Four girls based in Manhattan playing electro-dance-post-punk, pumping up Y2K and DIY styles and talking of sexual emancipation, gender and relationships are, from 2019, the Cumgirl8: a clickbait name “founded on the only emotions that seem to really affect people.. to be sexy and disruptive. Cumgirl8 is clickbait! First we draw you in; then we radicalize you”. They are Avishag Cohen Rodrigues, Chase Noelle, Lida Fox, Veronika Vilim: let’s mind their own business.

Hi girl8s. I hope you are enjoying your European tour! You have performed in Milan a few days ago, then Rome and now Athens: how are you enjoying this experience and how much is it shaping you personally, collectively and in relation to your music? What is the most intense thing that has happened? Has anyone fallen in love?

Chase: The most intense thing was definitely that - the moment we arrived in Italy - tens of thousands of people took to the streets to protest violence against women. A woman named Giulia Cecchettin was murdered in Verona, and she had been warning people that her partner was dangerous before she was killed… Days after, calls to the national domestic abuse hotline doubled - so it was devastatingly evident that there was a problem. It felt really powerful to be there and scream “contro il patriarcato” with our fans. It hit me close to my heart. Italian patriarchal culture is the reason why all the women in my family are fucked up. The Italian tour all culminated in celebrating the birthday of Cicciolina, who joined us on stage in Rome. She made a powerful speech, we serenaded her with the song we wrote her, and she ate her pussy-shaped birthday cake. It felt like a very loving resistance. I think we all fell in love with her even more. She is even hotter in person. I kissed her a lot in the limo. :)

Veronika: Life shapes music.. touring is insane. Had all my shit stolen, passport, computer, iPad, balenciaga bag, all my makeup the last day of tour. All I wanted was to go home and be with my dog :(. There was a moment that I had that made me feel like life is so relative honestly because it is. Everything happens for a reason and maybe it’s just all a simulation. Somehow found my passport in a trash can with some other things including Avis passports and visa through an AirTag! (Apple, sponsor me!) it was giving spygirl8.. I fell in deeper love with Ilona Staller, she is one of the only people that I met that I was inspired by that actually lived up to their expectations.

Lida: I got food poisoning and then the night I was finally starting to feel better I ate some chicken that was undercooked and got it again even worse! so several days of awful food poisoning. It's always a challenge to stay completely healthy on tour. But I think this tour definitely feels more smooth than the ones in the past, and we understand each other more and how we cope with different challenges on the road. Musically we get to experience bands and artists we admire together and see them play or meet them for the first time. It's an amazing, enlightening and inspiring experience each time. Meeting Cicciolina was definitely a life highlight dream come true. I got married 2 weeks before I left for tour so I'm in love with my partner more and more every day.

What is, instead, your typical day in your typical life in the US?

Chase: Coffee! The rest is an overstimulated blur. Love nyc!!

Veronika: Gym and making clothes in my studio is an ideal day.

Lida: Cuddling with my wife as much as possible when i’m home

Avishag: Definitely coffee first, then music all around

The themes of your songs and talk show 1-900 deal, among other things, with sexual normalization, which seeks to counter centuries of Christian and tout court religious austerity, to equalize sexual experience for women and men, and to legitimize the subject of sex in daily life and in places of study. While there is undoubtedly a need to fight against the above injustices and against a society that regards sex and the sexual body as taboo, I wanted to know what you thought about the possibility that this restraint was also due to the fact that human beings regard this sphere as sacred, and that therefore keeping it intimate also means giving it the magical and precious aura that belongs to it.

Chase: The idea of restraining what is sacred sounds so hot… but I think it’s violently clear that Abrahamic cultures have been using that exact language as a weapon to repress women. We traveled 8000 years for the cultural reset.

Veronika: I think that there is still so much sexism in the world sadly, men are allowed to have their nipples out on the internet, post content that is extremely sexual while women can’t? I think that this is the problem with everything. Normalize allowing women being sexual because they want to be and then there won't be a taboo around it.

Lida: You can be very open about sex and still keep it sacred, intimate, magical and precious all at once. These traits don’t have to be mutually exclusive. Society often makes us think that if we’re one way we can’t also be the opposite, but life and humans and all beings are complex and seemingly contradictory. Something doesn’t have to be taboo to be sacred.

A book/movie/podcast to recommend on sexuality emancipation?

Chase: Madonna “Sex” book, the film “Klute”, “girlsonporn” podcast
Veronika: Anaïs Nin, all John Waters films, “girlsonporn” podcast
Lida: I haven't listened to it in years but I listened to the podcast “nymphowars” by Macy Rodman and Theda Hammel all the time during covid and it was amazing. Maybe it’s not necessarily about emancipation but it’s liberating and hilarious.