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Does the Leather Community Belong at Pride?
122 Plays17 days ago
Today we cover the history of the leather community, how it came to be, their importance and integral position in queer history, and why we should not exclude groups from pride.
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Transcript
Introduction to Kink, Leather, and Pride
00:00:00
Jon McCray Jones
Hello and welcome to this week's episode of the Fun with Sex podcast. I'm Natalie. And I'm John. And today we're talking about the intersection of kink and pride.
00:00:13
Jon McCray Jones
I think also like leather and pride. And I think it's important that we make that distinction from the start. Because every time that I see people talking about like, oh, kink doesn't belong at pride.
00:00:24
Jon McCray Jones
I'm like, very rarely do I actually see any type of like kink or like BDSM scene in pride. Yeah, it's really not about, you know, because people try to use the argument of like, oh, Pride Parade is an event and where kids come to. Nobody's practicing kink at the parade. It's simply just people in the leather community who are showing pride and being a part of that community. And I think people don't understand that, like, while there's a lot of overlap between leather and kink communities, they're not the same.
Historical Role of Leather Community in LGBTQ Movements
00:00:59
Jon McCray Jones
And I also think people need to understand that there may not be a pride or even a substantial LGBTQ movement that's this open and this powerful in the United States if it wasn't for the leather community putting their necks out and fighting for our rights.
00:01:17
Jon McCray Jones
ah Do you know the history of the leather community at all? Or... I know a little bit tangentially just from knowing about queer history and kink history, but I'm ready to do a deep dive and learn more.
00:01:31
Jon McCray Jones
Basically, if you go back to like the 1880s, before the leather community, um there was a movement for LGBTQ rights in this country. And like through the early and like the 19...
00:01:42
Jon McCray Jones
and like nineteen early nineteen twenty s in big cities, and especially in places like Harlem, there was more of an open LGBTQ community and there were balls and there were people that were dressing in gender non-conforming ways.
00:01:59
Jon McCray Jones
um But then in the 30s and the forty s during the Great Depression and the war and the medicalization of queerness, there was a massive conservative backlash in America hu that absolutely destroyed and disrupted the above ground queer scene in this country.
00:02:18
Jon McCray Jones
um There was a lot turmoil and a lot of pushback against left-wing ideologies in America response to, excuse me, concerns about communism.
00:02:30
Jon McCray Jones
And now it goes back to like the 30s and the 40s. And queerness was associated with left-wing ideas, which was associated with communism. And we had a return to like conservatism in in America.
00:02:41
Jon McCray Jones
and then in 1950s is when you have the conventional ideas of like traditional American family values. Yeah, the post-war, super traditional white picket fence lifestyle.
00:02:52
Jon McCray Jones
But ironically, the road war two World War II might have been one of the biggest catalysts for like the modern LGBTQ rights movement in America. you had a bunch of queer men, normally, and queer women. I'm not going to erase the story of like the queer lesbians and queer bisexuals who also fought in World War two But you had all these people from all these small towns get shipped off to these places where they mostly spend time with people of the same gender.
00:03:21
Jon McCray Jones
And they're away from home. They're away from their... social circle and their conventional moral atmosphere of people who would judge them like their church and their parents.
00:03:32
Jon McCray Jones
And you started seeing a lot of people experiment with people of the same gender during World War two And there would be like drag shows happening in the Barrett's during World War II. lot of men would entertain each other by dressing up and performing theater as people of the opposite gender or dances.
Formation of Leather Subculture Post-WWII
00:03:50
Jon McCray Jones
So post-World War two And that a lot of gay men came back home and they were disgruntled going back to their small towns with very conventionally conservative values and they felt limited.
00:04:04
Jon McCray Jones
And with the help of the GI Bill, that only really happened with white gay men. um We can also go into like the impacts of the GI Bill on like leather and queer communities of color, which is why we don't see like queer neighborhoods that center black and brown queer people.
00:04:23
Jon McCray Jones
Yeah. Because only white gay veterans have access to the GI Bill. this money poured in from the federal government allowed all these gay men veterans to create neighborhoods in Chicago and New York and other major cities of gay conclaves of like veterans who came back from the war where they were able to buy houses and open up bars and open up businesses.
00:04:47
Jon McCray Jones
And that leads us directly into the leather community. Yeah. Because all these gay returning veterans and other gay men who found solace in these neighborhoods, ah these gay veterans missed the uniformity and the masculinity that came with wearing these uniforms that they wore in the military.
00:05:05
Jon McCray Jones
And they kind of co-opted biker gang leather. And they started using these these outfits, these uniforms, leather, as a way of reclaiming masculinity from cis-heteronormative terms and creating their own culture around masculinity and hierarchy.
00:05:25
Jon McCray Jones
And then that's where kind of the BDSM play kind of plays into this. And creating these safe spaces for gay men to be gay and to be masculine and to be powerful outside of the grasp of are normal social constructions of masculinity and straightness.
00:05:44
Jon McCray Jones
And that's the roots of the leather community.
Pre-Stonewall Activism in Leather Bars
00:05:46
Jon McCray Jones
Basically, a lot of them were returning veterans who were gay men who found out that they were gay while serving in World War two and helped create the, again, cis white man gayborhoods in major cities like Chicago.
00:06:00
Jon McCray Jones
Yeah. And I think one of the themes I really see too is that, which is still very much instilled in those communities today, is this idea of brotherhood and having a community because, you know, America post-World War II was really, really being pushed into this hyper-capitalistic, individualistic culture, and there wasn't really a sense of community or camaraderie. I mean, now we're all in single-family houses with a lawn separating us, and it's all focused on the nuclear family, whereas
00:06:35
Jon McCray Jones
You know, when you're in a war you're in the same uniform. You're fighting with these people. These are your brothers. These are your friends. So i think a lot of people coming back were searching for that and especially searching for a queer community.
00:06:49
Jon McCray Jones
And while gay men were able to establish these communities, there was a lot of lesbians and like trans men who fought in world war ii not not a whole lot of trans men but the reason why a lot of these lesbians couldn't set up their equivalent of boys towns because a lot of times they were denied the gi bill and same thing with why when you look at boys towns around the country they're normally predominantly white gay men and it's because black veterans and veterans of color were also systemically denied the GI Bill, so they didn't have that federal funding that allowed them to create these gay neighborhoods like you see in Chicago and New York.
00:07:27
Jon McCray Jones
Yeah, and something that's still very prevalent today and why we don't have a lot of lesbian-specific spaces is when you think about who has the most capital in the society, especially back then. I mean... yeah you're in a couple, two women. It's not like you have a lot of disposable income to go to bars and do stuff like that. But, you know, just because they weren't centered in those specific bars doesn't mean that lesbians weren't a huge part of the leather community as well. And kind of like getting to
Interconnection of Kink, BDSM, and Leather Communities
00:07:58
Jon McCray Jones
that place. So within like throughout the 50s and 60s, we see the leather community become this safe space for gay men to come together and hang out and feel protected
00:08:11
Jon McCray Jones
by each other and protected by the space in a world that i was still vehemently in a country and a world was so vehemently homophobic in killing gay people.
00:08:22
Jon McCray Jones
ah And throughout the sixty s but even like before Stonewall, a lot of these leather bars became place of like political activism and like organizing And like fighting for gay rights. And a lot of these guys will get into like brawls with like straight men who would like yell homophobic things into the bars.
00:08:42
Jon McCray Jones
And this became one of the first places of like queer political organizing that helped spur the snowball effect that led to Stonewall. And I think that's the other thing that like what people don't understand that like Stonewall was...
00:08:56
Jon McCray Jones
the big bomb that started the queer rights movement, the modern queer rights movement in the United States. But there were a lot of like uprisings and protests and oh yeah fights before 1969 in New York on Christopher Street that led to that moment. And a lot of that was caused and organized by the Leather Sea.
00:09:15
Jon McCray Jones
Yeah. And I think what's also really important is to remind people of like how kink became associated with leather. And have you heard of the term alt sex before? No, I have not.
00:09:27
Jon McCray Jones
So alt sex is this idea of community of ah people who, whether they're queer or they're straight, they don't fit inside the norms of conventional heteronormativity society.
00:09:41
Jon McCray Jones
So either they're kinky, they have fetishes, they're gay or queer, or they're non-monogamous.
Support of Gay Men During AIDS Crisis
00:09:49
Jon McCray Jones
They're just alternative to typical monogamy and typical like vanilla sex.
00:09:55
Jon McCray Jones
And what happened was a lot of the bi and queer people and even straight people who were into like BDSM and fetishes also found solace in the countercultural and sex positivity of the leather movement.
00:10:13
Jon McCray Jones
So you started to see a lot of like kinky and BDSM people. throwing events at gay bars or at leather bars, because those were the only bars that would allow them to have a place to organize. So start seeing leather bars being a first place for sex positivity in this country in the modern era in like the sixties and the seventies.
00:10:31
Jon McCray Jones
And then that's how ah let the BDSM and fetish community started co-opting leather wear. Yeah, I think it makes a lot of sense. Cause I was aware of the leather community was kind of formed with,
00:10:46
Jon McCray Jones
the biker community, gay veterans, um and also the BDSM community. And it's really just kind of the idea of being countercultural in a time when that was not what society was pushing us to do. And that was not what a lot of people wanted to do.
00:11:03
Jon McCray Jones
yeah And that's why like these communities, while not exactly the same, have like a lot of overlap. And the aesthetics are really similar because the the BDSM and Greater King community saw freedom in like the leather community and co-opted their looks.
00:11:21
Jon McCray Jones
And again, and people talk about BDSM at Pride, oftentimes they're talking about the leather community at Pride. But because we don't know this history, we don't understand that there is a difference between those two communities.
00:11:36
Jon McCray Jones
And that leather doesn't have to be sexual. Leather is just queer. It's just a gay aesthetic in the same way that other things are gay aesthetics. While BDSM is rooted in sexual relationships, even though i would argue that BDSM and kink itself is always relational, but not always sexual.
00:11:56
Jon McCray Jones
And that's a different conversation for a different podcast. Yeah. ah I think a lot of times when people see what they think is BDSM and Kink at Pride, what they're actually seeing is leather at Pride.
00:12:08
Jon McCray Jones
And I think that even if BDSM and Kink is at Pride, that erases the fight and the side-by-side. handholding that these communities had with the leather and the gay rights community throughout the 70s and
Respectability Politics and Inclusivity in Pride Events
00:12:22
Jon McCray Jones
80s.
00:12:22
Jon McCray Jones
One of the big people who helped fundraise and organize pop-up medical care and mutual aid for gay men was one, ah the leather women community, lesbian leather community.
00:12:36
Jon McCray Jones
That's why the L comes first in LGBTQ. And also the King community was one of the biggest participators in fighting for gay rights activism and organizing for AIDS and mutual AIDS for gay men.
00:12:50
Jon McCray Jones
Yeah, that's what I was going to say is the leather community and this idea of having a strong sense of community, um physical spaces where you could go and find your community became so, so important during the AIDS epidemic.
00:13:04
Jon McCray Jones
And ah lesbian women were really integral for that because this was a day and age where there were even doctors and nurses who had refused to care for these men and all the propaganda that this was ah gay punishment and gay cancer. So it was really them who were on the front lines caring for these people and making sure they were safe.
00:13:29
Jon McCray Jones
And yeah, I mean, you know, it's crazy talking to queer elders about this period in time, but I just now more than ever, I always think of that quote about we'd go to a funeral during the day and then we would party at night.
00:13:49
Jon McCray Jones
You know, people not only relied on this community to give each other care when no one else would, but also to come back to during these dark times. And the leather community and the greater, but letter leather community,
00:14:04
Jon McCray Jones
as it was now changing from like a space of just cis gay men to a space that was a little bit more queer and even accepting straight people who are part of the kink community was one of the pillars that upheld the gay community during the AIDS crisis and like fought for LGBTQ rights and fought for the federal government and local state governments to do something while tens of thousands of gay people died in the streets.
00:14:31
Jon McCray Jones
And we have to remember that like our federal government, the same conservatives that gay people today are trying to appease by kicking queer people or kicking leather people out of pride was the same government that sat there and ignored tens of thousands of gay men dying during the AIDS epidemic.
00:14:49
Jon McCray Jones
And I think that gets us to like a really important point of like respectability politics and does pride belong or does kink and leather belong at pride?
00:15:00
Jon McCray Jones
I mean, i think the biggest thing is these communities and these identities are very intertwined.
Solidarity Against Conservative Politics
00:15:09
Jon McCray Jones
um And I think, you know, i feel the same way about ah turning your back on the leather community when it comes time for pride. It's the same thing you see where trans women and trans men were at the front lines at Stonewall fighting for queer rights. And then, oh, and, you know, the same thing happened to Black queer people. It's like, oh, well, it's a bit easier for us to be accepted if we're, like, the stereotypical,
00:15:40
Jon McCray Jones
white cis person then we have a better chance of being accepted so we're not gonna include you guys in our protest and in our chance to get rights because that would kind of make it harder for them to accept us when it's like it's bullshit these are the people that got you to the point you are today and the idea of like what is respectability politics and it's the idea of marginalized communities whether it's on queer lines or racial lines or any other type of like marginability trying to present themselves that is palpable.
00:16:19
Jon McCray Jones
I said ah feel like I said that word wrong, but that is digestible to the greater culture. So that's either gay men who are like, well, I don't want to be hypersexual because that doesn't do any service to our community.
00:16:34
Jon McCray Jones
That's live in a monogamous house in the suburbs, which if you truly want to do that, that's perfectly fine. That's perfectly fine. i have thoughts about the suburbs, but in general, that's perfectly fine. But it's gay men who repress parts of themselves to become more accepting to greater society or lesbians who are like...
00:16:52
Jon McCray Jones
Let's not do X, Y, and Z of queer culture or lesbians against groomers, groomers being trans people or providing care for trans kids because, excuse me, that's going to heart hurt our greater cause.
00:17:07
Jon McCray Jones
That's not what resp but respectability politics is. Or Black people changing the way they talk or dress because they don't appear too ghetto because they want white people to accept them. And like my issue respectability politics is that it doesn't work.
00:17:21
Jon McCray Jones
The same people who are disgusted by trans identities and trying to ban drag shows are the same people who don't want you at Pride, who are voting against gay marriage in general and, excuse me, voting against gay marriage in general and voting for politicians that are trying to strip gay stories out of educational materials and like American history.
00:17:47
Jon McCray Jones
And these are the same people who are trying to ban drag shows. And when you turn your backs on people who are in your community who historically have fought with you side by side to try to be more to try to be more digestible to greater culture, all you're doing is alienating your friends to lie in bed with your foe who as soon as you all how soon as they get rid of your other allies that you can't involve are coming for you next and we're seeing this now american politics yeah i think that's the most naive thing about people who hold privilege in one identity um but are in a marginalized group in another is they think they can appeal to the oppressor but it's a naive thought because it's like
00:18:35
Jon McCray Jones
did you really think they weren't going to come for you next? I mean, I'm thinking about that guy who was openly gay, as openly gay as you could be in Nazi Germany.
00:18:48
Jon McCray Jones
And, you know, he kind of had this air of confidence that Hitler was going to never come for him. And it's like, oh no, wanted you to help me along the way, but you are gay. Well, that's the story of, I believe his name was Ernst Rome.
00:19:03
Jon McCray Jones
ah He was a lieutenant and like one of the special forces for the nazis during the early rise to power he was like a very charismatic military leader who had his own like private army and while hitler was homophobic ernst thought he was protected because he was useful to hitler and that his identity was okay and hitler was going to go after the fairies or the more feminine gay man and was going to go after the trans and gender queer people, but he would be protected because one, his queerness was behind nationalism and was very hyper masculine.
00:19:44
Jon McCray Jones
And then as soon as Hitler cracked down on a, finished cracking down on the greater LGBTQ community, he ended up killing Ernst too, for being gay. And we see that story happen time and time and time again with like gay Republicans,
00:19:59
Jon McCray Jones
ah getting in bed with like in this election with Trump in 2024 because they thought, well, he's just going after the trans community and he ends up going out to everybody. and that's what we're, we're warning about what's happening with like kink and leather is that you want to sanitize pride and make it socially acceptable for these corporations and these like conservative ideology people and take the sexuality or the leather history out of pride But then as we're seeing in like 2024, corporate sponsors are disinvesting from pride in record numbers because the Trump administration put a little pressure on them.
Debate on Kid-Friendly Pride Events
00:20:39
Jon McCray Jones
you know who's not disinvesting from pride? The leather community and the kink community and people who are still showing up time and time again lock arms with the queer community, the greater queer community.
00:20:51
Jon McCray Jones
who has fought side by sides with the greater queer queer community since the start when Target decides that, hey, we don't want to piss off the Trump administration, so we're not going to be at Pride this year. And Lockheed Martin stopped hosting their LGBTQ day because they want to make sure they can sign deals because they want more bombs to drop in Palestine.
00:21:12
Jon McCray Jones
Yep. And I think that, like, the other thing that, like, I can hear people already arguing about is what about the kids? And I have a lot of thoughts about that, but do you want to get yours out first?
00:21:27
Jon McCray Jones
Yeah, I think, you know, I'll speak based on my experience of going to what is typically the only kid-friendly Pride event, which is every city's Pride parade. And there's really nothing I've seen that is like,
00:21:47
Jon McCray Jones
inherently explicit in the leather community when they're in the parade they're simply just in leather gear i mean the most i guess you could say intense thing would be like you might see some leash action but again it's not explicit content it's just somebody on a leash um and i think like you know think it's also that level ah like, what do you define as sexual? Because also a lot of people who attend Pride want to be very expressive of their sexuality. So they're going to attend in a jockstrap.
00:22:29
Jon McCray Jones
you know, i just kind of, I think as a parent, if you're not comfortable kind of explaining the what's going on or unpacking that with your kid, maybe just see if there's a more Explicitly marketed to kids event because the parade has never been explicitly again in the cities I've lived in marketed to children.
00:22:56
Jon McCray Jones
um But again, it's like you can also attend. a 4th of July parade where you may see the Dallas Cowboy cheerleaders in their little underwear and crop top bra set.
00:23:11
Jon McCray Jones
So yeah. Yeah. And like for the final thoughts on the podcast, I kind of want to push back on like the first thing you said, and I'm glad you changed it later because like, I don't think the pride parade is the only kid friendly part of pride.
00:23:25
Jon McCray Jones
Because like, what defines kid-friendly? Because when even if you go to a normal Pride fest, you're not going to see somebody in the middle of the street performing a sexual act on someone else.
00:23:38
Jon McCray Jones
You may see somebody in revealing clothes, but then in other contexts, we don't see that as not kid-friendly. You take your kid to the beach and people are in bikinis You take your kids to a sports game and there's cheerleaders.
00:23:53
Jon McCray Jones
ah Hooters used to have a kids eat free night where parents, mostly dads, would take their sons to Hooters to stare at girl or women's breasts.
00:24:04
Jon McCray Jones
So I think the idea is that like what is kids friendly is like up to the parent. As long as you're not taking your kid to an explicit sexual scene where they're performing sexual acts.
00:24:15
Jon McCray Jones
And I think what gives us in trouble at pride is that we go into this idea that adults have the police revealing their bodies and police what they wear because kids may be present instead of it's the job of the parent to make sure that kids that they bring their kids someplace
00:24:40
Jon McCray Jones
they're comfortable knowing what their kids see certain body parts and also like how sexualizing are we making our body or how are we sexualizing other people's bodies if they're just showing their bodies and being proud of like who they are.
00:24:54
Jon McCray Jones
And I think that this also follows a long history of tying queerness to perversion and groomers, which is like so ironic about the gaze against groomers when they're using that to attack trans people.
00:25:06
Jon McCray Jones
Because 15 years ago, that was the argument against gay marriage because it was was somehow lead to pedophilia. Or if we accept men dating other men, then it's turned to adults dating kids.
00:25:18
Jon McCray Jones
There's this always using kids as a way to push back against anything that challenges normative sexual practices because like kids are a group of people who can't advocate for themselves and don't have agency so they must be quote unquote protected and instead of protecting them from like catholic priests or religious leaders who are the second most likely group to abuse kids outside of someone in your immediate circle meaning immediate friends and family we create these boogeyman of like gay men and drag queens and queer people who are abusing kids
00:25:51
Jon McCray Jones
And I think that when we like talk about sanitizing pride to make a kid friendly, we're playing right into that narrative. Yeah. It's really about you're holding queer people to a higher standard. Cause like I said, you can go to any basketball game parade and see plenty of cheerleaders and pretty revealing outfits, or, you know, you take your kid to see lady Gaga or the halftime performer.
Pride as Protest and Revolutionary Spirit
00:26:18
Jon McCray Jones
like It's nothing new to see, like, some legs and stomach.
00:26:23
Jon McCray Jones
Yeah, and, like, I think that, like, for a parting thought, Pride was never supposed to be digestible to, like, the greater culture. The original Pride was a protest. I mean, the original Pride was a riot.
00:26:36
Jon McCray Jones
I mean, like, Stonewall was throwing rocks at cops and fighting the police while they tried to mass arrest people. Like, I think even a protest is, like, sanitizing it a little bit. You could almost call it the original Stonewall moment in Uprising.
00:26:53
Jon McCray Jones
And I think that, like, drag, leather, and to a certain extent kink are all part of that long lineage of, like, fighting against the status quo. And I think that, like, trying to make pride digestible to the status quo directly opposes the ethos of what pride is meant to be originally.
00:27:12
Jon McCray Jones
And you're playing right into the hands and the talking points of the people who don't want pride and LGBT visibility to be a thing. Yeah. Yeah. So, like, I think this is it. Let me check my notes. I don't know if i have much more to talk about.
00:27:28
Jon McCray Jones
i mean, i just to end, i don't think conforming will ever set anyone free. it will never stop queer phobia. It never has. And like p pride must remain to its history and its truth.
00:27:42
Jon McCray Jones
And the leather community is part of that queer history. The leather community is a big reason why pride is a thing and why gay rights as a movement has some teeth and push for all these rights since the fifties.
00:27:56
Jon McCray Jones
And a lot of those started, a lot of these, this history can be traced directly back to like the grandparents in leather bars. Yeah. All right. right Well, that's all I have for today.
00:28:09
Jon McCray Jones
Thank you for listening and we'll see you next week.