Leather Archives & Museum: 25 Years
The official catalog celebrating the 25th Anniversary of the Leather Archives & Museum. The catalog features essays, collection photographs, and highlights over the LA&M's institutional life.
The official catalog celebrating the 25th Anniversary of the Leather Archives & Museum. The catalog features essays, collection photographs, and highlights over the LA&M's institutional life.
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THE LEATHER ARCHIVES & MUSEUM:<br />
SOME PRE-HISTORY<br />
T<br />
he LA&M is one of the most<br />
significant accomplishments of the<br />
late 20 th century movement for the<br />
rights, dignity, improved status, and selfacceptance<br />
of the leather and kink<br />
populations. And I will be forever grateful to<br />
Chuck Renslow and Tony DeBlase for their<br />
key roles in making one of my most<br />
cherished dreams come true. I hope some<br />
of the pre-history and early history of the<br />
institution can provide a perspective on its<br />
importance. What follows is not a<br />
comprehensive account of the early history<br />
of the LA&M, but rather those aspects in<br />
which I was involved and of which I have<br />
direct knowledge.<br />
When I began collecting, compiling, and<br />
documenting leather history in the late<br />
1970s, it was a more or less unthinkable<br />
project, for several reasons. There was the<br />
pervasive stigmatization of the community<br />
and its assortment of sexual practices. In<br />
turn, this general disreputability was largely<br />
responsible for the way knowledge about<br />
these sexualities and its practitioners was<br />
produced and circulated. At the academic<br />
level, SM and fetishism were considered<br />
mental diseases, and were mainly<br />
addressed in the psychiatric literature. At<br />
the popular level, most writing about<br />
leather, SM, and fetishism was published<br />
as porn. There were exceptions, such as<br />
Terry Andrews’ Story of Harold, The Real<br />
Thing by William Carney, the fiction of Phil<br />
Andros (Sam Steward), and of course,<br />
Larry Townsend’s The <strong>Leather</strong>men’s<br />
Handbook. But these were relatively rare,<br />
and both Steward and Townsend’s books<br />
were produced and marketed as porn. So<br />
was Drummer, the most significant of the<br />
leather magazines. Pauline Reage’s Story<br />
of O, then one of the most notable works of<br />
(predominantly) heterosexual SM erotica,<br />
was published by Olympia Press, which<br />
occupied a kind of netherworld between<br />
pornography and avant-garde fiction.<br />
One of the largest impediments to<br />
developing any sort of credible leather<br />
history was the scarcity of primary source<br />
material. The kinds of research libraries<br />
and archives that make serious historical<br />
work possible did not collect leather and<br />
SM materials. Again, there<br />
were exceptions, such as the Kinsey<br />
Institute in Bloomington, Indiana, to which I<br />
soon made the first of several pilgrimages.<br />
In addition, there was a nascent interest<br />
within leather communities on their history.<br />
Some of the then-active leather<br />
organizations began to feature programs<br />
on aspects of leather history. Among the<br />
most important of these was New York’s<br />
GMSMA (Gay Male SM Activists), founded<br />
in 1980. For example, in 1982, one of<br />
GMSMA’s early programs was on SM in<br />
New York City in the 1950s. This panel<br />
discussion featured some of the founders<br />
of the New York leather scene. It was<br />
recorded, and I had it transcribed; it<br />
remains an invaluable document of early<br />
leather life in the US. Earlier in 1982,<br />
GMSMA had a program on SM art and<br />
artists. This was presented by Louis<br />
Weingarden, who ran Stompers, a boot<br />
store and leather art gallery in New York’s<br />
Greenwich Village. Weingarden and his<br />
gallery were on the leading edge of a<br />
resurrection of gay male leather art in the<br />
late 1970s and early 1980s. Stompers<br />
hosted the first Tom of Finland show in the<br />
United States, as well as shows featuring<br />
artists such as Steve Masters, Kenneth<br />
Anger, Quaintance, Blade, Colt, Rex, Olaf,<br />
Domino, Brick, Lou Rudolph, and Etienne.<br />
However, in 1978 when I rather quixotically<br />
<strong>25</strong>