by Dr. Mireille Miller-Young
Mireille Miller-Young, is Associate Professor of Feminist Studies at University of California, Santa Barbara. Her research has been supported by the W.E.B. DuBois Advancing Equity Through Research Fellowship at Harvard University, the Institute for Cultural Inquiry in Berlin, and the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation. Dr. Miller-Young’s award-winning book, A Taste for Brown Sugar: Black Women in Pornography, innovated academic and public discussions on race, porn, and sex work.
Villainous Conference: Spiritual Empowerment & Healing by The Trap Witch
Sex work can be one of the most catalyzing fields for a woman/persons because it demands a high level of adaptability, emotional intelligence, and strategic thinking. It forces one to navigate power dynamics, assert boundaries, and cultivate a commanding presence—all essential skills in business, leadership, and personal evolution.
The ability to read people, build relationships (including parasocial ones), and transform one’s self-image through confidence and self-possession creates a foundation that transcends the work itself. It sharpens instincts, removes fear of rejection, and teaches financial independence and negotiation—key tools for thriving in any space.
Villainous Conference: Black Collections and Documenting at Arizona State University Library by Jessica Salow
In this workshop/presentation learn from the archivist of Black Collections at Arizona State University Jessica Salow how she documents and preserves Black life in Arizona. We will discuss preservation techniques, tips and tricks, and where to find resources at no or low cost to preserve your family and community history and legacy. She will also speak to the work she has been doing over the last three and a half years in creating the first institutional archival collection at Arizona State University Library that documents Black life in Arizona.
The online streams were facilitated by members of YAS Work, including the editing of these videos. For more information on YAS Work, visit yaswork.org.