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Archer -> RE: Leather? (11/9/2007 6:23:34 PM)
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Leather, When I speak of Leather I think of men returning from war, men who learned they were not alone, that there were other men who were gay and wanted something to be other than the stereotype of the "mary" sissy boys they had been taught was what homosexuals were like. I think of men who had learned brotherhood, discipline, integrity, and other values that made men, men in battle and returned to the states located their brothers and passed on those traditions and values they had formed. I think of the rough trade days, Biker bars of the 50's and 60's where the men circulated and mixed with each other and took the traditions and built upon them. I think of the need to confidenciality because homosexuality was liekly to get you jailed or beaten by the cops or both. I think of jobs lost because someone found out. I think of that community banding together to protect their own first from discovery and later from HIV. I think of community action to help brothers and family, and then turning the activism and fundraising to a wider group of charities. Leather conveys a sense of family formed by choice rather than bloodlines.
Leather was chosen because it was the road armour they wore to protect them while they rode. It adapted to be the armour that protected them from bashers, from folks who still felt the need to attack someone because they were different. Symbolic they were not the sissy boys that the bashers thought them to be. Men testing their limits of pain, of love, of discpline.
Fast forward through the years of exclussivity to the years of activism and the ranks swell with first lesbians who had formed their own groups parrallel to the men's groups, and a few radical heteros who saw beyond the gay label and saw people practicing radical sex, forming lovong relationships, celebrating themselves. On through the years as they shifted from exclussivity to inclussivity a merging of BD-SM lifestyle people who had shared many of the same publications and contact mags.
These are the things I see when I look back at the history of what is now called Leather.
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