We Are Family - sort of...

I know that so many of My fellow gay men think that Leather is just a provocative and decorative and non-essential feature for a small segment of gay identity, the same way that they're dismissive of our other "fringes" like elder gays, or faery gays, or opera queens, or drag queens. The logo above is from a group at the University of California at San Diego, and the letters stand for "Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgendered, Queer, Intersex, and Allies." (Originally I wondered if the "A" stood for "Asexuals".)

Often I see this sort of dismissive attitude towards fringe communities represented in the so-called "mainstream" gay media, which hypocritically uses titillating images of Leather People to attract viewers and readers, while not serving the BDSM community with a proportionate amount of content. There's also a fair amount of misogyny and even outright derision of lesbians, bisexual, and transgender people among gay men. So even in the parallel "Family" that I've joined with My own gay friends, there is a societal norm that doesn't necessarily value BDSM players, their variety, and their particular culture. Even around a gay Thanksgiving dinner table, there is conservatism and liberalism, white and black sheep - there's still plenty to hot-headedly argue about.

Our value to our birth family, our invented family, and our BDSM Family is that We stay honest to Ourselves, and that We stay honorable and compassionate towards others. We honestly make Our own choices, and we either honor, or have compassion for the choices that other people have made. Committments to honesty and honor come out of the military heritage of the Old Guard's founders, who lived their convictions openly and proudly. Honor and compassion for another person's difference was a hallmark of the New Guard, whose members were highly concerned not only with physical safety, but also the need to have a safe and supportive mental environment.

What I'd like to see the Next Guard espouse besides the qualities of honesty, honor, and compassion, is the Valiant. Being valiant or brave in the sense that Italians use the words "Bravo" and "Brava", meaning not only that a person is fearless, but that he's resolute, and determined, even audacious, even a bit showy. When we yell "Brava" after an opera singer sings an aria, we show her that we're enthralled [from the word thrall meaning a slave or servant] - we're slaves to her talents. A valiant opera singer like Maria Callas perservered and overcame her insecurities, and even if she didn't conquer absolutely every fan or critic, in recordings, she still holds our utmost attention.

Being the Valiant one of our families, the one who's got the nerve to try new things, and who has the cojones to stand up for someone who's weaker, who is gallant in defeat, who dares to live fully and out loud - those should be Our values, that's what we should give back to Our families, and perhaps We can inspire Our siblings and friends to become more dauntless and self-reliant by Our example. And what I'd particularly hope to see, is that the gear and the symbols that Leather and BDSM people use for themselves become associated with an Ideal Person, someone who possesses a valiant, honest, honorable, and compassionate character.

Big Tent

There have been questions about terms like: fetish, kink, BDSM, and leather, and whether the Next Guard wants to exclude people from the discussion if they're not into Leather or BDSM. Next Guard is about BDSM which is an imprecise term that ironically has extremely precise connotations to multitudes of people. BDSM is sort of like LGBT in that it's an acronym that is trying to cover a minority category. I always thought it meant "Bondage Discipline Sadism Masochism" but those 4 letters can also mean all kinds of different things, a few being - boys, bois, Daddys, Daddies, discipline, domination, slaves, submission, Master, Mistress, et cetera. So what's the commonality between all these terms? I guess it would have to be a Difference. There has to be a Power. There's Someone who has Power and there's a Different someone who doesn't have as much power or any power.

That's what the Next Guard cares about most - the Difference, the Power, the Someones, the someones. BDSM is sometimes called Powerplay - also the title of defunct gay Leather kink magazine, (for which incidentally, I once appeared on the cover) and that's a good term. People like novelty, young people like to invent their own language, and so what's BDSM to me might to others be Powerplay, X-treme Sex, Hardcore, Hardsex, Hard Scene, Femdom, Alphasex, Futuresex, Pervsex, Kinksex, Pigsex, Dogplay.....I could go on and on. We might all be speaking a different language, but there's a fundamental grammar between all of these - when I pick up My flogger, I'll bet you're going get my gist.

Kink is a huge category, and a vastly imprecise, subjective, and vague term that means everything that isn't "normal" or run of the mill. Whatever. I've never met a "normal" person in my whole life. I think "normality" is a bogus political concept that power elites use to enforce docile behavior among less powerful. [Fuck that shit.] So basically Kink to me just means whatever people do sexually, because whatever you personally do sexually, someone else, somewhere else, will think that you're being kinky.

My point being about Kink is that whether it's Leather, Rubber, feather dusters, or diapers, or Klingon masks, or bourgeois-missionary-position-in-the-dark-along-to-easy-listening-music, it's all Kink, and it's all copacetic, but unless there's the Difference, the Power, the Someones, and the someones, then it ain't BDSM to me.

"Leather" [uppercase L] to me, as a gay man, means a cultural continuity and a set of rituals that always imply Difference and Power, and almost always imply the Difference between individuals that signifies a Someone and a someone. Leather is the symbol for this Difference, and it's a cultural symbol that goes back to the time human beings first clothed themselves in animal hides. In my mind, Leather is the most succint symbolic representation of BDSM.

But leather [note the lower case L] is also a fetish for many people. What is Fetish? Fetish is the obsessive fascination or even worship of inanimate objects, materials, styles, people, sexual practices, et cetera. Fetish is a word like Kink that is such a hugely subjective and imprecise category that it's often more obfuscating than clarifying.

So all these terms: BDSM, Leather, Kink, Fetish are imprecise and subjective, and there will never be a "Council of Nicea for Sex" to set all these terms into stone to form a dogma or catechism. You'll never get a crystal clear definition of any of these terms.

So Next Guard is going to keep Leather and BDSM as a prime focus, but that doesn't mean we exclude people with a different Fetish or Kink outlook, because if you're interested in the Difference, the Power, the Someones, and the someones - then come on into the Tent for the Big Show.



Circus Tent photo from Photochiel on Flickr.