Paradise at the Sandstone Retreat

Paradise at the Sandstone Retreat:

Pleasure, Perversion & the Technologies of Sexual Life During the 1960s-1970s

by David Rosen

This society turns everything it touches into a potential source of progress and of exploitation, of drudgery and satisfaction, of freedom and of oppression. Sexuality is no exception.

Herbert Marcuse1

Mr. Williamson’s paradise of the main house. Talese, a former New York Times reporter and a Secluded in the hills of Topanga founder of literary “new journalism,” Canyon, just north of Los Angles, the chronicled the going-on at Sandstone Sandstone Retreat was a unique in his 1981 “sex-posee,” They experiment in erotic exploration. Neighbor’s Wife. “After descending Founded by John and Barbara the red-carpeted staircase,” he Williamson in 1969, it drew a fairly reported, “the visitor entered the wide and often distinguished following semidarkness of a large room where, among “free love” advocates, those reclining on the cushioned floor, exploring the vast -- yet limitedly bathed in the orange glow from the chartered -- territory of sexual fireplace, they saw shadowed faces intimacy.* Among retreat regulars and interlocked limbs, rounded breasts were the sexologists Alex Comfort and and reaching fingers, moving buttocks, Phyllis and Eberhard Kronhausen, the glistening backs, shoulders, nipples, journalists Gay Talese navels, long blond hair and Max Learner, the spread across pillows, artist Betty Dodson, the thick dark arms holding performer Bobby Darin, soft white hips, a woman’s and Daniel Ellsberg, head hovering over an renown for leaking the erect penis.” His ears Pentagon Papers. were as observant as his According to one eyes: “Sighs, cries of estimate, its ecstasy could be heard, membership topped the slap and suction of 275 couples.2 copulating flesh, laughter, murmuring, music from the stereo, Sandstone’s library and public grounds crackling black burning wood.” resonated with high-minded conversation among well-meaning, Talese goes on to detail the enticing intelligent and mostly white, middle- scene awaiting a visitor: class, suburban professionals. However, the legions of sexual As the visitor’s eyes adjusted to the light, adventurers and the curious who there was a clear view of the many shapes, visited the ranch were drawn by the sizes, textures, tones: Some couples sat crossed-legged in circles, relaxing talking, “free love” practiced in the basement as if picnicking on a beach; others embraced in many positions: women

astride men, couples lying side by side, a * John Williamson insert; Facenfacts. Sex Matters Sandstone Ranch woman’s leg extended about her partner’s Maslow, B. F. Skinner, Robert Rimmer, shoulders, a man in missionary position and Winnie the Pooh.”* with elbows pressing into madras pillows, perspiration dripping from a dripping chin. These communes were organized to Nearby, a woman held her breath, gasping address a variety of social and spiritual as the man inside her began to come; then another woman, responding to the sound, concerns, but while many functioned arched her body and moved more quickly without an explicit sexual agenda, into her own orgasm, her skin flushed, her sexual exploration and face grimacing, her toes clenched. experimentation on an informal basis was not uncommon. Perhaps the most There were triads, foursomes, a few noted example of this kind of bisexuals; bodies that would belong to community was the Esalen Institute high-fashion models, line-academicians; located in Big Sur, south of San tattooed arms, peach beads, ankle Francisco. It served as a “living bracelets, ankhs, thin gold chains around laboratory” to further the development waists, hefty penises, noodles, curly female pubes, fine, bushy, trimmed, dark, of new psycho-therapeutic methods, blond, red valentines. … including massage, body therapy, nude “encounter” groups and – as ”It was,” Talese chuckles, “a room with practiced by one of the psychiatrist a view like none other in America, an Fritz Perls – sex between a therapist 4 audiovisual aphrodisiac, a tableau and his patient(s). These venues vivant by Hieronymus Bosch.”3 placed the emancipation of sexual experience at the center of the quest Sandstone may have been the most for new ways to live a fuller life, one well known of the intentional outside the conventions of traditional communities that flourished during the experience. tumultuous 1960s-1970s period, but it was not alone. Other communes The ‘60s counterculture, with its included secular groups like the Sheep appeal of sex, drugs and rock-&-roll, Ridge Ranch (aka Wheeler's Ranch), provoked all kinds of sexual Hog Farm, Total Loss Farm, Drop City, experimentation. Hippies and other Black Bear Ranch, Trans-Love free spirits from San Francisco’s Energies, Morning Star Ranch, New Haight-Ashbury to New York’s East Buffalo and Libre. They also included Village explored alternative lifestyles, religious communes like the including communal living, group Brotherhood of the Spirit, Shiloh, marriages and “free love” 5 Jesus People USA and Divine Light arrangements. The experimentation Mission. Talase sites a New York within most communes appears to Times survey that claimed that there have adhered to fairly conventional were nearly 2,000 “alternative lifestyle patriarchal, heterosexual sexual communities” in the U.S. during the counter-culture era. He notes that * Wilhelm Reich was a German-born these social experiments were “… of psychoanalyst, author and discoverer of various sizes and distinction, located in the “orgone” life force; he was arrested farmhouses and city lofts, hillside and imprisoned by the US FDA for his manors and desert adobes, geodesic experimental cancer research and died in a domes and ghetto tenements….” federal penitentiary in 1957. Abraham Participants included “hippie Maslow was a psychologist and formulated horticulturists, mediating mystics, theory of “hierarchy of needs.” B. F. Skinner was a Harvard psychologist and swingers, Jesus freaks, ecological author of the “utopian” study, Walden Two. evangelists, retired rock musicians, Robert Rimmer was the author of The tired peace marchers, corporate Harrad Experiment that advocated for dropouts, and devotees of Reich and utopian, group marriage.

© David Rosen, 2016 page 2 Sex Matters Sandstone Ranch practices. It appears to have been the divisions that defined other principally male directed, progressive moments of the era, the heterosexually oriented, with limited civil rights, anti-war and women’s sex-play (e.g., fetishes, role playing) movements. With regard to sexuality, and the mixing of people of different the division was between a more backgrounds (e.g., race, class, sexual mainstream, middle-class ethos orientation). Nevertheless, three- promoting male-oriented notions of somes involving one man and two pleasure and those identified as more women were not uncommon radical, if not “perverted,” whether explorations. Still others within the identified as homosexual, hedonistic or counter culture were open to wider pan-sexual. It was a division between experiences. “When you start getting those enforcing reformist free in your lifestyle, it’s hard to accommodation to existing social regress and go backwards,” a teenage power and those championing a more girl describes her experience with systematic critique of patriarchy and “free-love” during the ‘60s. “What got homophobia. This struggle was played me into the lesbian trip is I hung out out in a variety of different sexual with hippie types, smoked pot, worked activities including at private parties, in the anti-war movement, rebelled in swap clubs, swing clubs, gay s/m clubs every way I could think of.” She then and a variety of anonymous sexual admits, “I slept with most of the men hook-ups. It is a struggle that in my group. Then there were two continues into the 21st century. women in the group who had three- ways with men. I thought that Swap sounded interesting. I was open to experience as a way of living.”6 In 1964, William and Jerrye Breedlove published Swap Clubs: A study in The sexual revolution of the 1960s- Contemporary Sexual Mores. 1970s was the nation’s third major According to the book’s “bio,” the challenge to deeply rooted traditional couple had been married for 12 years Christian moral order. The earlier and he was a 30-year-old engineer revolutions include the utopian and she was 29-year-old librarian; movements of the 1840s-1870s and they had four children and lived in the cultural revolution of the 1910s- Southern California. Their study is 1920s.7 The ‘60s counterculture was a based on a series of first-person multigenerational effort, involving interviews and -- although unstated -- adults and young people, both high participatory observation.* If one school and college students. It accepts their findings, the sexual promoted a significant expansion in environment of the ‘60s was in the the forms of acceptable sexual midst of a much more profound expression and experience. The exploration process than is usually sexual revolution occurred during a recognized. Extrapolating from the period in which nearly all forms of alleged findings of Alfred Kinsey’s social authority were challenged, Institute for Sexual Research at including race relations, foreign Indiana University, the authors found military policy, dress codes and “that there are approximately five musical tastes. The outcome of this million married couples in the U.S. struggle forever changed the nature of who have exchanged partners with America’s its moral order, especially its sexual culture. * This is a non-scholarly study with no discussion of methodology; thus, it is The ‘60s sexual revolution was marked impossible to know if this is a work of by an internal schism that mirrored fiction or really based on primary research.

© David Rosen, 2016 page 3 Sex Matters Sandstone Ranch another married couple for sexual homosexuals each have clubs of their intercourse at least once during their own, of course … .”11 marriage. Other authorities have estimated anywhere from a half- The study is invaluable with regard to million to three million.”8 the swap groups the Breedloves discovered operating throughout the Whatever the actual number, the country. Like a well-researched travel Breedloves’s identify this as an guide, they report on mate-swapping important socio-sexual development. groups in such likely place as New Further extrapolating from the Kinsey York, Los Angeles, Chicago, San data, they detail the evolution of the Francisco (90 couples participating), swap club between 1953 and 1973: Boston and Miami. More revealing, “The number of swap clubs in 1953 they found groups operating in was probably less than 2 percent of Baltimore (32 couples), Denver, the married couples between the ages Detroit (42 couples), Elizabeth, N.J., of 20 and 45 years. In 1963, it was Kansas City, Las Vegas (10 couples), probably above 5 percent. By 1973, Milwaukee, Minneapolis-St. Paul, Palm the total will probably reach 15 Springs, Philadelphia (more than 100 percent – maybe reaching all the way couples), Phoenix, Salt Lake City to 25 percent before leveling off.”9 (including Mormons), Seattle (34 However one reads the Breedloves’s couples), St. Louis and Washington, findings, a distinct sexual sub-culture DC (12 couples), among other cities. existed and, for those who sought it The authors found that the participants out, could be found and joined. in these swap clubs not only respected the boundaries of permissible sexual Swap clubs – and the people and the practice, but conformed to a general sexuality engaged in – had a very set of demographic characteristics. particular definition or boundary that set the limits to what was acceptable. “… [W]e have found that the greater The Bleedloves identify a number of number of practitioners – over 95 what they call “unusual interests” -- percent – are those of ‘normal’ including homosexuality, fetishism, heterosexual appetites, who more flagellation, transvestitism and often then not are from the better- bestiality -- that set the limits to adjusted, better-educated, higher- sexual practice. Concerning income people in our society,” they homosexuality, the wife could be “bi,” wrote.12 Nearly all those they met but the husband had to be “straight.” were white, college-educated, “The second ‘most unusual’ interest is physically healthy, middle-class mild fetishism,” they found. The professionals in their early- to mid- fetishisms they ranged from a satin 30s. (Washington appears to the undergarment or bedsheet to a piece exception, with more black than white of silky cloth to “sometimes even a couples.) Most were in happily contraceptive device.” However, they married couples with children who warned, “If the fetishism is not mild, if participated as part of a couple it replace the opposite sex completely seeking to broaden the meaning of (autoerotic fetishism), or it the fetish their committed relationship. is too flagrant, the fetishist would be alien to the swap club philosophy.”10 Equally revealing, the Breedloves Going further, they insisted, “Sadism found that most clubs sanctioned and masochism are not welcome in either one-to-one or group swap clubs. Transvestites, sado- engagements (i.e., threesomes or masochists, zoophiles and more). Some, like members of a Philadelphia group, made mate

© David Rosen, 2016 page 4 Sex Matters Sandstone Ranch selection based on “keys in the hat” because they were apparently active principal. Some, like those in Denver, participants in the scene, the authors had regular nude photo shoots (mostly note: “… swingers consider an ideal of women). And some, like the group gathering one in which everyone can on Staten Island, NY, engaged in strip- express themselves as individuals and tease sessions and “strip-canasta.” appreciate others for doing the same.” However, the most extreme action They warn, “If ever one person fails to seems to have involved southern have an enjoyable experience in these California groups that required, as the terms, the gathering is that much less authors’ note, “that every male be enjoyable for everyone.”15 sterilized.”13 The goal of the swing club, of In 1971, Gilbert Bartell published a engaging in sexual activity with study of group sex commissioned by multiple partners sharing the same the Playboy Foundation. Bartell values, was to give – and receive – a estimated that about one million gift. These participants sought people were involved in “organized” mutually pleasing intimacy among swinging. He found a particular sexual active and equal partners, not merely sociology operating, much of it sexual conquest. Scarred as they confirming the Breedloves’s findings. were by their predominately First, swinging took one of two forms - heterosexual (and patriarchal) - either “closed” (i.e., couples in sensibility of the time, these practices private) or “open” (i.e., group play). nonetheless expressed an effort – Second, women tended to be more however imperfect and compromised – active than men. Women engaged in to achieve sexual pleasure without homoerotic play (with two women in a turning either partner into a three-some); women were commodity. exhibitionists in two- or three-way sexual encounters; men enjoyed Swing voyeurism. Third, swingers forged a community outside the confines of Swing clubs represented a second -- mate-swapping get-togethers or clubs, and far more radical -- form of ‘60s including subscribing to and/or placing sexual engagement. “Swing clubs had personal adds in publication like Select opened in nearly every state in the and Kindred Spirits attending Union, with twenty-seven in California conventions and going on a specially- alone, and most of Canada,” Heidenry chartered cruise (often sponsored by points out. In New York, one of the Lifestyle Tours and Travel). As earliest was Percival’s, but it was Playboy found, “Many had taken the short-lived. However, the club that magazine’s philosophy to heart: They gained the most notoriety was Plato’s would not allow marriage to end Retreat, located at the Hotel Ansonia, sexual exploration.”14 premises of the former Continental Baths. Another husband-and-wife research team, the anthropologists Charles and “On an average night,” Heidenry Rebecca Palson, undertook primary reports, “more than two hundred research to understand the couples flocked to Plato’s basement phenomenon of swap club sex. cave to see, to conquer, to come. Employing a first-person, Most of them were straight, aged participatory-observer methodology, twenty to fifty, and well educated -- they assessed some 136 swingers and but the only common denominator was their findings confirm those of the lust ...” The club was opened in 1977 Breedloves and Bartell. However, by two enterprising hustlers, Larry

Levenson and Mike Ross, and quickly located in mid-town and run by Jay became city hot spot. It was a cross and Diane Hartwell, publishers of the between the Sandstone Retreat and S&M Express. In addition to private Club 54, the popular nightspot. rooms for one-on-one play (called According to one historian, “The $25 “session rooms”), the club sported a entry fee (a little less the price of a room with a stage equipped with Broadway theater ticket) included an sawhorses, ratcheted-run pulleys and ‘all-you-can-eat’ buffet of bagels and a large selection of whips. “After the lox, chicken salad, wine and scotch.”16 lights dimmed,” reports an observer, Sociability was of equal value as “a bare-breasted black women, sexual pleasure. wearing a bandoleer of nipple clamps, rode on stage mounted atop a nude One Plato visitor noted, “By one a.m. male wearing a black leather face the crowd had grown to five hundred mask an a horse’s tail attached to his and the orgy began.” He details the scrotum. As she cantered him across following adventure: “By now most of the stage, he whinnied and she the guests had shed their cloths, and slapped his buttocks until they trotted group gropes were everywhere -- in off stage to moderate applause.”19 the pool, whirlpool, baths, or steam room. Couples and threesomes made Gay sex clubs were even more radical. love in the cubicles or out in the open. They included, in the West Village’s Women gave random blow jobs in the meat-packing district, the Cock Ring hallway and lay spread-eagle on a and Sewer as well as the more table as two or three men worked notorious Anvil, Hellfire and Mineshaft them over.” as well as the Catacombs in San Francisco. They appealed to those Howard Bellin, another Plato visitor drawn to the demi-world of after-hour during its early days, confirms this clubs and sought to push the limits of assessment: “Plato’s Retreat was sexual experience, especially involving unbelievable.” He adds: “I had never fetishism. in my life seen anything like this and probably will never again. I mean, The Anvil was located on West 14th thirty, forty couples all making love at Street and 11th Avenue, in the heart of the same time, it was amazing, you the West Village’s meat packing cannot believe it. Ahhh, those were district; it was a part of the city with the days. …”17 During an evening of little residential population and pretty November 1979, Plato’s Retreat deserted late at night. One regular reached its zenith. As Heindenry visitor, Philip Gefter, described it as notes, “an occasional porn actress “Weimar culture … on acid. It seemed named Tara Alexander took on eighty- more like a club with a kind of festive, six men, four at a time, in a nonstop ersatz honky-tonk atmosphere that six-hour spectacle dubbed the the dingy, seedy dive it appeared to be Supermathon.” The performance was from the outside.” The club’s “back so provocative that it was rebroadcast room,” located in the sub-basement, over a New York X-rated cable show, was another story: “I was in the back Midnight Blue.18 room having a grand old time. There was a ledge that ran the length of the Three s&m clubs operated in New York back room, which I never actually saw, during the heyday of Plato’s Retreat, but people would lie on the ledge and the Club O at Fantasy Manor and the get fucked. I remember this particular Castle. Two women ran Club O and it night, there I was lying on the ledge, “boasted an unusual mix of gay and my underpants and my jeans cradled straight clientele.” The Castle was in my armpit besides me, being fucked

© David Rosen, 2016 page 6 Sex Matters Sandstone Ranch randomly by several different men. I place where flesh was the common could feel them one at a time inside denominator.”23 me, even thought I never saw them.” Self-reflectively, Gefter questions, Preston fully appreciated the social “Either I was truly liberated or truly significance of the Mineshaft. “This psychotic. Who knows?”20 This was communal sex, even question haunted the ‘60-‘70s as it communistic,” he proclaimed. “It was does the extreme sex scene today. insurgent theater; it was meant to offend bourgeois sensibilities, if people The Mineshaft “could be approached who held them ever walked mistakenly with a sense reverence, anxious dread through them.” He then reflects, “But (typically the first time), but usually the real purpose of the action at The evoked some sense of excitement, Mineshaft was determined by action however mild,” reports Joel Brodsky, a that was to be witnessed within the sociology professor at University of tribe of gay men. The activities were Nebraska (Lincoln). As he points out, devoted to initiating a male into the “On weekends few arrived before 2:00 camaraderie of the group, something a.m. and the crowd was dense until at that has to be observed by the least 5:00 a.m....”21 He details the group.”24 Brodsky concludes his scene: analysis by observing the Mindshaft “was clearly the creation of secondary “The first room one entered after being labor market capitalism and admitted was the “front room.” This was a maintained through traditional forms large space, with spotlit pool tables, a long of political corruption.” Furthermore, bar which was the most brightly lit area in “it clearly demonstrated the power of the Mineshaft, a coat-check area, and a cultural and social organization to few benches in the shadows along the far transform sensation and physiological wall. ... [T]he front room was also a 25 favored place for initiating sexual contact. response into erotic experience.” ... people would bend over a pool table, sit astride or stand at the bar, while their The Hellfire Club was among the partners penetrate or fellate them. It was wildest sex clubs. It has been especially appropriate for those who described as a “black-on-black enjoyed a sense of public spectacle, basement with its own water-sport exhibition, or humiliation. room, a dark labyrinth of doorless

cubicles with an impressive array of “Activities begun in the front room might also move into an adjacent area. ... It was hardware.” Its most memorable much dimmer than the front room, feature, it very essence was that “the contained a small bar, a table, some Hellfire reeked of stale sex and urine.” wooden stalls, two recesses which As one observer noted, it “attracted contained slings, and featured a spotlit sexual adventurers of every wooden frame in the center with a sling description: straights, bisexuals, drag about six feet off the ground. The slings queens, sadists, masochists, fist were used to suspend men who wished to fuckers, masturbators, voyeurs, and be fisted, and the bartender at the small especially gay leathermen, who were bar would provide paper mayonnaise cups of Crisco and handfuls of power towels to then reveling in their he-man 26 those doing the fisting. The wooden stalls heyday.” could be used by those wishing to exclude others, but also had “glory-holes” to allow San Francisco’s Catacombs gained an both voyeurism and pseudo-anonymous international reputation as a s&m, 22 fellatio.” leather club promoting fisting or “handballing.” Founded by Steve According to John Preston, another McEachern, opened in May 1975 and regular visitor, “You were entering a closed in August 1981 with

McEachern’s sudden death of a heart benches and, as Rubin reports, “the attack.* It was located in a two-flat top part of a hospital gurney, covered Victorian house in the Mission District, with a foam mattress.” Further back on 21st Street between Valencia and was the dungeon, with mirrors on the Guerrero. As Rubin makes clear, “the walls and ceiling, which itself was Catacombs was exclusive. To be divided into two sections. The first invited to the parties, you had to be on part included an iron cage, a large Steve’s list.” “The Catacombs was wooden bondage cross (“a favorite always primarily a place for gay male spot for whipping,” as Rubin notes), a fisting parties,” Rubin reports. “It was padded bondage table and two also a place for S/M, and over time, operating tables “perfect for medical the Catacombs was shared with other scenes or precision torture.” The groups – kinky lesbians, second part included “two rows of heterosexuals, and bisexuals. While it commodious black leather slings. …. never lost its identity as a fister’s Each sling was fitted with the paradise, over the years it increasingly ubiquitous stirrups. To holds of Crisco, took on a community center for the big empty coffee cans were hung by local S/M population.”27 chains next to each sling.”29

The club did more than provide a Reflecting the influence of the ‘60s space for “intimate connection, male counter-culture, the Catacombs fellowship, and having a good time,” founder, Steve McEachern, was lovers which are values in and of themselves. with Cynthia Slater, who had founded “It facilitated,” concludes Rubin, the Society of Janus, a pan-sexualist “explorations of the body’s sensate organization, in 1974. According to capabilities that are rarely available in Rubin, “Cynthia was bisexual. She modern, western societies.” The space introduced her female lovers into the was divided between a more public, [Catacombs] space, and they in turn social front room and a series sex-play brought other lovers and friends.” areas in the back rooms. As Rubin Rubin notes, “By the summer of 1978, reports, “[n]udity was the norm at the there were usually one to five women Catacombs. People wore leather mingling among sixty to eighty men. harnesses, arm bands, jocks, socks, As Steve had predicted … many of [the cock rings, or nothing at all.” The men] came to enjoy the presence of a social area was styled like a leather few women as yet another twist on an bar, with a variety of male erotica already wild situation.” On March 21, decorating the walls, and encouraged 1980, Slater moved to expand the camaraderie. The back rooms were, as scope even further, hosting at the she relates, “not for casual socializing. Catacombs what Rubin finds to be “the The back was for sex.”28 first time significant numbers of kinky gay men, lesbians, bisexuals, and The back rooms consisted of the heterosexuals partied together in the “Bridal Suite” and the “Dungeon,” and Bay Area.”30 This event may well have each offered its own distinct pleasures. been the zenith of the sexual The centerpiece of the Bridal Suite was revolution. a four-poster waterbed; the room also included a series of foam-padded The sexual revolution may have reached its dead-end in the very different model of sexual “community” * After its closure, a Catacombs II opened represented by the motorcycle gangs in October 1981 and closed within three of the period. Bikers had become a months; a third club, the Catacombs on very peculiar cultural phenomenon Shotwell, opened in February 1982. [Rubin-1991/132-34] during the post-WWII period,

© David Rosen, 2016 page 8 Sex Matters Sandstone Ranch romantically epitomized by Marlon usually quite abusive after the sale is 31 Brando’s performance in The Wild finalized.” Ones. By the ‘60s, a fundamental split developed between those portrayed in A woman reaches the nadir of her Easy Rider and those who identified sexual being when she is reduced to with the Hell’s Angles. While the the status of “sweetbutt” – no longer former suggested the inherent threat protected by status being an “ol’ lady,” of a more whimsical, poly-sensuous she becomes community property and male identity, the latter represented freely exchanged by gang members. the residual form of masculinity that had been superseded by the post-War Private parties played an important recovery driven by the consumer role for diverse segments of those revolution. This identity laid claim to seeking greater sexual expression. the outlaw, gunslinger, frontiersmen For example, in Detroit, during the mythology that has long been ‘60s “house parties still remained mythologized in the U.S. This more favorite social activities,” often hard-core, backward-looking male attracting African-American lesbians community, known among themselves and gay men. Rochella Thorpe found, as “one percenters” – at once a tiny “as economic factors permitted, bars minority and the cream-of-the-cream evolved from house parties to include of the crop – was unique in the shared gay and lesbian spaces, to bars absolute commodification of sexual where the clientele was mostly black 32 practice, particularly in the treatment lesbians.” The anthropologist Gayle of women. Rubin found a similar phenomenon among gay male leathermen in San The Hell’s Angels gained nationwide Francisco. As Rubin reports: notoriety in 1967 when Newsweek ran a story about a biker’s “ol’ lady [being] “Sex parties had been critical to the nailed to a tree for holding back on her development of leather social life at least as far back as the late forties. Before man.” The coverage exposed how there were leather bars, there were S/M women within “outlaw“ biker gangs parties. These parties were usually held in were treated as sexual property. By private homes and apartments, hosted by the mid-‘70s, a number of gangs, one or two individuals, and populated by including the Orlando Outlaws and means of informal networks of referral. Devil’s Discipline, had broken up due The parties in turn helped the early gay to too aggressive treatment of women. S/M networks to diversify and grow. The According to James Quinn, an contacts made through these networks in academic expert, “bikers ladies are the late forties and early fifties led to the establishment of the first leather bars.”33 shared with other club members at the discretion of their male companions.” Unfortunately, such gatherings had to He adds: remain secretive. The police regularly

raided some, especially among “An ol’ lady may be sold for anywhere from 34 50c to $500. The lower the price asked by lesbians and drag queens. her ‘ol man, the more abusive the buyer’s intentions are likely to be. It is also a Anonymous hook-ups serious blow to the woman’s self-esteem tobe sold for much less than $75 to $100. Swing clubs, swap clubs, sex clubs, Women sold at impromptu barroom invitation-only gatherings and other auctions can expect to first be inspected venues provided ways by which many and manhandled by prospective buyers adults -- be they straight, gay, and then bid on by a drunken and hostile bisexual or into nearly any manner of audience. Buyers at such auctions expect to keep the woman only briefly and are fetish pleasure -- could explore the

© David Rosen, 2016 page 9 Sex Matters Sandstone Ranch limits of their sexuality. These venues No commercial establishment played a were complemented by a host of other more significant role in the formation means by which individuals (but of a self-identified community, the predominantly men, be they straight modern gay movement, than public or gay) could engage in isolated, bars. Other licensed commercial discrete sexual encounters be they establishments -- including commercial or noncommercial. Such bathhouses, massage parlors, adult encounters included visiting a bookstores (often with backroom bathhouse or massage parlor, meeting peepshows) and porn movie houses -- with a prostitute at a bordello or as a encouraged sexual encounters, most random encounter on the street or in a often anonymous ones. Bar facilitated car, or seeking a secluded liaison at a social engagement. Many served public toilet, truck stop or park. These either an exclusively male homosexual venues provides a quasi-private, and clientele or catered to a predominantly often illegal, space in which individuals heterosexual clientele but were gay- (and occasionally groups) could friendly or gay-tolerant. Of these, the engage in anonymous sexual acts ones that catered to lesbians, fairies, which, in their own way, tested the leathermen or another distinct sub- limits of traditional sexual values. groupings were especially important.

The most notorious illegal commercial Gay bars of the late-‘50s and ‘60s enterprises that furthered the offered their patrons what Faderman cultivation of community were the calls a “clandestine” setting that innumerable after-hour bars and clubs. “ensure[d] privacy, since exposure They appear to have taken place in could be dangerous.” They were most cities throughout the country and their often “dark, secret, a nighttime place, appeal was to the more adventurous. located usually in dismal areas… .”37 In Detroit, according to Thorpe, Up until only the most recent period, “[a]fter hours parties offered dancing, patronage at public saloons, taverns drinking, eating, and talking as their and bars has been predominately a main activities. African-American male affair. Such establishments were lesbians and gay men could participate often further segregated on the basis in both the public bar scene and the of ethnic group, race, class and other house party tradition.”35 As a woman factors. That this pattern should be who visited such clubs in Philadelphia mirrored within the homosexual reported, “[t]hey were a riot. That community is no surprise. That most was my first immersion in just such gay bars catered to men does not another world, a real underworld. mean that they excluded women or Boys looked liked girls and girls looked people of color (although some did) or like boys.” These gatherings got that there were no exclusively lesbian started after 2:00am, when bars or ones that catered nearly- commercial bars closed, and tended to exclusively to people of color. serve a mixed clientele. Many were Nevertheless, as the historian Martin located on two to three blocks along Duberman stresses, “bars were among Locus Street and were allegedly the few places where lesbians felt they operated by the Mafia. As the historian could congregate and be themselves in Marc Stein found, “In mixed-bars, relative safety.”38 same-sex couples could exchange partners and form cross-sex pairs if A resourceful lesbian could patronize a the police appeared. In after-hour discreetly operating bar in nearly clubs, same-sex dancing was less every large city (as well as many restricted.”36 smaller ones) throughout the country. While many lesbians, let alone

© David Rosen, 2016 page 10 Sex Matters Sandstone Ranch heterosexual women, did not drink simple demographics, bars in smaller alcohol or felt uncomfortable going to cities tended to support a greater mix a questionable place in a seedy part of of orientations, whereas bars in bigger town, a remarkable number – both cities encouraged fragmentation along black and white -- appear to have more specialized lines of self-identity. done so. For example, in New York This was especially evident among the there was the Sea Colony; in Los leather bars that came to populate the Angeles, the Open Door, If Club and San Francisco scene. According to Paradise Club; in San Francisco, Kelly’s Rubin, the earliest self-identified Alamo Club; in Oakland, Mary’s First association of leathermen appeared in and Last Chance; in Omaha, the Cave; San Francisco in the ‘50s and early- in Detroit, George’s Inca Room, 60s and tended to congregate along Bingo’s and Fosters during the ‘60s with other gay men and lesbians at and the Palais, Barbary Coast, the specific bars in different parts of the Club Exclusive and the Casbah in the city. For example, they socialized in ‘70s; and in Philadelphia, the most North Beach at the Black Cat and in famous lesbian bar was Rusty’s.39 As the Tenderloin at the Old Crow and the one of the regulars at Rusty’s recalled, Caboose. In addition, such men also the sexual atmosphere was charged seem to have cruised the waterfront with the illicit: “There was a near the Ferry Building. tremendous sense of sexual electricity in the air, which was the shadow side It is with the opening of, first, the Why of everything I’d been brought up Not and, most importantly, the Tool with. And that side is always both Box, in the early-‘60s that the first enticing and threatening in equal exclusive leather bars were founded. parts. So that’s the way I remember The Tool Box operated between 1962 Rusty’s, a sense of excitement, of and 1971. In June 1964, Life danger, of possibly having fallen off magazine ran a feature spread on the the edge of the known world.”40 In Tool Box, provocatively illustrated with Detroit, and probably other cities, dimly-lit shots of men in leather these bars supported some element of outfits. As Life reported to a what Thorpe calls “sex trade;” the bars fascinated, if not shocked, middle “offered a variety of sexual pleasures America: for those who sought them, but remained discreet enough that those “One of the most dramatic examples [of who wanted to could remain only S/M bars], the Tool Box, is in the vaguely aware of them.”41 warehouse district of San Francisco. Outside the entrance stand a few brightly polished motorcycles, including an As suggested, there were a far greater occasional lavender model. Inside the bar, number of gay male-predominant and the accent is on leather and sadistic male-only bars in the ‘60s and ‘70s. symbols. The walls are covered with Like the lesbian bars, they operated murals of masculine-looking men in black throughout the county. However, leather jackets. A metal collage of because of the significantly larger motorcycle parts hangs on one wall. A number of men who went to bars cluster of tennis shoes – favorite footwear (particularly in the bigger cities), for many homosexuals with feminine traits greater differentiation among clientele – dangles from the ceiling. Behind it a derisive sign reads: ‘Down with often took place – in effect, bars not Sneakers!’”42 only had their own identity or character, but were patronized by As Rubin notes, “the Tool Box was a increasingly more specialized or self- sensation – wildly popular ….” identified patrons – most often along class, race and fantasy lines. Due to

Its popularity lead to the opening of But this seems to have happened quite other bars targeted to this apparently unintentionally. growing (or at least more visible) segment of the gay community. New York has a long history of bars Among the numerous other bars that catering to gay men.44 And like such operated from the mid-‘60s into the bars throughout the country, there early-‘80s and that catered to a were clandestine venues facilitating leather clientele were: the Detour (in discreet encounters. By the ‘60s, the the Western Addition) and On the bar scene, especially in Greenwich Levee (on the Embarcadero), which Village, was controlled by organized opened in 1965; Febe’s and the Stud crime interests. As Duberman points (in SoMa), in 1966; the Ramrod and out in his definitive history of the the In Between (which quickly but was Stonewall uprising: “The Washington followed by the No Name, the Bolt, the Square [bar] was owned by the Joe Brig and the Powerhouse) in 1968; the Gallo family, which also controlled Boot Camp, in 1971; the Folsom Tony Pastor’s and the Purple Onion Street Barracks, in 1972; the Red (whereas the Genovese family Star, the Ambush and Folsom Prison in operated the Stonewall, TeleStar, the 1973; the Balcony (favored by those Tenth of Always, the Bon Soir on into fist-fucking and located in the Eighth Street, and – run by Anna Castro), in 1977; the Arena and the Genovese – the Eighty-Two Club in the Black & Blue, in 1978; and the East Village featured drag shows for an Stables, the Watering Hole, the Trench audience largely composed of straight (for those into water sports), the tourists.)”45 As part of the culture of Leatherneck and the Plunge, in 1979. illegal gathering places, repeated While bars like the Drummaster, Gold police harassment (with its attended Coast, Compound, Oasis, San pay-offs, closures and arrests) Francisco Eagle, Cave and Chaps threatened not only the Mob, but the continued to open (and close) during clientele as well. the 1980s, the onset of the AIDS crisis by 1984 lead to closing of gay The Stonewall was a pretty seedy bathhouses and many bars.*43 place. As Kaiser describes it, the bar “was not an elegant place; it did not New York went through a similar, but even have running water behind the quite different, sexual evolution among bar.”46 But it did attract a wonderfully its gay community during this period. diverse clientele. He adds, “the crowd In distinction from San Francisco, Los was unusually eclectic for a gay place Angeles and other cities, sexuality in this era….” In particular, it took on a stronger political dimension. attracted a good number of under-age The activism of the civil-right youths and drag queens, especially movement of the ‘50s and ‘60s was those of color. As history would have taken up by radical sex activities it, a “normal” occasion of police during the late-60s and early-‘70s. harassment on the night of June 28, 1969, exploded into a minor civil * Rubin’s warning as to the status of the rebellion. Over the next three days, s&m scene in San Francisco should be the Village would be the site of a mini- borne in mind: “… almost every major city guerrilla confrontation between rock- has an S/M population, that San and bottle-throwing “faggots” and the Francisco’s is not particularly large, and police’s elite Tactical Patrol Force. that S/M institutions are more numerous and developed in New York, a city that has The Stonewall uprising exploded the failed to pass a gay rights ordinance, than myth of gay passivity in a triple sense. in San Francisco, one which has.” [Rubin- 1987/203] First, “homosexuals,” and in particular

© David Rosen, 2016 page 12 Sex Matters Sandstone Ranch stylized effeminate drag queens, were ‘60s, reports were circulating that it not passive – they could be tough; was pioneering a new sex practice, second, the formal, political movement “fist fucking.” As a regular visitor to of self-identified male and female the Baths during this period reported, “homosexuals” needed to – and could he “edged his way to [a bunk bed], – be more militant; and, finally, joining a dozen other young men who individual “homosexuals” needed to – eyes were straining out of their and could -- come out of the “closet” sockets in total disbelief as a young and be more one’s self, however s/he blond boy lay spread-eagle on the manifest it. After Stonewall, Sodom mattress, a burly man in front of him and Gomorra moved closer to methodically pushing his arm into the mainstreet. boy’s entrails.”*51

Police harassment of homosexuals During the ‘60s and into the early- continued after Stonewall as illustrated ‘70s, a host of bathhouses opened by the raid on a 1971 dance hosted by throughout the country. According to the lesbian organization, Daughters of various reports, it appears that by Bilitis.47 Nevertheless, the gay 1972 over 100 were operating in the community was emboldened. “Pre- continental U.S. and Puerto Rico; by Stonewall gay S/M was a very small 1980, the number was between 150 community,” observes David Stein.48 and 200. In addition to the major The ‘70s witnessed the politicization of cities, bathhouse were reported to be gay s&m and other perverts. operating in Akron (OH), Billings (MT), Camden (NJ), Cleveland (OH), Duluth Gay bathhouses have been a unique (MN), East Hartford (CT), Galveston venue for illicit homoerotic encounters (TX), Louisville (KY), Portsmouth (VA), for most of the 20th century. Their Savannah (GA), Tampa (FL), Toledo appeal is quite simple, as the historian (OH) and Kenosha (WI). While many John Loughery has observed: “Cruising gay bathhouses faced regular police is different in a towel, which negates harassment, enough business was worry about a proper outfit, lengthy generated to encourage more barstool conversation, vice squad entrepreneurial businessmen to take entrapment, or unpleasant surprises advantage the emerging opportunity. when the clothes come off.”49 Two of these efforts are of special note However by 1960, there were only – The Club, a chain of independently three bathhouses operating in New operated bathhouses, and New York’s York City. According to one observer, Continental Baths, the most celebrated “All three had in common an ingrained facility of the era. seediness that dismayed all but the hardiest. The rooms were filthy, torn The Club began most inauspiciously in sheets covered sheets, the latrines 1965 when Jack Campbell and two were unspeakable, and the associates opened a bathhouse in atmosphere was bleakly downtown Cleveland. As Campbell degenerate.”50 recalls, “I specifically wanted a better, cleaner atmosphere.” And he wanted Each bathhouse appears to have appealed to a distinct clientele. For * According to Heidenry, “The first example, the Mount Morris Baths, in published photo of heterosexual fist Harlem, catered to mostly black men fucking – a man’s hand and wrist inserted who were often discriminated against into a vagina – appeared in Screw [a NY in the other bathhouses. The St. weekly] under the headline ‘Fist Fucking Femme.’” [Heidenry/162] While no Mark’s Baths, in the Lower East Side, publishing date is provide, it likely was the most notorious. By the late- appeared in the late-‘60s.

© David Rosen, 2016 page 13 Sex Matters Sandstone Ranch it to be explicitly targeted to gay men. Massage parlors were, in a number of They modeled it not after the seedy important respects, the heterosexual bathhouses in New York, but the more equivalent to the gay bathhouse. Both stylish ones already operating in San operated as quasi-health Francisco, in particular the famed establishments, offering services that Sutro Baths.* Over the following few skated the line between providing a years, Campbell and his associates beneficial physical therapy and opened a second bathhouse in meeting other, more genital, needs. Cleveland, the Sixth Street Sauna, and Second, both existed in the middle- expanded to Toledo and then other zone of commercial sex outlets, cities. By 1971, Club bathhouses were between an established brothel and a operating in Atlanta, Buffalo, Miami, random encounter with a streetwalker. New Orleans, Newark and St. Louis, Finally, both could, over time and among other cities.** Ever innovative, recurring patronage, foster a sense of Club owners offered special student “community,” where individual discounts and discounts for two or participants – customers or more guys coming on “Buddy professionals -- could become Nights.”52 “regulars,” establishing a unique form of friendship, if not intimacy. These Stewart Ostrow opened the establishments could, over time, Continental Baths in New York’s Hotel function much like a sex club, where Ansonia in 1968. It was distinguished for a price -- but a fee modeled more by offering a new, more attractive in terms of a non-profit coop then a environment that included clean for-profit business – participants could showers and steam rooms as well as share something more than a discrete private rooms for consensual commercial exchange, something sexual encounters. And, like the Club invoking the possibilities of a gift. chain, it was explicitly “gay friendly.” But the Continental added Massage parlors are a venue of sexual respectability with the feature engagement unique to the sexual performance of stars like Bette Midler, revolution of the ‘60s and ‘70s. Gay Cab Calloway and the Metropolitan bathhouses were an outgrowth of the Opera’s Eleanor Steber, among others. progressive social policy to provide the Not unlike the appeal of the famed poor and immigrants of turn-of-the- drag balls of the ‘20s and ‘30s, with century urban America with public the Continental gay sexuality became hygiene. Massage seems to have respectable. As Loughery notes, “The emerged as a legitimate form of unspeakable has become the physical therapy during the post-WW- fashionably to gays and straights, at II era, as many men returned from the least in New York.”53 war suffering a wide variety of disabilities. During the post-War decades, massage underwent a

peculiar split – dividing between those * The Sutro Baths appears to have been in a class by itself. As David Allyn reports, who sought to legitimize the practice “Sunday nights only women were through professionalization (including admitted, Tuesdays only men, and on licensing boards, trade associations, Wednesdays and Saturdays only conventions, etc.) and those, more heterosexual couples. Friday evenings, enterprising, who saw how providing advertised as ‘hot and nasty,’ the club was physical contact and stimulation, open to everyone – gay, straight, and including genital, could be profitable. bisexual.” [Allyn/238] ** The Club chain consisted of either 14 or The line between these two tendencies 37 bathhouses; see Loughery/359 and Allyn/238, respectively. often blurred. The massage “parlor”

© David Rosen, 2016 page 14 Sex Matters Sandstone Ranch emerged as a new venue of physical, bribed) these fairly transparent sexualized performance during the enterprises. Finally, there was an late-’50s and early-‘60s in the West abundant supply of men, particularly Coast. “Visitors were admitted by more respectable, middle-age men, appointment only, and the masseuses, eager to engage in safe sexual acts -- invariably refined-looking women, and had the money to do so. often wore starched nurses’ uniforms that were covered with a white smock Massage parlors proliferated during while administering a massage to a the ‘70s. One of the first to open in naked man on the table,” Talese New York was the Pink Orchard, on observed. “To be fully massaged and East 14th Street, and its success led to finally masturbated by one of these opening of others. They included the white-gowned professionals was, to Perfumed Garden, on West 23rd many men, a highly erotic experience Street; the Secret Life Studio, on East … .”54 The split between physical 26th Street, described as “four dimly lit therapy and genital satisfaction would mauve rooms”; the Casbah East and continue to define the message Casbah West, which resembled “an business to this day. ultamodern cave”; the Middle Earth Studio, on East 51st Street, which No one provides a better, more resembled “a hippie commune, having accurate if not intimate, portrait of the beaded curtains, madras pillows, and life of massage parlors than Talese. incense burning in the rooms”; the With the same rigor and commitment Stage Studio, on East 18th Street; and to first-person, participatory-observer the Studio 34, on West 34th Street.56 research that he applied to the sexual The most lavish parlor in New York swinging practiced at the Sandstone was undoubtedly Caesar’s Retreat, on Retreat, Talese explored the world of East 46th Street, that opened in 1972.* massage parlors in Thy Neighbor’s Wife. As he found, “By 1970, "Nothing in New York yet compared to however, things began to change in Caesar’s Retreat,” Talese remarked. the massage world as this private It owner, Robert Scharaga, a Bronx- service went public.”55 born onetime stockbroker, invested thousands of dollars in decorations for For Talese, this transformation was the man private rooms, the sauna, the due, in significant part, to the changes circular baths and a fountain with in public morality that remade the plaster-cast Romanesque statuary. sexual landscape. Nudity was “The customers could drink free increasingly more acceptable, champagne in the reception room especially as evident in magazines, while waiting for a half-hour massage movies and even Broadway plays. A session done with warm herbal oil,” he shift in values by many young, adds. A simple massage cost $20, college-aged women, feeling less quilt but, as Talese adds, for $100 “a or shame about sexual promiscuity, customer could have a champagne provided, according to Talese, an bath with three liberated ladies.”57 ample supply of highly effective workers to “man” the parlors. There Massage parlors flourished in was also a growing number of Charlotte, Atlanta, Dallas, Chicago (on entrepreneurs willing to invest the South Wabash Street and decorated often relatively modest capital needed like the interior of a church), in to open a parlor; with time, more suburban Washington, DC (the ten- elaborate and expensive facilities would open. There were the police and * John Heidenry places it on East 54th judiciary that tolerated (or could be Street; Heidenry/85.

© David Rosen, 2016 page 15 Sex Matters Sandstone Ranch room Tiki-Tiki) and dozens in Los full-body massage as well as either a Angeles, especially along Sunset Strip “hand-job” (i.e., masturbation) or a and Santa Monica Blvd. The most “blow-job” (i.e., fellatio). These young lavish parlor in LA was the Circus women often earned between $300 Maximus, a three-story house off and $500 per week for services Sunset Street and founded by Mark rendered -- a relatively good salary for Roy. According to Talese, the parlor’s the period. décor “sought to suggest Roman hedonism; its thirty masseuses wore In 1965, Newark, NJ, police raided the mini-togas of purple, gold, or white dungeon of the notorious dominatrix, crepe, and its advertising proclaimed: Monique Van Cleef, and the story ‘Men haven’t had it so good since the captured front-page headlines in the days of Pompeii.’”58 nation’s tabloids. Her dungeon was only one example of a growing One of the great values of Talese’s assortment of discreet commercial study is his description of the massage venues where the limits of pleasure parlor’s actual environment or working were experienced – and extended. conditions. As he reports: Ever resourceful Ms. van Cleef also made house calls: “I remember one of “After the customer had paid the fee to the the slaves, a nice executive who lived manager, and selected the masseuse of his on East 53rd Street (NYC). He wasn’t choice, she escorted him through a hall feeling well, so he asked me to go to into one of the private rooms, carrying his house with some fresh hot shit. I over her a starched sheet she had gotten put it in my attache case and took it from the linen closet. the few blocks to his house. … When I “Closing the door and spread the sheet got to his place, I spoon-fed it to him, over the table, she waited until the man and he felt much better, or so he had completely nude before she began to said.”60 remove her clothing. It was the belief of most studio managers that, if the customer The rapid growth and acceptance of happened to be a plainclothes police swap and swings clubs as well as officer, the masseuse could not be massage parlors helped bring prosecuted for immorality if the policeman prostitution out of the proverbial had preceded her in exposing himself while this assumption had yet to be tested in closet. While more traditional brothels court, it was nonetheless adhered to in persisted, many prostitutes often took most parlors. the form of dating or escort services, nude photographic galleries and even “Although the majority of customers were sex therapists or surrogates. They old enough to be masseuse’s father, there gained easier access to a customer was a curious reversal of roles after the base through ads placed in weekly sexual massage had begun: It was the newspapers and other outlets. young women who held the authority, who However, prostitution remained illegal had the power to give or deny pleasure, while the men lay dependently on the in nearly every state of the nation, and backs, moaning softly with their eyes local police often harassed or arrested closed, as their bodies were being rubbed “hookers.” with baby oil and talc.”59 Prostitution was, however, not illegal For the services provided, the young in Nevada. The Moonlight Bunny female masseuses usually received Ranch was founded in 1956 and, as about one-third of the fee for the reported by J. R. Schwartz in The session – as well as tips for additional Travelers Guide to Best Cat Houses in services provided. Most often, the Nevada, is considered “the grand old masseuse provided some form of a lady of the cathouses in Lyon

County.”61 However, the state’s most vibrator’ is a derivative of an artificial famous brothel was the Mustang bovine receptacle used in the dairy Bridge Ranch, located outside of Reno. and cattle industry.” According to Heidenry, “prostitutes averaged ten to fifteen tricks in a The report also identified what it called twelve-hour tour; some boasted “miscellaneous materials” or what ‘personal bests’ of up to forty a day. would be considered fetish objects, Though the prostitutes earned less at including “‘love dice,’ strip-poker Mustang, they enjoyed more security, cards, high-heel shoes, corsets, as well as a weekly medical lingerie, microphones and telescopes checkup.”62 for voyeurism, rubber and leather wearing apparel, wigs, whips, clubs Almost any venue where two or more and chains.” The report also assessed people, mostly men, either straight or explicit, “hard core” pornography and gay, found still other venues to engage found that “the most graphic sexual in anonymous sexual encounters. stimuli available in the marketplace These social spaces ranged from public are photographic depictions of actual restrooms or toilets (or “tearooms”), sexual intercourse of all types.”63 deserted doorways, alleyways, truck stops and public parks to the back The Commissioners consisted of rooms of bars, after-hour clubs or academics, psychologists, clergymen porn-bookshops. The sexual and other public officials and found no engagements that took place were scientific correlation between anonymous and rarely if even involved pornography and violence, especially a financial exchange. While semen sexual violence toward women and and other body fluids often passed children. Going further, it advised between the participants, little cash removal of all currently-existing seems to have changed hands obscenity laws, finding that these laws between those hurriedly seeking to served only to criminalize sexual consummate their illicit sexual liaison. practices better left to an adult’s private life. Pres. Richard Nixon Sex toys repudiated the Commission’s findings.*

The 1970 U.S. Commission on Some of the most advanced Obscenity and Pornography, popularly technologies of the post-WW-II period known as the Nixon Commission, were recruited to develop a new issued a nine-volume supplement or generation of prosthetic devices, Technical Report, that took a critical specifically designed to improve sexual look at sex paraphernalia. “Sexual performance. Many of the same devices can be divided into three issues that preoccupied sexual categories: artificial male genital concerns in the previous decades, devices (usually rubber or plastic notably male impotence and female reproductions of a penis), artificial breast size, persisted, but did so under vaginas, and vibrators for genital the dictates of a new scientific stimulation,” it reported. Assessing authority -- one appropriate to the some of the leading commercially- expanding consumerism of the ‘50s available “sexual devices and and ‘60s. Continuing a long-standing pseudomedical products,” it added: “The devices are advertised under * such names as ‘coital training devices,’ They are the all-inclusive [Frederick] ‘duo-stimulator,’ ‘artificial vibrator,’ Comstock anti-obscenity laws first enacted by Congress in 1873 and still remained in ‘coitus splint,’ ‘Vib-E-Rect,’ and so on. force although slowly being challenged and The widely advertised ‘artificial reversed by key Supreme Court decisions.

© David Rosen, 2016 page 17 Sex Matters Sandstone Ranch practice common to the “underground” Americans. As Francis observed, “A sex economy, there were repeated lot of people in the black community attempts to blur the difference are impotent, too.” Quickly, Marche between sexual prosthetic devices to became the sole supplier of Gem’s meet medical purposes and sex toys or “ebony division.” fetishes intended to enhance sexual pleasure. Being more entrepreneurial, Marche diversified his sales efforts, placing Among some of the products that mail-order ads for both black and attempted to blur this distinction were white dildos in true detective, “girlie” devices designed to address problems and other magazines. By the mid- of male impotence, including penal ’60s, demand had expanded to such a implants and penal “pacemakers”, and level that he opened a small dildo others targeted at the Hollywood- factory in North Hollywood. Madison Ave. fiction that women need Continuously seeking to improve the to increase their breast size (e.g., the quality of his products, Marche took electric nipple-stimulator bra). In advantage of new manufacturing addition, there were numerous devices techniques and materials, particular introduced as semi-legitimate “marital plastics and rubber. He introduced aids” between a prosthetic device and more lifelike dildos that were pliable fetish. Among such devices introduced and had wrinkles. He is also credited during the ‘60s period were the “sex with introducing the first primitive harness,” “sex handles” for better vibrator and the first artificial vagina. gripping and the “Coital Couch.” In His most expensive product was the addition, a number of machines were Accu-Jac, a masturbation machine, offered to increase male and female selling for $200 -- an unheard of price sexual potency, including numerous for the time! Diversifying his product “orgasm machines” and, of these, that line, Marche sold nonphallic vibrators, most misunderstood (thus, notorious), a vibrating prostate massager, a was Wilhelm Reich’s “orgone box.”64 massage stimulation mitt for men and women, and “soft, pliable, lifelike These devices were part of a still dolls.” By 1976, Marche was selling limited selection of commercially 350 different products and generating available sex products that had grown annual revenues of $250,000. “In the modestly over the preceding decades. vibrator market, Marche found himself In the early ‘60s, as Heidenry competing with such giants as Hitachi observed, “the sex-toy market was and General Electric,” Heidenry virtually nonexistent, and many people reported.66 desperate for a little sexual variety still made their own dildos, fashioning A unique barometer of the changing crude devices from broom handles and character of social sexuality involves foam.”65 There was, however, a small the increasing availability of explicit commercial market for sex toys and sexual materials. By the mid-’80s, fetishes, often sold as medical aids. such materials took an increasing John Francis, of Los Angeles, number of formats, including printed supported himself by producing hand- material (e.g., still images, magazines made prosthetic phalluses for the Gem and books) and filmed material (e.g., Company, a surgical supply firm. 8mm and 16mm film and homevideo). While Francis produced devices for They were being sold at general or white people, one of his friends, Ted convenience stores, newsstands, Marche, who would later be called the vending machines and local “father of the modern dildo,” began by prerecorded videocassette (PRC) producing dildos for African- outlets as well as a growing nationwide

© David Rosen, 2016 page 18 Sex Matters Sandstone Ranch network of small retail outlets often devices in [the] country is alleged to referred to as “adult book stores.” The be [Reuben Sturman] through his ‘Doc rapid growth of dedicated “adult” retail Johnson’ line of products.” This outlets is most evident in Los Angeles retailer was estimated to control where, according to Federal statistics, between 70 and 75 percent of the U.S. during the period from the 1950s to sexual devices and paraphernalia the 1970s the total number of market.69 “pornographic” retailers exploded from a mere five in 1950, to 18 in 1965 to Practitioners of s&m and other 400 in 1970.67 perversions in New York joined together to form the Eulenspiegel “The inside of a ‘adults’ only Society In 1971. Originally intended pornographic outlet can be divided into exclusively for masochists, the group distinct display and sales areas,” the quickly expanded its mission to all Attorney General report noted. “They engaged in consensual s&m, including display areas include selections sadists, bottoms and tops, gays, devoted to sexual devices and lesbians and bisexuals as well as paraphernalia, reading materials and straight women and men. The Gay peep show booths. In the typical Male S/M Activists (GMSMA) and the pornographic outlet it is not Lesbian Sex Mafia (LSM) were formed uncommon to see anywhere between in 1980, adding to the visibility of gay from 1,000 and 2,000 different items and lesbian s&m presence in New for sale.” Among the paraphernalia -- York. In San Francisco, the Society of or “novelty” items -- available were Janus was formed in 1974 and, in “dildos, rubber vaginas, tools used to 1978, SAMOIS, a lesbian-feminist S/M simulate sodomy, medical appliances organization, was formed; it broke up to spread anal and vaginal orifices, in 1980 and was supplanted by ‘love’ creams, blow-up dolls with Outcasts70. [see SAMOIS; orifices, stimulants, inhalants, whips, Heidenry/154; Rubin-1991/120; D. leather harnesses, edible panties and Stein/146] rubber clothing articles.”68 In time, gay s&m communities in other By the 1980s, interested consumers cities across the country formed could also acquire a host of additional organizations to serve educational, devices whether through such retail political and social purposes. Among outlets or by direct mail. The Attorney predominately women’s groups were General’s commission identified these the Outcasts [San Francisco], Bound & devices as “... dildos, penis rings, Determined [western Massachusetts] stimulators, french ticklers, and Leather & Lace [Los Angeles]. aphrodisiacs, inhalants, inflatable dolls Among the predominately men’s with orifices and police and detective groups were the Gay Men’s S/M equipment. Some are purchased for Cooperative (GMSMC) [Philadelphia], internal use while others are bought Avatar [Los Angeles], Vancouver for external stimulation.” In addition, Activities in S/M (VASM), SigMa “There are also devices and sexual [Washington, DC], Dreizehn [Boston] paraphernalia designed for specific [D. Stein/155] and the Pocono types of sexual activity. For example, Warriors Club [Pennsylvania] [D. there are products specifically Stein/152]. designed for sadomasochistic sexual activity. Such products include masks, Communes, swap clubs, swing clubs, whips, chains, manacles, clamps and gay bars and s&m groups suggests an paddles.” The Commission’s report underground sex culture in gestation. noted, “The largest supplier of sexual The Supreme Count’s 1973 decision,

Roe v. Wade, shifted the social terrain images reinforcing the complexity, of sexuality by giving women more confusion and rawness of modern formal – medical, legal – control over urban life. A newspaper critic of the their bodies. Whereas the 19th day exclaimed: "Magnified to Amendment formally gave each gargantuan proportions, it is woman citizenship, Roe formally gave absolutely disgusting. her both privacy and control over her body. This decision followed a series One of the earliest picture shows at a of earlier decision that slowly Chicago penny arcade was How Girls overturned the century-long tyranny of Undress; it was displayed on a the Comstock law. First enacted in “mutascope” system and attracted 1873 through the efforts of the many young boys.73 Movie theatres at nation’s foremost moralist, Anthony that time were one of the few Comstock, it was finally dismantled in acceptable social spaces in which white 196x/? men and women, often unchaperoned strangers, could share an intimate proximity and an exciting visual Obscene illuminations experience; African-Americans were barred from early New York movie Innovations in the technology of houses. Other then the saloon, the representation during the 20th century dance hall or church-sanctioned fostered increasingly more vivid, gathering, young men and women graphic depictions of the body (mostly (excluding prostitutes) had few public female) and sexual practices. These venues in which to socialize let alone innovations confronted repeated flirt, touch or kiss. "The very darkness campaigns to suppress such display, of the room," warned the social but these efforts ultimately failed. reformer Jane Addams in 1909, "is an Porn is protected by the First added attraction to many young Amendment protects porn and has people, for whom the space is filled become a $10-plus billion industry. with the glamour of love making."74

The precise date of the first “porn” For most of the 20th century, the movie remains unclear but some widely circulating yet illegal stag film historians identify Le Bain, a silent, provided the principal means by which black-and-white moving-picture heterosexual men (and sometimes version of a French postcard released women) could, according to film in 1896, as the first porn film.71 The historian Linda Williams, view “genital “vitascope” was a late-19th century sexuality never before glimpsed in any advanced technology, one of the other form of visual representation.” earliest moving-image projection Nevertheless, by the 1910s and 1920s systems. William Heise’s classic this distinct cinematic sub-genre was, vitascope film, The Kiss, which runs 16 according to Williams, in its to 51 seconds (depending on version), “heyday.”75 By then, its basic depicts a close-up of John Rice and structure of aesthetic expression and May Irwin passionately kissing.72 It mode of viewer experience were was first shown, projected onto a large established. These features -- in screen, at the Koster & Bials Music Hall effect, what made the stag film in New York in 1896 and the “pornographic” -- would remain performance excited many. The essentially unchanged until the 1970s display of a larger-than-life sexual when the feature-length “porno” film intimacy must have been thrilling, and, subsequently, homevideo were even overwhelming. Early movies introduced. must have felt like a cascade of

The stag film is a product not only of concern over apparent obscene 20th century imagination, but material during the 1910s and ‘20s, technology as well. It emerged during Hollywood producers setup a watchdog the early years of the century with the group, the Production Code introduction of the comparatively Administration (popularly known as lower-cost 16mm film equipment. the Hayes Office) in 1927 to monitor And, in the face of the Comstock laws, the voluntary enforcement of took advantage of non-commercial, safeguards against the depiction of semi-private venues for principal “licentious or suggestive nudity, sex display -- venues appropriate for perversions, white slavery, and 16mm equipment. Most often in the miscegenation.” Nevertheless, in the US, stag films were shown as part of eyes of some concerned citizens evening “smokers” or, as Williams calls (particularly the Catholic Church), them, “primitive genital shows.”76 (In these efforts were a failure and called Europe, stag films were shown in for greater vigilance to keep “immoral” bordellos to help arouse male materials out of movies. Under customers prior to sexual pressure from a Church front-group, engagements.) She points out that the Legion of Decency, Hollywood these smokers were “hosted by some adopted a tougher production code in exclusive male club (the Elks or 1934, the Code and Rating Office. It college fraternity, for example), and oversaw “banning among other things attended by invited female ‘guests’ ... the portrayal of adultery, lustful .” She identifies its appeal to both embraces, undressing scenes, and male bonding and a distinct kind of dances suggestive of ‘indecent sexual foreplay: “The stag film does passion’.”78 The legal scholar, Richard not seem to want to ‘satisfy’.” Rather, Randall observed: “This triad of control she adds, “its role seems rather to -- industry self-regulation, organized arose and then precisely not to satisfy religious pressure, and government a spectator, who must subsequently censor boards -- affected a censorial seek satisfaction outside the purely stability that lasted nearly a visual terms of the film -- whether in generation.” He adds, “The industry masturbation, in actual sexual discovered it could live quite easily relations, or by channeling sexual with these burdens because of the arousal into communal wisecracking or extraordinary profits from the ‘family’ verbal ejaculation of the “homosocial” film, the chief product of a censored variety. Williams further clarifies her medium addressing itself to an almost insight: “In the primitive stag film, the undifferentiated mass audience in the primary pleasure seems to involve 1930s and 1940s.”79 forming a gender-based bond with other male spectators.”77 And this While the Code remained officially in “bond” appears to conceal a latent place until the early ‘60s, it lost much homoeroticism -- by which the of its muscle in the face three heterosexual male viewer’s particularly critical Supreme Court identification with the surrogate decisions. The Court’s 1948 phallus depicted on the screen allows Paramount decree (temporarily) broke him to voyeuristically experience a the back of the Hollywood studios secret pleasure in another man’s erect distribution monopoly.80 In 1952, the penis and, thus, a new dimension of Court reversed the 1915 Mutual Film male camaraderie. Corporation decision, extending First Amendment protections to Roberto Chicago enacted the first film Rossellini’s film, The Miracle. As censorship law in 1907. Faced with a Randall noted, “The Miracle decision rising wave of religious and civil did not outlaw government censor

© David Rosen, 2016 page 21 Sex Matters Sandstone Ranch boards per se, but it did provide a fictional narratives that burst on the constitutional basis for challenging public consciousness ....” It was a their rulings. ...”81 Finally, the 1957 feature film that had, as Williams Roth (combined with Alberts) decision notes, “a plot ..., and a coherent one established two of the major to boot, with the actions of characters benchmarks in the determination of more or less plausibly motivated.” post-WW-II obscenity determinations. Going further, she argues: “For the In the words of the five majority first time in hard-core cinematic jurists, the Court found, first, that “to pornography a feature-length film -- the average person, applying not a documentary or a contemporary community standards, pseudodocumentary, not a single-reel, the dominate theme of the material silent stag film or the genital show of taken as a whole appeals to prurient the beaver shot -- managed to interests” and, second, that the work integrate a variety of sexual numbers is “utterly without redeeming social ... into a narrative that was shown in a importance.”82 legitimate theater.”85 And audiences came out in record numbers to see it, During the period of the 1950s thru especially after repeated police ‘70s, a number of other Court attempts to close it down. Reports decisions helped to greatly expand the claim the film was seen by a quarter- boundaries of what was acceptable million viewers and grossed a million speech in the print and film media. dollars.86 Randall identifies the defining issues for film in the ‘50s as adultery and for Traditional obscene images, especially the ‘60s as “limited erotic nudity” and those representing s&m and other “particular words in the sound track fetish practices, were gaining greater like shit, as slang for heroin in The popular during the ‘60s-‘70s period, Connection, or rape and contraceptive especially exposure through fashion, in Anatomy of a Murder ....” By the advertising, tabloid images and other early-‘70s, the line between “soft” and mass-media depictions. As could be “hard” core content was eroded. In expected, legal reaction mounted. “As print, Penthouse was the first soft-core the prosecution of pornography publication to show a woman’s public proceeded inexorably, the inventory of hair and depict fetish devices (e.g., forbidden practices increased whips, chains, leather costumes). In exponentially,” Heidenry reports. film, Man & Wife (1969) was the first “Bestiality had always been proscribed, to depict heterosexual intercourse and but now the censors began to ban The Animal Lover (1971) was the first scenes depicting golden showers, to depict a woman having intercourse defecation, pain, and SM. At the same with a dog.83 time, it became acceptable to show formerly taboo acts like anal sex, It was, however, the opening of Deep double insertion, orgies, and group sex Throat in June 1972 at the New World -- a reflection of society’s increasing Theater in Times Square that launched sanction of such acts in private, but a new era of sexual representation. also a reflection of the arbitrary and The film displayed “fifteen subjective criteria of obscenity of the nonsimulated sexual acts, including part of federal prosecutors.”87 seven of fellatio, four of cunnilingus ... and others requiring more More cutting-edge stag films were imagination.”84 More importantly, as pushing the limits of social the film historian Linda Williams acceptability -- and being seized by observes, it signified “the translation local police moral squads across the from illicit stag film to the legal, country. In the early ‘60s, a Cleveland

© David Rosen, 2016 page 22 Sex Matters Sandstone Ranch moving-picture theatre owner, Nino one George Collins; some included the Jacobellis, attempted to advertise and performance of what Kuh calls “a show a French film Les Amants (The prematurely bedraggled unwed Lovers) (1958), directed by Louis mother, not yet eighteen years of age” Malle. As one commentator of the that which provided the basis for more time notes, “It is a tale of a married severe criminal prosecution. The woman, her paramour, and her most initial arrest led to Fred Barrett, a recent lover.”88 It was advertised as photographer living in “a quiet depicting “[t]he frankest love scenes suburban community” of Hewlett, Long to be seen in the country” and it was Island, who ran the duplication facility closed down by local authorities. A out of his garage. “His garage similar fate befell the Swedish import, contained a massive film printer,” Kuh 491 (1964), which crossed many notes. “Using the negatives that he traditional lines of perversity, had photographed and processed, and heterosexual, homosexual and other similar films that he had bestiality. The film deeply offended procured, Barrett turned out reels of Richard Kuh, a former New York film to meet the market demand.” County Assistant D.A. “The Inspector The police seized 100 film masters and is shown with his hands between the hundreds of copies ready for sale. thighs of the boy,” he railed. “The Melvin Dutchkin distributed these stag movie stops just short of showing the films through his Brooklyn TV repair culmination of the homosexual act. ... shop. Kuh laments that Dutchkin [In another scene a] naked prostitute “catered to a handful of uncomfortable is the subject of the sex orgy. She is little men who make or supplemented shown leaning over the rail in a naked their livelihoods by selling hard-core condition with her ... . The boys got films to local marginal book, photo, angry at her and vented their anger by and novelty shops or to anyone who holding her and forcing a large dog would buy or rent them.”92 they picked up into position to have sexual relations with her.”89 Finally, in Technological innovations during ‘60 1964, the pioneering independent “art” and ‘70s significantly expanded the filmmaker, Jonas Mekas, was arrested availability of “hard core” visual in New York for sponsoring the materials of sexual representation. showing of Flaming Creatures. The These technologies involved not simply film, which Susan Sontag has new media formats (e.g., 8mm and described as “remarkable and 1/2-inch video), but also new modes beautiful,” shows masturbation and of presentations or display, especially oral-genital stimulation.90 the semi-public peep-show booth and the private in-home display through One of the most revealing examples of homevideo and satellite and cable the sustained effort to suppress porn receptions. The introduction of the film must surely have taken place in “loop,” a 10-minute long film reel, 1960-61 when the New York City often in color and with sound, was police broke up a notorious stag porn quickly seized upon for the display of ring. Based on a tip, the police initially explicit sex performances. Porn seized a collection of stag films that producers and distributors took included Ironing Broad and Strip advantage of a new film format, Poker. Kuh observed, “stag films [are] Super-8mm, which was not only the most intimate ‘home movies,’ that cheaper than traditional 16mm, but [show] men and woman in sexual encouraged sale of projectors for in- acts, including (but only including) home use. The Super-8 loop found its intercourse.”91 He reports that 59 true “home” as part of the coin- reels were seized in the possession of operated peep-show booth.

Sometimes called “masturbation may stick to certain areas of the floor. The booths,” they were the brainchild of booths are also often littered with cigarette Reuben Sturman, the notorious mid- butts and tobacco. The trash and sewage West “King of Porn,” and were and the application of disinfectants or ammonia on occasion create a particularly installed in sex clubs, adult arcades nauseating smell in the peep booths.” and adult book stores. “Peep shows had become a coast-to-coast craze, “It has been estimated that peep like pinball machines in the fifties,” shows are the biggest moneymaking reports Heidenry. They attracted portion of the [adult pornography] “everyone from Wall Street pinstripes industry,” the report found.94 to Oregon lumbermen popping into an arcade at noon hour or after hours to The video “revolution” of the mid-‘70s drop a few quarters while they 93 began with Sony’s introduction of the dropped their pants.” half-inch videocassette and HBO’s satellite delivery of programming. Attorney General commission’s report These developments, quite on obscenity describes a standard independent of each other, provided peep-show booth as follows: the necessary technological preconditions for a new era in-home “The average peep show booth has (and, over time, public) sexual dimensions of about three by five feet. representation. Quite serendipitously, The booths are partitioned four-sided cubicles generally made of wood or plastic. a Supreme Court decision in 1973 (the Often, a bench is built into one of the same year in which the pronounced its walls. On the wall next to the bench is the monumental Roe decision) coin or token-operated box. A customer contributed, indirectly, to the rise of places coins or tokens into the box and the the video revolution. In this case, the movie inside the booth is activated. ... Court found that the Atlanta’s Paris Adult Theater violated a local decency “Inside the booths the viewer may see ordinance by showing Magic Mirror and approximately two minutes of the movie It All Comes Out in the End, two for twenty-five cents. As the number of sexually explicit scenes or diversity of “hard-core pornographic films.” As sexual acts increase, the viewing time Randall notes, a “majority of the Court decreases. ... maintained that the right to have access to pornography was limited to “In addition to movie viewing, the booths the privacy of one’s home and did not also provide places for anonymous sexual extend to commercial movie relations. Many booths are equipped with houses.”95 a hole in the side wall between the booths to allow patrons to engage in anonymous Like all “revolutions,” this one has its sex. The holes are used for oral and anal sexual acts. Sexual activity in the booths own prehistory. The cassette emerged involves mostly males participating in out of a nearly two-decade technical sexual activities with one another. effort to make television production However, both heterosexual and more economically efficient. Ampex homosexual men engage in these introduced the first videotape recorder activities. The anonymity provided by the (VTR) in 1956. Up to that time, there “glory holes” allows the participants to were three means by which television fantasize about the gender and other images could be presented -- live, characteristics of their partners. ... preshot on film or prerecorded on

“Inside the booths, the floors and walls are kinescope. Unfortunately, each was often wet and sticky with liquid or viscous plagued by its own limiting substances, including semen, urine, feces, performance capabilities. “Using tape, used prophylactics, gels, saliva or alcoholic editing could be performed far more beverages. The soles of a patron’s shoes rapidly, since tape did not require

© David Rosen, 2016 page 24 Sex Matters Sandstone Ranch processing,” Bruce A. Austin reports. an original video work and rent or “Special effects could be easily resell it to a customer. [Austin/326- accomplished with the push of a 29] As Heiderny states unequivocally: button and for considerably less cost “Video freed porn from its bondage to than with film. The fidelity of tapes adult bookstores and the raincoat images was superior to that of film or crowd ....”98 In his history of kinescopes,” he adds. “Mistakes in an homevideo, Fast Forward, James actor’s performance could be easily Lardner notes that “[p]ornography removed using the erase/rerecord accounted for a large share of the mode of VTRs.” He further notes: business to begin with, in part because “The producer’s and [TV network’s] the producers of ‘adult’ movies -- program standards department’s fear unhindered by any prejudice against of unanticipated on-air obscenity or the new medium -- had been its first libel occurring on audience suppliers.”99 However, Austin raises a participation programs was removed cautionary note, observing: “The by virtue of the new medium.”96 popularity of X-rated sexually explicit video, long suspected of particular The first explicit sexual video seems to success in the home market, is difficult have been released in 1977 and, very to track with any precision, since rapidly, “X-” and “XXX-”rated videos industry reports of such titles are came to dominate this fledging new either nonexistent or notoriously medium of representation. By the unreliable.”100 late-’70s, X-rated videos were selling for about $100 each and accounted for The adoption of video as, increasingly, half of the PRC market; however, the principal technology for both the according to the Software Dealer’s production and distribution of sexual Association, by 1984 “adult” titles had representations is important for at slipped to 13 percent of total sales. least three reasons. First, it undercut This market segment accounted for a the hegemony of broadcasters wide assortment of titles. By 1985, particularly network television. when approximately one hundred Because of limitations in channel sexually explicit full-length films were capacity inherent to the analog NTSC released, an estimated 1,700 new spectrum, TV fosters the consolidation sexually-explicit videos were released. of a homogenized national market. So popular were “adult” videos that by Like radio, analog TV is a one-way and ‘85, when approximately 28 percent of a point-to-multipoint distribution US households had a VCR, three-fifths medium. This federally licensed of the nation’s 20,000 retail outlets distribution model facilitates were selling and/or renting such “gatekeeper” control over the creation titles.97 and dissemination of programming by centralized networks. Video, however, Homevideo encouraged the is more like photography and -- when “mainstreaming” of explicit sexual driven by improvements in portability representation, but the Supreme and picture quality as well as cost Court’s 1984 famous Sony decree had reductions -- “democratizes” reception two significant consequences that and, in time, production. This helps transformed the porn industry. First, foster both viable niche-market it legitimized a viewer’s right to freely “professional” productions appealing to record copy-righted material off-the- nearly every taste as well as personal air for non-commercial display in the or “amateur” productions expressing privacy of their home. Second, it nearly every imagery perversion. legitimized the “First Sale” doctrine under which a merchant could acquire

Second, video furthers the market- only admits to, but encourages, the driven “democratization” of sexual pleasures -- and “perversions”! -- of representation by shifting the venue of women. That this new aesthetic sexual performance from the porn emerged concomitantly with the rise of theatre, “masturbation booth” or the women’s movement was quite bookstore to the privacy of the accidental. viewer’s (i.e., performer’s) home or bedroom. The shift from the arcade to The satellite has an even longer -- and the bedroom helped transform the more colorful -- “prehistory” than distribution model from that of the video. Arthur C. Clarke is credited with radio/TV media to a more “multipoint- envisioning the first geosynchronous to-multipoint” model. This encouraged orbiting satellite in 1945, but it would the emergence of new class of take the Soviet Union to launch commercial mediating institutions like Sputnik, the first communications retail outlets and catalog fulfillment satellite, in 1957. In the U.S., the first companies that uses public/private commercial domestic communications mail delivery (often in the proverbial satellite, the Westar I, was launched in “plain-paper wrapping”) to consumers. 1974. The following year, HBO, the Even a Supreme Court judge can premium pay cable service, began to watch “porn” in the privacy of his distribute its programs to its regional home. Nevertheless, this shift in system operators via satellite feeds venue has an often-unrecognized and helped remake the cable- consequence. “The [pornographic] television industry. By 1979, the FCC tape slips onto a shelf, is rented or deregulated receive-only (TVRO) not, and its possible sociological or satellites -- the bulky backyard earth- historical impact recedes into the station dishes -- that opened up direct background,” Williams acknowledges. access to programming by the average “This apparent timelessness, though, TV viewer.102 is only the illusion of a group of texts [i.e., works] that the parent culture Because cable and satellite would prefer to disown; part of the programming distribution does not challenge of reading them is to put employ terrestrial electromagnetic them back into time, to note the radio spectrum, such services do not historical demarcations in the seeming require traditional FCC TV monolith, the way they are as much broadcasting licenses to operate. In about change as about repetition.”101 addition, because cable and satellite services are “fee” based, offer more Finally and perhaps most important, programming channels and (since the restructuring of production and 1997 with DigiCipher encryption distribution resulting from the techniques) can scramble the video economies of scale/scope of popular signal, they provided the necessary video adoption, significantly preconditions for the in-home contributes to the fostering of a new reception and display of sexually- pornographic aesthetic. The privacy of explicit video. As the 1986 US the home venue of display, while Attorney General’s commission on undercutting the viability of porn pornography noted, “cable and theatre catering to the “raincoat satellite programs often contain more crowd,” encourages viewing by couples sexually explicit scenes than those and single women. This, in tern, shown over broadcast television.”103 helped to undercut the historic The primary vehicle for both misogyny of traditional pornography. suggestive “R” and illicit “X” and “XXX” In addition, it contributed to the rated materials was “premium” emergence of a new aesthetic that not services like HBO or Showtime, “pay-

© David Rosen, 2016 page 26 Sex Matters Sandstone Ranch per-view” services like Spice and counterculture politicized sexuality as Playboy, and locally originated, never before in U.S. history. Yes, the noncommercial public access channels. mid-19th century utopians and turn-of- Together, these technologies of the-20th century hedonists challenged delivery have opened a virtual traditional moral order. But the ‘60s floodgate of programming to an sexual revolution represented a new enormously expanded audience of order of magnitude of social struggle. receptive viewers. The civil-rights and anti-war movements of he ‘60s challenged, A peculiar contradiction distinguished each in its own and complementary the most “public” of the technologies way, the then-dominant structure of of representation, radio and television. social and political power as well as These media have at once reached the the system of moral authority. And largest audiences while delivering the the movement for sexual liberation most prescribed, “censored” was infused a similar rebellious spirit. programming. While the guarantee of “freedom of speech” is one the Like the other movements, the sexual cornerstone principals on which each liberation movement consisted of a medium is built, a review of their complex mix of people, social settings respective histories reveals how a and experiences. It included females policy of “censorship” has been and males, heterosexuals and strictly maintained. Broadcasting homosexual, adults – and young embodies the legacy of the Comstock people -- of all races, class and regions laws that had originally been passed of the country. They were people into by Congress in the post-Civil War all and every form of consensual, non- period. Their power resides in three exploitative – and, too often, important factors -- (1) the nonconsensual and exploitive -- requirement to secure a federal license practices that promised sexual to operate, (2) media technology pleasure. In effect, this movement based on “air wave” scarcity and (3) a encompassed all those who acted out corporate-defined, network-structured, their sexual intentions in a way that advertising-based business model. risked possible arrest or other forms of social stigmatization and harassment – Rethinking the ‘60s even if performed in the privacy of one’s own home. This sexual “The decade of the ‘60s had ushered in movement was incubating by the anti- an unprecedented sexual subversives hysteria of the post-WW-II permissiveness, characterized by mini period.104 By the ‘60s, the outlines of a skirts, the pill, group sex, mate self-identified community of people swapping, a skyrocketing divorce rate, pushing the boundaries of acceptable and acceptance of premarital sex,” sexual experience were in place. observed the historian Lillian Faderman. “The rigidities of the ‘50s The ‘60s movement for sexual was turned on its head. liberation, like the other major social Heterosexuality began to look movements of the period, was split somewhat like homosexuality, as between a more mainstream liberal nonproductive sex and cohabitation approach and a more radical strain. without marriage came to be Not unlike those fighting for civil commonplace. “[Faderman/201; see rights, against the Vietnam War and to also Heidenry and Allyn] limit consumerism, the fight for greater pleasure shared a split The cauldron of simmering social between those championing fervor that defined the 1960s “liberalization” and those

“liberation.”105 Liberalization prohibitive legislation, arrests, press encouraged a greater exploration of scandals, lose of employment, trial pleasure but (for the most part) did so and imprisonment, and even within terms of a conventional, institutionalization in psychiatric patriarchal heterosexuality; liberation asylums. For much of the 20th century, also encouraged pushing the few, including civil libertarians and boundaries of sexual expression, but other progressives, protested or did so challenging both patriarchy and challenged this repression. heterosexuality and, thus, the power Unfortunately, this was especially true relations between the participants. for those labeled perverts. Whether involved in sexual liberalization or liberation, participants The Stonewall uprising in 1969 and the confronted issues relating to age, Roe v. Wade Supreme Count decision class, race and gender role and erotic of 1973 were two of the most pivotal proclivities. All engaged in the moments in the politics of sexuality dialectic of sexual power, of equal during the ‘60s-‘70s period. consent expressed in terms of Symbolically, they were not unlike the masculine/feminine, top/bottom, Montgomery Bus Boycott and Brown v butch/femme or the terms. Board of Education decision that framed the civil-rights movement. The U.S. has had a long history of Stonewall and Roe framed the illicit adult consensual sex. However, subsequent quarter-century with much of this practice has been -- and regard to sexual identity. For sexual for some continues to be -- defined as identity, control over one’s own body - “sinful,” “abnormal,” “illegal” or - and the experience of pleasure – was “perverse” or all four. Those who not only merely a personal or even engage in activities socially labeled as social issue; it was a political immoral have often faced a variety of engagement. forms of harassment and outright repression, including moral crusades,

Notes

1 Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society (Boston: Beacon Press, 1964), p. 78. 2 John Heidenry, What Wild Ecstacy: The Rise and Fall of the Sexual Revolution (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1997), pp. 175-76; John D’Emilio and Estelle B. Freedman, Intimate Matters: A History of Sexuality in America (New York; Harper & Row, 1988), p. 326. 3 Gay Talese, They Neighbor’s Wife (New York: Dell, 1981), pp. 398-99. 4 Ibid., pp. 222-23; David Allyn, Make Love, Not War -- The Sexual Revolution: An Unfettered History (New York: Routledge, 2001), pp. 200-02.

5 Allyn, op. cit., pp. 80-82. 6 Lillian Faderman, Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers: A History of Lesbian Life in 21st Century America (New York: Penguin, 1991), p. q-203. 7 [Jennings] 8 William and Jerrye Breedlove. Swap Clubs: A Study in Contemporary Mores (Los Angeles: Sherbourne Press, 1964), p. 35. 9 Ibid., p. 45. 10 Ibid., p. 59. 11 Ibid., p. 60. 12 Ibid., p. 64. 13 Ibid., p. 72. 14 James Petersen, James R., The Century of Sex: Playboy’s History of the Sexual Revolution, 1900-1999 (New York: Grove Press, 1999). pp. 346-47. 15 Charles and Rebecca Palsom. “Swinging in Wedlock,” in John H. Gagnon and William Simon, eds., The Sexual Scene (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Press, 1973), p. 106. 16 Allyn, op. cit., p. 238. 17 Ibid. p. q-38. 18 Heindenry, op. cit., pp. 263-64. 19 Ibid., p. 218. 20 Charles Kaiser, The Gay Metropolis (San Diego, CA: Harcourt Brace, 1997), pp. 244-45. 21 Joel I. Brodsky, “The Mineshaft: A Retrospective Ethnography,” in Thomas S. Weinberg, ed, S&M: Studies in Dominance & Submission (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 1995), p. 206. 22 Ibid., pp. 208-09. 23 John Preston, My Life as a Pornographers & Other Indecent Acts (New York: Masquerade Books, 1993), p. 52. 24 Ibid. 25 Brodsky, op. cit., p. 215; see also Kaiser, op. cit., pp. 245-46, Preston, op. cit., pp. 51-58. 26 Heidenry, op. cit., p. 160. 27 Gayle Rubin, “The Catacombs: A temple of the butthole,” in Mark Thompson, ed., Leatherfolk: Radical Sex, People, Politics and Practice (Boston: Alyson Publications, 1991), pp. 121-22. 28 Ibid., pp. 123, 128, 124, 125. 29 Ibid., p. 126. 30 Ibid., p. 130, 131. 31 James F. Quinn, James F. “Sex Roles and Hedonism Among Members of ‘Outlaw’ Motorcycle Clubs.” Deviant Behavior, 8: 47-63 (1987), p. 55. 32 Rochella Thorpe, Rochella, “A house where queers go: African-American Lesbian Nightlife in Detroit, 1940-1975,” in Ellen Lewin, ed., Inventing Lesbian Cultures in America (Boston: Beacon Press, 1996), p. 59. 33 Rubin, op. cit., pp. 120-21. 34 Faderman, op. cit., p. 166; Duberman/170ff] – 35 Thorpe, op. cit., p. 60. 36 Stein, op. cit., pp. 66-67. 37 Faderman, op. cit., p. 161 38 [Duberman/118] 39 Faderman, op. cit., pp. 165, 182; Duberman/118; Thorpe, op. cit., pp. 53-55; Stein, op. cit., pp. 57-80.

40 Stein, op. cit., p. q-59. 41 Thorpe, op. cit., p. 59 42 q/Fritscher/109] 43 [Rubin-2001/20-22] 44 Geroge Chauncey, Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World, 1890-1940 (New York: Basic Books, 1994), pp. 337-59. 45 Duberman/183] 46 Kaiser, op. cit., p. 197. 47 Faderman, op. cit., p. 198. 48 Stein, op. cit., p. 147. 49 John Loughery, The Other Side of Silence: Men’s Lives and Gay Identities – A Twentieth-Century History (New York: Henry Holt & Company, 1999), p. 358. 50 Heidenry, op. cit., p. 108. 51 Ibid., p. 162; see also Loughery, op. cit., p. 358. 52 Loughery, op. cit., pp. 359-60; Allyn, op. cit., p. 238. 53 Loughery, op. cit., pp. 358-60. 54 Talese, op. cit., p. 303. 55 Ibid., p. 305. 56 Ibid., pp. 307-8, 311-14. 57 Ibid., p. 314. 58 Ibid., pp. 315-16. 59 Ibid., pp. 309-10. 60 Gerald and Caroline Greeene. S-M: The Last Taboo (New York: Grove Press, 1974), p. q-197. 61 Stein, op. cit., p. 35. 62 Heidenry, op. cit., p. 173; see also Stein, op. cit., pp. 15-19. 63 U.S., The Report of the 1970 Commission on Obscenity and Pornography, v. III, pp. 131, 180. 64 Hoag Levins, Amerian Sex Machines: The Hidden History of Sex at the U.S. Patent Office (Holbrook, MA: Adams Media Corp., 1996), pp. 225, 227, 219; see also Janice M. Irvine, Disorders of Desire: Sex and Gender in Modern American Sexology (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1990), pp. 107-14. 65 Heidenry, op. cit., p. 75. 66 Ibid., pp. 75-77. 67 U.S., Final Report of the Attorney General's Commission on Pornography (Nashville, TN: Rutledge Hill Press, 1986), pp. 342-45. 68 US Attorney General, p. 378. 69 US Attorney General, p. 370. 70 SAMOIS, Coming to Power: Writing and Graphics of Lesbian S/M (Boston: Alyson Publications, 1987); see also Heidenry, op. cit., p. 154; Rubin, op. cit., p. 120; David Stein, “S/M’s Copernican Revolution: From a closed world to the infinite Universe,” in Mark Thompson, ed. Leatherfolk: Radical Sex, People, Politics and Practice (Boston: Alyson Publications, 1991), p. 146. 71 Heidenry, op. cit., 50. 72 Wiliam Heise, The Kiss (1896)] 73 David Nasaw, Going Out: The Rise and Fall of Public Amusements (New York: Basic Books, 1993), p. 154. 74 Jane Addams, The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets (New York: McMillian, 1909), p. 86. 75 Williams, op. cit., p. 85. 76 Ibid., p. 76. 77 Ibid., pp. 74, 73.

78 D’Emilio and Freedman, op. cit., pp. 281-82. 79 Richard S. Randall, “Censorship: From The Miracle to Deep Throat,” in Tino Balio, ed., The American Film Industry (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1985), p. 511. 80 Ernest Borneman, Ernest, “United States versus Hollywood: The Case of an Antitrust Suit,” in Tino Balio, ed., The American Film Industry, p. 459. 81 Randall, op. cit. 82 Richard H. Kuh, Foolish Figleaves?: Pornography in -- and out of -- Court (New York: MacMillian Company, 1967), p. 24; U.S., 1970 Commission, pp. 307-08. 83 Heidenry, op. cit., pp. 87, 85; Randall, op. cit., p. 522. 84 Randall, Ibid. 85 Williams, op. cit., pp. 99, 98. 86 Ibid., p. 100; Heidery, op. cit., pp. 149-53. 87 Heidenry, Ibid., p. 322. 88 Kuh, op. cit., p. 60. 89 Ibid., p. 307. 90 Ibid., pp. 40, 96, 305. 91 Ibid., p. 92. 92 Ibid., pp. 93-94. 93 Heidenry, op. cit., pp. 55, 73; Willams, op. cit., p. 75. 94 US Attorney General, op. cit., pp. 376-77. 95 Randall, op. cit., p. 519. 96 Bruce A. Austin/323] 97 US Attorney General, op. cit., pp. 352-53. 98 Heiderny, op. cit., p. 213. 99 James Lardner, Fast Forward: Hollywood, the Japanese and the VCR Wars (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1987), pp. 183-84. 100 Austin/338]. 101 Williams, op. cit., pp. 268-69. 102 Andrew F. Inglis, Behind the Tube: A History of Broadcasting Technology and Business (Boston: Focal Press, 1990), pp. 392-412. 103 US Attorney General, op. cit., p. 362. 104 David Rosen, /book] 105 Faderman, op. cit., p. 189; D’Emilio and Freedman, op. cit., p. 306.