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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they negotiate, play, and live a BDSM, kink,<br />
and/or <strong>Leather</strong> lifestyle.<br />
There are many ways for anyone to negotiate,<br />
with themselves and others, how to create<br />
a lifestyle and/or scene that works for<br />
them. My source material does not provide<br />
concrete answers to the questions raised in<br />
the previous paragraph, but it does provide a<br />
wide variety of perspectives from people of<br />
colour that I look forward to exploring more<br />
fully in my thesis. [2]<br />
My research at the LA&M has also led me<br />
down another somewhat controversial path –<br />
although since when has anyone been adverse<br />
to a little controversy, right? Almost by<br />
accident I came across a number of sources<br />
relating to the infamous Dallas Conference of<br />
’88, [3] and instantly my interest was sparked.<br />
Again, I have been confronted with a number<br />
of contradictory voices in the archive, but<br />
what emerges is a number of conflicts between<br />
men and women, gays and lesbians,<br />
urban and rural, the East Coast and the West<br />
Coast, and those who belong to official leather<br />
organisations and those who do<br />
not. Newslink by the GMSMA has some particularly<br />
interesting articles on the topic, and<br />
they show how heightened emotions were<br />
following the conference. Similarly, correspondence<br />
in the Joseph Bean Papers is<br />
highly charged. My goal here is not air dirty<br />
laundry for its own sake, but to analyse how<br />
these clashes reflected and contributed to the<br />
landscape of the leather community in the<br />
late twentieth century. Occurrences such as<br />
the Dallas Conference of ’88 offer me, as an<br />
historian, an opportunity to see what various<br />
stakeholders in the community considered<br />
vital, and how these views influenced further<br />
development in the scene.<br />
I want to thank the LA&M, and especially Rick<br />
Storer and Jakob VanLammeren for their support.<br />
Resources such as the LA&M are rare,<br />
and to be treasured – thank you for making<br />
my cross-hemisphere pilgrimage possible.<br />
Yours in <strong>Leather</strong> – Lily.<br />
Notes<br />
[1] Lenius, Steve. “New Book about Black Men in <strong>Leather</strong>.” <strong>Leather</strong> Life column for Lavender Magazine,<br />
Issue #108. July 16, 1999. Accessed via the web on 2015-03-<strong>25</strong>.<br />
[2] For additional information regarding PoC in <strong>Leather</strong>, visit Dark Connections, the Carter/Johnson<br />
<strong>Leather</strong> Library, ONYX and their annual anniversary party Blackout.<br />
[3] See Joseph Bean’s article series on the Dallas Conference ’88 in issues 35, 36, 37 and 39 in The<br />
<strong>Leather</strong> Times.<br />
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