It’s generally assumed that leather culture got s start the 1940s, as an offshoot to post-World War II motorcycle clubs that began poppg up around the same time. Gays had flocked drov to large ci followg Blue Discharg om the army, a way of removg homosexuals om service, as dishonourably dischargg and imprisong gays beme impractil wh the huge number of recs durg WWII. It led to large groups of homosexuals ci like Los Angel, San Francis and Chigo.
Contents:
A BRIEF HISTORY OF LEATHER AND THE GAYS
Our visn: to accurately reflect the gay leather scene while tg rears about fetish and kks that are unrreported or Matt SpikeThis photo om issue 218, which will e out October 2020, celebrat the 1st year anniversary of the Dmmer reboot. The naive belief that sex is simply an born stct still exerts s power, but most gay men and lbians know that the sex they have was not nate or entirely of their own makg, but learned—learned by participatg, scen of talk as well as of fuckg. It is now jeopardy even wh the gay movement, as gay men and lbians are more and more drawn to a moralizg that chim wh homophobic stereotype, wh a wizened utopianism that nf our matury wh marriage to the law, and perhaps most sidly of all, wh the privatizatn of sex the fantasy that mass-mediated belongg uld ever substute for the public world of a sexual culture.
This emergg activist stance, lled gay liberatn, engaged civil prott and nstcted an unrstandg that beg “gay” was more than a medil ndn or viant sexual practice, but a distct, posive cultural inty subject to shared opprsn (Weeks, 2016). Meanwhile, mastream lbian and gay activism grew more stutnalized and creasgly emphasized morate requts for civil rights—as the 1993 March on Washgton—while leather, bisexual, and trans people ntued to ph for cln the movement (Warner, 1999). In 1979, the “Gays Unr 21” ntgent SF mand to have their rights taken serly by both straight and gay adults, who were “acceptg straights’ posn that young people have no sexualy, ” and “excludg om the larger gay muny” (Gays Unr 21 Contgent, 1979).
The origs of gay leather the Uned Stat are somewhat unclear, but popular acunts discs a wave of gay men who were discharged om the ary followg World War II, bed wh a rebell, mascule image of black-clad motorcycle gangs the 1950s (Addison, 2012). The LAPD raid the Black Cat 1967 (beatg patrons and pturg one bartenr’s spleen), a Homophile Effort for Legal Protectn fundraiser at the Black Pipe 1972, and the Mark IV baths “slave ctn” fundraiser for gay chari 1976: an effort which volved roughly a hundred officers, two helipters, a dozen vehicl (Los Angel Leather History, 2021; Rub, 1982b; S. Cg distorted media bigotry, fagbashg, and “the opprsn of our liftyle wh the larger gay/lbian muny, ” Brian O’Dell found New York’s Gay Male S/M Activists (GMSMA) 1980, and the Lbian Sex Mafia (LSM), a New York lbian S/M group, was found the followg year (Rub, 2015).