Every photograph I create, every homoerotic gesture I capture, every unapologetic bulge I put on display—this is not just art, it’s a manifesto. It’s a refusal to let governments, patriarchies, corporations, or self-appointed moral gatekeepers dictate what bodies can do, how they can be seen, and whether or not their sexuality has economic value.
Harnessed, Hard, and Uncensored: My Art is Protest, My Body is Protest – by Maxwell Alexander, Queer Artist, MA(FIT)/BFA(SVA)
We live in a world where billion-dollar corporations sell us sex in perfume ads, cologne campaigns, Hollywood blockbusters, and Super Bowl commercials, yet the moment queer artists, sex workers, or independent creators put our bodies into the marketplace, the morality police come running. Hypocrisy has never been so well-dressed.
I say this: sex is work—just as painting is work, cooking is work, driving a truck is work, and being a CEO of an oppressive tech monopoly is work. The body is labor, the orgasm is labor, the erotic imagination is labor. And in that labor, there is dignity. There is creativity. There is freedom. No government has the right to tell anyone what to do with their body, their cock, their desire, or their bank account. To police sexuality is to police life itself.
My art is about normalizing what has been demonized. Normalizing the bulge in your jeans. Normalizing piercings, sweat, and skin. Normalizing the cock ring not as a fetish prop hidden in shame but as jewelry of power, defiance, and pleasure. I create images that force you to see sex not as sin, but as humanity at its rawest, most vulnerable, most beautiful.
And yet, the new moral order wears a hoodie and writes code. The patriarchy has gone digital. The church and state have been joined by platforms and app stores that police bodies behind the friendly mask of “community standards.”
When we launched HARD NEW YORK — my homoerotic fine art gallery of leather, bulges, cock rings and raw queer masculinity — it was never just about aesthetics. It was about sovereignty. It was about showing that cocks and balls, leather and harnesses, dildos and desire can be framed as fine art, collected, bought, and displayed as cultural objects of power. It was about saying, out loud, this is work, this is art, this is our culture.
Then the platforms came. The Canadian company that powered my store, received pressure. An American tech monopoly, controlling content distribution and payments with a hetero-Christian moral compass disguised as policy, flexed its oppressive muscle. I was told to tone it down or shut it down. The implicit message was clear: sexually charged art is fine when oligarchs profit from it, but not when queer artists monetize it ourselves.
We refused. We fought. And we won. HARD NEW YORK is online and accepts all legal forms of payments. The gallery still sells prints of erect cocks, cum-filled balls, bulges, leather, dildos and cock rings as fine art. We’re still here because we refused to disappear quietly into “patriarchal content moderation.”
The patriarchy wants to legislate morality. The tech feudal overlords want to algorithmically erase us, censor us, demonetize us, shadowban us until we disappear. They want our creativity, but not our liberation. They want our clicks, but not our autonomy. They want our bodies only when they control the transaction.
But here we are, still hard, still alive, still ungovernable. Sex work should be legal, now. Not tomorrow. Not when a politician decides it’s “respectable.” Now. Because queer people, sex workers, erotic artists, we have always been the canaries in the coal mine. If our freedom is under attack, then everyone’s freedom is under attack.
So let my work stand as protest. Let every photo I publish be a middle finger to repression. Let every cock shot in black-and-white be a declaration that sex is art, sex is labor, sex is survival, sex is liberation. This is sovereignty. This is resistance. This is freedom.
Our message to every platform, every CEO, every boardroom that thinks it can decide which bodies get to exist online: hands off our art, hands off our commerce, hands off our right to earn from our own creativity.
And no patriarch, no government, no algorithm, no outdated morality will ever stop us.
Support queer art at HARD NEW YORK and use your dollar to protest the oppression!
By Maxwell Alexander, MA(FIT)/BFA(SVA)
