Comments on: leather, gray suits, motorcycles, folding chairs, and queer history

leather, gray suits, motorcycles, folding chairs, and queer history

brainwane — Mon, 27 Sep 2021 11:54:31 -0800

Aphyr, a gay leatherman, writes a history of "the relationship between queer leather and the larger LGBTQ community" covering the first few decades of Pride celebrations. "I want to give fellow LGBTQ people—both kinky and vanilla—an understanding of the interplay of queer and leather communities, a grasp of how normative and radical forces interpreted and shaped the expression of Pride, and an appreciation for the people who worked to achieve the culture we have today. I hope that this history gives readers a framework for thinking about leather and Pride in a more nuanced way." Long enough that it's also available as an 89-page PDF or ePub.

A few quotes:

Discourse over the acceptable bounds of sexuality in public has gone on since the very first days of Pride, and debates over leather visibility followed shortly thereafter. In a sense, the present debate is continuous with normalizing arguments from the 1970s through 1990s.... In particular, I've chosen to focus on the United States from 1965 to 1995. This is the culture I'm fluent in, and which most of my sources cover. This period covers the origin of Pride, the rise of gay liberation and organized leather, and the partial acceptance of leather within the LGBTQ movement. Much of this work centers on New York and San Francisco—the city which originated Pride, and the city which became a focal point for debate over public displays of variant sexuality. These are the cities for which I have the most extensive sources available. There is more to tell in other cities, but I'm limited by time and access to archives...... Bernstein (2016) described a similar spectrum of strategies in which queer people deploy "identity for critique" to confront social norms vs "identity for education" which builds empathy with broader society...... I cannot begin to catalogue the ways that I personally was uncomfortable with LGBTQ life during my teens and early twenties, from "I am better off dead than being gay" to "I wish they wouldn't march with so many flags" to "Do Equality Riders really need to stage die-ins on Brigham Young's private land?" I wrote this piece (in part) to extend a bridge to others grappling with similar feelings.....

By: migurski

migurski — Mon, 27 Sep 2021 11:59:17 -0800

Aphyr previously: Hexing the technical interview.

By: eotvos

eotvos — Mon, 27 Sep 2021 12:44:09 -0800

This is really interesting. I haven't read it all, but what I have read is really thoughtful. Thanks! I remember being startled when my mom - who had dated women for most of the last 50 years - was very concerned to learn that I was dating someone who worked at a well known leather shop. I'm about as far as one can be into the boring/expected corner of sexuality space, so I couldn't help but giggle at the idea that being involved with someone who uses sewing machines to make naughty things could possibly be a scandal. But, she was genuinely worried. It's a real thing. As a passer-by, I still genuinely don't understand how one can be offended about seeing something in public that one can walk away from. Sure, leave the Nazi and slave-themed shit at home. Doing that in public is an implicit threat that will make people feel unwelcome, even if it may not be intended that way. But, unless you happen to be an uplifited science-fiction dog-person, nobody with a tail is doing anything to hurt you. Just walk on. There's nothing at Folsom that's harder to explain or more potentially damaging to a kid than a Tom Clancy novel or a James Bond film.

By: Halloween Jack

Halloween Jack — Mon, 27 Sep 2021 14:07:48 -0800

Ironically (or not), the first pictures that I saw of Folsom Street Fair were those published online by a conservative fundamentalist who could not believe! what those deviants! were doing! right out there on the street! By the third or fourth year in a row that he felt compelled to show us all what he'd witnessed, I was like, my dude, you are not fooling a single soul. As far as just how out of the mainstream this stuff is, contemplate this picture (CW: couple of people in collars) and compare it to a certain scene in Community in which Dean Pelton is looking at Dalmatian furries and murmuring, "This better not awaken anything in me."

Spoiler: it absolutely does.

By: hwyengr

hwyengr — Mon, 27 Sep 2021 14:16:04 -0800

I that's also the guy who goes to IML every. single. year.

By: Dysk

Dysk — Mon, 27 Sep 2021 14:54:15 -0800

I agree with most of this article, but feel like it pretty glibly throws having sex in public in with a bunch of types of self-expression that are very much unlike it. Can you be guilty of indecent exposure for flashing someone, and should you be able to be? If your answer to that is "yes" I don't see how you can just argue for public sex being fine. I guess the perspective on this might be different if you're a leatherman rather than a woman, but Pride is inherently a space shared by many groups, and there is av extent to which we all have to engage in reasonable and proportionate compromise to make that work. The prudes have to just put up with and accept the leather, the collars, whips, the kink. The leatherman has to put his dick away.

By: roger ackroyd

roger ackroyd — Mon, 27 Sep 2021 15:30:30 -0800

Ace lesbians can platonically tie up gay men. I just like that sentence

By: Nelson

Nelson — Mon, 27 Sep 2021 15:43:41 -0800

FWIW I believe a major motivation for Aphyr writing this essay was to address the hand wringing about public displays of kink sexuality at pride parades that was such a feature of online discourse this year. I absolutely do not want to have this argument on Metafilter, although I certainly can't stop others from doing that. As the fine essay says

Instead, this work aims to provide the kind of historical context that I think would be useful to a reader who is trying to engage with questions of public sexuality at Pride.

There's a long history of Pride events being transgressive about kink displays and sexuality. There's no simple consensus and certainly not one that's historically motivated. That's what this whole essay is about.

By: aphyr

aphyr — Mon, 27 Sep 2021 16:48:42 -0800

Can you be guilty of indecent exposure for flashing someone, and should you be able to be? If your answer to that is "yes" I don't see how you can just argue for public sex being fine.

This is such a fascinating question, and I honestly don't have a single answer! I personally feel that targeted exposure towards one person (or perhaps a small group!) of people who don't want to see is probably best understood as a form of sexual harassment--but I also think that the targeted nature of that behavior plays an important role. Unintentional exposure--such as a person skinny-dipping or who is glimpsed through a window--has different social (and in some cases legal!) status. Intentional *mass* exposure is yet a different sort of thing: streaking at sports games, for instance, has a very different effect on viewers than someone who specifically exposes themself to *you*. I, uh, say this as someone who's experienced several instances of both. Casual public nudity has yet *another* characteristically different feeling: when you see a naked bike ride, or men with their dicks out amicably chatting on the street corner on the way to brunch, it's..., well, it's just Tuesday in the Castro--or it was until city policy changed a few years back, haha. These norms are also gender, body, culture, and locationally dependent: nudity in France is a different thing from nudity in Indiana. This is not to advocate for any *specific* level of public nudity (I'd generally prefer a bit more of it, but I very much recognize other feelings!). If your upbringing was something like mine, you might have a sense of a strong, monolithic taboo around nudity, and a feeling of cognitive dissonance in contexts in which people *are* naked and that's... fine. It might be worth exploring that feeling a bit. I feel like my own life has been significantly richer for it.

The prudes have to just put up with and accept the leather, the collars, whips, the kink. The leatherman has to put his dick away.

This is addressed throughout the piece--in particular footnote 7 may be helpful. I should also note that I use the term "public sex" in line with Warner, Rubin, and Califia: it encompasses a broad range of public-nesses from secluded parks and restrooms to lamppoles in front of thousands of people, and a range of acts from holding hands to fisting. Neither of these words is a firmly bounded category. Should dicks be the line? Should breasts? Motorboating? Analingus? Frottage? When I swing dance with my boyfriend at a wedding, is that too sexual? Should the groom (his brother!) have choked him against a wall, insisting "no two fucking queers were going to dance at his wedding"? Should the family have concurred? Of course not--but norms are a difficult thing. None of this addresses my *personal* comfort, I realize, so perhaps I should say: my own attire has gone from "button down plaid shirt at Folsom Street Fair" to "jockstraps are normal streetwear in certain neighborhoods". I used to be extremely uncomfortable around public expressions of queerness. Now I'm delighted by people showing off as little or much clothes as they like.

By: brainwane

brainwane — Mon, 27 Sep 2021 17:08:48 -0800

aphyr: thank you for writing this. I learned a lot - about the Annual Reminder, and pre-Stonewall revolts, and the 1976 Pride in SF, and how the accusation "Nazi" was used, and more. I'm curious whether there are any details or arguments you wanted to include but couldn't/didn't?

By: sammyo

sammyo — Mon, 27 Sep 2021 18:28:55 -0800

Two words: Oh my.

By: straw

straw — Mon, 27 Sep 2021 19:05:53 -0800

I usually shy away with "thank you"s and "this is great"s in chat threads because this is about discussion, but holy shit this is good. Thank you. This is fantastic. I've been pondering my own arc, I have described myself as a "vanilla het monogamous pervert" and "given enough blowjobs to know that I'm straight", over the past three decades or so, wondering where some of that sense of exploration and future of the '90s went, and this captures what went before that era, and how much progress was made during that time, spectacularly.

By: Dysk

Dysk — Mon, 27 Sep 2021 20:14:02 -0800

This is not to advocate for any *specific* level of public nudity (I'd generally prefer a bit more of it, but I very much recognize other feelings!). Personally, I see public nudity and public sex as rather different things, and the phrase "public sex" is itself vague - at least to my reading, it means something very different in the context of secluded park/bathroom cruising, and in the context of a Pride march - one is a lot more public than another. Maybe that's my misreading. I don't mean to suggest that the answers are clear (though I can see how my original comment reads that way), but I do think just causally throwing "public sex" in with "marching in leather gear/with whips" is a category error that obscures more than it illuminates, to an extent. It erases a lot of nuance, in a sense. I do stick by my assertion that navigating shared spaces (and Pride is and should be a shared, inclusive space, which means making space for leather daddies at least as much as prudes, but it also means making space for e.g. queer women who have a history of sexual abuse/trauma at the hands of men, something Pride - and queer spaces/community more broadly - hasn't always been very good at) requires some degree of compromise and balancing competing access needs. Feeling like you can't bring your whole self to Pride obviously sucks, and it's a situation we should strive to avoid creating, but not at the cost of making it somewhere a lot of the queer community simply can't go or feel at ease, in whole or in part.

By: hippybear

hippybear — Mon, 27 Sep 2021 22:28:22 -0800

This is a very long read, and I'm still working my way through it, but as far as I've gotten it's doing a fair history of both Pride and leather culture as I understand them, being someone who has participated in both for quite a while now and who has done my share of self-schooling (and schooling by others, truly) about the history of this whole thing. Thanks for posting this. I look forward to getting through all of it. I can think of at least three people I'd like to get to read this, but I also know they never would, so... blech

By: chernoffhoeffding

chernoffhoeffding — Tue, 28 Sep 2021 08:01:24 -0800

I'm really tired of hearing how much I owe my rights to the leather community or whatever when pretty much every time I've gone to a leather bar, I've left in literal tears because of how invisible and unwanted I felt and how generally awful the entire experience was. As far as I could tell, any discussion of race was either to compare to the civil rights movement or to brag about how diverse the leather community is. I find it really hard to believe that racism in the community is and was enough of a non-issue that it didn't need to be discussed.

By: aphyr

aphyr — Tue, 28 Sep 2021 08:45:24 -0800

I'm curious whether there are any details or arguments you wanted to include but couldn't/didn't?

Oh, tons! Photos, in particular--there are a bunch of images that I wanted to reproduce, but wouldn't have the rights to use. I hope folks follow the links to the ones that are online, at least--they're fascinating lenses into queer culture. Also, some of the looks are just fucking *iconic*. I originally set out to write a persuasive piece which would draw on historical reference, queer theory, and personal experiences in leather and Pride spaces to argue for a broader spectrum of public sexual expression. In doing that, I wound up reading a little over three thousand newspaper articles and realized... huh, so much of this isn't in *any* secondary sources that I can find, and no book really synthesized the arguments I wanted to make. It's also, like... if I wrote the history specifically in service of an argument, I'd be leaving *out* whole tranches of accounts which I think are interesting and valuable on their own. At that point I realized the piece had to shift to become more of a reference source--more descriptive than prescriptive, comparing arguments for and against and how they shifted, and trying to draw out social threads over time. A platform for further scholarship and argument. The conclusion basically covers the historically-grounded part of the argument for leather inclusion at Pride, but it leaves out a big chunk of the contemporary argument I'd like to make. In particular, the fact that, like... Pride attendees react pretty positively to leatherfolk. I don't talk about parents who take their kids to Pride and their perspective on how their kids observe and interact with sexual expression, or how participants (may) moderate that expression in family contexts--there's a whole subtle dance around "how into this activity is the audience". There's a lot to be said about the perceived locus of responsibility for triggers: are people with trauma responsible for managing their emotional experience in public spaces, or should the public moderate displays to avoid triggers? What do we do when triggers are innocuous? When we appeal to a public standard of decency, who constructs that public? I might talk about how leather runs (and, I assume things like nudist events, etc) can establish community norms which make Pride look positively prudish. I just came back from a week at camp where nudity, sex, and SM were integrated into everyday social activity--a part of the fabric of day-to-day life, a form of connection, play, and art, and something to appreciate as an observer, rather than panic over. How jarring those norms are when you first encounter them, and how... incredibly fulfilling and liberatory they can feel after a few days. How those spaces generally rely on closed social groups with high degrees of community trust, and involve their own complex structures to create community safety. How many of the people in those contexts have sexual trauma directly linked to the activities on display--and how somehow, it generally *works*. It's not that that kind of space is directly translatable to Pride (for a wealth of reasons), but I want to communicate to people that our cultural norms are often invisible until challenged. I want to talk about how this is bound to the process of *growing up*: that I too was conservative in sex and gender when I was young! I think we can expect this discourse to continue indefinitely, because young people are always coming out and into contact with a polyphonic queer culture which is far broader than their own sexual preferences. How, as Warner argues, stigmaphobic queer people are driven by historical and social factors to eschew sexual expression and divorce queer identity from an uncomfortable sexuality. I don't think the "puriteens" analysis has really gotten at those causes yet. How *valuable* it is to develop friendships with, and partake in public spaces of people who are not like you. I'd like to talk about how media like Twitter and Tumblr, while wonderful sources of community and self-exploration, can also facilitate a sort of... context-collapse-driven compression of queer discourse, where information about consent in BDSM is compressed to "it must always be this" tweets or infographics. How eager we are to use scraps of information--someone using the "wrong" pansexual flag, saying "faggot" vs "queer", as a marker that someone is irredeemably toxic. I want folks to go out and actually talk to queer people outside those narrow internet spaces. Read books. Have a coffee or beer with a dyke in her 60s. Walk with a trans friend down the street and feel how street interactions play out for each of you differently. Talk to escorts about how they view consent and relationships. Get a sense of the wide variety of play dynamics in leather families. You get a sense of how broad, contradictory, and rich our culture really is. How language changes over time and between cities. How consent isn't a one-time verbal exchange, but an ongoing, multilayered negotiation involving nonverbal and verbal communication. Maybe next June, when this all comes round again, someone else will take up the persuasive project, and cite this work. That'd be cool. :-)

Feeling like you can't bring your whole self to Pride obviously sucks, and it's a situation we should strive to avoid creating, but not at the cost of making it somewhere a lot of the queer community simply can't go or feel at ease, in whole or in part.

So I realize that this history is long, but I really do encourage you to actually read it, because I a.) also care a lot about all of these things, and b.) devote considerable space in the text to addressing them. You might be pleasantly surprised!

By: aphyr

aphyr — Tue, 28 Sep 2021 09:13:04 -0800

I'm really tired of hearing how much I owe my rights to the leather community or whatever when pretty much every time I've gone to a leather bar, I've left in literal tears because of how invisible and unwanted I felt and how generally awful the entire experience was. As far as I could tell, any discussion of race was either to compare to the civil rights movement or to brag about how diverse the leather community is. I find it really hard to believe that racism in the community is and was enough of a non-issue that it didn't need to be discussed.

As a white person I can't speak to this as deeply, but I would like to acknowledge that racism in broader LGBTQ spaces and leather specifically are real problems, and the site of ongoing discussion and writing in the leather community. If you're feeling invisible and unwelcome in a leather bar or event on account of your race, then that space has likely failed you. This is something that Cincinnati Leather has been explicitly working on for several years--aiming for broad representation across race and various gender axes in events, leadership, media, and contest judges. If this is something you still want to explore, and you're in the US, you might get in touch with your local chapter of ONYX (or, if you're more towards the lady side of things, the Pearls). They're a leather organization devoted towards People of Color. In the Midwest (at least!) they run (fantastic) educational programs and social outreach at street fairs, bars, and leather contests. They also put together the "Blackout" leather runs. If you're having trouble making connections on your own, a group like ONYX might be able to help you build some local friendships--and that might make participating in majority-white spaces less isolating too.

By: chernoffhoeffding

chernoffhoeffding — Tue, 28 Sep 2021 11:45:41 -0800

I don't have a strong interest in leather. I just don't really like being told that I should care about a community that, at least based on my experience, struggles heavily with racism.

By: hippybear

hippybear — Wed, 29 Sep 2021 16:48:35 -0800

Finally got all the way through this, and wow, very intense and well researched. I really appreciate this existing. I'm sure I will be referencing it and forwarding it to others for years to come. Thanks so much for assembling this.

By: mkuhnell

mkuhnell — Thu, 30 Sep 2021 12:29:03 -0800

A long read and completely worth it! I'm queer and kinky and knew a bit of this history. I'm glad to have it collected as a reference for the future, and I will definitely be passing it on. I was welcomed into a little corner of the leather community (M/s) and would happily have stayed if my life hadn't moved in a different direction. aphyr: Was your recent event DO Summer Camp? If so, hi from a fellow camper!

By: aphyr

aphyr — Tue, 05 Oct 2021 12:47:18 -0800

Thanks hippybear, mkugnell! I'm afraid I don't know DO, and google isn't really helping. Likely not the same run I was at--wrong initials, and besides, you would have seen me. ;-)