PROFILE OF A SEX RADICAL

...the Court based its decision largely on the work of American anti-pornography feminists...

...A number of those arrested lost their jobs, and two committed suicide...

...So does Howard Davidson, director of the American Bar Association Center on Children and the Law...

...recalling the 1969 rebellion by gay activists in Greenwich Village...

...Califia's early recognition that her feelings lay outside what society considered proper had a profound influence on her...

...There's an incredible ranee in human sexual expression...

...Britain's "Operation Spanner," begun in 1989, was one of the most expensive investigations ever undertaken by Scotland Yard...

...The evidence against them: video footage a group of friends had shot of themselves at private S/M parties...

...they are not mysterious givens, but social constructions...

...The court has agreed to hear the case, acknowledging that Operation Spanner may have violated the right to privacy...

...We are sexuallv a \cr\ creati\e species...

...But Califia has not written a Utopia, and says she probably never will...

...Sadomasochistic sex, says Califia, is by definition consensual—a definition that separates it from nonconsensual sex, which she says sadomasochists consider an abuse of power and a form of violence...

...That outsider position makes you a radical if you start thinking about 'why am I on the outside?' and if you have a strong sense of self—which I, for some reason, have always had...

...If you walk into a typical S/M party, you are going to see a lot more communication about people's desires and limits, negotiation about exactly what will take place, care in the performance of sexual activity, and nurturing care afterwards than you would ever see at the typical singles bar or suburban cocktail party...

...she says...

...she says...

...But this sort of self-policing goes on at great risk to gay liberation, says Califia...

...To be radical, to be an activist, you have to give up the idea that your life is going to be safe or comfortable,1' she says...

...Califia's most controversial stance— her opposition to age-of-consent laws—has provoked heated debate...

...I ran a gauntlet evcrv day al school, where I was lucky il I avoided getting beaten up...

...It wouldn't be ethical...

...Hers would have a worker-controlled economy, and full equal opportunities for men and woman...

...When I arrive for the interview at 6:30 p.m., Califia is on the phone...

...1 ask what influenced her to become who she is...

...Calilia leans toward mv portable recorder and speaks di-recllv into the microphone...

...Califia's critics are disturbed by the linkage of pain and sex and by the possibility of inflicting harm...

...Rather, it promotes freedom for men and enslavement and silence for women...

...New things come out of that...

...Masculinity and femininity might become disengaged from gender...

...I know I wouldn't be...

...They will make you pay...

...It's really hard to predict when those magical moments in history will come...

...She is totalis serious...

...When I pushed open the bedroom door, my father was standing there without any clothes on...

...I've had more people stop me on the street to say, "Thank you for your work...

...Spanner led to the arrests of forty-two gay men...

...And the advice column Califia has written for The Advocate since 1981 is immensely popular...

...It always feels like a miracle to me...

...I am willing to hear them tell me what they want, even if it's shocking or difficult to empathize with...

...But for the most part, the left has refused to take sexual politics seriously...

...Pleasure, she argues, is a basic human right...

...I do these things because I have respect for my partners...

...Indiana, where she is a featured speaker for the festival's sexuality series and in high demand for book signings, lectures, dinners, and readings...

...The first time I came out, I lost my nuclear family...

...There's not a lot of room for me in that kind of lavender Utopia...

...You betcha...

...1 still say that children have their own sexuality...

...And it shows...

...And in an egalitarian society, people would need markers for whom they found attractive...

...There, the similarities end...

...But Spanner has also led to activism among sadomasochists worldwide...

...And for Califia, pleasure comes in many forms...

...We are not the property of our families...

...she says...

...Instead we all seem to be trying to mainstream and to pretend that "if the government would just leave us alone, we'd be exactly like straight people.' I don't think so...

...Feminists tend to regard masochism as an example of the damage inflicted by oppression...

...Still, she does not despair...

...She gives me a sly look...

...We're organizing politically not to shock or titillate people but for the purpose of self-defense...

...And that is hard...

...Imeet up with Califia at the National Women's Music Festival in Blooming-ton...

...According to Califia, sadomasochists teach each other safe ways to produce intense physical sensations without endangering anyone's well-being...

...Her work raises a central question for leftists: Does the goal of sexual liberation conflict with our goal of eliminating exploitation...

...Pornography is the great brawling voice of sexual frustration and panic...

...Police in this country take it for granted that they have a right to walk into leather bars and harass people, or try to close the place down," she says...

...I had a strong investment in figuring out why so many people were so twisted about sex, and why there was so much shame about something that seemed to me to be pretty straightforward...

...By the time they located her, she had turned eighteen...

...For all the controversy that has surrounded her writings, Califia upholds herself as a defender of individual liberty...

...I want my inside and my outside to match...

...Her family responded by attempting to confine her to a mental institution, but she had dropped out of school and they couldn't find her...

...and a similar rain of harassment and blows at home...

...I will be a feminist...

...Califia stretches the boundaries of this tradition with her defense of sadomasochism and her controversial critique of age-of-consent laws...

...Califia is an original in the gay community...

...I truly wish others would adhere to the same high standards of consent and consideration that sadomasochists uphold...

...She motions me to the most comfortable chair in the cramped dorm room, wraps up her call, kicks off her boots, and props herself up on two pillows...

...But Califia believes young people can be sexually active without being exploited, and she says we need to stop regarding young people as "the property of their parents...

...Califia is in the tradition of philosophers Wilhelm Reich and Herbert Mar-cuse, the gay pioneer Harry Hay, the poet Allen Ginsberg, the journalist Ellen Willis, and the novelist Dorothy Allison, who calls Califia's essays "lucid, intelligent, brave, and true...

...The government is one of those powerful institutions—especially in Britain...

...Card sees "sexual sadomasochism as enacting, in eroticized and often playful make-believe fashion, roles of dominance and subordinance that characterize not only authoritarian adult-child relationships within the family or authoritarian religious relationships, but, more generally, the norms of a patriarchal, misogynist society...

...The police ultimately decided that they did not have enough evidence to prosecute him...

...In a just society, where children were given the kind of sex education that they ought to be entitled to, and support from their adult caretakers, kids would express their sexuality more instead of less...

...she says...

...Though she sees herself as battling the more censorious wings of American feminism, Califia is still proud to call herself a feminist...

...If I'm out, I get to define my terms...

...she writes in the introduction to her first book, Sapphistry...

...When I ask her to explain what her Utopia would look like, Califia describes a world that in some ways resembles the Utopias she has criticized...

...In that kind of world, it's really hard to emphasize increasing sexual freedom for youth...

...The sex that I have from the outside may not look compassionate...

...The difficulties for nonsadomasochists have been primarily with sadism and with psychodrama that appears to make light not only of rape and incest but also of histories of oppression," writes Card...

...It was pretty clear that I was not going to grow up to be one more Mormon housewife and mother...

...Doc and Fluff, that she calls a dystopia—a grim depiction of sexual repression in America's future...

...In the early 1970s, Califia involved herself in separatist lesbian culture, but soon grew dissatisfied with the movement...

...Eight received prison terms of up to four and a half years...

...Unflinching" is the perfect word for Califia...

...Canadian customs seized Califia's books—along with S/M magazines, issues of The Advocate and Deneuve, the writings of Dorothy Allison, bell hooks, David Leavitt, and Marguerite Duras, a chili-pepper cookbook with the title Hot, Hotter, Hottest, and the anti-pornography writings of Andrea Dworkin herself, who had quoted long passages from the books she advocates censoring...

...Califia says frank talk about sex is particularly important for women—it gives women access to their own pleasure...

...she sa\s...

...Pleasure returns our sense of wonder about the world," she says...

...I want to be consistent with the world...

...She credits her adult sexual mentors with giving her an opportunity to imagine, and create, a belter life...

...Throughout the case, the British authorities acknowledged that the "assaults" had occurred with the full consent of the men involved, that the activities in question had occurred in private, that the injuries had not been permanent and had not required any medical treatment, and that no one had complained to the police...

...I faced continual ridicule and physical violence because I was not a feminine, giggly girl," she says...

...That \anation is benign...

...She does so not only because any censorship violates the First Amendment, but because she believes pornography, like other disdained pleasures, is a form of resistance...

...If there are no penalties for engaging in certain sex acts, more people do it...

...they say out loud that the emperor has no clothes...

...You can't know what any sex act means until you talk to the participants and find out how they feel about it," she says...

...I did not wail until 1 was eighteen to be sexually active...

...Unlike feminists who see pornography as inherently degrading to women, Califia has consistently defended it...

...I had people call me threatening to kill me, threatening to beat me up...

...As a social process and as a form of speech, pornography promotes not freedom but silence" writes author and lawyer Catharine MacKinnon...

...It's one of the ways that we celebrate our most courageous and lovable selves...

...Califia describes herself as a "sex radical" and argues that gender and class injustice "are based mostly on sexuality—hatred of the body, the state's interest in controlling our pleasures...

...Her position comes out of her own experience...

...Sadomasochists wind up educating each other about physical and emotional safety and helping one another to avoid abuse," she says...

...I know that there is so much hate and opposition out there that if I act with self-hate or self-doubt, I will be swept away...

...We have a right to be here...

...I stood there...

...Card asks: ''How can it be right to cause unnecessary suffering deliberately...

...That is the moving passion of my life...

...Note lhai only the interviewer is laughing, not the interview subject...

...Califia, in support of Vancouver's Little Sisters bookstore (a gay and lesbian business repeatedly targeted by Canadian customs), successfully defended her own work in Canadian court...

...Sixteen were eventually charged...

...But since the Butler ruling in 1992, the banned books have been predominantly the literature of sexual minorities...

...We are not the property of our employers...

...They want to codify their philosophical position and turn it into state law and fact...

...I was smart enough not to tell them where I was," she says...

...Califia has been widely hated, but she has also been widely loved...

...To say in 1975 that you were a lesbian who wanted to do S/M was absolutely outrageous, intolerable...

...Many theoretical Utopias are dreamed up by people who are afraid of diversity and deeply conservative about sex," she writes...

...l'So it looks like we may be able to gain protection for ourselves, at least in England," Califia says...

...It's hard to smell your books burning in one corner of the courtroom and to talk about trying to save their lives in the other...

...At the heart of movements for sexual freedom, she says, is the position that the state does not own people...

...But there was a Paris Commune...

...I had people who would spit at me, walk out of restaurants if I walked in...

...The minority culture controls us by limiting our vision and denying us all possible images of the women we might become," Anne-Marie Cusac is the Associate Editor of The Progressive...

...Califia is less inclined now to believe that our society is ready to make sexual freedom safe for minors...

...A system of domination and submission, pornography has the weight and significance of any other historically real torture or punishment of a group of people because of a condition of birth," writes anti-pornography feminist Andrea Dworkin...

...I wound up going through my work and justifying it almost page by page," says Califia...

...Ethics, Califia tells me, is one of her preoccupations...

...Califia believes that in a society with more equality, those things now called perversions would multiply...

...According to Countdown on Spanner (a political group formed in response to Operation Spanner), a married couple was prosecuted for engaging in S/M...

...People felt like they had nothing to lose and they fought back...

...Claudia Card, professor of philosophy at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, has summed up the arguments against S/M in her book Lesbian Choices...

...On this understanding, sadomasochistic desires have roots not simply in individual psychologies but in society at large...

...It's offensive to society's obligation to protect children...

...Some say S/M imitates the oppressive relationships men traditionally have had over women...

...And there are certainly very powerful institutions in our society that would like us not to exist...

...I'm very much in touch with where I came from—a little leather missionary" When I ask how long she has been a sex radical, Califia tells me one of her earliest memories, of a hot afternoon when she was supposed to be taking a nap, but woke up and opened the door to her parents' room...

...Along with her other battles on behalf of sexual freedom, Califia has fought against the censorship of all forms of pornography...

...This second coming-out cost her many of the friends she had gained as a lesbian feminist...

...Thev might become erotic vocations instead of being linked to chromosomes...

...Califia challenges people to overcome their preconceived notions of S/M...

...Even so, most of the men who had acted as sadists were charged with assault...

...As long as men and women are unequal...

...Canada's Supreme Court ruled in the Regina v. Butler case that free speech did not include pornography...

...What I got was a few minutes ot sanctuary away from my family, a vision of another reality, and it saved my life and my sanity" In a 1980 essay, Califia argued that we should not confuse "the issue of violence against children with the issue of children and sexuality...

...But at its heart it is, or I wouldn't do it...

...She also realized that her sexual fantasies were S/M-oriented...

...I think it's interesting that one of the dreams of many social engineers on the left and on the right has been, 'if we had a Utopia, then this kind ot natural sexualiH would emerge' that ostcnsihk would be free from things thai arc now called perversions...

...The second time, I lost my gay family...

...Califia understands that S/M practitioners are under assault...

...In an S/M context, the uniforms and roles and dialogue become a parody of authority, a challenge to it, a recognition of its secret, sexual nature...

...There was a Stonewall riot...

...I'm obsessed with ethical issues...

...They will make it expensive...

...another man lost his job after police raided his home, removed the sex toys they found there, then showed a video of the police search to the local social-services department, the headmaster of the school where he was employed, and the local board of governors...

...I am interested in something ephemeral—pleasure—not in economic control or forced reproduction," she writes...

...That sexuality might sometimes include exploration with older people...

...We need the forbidden and the unspeakable not only because it has intrinsic worth, but because it reminds us that we live in a digitized culture where we're taught to crave food that does not nourish us, cookie-cutter relationships, cliches disguised as inspiration, religions without ecstasy, second-hand violence, third-hand sex, two-dimensional lives that are three sizes too small," Califia writes in Macho Sluts...

...These critics wish people like Califia would go away—or at least keep quiet...

...After the Spanner ruling, police cracked down on S/M bars and parties nationwide...

...People who practice S/M have come together across international lines to assist the group in appealing the decision to the European court...

...This tradition holds that sexual liberation is indispensable to true freedom, and that the repression of sexual pleasure is one of the oldest of the master's tools...

...Pornography is as unpopular with most governments as seditious rhetoric because it has a similar function," she writes in the introduction to Forbidden Passages: Writings Banned in Canada...

...Certainly on a moral level, there's nothing about my life that the Mormon church could ever approve of...

...Califia's defense of sadomasochism has offended critics inside and outside the gay community...

...S/M is premeditated erotic blasphemy," she writes in Public Sex...

...I'm a loving person...

...Her essays assert the political importance of sex workers, butch/femme lesbians, and sadomasochists...

...Political dissidents voice their discontent with business-as-usual...

...Many also think of it as passive, whereas sadism appears active, more easily identified with oppressors...

...Nonetheless, age of consent is one area where Califia's politics have changed during the past sixteen years, although she still opposes age-of-consent laws and "probably always will...

...But in terms of how I live...

...I think it's sad that the lesbian and gay community has abandoned critical analysis of heterosexuality as an institution," she says...

...Califia sees no conflict...

...You saved my life,' than I've had people who hiss and say, 'Get out of my way,' and make it clear that they don't approve," she says...

...Instead, she has written a piece of fiction...

...He finally snapped, 'Do you think it's all right for little girls to stare at their fathers when they are naked?' " This event marked the beginning of a schism, Califia says, between what felt natural and what her family, and the world, would tell her was right...

...Card also argues that the sadomasochistic urge derives from an oppressive society...

...When I begin to laugh...

...It is a consensual activity that involves polarized roles and intense sensations...

...My strategy then was what my strategy has been my whole life," she says...

...We are not the property of the state...

...Sapphistry garnered "wheelbarrows full of vicious reviews," largely because it treated sadomasochism and butch/femme role playing as acceptable forms of sexual expression, she notes...

...Califia's gay critics have voiced anxi-etv that sadomasochists, trans-vestites, and other sexual minorities make all gay people appear extreme, thus providing fodder for the Christian right...

...As a lesbian sado-masochist, a minority within a minority culture, she has repeatedly defended gender outlaws...

...But since its first printing in 1980, the book has been one of Naiad Press's top sellers...

...Califia insists that the current, popular anti-porn ideology is not just a theoretical issue: "Anti-porn activists like Andrea Dworkin and Catharine MacKinnon don't just want to picket porn shops and organize Take Back the Night marches...

...We're not even able to give kids the kind of sex education they need to protect themselves from AIDS," she says...

...In Canada, we have an example of what would happen if feminist anti-porn theory became law...

...I might take issue with the word "consent...

...Califia vehemently denies that S/M is about a death wish, is abusive, or replicates oppressive real-life situations...

...How did she respond...

...There is no task more radical, more in keeping with a vision of a free society, than changing sexual relations," writes Willis in her book Beginning to See the Light...

...At age seventeen, Califia left high school a year early and enrolled herself in college, where she first met out lesbians, and realized she, too, was gay...

...We're a community that is under state attack...

...Their partners were charged with conspiring to assault themselves...

...For sixteen years, "I've been standing on the tails of sacred cows, ringing a very large bell," she says...

...I thought, 'I'm doing something wrong here, but I don't know what and I don't know why.' That was one of the first clues that I couldn't trust my own sense of what was right or wrong when it came to my body and the things that grown-ups called 'sexual,' and that I would have to study other people for cues and hide my own beliefs and my own behavior if I was going to make it into adulthood...

...It's been the leather community's Stonewall," says Califia...

...I'm the most politically correct person 1 know...

...Because sadomasochism is usually portrayed as a violent, dangerous activity, most people do not think that there is a great deal of difference between a rapist and a bondage enthusiast," she writes in Public Sex...

...I can't think of anything that gives people more energy or more heart or more hope when they need to face opposition and get through parts of their lives that are difficult and frightening...

...I come from a bunch of people who left everything they had behind, piled their clothes and some seeds in wooden carts, and dragged them across the entire length of the continental Lmited States to go start something new...

...In most cases what we see are big power differentials—a power difference based on age...

...S/M recognizes the erotic underpinnings of our system and seeks to reclaim them...

...She defended her work in a way that only Pat Califia could: unflinchingly," says Janine Fuller, the manager of Little Sisters...

...Her critics are dismayed by her belief that society should suspend rules that say minors do not have the capacity to consent to sex with an adult...

...So writes author Pat Califia in the preface to her book of erotic fiction, Macho Sluts...

...so the word 'consent' doesn't make much sense," says Mark Haag, clinical director of the Oasis Program, based in Madison, Wisconsin, a treatment center for families where there has been sexual abuse...

...You have to go out and buck the system...

...Califia has aligned herself with "disenfranchised people and topics, even if that meant I would stay poor and be widely hated," she writes in Public Sex: The Culture of Radical Sex...

...He glared at me...

...Califia's Utopia is anything but boring...

...The gains we have made "are fragile...

...I get to tell people who I am and what it means...

...And she has had some intimidating foes...

...As a young person...

...We shouldn't forget that there have been times in human history when people did come together for whatever reason," she goes on...

...But sadomasochism is not a form of sexual assault...

...I personally consider that when a guy who's twenty-six gets involved with a fourteen-year-old, that is by its nature exploitative," he says...