The Wild and the Tame

Mistress Tiffany wrote a comprehensive article on "Protocol positions", and to Her post: "A protocol analogy" someone asked if Her protocols were Leather or BDSM protocols.

What's so Next Guard about Mistress Tiffany's article about protocol positions is the synthesis between the ancient BDSM, the historically recent Old Guard, and the remotely ancient and contemporarily fashionable Yoga. Yoga, especially it's emphasis on breathing and on the experience of the present moment, is an excellent discipline for all Next Guard Leather and BDSM people, and especially those who identify as submissives.

Let's look though in more depth about the historical bases of protocol positions.

Big "L" Leather is different than little "L" leather. Big "L" Leather is a culture: a set of rituals and customs and attitude. Little "L" leather is a fetsh for the actual leather object: whip, shoes, boots, hat. Whereas leather has been a fetish for human beings since we lived in caves, Leather originates from the nascent gay American culture in the years after World War II. BDSM though is something that we can trace throughout human history. We can find postures and attitudes and language that reflect BDSM eroticism in sculpture, and pottery, and painting, and literature that goes back thousands of years. And in every culture that makes artifacts - Egyptian, Chinese, Mayan, Persian, Celtic, Greek, Roman... Historians often hesitate or refuse to attribute a sexual, consensual BDSM framework to ancient art, but artists make art, not historians. The natural tension and dramatic oppostion inherent in BDSM Powerplay often make it an irresistible subject for artists, even if historians choose to look the downplay, ignore, or obfuscate it.

All the way back to the Story of Gilgamesh, erotic and epic poetry celebrates the heros and heroines that struggle for love, who suffer, aquiesce, surmount, and triumph, in love if not in life. Sometimes the language about Powerplay is direct, and compares lovers to masters, mistresses, and slaves. Sometimes the imagery is indirect, but it speaks to our deepest erotic sense, and we know there was sexual dimension to the power differential between lovers, or between celebrants in a ritual, as in the famous frescos in the Pompeiian Villa of the Mysteries. [the artist David Dashiell, 1952-1993, referenced these frescos in his monumental Queer Mysteries.]

In those frescoes, we can see different people whose postures reveal their status in the ritual. There are some submissive postures that would fit right along side those that Mistress Tiffany described. These dominant and submissive postures are ancient, and not even necessarily exclusively human. The language of the body expresses power states for all vertebrate animals. Indeed many yoga positions take the name of animals - besides Downward Facing Dog, there are countless others; Crow Pose, Eagle Pose, Monkey Pose, Cobra Pose...

But Leather Culture is fairly recent. When Old Guard traditions began, in the years after World War II, the memory of military protocol was still fresh, and there was a continuace of military bearing and carriage in Leather Play. Tops often acted like Drill Instructors and bottoms acted like fresh recruits. Whereas I think dominant and submissive postures are not only eternal with human beings, but with most animals, the then recent memories of Standing at Attention, Parade Rest, Avoidance of Eye Contact, along with all the typical Boot Camp humiliations (push ups, holding a rifle above the head, using a toothbrush to clean a toilet or floor, etc) all became Play rituals for the early Leathermen.

Conversely though, for many Old Guard members of the early motorcycle centered clubs, and also for the men dishonorably discharged out of the military, and further, those men that scorned the military and the blind acceptance of authority, there was a whole new outlook and set of postures and language. These men, and also women and transpeople, were performing a set of postures, and using language that wasn't merely negligent or lazy, instead it was intended to be socially and politically provocative. They were surly, smart-ass, wise cracking, slouching, shuffling, sexy. It's the way detectives and heros in Film Noir movies act, or the way Marlon Brando and his gang acted in "The Wild Ones". It was a rebellion of the individual against societal norms. Sticking it to the squares. Flipping off the Man.

-"What are you rebelling against?"

- "Whaddya got?"

I enjoy seeing men perform both sets of Old Guard Postures. Respect is a turn on, and sometimes insolence that I can dominate and reform is a turn on as well. I've found that gradually formalizing My own posture often results in a subsequent formalization of a sub's posture, even without recourse to words or a physical response. Then with subtle actions, like the ministrations of a dressage horseman, I can refine the posture to My liking.