The season of the holiday shopping orgy has arrived. In San Francisco on Sunday, they took it literally.
"Holidays are a time for intimacy," said Carol Leigh, aka Scarlet Harlot, a pink-haired former call girl. She was selling her own brand of perfume, Whore Magic, along with feather boas and other "sex positive" gifts at the holiday bazaar at the Center for Sex and Culture.
"It's winter, so it's time to keep warm," she added.
It was also beginning to look a lot like XXXmas. While shoppers in suburban malls trolled the aisles for iPods and salad spinners, at the Belle Bizarre, as it was called, they could pick up a Delta Burke bustier, a Post-it-note-style pastie, or a candy garter belt or G-string, a new spin on candy necklaces sold at Kissable Cutie, a booth operated by Contessa Carlton, a professional escort.
It is probably safe to say that the average mall in the US would not feature a sign that read, "US Out of My Underwear."
The bazaar, where Santa Claus was not spotted, was a benefit for the sex and culture center, a nonprofit organization that specializes in adult sex-education programs. The money raised from the sale of geisha hair clips, suede chokers and the like is to help finance the center's Exotic Dancers Education Project, a support program for sex workers that addresses issues like filing taxes and "avoiding sex worker burnout."
Estelle Freedman, a history professor at Stanford University, said that especially since the 1950s, the Beats, gay activists and other groups had helped create public expressions of sexuality here.
"Given the early mobilization for AIDS awareness in San Francisco, along with the commercialization of sex throughout American culture, it is not that surprising to hear about a local sexual flea market to benefit the education of sex workers," said Freedman, a co-author of Intimate Matters: A History of Sexuality in America.
Carol Queen, the founding director of the center and the author of Exhibitionism for the Shy and other books, said: "The Bay Area is the capital of nonjudgmental thinking about sex and the idea that sex can be a positive force in one's life. It is the home of the frisky underground."
That underground was out in abundance on Sunday afternoon, including three dominatrixes.
"We're here as a gesture of solidarity," said one of them, Selma Raven, who was wearing a Santa Claus cap with fake leopard trim. "We're into positive kink awareness."
Mia Houtermans, a 29-year-old anthropology student who has been studying the rights of sex workers, perused anatomically suggestive magenta soap, "Sluts Unite" T-shirts and vintage postcards of lesbians.
"Certain forms of sexuality are frowned upon in our culture," Houtermans said. "This seems like an interesting way to change that."
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