Leather Leaders

September 2004

Our society remains bedeviled by the Puritanical notion that sex is wicked. Despite gay liberation’s advances, many people continue to see any sex outside narrow boundaries (with the ideal being a married man and woman having vaginal sex in an attempt to procreate) as intrinsically wrong.

Even folks not quite so uptight often see sex as needing some other redemptive purpose, usually formulated as an aid to building “intimacy” in a “committed relationship.” Sex unredeemed by such a “higher” purpose is still viewed as terribly dangerous. Enormous numbers of people are incarcerated for consensual, mutually enjoyed sex with adolescents. Crackdowns on so-called “public” sex (in which participants almost always, in fact, take care to seclude themselves) remain a favorite tool of ambitious politicians. And federally-mandated gulags for those branded “sexually dangerous persons” now exist in all fifty states; garden-variety prostitutes, t-room queens, and ephebephiles are thrown in with violent rapists, all labeled as permanent threats to society, in need of life-long monitoring.

Not all people are so crippled by such a destructive view of sex. Many with a clearer, more humane vision of sex can be found amongst those who’ve made leather a facet of their sexual lifestyle.

One reason so many leather aficionados have a more enlightened view of sex is that their predilections often involve a manner of dress that signals a set of sexual interests. By consciously adopting a costume which advertises outside-the-mainstream sexuality, leather folk are forced to confront and challenge society’s rigid sexual prohibitions. Thus, leather fans have often given more thought to irrational, arbitrary, and often brutal sex rules.

But perhaps the biggest contribution leather folk make stems from the nature of much leather sex itself.

When two (or more) leather men (or women) connect sexually, certain roles are frequently negotiated and an explicit “game plan” adopted. Different scenes can be enacted, rehearsed, and perfected. Participants can switch roles, try out new parts, and vary their props and costume. Leather sex allows freedom to explore and discover just what buttons work best for its practitioners.

Such overt scripting does much more than create the potential for more fulfilling sex. Much in the same way that cross-dressing queens underscore that all clothing is “drag,” leather fans remind us that amorous interactions all have a psycho-sexual dynamic. Sex, like other human interactions, carries with it the potential for all sorts of “game playing.” By being explicit about the play aspect of sex, leather fans can avoid the pitfalls that imperil those not recognizing the games that take place during sex.

How many partners are confused by the hot “make-up sex” that often follows a big– even violent– fight? How many partners live with unconfronted resentments born of their inability to seek out the sex they crave, but are too embarrassed to negotiate? How many are crippled by possessive jealousy because they see sex as validation of their relationship (and thus, themselves), instead of as play to be enjoyed by mutually desirous participants? Leather fans’ insight about the role of sex in our lives could help even those who do not share a particular fetish for tanned hides.

Given the ongoing political retrenchment, we must worry that leather folks, precisely because they challenge conservative sexual values, will find themselves more and more the target of reactionaries like John Ashcoft. Leather fans command our support, not simply out of a self-interested commitment to civil liberties, but because they serve as sexual leaders, prophets to a world ever in need of the message: sex is good.

Pasted from <http://guidemag.com/magcontent/invokemagcontent.cfm?ID=E56BBE19-5DAD-4325-8CCD02DB7A004C57>