Since her involvement at an early age with John Vaccaro's Playhouse of the Ridiculous, New York's original queer, political, rock and roll, glam-punk, glitter theatre of the late 1960s, where she was spotted by Andy Warhol and became one of his 'superstars', Penny Arcade has built the reputation of being one of the most outspoken performance artists around. But despite the often serious themes of her one-woman shows, she can elicit more laughs than many a stand-up comedian, while educating audiences on what's wrong in society. Katrina Fox finds out where she's at today.

KF: Earlier this year saw the world premiere of your new show, Rebellion Cabaret in Sydney. Can you tell us what it's about and how you came up with the idea.

PA: The theme of the show is marketed rebellion, gentrification (not only of real estate but of ideas), the pathetic ploy of 'Bourgeois Bohemia' for people who want the trappings of Bohemia but not the true Bohemian values. It is about the morass of celebrity culture, personal failure, and coming to terms with the price one pays when when one lives by one's beliefs. It is about 'queer' becoming a brand, as homogenised and empty as any other 'style'. Like all my shows it is about real life and it's a black comedy.

KF: In your 1995 show Bitch! Dyke! Faghag! Whore! you said, "1995 is a fine time to be gay or lesbian but still an awful time to be a woman". Do you still believe that to be true today?

PA: I said there has never been a better time to be a dyke than 1995, or 2005 for that matter, but as far as being a woman? Still not so good. This was to point out that while in the small circles of women's nights at some bars or clubs we could see that more and more women were coming out and there was support within the 'gay community' for being a dyke. But it still sucks sociologically to be a woman and I don't want anyone to be lulled into a false sense of security. Very little has changed in the hearts of people. The people who created the gay liberation movement and women's rights movement were renegade outsiders who wouldn't be tolerated in today's so-called 'gay community' or in today's so-called feminist circles that are a popularity contest, not places that respect the individual's right to think and express diverse opinions. The women's movement has been infantalised.

KF: You've obviously got some strong opinions on feminism and its failings. Tell us about this.

PA: I have been a feminist my entire life but I despise the women who will only accept me into their so-called feminist circle if I think exactly like them, and that has been the product of 20 years of women's studies - girls who leave university with a so-called 'feminist' checklist that they try to match up to real life: 20-year old girls who consider themselves staunch feminists but who don't respect the women who came before them and put their bodies on the line, who routinely talk down to women 30 years older than themselves if they don't hear the same pathetic 'victim party line' spouted back at them.

Highly self-individuated people, especially women, are scorned and reviled. We live in a society that cannot tolerate real individuality. Women's groups tend to operate by consensus, not by the best idea. I have long observed the inability of women to tolerate strong women. The preferred method is manipulation behind the scenes. Well-known feminists do not represent me and my concerns so I stopped being involved in theirs, with the exception of pro-sex feminist Dr Betty Dodson, my mentor and heroine (www.bettydodson.com). Gloria Steinem represents a group of self-serving ego maniacs that are busier with the trajectory of their own careers than they are with looking around at the real world. Steinem is a popularity junkie, which she proves when she goes into long dialogues with former Riot Grrls, having totally ignored the past three generations of feminists who came in her wake. Ms magazine is not out there looking at the women who are fighting in the frontlines. Ms magazine, like most other baby boomers, is in fear of being considered old or behind the times, so it crawls up the ass of every 20-something with a nose ring, a tattoo and a record deal. The truth is, Ms is behind the times, and has been behind the times for the past 30 years. It does not promote new ideas, just new women who espouses its ideas. It is a useless organ grinder for the same handful of professional feminists, and that is a real reason why after 30 years of second-wave feminism, that feminism has failed to speak to the widest margins of American women. How can that be when feminism is about equal opportunity and equal pay? It is because the movement has been high-jacked by a handful of women who use it to aggrandise themselves and to stay in control.

The new third wave feminism is a shallow movement. Young pseudo-feminism is a group activity which is mono generational. It is a flavour. It is something that is not lived with the body on the street as my feminism has been. It is lived on a velour couch in a student centre with four other girls who took the same women's studies class last semester. It is a huge disappointment to me. We still don't have the original goals of feminism: equal opportunity and equal pay for equal work - end of story. What has happened at the university level in America is appalling - it has as much to do with real life as the Vagina Monologues. Twenty monologues from women who didn't know they had sexual organs? And if VM were really such a feminist treatise, wouldn't it be called the Clitoris Monologues? We must respect each other as individuals beyond gender. Don't you find it amazing that after generations lived and died to say that gender doesn't matter, the youngest generation is completely hung up on gender?

KF: The 1990s saw a rise in sexuality and gender politics with 'queer' becoming the buzzword, and now words such as 'pansexual' and 'omnisexual' are a part of the lexicon, as well as a move towards people not defining their sexuality. As a self-described bisexual, what's your take on sexual or sexuality 'labels'?

PA: I feel there is a lot of homophobia involved in some of this. It comes from people who have no idea what was going on 10 years ago, not to even mention 30 or 300 years ago. There are girls right now who think they are completely edgy because they don't understand that 10 years ago you would be kicked out of the lesbian club for even admitting that you liked penetration. Right now, you have a big trend of 23-year-old girls cutting off their breasts. Now some of them may need gender reassignment, but let's face it, a lot of it is just trendy. Yes, trendy. Not every 23-year-girl is really a boy. Suddenly a lot of girls don't want to be lesbians and being butch isn't butch enough - now you have to be a boy. It raises a lot of questions for me who has been involved with transsexuals all my life. All the transgendered people I have known have carried this reality of themselves since birth. It didn't suddenly dawn on them that they were 'trans' four months ago. I think that it has been substantiated that many, many women are bisexual or bi-curious compared to men. After all, women just look and admire other women physically a lot more then men do even surreptitiously. A lot of girls who wouldn't even have been actively bi 10 years ago are deeply involved with women today.

KF: So you don't think the transgender movement or 'gender revolution' as it's been referred to has had or will have a positive effect on society?

PA: I personally think that sexual identity is a molten thing. It moves, it changes all by itself. I think that more people than ever now know that there are a lot of alternatives to the binary gender model, but lets face it - speak to anyone who has led an alternative life for the past 30 years in New York, London, Sydney or anywhere, and that is not news to them. The question is this: just because people go to clubs that are populated by drag queens and transsexual people when they are young, does that make them change their socially mandated ideas? Will they fight for someone's right to not be discriminated against when the voting booth curtain is pulled and no one knows what they are doing? I speak all the time to women who graduated from college 10 years ago who lost their political orientation three years out of uni and are uninvolved in any political reality. The larger world doesn't seem to be evolving on these issues because they are not coming from the heart of the problems of acceptance.

KF: You referred to today's 'so-called gay community'. What's wrong with it?

PA: The most disturbing element of what has occurred in what was once the proud and honorable gay world is the pathetic need for approbation and acceptance by the middle-class world. To be married in the eyes of God, all you need is to have the blessing of your ceremony at the particular church or congregration you belong to. America's constitution is based on the separation of church and state. Do you mean to tell me there are not 100,000 gay and lesbian lawyers in the US that could not come up with the idea of a class action suit for legal civil union? A civil wedding? But no -what they want is to turn over mainstream public opinion and get the approval of a corrupt church that doesn't act on the word of Christ or God the father (Judaism) for that matter.

KF: Has this need for acceptance led to 'queer' becoming, as you've said, a homogenised brand? What in your view is the true meaning of 'queer' and why?

PA: By the early 90s, marketing to gays and lesbians using the rainbow theme became standard fare. The so-called gay community is so different from the long-established gay world, where anyone was welcome and there was no marketing and no ceiling on achievement in the world. An artist rose to the level of their talent not simply to being the best among a group of other 'gay' painters, or writers, or comedians and so on. It is a counter revolutionary and counter-counter revolutionary and counter-evolutionary idea which breeds contempt and backlash. Queer means outsider. You cannot be part of a queer club, because by virtue of being queer you are excluded by groups. Groups demand homogenisation and like-mindedness. When one is left out of things, ostracised or relegated to the sidelines of life, the flipside to how badly you feel is the defensive arrogance that arises that tells you 'I am special'. Few people are willing to give up being special for real equality and you cannot have both - like the young dykes who introduce themselves as being 'fierce dykes' but 10 minutes later are demanding 'safe space' when they don't like what I am telling them - you can't be a fierce dyke and demand safe space in the same sentence.

KF: You talked about outsiders. Aren't sex workers the ultimate outsiders and why, in your opinion, hasn't there been a sex worker's movement?

PA: No they're not the ultimate outsiders - that's a fantasy that a lot of people cling to. 95 per cent of sex workers have extremely middle-class values - they want money, they don't want to be bothered and people don't know they're a sex worker. No one's organising around sex work because no one is organising around workers rights. Prostitution is an economic issue, not a moral one and anyone who's involved in it or knows people who are, knows this. There's a lot of different roads that lead to someone being a prostitute. There's a lot of stigma involved but apparently there's no stigma attached to marrying for money, which I find really despicable. One of the reasons that I really detest certain women who call themselves 'sex workers' is that they are incredibly vague. I'm currently writing a new show A Whore Like the Rest which is a take on the current cache that prostitution gives women of a certain class without the stigma that it brings to working-class women. From Madonna to the current crop of hip hop stars, I see the bad girl aesthetic adopted while real bad girls are shunned from society.

KF: After being a Warhol superstar, you could have gone to Hollywood and exploited your status to become a star, but you didn't. Are you glad you took the route you did?

PA: Did I take advantage of the situation? No. Is it a good thing? Yes. I doubt I would be alive today. I was far too naive, too soft-hearted, too perverse and too secretive. Like many women who carry an 'aphrodite' energy since puberty, I never understood the sexual aura I carried. I think that the multiple rapes that occurred to me before 18, along with my lack of awareness about my sexual impact, led to me being fearful and secretive about being acknowledged for it. Certainly as a faghag from puberty, the gay men who mentored me were never comfortable with my curves and large breasts. Their nervousness about my sexual charisma came out in jokes about my body that made me very insecure and lowered my self-esteem. The drag queens were obsessed with my body - they cheered me on, but a lot of damage had already been done to my self-esteem. Being raised by gay men and drag queens at an early age, they were my sexual activity role models. So between that and my own sexual appetites, I had a far greater focus on sex than I would have if I devoted myself self to 'building a 'career'.

I grew up to be who I wanted to be, who I set out to be. Someone who lived an artistic life - in fact someone who has lived several full lives with many important relationships and lifelong friendships. I realise that I could have made more money along the way, I could have had more fame and recognition. But that money, fame and recognition would have come from my sexual charisma, not my talent. Money was always important to me, but I never let the desire for money steer my course, just as I never let my desire for acceptance, security and widespread recognition and approval steer my course. I am proud of that because inside I am an avaricious, insecure, frightened and egocentric person. It has been quite the balancing act. But a lot of strength comes from sticking to what you believe in and hope to create, and in the end your own authenticity is of great comfort.

Penny Arcade is working on releasing all her shows on DVD, completing a documentary on Quentin Crisp, writing her memoirs, and writing a new show A Whore Like The Rest. Visit her website at www.pennyarcade.tv

Slit is a dyke porn, politics and culture magazine, based in Australia but distributed internationally at selected outlet. Visit the magazine's website at http://www.slit.cat.org.au/