At beer busts, gear nights and leather bars, we curse the man with the microphone, blathering and promoting himself when he should be cruising and fucking someone. We slowly shake our heads at title contests that evoke campy play-acting rather than meaty sexual prowess. We pause our conversation with someone we want to fuck in order to weakly applaud a stage lined with men we wouldn’t fuck.
The Sword will soon bring you inside one local fetishist uprising that will storm the IML title contest this year with a new mold of leatherman. But the invasion has already begun. 2007 International Mr. Leater Mike Gerle has written a controversial indictment of the current leather scene, aiming his ire at the culture of self-promotion and flaccid fund-raising that has usurped the original intent of gay kink culture, which is to celebrate radical sex and honor its most adept sexual players.
The erosion of leather culture is partly due to online cruising and partly due to the mainstream embracing of kink. But the root of the problem is that instead of honoring men who have mastered the art of being a whore, we honor men who have mastered the art of being an attention whore. Take it away, Gerle:
I am witnessing my leather world being overrun by non-kinky people manipulating the powerful energy of the leather tribe into a vehicle for their own self-promotion. This has got to stop. If for no other reason, it is driving the kinky men I want to hook up with out of the few spaces we have left. This is cock-blocking on an enormous scale…You, with the microphone, please shut up so that I can do the dance Leathermen once did in these spaces. It can only happen when the environment is right, and your screeching is making it impossible…
There is a growing group among us in the titleholder community who value the act of fundraising over the ability to celebrate what it means to be fully functional and celebrated kinky people. They now look for charities to do fundraiser for, just so they can do fundraiser. Being a Leatherman or a kinky individual is no longer relevant to their gatherings.These are Leather carpetbaggers. They have been drawn to the light our powerful energy creates and have found opportunity in this new fundraising paradigm. The gear they wear is a costume rather than an expression of their basic nature. They have little or no interest in our world beyond its ability to generate notoriety for themselves.
It is up to the new generation of kinky gear fuckers to stave off the ossification of the leather scene. I’m going to kick things off myself this weekend, at the Sunday beer bust at The Eagle in San Francisco. First I will break the microphone. Then I will fucking take a fucking piss on the first person to offer me a raffle ticket.
RELATED:
My Dick Slept Through Mr. Leather 2010
Before IML, There Was Mr. Gold Coast 1978
Sin and Suction at Mr. International Rubber 2010
55-Year-Old Abercrombie-Wearer Told to Put Clothes Back on at Underwear Night
International Mr. Leather vs. Leather Carpetbaggers (Dan Savage)
I would like to add that we need to stop trying to ignore, skirt, and break the laws that prevent us from doing what we want to do , and CHANGE them! You can be naked on the street in san francisco, but not in a bar. What?!
Here is something you can do that is even more effective than breaking the fucking microphone:
PLAY.
Do it in the bar. Fuck them if they don’t like it.
Tony Buff and I play in bars all the time and we get shut down all the time. When that happens we know what kind of bar we are in and we fucking move on. Why do we think it’s important to do this shit in public? Because IT’S OUR FUCKING SPACE and WE WANT TO CLAIM IT. If you run a leather bar and are freaked out by a flogging or bondage or bootlicking or whatever you should stop exploiting our community and open something else. If you are a title holder and you are weirded out by the crazy shit we do (safely I might add) maybe you should move on because you have no fucking clue – and you are supposed to represent and lead us.
Players need to reclaim our spaces, and when that doesn’t happen we need to make new spaces.
I never understood the whole leather-thing…..they all just seem like a bunch of girls in costumes…..it’s just a different drag. Yes, the right body it can be very sexy but they whole idea of a bar full of men, who look like one of the Village People wiggling around to “dancing queen” is just enough to kill my libido!
Someone needs to start a Facebook page to destroy that microphone at the Eagle, if nothing else.