If San Francisco’s Folsom Street Fair is any indication of what’s to come for the kink community, the days of the fetish events dominated by cis gay leather daddies, doms, and strict masters with their slaves on leashes may be numbered. There was a period when leather men were the vast majority at the Fair. Today, you’ll still see these guys cruising Folsom and the surrounding streets, but the event has become more diverse, allowing space for everyone in the LGBTQ community and beyond. When compared to other events, such as CLAW, Cleveland’s popular leather conference that has pushed for all-male spaces, Folsom stands as a kind of beacon of queer progressivism within its space.

This begs the question: With the largest kink and leather event in the world embracing diversity, is it reasonable to expect the same push for inclusivity at other public, male-dominated events across the country?

The Folsom Street Fair was never strictly gay or leather. Called Megahood at first, Folsom Street Fair began in 1984 as a way to showcase the neighborhood SOMA (South of Market) and combat redevelopment. It also allowed the community to celebrate and heal in light of the AIDS epidemic. Since there were so many gay leather venues in the neighbourhood, it became a welcome place for the leather community to celebrate in broad daylight.

Throughout the ‘80s, the leather community claimed more of the Fair. In 1988, after a leather contest and fetish fundraiser were attached to the Fair, Leather Week was born. Although there weren’t just cis men in the leather community at the time, they were the majority presence. Through the early ‘90s, the leather community had dominated the Fair, though it wasn’t until ‘96 that its posters overtly featured leather imagery. From about that year until ‘99, the imagery was mostly of cis gay men. From 2000 on, however, the imagery on the posters became more inclusive of other genders and fetishes.

But where did female participants fit in?

In response to some women feeling unwelcome and unsafe at the Fair, Rachele Sullivan had been tasked to launch a safe, women-only space in 2004 that would exist within the larger fair. The following year, this space for women was created and later coined Venus’ Playground.

It didn’t sit well everyone.

“The men were like, ‘Well, why do they get their own tent and play space and all this stuff?’” Sullivan tells NewNowNext. “And the thing was, the men had the rest of the fair to be comfortable in and be okay.”

In 2016, the name changed to The Playground, with the help of Christy Busch, the co-founder of Queer Sphere, a kinky San Francisco club that includes every gender. The result was a destination for marginalized groups who didn’t identify as cis gay men.

According to Sullivan, many are supportive of the space, but others want it to go away, which makes the democratization essential in combating hostility and giving marginalized groups a voice.

“You tend to get these people out of the woodwork who will be like, ‘Oh yeah, I stopped going when they started being so anti-cis,’ which is basically their way of saying trans-positive or welcoming of other communities,” explains Edwin Morales, the current president of the board of directors for Folsom Street Events.

“There are definitely people who still do not feel comfortable going,” he adds, “including friends of mine who are like, ‘I love you and I love what you’re doing, but we’re not there yet.’”

They're not alone.

BDSM educator and Bay Area Reporter’s kink and leather columnist, Race Bannon intimates that as a result of the politicization of some male, erotic public spaces, many producers are creating private or under-the-radar, male-dominated events in order to maintain men-only spaces. Based on ticket sales of some events in and around the Folsom Street Fair, these male-dominated parties are still in high demand. The butch BRÜT party, for example, happening on the Friday of Folsom weekend has sold out online, according to the event’s co-producer and co-owner, as has the early general and VIP tickets for BOUND on that Saturday. Magnitude, another party on the Saturday hosted by Folsom Street Events, boasts “3,000 of the hottest leathermen from around the globe.” They also sold out of VIP tickets. These are only the public events; there are a series of events happening this weekend not being advertised as publicly, but are assuredly male-only.

Bannon notes there are upsides to the sort of mixing at Folsom Street Fair, but he believes that the mistake is being made that sexuality is democratic.

“I think that the downside is that we have assumed that homogenization is a good thing,” he says. “So what happens is you put heterosexuals in spaces with gay men, in spaces with lesbians, in spaces with genderfluid people, in spaces with trans folks—just mixing everything together and all of a sudden, no one’s quite sure how to act. If heterosexuals were in their own space, they would know how to act. If gay men were in their own space, they would know how to act. If women were in their own space, they would know how to act. [People] know how to act in their own spaces.”

“I know what the optics are,” Bannon continues, “the scene is blending. [People say,] ‘Oh, the scene is going pansexual. I guess this is the direction we’re going in.’ But if you look at where the feet are going—the feet are going to the events that cater to what their sexuality wants. Gay men are going to gay men’s events. They just are.”

Bannon admits that it will be difficult to maintain public male-dominated social spaces, if that is, they’re truly public spaces. This means there’s a chance that major men’s events such as International Mr. Leather or Mid-Atlantic Leather Weekend might become more inclusive like the Folsom Street Fair.

When asked if The Playground detracts from Fair’s centering of cis gay men, Sullivan had a response at the ready: “Oh, I’ve heard that,” she says, laughing. “I’ve heard that for some years. I would tell them that it actually does. We’re actually playing. It’s what Folsom Street Fair is about. It’s embracing who we are with a sexual freedom.”