'The frisky underground'

Today the New York Times published a short article about a benefit sex bazarre in San Francisco. It quotes Carol Queen -- who is a terrific person who does more for the alterno-sex people in SF than I ever have or will -- as saying "the Bay Area is the capital of nonjudgemental thinking about sex," and quoted "one of three dominatrixes"* as saying "We're here as a gesture of solidarity." It talked about novelty underwear and "post-it style" pasties, and "anatomically suggestive magenta soap."

El struggle continua, don't it? God, it makes the San Francisco sexual underground sound like a bunch of lightweights. If you read the article closely, you can find a bunch of cool things, like the fact there's a program to help stippers deal with burnout and their income taxes. But the general tone is silly and almost mocking. I would like the rest of the country to see us as dark, menacing and subversive; at the very least, it would be nice for a national reporter to make the connection between this sexual underground and the fact that San Francisco is on the forefront of civil rights for alternative families, from the gay marriage issue to domestic partner rights for mixed-sex couples.

Yes, it's true that many of the people in the sexual underground are actually sweet and dorky. But our actions, our art, and our movement have much larger and more serious implications than panties that say "U.S. Out of My Underwear."

* Now we know what NYT style is for the plural of "dominatrix." Is it in the stylebook, I wonder?