Aphyr, a gay leatherman, writes a history of “the relationship between queer leather and the larger LGBTQ community” covering the first few decades of Pride celebrations. “I want to give fellow LGBTQ people—both kinky and vanilla—an understanding of the interplay of queer and leather communities, a grasp of how normative and radical forces interpreted and shaped the expression of Pride, and an appreciation for the people who worked to achieve the culture we have today. I hope that this history gives readers a framework for thinking about leather and Pride in a more nuanced way.” Long enough that it’s also available as an 89-page PDF or ePub.
A few quotes:
Discourse over the acceptable bounds of sexuality in public has gone on since the very first days of Pride, and debates over leather visibility followed shortly thereafter. In a sense, the present debate is continuous with normalizing arguments from the 1970s through 1990s….
In particular, I’ve chosen to focus on the United States from 1965 to 1995. This is the culture I’m fluent in, and which most of my sources cover. This period covers the origin of Pride, the rise of gay liberation and organized leather, and the partial acceptance of leather within the LGBTQ movement. Much of this work centers on New York and San Francisco—the city which originated Pride, and the city which became a focal point for debate over public displays of variant sexuality. These are the cities for which I have the most extensive sources available. There is more to tell in other cities, but I’m limited by time and access to archives……
Bernstein (2016) described a similar spectrum of strategies in which queer people deploy “identity for critique” to confront social norms vs “identity for education” which builds empathy with broader society……
I cannot begin to catalogue the ways that I personally was uncomfortable with LGBTQ life during my teens and early twenties, from “I am better off dead than being gay” to “I wish they wouldn’t march with so many flags” to “Do Equality Riders really need to stage die-ins on Brigham Young’s private land?” I wrote this piece (in part) to extend a bridge to others grappling with similar feelings…..