FOR THE MAN WHO HAS EVERYTHING INCLUDING PIERCED TITS ↪ Read more about Male Hide LEATHERS, Inc. here

Durk Dehner photographed by Anton Hämäläinen for Voima magazine

Durk Dehner’s life’s work is to nurture Tom of Finland’s world-changing art

The cofounder & president of Tom of Finland Foundation received the knighthood of the Order of the Lion of Finland in the spring of 2023 for his work.

Hi! I saw your comment on leatherdaddies/leather/kink at pride and you mentioned how this type of masculinity isn't meant to be performed for a het audience, and removing that framework is essentially hollowing out this type of masculinity. (?) I've been looking into modern media portrayals of non hegemonic masculinity and I was wondering if you had some good intro sources for leather culture? Based on the info in that post I'm wondering if there's some bleed through with pop culture/TV and the modern pop cowboy/space western but I could just be jumping to conclusions. At any rate would sill love and appreciate any recs you would be able to give--if not, totally understand! Either way I love the info that you added to that post a lot!!

It's like you knew I didn't want to be working on my thesis and have come to save me.

Okay so, it really depends on what you want for like "sources for leather culture" because if it's leather culture as it exists today put on your tightest Levis, and your heaviest leather boots and go to the local gay bar on leather night and make friends (easier said than done I know I've always lived in rural America, also pls don't go gawk leathermen we can tell) But if you want historic sources that I can help you with better.

The two books I cite the most in my thesis when it comes to leather masculinity are 1. Urban Aboriginals: A Celebration of Leathersexuality by Geoff Mains and 2. The Leatherman's Handbook by Larry Townsend.

The first is much easier to get your hands on than the second. You can just by Urban Aboriginals on Amazon or Thriftbooks or bookshops, probably even your local gay bookstore if you have one, it's still in print. I have the third edition I love that book SO MUCH it was originally published in the early 80s, and I use it as a reflection of the "golden" age of Leather in the 1970s.

Unfortunately, The Leatherman's Handbook and The Leatherman's Handbook II are out of print. That is not to say you can't get your hands on them. I spent an obscene amount of money to buy the pair on ebay. But also, I once found a Lesbian SM reader in my school's library, so you might beable to get it though an interlibrary loan? or maybe a pdf exists?

Another useful text that I cite quite a bit is Leather Folk: Radical Sex, People, Politics, and Practice, edited by Mark Thompson. This is an anthology of essays written by, you guessed it, leatherfolk both gay men and others. (I am assuming because of the post that you are most interested in gay leathermen)

Regarding the rest of your post on pop-culture portrayals of non-hegemonic masculinity (I am assuming you are using that term in an academic "I've read R.W. Connell" way, if not RIP, sorry again I'm working my thesis the first chapter of which is very "I'm Read R.W. Connell") I have one thing to say:

I am 90% sure only three of these men are gay, that only three of these men are intimately aware of the costumes they are wearing. David Hodo, the construction worker, Randy Jones the Cowboy, and Glenn Hughes. I wish I could find the photo of the three of them in their costumes with one very important detail, a single button of their 501s is undone. If you are a gay man crusing in the 1970s you own a pair of levi 501s that are so tight you have to shimmy into them, and you leave one of the buttons undone to make your dick bigger. You can also just tell when they're dancing who understood the assaignment.

I give all this information because the village people have such a weird relationship with the gay community. I haven't done a lot of work with them specifically so I'm sure someone is gonna read this and know xyz. But these guys are named after the west village, where gay men lived in new york, and got their start preforming for gay men. the costumes they wear are of course different types of masculinity idealized in the gay community. Their songs (at least the first iteration of the village people) are usually about gay things. YMCA is of course about crusing, but "San Francisco" from their debut is even more overt along side "Go West," "In the Navy," and "macho man"

I've inserted this video as a visual so when I say, "the three gay ones understand the assignment," you know what I mean, their performance is campy where, where the other two are missing that.

But deconstructing the Village people, or at least the three queerest ones takes an understanding of queer history. In the same way that the Leatherman is a "biker," the construction worker is not really a construction worker (this is not to say that Leathermen are not often bikers, they are) The construction worker is a "Clone" the promiscuous gay men of the 70s who wore Levi jeans, work boots, tight t-shirts, and flannel and solicited sex from other clones in public. Similarly, the cowboy might be a cowboy, but he might also be one of the hundreds of men who hung out at western-themed bars (closely related to leather) and are the prototype of the bear. All three of these particular queer masculinities resist the feminine archetype of queer men HOWEVER, when produced for mass conception, they are camped up.

I think that this would be an instructive place for you to start, I don't know that I can help with more modern pop-culture though.

I'm In The Depths of A Research Hole On The Origins of The Leather Scene

and I'm just like... aside from Sam Steward and like Jean Genet's stuff I cannot find a DAMN thing from the 40s on gay bikers after WWII or like people starting to coalesce around that. Like I know about a bunch of gay men who were around doing gay shit in the 40s, but like... it feels like everything from Thom Magister to The Satyrs to... IDK what all sort of pops into existence in 1950 or later but there's this story of stuff that was there before, the old guard, the beginnings of outlaw bikers... but there's nothing from any of the guys who were in WWII and later started doing leather stuff. IDK man.

Source: Becoming Visible; An Illustrated History Of Lesbian And Gay Life In Twentieth-Century America- by Molly McGary and Fred Wasserman

Mike Ruiz takes leathermen into the metaverse with NFT drop

Mike Ruiz takes leathermen into the metaverse with NFT drop

Celebrity and fashion photographer Mike Ruiz, continues to expand his his ongoing portrait series focusing on the beauty and diversity of the leather community, by taking leathermen into the metaverse. On June 5th, Ruiz will be dropping a series of 100 portraits from his leathermen project as NFTs. “With the metaverse gaining momentum and art being tokenized digitally”, Ruiz told The Queer…

View On WordPress

Cynthia Slater was a Leather sadomasochistic bisexual pervert and activist, catacomb-hunting sex worker from San Francisco, co-founder of the Society of Janus in 1974 (one of the first visible gender-mixed groups for sadomasochists), and founder one of the first groups to support bisexual women living with HIV. Her sexual escapades, her virtuous masochism, her taste for greased-up fists, and her activism are documented in numerous interviews and writings.She was also a close friend and companion of sex radicals such as Patrick Califia, Robert Mapplethorpe, Larry Olsen, Bob Flanagan, and Sheree Rose (and a lover of some of them). Knowing her story was very important to me, and I will always be very grateful to her. I had long thought about making her some kind of transhistorical spiritual offering, and right now I am working on an oil portrait project of her. Here I show some initial sketching in pencil, which I hope to turn into painting later.

Pride isn’t a “queer-friendly space”, pride IS queer space.

Kink doesn’t “belong” at pride, kink IS pride.

To say that these things are just-kind-of-also-included is such a diluted view of what these things actually are. These spaces have been mentally purified for so many people as things that are “also-okay-for-gays!”--

No!!

These spaces ARE OURS. Not just “friendly to us”. Not just “inclusive to us”. They ARE us. We don’t just “belong”... We’re the reason it exists in the first place!

~ Shoes.

Culture: Romano-British

Place of origin: Roman site of Newstead (Trimontium), Roxburghshire, Scotland, Northern Europe

Medium: Leather; thistle-shaped tab at the back

Glenn Hughes from the Village People in "Can't stop the Music" (1980)

Durk Dehner, Tom of Finland Foundation cofounder & president

Drummer magazine, May 1977

I can't believe we could've had 60s ineffible wives. The ultimate punk and prep couple. Grease but lesbians.

Guess I need to go to fucking Chicago and dig through old interviews

Source: Coming To Power: Writings On Lesbian S/M - Edited by members of SAMOIS

Note - This book contains very problematic and triggering content and I would not recommend it

1978 San Francisco Gay Day Parade

Tom of Finland Foundation president & co-founder Durk Dehner receives knighthood in Finland

Tom of Finland Foundation (ToFF) President and Co-founder Durk Dehner has been knighted by the Chancery of the Orders of the White Rose of Finland and the Lion of Finland. The Order of the Lion of Finland is awarded in recognition of outstanding civilian or military conduct, and the President of the Republic of Finland has the exclusive right to confer their decorations as Grand Master of the…

View On WordPress