In October 2018, porn stars Rebecca More and Sophie Anderson posted a suitably filthy video to promote a gangbang they were about to partake in.
“Do you know what we are? We’re fucking cock destroyers, aren’t we babe?” Rebecca purred, with Sophie adding: “Cock fucking destroyers.”
If they wanted attention, they got it—the absolutely NSFW video became a go-to reaction video on gay Twitter and turned the Cock Destroyers into queer icons and social media sensations. Fast forward two years and the pair have graduated from going viral on Twitter to creating their own reality show, one so inclusive and refreshingly diverse that it could be used as a blueprint for all reality shows (minus the bondage and dirty talk).
Slag Wars—slag being British slang for a promiscuous woman, which is being reclaimed by the Cock Destroyers—is a hunt to find the next international queer sex symbol and Cock Destroyer. After two weeks quarantining in the English countryside, seven “slags” with varying careers in the sex industry compete in increasingly raunchy and ridiculous tasks, including whispering filthy ASMR into a microphone while Rebecca and Sophie ham it up in a hammock, to biting down on an apple for a spanking photo shoot, with one slag being eliminated at the end of the challenge. Think RuPaul’s Drag Race, but with added kink, less clothes, and even more silicone.
But while you may expect the innuendos and the latex, Slag Wars is surprisingly touching, and is one of the most sincere depictions of sex positivity and diversity seen on reality television. The cast members range from porn stars (Cain has worked in studio porn since he was 18) to OnlyFans sensations (couple Levi and Cam boast they’re in the top 0.5 percent of creators) to Cock Destroyers fans (Kevin, a Scottish retail worker, had no experience in sex work before the show), and a wide range of sexuality, race, nationality, and gender identity is on display. Gustavo hails from Mexico; Nicky Monet is a transgender woman who models for Rebecca and host Matthew Camp’s range Daddy Couture; Tyreece Nye is black and non-binary. When any of the cast members are shown on screen, their pronouns, whether he/him, she/her or they/them, are also shown.
“Isn’t that great?” Sophie tells The Daily Beast. “For me, there hasn’t been any other show that has shown the trans community, the non-binary community, like Slag Wars. The show is a real ambassador for other shows to take on this. All shows have a responsibility.”
“We can be the OnlyFans of new shows,” Rebecca adds. “We need to get more sex workers, more queer people, let’s do this.”
“The show is so good because it’s so inclusive,” Tyreece offers. “It’s not saying all the cast members represent the whole queer community, but each of us represent our authentic selves. I think it’s going to be better than Drag Race. We’re not drag queens, we can’t blame it on a persona. We’re taking that brave risk of showing our true selves. Reality shows like Drag Race that are ‘established,’ they kind of have a formula to them, whereas Slag Wars doesn’t have a formula. Anyone can apply. Whereas Drag Race, even though they don’t say it, you have to be a male drag queen, you have to fit into the jigsaw puzzle.
“People will love it, people will hate it but we’ve made that jump to tell our stories. There could be so many people who watch it and think, I’m not the only person going through this, and that’s why it’s so special.”
In the second episode, Tyreece talks to Black dominatrix Busty Cookie about being fetishized as a person of color and a non-binary person in a frank discussion of tokenism and racism in the sex industry. “I’m not pretty for a Black boy, I’m pretty period,” they say. While conversations about “the issues” often seem tacked on in reality shows, most of the contestants agreed to be on Slag Wars solely for those conversations.
Nicky Monet, a burlesque act and drag queen in Los Angeles, frankly discusses being kicked out at the age of 14 after realizing she was trans, and makes no bones about the fact that she joined Slag Wars to share her story. “I’d rather educate at this point than cry about it,” she says, adding, “I didn’t go through all that struggle, being homeless at 14, being beaten, selling drugs for dealers to survive, and then making this amazing life for myself, to not use my platform.”
Meanwhile, Cain—who hails from the U.K.—says he came into Slag Wars thinking it would be silly, and with “my own agendas I want to push.”
“I come from no money and I got into studio porn when I was 18 after doing webcam shows. I did it under a fake name and when people found out, I’d block them because of the stigma behind it,” he explains. “I kind of saw it as a dirty habit to get money. But at the start of the year, I publicly came out about getting back into OnlyFans and stuff, and the great thing about OnlyFans is you get to control your narrative. With sex work being normalized, it gives way to a lot more control, and that was my story I brought to it.”
Allowing the contestants to tell their stories was at the forefront of Rebecca and Sophie’s minds when creating Slag Wars, but they had no idea what conversations would be had in front of the camera.
“I think it’s an important eye-opener, whether you’re coming to watch Slag Wars out of curiosity, whether you’re part of the queer community, there will be something you can take away from it,” Rebecca maintains. “There will be some penny-dropping things about the judgment of sex workers. There’s a lot of people that don’t understand the non-binary, and they struggle, and perhaps when they start hearing people talking about being non-binary, it helps to have that conversation.
“We knew the contestants would be free to talk and they are quite open people, but we didn’t expect some of the things that came out. What Tyreece says, that’s very sad to me, that my friends have had to feel like that. It’s an eye-opener because there is that white privilege that we’ve never had to experience that in our lives, particularly in my career as a white female. This year has been a very big learning curve, I’ve been in hibernation in lockdown, learning about everything.”
In addition to being emotional and camp AF (the Cock Destroyers’ latex outfits on arrival are what you see at the gates of queer heaven), Slag Wars is definitely a learning experience in all things sexual. Even when the slags are preparing to shoot an ode to foot fetishes in fishnet tights, viewers get an education in the importance of consent in kink, with the narrator reminding us that consent can be withdrawn at any time and should be enthusiastic and vocalized. Yes, the tasks are silly and over the top, but Slag Wars gives a refreshing take on sex—it can be sexy, and boundary-pushing, but it should always be respectful and fun.
The cast and crew are already looking toward a second season of Slag Wars, to find even more Destroyers to join the family. And while reality-TV opportunities are often reserved for cookie-cutter stars, the Cock Destroyers want aspiring sex symbols to know that everyone is welcome.
“Being a Cock Destroyer is in here,” Sophie contends, gesturing to her heart. “It isn’t about race, it isn’t about sexuality, even though it’s very much incorporated, it’s not about age or body shape. You are welcomed, you are not judged, it’s about being accepted. It isn’t that you’ve got to have this gender, this sexuality to be a Cock Destroyer. To be a Cock Destroyer, you can be anything.”
Slag Wars is available to watch on men.com and SlagWars.com (the latter is safe for work) from Nov. 27.
