Here is a draft of the oral history project I am currently engaged in for my seminar class on the History of Sexuality in America:
Normalizing Public Nudity in San Francisco
Elwood Miller
HMSX 702
“I think if anyone has a problem with
[nudity], it’s their issue not mine. Because, what kind of damage is there? If
they’re offended, look the other way. I might be offended by something you’re
wearing, but I’m not going to complain, I’m going to look the other way if I
don’t like it. So I think they should have the same courtesy.” [1]
One particularly warm San Francisco day,
I found myself sitting with a friend in the newly fashioned Jane Warner Plaza
at the intersection of 17th, Castro, and Market streets. I was naked, my friend
was not. An older woman passed by with a little boy beside her. The boy found
us fascinating. He looked, smiled, and said with that wonder only a child can
muster, “A naked man!” The older woman told him, “He is disgusting!” The boy
replied, “Disgusting, yea, he’s disgusting,” stopped looking at us and ran to
keep up with the woman. My friend and I had just witnessed the very moment when
a child’s mind is closed, when that child is first taught that what they
believe to be interesting and natural, a naked body, is shameful and
disgusting. Teaching this child that my naked body is disgusting teaches him
that his body is disgusting as well. Many believe the time has now arrived when
our very bodies deserve to be recognized and afforded equality in the public
realm. There is growing resistance to the societal control which dictates
hiding our bodies because some see them as shameful, dangerous, primitive, or
disgusting. Exploring four oral histories, I will argue that not only has a
movement for nudist equality been in ferment since the 1960s, but has also
experienced what were once thought of as impossible advances in the past
fifteen years; a movement to normalize the naked body in public space, to
guarantee equal access and freedom from stigmatization by those who choose
clothes freedom.
Given the prevailing attitude towards our
bodies, it is not surprising that historians and other academics have largely
ignored the nudist or naturist movement as a serious topic of study until
recently. Those who do address the topic seem unable or unwilling to challenge
the status quo. In Hiding From Humanity:
Disgust, Shame, and the Law, Martha C. Nussebaum states that even though
the rationale for laws against public nudity are weak, “many people really do
believe that premature exposure to the sight of adult genitals harms children,
and the intrusion on personal liberty that is involved in restricting public
nudity is probably not great enough to worry about.”[2]
Nussebaum dismisses the right of the body to exist in public space as
inconsequential, although she sees no logical reason for its prohibition,
revealing her own biases and learned prejudices. Ruth Barcan, in Nudity: A Cultural Anatomy, argues that
while we might seem to possess more body freedom now with the proliferation of
nudity through various media, it is always restricted by regimes of
representation which privilege only certain bodies, insist on sexualizing the
body, and highlight the vast differential between actual permissible bodily
practices and those representations.[3]
Barcan’s observations and conclusions are astute, but what both Nussebaum and
Barcan fail to see is a growing movement that not only questions regimes of
corporatized, commoditized representations of bodies but also demands access to
equality in the public sphere in spite of social myths centered on childhood
sexuality and the hysteria that subject currently evokes.
San Francisco has had a reputation for
being a wide-open town, providing fertile ground for the outsider, the
marginalized, and the freethinking since its initial surge as the way station
to the California gold rush of 1849.[4]
Andrew T. relates how San Francisco has the reputation for always being a place
for renegades, as well as a place that affirms human sexuality more readily
then many other places.[5]
Indeed, in San Francisco the push for nudist equality, for normalizing the
naked body in public space, may be traced at least to August 21, 1965, when
Jefferson F. Poland, leader of the San Francisco Sexual Freedom League, along
with his girlfriend Ina Saslow and friend Shirley Einseidal held a Nude Wade-In
at the Aquatic Park near Fisherman’s Wharf. The group had notified the press,
and reporters and cameramen were on hand as well as a crowd of about five
hundred mostly male curious onlookers. Handing out fliers and holding signs
proclaiming, “WHY BE ASHAMED OF YOUR BODY?,” other supporters were on hand to
form a picket line. Once out of the water, Poland, Saslow, and Einseidal joined
the picket line, naked. The police arrived and the trio was arrested.[6]
Almost forty years later, the nude body
in public space is becoming more normalized in San Francisco due to the efforts
of a core group of activists. At Seventeenth, Castro, and Market Streets on any
warm, sunny day, men will come to sun and lounge naked. Men may often be seen
walking through the neighborhood naked as well. Andrew T. finds what has
happened there “amazing in terms of people’s acceptance and in terms of
emboldening [himself].”[7]
Andrew gives a great deal of credit for the success of the movement as well as
his personal increased comfort level with public nudity to activist George
Davis as well as events such as a dance project he participated in with the
Dandelion Dancetheater. The Dandelion Dancetheater describes itself as “being
situated at the crossroads of dance, theater, community activism, healing, and
new performance forms.”[8]
The event Andrew was involved in took place in a warehouse space in San
Francisco’s Mission District around 1998. All of the performers were naked at
some point during the event, and each night the event would begin with a march,
led by a drummer, as naked as you dared, around the outside of the warehouse space.
Some people were top-free, some were dressed, and some were naked. The dance,
being about body acceptance and the exploration of who may be named a dancer,
incorporated all body types: classically fit, obese, young, old, and
other-abled. Walking around the block naked night after night in the mission
was a big breakthrough for Andrew. Seeing people engaging in public nudity,
Andrew related, gave him the feeling that he wanted to be a part of this, to be
a pioneer for change.[9]
A bunch of guys [were] outside of a bar,
and they were like, ‘What the hell are you doing?’ I’m like, ‘This is who I am.
I don’t like clothes. I don’t wear them unless I have to.’ And they’re like,’
Aren’t you afraid you’ll be arrested?’ And I’m like, ‘No, it’s not illegal.”[10]
Public
nudity is not illegal in San Francisco except in the parks and for decades the
police ignored this fact until recent actions by local nudist activists
challenged longstanding police policies.[11]
The San Francisco Police Department regularly cited people engaging in public
nudity as recently as the fall of 2010. However, the District Attorney’s Office
would not prosecute. George Davis has been a nudist activist for many years,
and many nudists such as Andrew T. credit him with doing much to change the police
department’s policy regarding complaints over public nudity. Davis worked as a cab driver in San Francisco
in the 1970s before moving away. When he returned to the city in the early
1980s he noticed a major conservative shift in mass culture, even in San
Francisco. Davis believes one of the barriers to having public nudity achieve
more citywide acceptance is the lack of a gender balance. During the 1970s,
Davis said it would have been easy to find women willing to participate, but
since the 1980s it is nearly impossible.[12]
Davis first began his activism practicing
nude yoga at Fisherman’s Wharf in San Francisco. On July 29, 2004, Davis was
cited for committing a public nuisance after a nearby clothing store merchant
complained. “You have a man standing in front of the cable car turnaround doing
yoga nude, with a bus full of children from a Christian school next to it,”
said Harriet Gibson, the storeowner. “We don’t need that in our city.”[13] But prosecutors dropped the
charges. “Being naked in San Francisco is not a crime,” explained District
Attorney spokesperson Debbie Mesloh, “unless the gentleman had lewd conduct or
was obstructing traffic.”[14] Since then, Davis has run
for mayor of San Francisco and for supervisor of District 6, always campaigning
naked with a nudist platform. Davis has twenty-three citations and eighteen
arrests for indecent exposure and was handcuffed and sent to prison for seven
hours since the District Attorney’s pronouncement. The result of all of these
arrests and citations was zero trials and zero convictions. Davis also has
fifteen letters from the Office of Citizen’s Complaints describing police
dealings with him as harassment. It was not until he and fellow activist Lloyd
Fishback protested in front of city hall naked during his supervisoral campaign
in 2010 that the police harassment stopped.[15]
Rusty Mills tells of frequent
confrontations with the police when going out with a group of friends for nude
urban excursions in the evenings. Mills and his group knew what they were doing
was not illegal, but the police did not. Mills took the approach of arguing
with the police about it. Some of the nudists with Mills thought this would
make it worse, but Mills related that it did not; in fact it made it better.
“They [the police] realized they weren’t dealing with someone who was easy
intimidated.”[16] Mills said several others
began taking this approach as well, not backing down when confronted by police
who were challenging their right to be legally nude, and he feels it made a
huge difference in the long run. Mills began his urban nude excursions around
1988 and eventually ran into a few others who were engaged in the same
activity. However, it was with an Internet group he founded around 2002 that
led to an explosion of contacts with urban nudists and their supporters.
Even at events such as the San Francisco
Folsom Street Fair, a leather and fetish celebration, and the San Francisco Bay
2 Breakers, which has a history of celebrating the absurd through costumed
participation, the police would intervene when public nudity occurred according
to nudist advocate, Mitch Hightower.[17]
The first year for naked runners, 1993, six who ran naked in the Bay 2 Breakers
were arrested as soon as they crossed the finish line. Five of the group opted
to challenge the charges; one member accepted a plea bargain. Attorney William
G. Stripp filed a demurrer to the court on their behalf substantiating that the
charges were illegal, and the charges were immediately dismissed. That was the
first and last year naked participants in the foot race were arrested.[18]
The first Folsom Street Fair was held in
1984, and public nudity was discouraged from the beginning by use of “informational tickets” that fair monitors
would hand to naked participants explaining that the fair was meant to be a
“safe-space” for everyone, thereby conflating genitalia with danger and harm.
People would put something brief on, walk a half block, and get naked again,
recalled Hightower. This cat and mouse game occurred year after year. The Dore
Alley Fair began in 1987.[19]
It was smaller, less public, and attracted fewer tourists than the larger
Folsom Fair, so it quickly gained a reputation as being more sexually open and
nude friendly. In the 1980s, Hightower described the Dore Fair as being more
intimate, more about male bonding. The popularity of the Dore Fair forced it
out of the alley and onto Folsom Street, resulting in a more restricted and
policed event.[20] Hightower remembers having an exhibit at the
Folsom Fair in 2004 that was a jail. Everyone who they saw naked, they threw in
the jail cell. Soon, Hightower said, the cell was filled with naked people. He
believes that was the point after which people started coming to the fair
explicitly to be naked.[21]
Rusty Mills and Lloyd Fishback were stopped
by San Francisco Police officer Lorenzo Adamson while walking by the LGBT
Community Center naked on Saturday, June 7, 2008, after supporting San
Francisco’s World Naked Bike Ride, an annual event held in cities worldwide
since 2004 to protest fossil fuel dependence and celebrate body freedom.
Adamson told Mills and Fishback that they could not walk around naked; it was
indecent exposure. Mills informed Officer Adamson that it was only indecent
exposure if you engage in lewd behavior. Adamson retorted, “I don’t care about
all that legal mumbo-jumbo. It’s not normal . . . it’s not healthy, and no
other police officers would disagree with me.” However, Mills and Fishback were
not cited and were soon on their way (See image #1, appendix).[22]
San Francisco Police Officer Lorenzo Adamson made it clear in his exchange with
Mills that he was aware of the law but did not care, citing it as so much legal
mumbo-jumbo, and that he believed his opinion and the opinions of his fellow
officers that public nudity was not normal or healthy overrode any legal
concerns.
When George Davis ran as the nudist
candidate for supervisor of San Francisco District 6 in 2010 with a platform
espousing freedom of expression and freedom from censorship, he challenged and
confronted police prejudice and harassment head-on. Davis campaigned nude all
over the city. On August 18, 2010, Davis, along with three other campaigners
were arrested and cited in front of
Macy’s on O’Farrell Street in San Francisco’s Union Square shopping
district. The following Friday, August 20, Davis and Lloyd Fishback began what
they planned as daily protests in front of San Francisco’s City Hall (see image
#2, appendix). On Monday, August 23, before anyone entered the courtroom, the
nudity citations were dismissed and San Francisco Police Department’s legal
department issued new nudity law guidelines. These guidelines specified that:
1. The police will no longer cite for Indecent Exposure (PC 314) unless there
is obvious lewd and obscene conduct. 2. The police may cite for Public Nuisance
(PC 372) with a citizen’s complaint. The police are to exercise their
reasonable discretion on this issue.[23]
The actions of George Davis, Rusty Mills,
Mitch Hightower, and the original five Bay 2 Breakers nudists who challenged their
arrests may all be seen as working to influence both the police department’s
attitude towards public nudity in San Francisco and the issuance of new nudity
law guidelines. It is clear, however, that the defining actions in the struggle
against undue police harassment of public nudists in San Francisco were George
Davis’s actions in 2004 after his arrest at Fisherman’s Wharf for performing
nude yoga in public and again after his arrest in front of Macy’s in 2010 for
campaigning for San Francisco supervisor while naked.
I do think it is a basic right. For me,
nudity is the default. When people say, “Oh, you’ve grown a beard.” No, I
didn’t grow a beard, I didn’t shave. “Oh, you’re naked.” Well yes, I’m naked,
but it’s because I didn’t put on clothes. Nudity is the default.[24]
Following the release of the San
Francisco Police Department’s new public nudity guidelines, an increase in
public nudity occurred on the streets, especially in the city’s Castro
district. According to the district’s supervisor, Scott Weiner, “Now it’s a
regular thing and much more obnoxious.”[25]
Supervisor Weiner introduced legislation to the San Francisco Board of
Supervisors that required any unclad person to put a cloth or similar barrier
down before sitting on benches or other public seats and prohibited nudity in
restaurants. George Davis believes, “Wiener might as well have shot lasers and
fireworks into the sky announcing that public nudity is legal.”[26]
According to Steve Adams, president of the Merchants of Upper Market and Castro
(MUMC), “As long as the people who come to look spend money in the neighborhood,
that’s all I care about.”[27]
Most of my interview subjects agree that an inadvertent effect of the new
Weiner regulations is to acknowledge the lack of legal grounds for an outright
prohibition of public nudity without going so far as to legalize it. Because of
this, along with the many tourists’ positive responses, most of my interview
subjects do not see a backlash coming.[28]
My interviews show the existence of a
growing movement for nudist equality in San Francisco through the normalization
of nudity in public urban spaces that has roots in the 1980s and 1990s and
while having shown some significant successes, still remains fragile and
vulnerable. My subjects believe that public nudity can teach the LGBTQ
community that all bodies are worthwhile, have value, and are beautiful by
upsetting body entitlement and looks-ism within the community.[29]
Body acceptance is something everyone is entitled to, says Mitch Hightower.[30]
Beginning in the 1980s, events such as the Folsom Street and Dore Alley Fairs
have made the queer community aware of the possibilities body freedom
presented. Through the efforts of activists like George Davis, Lloyd Fishback,
Mitch Hightower, Rusty Mills, and the original five Bay 2 Breakers nudists who
challenged their arrest, over time the San Francisco Police Department was
forced to recognize that, in fact, public nudity was not illegal in spite of
individual officers’ moral objections. People like Kevin Alves, Andrew T.,
myself, and others who appear naked in public spaces on a daily basis advance
the movement by making the naked body visible in an urban environment, thereby
normalizing the naked body in everyday discourse and commerce. We may also see
how the activities of these people have indeed attached value to the naked
public body; a monetary value which may be seen in the reactions and statements
of business leader Steve Adams who sees the nudists as a boon to capitalism,
and more importantly the value inherent in normalization, as the naked public
body comes to be seen as natural and life affirming.
Appendix
Rusty Mills and
Lloyd Fishback are questioned by Officer
Lorenzo Adamson,
June 7, 2008. Photo: Jane Philomen Cleland.
Image
2.
George
Davis protests police harassment in front of San Francisco City Hall, August
20, 2010
[2] Martha C. Nussbaum, Hiding
From Humanity: Disgust, Shame, and the Law (Princeton, Oxford: Princeton
University Press, 2004), 304.
[3] Ruth Barcan, Nudity:
A Cultural Anatomy (Oxford, New York: Berg, 2004) 94-6.
[4] Nan Amamilla Boyd, Wide
Open Town: A History of Queer San Francisco to 1965 (Berkeley, Los Angeles,
London: University of California Press, 2003), 1-5.
[5] Andrew T., interviewed by the author, May 3, 2012.
[6] Cec Cinder, The Nudist Idea (Riverside, CA: Ultraviolet Press, 1998) 591-93. ;
Jefferson F. Poland, Sloan, Sam, Sex
Marchers, 2nd ed. ( San Rafael, CA: Ishi Press International,
2006) 18 – 20.
[7] Andrew T.
[8] “Mission Statement,” Dandelion
Dancetheater,
http://www.dandeliondancetheater.org/mission.html (accessed Apr 18,
2012).
[9] Andrew T.
[10] Kevin Alves.
[11] SCOCAL, In re Smith, 7 Cal. 3d 362, http://scocal.stanford.edu/opinion/re-smith-22890 (accessed April 19, 2012). ; San
Francisco Park Code, Sec. 4. 01 (h) Disorderly Conduct., http://archive.org/stream/gov.ca.sf.park/ca_sf_park#page/n15/mode/2up (accessed May 13, 2012).
[12] George Davis, interviewed by the author, Mar. 24, 2012.
[13] Phillip Matier, Ross, Andrew. “Au
Naturel is Natural for Naked Yoga Guy,” San
Francisco Chronicle. http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2004/09/22/BAGQO8SQIK1.DTL, (Sep. 22, 2004).
[15] George Davis.
[16] Rusty Mills, interviewed by the author, Mar. 22, 2012.
[17] Mitch Hightower, interviewed by the author, Mar. 28, 2012
[18] “Bare To Breakers 20th Year Run,” Bare 2 Breakers.com, Apr. 17, 2012, http://www.baretobreakers.com/Main3.html (accessed May 10,
2012).
[19] “History,” Folsom Street Fair 2012, Folsomstreetfair.com. http://www.folsomstreetfair.com/history/history5.php (accessed May 10, 2012). ; Mitch
Hightower.
[20] Mitch Hightower.
[21] Mitch Hightower.
[22] “Naked Men Meet Cop,” Bay
Area Reporter, 42:9, Jun. 12, 2008.
[23] George Davis, “New SFPD Nudity Guidelines,” Georgedavisdistrictsix’s Blog, http://georgedavisdistrictsix.wordpress.com/ (accessed May 10, 2012).
[24] Andrew T.
[25] Malia Wollan, “Protesters Bare All Over a Proposed San
Francisco Law,” New York Times, Sep.
25, 2011 http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/26/us/san-francisco-nudity-restrictions-provoke-the-nakedly-ambitious.html. (accessed May 10, 2012).
[26] Ibid.
[27] Ibid.
[28] George Davis. ; Rusty Mills. ; Lloyd Fishback, interviewed
by the author, May 4, 2012. ; Andrew T.
[29] Mitch Hightower.
