SEX It is hard to imagine an industry as rich, yet as under-examined as that of pornography. We spend billions of dollars on porn in this country, and billions of hours trying to hide that fact, erasing search histories and wedging DVDs under the bed when our parents are coming over.
So perhaps it makes sense that The Feminist Porn Book, the first of its kind to include writings from porn-studying academics and porn performers, is designed so as to resemble nothing so much as a traffic sign. “What are you reading?” I doofily joked to myself on BART while positioning the Day-Glo paperback with its “FRANKIE SAYS RELAX” massive font in a way I hoped would avoid undue scorn-face from my fellow passengers.
It’s their loss, really. The book is a big deal, a first-time conglomeration of viewpoints from across the pro-sex feminist landscape. Its introduction alone was the most comprehensive history of feminist pornography I’ve ever seen (how appropriate that we’re in the middle of Women’s History Month 2013.) The next time anyone has a question about whether porn can really be anti-sexist, I will direct them to The Feminist Porn Book‘s neon glow.
Within its pages, professionals from a variety of nooks and crannies tackle some issues that even we, as feminists who believe porn can reflect and augment healthy sexuality, have trouble resolving. Penn State’s Ariana Cruz tackles the image of black women in porn (and the no-less-interesting reality of being a black female academic who studies black women in porn.) Am I the only one who gets giddy about heavily-footnoted academic essays on the race issues stirred up by Asian porn star Keni Styles’ participation in locker room orgy scenes?
Performers’ voices are well represented here, mainly in first-person testimonials that explain their career paths, complicated stories that don’t dodge critique of the adult industry. Transman pioneer Buck Angel talks vagina, seasoned pro Nina Hartley about being a role model. The Bay Area’s April Flores explains how she busts up the BBW stereotype. Kink.com model Dylan Ryan and director Lorelei Lee explore society’s conception of their professional lives.
In a brief phone chat, one of the book’s editors and longtime feminist pornographer herself Tristan Taormino explained to me that the book came about after a panel discussion in which she participated that featured both academics and porn stars. That fusion, the participants felt, gave birth to a conversation that had to be continued. A few panelists from that chat can now be found within the anthology’s pages, and Taormino is now organizing a day-long conference to take place on April 6 amid the hangovers from the eight-year-old Feminist Porn Awards in Toronto.
“There are feminists in mainstream porn. I’m not the only one, I swear!” Taormino says this in a jocular manner, but given those billions of dollars, her implication that porn is starting to allow more room for feminist imagery and voices is a rather big deal. For now, I resolve to worry less about what other people on BART think of my reading list.
THIS WEEK’S SEX EVENTS
Three years of Oh! Powerhouse, 1347 Folsom, SF. www.powerhouse-sf.com. Wed/13, 10pm-2am, $3. Darling DJ Robin Simmons will give you something to listen to beyond the slaps and moans at the third anniversary of this gentlemanly meet-up for dirty dappers.
BDSM panel for anarchists California Institute of Integral Studies, Room 304, 1453 Mission, SF. bayareaanarchistbookfair.wordpress.com. Sat/16, 6:30-8:30pm, free. Internet flame wars ensued when Native scholar Roxanne Dunbar Ortiz canceled her talk at the Bay Area Anarchist Book Fair upon realizing it would be held in the event rental space of Kink.com’s Armory this year. Today’s discussion looks to re-unite members of the radical community who disagreed over the issue. Pre-open floor, a history of pornography and feminism will be presented, as well as ways to support sex workers, women, and people who think differently than you do.
FILM Even Fukushima Daiichi-style nuclear meltdowns can’t sever the blood ties that bind a brood of CAAMFest films that focus on family. Modernity nevertheless ushers in a set of unique struggles in these films, not exactly family-friendly fare, though most are fulsome with empathy for these clans under pressure and in the viewfinder.
Throwing the lid back on the Mosuo Chinese ethnic minority, while unveiling the economic and cultural stressors weighing on families struggling to keep up in the soon-to-be world’s largest economy, The Mosuo Sisters documents the lives of two young women from a small village in the Himalayan foothills. Eldest sibling Juma is trying to maintain her role as family breadwinner — she sings in big-city clubs that trot her out like an exotic specimen — while the younger Latso is rooming with her, studying accounting and embracing urban life. It takes a global downturn to tear the two apart, as Latso is encouraged to help out on the farm and Juma finds it harder to remain the de facto matriarch-at-large, while the Mosuos’ way of life — in which “walking marriages” place the power and offspring in the hands of women and their households — is chipped away from afar by the draw of neon-dappled cities, rendered as eloquent, inexorable rivers of headlights by director-cinematographer Marlo Poras.
Two families — one far from home and the other navigating a thicket of cultural, political, and product safety issues — feel the pain of Xmas Without China in Alicia Dwyer and Tom Xia’s gently humorous and humane doc. Chinese-born, California-raised Xia is by all respects American (apart from his green card), but as a firestorm ignites over the lead in Chinese-made toys and the threat of Chinese industrial might, he comes up with the genius plan of finding out just how deeply China and its goods have rooted itself in the US, despite Americans misgivings. He finds a family, the Joneses, who are willing to go without anything made in China through the Christmas season — just to see if they can.
Meanwhile, Xia’s parents, who have set themselves up in their own American dream, a colonial McMansion, are also put under the lens as they struggle to keep up with their own neighboring Joneses, plotting the biggest Christmas-lights display on the block — and coping with homesickness for family back in the old country. As dad Tim Jones sneaks into the stash of verboten Chinese goods for his beloved Xbox, Xia uncovers his own insecurities, as he finds himself lying to the Joneses about his citizenship and hiding behind a facade of assimilation.
Taking the kin out on a pulpy, not-for-youngsters thrill ride, director-writer Ron Morales’ Graceland uncovers a lurid Manila of child sex workers, corrupt politicians and cops, and trash mountains. Chauffeur Marlon (Arnold Reyes) is tasked with enabling the dirty work of his politico boss, Changho (Menggie Cobarrubias), including packing up and paying off the little girls he drugs and rapes. The switch comes when kidnappers come for both their daughters, and the once-powerless servant becomes inextricably embroiled in the crime. Though occasionally threatening to topple over into scene-chomping territory and finally revealing drive-through gaps in its plot, the full-frontal Graceland is still capable of inspiring admiration for its sheer gusto, refusing to flinch at the brutality wrought on young girls’ bodies and likewise daring you to tear your eyes away in complicity.
Blood — whether it pulls a family unit together or rips them apart with fears of radiation contamination — underlies the apocalyptic scenes of The Land of Hope, the first feature film to grapple with the 2011 Fukushima disaster. Life in fictional Nagashima seems idyllic until the arrival of an earthquake and tsunami that ushers in a largely unseen nuclear disaster. Dairy farmer Yasuhiko (Isao Natsuyagi) forces his son Yoichi (Jun Murakami) and daughter-in-law Izumi (Megumi Kagurazaka) to leave him behind, along with wife Chieko (Naoko Ohtani), who suffers from dementia; it’s a sacrificial gesture that evokes 1983’s The Ballad of Narayama‘s mash-up of filial piety and noble embrace of death.
Yoichi denies reality as vigorously as he can, until Izumi becomes pregnant and learns that their new home also reads high in radiation. Writ with an eye to psychological trauma rather than physical dangers, Sion Sono (2002’s Suicide Club) has likely made his most ambitious film to date with Hope. It makes stirring use of exquisitely subtle images that imbue empty towns and blowing wind with dread; eerily surreal sights of a mother-to-be puttering around town in a Hazmat suit; and symbolism made literal, as when Ugetsu-like child phantoms materialize in wreckage from the waves.
Set in a country that prizes purity and conformity — and has a legacy of dealing with the aftermath of nuclear disaster — Hope may not leave you with hope, exactly. But it certainly imparts the expected horrors and unpredicted highs when the safe family home finds itself under siege, leaving on your mind’s eye the shadowy imprint of a woman, dressed in her finest kimono, dancing to festival music only she can hear, in the snow near a contaminated town reduced to tinder.
Somehow in the course of things I missed out on blogging about this year’s Tranny Awards, LA’s porn industry hat-tip to the best in transgender adult film. This year was particularly special — for the first time transmen were honored with their own award category, sponsored by relatively new site FTM Fucker, whose founder is angel-faced James Darling. OG beefcake FTM actor Buck Angel won, appropriately enough. Hopefully in future years there will be new FTM stars at his level.
In other news… my lord, has anyone checked out the James Deen store recently? Who cares if that NY Mag article sinks The Canyons. Fleshlights, baby panda t-shirts, posters — the bulge in Deen’s (back) pocket should be sizable regardless of box office returns, thanks to his legions of Deenagers, a term that apparently has little to do with age.
Anyways, sex events.
“Bling My Vibe”
Who says no to creating a work of art with a $3 vibrating dildo? Not this writer — check out my handiwork, and that of other Bay Area artists and sexy local celebs at this sex toy art show on view ’til the end of the month. Check out the contest page for early looks at the competition.
Mark I. Chester’s erotic sketch class in SoMa churns out some top-notch renderings of gay male sexuality, so for fans of muscle, leather, kink, and lust should head to this exhibition of his pupils’ best works. Not all of the drawings at this show are erotic — Chester’s class makes up merely a subset of the work — but all promise gorgeous men in artistic poses.
The name, the fact that this production is helmed by Annie Danger, queer trans utopia-seeker, the promise of nudity — surely these will add to a truly religious interactive theater experience.
DJs Damon and Tomas Diablo make this fetish disco the place for non-chafe leather. Tonight’s happening is a celebration of 20 years of kinky dancefloor exploits.
The Sex Workers Outreach Project and St. James’ Infirmary are hosting this gathering of past and present sex workers and their allies in celebration of this day of commemoration, which started in 2001 at sex worker festival in Calcutta, India.
Sun/3, 11am-2pm, free. Dolores Park, 19th St. and Guerrero, SF.www.swopbay.org
“Porn-Star-Gazing”
Twitter has changed a lot of things, but perhaps nothing as much as the relationship between porn stars and their fans. The industry is notorious for its all-access policy on the social network — and really, it’s just one of many places where you can see the evolving relationship between adult actors and their audience. At today’s panel discussion, porn performers Lorelei Lee, Mickey Mod, Conner Habib, Richard Pacheco, and CJ Laing will chat with sexologist Carol Queen about the different ways different kinds of porn stars talk with their fans. The event was inspired by the Nina Hartley fanmail exhibit currently gracing the Center’s walls.
Sun/3, 7pm, donations suggested. Center for Sex and Culture, 1349 Mission, SF. www.sexandculture.org
SEX “BDSM so quickly and easily gets painted with a broad brush,” said porn performer and author (her piece this week on Jezebel, “How I Became a Feminist Porn Star” is not to be missed) Dylan Ryan.
I’d called her in the wake of last week’s SF Weekly cover story (“Gag Order,” 2/20/13), which included some healthy critiques of Kink.com, the local porn company often held up as the standard when it comes to shooting kinky sex.
The piece also included testimony that was run without being fact-checked from certain ex-Kink employees — and that aside, the article was clearly timed to capitalize on controversy surrounding owner Peter Acworth’s recent drug and gun arrest. (ATTN: Weekly, you need not call into question the “strict code of ethical behavior and transparency” a pornographer is known for when it is discovered that said pornographer does cocaine, nor when he fires guns in the bowels of a building made for that purpose.)
The Weekly’s investigation continues. Hopefully it will help move conversation forward on how to make better porn.
As Ryan — who has shot for Kink.com for nearly 10 years — pointed out, the trouble with porn wars is that they can be skewed into a referendum on whether such-and-such porn (and often, by extension, the sexual desire it portrays) should exist.
So real quick, let’s use this moment to convene members of our occasionally dysfunctional, but forever-forward thinking sex work community. The question: can sexual consent exist when you’re doing it for the money? Who is in charge of making sure everyone’s needs are respected?
“When capitalism is involved, it makes the situation…interesting,” wrote performer Maxine Holloway [after protesting and ceasing to shoot for Kink.com when it removed base pay for web cam models, Holloway settled out of court with the company. Her voice appears in the Weekly article.] “As models we want to perform well, we want to push our boundaries, we want to get paid, and we want to be hired again and again.”
But, she continued, “money can be a perfectly legitimate reason to consent. Most people would not agree to show up at their nine-to-five job if they were not being paid an agreed amount of money.”
Ryan re-enforced the importance of the shoot’s producers stating clear run times, expectations, and other matters with performers before filming. After that point: “it’s a fine line, but so much of the onus is on the person to be their own agent.”
Locally, performer Kitty Stryker has examined these issues in her “Safe/Ward” consent workshops. And Holloway wrote she hopes to create an “industry standards” rating system that could guide performers to responsible producers. “Porn performers are not inherently victims and producers are not inherently exploitive,” she cautioned.
“These things can be positive, sexually healthy,” Ryan continued. “Every performance I do is about showing women how much fun I’m having.” Would that all debate on ethical porn started off with how its participants want to demystify, and excise shame from, sexuality — instead of drug charges.
THIS WEEK’S SEX EVENTS
“Bling My Vibe” Fri/1-March 31, free. Good Vibrations, 1620 Polk, SF. tinyurl.com/blingmyvibe.
Who says no to creating a work of art with a $3 vibrating dildo? Not this writer — check out my handiwork, and that of other Bay Area artists and sexy local celebs at this sex toy art show on view ’til the end of the month.
The Great Church of Holy Fuck Fri/1-Sun/3, 8pm, $15. Counterpulse, 1310 Mission, SF. www.counterpulse.org. The name, the fact that this production is helmed by Annie Danger, queer trans utopia-seeker, the promise of nudity — surely these will add to a truly religious interactive theater experience.
International Sex Workers Rights Day picnic Sun/3, 11am-2pm, free. Dolores Park, 19th St. and Guerrero, SF. www.swopbay.org. The Sex Workers Outreach Project and St. James’ Infirmary are hosting this gathering of past and present sex workers and their allies in celebration of this day of commemoration, which started in 2001 at sex worker festival in Calcutta, India.
Not so much the disease itself — although the rate of HIV infections has been rising again in young gay men, according to a report last year by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and African Americans continue to be the hardest hit population in the US. And California, especially the Internet of California, has been gripped by another paroxysm of debate about barebacking porn, one that reached all the way to the ballot box in November with the passage of Measure B in Los Angeles, requiring all porn actors to wear condoms when filming in the city.
However, it’s the vibrant culture that grew up in resistance to the disease in the 1980s and ’90s that’s capturing the attention of a new generation, sparking a revival of interest that goes beyond typical retro-cycle nostalgia. For many young queers and allies frustrated by HIV discrimination, evictions, predatory pharmaceutical companies, sex-work criminalization, and immigration policy failures, it’s a newfound inspiration.
Rowdy AIDS resistance, defined by the loud-mouthed, street-closing, bridge-blocking, cathedral-occupying international AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power activist network, has been thrust back in the cultural spotlight after being overshadowed by more recent, conservative fights for marriage equality and military service rights. Initiated by NYC rabblerouser Larry Kramer in 1987, ACT UP defined queer politics for almost a decade and successfully changed the way government policy and the medical industry approached AIDS. (There would be no life-sustaining HIV drug combination therapy without ACT UP’s in-your-face civil disobedience.)
In San Francisco, the homegrown AIDS Action Pledge organization, started in 1985, laid the foundation for nonviolent yet radically confrontational AIDS activism, before partnering with ACT UP/New York and changing its name to ACT UP/San Francisco, helping to create a coast-to-coast juggernaut of information- and strategy-sharing. In its early ’90s heyday, thousands of virile ACT UPpers (and participants in related groups like Queer Nation, Gran Fury, and Boy With Arms Akimbo) from Kansas City to Copenhagen took to the streets, scaled walls, pilloried politicians, got arrested, and yes, got laid, too — it was a heady, cruisey time.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wwhFS1mUaVY
During the past two years four documentaries about the period have been released to critical acclaim — How to Survive a Plague, nominated for a 2013 Academy Award, which documents the enormous influence ACT UP and its offshoot Treatment Action Group had on the development of life-saving combination drug therapies by major pharmaceutical companies; United in Anger, director Jim Hubbard’s eye-opening ode to the diverse membership, complex infrastructure, and social issue agenda of ACT UP in New York, which draws on the immense ACT UP Oral History Project archives Hubbard started 10 years ago with writer Sarah Schulman; Vito, an HBO documentary about outspoken AIDS activist and Celluloid Closet author Vito Russo; and We Were Hereby director David Weissman (currently being Ellis Act evicted from his Castro apartment), which focuses on San Francisco at the very beginning of the epidemic leading up to ACT UP’s founding, and the development here of innovative treatments.
Kramer’s own polemical, overwhelming 1985 play about the dawn of the disease in New York, The Normal Heart, was revived on Broadway in 2011 (it played here at A.C.T. last year), snagged three top Tony Awards, and is being made into a movie with Mark Ruffalo, Alec Baldwin, and possibly Julia Roberts. The artwork of hyperkinetic grafitti artist Keith Haring, who designed some of the most recognizable anti-AIDS iconography before succumbing to the disease in 1990, was everywhere in 2012, from Google Doodles and iPhone cases to collectible sex toys and a retrospective at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. Dangly pink triangle earrings and “Silence = Death” t-shirts and buttons, emblems of ACT UP, are popping up on hipsters all over.
And, um, Justin Bieber wore an ACT UP T-shirt to the 2012 CMT Country Music Awards?
FANNING THE FLAMES
Last year, a 28-year-old sex worker and activist named Cyd Nova, along with others who had been involved with the Occupy movement, started contacting ACT UP veterans about the upcoming 25th anniversary of ACT UP that March.
“My friend Kentaro and I had developed a common obsession with ACT UP because we saw it as reflection of what is missing in our community,” he told me. Nova had discovered ACT UP when he was 17, as he made an attempt to “understand who I was in the world I was living in.” When he began researching the ACT UP Oral History Project online and watching New Queer Cinema classics like the 1993 HIV-themed musical Zero Patience he “found it all incredible.”
“The emergence of ACT UP represented to us this time when queers stood together when faced with a genocide of indifference, devoting their lives to fighting for the those of their friends, lovers, family and themselves. This stands in contrast to gay and lesbian culture of the 2000s — the focus on marriage and class climbing. For people of color, sex workers, drug users, and transgender people HIV still exists. I wanted to get involved in some deeper way.”
Kentaro updated ACT UP graphics with a new “Act the Fuck Up” design, and there was enough traction about the anniversary idea among curious young people and elders to plan a “NOT OVER: 25 Years of ACT UP” panel at the Women’s Building in March, followed by a march in April through the Castro and Mission protesting the evictions of people living with HIV/AIDS, condoms being used as evidence to prosecute sex workers, and the Catholic Church’s homophobic and sex-phobic policies.
Both the panel and the march were well-attended, and another panel — this time featuring ACT UP veteran Sarah Schulman reading from The Gentrification of the Mind, her impassioned memoir of how queer rebellion to the AIDS crisis vanished into conservatism and consumerism, — overflowed its Luggage Gallery setting. Several of the attendees decided to start holding regular meetings and full-on reactivate the movement, reviving the name ACT UP/San Francisco.
The new ACT UP/SF joining with OccuPride at the 2012 Pride Parade. Photo by Liz Highleyman
These events were followed by more old school-style ACT UP actions: slogan-bearing banner drops at Pink Saturday in the Castro, guerilla street art bombs, a “Cumdumpsters of the GOP” condom toss at Folsom Street Fair. A nexus of affiliation emerged among fellow radical queer groups like OccuPride, Homonomixxx, and active ACT UP chapters in other cities. In December, a small group managed to enter Bay Area-based pharmaceutical giant Gilead’s headquarters to protest the exorbitant pricing — $28,500 per year — of its new, more convenient HIV drug Stribild. An action is planned for February 25 to deliver letters protesting Stribild’s price to Gilead, and another for ACT UP’s 26th anniversary in March.
One of the less-emphasized aspects of ACT UP was its reverence for procedure and attention to order, its organization into multiple affinity groups and action committees: a trick learned from classical anarchism and the Civil Rights Movement. The young ACT UP/SF members I’ve met — there are about 25-30 core members — seem to have absorbed these techniques: they speak calmly and deliberately but candidly, seeking out consensus but unafraid to disagree. Their actions, too, seem deliberately organized and calmly executed.
The delicately butch-featured Nova joined me at Church Street Cafe, along with fellow ACT UP/San Francisco revivalists Mayra Lopez, 24, a poised yet vivacious nonprofit worker with striking red lips, and Alan Guttirez, 23, the kind of soft-voiced, sharply intelligent sex worker who somehow survives Dennis Cooper novels.
“I was 18 and taking a summer sociology class at SF State with this flaming faggot professor,” Guttirez told me. “Usually queer teachers like to talk about themselves a lot, and at some point he mentioned ACT UP. No one knew what he was talking about, that there was this whole radical movement here that had been almost completely buried. I was immediately curious about the possibilities.”
Lopez told me, “I grew up in Sonoma — for half my life, HIV wasn’t even on my radar. You never talked about sex in the Latino community I’m from, nevermind queer issues or HIV. Then, in high school, I watched a documentary about HIV and wanted to do a history of the disease for a project. I picked up a book of posters, included ones from ACT UP, that’s how I found out about it. From there I went to work for a nonprofit — but nonprofits have a problem with being able to address issues about migrant workers and HIV, which is my focus. They have to be so P.C. I feel like ACT UP is a tool to address those issues openly.”
A 2012 ACT UP/SF die-in outside Mission Dolores Basilica, protesting the Catholic Church’s homophobic and sexphobic policies. Photo by Liz Highleyman
Is any of the motivation for the ACT UP renewal a matter of trendy nostalgia? “We’re too busy for nostalgia,” Guttirez says. “We wish the people wearing ACT UP things or looking back at the ’90s would dig deeper into the meanings to know what those things stood for, that we’re still fighting against the same shit. Categorizing people on hookup sites as ‘clean’ or ‘dirty’ according to their HIV status or making fun of poor people is just perpetuating behaviors that were once used against us, and killed us.”
A BROADER AGENDA
One of the original ACT UP’s main goals was access to life-sustaining drugs. What’s the agenda of a new ACT UP? Besides addressing the prohibitively high costs of AIDS meds — something most HIV-positive people with insurance may take for granted, a lack of awareness that drug companies can take advantage of by price gouging or delaying more cost-effective treatments, and leaving uninsured people scrambling and dangerously stressed as public programs are increasingly cut — and the lack of an HIV safety net for many immigrants, the new ACT UP/SF also gives priority to sex worker and housing issues.
ACT UP/SF joined a coalition of local organizations, including Nova’s employer St. James Infirmary, to successfully demand that the San Francisco Police Department ban the use of condoms found on someone suspected of prostitution from being used evidence against them. (On January 14, however, Police Chief Greg Suhr announced that the ban would remain “temporary” for 90 days.)
And ACT UP/SF is also agitating around a provision in the $15 billion, George W. Bush-initiated PEPFAR international AIDS relief program, which forces organizations to pledge to oppose prostitution in order to receive funds. The US Supreme Court has agreed to hear a case against the provision this year.
A more local, immediate concern, however, one that ACT UP/SF places at the top of its list, is the skyrocketing cost of rent in San Francisco and the increasing numbers of evictions and stressful threat of evictions that many people living with HIV/AIDS face today.
“Evictions are killing us, they’re murder,” Lopez said, as Guttirez and Nova voiced their agreement. “People think medication is the number one priority for people with HIV — but it’s not, it’s housing. SROs are being pushed out, affordable housing stock is shrinking, people are being forced to leave. Without stability, it’s very hard to comply with your drug regimen, which is already complicated enough.
“I hear people all the time say, well if you can’t afford it here, then just move. They don’t understand that San Francisco is still one of the few places where queer people feel safe, that there’s a network of services here with proven results that you can’t find anywhere else, especially places many people living with HIV can afford to live. And there are support networks here, too, that aren’t available anywhere else.”
In fact, one of the most valuable things ACT UP/SF may be doing right now is offering a community for people, especially young people, with HIV to connect beyond the isolation of computer screens, to share information, enter into a positive dialogue, and receive support in a sympathetic environment geared toward changing the status quo.
Guttirez sums it up: “We’re for people who realize an angry Facebook post isn’t enough.”
BACK IN THE DAY
Have any old-guard feathers been ruffled by the ACT UP revival?
“The only real resistance we’ve had is to the name ACT UP/San Francisco — our intention is to reclaim the name from the mess that happened in the past,” Cyd told me. He’s referring to perhaps the most acrimonious legacy of local queer history. In 1990, after a phenomenally successful year of protest and media attention, several people left ACT UP/San Francisco to form ACT UP Golden Gate, intending to focus specifically on advocating for drug development and treatment, rather than address broader social issues like economic justice and gay equality.
The split was amenable at first, until things got really weird. Two men, David Pasquarelli and Michael Bellefountaine, moved here from Florida in 1993 and took over Act Up San Francisco. They quickly went from questioning the wisdom of poisoning one’s body with chemicals from the medical industry to flat out denying that HIV was the cause of AIDS, telling HIV-positive followers to forego medications altogether, saying that’s what was really killing them. Many panicked young people were swept into the new ACT UP/SF’s cultlike atmosphere, and to their doom.
“They were whackadoos!” old school ACT UP member Waiyde Palmer exclaimed when I brought up Pasquarelli and Bellefountiane. “They killed hundreds of people — and now they’re dead. Of AIDS. But the bitterness still lingers.”
I met the svelte and sassy Palmer, contributing editor of the Castro Biscuit news website and longtime survivor of AIDS, at Church Street Cafe, along with other ACT UP veterans Dean Ouellette, bushy-bearded gardener and musician, and respected journalist and activist Liz Highleyman. The three formed an uncanny, silver-haired mirror image of their younger counterparts I’d met with earlier.
A lively conversation careened among several milestones of queer radical AIDS activist history. The major early, roof-climbing takeover of pharmaceutical giant Burroughs Wellcome’s Burlingame office in 1987. The packed week of successful demonstrations around the sixth International AIDS Conference in 1990. Protesting a 1989 episode of NBC program “Midnight Caller,” which featured a murderous bisexual HIV-positive character. The 1989 day that Stop AIDS Now or Else blockaded the Golden Gate Bridge, two weeks after members of ACT UP/SF chained themselves to the Pacific Stock Exchange.
Juicy tidbits dropped: owner Marty Blecman of Megatone Records, Sylvester’s label, bankrolled ACT UP until he died in 1991; a fresh-faced Rachel Maddow, member of the AIDS Legal Referral Panel in 1994, stole some other cute dyke’s look. We tried to pin down a timeline of everything, but memories were fuzzy, exact dates had faded.
“I’m pleased to be a part of what’s happening, and I’m glad that it’s so intergenerational,” said Palmer (all three are active in the new ACT UP/SF) “but we need to maintain a momentum, and the motivation is different than when people were dying around you every day. Back then, the movement had members from every walk of life — yuppies, deadheads, people I never would have dreamed of associating with as a punk — united by this life-threatening illness.”
Highleyman agreed. “HIV has been taken over by the medical industry, we’re narcotized. A lot of ACT UP was based on exchanging information on these bewildering scientific things. Now people just ask their doctor what medicine to take. But who’s monitoring the doctors or watching the drug companies?”
“And the economics of the city have changed so much,” she continued. “I wonder if there are the resources anymore to support a protest movement. It’s just so expensive to live here, who has time to organize and follow through? The fact that these kids are taking it on is incredible and rare.”
“Back then we all worked three jobs, too” Palmer said. “But our rent was only $300 dollars — and if you had to leave one job to go to a protest, something else would pop up. I’m not sure if that can happen now.”
TIME PASSAGES
What happened to ACT UP? Leafing through the mesmerizing ACT UP Golden Gate files in the GLBT Historical Society archives in SoMa (especially those of its young star activist, Edward Zold, who succumbed to AIDS in 2009 at 38), a blizzard of drug names zips past: liposomal, foscarnet, fluconzole, sp-pg, TNP470, D4t, clarithromycin, AZT, Deovythymidine, xylocaine.
Every week it seemed, a new hope rose with a new drug name, only to be quashed when that drug failed. As several of the recent AIDS movies posit, the overwhelming amount of death just became too much, people couldn’t handle it anymore. Activists began turning on each other, the movement faded, and activist queer culture sank into despair. Until 1997, that is, when everyone began to realize the new anti-retroviral drug therapies would actually work. They were going to live, and then it was the best Folsom Street Fair ever.
Maybe more importantly, whatever happened to radical queer activism in general? I met with writer K.M. Soehnlein, who’s working on a novel based on his experiences of the ACT UP period — he was there from the very beginning in New York. He’s featured in United in Anger, and Queer Nation, an ACT UP offshoot formed to combat gay-bashing and promote queer visibility through renegade tactics, began in his living room in 1990.
“Occupy was a blip on the everyday gay person’s radar screen — and the police response to it was enormously more brutal and scary than when we protested in the ’90s and police usually worked with us,” he said. “But honestly, most gay people now are happy to see their president onscreen saying the word ‘gay’ before the word ‘marriage’ and that’s good enough for them.”
Soehnlein also has thoughts about why ACT UP may be resonating again. “There’s been talk about AIDS PTSD, and it really was a war. ACT UP felt like the only thing you could do to stay sane. Many people had to shut themselves off from that time in order to move on, and activism may be included in that.
“But 20, 25 years is a long time. It could just be a matter of waking people back up.”
ACT UP/SF meets at 7pm every first, third, and fifth Thursday — including Thu/21 at Alley Cat Books, 3036 24th St., SF. www.facebook.com/ACTUPSF
There are few things that San Franciscans love more than Thin Mints, and local Girl Scouts found out what those were on Sunday when a troop conviniently posted up in front of the deceased Diesel store at Castro and Market. The whippersnappers paid witness not only to another nude-y demonstration against the city’s new ban on public nudity, but also to said demonstration’s infiltration by dapper members (ahem) of local porn outfit Naked Sword [as Castro Biscuit reported.] They’re making a send-up of the nudity ban starring an ambitious politician, surname: Cox. Wink.
The flick will star Guardian cover boy Leo Forte, Dale Cooper as Cox, Christian Wilde as Officer Dick — who, we will note, was the only “cop” making arrests at the porn shoot-protest. Though there were six members of SFPD there by Castro Biscuit’s count and many exposed sets of genitalia, not a single arrest was made. If you’re going to have a nudity ban, might as well be a selectively-enforced one — all the better for climate-of-fear creating, amiright?
Adult Entertainment Virtual Convention
Perhaps you were unable to attend the AVN porn awards in Vegas this year, or last weekend’s transgender version, the Tranny Awards in Los Angeles. How will you supplant the opportunities you forewent to rub elbows with your favorite adult stars in a vast, drafty hotel conference room? Might we recommend this peculiar, multi-day event hosted by porn critics Xbiz and sex-only Second Life-esque world Red Light Social Center. Now in its second year, you can prowl the halls of the convention avatar-like, taking in a Q&A with James Deen (Sat/23, 10am), daily industry networking hours, and expert panels on social media and branding for adult brands (Wed/27, 2pm) and online possibilities for sex work (Fri/22, 2pm).
It’s another edition of this XXX storytelling series’ amateur hour — not in a bad way! We’re just trying to say the field is open to all comers. Come at 7:30pm to sign up for a five-minute slot, all for you to lay bare your tale of one-off sexual shenanigans. The winner gets to compete in an upcoming championship round of some sort. Good luck, truth teller.
Rachel Maines was actually researching a different kind of poke entirely when she came across the world of vibrator history — the scholar, who is currently a visiting scientist at Cornell University’s School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, first saw mention of old school vibes in antique needlepoint magazines. Her interest piqued, Maines embarked on a study of the vibrator’s origins in private homes and as a tool used by doctors to treat “hysteria” among the female population. Today, she gives a talk surrounded by Good Vibrations founder Jodi Blanks’ formidable collection of vibrators throughout history — and of course, alongside some modern-day versions you can buy for your newly-educated self.
Fri/22, 6:30pm, free. Good Vibrations, 1620 Polk, SF. www.goodvibes.com
Sex Worker Outreach Project meeting
Current and former sex workers are invited over to talk justice at SWOP’s regular meeting of the minds. The national organization fights for social justice for sex workers, working particularly on anti-violence issues. SWOP was behind a failed bid to decriminalize prostitution in 2004, and every year leads the way with the International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers — check it out.
… Speaking of SWOP, if you didn’t make it to that meeting — or aren’t a current or former sex worker, but still want to support the group’s work — or just like lit, get over to this evening of spoken word performances about the world’s oldest profession. Contributing to the program: Apaulo Hart, Carol Queen, Chad Litz, Cho Whoreingsly Prancypants, Daphne Gottlieb, Jacques LeFemme, Janetta Johnson, Miss Lola Sunshine, and Shelley “Muffie” Mays.
Sat/23, 8pm, $10-20 sliding scale. Center for Sex and Culture, 1349 Mission, SF. www.sexandculture.org
She wears a Guess Collection spotted lynx coat, Manolo Blahnik boots, Isabel Marant dress, La Perla lingerie. She has to figure out how to have sex with a quadriplegic. She is gentle, the most sweet. The Christeene Vale that stars in the “San Francisco” segment of Fourplay, a collection of sex-themed shorts that will screen in part at Other Cinema’s “Eros” lineup at Artist’s Television Access on Sat/16 is not the same filthy drag-terror I remember slapping and dredging her sweaty stomach over the faces of other front row admirers at her Public Works appearance last year.
In part, this is due to the fact that in Fourplay Vale (or rather, Paul Soileau, her real world alter ego) is interpreting the cross-dressing SF sex worker who is sitting across the table from me in a SoMa cafe. Her name is Chloe, and she is explaining to me why her job is a lot like being a therapist.
Here is the plot of Fourplay‘s “San Francisco”: Soileau’s Chloe is called out to North Bay house with an unusual challenge. The wife of a quadriplegic man wants a professional to give him his first experience with a biological man. He’s not gay, the wife explains upon Chloe’s arrival. It’s just something he wants to do.
The ensuing scene between Soileau and the prone man will convince anyone of the need for experienced, compassionate sex workers. It will also introduce you to ways of sexual pleasure you perhaps had not previously considered (spoiler alert, but: toe.)
The story is loosely based on an experience that real-life Chloe recounted to director Kyle Henry when they were introduced by a mutual friend in San Francisco. They changed a things about the plot to make it simpler for audiences to digest. It was actually the quadriplegic’s mother who called Chloe. In the film version of Fourplay the disabled man is older — in real life he was 23 years old, having had an awful motorcycle accident at 18. The real-deal sex took place in Post Street hotel, one with adequate handicapped access so that the mother could position the man in the room, leave the money in an envelope on the desk. The next time real-life Chloe heard from mom, it was three years later. She had called to let him know her son had passed away in his sleep.
“All I could think was ‘god, this woman loves her son so much,’” Chloe tells me over tea at the new 111 Minna cafe. In person, it is easy to see similarities between the queen in front of me and Soileau that may have lead to the casting of the Fourplay short. Both of them have big eyes that look at you — Vale’s through freaky contact lenses, but you imagine the spirit is the same behind the plastic. In person, Chloe affirms, Soileau is actually quite gentle and Southern. Christeene hadn’t yet been born when the short was filmed almost three years ago, or when the two drag queens spent time studying each other before the short was shot.
Chloe remembers that she was insistent that the tenderness she felt for the disabled man be apparent on screen, that Soileau bring back to life the humility she felt in that moment.
“It wasn’t about getting pleasure,” she says of the quadripligic man. “It was more about him giving pleasure.” Which makes sense – a man who has to be waited on 24/7 for his own survival would fantasize, one supposes, about the moment when he could give happiness to another. “It changed my definition of what sex could be.”
Chloe’s career began when a drag queen named Chocolate who worked the door at Trannyshack Tuesdays at the Stud asked baby-drag Chloe what her “price” was. Chocolate became her teacher, learning her the best way to work with clients. Judging from the way Chloe divined, diagnosed, and prescribed a cure for my Valentine’s Day anxiety, she’s definitely attuned to the needs of others — one of those “givers.”
“Very quickly,” Chloe remembers “the fear subsided when I saw how powerful touching the skin of another person, having them touch yours – how remarkable and transformative that can be.” Through the power of drag, she was able to take charge of each rendezvous and, she feels, really help people. “We’re not criminals. We’re artists, we’re shamans,” she tells me. Chloe was active in 2008’s defeated Proposition K, which would have prohibited the SFPD from using resources to instigate and prosecute sex work.
“We live in a lonely world. People can go for days without speaking [in real life] to anyone.” She saw lots of self-identified straight men during those days of the first dom com boom in San Francisco, the kind of guys desired by the same burly gay men who the slight, nerdy Chloe felt rejected by in bars before she started sex work (“tranny’s revenge,” she laughs.) But when I ask how it felt to be so intimate with people who were in the closet, Chloe bridles.
“As I understand, there’s a big difference between sexual identity and sexual practice.” Let them be straight if they say they’re straight, she avers. “I believe everyone should have the power of self definition.”
Her caretaking spirit is evident in the short that Henry and the rest of his Austin-based collective created (Henry’s partner is one of Vale’s back-up dancers — the making of the “San Francisco” segment was somewhat of a family affair.) The partial screening on Saturday will be the second for Fourplay in San Francisco after last year’s Frameline debut. Who know, maybe Christeene will make an appearance — she was just announced as a guest judge for Fri/15’s Trannyshack Star Search pageant.
Chloe’s excited that more of her SF friends get a chance to see the piece that they put together so many years ago. “It was so easy because Paul is so sweet, so fearless, he understood the complexity of the piece. And he fit perfectly in my clothes.”
Yep, that fuzzy feeling wasn’t the only thing Chloe contributed to Fourplay – lady offered up the clothes off her back.
A major, massive shout-out to the local activists who finally convinced SFPD to get rid of their draconian, awful policy of using condoms found on suspects as proof of intent to do sex work. The last thing we needed was our community’s most vunerable sex workers being afraid to carry protection — not to mention having the plain old slutty among us leaving rubbers at home for fear of police harassment.
Police Chief Greg Suhr has pledged that condoms will no longer be mentioned in police reports and that officers will no longer photograph condoms found on the person of people they pick up under suspicion of illegal sex work. Yay! Read all about it in this piece by the Bay Area Reporter. Onto the week in sex events.
March for Mission safety
This is hardly sexy, but it does have a lot to do with our right to feel free and safe in our streets and certainly affects the sex-positive community, so we’re putting it in here. We’re sure you’ll understand. After yet another woman was sexually assaulted in the Mission District on Jan. 6, community members have decided enough’s enough. Link up Friday afternoon with your neighbors to bring attention to the issue, and call for increased vigilance so that no one else has to feel unsafe in their own neighborhood. The march will head out from the 16th Street BART station, walk west on 16th Street to Valencia Street, then up Valencia to 24th Street and back down to 16th in a big, night-taking-back square.
Fri/11, 4-6pm, free. Meet at Mission and 16th St., SF. Facebook event
Sexual Outsiders book launch
There’s been a welcome uptick in guides to BDSM lifestyle penned by members of the kink community. We profiled Mollena Williams and Lee Harrington’s book Playing Well With Others: Your Field Guide to Discovering, Exploring and Navigating the Kink, Leather and BDSM Communities last year, and now two experts in kink-positive psychotherapy are releasing their own manual on the subject. Sex therapist David Ortmann and Cal State research psychologist Richard Sprott celebrate Sexual Outsiders today with a reading.
Sat/12, 2:30-6:30pm, free. Paul Mahder Gallery, 3378 Sacramento, SF. www.sexualoutsiders.com
Anal Play with Rain DeGrey
A quick scan of BDSM porn starlet Rain DeGrey’s blog is all you need to know that this is a woman who likes to share her experience as a kinky person, and open up horizons so that others can fufill their desires for themselves. As such, we are happy to recommend DeGrey’s class at Kink.com’s Armory this Saturday. The Armory’s class schedule has exploded in size over the past year — which is to say that if you’re looking for instruction in rough love, you can find it in the porn palace several times a week. The thrill of learning in the same cavernous building the website uses to shoot many of its offerings will not be lost on you, we’re sure.
Contestants in pursuit of the Dirtiest Storyteller in San Francisco crown will take the Bawdy stage tonight — and you, perv, are welcome to be one of them. Have you longed to air your X-rated anecdotes on stage? Arrive early to Cafe Royale to take part in the slam — you’ll have five minutes to speak your piece, and be judged on storytelling, sexy theme relevance (tonight’s is “Jackpot!”), and adherence to time limit.
Of course, if voyeurism is more your thing, you can just treat this as a regular old Bawdy and come to drink and eavesdrop on exciting Bay Area tales of torrid.
Tue/15, sign-up at 7:30pm, competition at 8pm, $10. Cafe Royale, 800 Post, SF. www.bawdystorytelling.com
“Pegging Demystified” with Dr. Charles Glickman
Catch Good Vibes sexologist Glickman while you still can before he leaves the company to focus on teaching prostate sex workshops across the country. It makes sense, he literally wrote the book on it — The Ultimate Guide for Prostate Pleasurehits shelves later this month (check out its launch party at Good Vibes Valencia Street on Jan. 31.) The fact that this tutorial, which focuses on dildo-harness selection and pegging technique, is free-of-charge, should be enough reason to go say hey and learn some prostate tips before Glickman flies the coop.
Thu/17, 6:30-7:30pm, free. Oakland Good Vibrations, 3219 Lakeshore, Oakl. www.goodvibes.com
Still don’t have a 2013 calendar? Want a bunch of vag on your wall?
… Well you’re in luck. Not only does Australian gent Philip Werner have copies of his black-and-white photography calendar left, but he also successfully crowd-funded is accepting pre-orders for his coffeetable book. Werner photographed women’s genitals, and paired the images with their thoughts on their vag, body acceptance, and societal expectations. We got a copy sent to the office and think it would make a great conversation starter in your apartment’s foyer.
Before we get to the week in Bay Area sex events, here is something you will want to be aware of: the ingenious ad campaign perpetuated by Baltimore activists from Force: Upsetting Rape Culture, who riffed off of questionable underwear design from Victoria’s Secret. In doing so [as Baltimore Fishbowl reports], the group ended up giving the company irrefutable proof that yes, their clientele cares about consent when in comes to sex.
“[VS’] ‘Sure Thing’ and ‘Yes No Maybe’ and ‘NO peeking’ underwear promote the idea of limitless availability,” Force activists Hannah Brancato and Rebecca Nagle told Fishbowl. “Or on the other hand, leaving the choice up to the (presumably male) partner. The brand teaches girls to be coy instead of vocal and makes it seem uncool and unsexy to say no and mean it.”
So what’d they do about it? They made a fake VS website promoting undies that say “No Means No” and “Ask First”, and mounted a viral social media campaign, and soon enough the praise for VS’ apparent conscious-dawning was rolling in via Twitter, Facebook, etc. from survivors of sexual assault and VS employees alike. The website and @LoveConsent Twitter handle were eventually shut down, but not before their effects were visible across the Interwebs.
So that was neat. On to the week in Bay sex.
Moon Market
Insofar periods are related to babies are related to the act of making love, this is a sex event! This lil’ indie gift fair features sea sponge menustration kits from Holy Sponge, kits that feature besides two all-natural, sustainably-harvested sea sponges, tea tree oil with which to disinfect them, and desert or white sage with which to purfity thyself. Also, lunar eclipses are sexy, and you will want to be in a room full of lunaphiles when Friday’s occurs, so go. Also on sale: Chamomile on Mars‘ hangover tea and Down At Lulu‘s vintage ladywear.
It’s not important what you have on underneath them, gentlemen — panties, briefs, jocks, or otherwise. What matter is that you remove them, immediately. Your pants, of course. And you’ll be in good company in this deliciously seedy SoMa dive — studly go-gos serve as role models for what to do when you’ve freed yourself from lower body constrictions.
Fri/14, 11pm-1am, free. KOK Bar, 1225 Folsom, SF. www.kokbarsf.com
Whobilation
The pansexual costumed pervs of Kinky Salon host their yearly holiday party, where DJs spin, swingers swing, and a candy cane fellation contest will incur horrendous sweet tooths. Says the website:
So fluff up your PinkMink and shine up your Ball-Hoo
Put that ruff on your muff and buff up your wazoos
The joint will be hoppin, the bubbly poppin
and of Merriment & Mirth- you may ask?
no, there’s no stopping!
Sat/15, 10pm-late, price and location info sent to those who sign up for free membership. www.kinkysalon.com
School of Shimmy student showcase
Enter the world of Dottie Lux, creator of this local troupe of pasty-shaking, heart-breaking burlesque performers. Today’s showcase features numbers by Lux La Croix, Dorian Faust, and Ruby Vixen — plus a host of guest stars and Lux herself overseeing precedings.
International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers
Ten years ago, feminist porn icons Annie Sprinkle and Robyn Few (RIP) marked December 17th by holding a candlelight vigil for the 70-plus victims, many of them sex workers, of Washington State’s Green River Killer. Since then, their simple ritual has spread across the globe, and the day has become an annual opportunity to call for justice for sex workers everywhere. Attend the vigil at the Center for Sex and Culture, where everyone is invited to add to a community altar to those who’ve passed, and the birth of a new PFLAG-style group for friends and family of sex workers will be announced.
Mon/17, 5-7pm, free. Center for Sex and Culture, 1349 Mission, SF. www.december17.org
Win a harness, why don’t you?
Drop by your locally-born national purveyor of quality sex accoutrement to meet Tres, who created the SpareParts HardWear line of harnesses. SpareParts’ Sasha harness may be of particular note — the ruched sides of the attached panty give an extra frisson of femme-sexy to your playtime. Sasha is among the two harnesses that will be raffled off today at the store and Tres will be doing fittings for customers, so no more chafing or slipping for you.
Dec. 20, 3-7pm, free. Good Vibrations, 2504 San Pablo, Berk. www.goodvibes.com
We were thrilled to bits at the Guardian when St. James Infirmary’s longtime program director and former Harvey Milk Club president Stephany Joy Ashley was named Supervisor David Campos’ new legislative aide. Ashley was a speaker on our “Feminism in the Bay Area Today” panel discussion and worked on a number of political campaigns, from John Avalos’ bid for mayor to Rafael Mandleman’s 2010 run for District 8 supervisor.
Of course, Ashley was a stripper at SF’s amazing worker-owned strip club — six years ago. And we think it’s awesome that we live in a town that doesn’t separate sex workers from the political world. And actually, the Mission Loc@l headline isn’t really indicative of the article’s content, which does focus on Ashley’s impressive qualifications.
But, the fact of the matter is that “Lusty activist” and “former Lusty Lady dancer” are really insufficient descriptors for someone who has continued to play really important roles in the community since her days at the Lusty. It’s hardly the most unique thing about Ashley either, given her achievements since.
We get it local bloggers, we’re all looking for clicks. But let’s not sensationalize sex work — not to mention completly legal sex work — anymore. This story was already awesome without it.
Yesterday morning I dug up my Obama mix, the CD that I made at this time four years ago when I was a wide-eyed political organizer and played for my team of adroit, grandmotherly union member-canvassers. Gah, my dislike for Will.i.am is well-known but this song gets me every time. Which is why I found myself on Election Day 2012 wearing a Moveon.org Obama T-shirt I donated $5 for, all abuzz with Obamastalgia. It’s like a drug, this resurgance of a younger, less jaded president — even if it’s only for the time it takes for all that confetti maelstrom to settle to the stage.
If similar feelings of Oval Office lust have got you all hot and bothered (or just immensely bothered, in the case of some of the California races BOO LA’S PROP BBOO PROP 35), here’s a week full of sex events to help you blow off some steam, SF style.
Aural Sex: Seduction by Voice
Besides being skilled in the art of Japanese rope bondage, local sex educator Midori is skilled in the art of vocal seduction. Whether you are a sex writer gearing up for a spoken word event (perhaps yesterday’s Bawdy Storytelling inspired you?) or merely looking to begin seducing your prey before they even see any skin, her class today promises to teach you the tricks of sultry
Bawdy Storytelling: Who You Calling a Dirty Whore?
Boldly dubbed the night of “sure things” by Bawdy founder Dixie de la Tour’s press announcement, tonight’s pervy storytelling event explores the “appallingly erotic and emotionally appealing” lives of performers Carol Queen, Ginger Murray, Bunny Von Tail, and Dixon Mason.
“It’s done for charity, now do it for love” is not the least problematic website title we’ve heard — particularly as, in the case of WhatsYourPrice.com, what you’re “doing for love” is deciding whether you are “attractive” or “generous.” Such semantic acrobatics for good old fashioned sex work we’ve ne’er seen. Nonetheless, when the site sent us the results of its recent survey among members (over 5,000 SF hetero men surveyed!), this is what we read:
Based on the results of this study, San Francisco’s perception of “The Perfect Woman” is brunette (+$140.54) with blue eyes (+$43.79), a social drinker (+$19.60) who doesn’t smoke (+$16.28), who is a college graduate with a Master’s Degree (+$35.31). Overall, San Francisco males are willing to spend an average of $255.52 to go on a first date with their definition of “The Perfect Woman.”
We do love smart…
Sex workers’ writing workshop
Gina de Vries, local sex worker scribe, SF State master in writing, and previous SFBG sex columnist offers this class for sex workers every second Saturday of the month at the Center for Sex and Culture. If this year’s election, with its doleful condom mandate in LA and likely-to-pass Prop. 35, which will further marginalize sex workers, is any gauge, then this is one sector of society that needs its voice heard at higher volumes. Pick up the pen (stylus, whatever), start writing.
After reading Mollena and Lee Harrington’s user-friendly guide to joining the BDSM/kink community — and interviewing Mollena about it for this fall’s Sex Issue — I was convinced they’d written the practical counterpart to 50 Shades of Grey’s inspirational, if somewhat incomplete, smut story. Today, the duo post up to talk about some bonehead beginner’s moves that get made — and how to deal with “douchebag deviants.” You know.
Make an Impact: Pleasing Your Bottom with Impact Play
Last we heard from Kink.com actor and sex educator Chloe Camilla, she was doing a tear-jerking performance piece at the ASQEW Festival at YBCA on her parents’ reactions to discovering her life as a sex worker, her discovery of true love, and ensuing decision (based on her family’s feelings) to quit sex work altogether. That’s why we were so pleased to hear that the cheerful queer femme will be returning to sex ed — at least, partially
“[My parents would] much prefer I abandon the identity completely, of course,” Camilla told us via email when we contacted her to get the update on her work “but as my website and educational work is politically important to me (and the main way I get to be more complex than an object others control the images of), I’ve kept it up on a very part time basis. I mostly do other things at this point, but sometimes I’ll teach or perform when the opportunity presents.”
We’ll take it! Celebrate her conviction by signing up for this class in impact play for tops, in the depths of Kink.com’s porn palace.
“Some weird, Kool Aid-tasting shot. I don’t really know what it was, but it was something.”
— was passed around at the League of Pissed-Off Voters‘ party at El Rio last night right after Obama’s acceptance speech. Generally speaking, this was not the bar to spend last night hashing out the district races and local ballot measures (though the back patio housed its fair share of politicos weary of the election trail.) This was where you went to celebrate, wholeheartedly, the next four years of President Barack “we actually like that his middle name is Hussein” Obama, and the trouncing of those who would seek political office by qualifying and diminishing the atrocity of rape. Seeeee ya Todd Akin and Richard Mourdock.
This was not 2008, of course. Biking to the bar through the Mission at 9pm, there was nowhere near the number of rowdies that had flooded the blocks only recently for the Giants’ World Series win. Obama has split quite a bit of his political capital over the last four years, of course, invading people, imprisoning people, stealing our medical marijuana.
“I can, like, jump in the air for you!” said a curly-haired cohort when I told her I was taking celebration shots for the Guardian. “I’d be happy to do that!” We never quite got around to the staged exuberance, but I dug her game enthusiasm.
For last night’s El Rio denizens — which included sex workers, legislative aides, community radio hosts, the League of Pissed Voters (who has hosted the election night party here for a few years running), and off-duty drag queens — it was either this halway-exciting victory or withering away under the social policies of a backwards Mormon who can’t stop talking about winter sports and would like to ignore the fact that half the people who were smashed into the Mission dive existed. A lot of these folks travel, so they were pleased that they could continue to leave the country with their head held high. They cooed in mock sympathy when Obama mentioned, kindly, the drive of his opponents.
“I can’t see much difference between this crowd and the Giants crowd,” said a woman on a stool next to me who must have been in her seventies. She had filtered in just before Obama’s acceptance speech with some supporters of unsuccessful D5 candidate John Rizzo.
I had to admit, as I watched the capacity-crowd punters inside the bar explode in cheers when that confetti windstorm engulfed the Obama and Biden families after Barack’s well-paced, perfectly acceptable acceptance speech — these were the same people I’d been celebrating Posey and Scutaro with the Sunday before last. There wasn’t a local returns-scanning political junkie in sight. Or at least one that didn’t drop their cellphone in the cheer that followed after El Rio owner Dawn Huston announcement of the free shots of mysterious sweetness.
But they were my neighbors. And you don’t always get free shots at El Rio.
What to do when Halloween rolls around, but you’re already slutty 365 days a year? Up the ante with one of this week’s sex events, because you’re more than just an awkwardly-gender-coded bag of crap from Spirit.
Quickies Indie Erotic Short Film Festival
Once a year, locally-born sex toy behemoth Good Vibrations gives us an opportunity to don a Halloween costume, kick back in a historic theater, and watch ourselves have sex. This would be Good Vibes’ annual erotic short film competition, which welcomes sensual submissions featuring sexualities of all stripes, vanilla and kink alike, and all manner of core, rock-hard to whisper-soft. This year, sexologist-about-town Carol Queen and drag cinenova Peaches Christ host the affair, whose audience-selected winner will take home a cool $1,500.
Australian animated genitals await you at Quickies
Good Vibrations Sex Summit
And the fun need not end in the Castro. “Sex nerd” is becoming one of those that’s-so-San-Francisco identities, right up there with “proud wearer of cock rings.” Bawdy Storytelling based an entire show ‘n’ tell session around the concept this year, and now you can spend an entire Saturday (bonus if it’s bright and sunny out) getting into the nitty-gritty of desire, lecture style! Good Vibes hosts this day of panels and keynote talks by all kinds of sexperts. Topics up for discussion include “Regulating Pleasure: Sex, Politics and Censorship,” “Outspoken/Unsaid: Sex and Media,” “Pills, Profits and Pleasures: Sexual Health and Pharmaceuticals,” and “Sexual Stargazing: Sex and Pop Culture.” Attendees get in free to Friday night’s erotic film festival at the Castro. Make a weekend of it, nerd!
This Halloween season, hightail to the one haunted house where you don’t have to be embarassed about getting the pants scared off you (and yes, this is the perfect opportunity to look at those photos again.) Kinky Salon hosts a spooky, two-night edition of its vampire kink orgy (all orientations, all the time.) This weekend look for zombie strippers, Satanic rituals gone sexy, and tunes by DJ Fact 50.
Poet Zhayra Palma is teaching four sessions (they started Oct. 23) of writing workshops for people in the sex industry, because really who has better stories than them? (Sorry, Muni drivers.) Come if you’d like your poetry demystified, your voice unleashed, your writing workshops taking place in the most amazing library of sex lit in San Francisco.
As this trailer of Somebody’s Daughter clearly shows, when women become sex workers they become mice.
White Ribbon Against Pornography Week
Through some odd vagary in conservative PR-think, I am on the press list for Morality in Media, a batshit crazy anti-porn organization who sends me important tidings like the fact that adult filmmakers are voting for Obama. Thusly, I have been alerted to the fact that next week will be chockful of free livestreams of sure-to-be-hilarious-if-you’re-not-terrified anti-porn flicks (like this documentary of a real-life pastor’s son who “felt a call from God” to marry a sex worker. Lucky her), seminars on how to spy on your child/limit their ability to access information, and psuedo scientific talks on porn addiction. I suggest masturbating to all of it.
Though public nudity is currenty legal in our fair city, your right to strut like a peacock may be in danger — Supervisor Scott Weiner has submitted an anti-nudity piece of legislation that woud make everyone put their clothes on. Should that rub you the wrong way, join this protest in the middle of the city to show your true colors. Clothing very much optional. After the chanting, head to the Center for Sex and Culture to estatic dance the night away with Seattle DJ Jules O’Keefe.
Senior and disability action Western Addition Senior Center, 1390 ½ Turk, SF; 415-546-2096. 9:30am-1:30pm, free. Senior and Disability Action University presents a workshop series on strengthening health care services for these populations in San Francisco. Learn about current health care services, how they could be improved, and the leadership and community organizing skills to get it done. This is the second to last session in the series, the last one is on Halloween, and it’s all free. The group also provides leadership and empowerment classes in several languages throughout the city.
Thursday 25
Take back the plaza Oakland City Hall, 14th and Broadway, Oakl; www.occupyoakland.org. 5pm, free. A year ago Oct. 25, the streets of downtown Oakland were the site of a historic event. Police had moved in on the Occupy camp next to City Hall, and the people there, and hundreds of supporters, resisted. In the dark, the fight raged on, and the tear gas clouds, bean bag bullets, and tear gas clouds would spread fear and radicalism throughout the crowd. In one infamous incident, Iraq war veteran Scott Olsen was hit in the head with a bean bag round, and his name spread throughout the country. Occupy Oakland will not let the anniversary of this day pass unmarked. Instead, they are calling for a night of protest.
Unite for prop A El Rio, 158 Mission, SF; Facebook: Community united for Prop A at El Rio. 6-9pm, $10-25. If fighting for a better world isn’t your thing this Thursday, try fundraising for one! Join Sups. John Avalos and David Campos, City College board members, and labor leadership for a event supporting Prop. A. The measure would create a much-needed parcel tax to keep City College serving students even as it faces the challenges of the accreditation process. You can also come to be entertained by MC Anna Conda and StormMiguel Florez, and leave decorated with the “I am City College” logo if you bring something to silkscreen.
Friday 26
SWOP happy hour El Rio, 158 Mission, SF; Facebook: SWOP Happy Hour Fundraiser — In the Name of Robyn Few! 4-6pm, free. Drink in the name of deceased sex workers rights and marijuana advocacy legend Robyn Few (see “Fierce, forceful, amazing: remembering Robyn Few,” 10-2-12.) The money raised at this happy hour benefit will go to Sew Workers Outreach Project Bay Area, the local branch of the international advocacy and action group that Few founded. There will also be a raffle with prizes like a pro massage, art and sex toys.
Sunday 28
ASWAT in concert Islamic Cultural Center, 1433 Madison, Oakl; www.mecaforpeace.org. 3-5:30pm, $10-50. ASWAT, whose name means “one voice,” will be performing songs that “represent our feelings towards occupation (the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem), the beauty of the land, our civil rights in this country, the Arab American experience and fighting hate and misinformation,” according to ASWAT’s founder Nabila Mango. This is the big annual benefit for the Middle East Children’s Alliance (MECA), and this year the money goes to their Maia Project, which helps with “clean water for the children of Palestine. To date we’ve installed 37 water sanitation/purification systems in schools in Gaza, reaching 35,000 children and their families. The World Health Organization cites that 95 percent of the water in Gaza is unfit to drink.”
Tuesday 30
Ballot breakdown Alley Cat Books, 3036 24th St., SF; (415) 323-5768, theleaguesf.tumblr.com. 6:30pm, free. The League of Pissed-Off Voters is also known as the League of Young Voters. But frankly, it’s pissed off. Well, pissed off at some things, like California’s Prop. 32 that would screw unions, and District 1 candidate David Lee’s potential illegal coordination with Realtors, a problem that it hopes the Ethics Commission looks into after it filed a complaint about it this week. But the League is also very not pissed off about some things on this year’s ballot. Come to this event with questions, concerns, and a burning need to discuss the election with members of the League, from statewide propositions to city measures to local races.
The San Francisco Police Department announced today that they will stop using condoms as evidence in prostitution cases.
This will address the issue of police searching prostitution suspects for packaged condoms and wrappers. Under current city policy, police cannot confiscate condoms to be used as evidence. They can, however, photograph condoms. But recent reports form the Bay Area Reporter found that police sometimes broke the policy, and did confiscate condoms.
The SFPD, the District Attorney, the office of the Public Defender, and the office of Sup. David Campos spoke with groups that work with sex workers in meetings that led to the new policy, which will be in place for a three to six month trial period.
Public defenders also agreed to not use lack of condoms as proof of innocence for people facing prostitution charges.
A July report from Human Rights Watch criticized San Francisco, along with New York, Washington, DC and Los Angeles, for using condoms as evidence. Local sex worker health clinic the St. James Infirmary has also implored the police department to stop the practice.
It discourages sex workers from carrying condoms, they say, exposing prostitutes and clients to sexually transmitted diseases
“Cops in four of the major cities that we documented in this report are stopping sex workers on the street and harassing them for carrying too many condoms, and threatening to arrest them,” said Megan McLemore, senior health researcher at Human Rights Watch, in an interview about the report. “And this is a problem because it’s making sex workers less willing to carry and use condoms while they’re working.”
The Human Rights Watch report emphasized that many sex workers, as well as women and transgender people, fear carrying more than one or two condoms with them in public.
“Transgender people have terrible problems with being profiled by the police, being arrested falsely for prostitution, and just being equated with sex work in the mind of many, many police officers,” said McLemore.
The San Francisco Department of Public Health actually distributes condoms to sex workers as part of the fight against HIV/AIDS and other STDs—and police then photograph and even take them, to use against them in court.
In 1994, city departments agreed on a similar trial period to test the policy of not confiscating condoms. After the trial period, then-District Attorney Arlo Smith declared that condoms could no longer be confiscated for use as evidence.
This trial period could lead to a similar policy change, which would permanently ban the use of condoms, physical of photographed, as evidence in prostitution cases.
Why are we voting on — and watching the various interests spend about $30 million on — a simple tax increase that in most sane places would be vetted and approved by the state Legislature? Two reasons: California has an archaic and insane rule mandating a two-thirds vote of both houses for a tax hike, which is impossible as long as a few Republicans are still in Sacramento — and our crabby old oddball of a governor, Jerry Brown, insisted in his last campaign that he’d never raise taxes without a vote of the people.
Prop. 30 is an amalgam, a mixture of what Brown first wanted and what the more liberal supporters of a tax on millionaires were proposing. The guv had to come the table when it looked like the millionaire tax might have enough support to compete with his plan; he made a few concessions, and everyone signed off on this plan. It raises taxes on people with incomes of more than $250,000 (good) and hikes the sales tax by a quarter-cent (not so good) and would bring in $6 billion a year until it expires in 2019.
A bit of perspective: When former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger whacked the vehicle license fee his first day in office, he cost the state about $4 billion a year, with the stroke of a pen.
And in a state with more billionaires than any other place in America, a fabulously rich place with the world’s eighth-largest economy, the notion that we have to argue about raising $6 billion in taxes is farcical.
Nevertheless, it’s crucial to pass Prop. 30. The money will prevent catastrophic cuts to education and social services. Prop. 30 won’t move California a single step forward — but it will keep us all a few inches away from the abyss.
Brown has gambled his governorship on this — and if he loses, he’ll take a good part of the state’s future with him. We live in strange and unpleasant times; vote Yes on 30.
PROPOSITION 31
STATE BUDGET AND LEGISLATIVE REFORMS
NO
There are no easy solutions to the fiscal and political mess that is California, 2012, and voters should beware of self-proclaimed reformers claiming to wield silver-bullet fixes. Just the fact that this Prop. 31 tries to enshrine so many complex legislative reforms into one measure should give us pause. And it’s almost always a bad idea to use the initiative process to micromanage complex relationships between state and local governments and between the legislative and executive branches of state government.
Some of what this measure would do is good, such as requiring the state to do two-year budgets, a reform that San Francisco recently adopted. The idea of giving local governments more money and authority also has merit, although that’s a tricky proposition that could undermine environmental and worker safety protections.
We’re also disturbed by the idea of giving governors unilateral authority to make cuts during years with big budget deficits, and with a requirement that new state programs must be tied to specific funding sources. Again, many of these ideas sound good at first glance, but placing new restrictions on Legislators will only hinder their ability to respond to problems and popular will. And giving the governor that much power is just dangerous. Vote no on 31.
PROPOSITION 32
BANNING SOME POLITICAL SPENDING
NO, NO, NO
This is by far the most dangerous and deceptive measure on the ballot, one that threatens to cripple the ability of labor unions to engage meaningfully in the political process, giving big corporations and wealthy individuals even more control over our lives. Yet this insidious measure disingenuously purports to do just opposite, tapping into widespread concerns over corporate power and trying to fool people into voting against their best interests.
The measure presents itself as an even-handed effort to reduce political spending by both unions and corporations. “Prohibits unions from using payroll-deducted funds for political purposes. Applies same use prohibition to payroll deductions, if any, by corporations or government contractors,” reads the official ballot summary.
But while payroll deductions are the main source of funding for labor unions — which use that money to advocate for the interests of their members and the broader working class — few corporations deduct money from their employee paychecks for political purposes. They tap the many other sources of funding at their disposal.
Similarly, the measure claims to ban “union and corporate contributions to candidates and their committees,” yet it exempts many of the largest corporations from that restriction, allows even the corporations it does cover to bypass the restriction by forming super PACs, and it still allows corporate officers to funnel contributions to their favored candidates, making the corporate controls almost completely meaningless.
This measure is simply the latest effort by powerful corporations, wealthy individuals, and the conservative movement to hammer the final nail into the coffin of labor unions — which at this point are often the only force with the money to go up against terrible big-business candidates and measures. This needs to be a rallying cry for everyone who cares about fair elections: Vote no on 32.
PROPOSITION 33
NEW CAR INSURANCE RATING FACTOR
NO
This measure was created and funded by Mercury Insurance founder George Joseph, who tried to do the same thing two years ago with Prop. 17, which was soundly rejected by voters (see “Buying power,” 3/16/10). So this time around, he created a few narrow exemptions meant to defuse the criticism from that campaign, bought support from an influential nonprofit (see “The latest insurance scam,” 9/4/12)), and he’s banking on the outcome being different this time.
But Prop. 33 does the same thing as Prop. 17: it allows insurance companies to give discounts to drivers who have maintained continuous insurance coverage and pay for those discounts by increasing insurance rates for everyone else. In an era of global warming and increasingly congested roadways, the measure would punish those who opt to give up their car for awhile and use public transit, bicycles, or walking. Recent immigrants, and those who spend some time abroad or who quit their job to start a small business, would pay higher rates when they return to driving.
Last time, the measure was defeated by arguments that it punished soldiers and the unemployed, so Joseph tried to defuse those arguments with exceptions for those on “active duty service” or for people who have been unemployed for up to 18 months, but only if it’s the result of a “layoff or furlough.” Consumer Watchdog — the group that created California’s car insurance regulatory system with 1988’s Prop. 103 and has been battling Joseph’s various efforts to undermine it ever since — is strongly against the measure and dismissive of its narrow exemptions, citing studies showing rates will rise for those least able to afford it.
The bottom line is this is about Joseph’s bottom line, and he isn’t spending tens of millions of dollars in order to save you money.
PROPOSITION 34
YES YES YES
You want to know about the effectiveness of the death penalty in California? Try this: the number one cause of death among condemned inmates on death row is old age.
Then try this: The cost of implementing the death penalty since it was restored in California in 1978 exceeds $4 billion — about $308 million for each of the 13 people the state has killed.
So: California could hire 5,000 more teachers for every inmate strapped into a gurney and pumped full of lethal drugs. Sound like a bargain?
It gets better: Even if the state doesn’t kill anyone, it spends $184 million a year keeping people on death row who could instead be getting life without parole — which is, in the vast majority of cases, exactly the same sentence.
Prop. 34 would end 34 years of insanity in the golden state. It would remove California from the unholy roster of states that allow executions and would restore some justice to the legal system.
The flaws in the death penalty are legendary. More than half of the people on death row in America are black or Latino. An ACLU study found that 12 white people were executed for killing blacks, while 178 black people died for killing whites. Nobody who has the money for private counsel gets a death sentence; in nearly every single case, the condemned were impoverished, brain-damaged, or facing serious mental-health issues — and went to trial with inexperienced, overwhelmed public defenders who lacked the resources for a capital trial.
Oh, and then there are the people who turned out to be innocent. In recent years, 17 people who were scheduled to die were exonerated by DNA evidence that didn’t exist when they went to trial. There are hundreds more around the country who never got a fair shot in the courtroom. As long as they’re alive, there’s still a chance to correct a mistake. After the lethal injection, that option goes away.
California, for all its liberal image, has long been among the more bloodthirsty states, approving the death penalty by large majorities. But that’s changing — as the evidence increasingly shows how wrong and ineffective the death penalty is, the margin of voters in favor of repeal is growing. And this year, it’s entirely possible that this barbaric practice, outlawed in most of the civilized world, will come to an end in the nation’s most populous state.
This is a big deal; it’s a reason to go to the polls even if you’re disenchanted by Obama and unhappy with your local candidates. If California rolls back the death penalty, the rest of the country may start to follow.
If you still believe the death penalty deters crime, never mind: Go ahead and defy all of the evidence and vote against Prop. 34. If you’re a member of the reality-based community, please: Round up your friends, your family, your neighbors and vote yes on 34.
PROPOSITION 35
SEX TRAFFICKING
NO
Human trafficking is an egregious and horrible act. California law, as well as federal law, prohibits it, and the penalties are appropriately harsh.
But Prop. 35 — like so much else on the state ballot, the spawn of one rich person with a cause — wouldn’t just crack down on the worst people in the sex industry. It would expand the ability of state and local authorities to harass and arrest consensual sex workers and would lead to more people serving more time in prison for victimless crimes.
Former Facebook executive Chris Kelly, mad that the state Legislature wouldn’t pass a trafficking law to his liking and looking for an issue to run for office on, put up the money to place this mess on the ballot. It would rewrite the section in California’s Penal Code that defines human trafficking, and impose harsher sentences on those found guilty. It requires that all those convicted of human trafficking — under an expanded definition that includes such non-sexual crimes as extortion — register on the sex offender registry, and that all registered sex offenders turn over their Internet usernames and passwords to the government.
Prop. 35 is a parade of horribles that could be used to make someone who peed in public turn over his Internet information and to threaten friends and relatives of sex workers. Under this law, the adult child of a sex worker who was living in her house with her financial support could be tagged a trafficker — and could face a long prison term and a lifetime of being tagged as a sex offender.
We agree with sex workers advocates that human trafficking is a vile crime. But we also agree that decriminalization of prostitution should be the first step towards solving it, making sex workers unafraid to come forward and report abuse in their industry and making it easier to distinguish between forced and consensual labor. In the meantime, state Sen. Mark Leno is working on legislation that will address trafficking without the problems in Prop. 35.
We’ll wait for Leno’s alternative. Vote No on 35.
PROPOSITION 36
THREE STRIKES MODIFICATION
YES
On Nov. 4, 1995, a small-time criminal named Leando Andrada stole $150 worth of videotapes from K-Mart. The father of three was charged with felony theft — and since he’d had prior convictions for burglary and marijuana transportation, his conviction led to a sentence of 25 years to life.
That’s nuts — but it’s the result of a very bad 1994 law that has made California one of the harshest states in the nation for repeat offenders — and has overcrowded the state prisons and cost taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars.
The law states than anyone convicted of three “strike” felonies, no matter how nonviolent, must serve a minimum of 25 years behind bars. Even the people who sponsored the three-strikes law now agree that it’s gone too far.
Consider: Nearly 8,900 three-strikers are in prison in California, with 3,500 of them serving life sentences. A disproportionate 46 percent of three-strikers are African American.
Incarcerating all of these prisoners is expensive. Reforming three strikes could save the state of California $70 million to $90 million annually if it passes. And some of that money would be directed towards solving more murders and rapes — instead of paying so Californians can languish in prison for stealing video tapes.
Prop. 36 wouldn’t repeal three strikes. It would simply require that the third strike offense be considered violent or serious. And it would provide a means for people currently serving ridiculously long sentences for relatively minor crimes to appeal and seek relief.
This is long overdue. Vote yes on 36.
PROPOSITION 37
GMO LABELING
YES
A huge amount of the food on supermarket shelves in California contains genetically modified organisms (GMOs.) A lot of people, particularly in the chemical and agribusiness industry, think that’s just fine. They say that GMOs have no negative health impacts and improve the ability of producers to bring low-cost fresh food to customers.
We freely admit: The scientific evidence on GMOs is pretty sparse. There are some studies done on rodents that show organ failure and cancerous tumors related to some GMOs, but there are no human studies at all and the Food and Drug Administration says there’s no need to regulate GMOs.
Prop. 37 doesn’t seek regulations or limits in any way. It just mandates that GMO food be labeled — the way it is in at least 50 countries worldwide, including all of the European Union, China, Japan and Russia. Hardly a radical proposition, but it’s got Big Ag in a furor.
The No on 37 campaign is funded by Monsanto, Dupont, Pepsico, and other chemical, seed and food companies that make their money from genetically engineered foods. Those outfits say engineered food is perfectly healthy, and that food labeling would unnecessarily scare consumers.
We’ll be glad if they’re right, and GMOs are just fine and dandy. But consumers deserve a choice — and labeling would force the industry to support further studies on consumer safety. Vote yes.
PROPOSITION 38
TAX FOR EDUCATION
YES
There’s so much wrong with Prop. 38, starting with its origin. It’s another billionaire plaything, the work of the wealthy Molly Munger, who decided, on her own, that the state should raise income taxes to pay for better schools.
Yes, the state should raise income taxes on the wealthy. Yes, some of that money should go to education. But this is not the optimal way to go about it.
Because nobody but Munger and her pals vetted the measure, it’s got problems. For starters, it’s not a tax increase on the rich — it’s a tax increase for just about everybody. If you make more than $7,300 a year, your state income tax would go up. Granted, not by much: The sliding scale starts at 0.4 percent (about $30 a year for the very low end of the scale, and the wealthiest will pay much more) but still: the tax burden in this state (with its high sales-tax rates) falls disproportionately on the poor and middle class, and Munger’s measure should have exempted all but the top earners. And it’s got a popular, but troubling distribution scheme — between 60 and 85 percent of the estimated $10 billion a year in new revenue will go to K-12 education. The schools need the money — but so do cities and counties who pay for public health, affordably housing, public safety and a lot of other priorities.
But the question facing the voters isn’t whether Munger is a self-serving brat who went her own way on this, or whether there are flaws in the measure. It’s whether the state ought to raise taxes to pay for education. With all the duly noted reservations, the answer to that question has to be yes.
PROPOSITION 39
TAX TREATMENT FOR MULTISTATE BUSINESSES
YES
Again, an imperfect law, sponsored by an imperfect billionaire that seeks to solve a problem better addressed in the state Legislature. In this case, though, the Legislature’s tried to address it, but the recalcitrant Republicans haven’t let it happen.
Prop. 39 would change a loophole in the state’s tax code that helps multistate businesses to avoid state taxes. In essence, the current law lets companies choose whether to base their state tax liability on in-state sales or a combination of sales, employment, and property. Companies with a lot of out-of-state employees are able to reap huge tax breaks — if anything the current law encourages outsourcing.
Prop. 39, sponsored and bankrolled by hedge-fund billionaire Thomas Steyer, would mandate that all companies use the single in-state sales factor. The new revenue to California: $1 billion a year. It’s more fair, it creates the right incentives to keep jobs and equipment in the state, and it cuts a hole in the deficit.
VOTE YES ON 39.
PROPOSITION 40
REDISTRICTING REFERENDUM
YES
This referendum challenged the California Senate districts that were created early this year by the Citizen Redistricting Commission, an independent body that voters created as an alternative to the previous practice of letting politicians draw their own legislative districts after the decennial census. Those new districts aren’t perfect — indeed, San Francisco was placed in a single Senate district instead of the pair we had — but the process that created them was widely lauded as “open, transparent, and nonpartisan,” as the California Supreme Court ruled in rejecting a challenge to the districts. That ruling has caused the proponents of this measure — the side urging a “no” vote, which would invalidate the districts and let a judicial panel redraw them, whereas a “yes” vote upholds the existing districts — to drop their campaign and accept the commission’s results. Vote yes.
Robyn Few, innovative sex worker revolutionary and a part of the soul of San Francisco, passed away Sept. 13.
Robyn was a mother, a grandmother, and a wife. She was a leader. She died in her hometown of Paducah, KY after a long battle with cancer.
Robyn ran away from home when she was 13, and started survival sex. When she was 18, she became a legal sex worker. In a 2008 interview, Robyn remembered how much she loved stripping: “I loved it so much; it was so empowering to be able to get up on the stage…I came alive, and for me being paid to dance and to show my body [that] I was so proud of anyway…it was just an amazing experience.” She worked in massage parlors, as an escort, in an illegal brothel. She got married and had a child. After her divorce, Robyn moved to San Francisco.
Here, she got immersed in activism to legalize marijuana, and continued to do sex work, although she wasn’t out about it to most people she knew. But when she was arrested in 2001 in a nationwide sting, she couldn’t hide it anymore.
“When I was arrested, of course, everybody found out about me, and they treated me differently. They absolutely treated me differently. And here I was, the same person before I was arrested as I was after. I mean nothing had changed about me. Yet I was treated differently because people thought that I shouldn’t be a sex worker. So that made me very angry. And I became a major activist,” Robyn remembers in the 2008 interview. “Just because you’re a sex worker doesn’t mean you’re not a great community citizen. And that’s what I proved. And once I proved that, people began to trust me. And being a sex worker wasn’t so bad for them.”
After her arrest, Robyn remained dedicated to marijuana activism and dove into sex workers’ rights activism. She founded the Sex Workers Outreach Project, which now has chapters all over the US and around the globe. She helped create the International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers, observed annually on Dec. 17. She spearheaded campaigns to decriminalize prostitution in Berkeley, Measure Q, and San Francisco, Prop. K. She consulted with members of the New Zealand Parliament during a successful bid to decriminalize prostitution there.
Yesterday, a loving ceremony in honor of Robyn took place outside City Hall, and people from throughout her family and community shared their memories of her. Here are some of the stories.
“Robyn was one of the only people I’ve ever met to turn every party into a political rally and every political rally into a party.”
“She always brought whores to the stoners and pot to the hookers. And as you can imagine both parties very much appreciated the matchmaking.”
“She was fierce, forceful, amazing.”
“My mom was a really amazing person, and I will always miss her so much…She was so vibrant and amazing. She always was ready to do whatever she could. She was just an amazing person, and I will miss her.”
“The one thing that Robyn blows me away with more than anyone else on this planet is her ability to love absolutely anyone. Somebody a long time ago told me that the sign of a good sex worker is to be able to love absolutely anyone. And Robyn had that down more than anyone else. I have never seen someone give the same respect to every single human being she met. She had a light that shone through her eyes. She was an angle on the planet, and we’re all very, very blessed to have known her.”
“We were having a panel on coming out, should you or shouldn’t you. And she stood up and she proudly said, ‘I’m a whore!’ and I was just so shocked. And she just started screaming, ‘I’m a whore, and I’m proud! I’m a whore!’ It looked like she had just gone through chemo. And I was just so shocked and touched by her….In honor of Robyn, I would like to stand on the steps of City Hall today and declare my whoreness! There’s nothing to be ashamed of. And she was really inspiring. She was a really inspiring person.”
“She taught me so much, especially about the power of people of color in activist movements.”
“I first met Robyn because she was one of the original bitches of ASA (Americans for Sex Access). That’s what they called us, because all the drug policy groups were mostly men. And they were all very single-issue.”
“I, like a lot of educated women, like we like to call ourselves, thought I was a feminist until I met Robyn Few. Then I realized how full of shit I was. I always thought, well, sex work is exploitative right?… Violence against women is constantly tolerated and legitimized by the whole idea that what somebody chooses to do with their body- right, pro-choice- that what somebody chooses to do with their body is the purveyance of the state. Why do you think that the state should be able to tell you what you should do with your body?”
“I grew up in a very conservative place in Idaho, and Robyn has had a huge impact on my life, in just a mindset of things. And the biggest thing that I’ve learned from her is that all my preconceived notions about the way people should behave and the way things should be have been learned. And they can be learned again, or unlearned.”
“I had been arrested for prostitution, and because I was also a teacher at Berkeley High, it made the national news…. Even though I really just wanted to wear a big, enormous hat, huge glasses, and sneak in and out of court to avoid the whole thing…the activist in me said, OK, well the fucking cameras are on me, and they’re wanting to talk to me, so I need to say something and make use of this opportunity….so my life’s falling apart, I’m never going to be able to teach again. I can’t work because my clients are afraid to come see me, I’m all over the fucking news. I’m totally depressed…and Robyn! Every time I see Robyn she’s like, we’re going to take it to the Supreme Court! Because it was right after Lawrence vs. Texas had settled in the Supreme Court. So Robyn was like, the precedent’s been set, the language is there, we’re going to go for it, this is the case!…Robyn was just so happy. She was so supportive, so happy and so fun. She had sign making parties for my press conference, and every time I saw her she was so happy. OK, but here’s the thing. I eventually found out that she was in the middle of her own court case, a federal case, where she was facing time in prison, and didn’t know yet if she was going to prison. Her sentencing hearing was coming up….And here she is, she’s just this ray of sunshine and positive energy, and so happy and buoyant and supportive. And she never mentioned that she was possibly going to be going to prison for her own case.”
“As you all know, her laugh is one to treasure, and her charisma pulls in strangers….When Robyn and I talked about her opting out [of continuing treatment], it wasn’t a gamble on life. It was to choose an end to life, filled with travel and friends and love rather than life’s end governed and shaped by treatment and sterile institutions.”
“She was proud of her whore sisterhood, pleased with what had been accomplished, and confident that the younger SWOP members would continue what she started.”
“She’s created a whole movement. And her tenacity and her drive and her fight and her inspiration is so contagious. It was so contagious.”
“I dedicated a good month trying to help Prop. K pass. And so the day that the decision was going to come down, she rented a limo regardless. She was like, I’m renting a limo, we’re going to party, it’s going to be great. And then I’m hoping, hoping, hoping, I’m all come on Prop. K. We’ve worked so hard on this. Blood, sweat and tears, blood, sweat and tears. And then we hear on the radio the result. And I’m about to cry, and here’s the miracle part. Robyn Few jumps out the top of the limo and she’s all, ‘Yeah! 41.2 percent motherfuckers!’ And that is the miracle mindset…because you did lose the proposition but we won so much….we didn’t lose anything, we gained.”
“Robyn Few died on the same day as one of my other favorite activists, Tupac Shakur. On September 13. And people still remember Tupac’s legacy. And there’s certain activists like that, like Robyn, like Bob Marley. They’re all pot smokers. And I just feel really, really fortunate to have met her, because she is a special activist.”
Berkeley mayoral candidate forum North Berkeley Senior Center, 1901 Hearst, Berk; berkeleygraypanthers.mysite.com. 1:30pm, free. It may be the Peoples Republic of Berkeley, but it still needs a mayor. Come hear this season’s mayoral hopefuls lay out their visions at this candidate forum. Candidates Kriss Worthington, Zachary RunningWolf, Kahlil Jacobs-Fantauzzi, Jacquelyn McCormick, Bernt Wahl, and incumbent mayor Tom Bates are all expected.
THURSDAY 27
The political future of medical marijuana Oaksterdam University, 1600 Broadway, Oakl; www.blockreportradio.com. 6:30-8:30pm, $20 suggested donation. A panel discussion featuring some seriously high-profile pro-pot political people. Speakers include medical marijuana patient and former Black Panther Elder Freeman, Peace and Freedom Party candidates for Assembly Gene Ruyle and Mary Mcllroy, Peace and Freedom presidential nominee Roseanne Barr, former vice presidential nominee Cynthia McKinney, relentless marijuana activist Ed Rosenthal, and KPFA reporter Jose Alacran Gutierrez, who was arrested and now facing federal prison after covering the January raid on Oaksterdam.
The FDA’s great GMO scam The Hillside Club, 2286 Cedar, Berk; www.hillsideclub.org. 7:30pm, $10. Attorney Steven Druker, author of Altered Genes, Twisted Truths and a loud voice decrying the risks of genetically engineered food, will speak on what he believes was FDA corruption that pushed GMOs to market despite safety concerns. Dr. Myrto Ashe will also speak on “the medical perspective: why physicians are telling patients to avoid GMOs.” This event is a fundraiser for the Yes of Prop. 37 campaign, which would require that food containing genetically engineered ingredients is labeled in California.
SATURDAY 29
International student solidarity forum Student Union, City College of San Francisco, Ocean Campus, 50 Phelan Ave, SF; www.norcalsocialism.org. 11am-5pm, $5-20 suggested donation. As City College faces crisis, along with the rest of California’s education system, this forum will bring together students from around the world who have helped lead mass movements that fought back against austerity. Speakers at the forum include a representative of the CLASSE student union in Quebec, the Yo Soy 132 student movement in Mexico, the spring 2010 strike at the University of Puerto Rico, and a spokesperson from the University of Chile student federation. Food will be provided.
A night for the buffalo Women’s Building Auditorium, 3543 18th St., SF; www.buffalofieldcampaign.org. 7-10pm, $10-20 suggested donation. The Buffalo Field Campaign works day and night to protect buffalo in their winter habitat in Yellowstone National Park. Buffalo, once abundant in the western United States, are now rare after a mass slaughter that went hand-in-hand with the genocide of Native Americans that underpinned the westward migration in the 19th century. Join Mike Mease, co-founder of the Buffalo Field Campaign, a presentation and stories on the campaign to protect the buffalo, and John Trudell, former chair of the American Indian Movement, poet and musician, for music.
MONDAY 1
Celebration of the life of Robyn Few City Hall, 1 Dr. Carlton B. Goodlett Dr, SF; Facebook: Celebration of the life of Robyn Few. 2pm, free. Robyn Few, tireless activist for sex workers rights and medical marijuana, passed away Sept. 13 after a four-year battle with cancer. Her life’s work includes founding the Sex Workers Outreach Project, which now has chapters worldwide. All are welcome to celebrate Few’s life with a speak-out and open-mic on the steps of City Hall, a procession through the streets complete with red umbrellas, feather boas and other symbols of Few’s “audacious spirit of activism,” followed by storytelling at Buck Tavern (1655 Market) at 4pm.
TUESDAY 2
District 5 POOR peoples candidate forum 1300 Buchanan, SF; Facebook: District 5 POOR peoples candidate forum. 6pm, free. The candidates for District 5 have been through a tough race. But they haven’t yet faced the group that proclaims “Change won’t come from a savior, a pimp, or an institution/ Change will only come/ from our own poor peoples led revolution.” Which D5 candidate has what it takes to support the poor peoples led revolution? Find out Tuesday.
SEX 2012 Anabelle was 20 when she was kicked out of her parents’ house. The way she tells it, she was suffering from mental health issues and desperate for money. So she agreed to work in the sex industry — for a man who said that she would be doing masturbation shows that wouldn’t involve physical contact with customers.
But the man put up ads on Craigslist advertising sex with her. He sexually assaulted her. “I was in a situation that really coercive,” Anabelle, who asked us not to use her real name, recalled on the phone with me, voice shaking.
“He took me by his place but he also took me to a hotel room that he had rented,” she said. “I definitely felt like I was being held. He was around except when I was with a customer.”
“I don’t know how long he was intending to keep me there.”
She didn’t have to find out. Anabelle was able to escape. But the trauma and shame would stay with her.
“The next day I started peeing blood and I went to the ER, but I didn’t let them do a pelvic exam. It wasn’t clear if it came from an infection or some other thing, so I didn’t tell them what had happened,” she recalled.
Anabelle sees herself as a victim of sex trafficking. Stories like hers are driving Proposition 35, a statewide ballot measure called the Californians Against Slavery and Exploitation (CASE) Act.
But Anabelle isn’t supporting the CASE Act. And her arguments — and those of sex workers and their supporters — paint a very different picture of a law that could hurt the people it’s supposed to protect.
PARADE OF HORRIBLES
The CASE Act would increase prison sentences for sex trafficking. It would mandate that convicted traffickers register, for life, as sex offenders, and would require that registered sex offenders hand over any online usernames and passwords to law enforcement.
It would also increase penalties for trafficking in humans for non-sexual purposes, as well as extortion, although neither of those are mentioned in summaries of the law or pro-Prop. 35 materials.
The act defines a person as “guilty of human trafficking” if that person “deprives or violates the personal liberty of another with the intent to effect or maintain a violation of” several parts of the California Penal Code that already exist.
“Traffickers, driven by greed, are instigating rape and torture on children and women, and treating people like lifeless and soulless things,” says the CASE act website. And the stated intent of the act, to increase penalties for people who commit crimes like these, would garner little opposition.
But the CASE Act may go much farther. The ballot initiative was sponsored by billionaire and former Facebook Chief Privacy Officer Chris Kelly, who ran unsuccessfully for attorney general last year. It never got the rigorous review by legislative staff attorneys that other California bills go through. In fact, the Legislature already rejected a version of the CASE Act, citing concerns that it may have unintended consequences.
Greg Diamond, plaintiff’s attorney who opposes Prop. 35, calls those consequences a “parade of horribles.” Take the clause about deprivation or violation of personal liberty.
The act defines that phrase as “substantial and sustained restriction of another’s liberty accomplished through force, fear, fraud, deceit, coercion, violence, duress, menace, or threat of unlawful injury to the victim or to another person.”
All of the words on that list, of course, have their own legal definitions. Coercion, for example, is defined in part as “the provision and facilitation of any controlled substance to a person with the intent to impair said person’s judgment.”
So if a prostitute shares a joint with fellow worker, she could be guilty of providing a controlled substance, meaning she could be guilty of coercion, meaning she could be guilty of depriving personal liberty. That means triggering the harsh penalties for trafficking. And even if the person isn’t likely to be convicted, the possibility of a draconian sentence could force her to accept a plea bargain.
Opponents say the same “parade of horribles” could lead to a person who drops a sex worker off at work, holds money for a fellow sex worker while he or she is at an appointment, or “unwittingly has a 17-year-old prostitute as a roommate suddenly meeting the standards” for human trafficking, Diamond said.
Everyone guilty of “human trafficking” would be subject to long prison sentences and seizure and freezing of assets.
Sex workers are already adversely affected by laws against pimping and pandering. California Penal Code 266(h) includes in the definition of pimping: “Any person who, knowing another person is a prostitute, lives or derives support or maintenance in whole or in part from the earnings or proceeds of the person’s prostitution, or from money loaned or advanced to or charged against that person.”
That was written in reference to people who use the money a sex worker earns for themselves — that’s what pimps do, right? But sharing money is also what partners, family, and friends do.
“The pimping statute in California is so broadly defined that it includes all our domestic partners, our domestic relationships,” Maxine Doogan, president of the Erotic Service Providers Union, told the Guardian. “Our children are pimps under that legislation.”
Prop. 35 would expand those laws, bringing pimping under the category of human trafficking, with all the expanded penalties that entails.
It’s “an unnecessary expansion of pimping and pandering laws,” said Rachel West of the US Prostitutes Collective in a statement against the measure. “Sex workers are already being wrongly prosecuted for working together as is anyone who associates with sex workers — boyfriends, husbands, even drivers and anyone hired by a woman for protection against attack.”
“It seems to me that anybody who is involved in the milieu is in danger,” Diamond said.
Then there’s the issue of fines. The Yes on Prop. 35 campaign estimates that the law would bring in around $1.5 million, money that would be directed at “victim services.”
The money would be distributed through California’s Victim-Witness Assistance Fund. And 30 percent of that money would go to law enforcement agencies for “prevention, witness protection, and rescue operations,” according to Section 8 of the CASE Act.
The other 70 percent would be reserved for grants for nonprofits and public agencies that provide services like housing and counseling.
It was this section of the bill that made Anabelle most wary.
“I’m concerned about the services, I would hope they would be voluntary and not mandated by the courts,” she said.
As for law enforcement, she said, “with sex work still being illegal, if you give more money to law enforcement to fight trafficking, it gives more money to sex workers being arrested.”
COLLATERAL DAMAGE
Prop. 35 isn’t meant to further criminalize prostitution; it’s supposed to deal solely with victims of sex trafficking and the people who force them to engage in commercial sex against their will.
But sex workers rights organizers say that they will be collateral damage in the fight against sex trafficking.
“I’ve heard of sex workers charged as pimps when they pass phone numbers to a fellow worker, or when they share an apartment with a fellow worker,” said Carol Leigh, an activist with Bay Area Sex Worker Advocacy Network.
“In practice, in the way it’s written, it expands the fees and sentences that can be applied to anyone depending on how the police want to enforce it,” said Deirdre Wilson, program coordinator at the California Coalition for Women Prisoners.
Instead, Wilson said, lawmakers should “spend money to actually create viable resources for housing, recovery treatment, single mothers, vocational training, and jobs — things that people need to survive.”
Sex workers rights advocates have always argued for decriminalization, saying that if they weren’t afraid to reveal their work to police, they could be allies in identifying people who were being trafficked or otherwise exploited within their industry.
Anabelle, who now works in sex workers rights advocacy, agrees.
Decriminalization would “enable sex workers to actually help people without being in fear of arrest themselves,” she said. “It would remove the fear of arrest from victims, because that’s a big thing that keeps people from speaking out about it.
“I was afraid that if I went to law enforcement, I might be arrested,” she said.
Assemblymember Tom Ammiano has free-speech concerns about the bill. The law would require people, whose crimes had nothing to do with the Internet, to turn over their online usernames and passwords, which may be unconstitutional.
“Requiring someone to turn over every email and username that they have has a chilling effect on their free speech,” said Ammiano aide Carlos Alcala, who also mentioned that Ammiano has been working on a tiered approach to the sex offender registry that takes into account the severity of the crime.
Prop. 35 is well-funded and likely to win. What Californian isn’t against slavery and exploitation? But State Sen. Mark Leno, who is working on legislation to address sex trafficking without the problems in Prop. 35, advises that there’s often more to the picture when it comes to these initiatives:
“I always suggest, beware of billionaires who want to save your life,” Leno said.
We probably have Madison Young to thank that the festival is happening at all – the creator of wandering alt-sex gallery Femina Potens curated ASKEW, this weekend (Thu/13-Sat/15)’s YBCA smorgasbord of sexual politics, personalities, and pleasure points as expressed through film and performance.
So who better, we thought, to tell you why you need to lace up your thigh high latex and view ASKEW? And thinking even bigger, who better than the women-artists Young has assembled for three nights of screenings, their themes centering on sensuality, identity, and social justice? Read on for the voices of a sex worker documentarian, a MILF, and an activist examining BDSM and race.
Hiwa B: License To Pimp
“Sex work is in the fabric of America. San Francisco itself has a rich history of sexual revolution, so it makes sense that it leads the way in cutting-edge thinking about sexual politics. While the focus of my documentary is on strip clubs in San Francisco, the issues are national, even global. What labor rights do strippers have? Who determines whether they are enforced or needed? How are strippers responding to illegal labor conditions? These are some of the questions that I tackle in my film. I think that San Franciscans will find this film of interest because they most probably know sex workers who are confronting these issues.”
Screening at “Intersections: LOVE:SEX:PORN:ART: Our Intimate Identity” Thu/13, 7pm, $10
Madison Young: Down the Rabbit Hole: A Year in the Life of a Sexy Mama
“This is a very personal intimate autobiographical work that blends text readings, experimental performance, and video art. It’s an internal dialogue of a mother rediscovering her identity as both a lover and a mother. An exploration of pain, growth, body image, feminism, identity, public ridicule, and orgasms all structured loosely with in the frame work of Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland. I don’t think that there has ever been such an intimate display of vulnerability on the subject of sexuality and motherhood as you will find in this performance. It’s a piece I’m really proud of, and it’s also my birthday.”
Screening at “The Birth of Something New: Explorations of Queer Home, Family & Community” Fri/14, 7pm, $10
Mollena Williams: Impact
Photo by Aeric Meredith-Goujoun
“As a presenter in the BDSM, kink, leather and alt-sex communities, I often find myself trying to explain why the hell we do what we do. And as a performer, I find the dramatic and visual elements of kink to make rather compelling theater. As a black woman and a masochist, I find it challenging to have my sexuality judged based on cultural assumptions, judgmental attitudes, fetishization of race, fear and ignorance. It came to me that it might be interesting to see what it looks like when people witness something as straightforward as a spanking.
“I’m fortunate enough to have friends I can email and say “hey, come by the house and we’re gonna video you beating my ass.” The only “No, sorry, I can’t!” responses were due to scheduling conflicts. The people doing the spanking in the short are all friends, but when you see them presenting, variously, as friendly, aggressive, and neutral aggressors in the context of BDSM, the role of voyeur really manifests in the way it does in our works: as an active participant.
“Being in the room with viewers as they watch Impact allows me to heighten that anxiety and tension by physically bringing my presence to the experience of watching the film, therefore closing the gap between voyeurism and experience. There will be some invitation to interaction, and I am fascinated to see whether or not people in the audience feel empowered to interact with me in the performance, or hang back.”
Screening at “In/Visible: Women fighting for visibility & survival in a world that doesn’t always celebrate difference” Sat/15, 7pm, $10
OPINION The California State Democratic Party and Senator Barbara Boxer have let the sex workers of California down. They need to be taken to task for endorsing Proposition 35 without ever hearing the opposition. No more bragging rights to that big-tent democracy.
A little background: Prop. 35 is described as an anti-trafficking bill aimed at protecting children. But in reality, Prop. 35 further demonizes and marginalizes sex workers and includes sweeping, broad language that could turn spouses, relatives, and even children of workers into criminals. Under Prop. 35, my son, who served in the military and is now going to college, could be branded as a criminal — forced to register as a sex offender for life — if I used money from my erotic service work to support him. Sex workers and their allies all over the state are united in opposition to this measure. Proposition 35 qualified after a signature-gathering effort funded by a $1.6 million donation by former Facebook executive Chris Kelly. Like other politically ambitious people before him, Kelly picked an easy issue. It couldn’t have been hard to find one of those anti trafficking groups desperate to locate “victims” to extend their taxpayer-funded existence. With a title like “Human Trafficking. Penalties. Sex Offender Registration. Initiative Statues,” proponents are betting it will pass without due deliberation by the electorate.
But before the state Democratic Party, at its summer convention, endorsed the measure, the delegates could at least have sought input from the sex-worker community.
It’s a huge struggle for marginalized people like myself to get access to democracy. Now there’s a ballot measure to further criminalize us. And we’ve been betrayed by the California Democratic Party.
This is unacceptable to me, and I hope it’s unacceptable to you.
After the endorsement vote, a staff person tried to defend the party’s actions to me by saying more than 300 delegates at the state convention had voted Yes on 35. I was told that if I didn’t like the process, I could try to become a delegate to the party convention next time around.
The party functionaries don’t seem to realize that this idea is completely unrealistic for me, particularly in a state that has criminalized my occupation. If Prop 35, passes, I will be lucky by the next Democratic Party convention to have received forced “services” while trying to qualify for food stamps after I’ve been forced out of my profession.
There seems to be no room in the Legislature, the ballot process, or the Democratic Party for a small unfunded group of highly vulnerable constituents like us to have a voice to stem the tide of further disenfranchisement.
Those concerned with democracy for the little people should call all Democratic leaders and tell them to act in the true spirit of democracy and hear from the only state registered opponent to Proposition 35 — and reverse their support of this misguided measure.
Maxine Doogan is a member of the Erotic Service Providers Legal, Education and Research Project.
From June 20 through June 23, the FBI and local police departments and district attorney’s offices throughout the United States were engaged in Operation Cross Country, three days of stings targeting pimps for arrest.
According to the FBI, the mission was successful. “Nationwide, 79 children were rescued and 104 pimps were arrested for various state and local charges,” a press statement released the following week reads.
In the Bay Area, the operation resulted in “the recovery of six children, who were being victimized through prostitution, and the arrest of seven individuals, commonly referred to as pimps.”
Also caught up in the Bay Area sweep: 61 adult prostitutes — ten consensual sex workers for every underage victim.
The Guardian caught up with one such consensual sex worker swept up in Operation Cross Country. “Maya,” 22, an escort in Richmond, was targeted because officers believed she looked under 18 in her ads.
This is an extended version of the interivew with “Maya” published in this week’s paper.
Bay Guardian: Tell me about the arrest.
Maya: I got a phone call. All he said to me was that he was nervous and had never done this before, and that he was looking for somebody to party with. So I never said anything sexual, and he didn’t either. There was absolutely no premise.
So I went to the hotel room. I walked in the door and I said, I’m glad that I found the right room. I put my bag down. I turned to the side and there was another man standing there, and my immediate thought was that I was going to get taken advantage of by another person. But then- I can’t even, I don’t know how many officers it was. Some came out of the bathroom, and they said Richmond PD, you’re under arrest, put your hands behind your back. They arrested me. They had me in handcuffs, they questioned me for a while. Then they took me back to a different place where they read me my rights and questioned me, then they took me to a different police station to get booked. So all in all, I was in custody for about six hours. So I guess the way that it works with that is, the phone call is initiation and showing up to the hotel room is an act in furtherance. Entrapment is legal for that in California.
BG: What was the questioning like?
M: You know, I’ve been through a lot of things in my life. Family tragedies. Just like a lot of people. But that was definitely hands down, probably top five most traumatic events in my life. I’ve never felt so degraded. Because of the questioning, because they really badgered me and broke me down. And I’ve always been such a strong person that I think that was the hardest part of it, they really took advantage of me and put me in a very vulnerable space. Because they were very, very adamant about, basically getting me to say that I have sex for money.
They didn’t read me my rights until about an hour and a half after I was in custody. And they were sitting there asking me, why do you have condoms in your bag? I had a vibrator, I had lube, and I had condoms with me. So they just sat there and asked me about it.
There were four men and one woman in the room, and they were all sitting there making jokes. One of the officers was very adamant about telling me that he would never pay me that much for my services.
BG: You’ve said they lied to you, what did they lie to you about?
M: They told me that that day they had caught an underage girl, but then I read the newspaper article about the sting about it, and they said the youngest girl that they got that day was 20. So they were trying to make it seem like they were helping all these women, helping all these girls get away from this lifestyle, when in reality they’re just busting girls like me. Who totally- this has made my life infinitely worse.
They looked through my phone and looked through my pictures, and questioned me about every picture in my phone. They were like, is this your pimp? They read my text messages, they listened to voice mails from my family. They don’t care.
BG: Did you tell them that you didn’t have a pimp?
M: Yes.
BG: And they didn’t believe you?
M: Well, not at first. Because when I got arrested- my boyfriend is my safety call. I call him after I get into the room to let him know that I’m OK, and then I call him when I’m leaving . And if I don’t call him and let him know that I’m OK, that means that there’s a problem. So I knew that he was going to call and I didn’t want him to have a heart attack worrying that I was hurt or something like that. So I had to tell them that he was going to call, and they assumed he was my pimp because of that. But after they talked to him and all that, they realized that he wasn’t. Like, I’m saying they- you know, they’re trying to deal with these girls who are completely not in the realm of who I work with and what I do. Whatsoever.
BG: Have you experienced an arrest before?
M: No, never been arrested before.
BG: The sting was for underage people being trafficked. Do you think that’s a big problem? What do you think about that issue?
I do think that it’s a problem, absolutely. But this is the very unfortunate thing about what I do for work. Whether you want to call it prostitution or you want to call it escorting. So I do think absolutely it’s a problem, but it’s very important for people to know that it’s not the same thing, it’s really, really not.
I love my job, it’s unfortunate that this happened. I went to school for psychology, my main interest in human sexuality, and I was sort of doing this as a way to get into the field, essentially. I would absolutely consider it a form of therapy. Absolutely. Because I genuinely care. That’s why it’s the girlfriend experience. So yes, human trafficking is absolutely a problem. It’s not in my realm. I don’t support it, of course not. But there’s nothing that I can do about that unfortunately.
BG: Do you have any thoughts on how police could better track down trafficking in a way that doesn’t put you and other people who are in a totally different line of work in danger?
M: Yeah, I think that they need to not go after the girls, they need to go after the pimps. That’s it, period. It’s not fair to prosecute us…When it comes down to it, they say that they’re really trying to go after the pimps, but it sure doesn’t seem like it.
For me, for instance, I’m probably going to get two years’ probation, up to 60 days in jail and hundreds of dollars in fines. Now I’m out of work, can’t get a job, and I have prostitution on my record. You know, it’s just- it doesn’t help anybody.
BG: You’re out of work?
M: I can’t put ads up. I don’t have another job right now. So of course I can find work in the future, but it’s- it was abrupt. Basically everything that I’ve worked for. Because I’ve been doing sex work since I was 18. So people might not look at it this way, but its sales. It’s marketing. I’ve built my little empire with that. I’ve built the reviews, and I’ve built the experience, and essentially they just swiped it all away from me.
People I’m sure will read this article and either be completely unsympathetic or, if they take the time to really think about it, it’s a service, like any other service. This is the oldest profession in the world. If you, I’m a good and caring person. People give it such a bad name. Like the police, they think that us girls are just hustlers and pieces of shits and we’re just trying to make money and we don’t care. Which is absolutely not the case. Three quarters of the reason I do this job is because I care.
BG: It strikes me what you were saying about the police officer saying I wouldn’t pay that much. Were there other degrading things said?
M: In total I probably talked to about 10 different officers. Every single one of them, their first question was, how old are you? And when I said 22, they got this look of disgust, and they were like, oh, you’re so young. I had multiple officers tell me, you’re a victim and you don’t even know it. Just trying to break me down.
I don’t care if they’re officers, I don’t care what they do for a living. They’re still men. And when you come in and you’re a prostitute, they look you up and down. And they’re thinking about that. And I had the officer asking me questions like oh, how do you clean your vibrator. Just unnecessary questions, where obviously they’re getting some sort of gratification out of it. My interest is human sexuality and psychology, and I know, also because of this job, I know how to read a man and how to read what they’re thinking. And like I said, when you get booked as a prostitute you just get treated like a piece of meat and they all look at you like one. They’re just completely unsympathetic, I had to sit in a jail cell in Richmond, there was blood on the walls and there’s MS-13 tags everywhere…. And they keep telling me, you did this to yourself, you put yourself in this position, and it’s your fault you’re here. And they kept telling me, you need to get out of this life.
They all just joked, they were all laughing and joking. I had an officer, I was telling them why I have condoms and he said “I call bullshit!” and they all fucking laughed at me. I was a joke to them. They were all just sitting around laughing the whole time. And they’re sitting there watching the A’s game, I’m just sitting in handcuffs in the corner crying.
It was bad enough that it took me about a week before I could even see people again. It was, yeah. I couldn’t see anybody, I couldn’t tell anybody about it. Pretty much cried all the time.
BG: I was wondering if you could talk more about pimping, because people have told me that the definition of pimping has led to peoples boyfriends getting busted for pimping. Could you talk about pimping in general, what it means, what falls under it?
M: I can only tell you so much because I don’t have a pimp. But for the standard they use to evaluate if someone’s a pimp or not, I know they were asking my boyfriend if he set up dates for me. So I think it’s the setting you- I imagine if he had driven me to my appointment, he probably would have gotten in trouble also. So it’s the driving them, being the driver, setting up appointments. And I know they asked me a lot, and I heard them asking another girl who got arrested around the same time as me, they kept asking her if she gave him money for anything. So I think that’s it, if you give them money, if they drive you, if they set up your dates. They asked me, because my boyfriend got surgery recently and I’ve been helping him out with that. And they kept prying, asking if I gave him money for groceries, if I gave him money for anything. They try to trick you. But other than that I don’t have any thoughts on pimping, other than its terrible.
BG: Have you ever met people who were forced into what they’re doing?
M: No…I mean, we’ve all done things for money. You know, desperate times. Whether it’s working some shit job- I mean, I look at it as a job. So in the past when I was younger yeah, you know, trying to make rent. You know, maybe I’ll do something that I wouldn’t want to do as much, or not get paid as much for it. But it’s like shit, beats working at Taco Bell. You know, that’s the way you look at it. I’d rather have one appointment with a guy instead of making the same amount of money working 20 hours that week. Its’ just the way you look at. It takes a certain kind of person to do this kind of work, its now- people sometimes think it’s easy money. It’s not easy money. It takes a certain person, it takes an emotionally stable and sexually stable person to do this work sustainably. It’s definitely tolling. It’s tolling because its therapy. It’s tolling because I listen to people’s problems, it’s not tolling because of the sexual aspect at all. You know, that’s anatomy. It’s not the way that people think. People always concentrate on the physical attributes, when realistically there’s so many more psychological attributes that go into this kind of work.
BG: Have you gotten any help from sex workers rights organizations?
M: I did have a therapist that’s sex-worker friendly offer me free sessions. I might take him up on that, but- you know, the event was traumatizing. I’m not traumatized by my work. I can tell the story and that’s pretty much enough for me. I don’t really need therapy for being a sex worker. I love my job. It makes me happy, its great.
BG: What do you love about it?
M: I love meeting different people, I love the psychological aspects. I just have so many fantastic stories, and amazing people that I’ve met. I saw a guy recently who, after our session he was telling me that his wife had died about six months previous that he had married to for 42 years, and he started crying. And my mother passed away when I was younger, and so we were able to relate on that. And I gave him my lessons on how I dealt with it, and he had never really had somebody tell him that, and he was very touched. And I know that he will take those lessons that I taught him and use them for his grieving process.
So it’s things like that. People don’t realize how much therapy it really is, how many of these people just want some intimacy…we’re human beings, we need sexual outlets. That’s just the way that we are.
“Maya” invites anyone who has been in a similar situation or wants to talk to contact her at mayaarticle8719@yahoo.com.
The mission: Rescuing sexually exploited children. Who can argue with that?
From June 20 through June 23, the FBI and local police departments and district attorney’s offices throughout the United States were engaged in Operation Cross Country, three days of stings targeting pimps for arrest.
According to the FBI, the mission was successful. “Nationwide, 79 children were rescued and 104 pimps were arrested for various state and local charges,” a press statement released the following week reads.
In the Bay Area, the operation resulted in “the recovery of six children, who were being victimized through prostitution, and the arrest of seven individuals, commonly referred to as pimps.”
Also caught up in the Bay Area sweep: 61 adult prostitutes — ten consensual sex workers for every underage victim.
Operation Cross Country was part of an ongoing effort called the Innocence Lost National Initiative, which the FBI describes as beginning in the Bay Area in 2005 with the Bay Area Innocence Lost Working Group. According to FBI spokesperson Julianne Sohn, this June’s crackdown was the sixth Operation Cross Country in the past several years.
“The FBI and our partners are looking for those who are exploiting minors for purposes of prostitution,” Sohn told the Guardian. “But in the process of doing this we also pick up pimps exploiting adults, and adult prostitutes along the way.”
“What we’re looking at are people who traffic children for prostitution and solicitation,” she said. But the pimping arrests under Operation Cross Country don’t necessarily have anything to do with children. “Those are just pimps, generally speaking,” said Sohn.
As Caitlin Manning, a sex workers rights advocate, put it, “This emotionally laden appeal to save children who are forced into sexual slavery is being used to further the criminalization of all sex work, these lines are being blurred. There are always a large number of consensual sex workers involved in these stings.”
The Guardian caught up with one such consensual sex worker swept up in Operation Cross Country. “Maya,” 22, an escort in Richmond, was targeted because officers believed she looked under 18 in her ads. After her entrapment, arrest and interrogation, she convinced them she was older. She says that sex trafficking is a terrible problem, but criminalizing working people like her is no solution.
Bay Guardian:Tell me about the arrest.
Maya: I got a phone call. All he said to me was that he was nervous and had never done this before, and that he was looking for somebody to party with. So I never said anything sexual, and he didn’t either. There was absolutely no premise.
So I went to the hotel room. I walked in the door and I said, I’m glad that I found the right room. I put my bag down. I turned to the side and there was another man standing there, and my immediate thought was that I was going to get taken advantage of by another person. But then- I can’t even, I don’t know how many officers it was. Some came out of the bathroom, and they said Richmond PD, you’re under arrest, put your hands behind your back.
They had me in handcuffs, they questioned me for a while. I was in custody for about six hours. So I guess the way that it works with that is, the phone call is initiation and showing up to the hotel room is an act in furtherance. Entrapment is legal for that in California.
BG: What was the questioning like?
M: You know, I’ve been through a lot of things in my life. Family tragedies. Just like a lot of people. But that was definitely hands down, probably top five most traumatic events in my life. I’ve never felt so degraded. They were sitting there asking me, why do you have condoms in your bag? I had a vibrator, I had lube, and I had condoms with me.
There were four men and one woman in the room, and they were all sitting there making jokes. One of the officers was very adamant about telling me that he would never pay me that much for my services.
BG: You’ve said they lied to you, what did they lie to you about?
M: They told me that that day they had caught an underage girl, but then I read the newspaper article about the sting about it, and they said the youngest girl that they got that day was 20. So they were trying to make it seem like they were helping all these women, helping all these girls get away from this lifestyle, when in reality they’re just busting girls like me.
They looked through my phone and looked through my pictures, and questioned me about every picture in my phone. They were like, is this your pimp? They read my text messages, they listened to voice mails from my family. They don’t care.
BG: The sting was for underage people being trafficked. Do you think that’s a big problem? What do you think about that issue?
M: I do think that it’s a problem, absolutely. But this is the very unfortunate thing about what I do for work. Whether you want to call it prostitution or you want to call it escorting. So I do think absolutely it’s a problem, but it’s very important for people to know that it’s not the same thing, it’s really, really not.
I’m probably going to get two years’ probation, up to 60 days in jail and hundreds of dollars in fines. Now I’m out of work, can’t get a job, and I have prostitution on my record. You know, it’s just … it doesn’t help anybody.
BG: It strikes me what you were saying about the police officer saying I wouldn’t pay that much. Were there other degrading things said?
M: I don’t care if they’re officers, I don’t care what they do for a living. They’re still men. And when you come in and you’re a prostitute, they look you up and down. And they’re thinking about that. And I had the officer asking me questions like oh, how do you clean your vibrator. Just unnecessary questions, where obviously they’re getting some sort of gratification out of it.
BG: Have you ever met people who were forced into what they’re doing?
M: No…I mean, we’ve all done things for money. You know, desperate times. Whether it’s working some shit job. I mean, I look at it as a job. So in the past when I was younger yeah, you know, trying to make rent, maybe I’ll do something that I wouldn’t want to do as much, or not get paid as much for it. But it beats working at Taco Bell.
People sometimes think it’s easy money. It’s not easy money. It takes a certain person, it takes an emotionally stable and sexually stable person to do this work sustainably. It’s definitely tolling. It’s tolling because its therapy. It’s tolling because I listen to people’s problems, it’s not tolling because of the sexual aspect at all.
BG: Have you gotten any help from sex workers rights organizations?
M: I did have a therapist that’s sex-worker friendly offer me free sessions. I might take him up on that, but — you know, the event was traumatizing. I’m not traumatized by my work. I can tell the story and that’s pretty much enough for me. I don’t really need therapy for being a sex worker. I love my job. It makes me happy, its great.
BG: What do you love about it?
M: I love meeting different people, I love the psychological aspects. I just have so many fantastic stories, and amazing people that I’ve met. I saw a guy recently who, after our session he was telling me that his wife had died about six months previous that he had been married to for 42 years, and he started crying. And my mother passed away when I was younger, and so we were able to relate on that. And I gave him my lessons on how I dealt with it, and he had never really had somebody tell him that, and he was very touched. And I know that he will take those lessons that I taught him and use them for his grieving process.
So it’s things like that. People don’t realize how much therapy it really is, how many of these people just want some intimacy…we’re human beings, we need sexual outlets. That’s just the way that we are. “Maya” invites anyone who has been in a similar situation or wants to talk to contact her at mayaarticle8719@yahoo.com. An extended version of this interview can be found at sfbg.com
Is San Francisco still on the cutting edge of women’s issues? I recently spent a sunny Saturday morning buried in the radical archives of Bolerium Books (www.bolerium.com) — which is by the way, an amazing resource for anyone researching labor, African American, First Peoples, and queer history, among other things. Me, I was looking into our city’s rich history of feminist activism, inspiration for our upcoming Guardian “Bay Area Feminism Today” panel discussion. The event will unite amazing females from across the city who have but one thing in common: they’re pushing the envelope when it comes to the definition of what a “women’s issue” is, in a time when very few people claim feminism as their primary crusade. We’ll be talking more about their exciting projects –- but also touching on more universal issues. What is San Francisco’s role in fighting the nationwide attack on reproductive rights? How is our progressive community doing in terms of supporting women and maintaining a feminist perspective on issues?
Women’s work: it’s alive and kicking, and it deserves its moment in the spotlight. Meet our panelists here, in preparation for the real deal.
St. James Infirmary programs director, ex-president of Harvey Milk LGBT Democratic Club
For me, sex worker rights are a feminist issue because they are about body autonomy. As much as reproductive choice is a feminist issue, so too is the right to determine the ways in which we use our bodies, change our bodies, and take care of our bodies. When people are criminalized for their HIV status, denied access to hormones and safe gender transitions, or are afraid to carry condoms because it might lead to police harassment or arrest — these are all feminist issues. At St. James Infirmary (www.stjamesinfirmary.org), we provide healthcare and social services from a peer-based model, so community is really the central aspect of the project. I was excited to chair the Harvey Milk LGBT Democratic Club (www.milkclub.org) last year, because I wanted to keep raising sex workers rights issues as part of the LGBT agenda. At St. James, nearly 70 percent of our community members are LGBTQ, so it’s really critical that sex workers rights are treated as a queer issue, a feminist issue, and a labor issue.
CELESTE CHAN
Artist and founder of Queer Rebels
My partner KB Boyce and I started our production company Queer Rebels (www.queerrebels.com) to honor the feminist and queer of color artists and elders who paved the way. Our main project is “Queer Rebels of the Harlem Renaissance,” a performance extravaganza which took place June 28-30. Such an exciting time! The Harlem Renaissance legacy remains with us to this day. It was an explosion of art, intellect, and sexual liberation led by queer Black artists. I’m also a board member at Community United Against Violence (www.cuav.org). CUAV was formed in the wake of Harvey Milk’s assassination and the White Night riots, and does incredible work to address violence within and against the LGBTQ community. Another way I’m involved with women’s issues is through Femme Conference (www.femme2012.com). In a culture where femininity is both de-valued and the expected norm, Femme Con creates a vital feminist space — this year it takes place in Baltimore, Maryland.
EDAJ
DJ and promoter of queer nightlife
I work in nightlife to provide space for communities that often don’t have spaces to come together. For 15 years, I have been providing music for women as the resident DJ at Mango (every fourth Sunday at El Rio, www.elriosf.com). I also work to support my fellow LGBT veterans by promoting their visibility through my nightlife projects. Ex-Filipino Marine and two-spirit drag king Morningstar Vancil’s story has inspired me to work on creating a space that raises awareness about LGBT veterans, especially women living with disabilities. I also think it’s important to do outreach in the Black LGBT community to help strengthen support for organizations such as the Bayard Rustin LGBT Coalition (www.bayardrustincoalition.com), a group that is not only fighting for Black LGBT equality, but is focused on social change for all oppressed people. After 10 years of executive producing the Women’s Stage at SF Pride, I was honored as a grand marshal this year at an event hosted by the BRC and Soul of Pride. It was beautiful to see so many Black LGBT people dedicated to moving global equality forward. Although there is a need to reach out to everyone in the Black LGBT community, naturally my goal is to first focus on connecting more women, a group that has always been less visible.
JUANA FLORES
Co-director of Mujeres Unidas y Activas
My organization Mujeres Unidas y Activas (www.mujeresunidas.net) is based on a double mission: personal transformation and community power for social justice. MUA is a place where women arrive through different challenges in their lives. We try to provide emotional support and references so that they don’t feel like they’re alone, so that they have strength to begin the process of healing and making changes. Those can include issues of domestic violence, problems with teenage children, labor or housing issues — when they arrive at MUA they begin the process of developing their self esteem and becoming stronger. They also begin to participate in trainings and making changes in their community and to the system through civic and political participation. At MUA, women find a home. They feel comfortable because they’re always welcome. We’re developing strong leadership, leadership that is at the table when it comes to making decisions about our campaigns, like our letter of labor rights and the help we give to victims of domestic violence through our crisis line. Every day our members are developing their ability to be involved in the organization and community, and making changes in their personal and familial lives.
ALIX ROSENTHAL
Attorney and elected member of the SF Democratic County Central Committee
As an elected member of the SF DCCC (www.sfdemocrats.org), the governing body of the SF Democratic Party, I am working to involve the party in recruiting more women to run for political office locally. In the June 2012 election, I assembled a slate of the female candidates for DCCC — we called ourselves “Elect Women 2012.” It was a controversial effort, because it included both progressives and moderates. In the wake of a highly contentious and factional term on the DCCC, we hoped to prove that moderates and progressives can work together to re-energize Democrats in this important presidential election cycle. Running for office in San Francisco is a high stakes game; it is costly and requires an extensive political network. And so the DCCC is where many future candidates get their start — it is where they build the connections necessary to run for higher office, and where they hone their fundraising abilities. By recruiting and supporting women candidates for the DCCC, I am hoping to build a “farm team” of female candidates within the party. This year, I am proud that the seven women incumbents on the DCCC retained our seats in the June election, and that we achieved parity by electing four new women to the party’s governing board. I look forward to seeing what these women can accomplish together.
LAURA THOMAS
Deputy state director of Drug Policy Alliance
Ending the failed war on drugs is a women’s issue because women are far too often bearing the brunt of that failure, losing their freedom, children, economic independence, safety, health, and sometimes their lives as victims of the war on drugs. Women in prison in California can be shackled during childbirth, lose custody of their children because they use legal medical marijuana. They’re vulnerable to HIV and hepatitis C because they or their partners don’t have access to sterile syringes for injecting drugs. My major project for the Drug Policy Alliance (www.drugpolicy.org) is mobilizing San Francisco to show the rest of the world how effective progressive drug policy can be. I want to see San Francisco open the first supervised injection facility in the United States, to end new HIV and hepatitis C infections among people who use drugs. I want us to truly have effective, culturally appropriate substance use treatment for everyone who requests it. I want San Francisco to end the cycle of undercover drug buys-incarceration-recidivism. I want us to address the appalling racial disparities in who gets arrested, convicted, and incarcerated for drug offenses here. I want us to aggressively defend our ground-breaking, well-regulated medical cannabis dispensary system against all federal intervention. San Francisco is leading the way in the United States in addressing the harms of drug use and drug prohibition but we have a lot more we can do.
MIA TU MUTCH
Transgender activist and SF Youth Commission officer
I’ve worked for a plethora of LGBTQ organizations and have been on several national speaking tours. I currently serve as media and public relations officer of the San Francisco Youth Commission, and use my position to promote LGBTQ safety and overall health. I’ve partnered with several city departments in order to create a cultural competency video that will train all service providers on best practices for working with LGBTQ youth. As a vocal advocate against hate crimes and sexual assaults, I’m working with local groups to create a community patrol in the Mission to prevent violence against women and transgender people. I’m also the founder of Fundraising Everywhere for All Transitions: a Health Empowerment Revolution! (FEATHER), a collective aimed at making gender-affirming transitions more affordable for low income transgender people. I work to create avenues of equality for those who benefit the least from patriarchy by creating a culture of safety and support for people of all genders.
