The Leather Restoration:
Sacred Cows make the best
Hamburger
Wow. Over the second weekend in April
of '02 I attended the 6th Leather Leadership Conference. Held in
Manhattan Beach, California (next to the Los Angeles International Airport)
this was a weekend long event for leather leaders, activists, and those
of a political bent within the leather/ SM/ fetish community. This
was the third such event I had been to and I found it every bit as worthwhile
as the first two. One of the things that made this so was my attending
a workshop/ presentation of Guy Baldwin's. I've known Guy for about
as long as anybody else in the scene, over a decade now, and have always
admired his intellect and his insight. What he had to say on that
Sunday afternoon was well put, square on with my own sixteen years experience
in the scene, and deeply moving as well. Although I took copious
notes during his presentation I knew those would be inadequate in the face
of his original speech. So, I am very pleased that he has since posted
the full text of that speech and that I have a copy of it here to share
with you.
This is not light stuff. In many
ways it runs counter to what I myself have worked for over the past ten
or so years that I have been active in the San Diego leather community
and of what I have tried to accomplish within Club X San Diego. However,
Guy's words ring all too true for me based on my own experience.
Please, read this through, and think it through before trying to respond
to it. There is a lot going on here and it presents a pretty major
challenge to our established way of doing things within the leather/ SM/
fetish community.
Read on!
Guy Baldwin, M. S.
Speech: LLC-6
04-14-2002
The Leather Restoration:
Sacred Cows make the
best Hamburger
It's my impression
that interest in the Old Guard is running at an all-time high these days,
largely, I suspect, in a sweetly romantic attempt to re-create a tradition-based
foundation for contemporary leather life. I know this because I'm
traveling frequently to teach classes at events again, and this topic always,
always, always comes up with endless questions about “how it really was”
back then. About twice a month, I get requests for permission to
post my previously published essays about the Old Guard on web-sites, too.
What strikes me most
about those who question me closely about the Old Guard is how passionately
they seem to be searching for something which they believe will somehow
satisfy a deeply felt need….a longing for something they sense has been
lost to us. When I question people closely about what this need is……it
almost always can be reduced to a few key words: sexiness, cohesion,
intimacy, trust, reliability, integrity, accountability, and perhaps most
importantly, a sense of family
Common perceptions
out in the leather world today, are all too frequently summarized by remarks
like these:
“The leather scene is dying.”
“The magic and the mystery is gone.”
“We’ve lost sight of what’s important, and allowed ourselves to be distracted.”
“What’s happened to the connectedness?”
“I think that what I’m looking for hasn’t existed for a long time.”
“We’ve allowed the very essence of leathersex to evaporate into thin air.”
“Where is the Passion?”
It does seem very clear
to me that many people are simply not feeling something that they think
they should be feeling about their leathersex experiences and leather life.
If so many people have come to feel that way, then it’s probably time for
our leadership to invest some serious energy in coming to terms with these
three questions:
-
First:
whether or not it’s really true that we’ve lost something from the past
that’s important;
-
Second:
if so, how that’s come to pass, and
-
Third:
what, if anything, can and should be done to restore those missing things
to contemporary leather life.
These are worthy
issues for leather leadership to address because they obviously matter
so very much to our constituencies.
My plan for our time
together today, is to address what I think are some relevant issues relating
to all three of these questions, and to raise some issues about the assumptions
they imply which I think have influenced much of our policy making in the
last 20 years…all of which should take me about 30 minutes or so, if you’re
lucky, and then, we can visit about them together, if you like.
First, is it really
true that we’ve lost some things? From a certain point of view, it
doesn’t really matter whether it’s true or not if people believe that it’s
true. As a psychotherapist, I’ve come to understand that perception
IS reality, and if people actually FEEL that some important things have
been lost to us, then that’s what they believe, and they will act and think
accordingly. For that reason, it seems wise to take people at their
word, and proceed from the assumption that it is true.
The second question:
how were these things lost? The correct answer must be---I can’t
know for certain, because it is impossible for anyone to discover with
absolute certainty what each and every element of a culture’s evolution
has been. I think it’s important to view with suspicion anyone who
claims to have all the answers to that question. I’m certain that I do
not. Yet, I think I do have some pieces of the answer, which I’m
about to share with you.
I hope to offer you
some things to chew on today, that may be useful as we try to craft ways
to breathe some new life and vigor back into our world.
I don’t want to recount
my complete recollection of Old Guard realities as I experienced them,
but I do want to offer some history that might serve to explain why this
fascination with the Old Guard has become so widespread, and then go on
from there.
I was 18 when I entered
leather life in 1965. Most of the guys in the network I became a
part of back then, were aged 40 to 50---they were the first generation
of what we have come to call “the Old Guard” because about half of them
had been in the Scene for about 15 years by then, and half of those had
served in World War II……they were my first mentors, and I remember them
very well.
Back in the mid-1960’s,
when a guy finally got up enough courage to begin hanging out with the
leather crowd, and began to meet the leather guys there, it was common
for him to come under scrutiny by them. The leather core-group would
begin to notice him, and what followed was a period of time during which
that core group tried to find out if the guy had “the right stuff” to be
allowed into even the outer edges of that group.
And what was the right
stuff?
-
His interest had to be
genuine and personal----not voyeuristic.
-
He had to have a life
that worked that is to say, he had the basic five things going for him---a
job, a car, a place to live, a telephone, and enough disposable income
to entertain himself.
-
He had to have desirable
values----honesty, reliability, integrity, generosity and trustworthiness,
responsibility, he had financial stability and self-sufficiency, and a
desire to pitch in with hands-on helping out, and respect for the other
guys.
-
He had certain native
traits---common sense, a sense of humor, grooming standards in line with
the group’s, his manner wasn’t feminine, he had an interest in sex, a sense
of appropriateness and good manners, and also the ability to give and receive
good camaraderie.
-
And lastly, he had to
have and a balanced psychology, not be a substance abuser, and he couldn’t
have a criminal record of any consequence.
When enough of
the guys in the core-group determined that a candidate person had the “right
stuff”, he began to receive invitations to social events outside the bar
atmosphere---back yard bar-b-ques, weekend football on TV, outings to movies,
amusement parks, dinner parties, holiday gatherings, and such. Homes thus
became open to newcomers who craved access to the rich knowledge and experience
base, which only the core-group possessed.
And the two main reasons
for all this scrutiny were first: we wanted to make sure that we
were putting the potentially dangerous knowledge of how to do high-end
BDSM into well-balanced minds and hands, and second, we didn’t particularly
want to hang out with losers or have to clean up their messes.
Put simply, there was
a process by which a person wanting to enter the leather world was first,
pre-qualified to join in. This process was designed to keep out those
guys who were dangerous, flaky, bitchy, mean-spirited, gossipy, users,
drunks, thieves, liars, self-centered egoists, dependent personalities,
criminals, exploiters, poseurs, predators, and those with other hidden
agendas…….. in short, “losers”. With rare exception, this system
worked well.
All this happened at
a time when the gay male motorcycle clubs were the axis around which the
leathersex world revolved. It’s important to point out that maybe
only about 35% of the guys in those clubs actually did what we would call
BDSM by the way……. the rest were into various versions of what we called
“rough sex” back then.
On weekend nights,
members of the bike clubs made it their habit to hang out at a favored
watering hole which eventually created what we now know as “the leather
bar”…… yes, in almost all cases, it was the bike clubs that created the
first wave of leather bars, and not the reverse. It was in such places
that one could begin to learn by observing the dance of leather ritual
courtship.
Officially, the bike
clubs were democracies, but operationally, they were oligarchies run by
the elders who exerted strong influence over who did, and did not become
members. I wasn’t invited to become an associate member myself until
after I’d turned 21 This meant that I could attend meetings and participate
in discussion, but NOT vote.
Once the leather bars
became established in most major cities (say by about 1970) the focus of
leather life began to shift from the clubs into the bars themselves.
Bike clubs still began and ended their events at leather bars even up into
the 1980’s, but membership in bike clubs was already falling off seriously
by then, as more and more guys realized they could enter leather life via
the bar route rather than the bike club route; the process of de-centralization
of leather life had already begun.
Certainly by about
1975 or so, in the major cities, it was possible to be around leather guys
at the bars without needing to have anything whatsoever to do with the
motorcycle clubs. The effect of this was to open up a new set of
windows into the leather world, to some extent.
But--- and this is
important ----despite this fact, the process of actually ENTERING into
the network of the serious players remained essentially the same for the
newcomer--- the old bike club model for bringing new guys into the inner
circle continued to dominate the process. Newcomers still had to “pass
inspection” with the core-group in that particular city over a period of
time before one got the chance to work with the best and most experienced
players there.
For many who wanted
“in” this remained an annoying and frustrating fact of leather life.
This frustration set
the stage for the formation of the BDSM organization. Only two existed
in 1974, but they quickly became widespread. People who had been held at
arm’s length by the old bike club model, flooded into the democratic organizations,
and made sure that they were open to absolutely anyone over the age of
21---all the other standards for admission were dropped by organizations.
“INCLUSION” became
the politically correct watchword for these new organizations… and suddenly,
the tent flaps into the leather world went up everywhere. The old system
by which newcomers were carefully screened and then socialized into the
mores and folkways of leather life was swept away.
A virus accelerated
this destruction more than we could possibly have imagined. By 1985
HIV was full upon us, and with that disaster, the old leather tribe elders---both
in the surviving bike clubs and in the bars--- became distracted by the
need to help care for their own brothers who were suddenly fighting for
their lives, and all too often, losing the battles.
In a few short years,
the old process by which people had to be pre-qualified to enter the core-group
was shattered, as the tribal elders simply no longer had the time or the
emotional energy necessary to focus on bringing new “children” into the
fold. And just as in any culture, whenever elders can’t make time for their
children, those elders become irrelevant as children strike out on their
own to explore their interests….whatever they happen to be.
As more and more members
of the “bridge” generations died or fled from the organizations who no
longer discriminated in membership selection, there were simply fewer and
fewer resources available to newcomers for learning the complex and elegant
dance by which leathersex mating rituals really do unfold. The leather
organizations taught basic BDSM technique and safety, but were close to
useless for guiding the socialization process by which newcomers might
learn the subtle refinements of leathersex beyond mere technique.
And one other reason
for that, is that many of the new leather organizations and their events
were pan-sexual, and few gay leathermen in that era felt comfortable enough
in the presence of women and homophobic straight men to actually launch
the rituals of leathersex in mixed spaces….. most of us still do not.
Although I, myself, have supported the existence of pansexual dungeon spaces,
it’s very rare that I will launch scenes in them, simply because I’m not
comfortable doing that in mixed spaces either.
Sadly, those who were
most accomplished at the subtleties of leathersex were often the first
to die, because they had the most practice at doing it, and thus were most
likely to have become infected with HIV. Conversely, to make matters
even worse, most of those who survived were often the ones who never, or
only rarely ever did BDSM. Too often, they knew only the rudiments
of the Scene, and could often only describe the parts of it they’d maybe
witnessed in public.
Many of these inexperienced
survivors suddenly found themselves in demand for the first times in their
lives, and struggled to supply information from experience they rarely
had. Basking in a popularity that some of them had long desired,
they claimed knowledge they did not possess, and allowed themselves to
invent freely rather than disappoint. And by the way….. It is my suspicion
that the recent obsessive preoccupations with what we now call “protocol”
is a direct outgrowth of just such inventions….. Old Guard customs were
no where nearly as numerous or elaborated as today’s protocols have become
in some parts of the nation….. especially so in the South.
Anyway.
Almost instantly, BDSM
technique took on an importance that it never had during the 50’s, 60’s
and 70’s. After all, technique is the most easily taught part of
BDSM, just as it is also the most easily learned. But magnificent
BDSM demands much more than good technique as any fine player knows.
Playing all the notes of a musical composition correctly, does not music
make.
All during the 1980’s
leathersex education became dominated by the focus on technique…and for
that reason, the leathersex Scene became bottom-centered while Tops struggled
to learn how not to get a bad reputation by making technical errors in
Scenes. Many extraordinary Tops complained privately that they felt
castrated by what was going on, and quietly slipped underground to do it
their own way.
With their departure,
leather organizations slowly lost even more resources about how leathersex
really worked. “Power Exchange” propaganda leveled the playing field
in ways that denied or downplayed the importance of authority differences
in crafting magical and ecstatic BDSM experiences. Feeling less and
less welcome, people who were most at home in the Master/slave world, also
slipped quietly underground. Many of the few surviving old guard
guys just scratched their heads in amazement at what the leather world
was becoming…… and simply withdrew.
Meanwhile, the leather
organizations allowed themselves to bask happily in the illusion that they
were doing a great job as their curricula swelled with technique offerings.
The Era of The Tyranny of Technique had become firmly established….. and
unfortunately, it is very much in place today.
One of the sadder results
of this development has been the steady emergence and proliferation of
what Gayle Rubin has called “Paint-by-Number” BDSM----“Attach shackle A
to wrist B….then do this and say that,” and “presto” you have a formula
BDSM scene that is about as inspiring and satisfying as the Mona Lisa in
6 colors is.
One sees it routinely
in public dungeon spaces.
And while all that
was going on, something else was happening to us in a completely different
direction.
The politics of INCLUSION
that became popular in the ‘80’s in leather organizations seemed to demand
that we be consistent about that, and so leatherfolks began to fight for
a place at the larger gay & lesbian table, chiefly at local pride events,
and national marches, too. Since mainstream gay & lesbian politicians
were already spouting off about INCLUSION, they felt logically trapped
into accommodating us despite their personal disgust with our brand of
sexuality.
The first big national
success at doing that was at the March on Washington in 1987. I,
myself, carried a sign in that march that proclaimed, “DIVERSITY IS AMERICAN”.
NewsPapers picked up a photo of that sign and ran with it. I too,
had become an apologist for BDSM sexuality. At the time, it seemed like
a good idea, but today, I’m not so sure it was.
Much the same thing
happened at the March in 1993---- leather folks demanded and were reluctantly
given a place in the organizing committees.
The nightmare of trying
to be included finally grew to intolerable proportions in the most recent
march: The March on Washington 2000 organizers were bludgeoned with
the club of Holy Inclusivity until they agreed to allow a “leather” speaker,
but by the time the March on Washington organizers finally became willing
to deal with us and our issues around that at the last minute, no credible
and experienced, nationally recognized leather spokes person was willing
to become their token “inclusivity person” any longer.
I refused to speak
at that march, Joseph Bean refused, Viola Johnson refused, and even that
year’s IML, Bruce Chopnick refused. And we all refused because we’d
had it up to here with the fight against being marginalized or turned into
political pawns by the vanilla, kink-o-phobic power fags and dykes inside
the Washington Beltway.
So this time, none
of us lifted a finger to mobilize a big leather presence at the March,
as we had in the past. Sometimes, one gains more from leaving the
table, than by fighting to sit there……something professional negotiators
have always known. Inclusion has been way over-rated.
(But to return to my
thread): The energy of nearly all of our organizations thus became
harnessed to two main goals: 1) to teach our own people how to do
BDSM sexuality “properly” which meant technically correct, and 2) to defend
and seek tolerance for our sexual practices to the non-kinky world….. we
did this by adopting the mantra of “Safe, Sane, and Consensual” ……and we
did our best to sell it to them…… and to ourselves. And we have done
that for the last 15 years.
And we’ve done it despite
the fact that, privately, some of us know that lots of hot BDSM is anything
but completely safe & entirely sane. So, in order to have our sexual
practices match up nicely with our public propaganda, we essentially steered
our BDSM education along the most conservative and ultra safe guidelines…..and
in doing so, we pulled much of the bite and sizzle out of doing BDSM and
sanitized it beyond belief!!!
It’s no wonder that
so many people are complaining that leathersex feels “flat” to them these
days, and are wondering, “is that all there is?” Clearly, bunches
of people are ready for much more than Dungeon Masters permit in the over-supervised,
intermediate-level dungeons we see at events nowadays.
In a few short years,
the basis for the growth of the leather world had shifted from the un-spoken
policy of quiet attraction and careful screening that was at the very center
of the Old Guard world, to the policy of Proclamation…. Promotion and oh-so
tolerant Inclusion that characterizes the New Guard. Listen to the
speeches given at any leather contest and this is the party line that you
will hear today.
It is undeniably true
that one outcome of all of this has been that, in the general public, awareness
of kink has exploded since that policy shift. One needs only to spend
a week watching cable channels on TV to notice that kinky themes are ever
present in situation comedies, “reality” TV, talk shows, and even in feature
films and TV movies.
Just last week on
a network TV commercial, I saw a young boy wrapping his little brother
up in a toilet paper mummification….. I’m sure we can expect great things
from that kid someday…… And I suppose that I can make a good argument for
the benefits of all that, but my god….. at what cost to the way we try
to summon the pleasures and the gods of our special sexuality?
The fact is that the
Old Guard never gave a damn what outsiders thought about what we did.
They didn’t care what other gays & lesbians thought of us, and they
certainly didn’t care what mainstream society thought either. It
was never necessary to defend ourselves against outsiders because we never
did anything that would bring us to their attention……. and that policy
left us free to focus on what was really important to us---the wonderful
mysteries of Leathersex.
We knew damned well
that vanilla gays & lesbians were never gonna bless us for doing breath
control scenes, and that the mainstream het world would condemn us for
stuff vastly less risky than that!! Years later, I’ve now come back to
not caring what outsiders think of me or us, and I now know better than
to provide them with excuses to launch attacks at us.
Leaders of other minority
groups learned long ago about the dangers of pleading for acceptance from
the majority, and we should too. Like 12-step programs, I prefer a policy
of attraction rather than promotion that’s the best way to take care of
our own in my view.
It will be a cold day
in hell when I beg anyone for a place at the table again.
We are part of the
miraculous pageant of humanity, and we need to be very, very careful about
explaining or defending ourselves to anyone for any reason…..ever again.
Last August, I was
invited to deliver a keynote, and teach classes at an event called DOMINION
over in Florida….this is a very cool gathering of het players who are primarily
male dominant and female submissive oriented. When it was over, I
was invited to sit in on the post-event discussions, which surprised me,
but I accepted anyway.
After about an hour
of listening to how the organizers (all dominant het men) felt the weekend
went, they asked me how I thought they could do outreach to gay and lesbian
people---there were only maybe five of us at the event. I heard myself
saying that I felt it was a mistake for them to do any outreach whatsoever
to gay men or lesbians---that they should keep it an entirely het event---and
I made my case for that. They were stunned and very surprised, but
saw clearly that I had a point.
So…….. maybe one way
to re-infuse some of the mystique into the Leather world is to stop yammering
about it everywhere, and stop trying to explain ourselves to people who’ve
already made their minds up about us anyway. It seems likely to me
that we’ve probably already created as much favor as we’re going to out
there in the world.
The Old Guard that I knew would support that
view.
One way to put scenes
back out onto the edge of people’s comfort zones where BDSM really crackles
and sizzles is to have a far more sophisticated conversation about what
safety and sanity REALLY means, and to restrict those conversations to
people who are competent enough to have them with…..the Old Guard I knew
would support that.
One way to strengthen
our communities might be to stop begging mainstream gays & lesbians
to accept our sexuality as being within the normal range of human sexual
expression, and simply be out and proud of who we are and what we do, and
tell our critics to just flake off…… the Old Guard I knew would go for
that too.
The Old Guard I knew
would choke if they knew what goes on on the damned INTERNET. After
they stopped laughing, that is. The fact is that the Internet simply
can not supply the face-to-face settings wherein newcomers can watch, learn,
and practice our courtship and mating rituals…. and NO amount of text or
photos can substitute for that.
ONLY in Leatherspaces
is that possible…. period. If we’re serious about community building,
then we have to support people connecting with other people in real time
situations that do NOT include the phones or chat rooms where people’s
hidden agendas, personality disorders, and bullshit run riot.
Let us be clear about
one thing: the Old Guard was very EXclusive. This meant that
leather culture back then was NOT broad-based and was NOT inclusive.
Because if we are going
to support Inclusivity, then we have to be prepared to deal with thieves
like the treasurer who embezzled many thousands of dollars from the NLA
treasury a decade ago---a theft that left that organization’s leadership
very dispirited, and from which that organization never fully recovered
in my view.
If we are going to
support Inclusivity, then we have to be willing (as we have been) to overlook
abusers who support leather fundraisers, and yet have sent boy after boy
to the hospital in San Francisco- the capitol of political correctitude.
The Old Guard would have run that person out of town years ago, just as
New Yorkers did with a psychopath there, not long ago.
If we are going to
support Inclusivity, then we have to be prepared to deal with the crap
that tax evaders, predators, thieves, users, substance abusers, gossips
and liars (especially those who do so in print) and the other energy vampires
who bring such crap into our organizations and institutions. And
be willing to watch as they slowly drain the energy out of the dedicated
and motivated people that we Are so often blessed with.
Or, we can toss them
out on their asses, and begin to demand that people in our world behave
like healthy grown-ups as the cost of admission. But understand this:
doing so means being willing to take the heat for being EXclusionary, judgmental
and elitist. Diversity yes--- Inclusivity at any price---- Absolutely NOT.
I propose that this
decade become our decade of Restoration. That we dedicate ourselves
to the tasks of taking care of our own in some new and better ways….that
we devote ourselves to achieving a deeper and much more nuanced understanding
of this sexuality that we cherish so profoundly…… that we support the development
of more functional networks of kinky grown-ups who possess the maturity
and level-headedness necessary to bring renewed vigor into what we do and
who we are…… that we endorse family values and vigorously oppose the actions
of the those in our midst who subtract from who we are, rather than add…..
and that we recognize that love, intimacy, honesty, intensity, accountability,
family, and self-challenge are much more important than achieving pin-point
accuracy with every single whip-stroke.
It may well be that
to recover those valuable things that so many feel have been lost, our
world might have to undergo a period of contraction as the pendulum swings
the other direction. But, we can think of that as a time of self-review…….of
renewal……of Restoration.
Restoration of our
values……. of our honesty about who and what we are……… Restoration of appropriate
boundaries to protect what is sacred to us…….. and the Restoration of the
leather world as a functional family of grown-ups who really are different
and feel damned good about that.
Those of us who are
privileged to influence the currents of this river that we swim in, whether
elected, chosen by judges, or self-appointed, bear a special responsibility
to really think very carefully about the long term consequences of all
that we do in that role. To do that, we need to know, out loud and concretely,
exactly what assumptions our politics flow from. And we need to subject
those assumptions to very careful scrutiny that’s free from our own, personal
agendas.
It’s crucial that we
keep our eye on the prize, and choose what prizes we go after with great
care.
I’m confident that
we can do better for our people…… and we must….. because they so richly
deserve the very best that’s in us.
And I can promise you
that generations of unborn leatherfolks will bless you for your efforts….
……and thank you for
your trouble.
� 2002 - Guy Baldwin,
M.S.
# # #
Please note: Any spelling or grammatical
errors are most likely my own that occurred as I worked up this page with
Guy's original text.
If you would like to learn more about me
– just ask! Drop me a line and we’ll see what happens.
I can be reached
here at: madoc@madoc.us
You can also try using Yahoo
Messenger as I’ll have that one sometimes while I am at work or at
home.
My Yahoo handle is:
madoc62
Until later then,
Madoc
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on: 27 February 2003
