 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, Iget 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.
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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.
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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, dependant 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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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