Remember This Image?

It was the promotional image used by the Folsom Street Fair in 2007, and it came under fire from some religious fundies when it was released. You may remember this piece on it.

I just used the iconic imagery as a centerpiece in an academic essay I wrote for my Anthropology of the Body class.

Here's an excerpt that's too long...

The language used by anti-gay groups like Concerned Women for America leverage a shock value that is wildly disproportionate to the image produced by the Folsom Street Fair. Such language, when used correctly, has a chilling effect on the receiving population. Too afraid to engage in sexual activity that might be labeled deviant by those in the moral majority, kinksters are forced back into the closet, and must fulfill their kinks by looking at porn, or with prostitutes. Dan Savage, a sex columnist based in Seattle, has long documented the fate of kinksters forced into the closet by a misunderstanding spouse, or by larger sociopolitical or religious forces, and the kind of language used by CWFA no doubt has this effect on the reader. With no access to kink fairs like Folsom Street Parade, and the visibility and de-stigmatization such public events provide, kinksters who write to Dan from heartland America find it tough to string together a support system, or people with which they can safely talk about their sexual desires.

Taboo-busting, de-stigmatizing public displays of sexual affection like Folsom Street Fair have a lot in common with other counter-normative performances in other places in the rest of the world. The specific roles given to third-sex members of the native American community, within ritual settings, and the annual sexualized street parades in Brazil come first to mind. These are hyper visible instances in which sociocultural support allows those with alternative and stigmatized sexualities to start to regain control over their own bodies, and ease the burdens systemic to dominant definitions of the forbidden realm.

As Foucault is happy to enumerate, our bodies are constantly under control; by our government, by our consumer culture, by our workplaces. Sexual acts, thus, often include roles for submissive and dominant, one who is in control and one who lacks control, because these are roles systemic to our culture, arguably present in every social interaction. These roles are often negotiated within the sexual act itself, sometimes through words, sometimes through bodily cues, hopefully agreed upon, but not always of course. The Folsom Street Parade shines a light on these relations of power, and encourages a “safe” celebration of the diverse sexual interests inherent in our very genes. Because all of the people portrayed in the festival are there by their own choosing, participating in sadomasochistic acts that bring them pleasure, their autonomy is threatening to those that find such acts “despicable” or “morally-offensive.” Their freedom is labeled “harmful” to American culture, and detractors are quick to use the slippery slope defense (“first whipping, then animal fucking. Just you wait!”) because such defenses further a moral panic over sexuality where the dominant culture is legitimated and upheld through its representations of sexual “otherness” and sex is maintained as a certain kind of intercourse between a man and a woman.

The Concerned Women for America operate on a plane that defines certain kinds of speech and sexual acts to be “coercive” (Rubin 1997: 306). Sub textual to their sexual hate-speech is the brain wash theory Rubin illuminates which “explains erotic diversity by assuming some sexual acts are so disgusting that no one would willingly perform them….[they] must have been tricked or fooled.” (Rubin 1984: 306). The sexual acts on Folsom Street, according to this logic, must be a visual representation of coercion. The coercion argument has been used for decades against homosexuals, who were portrayed by mainstream American media as sexual recruiters, coercive and dangerous to have around children, who may end up “switching teams” lest a homosexual present a persuasive reason. “No way someone would actually want to be tied up and publicly humiliated on a San Francisco street” goes the reasoning.

Already marginalized by dominant narratives, it was hard for a small non-profit like Folsom to defend itself outside of its local sphere of influence. California state speaker Nancy Pelosi, in a statement that simultaneously distanced herself from the sadomasochistic community while questioning the motives of the CWFA, chose to focus on the iconic imagery in question rather than the homophobia inherent in the message of CWFA. She said I'm a big believer in the First Amendment. I do not believe Christianity has been harmed by the Folsom Street Fair." The statement cast the debate over the image, rather than over the sexual freedom the image represents. In an era where the sexual freedoms of politicians are constantly being questioned, its understandable that Pelosi would try and grasp for un-controversial language and peg the story as a tiff over freedom of speech, not sex.

Fox News unsurprisingly cast CWFA as the victim, including a quote from the president of CWFA, at the end of the article intending to incite anger in the readers at Folsom for its anti-Christian agenda. “When you take something that is sacred to somebody, you turn it into the profane and you use it for your own good," Morris said, in relation to the DaVinci parody. "That's bad for society." The moral compass of the article is thus grounded in the opinions of the CWFA, and those who accepted the story as the truth (or common sense) of the controversy, were made to think that the Folsom Street Fair was a radical and dangerous group of sexual minorities bent on harming American culture, instead of a stigmatized group of kinksters rallying for a bit more political power in a dominant culture terrified of its own sexuality.