A Kinky History Lesson

It's hard to celebrate where you are, if you don't know where you've been. The Leather/Kink/BDSM community has a very rich history. It's a mixed bag of gay leather, transwomen, kinky het folk, and BDSM enthusiasts, all supporting each other. War, motorcycle clubs, Stonewall, our government, and popular media have all left their mark. A lot of our history was lost to AIDS. And that history is being made right now, today, as well.

I'm going to share some of the history that I've been taught, history of the Kink & Leather community in the United States. I'm focusing mostly on Kink history, but it is indelibly intertwined with Leather history, and gay history, and the history of sexuality and eroticism, so we'll touch on those, too. There are links where I can to sources I ran across, so that you can explore different topics at greater length, since this is a scattershot overview of many relevant topics.

I'll probably miss important things, or tell it a different way than someone else would. That's part of the beauty of oral history; it's not a stagnant, defined thing. I take full responsibility for anything that's inaccurate, though; please offer more information or corrections as necessary. Some of what I'll tell comes from classes I've taught, or classes I've attended. Much of it come from listening to people who've been around longer, often people who are no longer around. I wasn't around for a lot of this history, but it's still my history, the history of my people. A history I'm proud to be a small part of. 

The Kinky Ancients

First of all, kink, itself, is not by any means new. As long as people have been around, kinky people have been doing kinky things. A few examples:

Let's start with the goddess Inanna in ancient Mesopotamia, up to about 2000 BC. The goddess of love, sensuality, fertility, procreation, and war, she was worshiped with domination rituals and flagellation. 

And then there's the Tomb of the Whipping - approximately 490 BC. This tomb has a fresco of two men striking a woman with a hand and what is likely a whip. She is bent over between them, and it looks as if she is fellating one of the men. Yep, that looks kinky to me.

We can also look at at least one ancient text you've all heard of. The Kama Sutra has been put somewhere between 400 BC and 300 AD. It contains an entire chapter entitled 'Of the Various Modes of Striking, and Of the Sounds Appropriate to Them.' It includes bondage, threesomes, genital piercings, and more discussion of things we would now consider kink and BDSM elements.

Of course, the ancient Greeks want in on the early kink, too. They are known for their debauchery, celebrating group sex as well as other tendencies that aren't as acceptable today. The Cult of Orthia had a rite of passage that involved piling cheeses on the altar. They were guarded by priests, who would whip the young Spartan men as they attempted to take the cheeses. This appears to be sometime in the range from around 400 BD through the first century AD. 

Anything the Greeks did, of course, the Romans wanted to do bigger. The Lupercalia Festival involved priests and young men cutting thongs (known as februa, from which we get the month February) and running through the town naked, whipping people with them. And then, of course, there's Caligula (12-41 AD) - renowned for exotic sex and abuse of power. There's stories galore to be found of his excesses.

The erotic sculptures of the Khajuraho Temples also offer a glimpse into ancient Indian sexuality, built between 900 and 1130 AD. These temples may be a celebration of womanhood, as well as celebrating love and passion.

Many Native American and Indigenous cultures have a tradition of rituals, or ordeals, that involve consensual torturous experiences as a test of courage, endurance, or fortitude. They may include flogging or whipping, suspension by body piercing, bondage, scarification, and other painful things.

For a more western version of the Kama Sutra, we might look at the works of Giulio Romano and Pietro Aretino, in the 16th century. Romano created drawings of sixteen sexual positions, to which Aretino added a series of accompanying sonnets. Engravings from the drawings form 'The Postures' or 'I Modi', a written and illustrated guide to sexual positions.

Mozart, in the 18th century. The aria for Don Giovanni is "Batti, batti, o bel Masetto" ("Beat me, beat me, oh beautiful Masetto"). Masetto thinks Zirlina has been flirting with Don Giovanni, so to placate him, she sings about all the terrible things he can do to her and she promises to kneel and kiss his hand and ask for more.

Considered the first original English prose pornographic novel, Fanny Hill, or Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure, was published in 1748, and includes a flagellation scene. It is now one of the most-banned books.

Victorian Sadomasochism in Europe

The Marquis de Sade was a French writer, whose erotic works, like 120 Days of Sodom and Justine, included a great deal of sexual violence. He also practiced the torturous perversions he wrote about, and died in a mental asylum in 1814. His words were banned in France until 1957. From his name, we get 'sadism'.

And then we have Leopold Ritter von Sacher-Masoch, an Austrian nobleman in the second half of the 19th century. Many of his writings involved descriptions of the satisfaction to be gained from receiving pain, violence, and humiliation. His best known work, Venus in Furs, tells a nearly-autobiographical story of a contracted slave relationship he was in. In 1886, the book Psychopathia Sexualis (Sexual Psychopathy: A Clinical-Forensic Study by Richard von Krafft-Ebing) was criticized for coining the term 'masochism', naming the still-living Sacher-Masoch the 'Poet of Masochism'.

Another example of master-slave relationships in the Victorian era is that of Hannah Cullwick, and her husband, Arthur Munby. Hannah Cullwick was in a Master/slave relationship with her husband, proudly calling herself Munby's 'drudge and slave'. For much of her life, she wore a leather strap around her right wrist and a locking chain around her neck, to which Munby had the key. She wrote letters to him almost daily, describing her long hours of work in great detail. She would arrange to visit him 'in her dirt', showing the results of full day's cleaning and other domestic work. She had a particular interest in boots, cleaning hundreds each year, sometimes by licking them. 

As shared terminology develops into a set of expectations, a culture emerges. Over time, European fetish culture and sexual progressiveness developed into an atmosphere of permissiveness - in some areas - that was much more relaxed than in the United States at the time.

And then Nazis

Before Adolf Hitler's rise to power, Germany was the heart of queer activism and research in Europe. The Institut für Sexualwissenschaft (The Institute of Sexology) was founded in Berlin in 1919. The Institute was a non-profit clinic; the site of research, medical support, and discussion by and for queer people all over the world. It was the first modern gender confirmation surgery clinic, and worked to spread information about STIs, contraception, and abortion.

And then the Nazis came to power. In 1933, The German Student Union, a group of Nazi-supporting youth, broke in and occupied the clinic. Several days later, they removed and burned the entire contents of the library; over twenty thousand texts. The Institute was shut down, its information lost. Many of its staff were taken to concentration camps.

Along with the Jews, gay men were also targeted for persecution. They were arrested, imprisoned, and sent to concentration camps. Many were castrated or used in medical experiments. The symbol of gay persecution was the inverted pink triangle, like the Jews' yellow Star of David. 

When the U.S. joined World War II in 1941, millions of servicemen were mobilized. When they weren't fighting, these men were being exposed to the more liberated sexual atmosphere of Europe. More importantly, they were bonding with their fellow soldiers, developing a brotherhood, depending on one another. They embraced the military lifestyle, with an emphasis on hierarchy, adherence to authority, rank systems, protocols, and ritual behaviors. And there was also emphasis on style, uniforms, boots, and other trappings of the military lifestyle.

The Old Guard & Kink Culture

When these servicemen came home after the war, many had been changed significantly, and didn't want to return to their former civilian lives. And since they were often brought back to the larger cities and left there, that's where they began to gather. At this time, gas was cheap, and motorcycles were readily available. Returning servicemen took to the road, forming motorcycle clubs. The first, and oldest still-running, gay men's motorcycle club & organization is Satyrs Motorcycle Club, formed in Los Angeles in 1954.

These clubs preserved some of the hierarchy and ritual from military life, giving the men a structure to cling to. The freedom of the road and group dynamics gave rise to hedonistic behavior. And because these were groups of men only, many of whom had become extremely close during wartime, they were often sexual - homosexual - in nature. Motorcycling can be dangerous, and many riders wear leather to protect them. The leather itself became fetishized. Motorcycle clubs became a place to find hypermasculine gay men, authority exchange, hot gay leather sex, and a heavy side of sadomachistic hedonism. This community is what has become known as 'Old Guard'.

The bars where motorcycle clubs gathered were leather bars - starting in New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. Chicago's first leather bar, The Gold Coast, was opened by Chuck Renslow in 1958. On Folsom Street, The Stud opened in 1966, leading to an influx of leather and gay establishments in that area.

Leathersex

Before long, it wasn't just the gay bikers enjoying hot leathersex. Fetish magazines and erotic photo collections were everywhere. In New York in the 1950s, Bettie Page was the 'Queen of Bondage', shooting fetish pin-up photos. Tom of Finland's drawings displayed highly masculinized homoerotic bikers, military men, and leathermen in the magazine Physique Pictorial.

The Kinsey Institute, established in 1947 as the Institute for Sex Research, studied sexual histories and published reports in 1948 and 1953 establishing that sexual orientation was not as rigid as most people believed at the time, and sought to normalize the idea that sexual orientation is a spectrum.

But leathersex still wasn't mainstream; it was a secretive and exclusive community outside the leather bars. Homosexual sex was illegal, and perversion was a target of society. Jeans with a white shirt and black motorcycle boots were the uniform, with leather vests or jackets at night. Secret communications were a part of the community, including flagging with keys or bandana hankies. 

Police raids on leather bars were common. Leather bars had become a haven for not just gay leathermen, but also for trans women of color, homeless queer teens, drag queens, and lesbians. In June of 1969, police raided the Stonewall Inn, and the bar patrons fought back. This kicked off several days of protests and riots, and became the catalyst for the gay rights movement around the world. Starting the next year, commemorative demonstrations, and then parades, began to be held, becoming what we now call Pride.

In 1970 in New York The Eagle's Nest (now Eagle NYC) became a home for gay organizations and biker clubs. More Eagle bars followed, each creating a community space in their area.

In 1971, the Chicago Hellfire Club was founded, a membership of gay kinky men (they began allowing transgender men to join in 2016). The Hellfire Club became the blueprint for other similar clubs across the country. 

Being a member of these clubs, or going to the gay and leather bars was still dangerous. Police raids weren't the worst fate. In 1973, New Orleans' deadliest fire was at the UpStairs Lounge. The victims were denied funerals, some unclaimed by their families, and the arson never solved.

Organizations & Celebrations

Larry Townsend's Leatherman's Handbook came out in 1972, spelling out the codes of conduct for the underground leather scene in the gay community. Some of these got into the hands of the heterosexual community, followed by kink and leather culture and protocols beginning to spread outside the gay community.

Lesbian clubs began to form, too, though rarely accepted alongside the gay clubs. Some of these women had served in the Women's Army Corps in WWII, and had come home to the same issues as the male servicemen.

The Eulenspiegel Society, also known as TES, is the first BDSM organization founded in the United States. It was founded in 1971 in New York as an informal association and support group for masochists and sadists. It was followed in 1974 by the Society of Janus in San Francisco, a nonprofit, volunteer-run organization devoted to the art of safe, consensual and non-exploitative adult power exchange. 

Dykes on Bikes, a lesbian motorcyle club, started in 1976 by leading the San Francisco Pride parade. The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence was organized in 1979 as a charity, protest, and street performance organization that raises money for for queer causes and promotes sex and drug education. Founded in 1981, the Lesbian Sex Mafia (LSM) is the oldest continuously running women’s BDSM support and education group in the country. And in 1988, MAsT (Masters And slaves Together) was founded in San Francisco as a support organization for gay men in Master/slave relationships.

In 1972 the Gold Coast began presenting the annual Mr. Gold Coast contest, which turned into the International Mr. Leather (IML) contest in 1979. The International Mr. Bootblack contest was added in 1993. The Leather Title system is still active today, with titles awarded to contestants by organization, region, role, or identity.

The first use of the phrase “safe, sane, and consensual” was in the 1983 mission statement of the Gay Male SM Activists (GMSMA) organization: GMSMA is a not-for-profit organization of gay males in the New York City area who are seriously interested in safe, sane, and consensual S/M. Our purpose is to help create a more supportive S/M community for gay males, whether they desire a total lifestyle or an occasional adventure, whether they are just coming out into S/M or are long experienced. [as quoted in stein, 2002].

In 1984, the Folsom Street Fair in San Francisco was held for the first time; it was and still is the world's largest leather event and showcase for BDSM products and culture.

The Epidemic

And then everything changed. AIDS arrived, and a generation of leatherfolk, starting with the gay men, were lost. Between 1981 and the early 1900s, around 500,000 people in the United States passed away from AIDs or AIDs-related causes, according to the CDC. Because it was a disease that primarily targeted gay men and other 'undesirables', the response to it was understated and unhurried. And so most of an entire generation of gay men and leatherfolk died.

During this time, the focus of the Leather community shifted. In some ways, the gay leathermen were pushed even further away from the overall queer community, due to being seen as hedonistic sexual people, and therefore part of the problem of the spread of HIV and AIDS. But the overall priorities became raising funds for the dying, driving awareness of the need for research, and providing care for the sick. Lesbian organizations became leaders fighting to save their gay male counterparts, even when the gay community criticized them for overshadowing gay male leaders, and other lesbians criticizing them for abandoning queer women's issues.

Many healthcare providers refused to treat people suffering from HIV or AIDS. Nurses refused to work, Pathologists refused to perform post-mortems, doctors were afraid to enter hospital rooms. Many of these gay men and women had already been rejected by their families for their lifestyle, and had no other resources beyond the gay community at large. Lesbian groups signed up as volunteers to care for sick people, receiving training quickly cobbled together. Groups such as the San Diego Blood Sisters held blood drives, to get needed blood to those ill, especially since gay men had already been banned from giving blood (a ban that is still in place and only now beginning to relax).

Because of the compassion and humanity lesbians showed gay men, much of the separatism of the 1970s disappeared in the 1980s. The GLBT community began to see their future linked as they worked together to survive the HIV and AIDS pandemic. And the community began to put the L first in LGBT. The placement of that L is far from trivial. It's a recognition that lesbians are not second-class members of their community. Instead, it was lesbians who kept the community together.

Pride & Progress

As the world recovered from AIDS, we move into the 90's. Smaller communities outside of the big metropolitan areas began to arise, through munches or small house gatherings. The pageant title circuit began to focus not just on gay men, but also on women and people of color, with POC Organizations like Onyx. 

The Rainbow Pride Flag represents the LGBTQ community generally. It went through a few iterations after it's introduction in 1978, and continues to iterate today. One of the most common versions seen currently is the 2018 Progress Pride Flag, with the traditional rainbow, but also colors recognizing queer folk who are trans, BIPOC, or living with AIDS. Other symbols continue to be used, including the pink triangle, reclaimed from the symbol of persecution before and during WWII, but the various pride flags are the most frequently-seen representation, with different colors for different meanings.

The first Leather Pride Flag was presented at International Mister Leather in 1989. Since then, it's become a very recognizable symbol of the Leather and Kink communities. Another oft-used symbol is the BDSM triskelion.

In 1991, Chuck Renslow (yep, the founder of the Gold Coast bar, and a lifelong major player in the Leather world) and Tony DeBlase founded the Leather Archives & Museum as a community archives, library, and museum of Leather, Kink, Fetish, and BDSM history and culture - leatherarchives.org.

The NCSF was formed in 1997 - a National Coalition for Sexual Freedom. An organization that would fight for sexual freedom and privacy rights for all adults who engage in safe, sane, and consensual behavior. They have projects focused on reporting discrimination, BDSM education, media tracking, lobbying for legal changes, connecting people to kink-aware professionals, maintaining community discussions around consent, depathologizing kink in the the DSM, and more. While kink was once classified as a mental disorder, as of 2013 and the publication of the DSM-5, the American Psychiatric Association says we are not 'crazy' (for reference, the DSM listed homosexuality as a mental disorder up until 1973, and kink was listed as a paraphilic disorder from 1987). Thanks, in part, to the NCSF.

A few legal cases of note, as the world of litigation overlapped the world of kink:

• New York: People v. Jovanovic - 1998, 1999, 2001 - This case, where Jovanovic was accused of torture of a woman he had S&M play with, introduced the concept of consent as a valid defense against a rape charge, although the idea wasn't followed through. Still, the idea had been introduced. "Although it may be possible to engage in criminal assaultive behavior that does not result in physical injury... we need not address here whether consent to such conduct may constitute a defense."
• US Supreme Court: Lawrence v Texas - 2003 - In a 6-3 decision, the US Supreme Court ruled that intimate, consensual sexual conduct is protected under the 14th Amendment to the US Constitution. "The petitioners are entitled to respect for their private lives. The State cannot demean their existence or control their destiny by making their private sexual conduct a crime." This overturned anti-sodomy laws nationwide. It essentially set the precedent that what adult people do together consensually in private isn't the business of the government.

Modern Kink: A New Century

More recently, the Kink community has begun to be recognized on its own, independent of its Leather history. Especially after the Internet began to bring us all together. With recognition and even legitimization, the Kink community has taken the opportunity to make social awareness a priority.

In times past, to find the Kink & Leather communities, you had to know someone. Someone had to personally invite you to a gathering of leatherfolk. And you'd find these folk at Leather bars, or later, on the backpages of magazines and indie newspapers.

But with the rise of the internet, that changed. With enough digging, you could find message boards and odd corners where alternative lifestyles were discussed. For the first time, people connected with the larger general Kink community, often before they connected with their local counterparts. 

When I 'came on the Scene', I emailed an address I found after searching the internet. After making contact, I was invited to a Yahoo! Group for my local community, where I could learn a little bit about what to expect before I attended my first munch in 2009. And once there, I learned that the big new thing at the time was FetLife, which launched in 2008. Described as Facebook for kinksters, and avoiding dating-site functionality; at this point, if you're kinky and online, you have a FetLife profile.

As Facebook and Google algorithms have progressed, it's become much more difficult to hide the existence of kink communities and spaces. It's easier to gain entry to them, without having to know someone or even meet someone. Instead of trying to keep from being found, some spaces have instead made it easier, pushing new people toward openly-advertised munches and classes to become involved in the community.

And there are a lot of new people. Because kink is not the taboo topic it once was. Kink is a common element in popular media now (BDSM in Culture and Media), which makes it something that can be discussed in the open. And then there's Fifty Shades of Grey, which came out in 2011. I've already written fairly extensively on my thoughts on the book and the phenomenon resulting from it. But taking a bit from a friend, he explains the book is to kink what the movie Lara Croft: Tomb Raider is to archaeology. It's not an accurate portrayal of archaeology (kink), but if someone reads/watches it and recognizes something that speaks to them, and maybe they become an archaeologist (kinky person) because of it, no one's going to be mad about that. Regardless of your thoughts on the book, it and other media brought kink into the public eye. And there's no going back from that.

In the legal world, too, BDSM is increasingly being seen as sexual diversity, rather than perversity. And that is reflected in Explicit Prior Permission guidelines being adopted for the model penal code, thanks to the American Law Institute and the NCSF.

So the kink world now is something very different than it was fifteen years ago, when I started. Or what it was in the 80's, when everything had to be about AIDS. Or what it was during the times of Leathersex or the Old Guard. Or during the Victorian Era, or before that. It's a constantly-evolving community, adjusting to the people involved and the world around them. I'm excited to see what the next chapter looks like.

Additional References and Resources

10 Parts in the History of Kinky Sex

A Brief History of BDSM

Leather Subculture (Wikipedia)

Gay Leather History

Kink's Role in LGBTQ History

The American LGBTQ+ Museum

A History of Leather at Pride

Leatherpedia

Marginalia on the Old Guard

LAM Reading Recommendations

Bonus - the Wonder Woman information I just couldn't figure out how to include well:

A Guide to Wonder Woman’s Kinky History

The Gloriously Strange, Kinky, and Feminist History of Wonder Woman

A very special thanks to Daisy Blue, bootblack at my home playspace, The Mark, for an excellent starting document that she allowed me to use as the backbone for this history. And more thanks to Nashville Switch, whose classes on kink history were enlightening and entertaining, and some of my first connections between who I am and who my people have been.