Gay men in S.F. say consent isn’t different for them. But some act like it is.

In TréBion Williams’ experience, some men take “no” as the start of a negotiation.

As a San Francisco go-go-dancer and a regular about town, he’s been objectified and he’s been groped. His refusals are often met with indifference, or taken as a challenge. 

No matter that the behavior is illegal under California Penal Code section 243.4, where it is classified as “sexual battery.”

Since Emanuel “Manny” Yekutiel, widely considered to be the front-runner for District 8’s next supervisor, dropped out of the race Oct. 1, such behavior has also become a citywide topic. 

Yekutiel withdrew days after two men told the San Francisco Standard that Yekutiel grabbed their genitals at a 2023 Pride event. A few months earlier, political organizer Brad Chapin went public with an accusation that Yekutiel had violently grabbed his testicles at a 2020 party. 

Yekutiel denied Chapin’s allegation, and said of the second that while he does not recall it, he “may have had too much to drink.”

“If I crossed someone’s boundary, then I’m deeply sorry,” Yekutiel said.  

Members of San Francisco’s gay community say that Yekutiel’s alleged behavior, while extreme, is part of a pattern. Some people repeatedly disregard consent or boundaries in communal spaces frequented by gay men. 

“There’s this idea that we’re gay men, so we want this kind of attention anyway,” Williams said. Some men treat a grab, he said, as the equivalent of “a wave or a handshake.”

It’s a problem, they said, and the accusations against Yekutiel offer an opportunity to underscore the importance of consent. 

In a straight bar, one gay man said, a man who kept touching or aggressively pursuing a woman would be frowned on. Among gay men, “because we’re all men, it’s the assumption that this is what you actually want anyway.”

Part of the confusion comes from an early history of nonverbal communication that developed between gay men. 

Throughout the 20th century, being publicly identified as gay could mean the loss of a job, or even someone’s life. 

To try to remain covert then, men signaled through looks, nods and body language — achieving consent by making it clear that whatever interactions they would have would be voluntary and approved by both parties. 

It was no guarantee. In addition to raiding gay bars, local police would also send out “decoy” officers to engage in nonverbal flirtation, and arrest any takers. But it still carried less risk than asking a stranger directly.

“We, as gay people, weren’t allowed to ask for consent in the past,” Williams said, because talking about sexual activities with other men could have put someone in danger. When it became safe to be openly gay, Williams believes “people went all the way to the other side” of the sexual expression spectrum.

Not taking ‘no’ for an answer

San Francisco Supervisor Rafael Mandelman, who is gay and currently represents District 8, which includes the Castro, inflamed the conversation when he told the Standard, “I think sexual assault occurs differently [in the gay community] and there’s a different threshold.” 

Mission Local waited three hours outside Mandelman’s office Wednesday to speak to him about the remark, but he did not speak with us. 

The supervisor’s comments were met with fury by members of the queer community. A joint statement by elected LGBTQ officials from across the city called on Mandelman to retract and apologize for a statement they see as normalizing sexual assault. 

Edward Wright, one of the statement’s co-signers and member of BART’s board of directors, said he and others pushed back on Mandelman because they did not want the only gay male voice out there to be his. 

It is important to push back against the generalization, he said, so it was not  “the only representation people are hearing.”

At bars, clubs and large parties where gay men crowd together, men described seeing the same pattern play out over the course of an evening. It is not unusual in these venues to see a stranger put his hands on someone else’s chest or watch someone interpret a “no” as “playing hard to get,” the men said. 

An unsolicited compliment, they said, can turn into an unwanted interaction.

Nevertheless, all can be sexual assault. The national anti-sexual violence organization RAINN defines sexual assault as “any sexual contact or behavior that happens without clear, voluntary, and informed consent,” including “unwanted sexual touching or fondling.” 

Sexual harassment covers unwanted sexual attention more broadly: comments about someone’s body, unwelcome advances and “repeated unwelcome requests after being declined.”

A 2024 review of 30 studies on consent among gay, bisexual, trans and queer men also concluded that nonverbal negotiation in queer spaces like bathhouses and cruising grounds grew out of criminalization. It also highlighted research arguing that blaming assault on “miscommunication” lets aggressors feign ignorance.

Quis Netters, 36, a Denver resident who visits San Francisco frequently, said that when he visits the Castro, making eye contact with another man is still “kind of an unspoken, unwritten rule” that means “you’re kind of giving them the okay.” 

Netters has tried nodding at men to be polite, only to have them walk over and touch him. “I’m just looking around, but they take that as a consent,” he said. 

Codes of conduct only get you so far

Venues across San Francisco, gay or straight, tend to police themselves when it comes to  appropriate behavior in their spaces. 

Before most shows at the drag nightclub Oasis, hosts will turn down the music and walk through a code of conduct. For years, organizers of the Folsom Street Fair have posted signs reminding attendees to “ask first” before photographing or touching someone. 

Still, some men read walking into a gay bar as permission. At one Castro dance bar, Williams said, he watched strangers grope men who appear uncomfortable, but don’t confront them about it. 

Brandon Doyle, 56, who has lived in San Francisco for 31 years, sees the same assumption at parties with a sexual side, even those with a clear code of conduct. 

“I think that there is, to some degree, an expectation that if you are in those spaces and dressed the way you are, that it’s an open invitation for people to grab you and grope on you,” he said. “It doesn’t make it right, and it doesn’t make it okay.”

At a packed dance party during Folsom Street Fair, Doyle said, a partygoer who appeared heavily intoxicated draped their arms over his shoulders and began groping him. Doyle repeatedly moved their hands away. They came back. 

He said, “Don’t do that” and then, “Stop! Don’t touch me like that,” until two friends stepped in and pushed the person away.

JC Saldana, 32, said that he always makes a plan with a friend before he goes out in the Castro to pretend to be a couple, in order to dissuade approaches from strangers. Still, Saldana said, he goes into some clubs expecting that he “might have to yell at someone” or push a stranger away.

Once inside a packed bar, he moves carefully: nothing more than a light tap on the shoulder or the upper back to notify someone that people are trying to pass by. Saldana doesn’t want people to mistake him for flirting or to feel like they’ve been touched inappropriately.

Saldana has heard his share of  excuses for bad behavior. One is the use of alcohol and drugs. He said people “think that they lack accountability because they’re drunk or they’re inebriated.” 

He doesn’t buy it. He has seen plenty of people who are still able to understand consent while under the influence of alcohol or other substances.

He’s also noticed a pattern. Often, he said, the people who don’t ask before touching are “people of privilege.” He believes older, wealthier men “think that they can get away with it.” 

‘We need to be loud’

Joshua J. Cook, who opened the Castro dance club Beaux 14 years ago, said he built it around what he didn’t have as a young man. 

“I do remember being a young person coming into the gay bars and parties, and feeling that introductions to people of an older generation always came with unwelcome hands or attempted kisses or smooches on the neck or embraces that lasted too long,” he said. “It seemed so normalized by absolutely everybody around me that I just didn’t know what to do.”

He said he earned a reputation as a “bitch” because he wouldn’t let men put their hands down his pants.

Cook believes unwanted touching has drastically decreased, but said Beaux continues to run a zero-tolerance policy with a trained security team. Its host, Hera Wynn, reminds the crowd that consent is mandatory. 

He rejects the idea that gay bars run on different rules.

“This idea that once you step into a gay bar it’s different is bullshit,” he said. He called the accounts he has heard “very, very isolated,” and not the queer nightlife experience. No one, he said, should have to plan a night out the way Saldana does. “Somebody should be able to come to any venue alone,” he said, and “not need a group of friends.”

In an op-ed published Tuesday, 48hills publisher and co-owner of the SoMa bar the Stud, Marke Bieschke, pushed back on the idea that groping “is a part of the culture.” He called on people to “know better, and be doing better, by now.” 

The gay men Mission Local spoke to said that consent can be communicated in a variety of ways, but that consent must not be in doubt. Uncertainty and refusal must be respected. 

Williams, for his part, said things are getting better. He credits younger gay men for being “a lot more vocal about their boundaries” than his generation. 

Any change has to come from inside the community, Saldana said.

“I think we’ve gotten way too comfortable with not saying anything,” he said. “And I think that we need to be loud.”