CarnalNation

“Girls! Girls! Girls!” the red neon lights proclaim as I walk along Broadway in San Francisco's North Beach. Other bright lights and a few full scale pictures of scantily clad women also do their best to entice me into the titty bars and strip clubs.

I reach the end of the street, though, and turn back, surprised and slightly disappointed. Where are the adverts for "legal" teenage porn movies, which I am accustomed to seeing in Amsterdam's red light district? Where are the plastic pussies hanging out of every window? The photos of women sucking horse cocks? The four-foot-tall black dildos? The rubber asses (special offer on butt plugs included)?

Having recently moved from Amsterdam to San Francisco, I have been pondering the differences between the sexual attitudes here and the US in general, and in Amsterdam and Europe in general—and the contrast between the red light districts is just one small example. Obviously, there are very different attitudes between the European countries and between regions of the United States, but I do think there are a few broad generalizations that can be made.

I think that many Americans have the idea that Europeans are very sexually open and liberated. Look at those French films, for god's sake! And Almodovar! You see more nipples in one of his films than you would in the last five years of Hollywood films.

In many ways, I think it is true that Europeans are more open than Americans. However, I think a lot of this simply has to do with a general acceptance of the human body, of sex and of biology in Europe. In many European countries, for example, nudity is not a big deal. I remember watching British TV shows as a child, and thinking that there was a lot of nudity—and England is one of the more sexually repressed countries in Europe!

Another interesting example of the different attitudes towards nudity has to do with my modeling. Although I posed nude, all the photographers I worked with in The Netherlands, and I myself, considered what we did to be art, not erotica. Arriving in the States, I got the impression that some people thought I was an erotic model—which I found amusing, since I had never considered myself to be one. Maybe I should!

Anyway, my point is that I think nudity and sex are more accepted in Europe, and viewed as normal, every day things which, of course, they are. This attitude makes Americans assume that Europeans do not suffer from sexual repression and are not conservative when it comes to sex. This, however, is not necessarily the case, even if it seems so from an American point of view. (I blame the puritans—religious nutters rejected by England and the Netherlands—for most of these American attitudes, by the way.)

Interestingly, many Europeans think that it is Americans who are the sexually liberated ones, the ones who are always happy to jump into bed—and upon reflection, I suppose I did my bit to help reinforce this belief!

From what I've seen so far of San Francisco, it seems that there is a larger, happier sex-positive community here. Perhaps what happens in Amsterdam and other European cities is that because nudity and sex are accepted, because they are taken as givens, the sex communities are more specific and more extreme.

Having spent most of my adult life in Europe, I actually have no idea, really, about sexual attitudes here in San Francisco and in America (despite my ability to spout platitudes and generalzations about them). So, I am looking forward to finding out all about them, and exploring the sex-positive community here, and continuing to challenge myself and my attitudes. All the while, I'm sure I'll be contrasting everything I encounter with what is now "normal" to me, that is, European attitudes. I'll let you know everything I find out!