Folsom Street Fair stresses consent amid leather and BDSM

SF Gate

Organizers of the Folsom Street Fair, San Francisco’s famed fetish festival, took new measures this year to educate attendees — especially sightseers and gawkers — on the subject of consent.

“Gear doesn’t mean consent. What you’re wearing doesn’t mean consent. An enthusiastic ‘yes’ means consent,” said Edwin Morales, president of the Folsom Street Events board. 

The message was distilled into a social media campaign and onto signage around Sunday’s 13-block fair, which featured bondage exhibits, people pulling their collared partners on leashes, and lots of bodies clad in leather — or nothing at all.

More than 250,000 people were expected to show up, with proceeds benefiting groups such as the National AIDS Memorial and Berkeley Free Clinic.

“We get them with the shopping and, ‘Hey, there’s gonna be naked people,’ and hopefully we get them registered to vote and donating to organizations,” said Foster, 55, a longtime attendee who lives in San Francisco. He declined to give his last name.

It was the first iteration of the fair since the #MeToo movement emerged, but its planners say the focus on consent was driven primarily by community feedback, not broader societal issues. Kinksters say consent and boundaries have always been at the forefront of what they do but that some newcomers and voyeurs are not quite as literate.

Exhibitionists and organizers say the widespread non-consensual picture-taking of event-goers has been especially frustrating. In a public space, though, the directive to “ask first” concerned some professional photographers on First Amendment grounds.

For poet Maryann Leilani Wood, 42, “the playground,” a fenced-off area for women as well as transgender and gender-nonconforming individuals, was invaluable. Everyone was welcome in the zone except cis-men, or those who were assigned the male gender at birth and still identify that way.

“It’s a shaded tent where you can just sit and not get gawked at by a tourist,” said Wood, who relaxed there with a packet of peanut butter and a notebook filled with what she said was art therapy. “This space is so important. Some of us don’t want to play with others.”

Wood, who said she suffered genital mutilation and other abuse as a child, said the fetish community helped her develop into someone who could “enjoy myself as a sexual adult.”

At the playground, people entering a canopy “dungeon” had to sign a 13-rule waiver form. Among them: no alcohol and keep conversation to a minimum. Also: “Use a drop cloth when waxing. No smoking (cigars), scat, water sports, sharps (knives/needles), blood or fire play.”

Michelle, 30, who was in charge of the playground and declined to give her last name, called the entire area a “safe space” and said it’s taken on heightened relevance, given current events.

“Consent overall is a bigger deal … but it’s always been part of the kink community,” she said.

In the quiet mid-morning, as she disassembled a stack of folding chairs, Michelle said her main hope and request to those entering the dungeon would be: “Please don’t make a mess. Unless it’s puke and it’s consensual.”

Near the playground, a throng persisted throughout the day around a bondage exhibit put on by the club SF Citadel and BDSM group Bondage A Go Go.

Longtime participants said they have seen a sharp uptick in “rope play” lately. One of the go-go dancers, William, 34, whose stage name is Vyl (pronounced “vile”), said he has noticed increased auto-suspension, in which a person single-handedly hoists himself or herself up into a contraption for pleasure.

Stefanos Tiziano, manager of SF Citadel and one of the Bondage A Go Go owners, said ropes have a “sensual” quality that, along with chains, hold a special status in people’s sexual imagination.

The exhibit featured several suspension frames from which people could be tied up and dangled, spanking benches and a few X-shaped equipment pieces called Saint Andrew’s Crosses. Carts were filled with floggers, blindfolds, whips and props. Tiziano pointed out the items in between taking photos of his wife, who was hanging from a suspension contraption.

An information table was stocked with wooden paddles emblazoned with “spank someone happy” and fliers for a sex-positive Democratic club.

A few feet away, a man in a kilt and dog mask was hitting the backside of a topless woman, chained to one of the crosses, with a purple “booty bat.” All around them, a mostly clothed public snapped selfies and recorded videos of the scene.

“This is the kinky haven,” Tiziano said, “the holy times of leather.”

https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Folsom-Street-Fair-stresses-consent-amid-leather-13270424.php