Leather Archives & Museum: 25 Years (1991-2016) [digital]

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