On June 19, 1964, Carol Doda, a dancer at the Condor Club in San Francisco, donned a bold new swimsuit that only covered the wearer's bottom half, and performed topless. She became the first topless dancer in America, quickly influencing many others to do the same. She didn't necessarily do this out of any feminist ideas of reclaiming her body; she was interested in show business, and to paraphrase her, that meant "showing her business".
Carol would eventually perform entirely nude, as would other dancers, though not without legal pushback. Cops would regularly raid the clubs and arrest people for "indecent exposure" or "lewd conduct". Several dancers from that era are still around today, and in interviews for the 2023 documentary "Carol Doda Topless at the Condor", they talk about the consistent harassment they faced, legal and otherwise, just for being adults with adult bodies and adult desires. But they also talked about how much they loved their work, and it's a real pleasure to see people in the golden hour of their lives talk so joyfully about their sexuality. Almost like that's normal..!
Strip clubs weren't the only targets of police raids and harassment of course. Gay bars, and gay people in general, were regularly targeted, too. California only overturned its sodomy laws in 1976 (many states still had such laws on the books within my own lifetime); before that, cops could entrap gay men by soliciting sex from them and then turning around and arresting the "perverts". You'd think it wouldn't matter what two (or more) consenting adults wanted to do to each other, but the Puritans who first set foot in New England have cast a long shadow on America. In 1971 alone, SFPD arrested 2,800 gay men for the crime of being gay. At the time, this also meant they had to register as sex offenders.
These arrests were not peaceful or humane. Gay people were brutalized, demeaned, abused, humiliated; cops, and society at large, had a carte blanche to treat them (to treat us) however they wanted. You may think things are better now, but every so often, like a violent wave crashing on a white sand beach, there's a reminder that some people are expendable because of who they choose to love and fuck: Matthew Shepard, Sam Nordquist, countless more. I could easily go on, but I think the gay people reading this blog will already be aware of our depressing history in this country, and the straight people should go read a book (may I recommend Leslie Feinberg's "Stone Butch Blues"?) and also ask themselves why these names don't sound familiar (but if they do, congrats, you're a real one). What I've written about here doesn't even scratch the surface of our history of course, but I hope I've made my point.
The harassment of strippers and gay people in 1960s San Francisco is related, not least of all because Carol Doda's controversial swimsuit was designed by a gay man, Rudi Gernreich, who was also part of the Mattachine Society, an organization focused on rights for gay men. They protested, helped gay men fight entrapment cases, and generally worked to bring gay man out into the open and prove that they deserved equal rights, too. Rudi Gernreich in particular used fashion to advocate for sexual freedom, for all people. And while Carol Doda may not have been a very political person, those around her were. Other dancers in that era did consider their work to be important for women's lib, and also strove for racial equality, performing in mixed race acts that at the time were still demeaned illegal or at the very least immoral. American history classes will never teach you this, but our civil liberties were not won by kind-hearted presidents and peaceful protestors who sat around quietly and beatifically with big beautiful pleading eyes. Whatever rights we have were won by the perverts, the freaks, the marginalized, those with nothing to lose and everything to win, often scandalously, sometimes terrifyingly. If you have any right to do whatever you want with your body, it's because a sex worker or [LGBT slur of your choosing] fought for that right. Thank one today!
I think about these pioneers often these days as our rights get rolled back, a nauseating reality that gets praised even by "liberals". Sex work is evil, no kink at pride, movies don't need sex scenes: no offense but have we all lost our minds? These talking points would slot right into a 1950s conservative political convention, and while it's no surprise to see modern-day conservatives say these things (and how!!!), I despair when I see anyone left of center saying the same. Perhaps you feel compelled by some of these arguments too, in which case I have to ask: why do you want to control what an adult does with their body? And to be clear, I'm all for harm reduction. Let's educate people about safe sex, let's treat sex work like work and give those workers real labor protections. I'm not saying everything is fine as it is and I don't think we have to accept this world as it currently stands because, frankly, it sucks balls. But neither do we have to slide back into an even worse past.
I also think it's easy to be very, very scared in this moment. Will you be able to keep getting hormones? Will you be able to get an abortion? Will you be able to hold your lover's hand in public? Will you be able to flirt with a stranger, to be sexual, without being arrested and deemed a sex offender? Will you be pushed into riskier and riskier work or sex? What happens when there's no more PrEP, no more gay bars, no more books teaching us about our past? Is this your first time thinking about these questions?
Some of this will absolutely come to pass -- it's already in motion. If we're lucky, we'll hold on to some of these rights, and be able to claw our way back to all of them, and more. But personally, I wouldn't sit by twiddling my thumbs and waiting for politicians with a (D) next to their name to do anything. In the days of Carol Doda and the Mattachine Society, they didn't have a benevolent government looking out for them. They only had each other. So, I guess what I really want to say is, don't assimilate. Don't look up at a politician with those big beautiful pleading eyes of yours and think you'll get spared. You won't! Instead of wasting your time on that, go out and be the biggest, nastiest freak you can. Embrace being a sexual adult with a body and do whatever the fuck you want with it. Help others do the same. Protect those exercising their right to bodily autonomy and don't think you know better than they do (okay unless it's about vaccines... vaccines are baller, everyone should legally be required to get as many as possible). But you know what I mean. Every time we demonize sex or the human body, we creep backwards towards more and more people's entire existence being criminalized. Yeah even if it's something as "innocuous" as whining about sex scenes. Don't grease yourself up in baby oil and dive down that slippery slope, baby. Nothing good waits for you there. Think about everything you have to lose and then go be the slurriest slur you can slur. Our future counts on it.
HAPPY PRIDE! :)