Harassment Archives - Godless Perverts

Maxine Holloway Wants Folsom Attendees to Ask First. Here’s How You Can Help Her Message.

September 13, 2015 by Chris Hall Leave a Comment

Asking consent shouldn’t be a problem in the BDSM and alt-sex communities. It shouldn’t be a problem anywhere, but the fact that kink events continue to face the issue of people grabbing without asking (or even transgressing previously negotiated boundaries) is especially poignant to me. One of the things I found most attractive about the kink culture — back in the days when I was learning about it from On Our Backs, Susie Bright books, and the alt.sex newsgroups on Usenet — was the idea of negotiated consent to do things that would otherwise be “bad.” I especially loved safe words. The idea that you could agree to signal when you needed to cross from fantasy back into reality symbolized everything that I loved best about the kink movement and the peer education movement that was coming up behind it.

But safe words — and in many ways, the ethos of consent that was so enlightening to me at the time — have become uncool among large segments of the kink communities. Safe words — and the negotiation that comes with them — are seen as the province of newbies and kink tourists, and that’s a problem.

The sentiment “Safe words are for wimps” has become popular on t-shirts, poster, and other paraphernalia. It’s a sentiment that we can’t afford.

Fortunately, there are people who have been pushing back. One of them is adult star and activist Maxine Holloway.

I’ve known Maxine for years, and even though sex radicalism sometimes seems to be hanging on by its fingernails in San Francisco, she’s one of the people that still gives me hope that the city’s tradition of combining perversion with politics will live on in the age of Twitter and Facebook. In 2012, I wrote a piece for the SF Weekly about how she and other cam workers at Kink.com were fighting for fair wages. She herself got canned from the porn giant for trying to organize the workers. For those of us who love combining blasphemy and sex, she’s recently become known for doing Mormon-themed porn as “Sister Rose.”

Maxine is continuing a campaign that she started last year to promote consent at Folsom Street Fair, which is coming up on September 27. Last year, she and other activists passed out bright yellow stickers and temporary tattoos reading “ASK FIRST,” like the one below:

#askfirst #folsomstfair2014 #Folsom

A photo posted by Queerella Fistalot (@fistalot) on Sep 24, 2014 at 8:19pm PDT

Maxine herself says better than I can why Ask First is necessary. In an article for the Eros.Com blog, she describes the precise events that inspired the campaign when she took a box full of her used panties to sell at Folsom in 2013:

I arrived to find a sea of attractive, kinky people, performers, and spectators. I tingled with excitement as I wove through the heavy crowds with my friends. Pushing through the crowds of people I suddenly felt a hand on my ass. I turned around and it was gone. A few minutes later, I felt another hand on my breast. I whipped around to see a group of men laughing and hurrying away. I tried to shake it off and continued on. As I navigated through the masses this continued to happen over and over and over. I know I was giving the public permission to interact with me by engaging and selling my underwear, but I didn’t agree to be touched or grabbed by complete strangers. As the sun set, I was hurling curse words at entitled grabby men and protectively covering my chest as I walked by strangers. I went from feeling like ‘Best Dressed Pervert’ to feeling violated and unsafe.

Public sexuality is a huge part of what makes the Folsom Street Fair exciting. The SF streets proudly display elaborate BDSM outfits and kinky acts as a form of sexual expression and community. But there is a big difference between celebratory exhibitionism and voyeurism – and a free-for-all. All too often consent gets erased in sexualized environments. When this happens it is no different than the prehistoric victim blaming that if a hemline is too short — they were “asking for it.” Just because someone is dressed sexy, or is engaging in sexual behavior – does not mean that it is an open invitation for everyone. Consent needs to be given and received, just like in any other environment. Unfortunately when abuse happens at kinky events it is often shrugged off as “part of the deal,” and non-consensual behavior seems to be on the rise as these events grow larger.

I’ve heard much worse stories than this. Maxine’s story isn’t something that’s unique to Folsom, or even San Francisco. It is, unfortunately, a big problem and a persistent one.

This year, Folsom themselves have been kind enough to help out by donating an entire booth to Ask First. Maxine and friends still need money to cover the expenses of printing the stickers and tattoos, the materials to build the booth itself, payment for a photographer, and various other things. All told, they expect to need $2,475 for the day.

This is where we — the Godless Perverts community — come in. Ask First is running a crowdfunding campaign to get that $2,475. As of right now, they’ve made 44% of their goal, and it shouldn’t be hard to help them make it the rest of the way. If you’ve got a few bucks, throw them into the Ask First fund to remind kink communities to life up to that great ethos of negotiated consent that made them so attractive to me and many others.

I have to admit one thing right up front: I haven’t given money to this myself yet. The key word is yet. As of right now, my bank account is so low that I’m afraid if I so much as breathe on it, it’ll go right into overdraft. When my paycheck comes in (hopefully tomorrow), I plan on sending some cash straight to Maxine Holloway and Ask First.

If you want to know even more, check out Maxine’s video below explaining the whole thing in detail.

Source: ASK FIRST | Indiegogo

About Chris Hall

A somewhat nerdy pervert who looks (mostly) normal on the outside, Chris Hall is fascinated by the politics, culture, and art of sex. He has written for The Atlantic, Alternet, SF Weekly, Slixa, numerous anthologies, and a dog blog that will go discreetly unnamed here.

Godless Perverts is Not for Everyone: What Inclusivity Means to Us, and What It Doesn’t Mean

December 8, 2014 by Godless Perverts Leave a Comment

A Joint Statement by Greta Christina and Chris Hall

Godless Perverts is not for everyone.

We mean that in the gentler, more informal sense of the term: Not everyone is going to like it. Not everyone is going to enjoy discussion groups, entertainments, or parties centered on godless views of sexuality. They may not enjoy our frank, explicit explorations of sex, including a wide variety of unconventional sexualities; they may not enjoy the views of religion that come up in our meetups and entertainments — some of which are harshly critical and mocking, others of which are sympathetic. That’s okay. We can’t be all things to all people, and we’re fine with that.

But we’re also not for everyone in the somewhat harsher sense of the term: We are not open to everybody. There are going to be times when we have to tell people they’re not welcome.

This is hard. Almost everyone has had painful experiences with being told, openly or otherwise, that they’re not welcome in a group. Almost all of us have had painful experiences being picked last for a team at school, or being treated like an outcast at a social event. The two of us certainly have. It’s a difficult thing to experience, and it’s not an experience we dole out lightly. (The Geek Social Fallacies can be very seductive, including Geek Social Fallacy #1: Ostracizers Are Evil.) But the unfortunate reality is that if we want to create a welcoming space for people who support and value our mission, we will sometimes have to ask people to leave. [Read more…]

Reminder: Social Club Tomorrow – Plus, a Few Words on Community & Harassment

September 30, 2013 by Chris Hall

First, we want to give a quick reminder to everyone here in the San Francisco area: Tomorrow is the first Tuesday of October, and that means that we’ll be gathering for the Godless Perverts Social Club at Wicked Grounds once again. If you’re all rested up from Folsom, or whatever you did this weekend, we strongly encourage you to join us. It’s a night of heresy, mixed with caffeine and munchies, in a kink-supportive environment. As we always remind people, the event is free, but we really, really want you to spend money at the front counter. Wicked Grounds is a huge asset to the San Francisco alt-sex communities, and we want to make sure they stay in business. Plus, we’ve started to get a reputation as good tippers among the staff there, and we want to keep it.

Although the Godless Perverts Social Club is a lot of fun, it’s really serious business to us as well. You’ve probably noticed that there’s been a lot of media chatter about atheist groups starting their own equivalents to churches. ((Update: I think I over-stated my own cynicism about the Sunday Assembly idea, and would like to make the point that it’s based on my own feelings about church, rather than a collective one. But on the whole, I’d rather not see atheism mimic all the structures of standard religion, and instead seek out its own forms of community building. I for one spent years going to Episcopal services as a lad, and found the whole process dry and dull, and not inspiring at all. Certainly, there are some who will find the Sunday Assemblies helpful. I wish them good luck; we all need to build support and community in any we can. But for myself, I feel like I’ve been down that path once already.)) Although I personally find the idea kind of pointless, and counter to what’s great about being atheists, the fact that some people like the idea points to something that we have to acknowledge: one of the most devastating things that people lose when they leave religion is not the sense of morality, or eternal reward after death, but the sense of belonging to a community. It’s also one of the reasons that people are often suspicious of atheists: we’re perceived as people who have cut themselves off from the community.

And so, the Godless Perverts Social Club is an attempt to at least partly fill that need. The feeling we want people to go away with is that they are accepted for their godlessness, their queerness, or their perviness.

Towards that end, it is very important to us that people of all genders, identities, and sexual orientations feel comfortable hanging out at the Social Club or any other Godless Perverts events. We’re bringing this up not because we’ve had any problems so far, but because this has become a huge problem in the atheist and skeptic communities at large, and we want to make sure that it doesn’t become a problem for us.

So let me just say this: although we don’t have a formal harassment policy yet, we will not tolerate harassment or unwelcome sexual advances at our events. If you’re at a Godless Perverts event and are made uncomfortable by someone or something, please tell us. You can approach any of our people in charge, or contact us through the website. We’re also interested in hearing more general feedback on how to make Godless Perverts a better environment. We aren’t opposed to people managing to hook up at our events, but keep in mind basic consideration: if someone indicates that they’re not interested, or that they’re uncomfortable, then back off.

These are just a few elementary thoughts, and as we grow, we’ll expand on them and develop more specific strategies. But for now, know that we’re committed to growing a community that’s accepting of atheists of all genders, races, orientations, and identities. If you ever think we’re fucking up on that goal, let us know.