The Sex Worker Film and Arts Festival kicks off nine days of film, performance, and lectures in an exuberant manner this week. Sex work activist Siouxsie Q is opening the festival with a live version of her acclaimed podcast, The WhoreCast, at the Center for Sex and Culture this Saturday.

Siouxsie and The WhoreCast have been through a lot this year. The show, formerly known as This American Whore, underwent an identity crisis when Chicago Public Media, which produces This American Life, demanded that she change the name.

Although she eventually had to comply, Siouxsie Q didn't come out of it too badly: The WhoreCast is now the only show about whores that has been publicly endorsed by Ira Glass as "charming."

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In the opening of Aroused, photographer Deborah Anderson promises great things: "This is not a movie about porn," she says in her opening narration. "This is a story about women. Their dreams, their desires, and their lives." The film is a part of a larger multimedia project, showing conversations between Anderson and sixteen female porn stars who modeled for her latest fine-art book. Her goal, she says, was to "strip away the porn star mask, allowing for their true essence to shine through, as the exaggerated image of a porn star has stuck with us for so long. As an artist, I felt the need to change the way we view these women visually."

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Sex workers have become much more visible in politics and culture over the last couple of decades. Thanks to a surge of activism starting in the 1990s, memoirs and essays about sex work have become their own subgenre. Even in liberal circles, a lot of stigma still remains, but publicly admitting that you're an escort, stripper, or porn star is a lot more likely to be accepted as a valid choice.

But while the workers have been able to edge ever so slightly into the daylight, the clients have remained securely and silently in the shadows. With their new anthology, Johns, Marks, Tricks, and Chicken Hawks: Professionals and Clients Writing About Each Other, co-editors David Henry Sterry and R.J. Martin, Jr. are trying to shift the conversation to include both sides of the transaction. Sterry, and Martin will be reading at The Booksmith on Haight Street tonight along with several contributors. Sterry, who worked as a rent boy when he was 17, talked to us about sex, money, and how to be a good client.

SF Weekly: Why did you take the approach of doing a book about clients?

Well, the first book that we put together [Hos, Hookers, Call Girls and Rent Boys] was all sex workers. I just felt like it would be cool to see what people who are buying sex are thinking about it as opposed to people who are just selling it. People buy and sell sex for such different reasons, depending on who they are and what their circumstances are. People who are buying sex -- they're not heard from. It's this billion-dollar industry with no customers. So, I really wanted to find people who would write articulately about what the experience is like for them.

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Hanna Quevedo

Something like this

Now that Diesel's retail location at the storied corner of Castro and Market has folded, there are plans in the works to bring a gay, philanthropic burlesque strip club to the old Bank of America building.

Oh, and during the daytime and early evening the establishment will offer patrons "locally sourced and sustainable dining options with designer cocktails and premium wine and liquor." That ought to get the party started.

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And there are those who have no other choice but to wait

SeekingArrangement.com, that pseudo-scientific conductor of sexy and creepy studies is at it again. Previously, the dating company deemed San Francisco the nation's sugar daddy capital. Now, the sex researchers over there have determined that S.F. women aren't that sexually experienced after all. In fact, according to its most recent study, 1 out of every 10 San Francisco women are still virgins.

Seeking Arrangement, a dating service that pairs sugar daddies with sugar babies, surveyed 5,498 of their local female members about their virginity, and learned that compared to the national average, San Francisco women tend to wait longer before having sex.

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She had to bring race into the debate

Just when you thought Proposition 35, the controversial state law voters passed which stiffens fines for convicted human traffickers, couldn't trigger the community any more: A local Prop. 35 panelist lost control of herself during a recent forum discussing the pros and cons of the new law, which also forces convicted traffickers to register as sex offenders.More »

Being Crowned Miss San Francisco

Adult beauty pageants are something that people seem to have a love/hate relationship with. Are they even relevant anymore? This year, it was announced that the first trans woman, Kylan Arianna Wenzel, was being allowed to compete in the Miss USA Pageant -- with the help of some legal action. But why are people still fighting to be judged on their looks alone? To help answer this question, I spoke to Vivian Wei, our very own Miss San Francisco. 

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Local sex work activist Siouxsie Q announced today that she has decided to resolve her conflict with Chicago Public Media and Ira Glass by changing the name of her podcast from This American Whore to The Whorecast.

See Also: This American Life Tells Local Podcaster: No Whores Allowed

Ira Glass Responds to SF Weekly 's Post on This American Whore Podcast

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We at SF Weekly don't shy away from sexual subjects, so we occasionally get "fan mail" of an explicit nature -- propositions, overly personal e-mails, and the rare marriage proposal. We can only imagine what kind of fan mail a porn star might receive. Well, now we don't have to wonder. Porn darling and Bay Area native Nina Hartley offers up the words, art, and gifts her fans have given her throughout her extensive career in the exhibition "Letters to a Porn Star: Nina Hartley Fan Mail."

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Fred Halsted's legend invariably precedes him, for the simple reason that the handful of daring films he made in the 1970s are largely unavailable and rarely shown. One of gay cinema's least polished and most prized pioneers, the SoCal native made personal, experimental, and uncompromising movies laced with hardcore sex scenes that were intended to provoke a reaction above the neck as well as below the waist.

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