San Francisco's Center for Sex & Culture invites all like-minded adults to gather on World AIDS Day to marvel at the extraordinary HIV/AIDS/safer sex poster collection on its gallery walls and enjoy readings that reference AIDS and its cultural context. Reception begins at 1 p.m. and the readings begin at 2 p.m. and are expected to last about two hours. Though no one will be turned away for lack of funds, the Center suggests a donation of from $5 to $50 to defray costs and to support the institution.
SAFE SEX BANG: The Buzz Bense Collection of Safe Sex Posters spans from 1982 into the 2000s, from San Francisco to New York City stateside and internationally to Australia, Germany, Denmark, and Canada. Circulated at a moment when the queer community experienced the initial ravages brought on by the HIV/AIDS epidemic, these posters comprise a striking aesthetic collection of graphically innovative design that explicitly visualizes diverse LGBT communities and safe sex activism. The exhibition runs through January 31, 2014 at the Center for Sex & Culture.
Among the readers celebrating World AIDS Day are Julia Serrano, an Oakland, California-based writer, performer, and activist who is the author of Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity (Seal Press, 2007); Mark Abramson, a former Midwestern farm boy who joined the great gay migration to San Francisco in the 1970s, and whose writings have appeared in the gay press as far back as Christopher Street, Fag Rag, Gay Sunshine and Mouth of the Dragon; Shar Rednour, author of The Femme's Guide to the Universe and editor of Starphkr and the Virgin Territory anthologies, and co-owner of SIR Video; and Dr. Carol Queen, a "cultural sexologist" because her earlier academic degree is in sociology, with an overarching interest in cultural impacts (gender, shame, access to education, etc.) on sexuality, and Staff Sexologist and Chief Cultural Officer at Good Vibrations, where she has been employed since 1990.
The Center for Sex & Culture is located at 1349 Mission Street, San Francisco. For more information on this event and exhibition, email here.
