Erotic Resistance: The Struggle for the Soul of San Francisco

by Gigi Otalvaro-Hormillosa

Erotic Resistance  celebrates the erotic performance cultures that have shaped San Francisco. It preserves the memory of the city's bohemian past and its essential role in the development of American adult entertainment by highlighting the contributions of women of color, queer women, and trans women who were instrumental in the city's labor history, as well as its LGBT and sex workers' rights movements. In the 1960s, topless entertainment became legal in the city for the first time in the US, though cross-dressing continued to be criminalized. In the 1990s, stripper-artist-activists led the first successful class action lawsuits and efforts to unionize. Gigi Otálvaro-Hormillosa uses visual and performance analysis, historiography, and ethnographic research, including participant observation as both performer and spectator and interviews with legendary burlesquers and strippers, to share this remarkable story.

Genres: Queer

255 pages, Paperback

Published February 20, 2024

Reviews

[Emma G · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting read for folks interested in SF herstories (as the author calls it) and feminist debates. I was introduced to many new ideas and concepts - most notably a new word I learned: "palimpsest," which is typically used to describe paper or manuscript with text that has been wiped away so that the paper can be reused. But in this book, the author applies the term to physical spaces like cities.

It would have been really compelling if there were maps included in the book visualizing these changes and the "lost soul" of SF over the past couple decades by showing closures of clubs and the gentrification of neighborhoods.

I enjoyed the analyses of the artworks included in the book and the excerpts from interviews. Another cool thing mentioned was the documentary, Live Nude Girls Unite! (2000), available on Kanopy, about the unionization of workers at The Lusty Lady in SF back in the late 90s.

As an East Bay kid and someone who is too young to remember what the City used to be like, this offered a glimpse into the complex and vibrant palimpsest that is/was San Francisco.