Mariko Passion, Educated Whore and Urban Geisha is a performance artist | activist | educator | whore revolutionary. She sings and rhymes her experiences and reality over beats, produces auto-documentary videos. She educates the community and fights for social justice issues related to sex workers rights in LA, across the U.S and the world.

This community includes current and potential clients, current, former and previous workers; the queer community, college classes, feminists, women of color, people of color, revolutionaries who think they know about us but don’t ask and more. She panels at conferences in the U.S and internationally and has been published in $pread, SF Examiner, interviewed on KPFA’s Hard Knock Radio, Shake Clear Channel’s LGBT Radio, and Radio Suzy 1. She most recently performed at the International AIDS conference Global Village stage in Mexico City, a conference that drew 20,000. She is available to create a workshop, presentation, or performance for groups.  Her songs “Decriminalize Me” personifies prostitution in an electronic influenced song that speaks of the common threads that she has with everyone else. “Keep On” speaks on the intense drive and passion of certain born to be hustlers living in a sexist world.

Ms. Passion has 10 years of experience in various fields in sex work. She has worked as a stripclub stripper, private dancer, agency escort, independent escort, brothel prostitute, web model, Mistress/Dominant, and sensual masseuse. She is currently working as mostly an escort in LA.  She founded and runs the LA chapter of Sex Workers Outreach Project Los Angeles (SWOP-LA) which works on HIV prevention and harm reduction projects on a shoestring budget.

Ethnically half Japanese, Mariko the self titled “urban geisha” follows the tradition of being well versed in conversation, fine art, music, singing and story telling as it was with the geisha of traditional Japan. Working as a call girl in the big crazy city of LA, is a LOT different than a Kyoto tea house or even Tokyo a couple of centuries or even decades back. Instead of reserving my musical and creative talents for my male customers, I use my arts to share knowledge about this work with all. The hustle is an art, and geisha are supposed to be the masters of that as well.  The urban geisha is a wild, renegade with courtesan skills that can be controlled by no one man or institution.  She is someone that I believe might not exist in any Japanese culture besides anime, my blog and escort fantasies.  But maybe she is alive and well in Japan and beyond.. The dominant culture of denial tries to pretend that she is not there, but her wrath has more power than is ever credited outside of fantastical realms.

CONTACT HER

for gigs, consultations, or interviews EMAIL:

mariko.passion at GMAIL dot COM