The Betty Pages sprung out of some conversations Betty Desire a local drag queen and I were having in a gay bar. These editorials may be out of context now and were written for a local audience in the Bellingham area. but I am sure readers everywhere can make some sense of parts of them.

Bellingham Leathermen, What Exactly is a Leather Club Anyway?

April 2005

This last month saw the kick off social for a new organization for gay men in Bellingham. The Bellingham Leathermen social at Rumors was by all accounts a huge success. About 30 men showed up in leathers, had a great time socializing and hanging out, winning door prizes and being entertained. According to the organizer Rick Ruben, "We had a lot of people who wanted to join the group after the social". To look at what this club might become I decided to point out some variations on the theme.

While there has been a BDSM organization serving the pan-sexual community in Bellingham for many years this is the first leather organization for men in my memory. If anyone knows differently I would love to hear about it. When a group like this is in its infancy it is very exciting to watch what a community will turn it into. In my experience "leather" has turned into a catchall phrase that surrounds many subsets of sexuality.

For some folks leather is just a fetish like rubber or boots or high heels or women's lingerie. They just feel sexy when they are wearing it or when the object of their affection is wearing it. For them the sum total of the experience is wearing leather or seeing it worn. Nothing else kinky deviant or out of the ordinary has to happen to make it a sexy successful event. Feel it on your skin, smell the tanned hide and you are there.

For others its is a uniform that signifies their participation in some other practice or culture. This can range from motorcycles to BDSM. Conversely not everyone into either of those practices is into leather. I know some really kinky sadistic vegans. But like it or not for the vegans in our sexual lexicon BDSM is often thought of as a subset of the leather community.

Some other men are drawn to leather communities seeking a structure in a fraternity of men. In speaking to those who were there (I am not that old) a lot of leather culture sprung up during the demobilization of men after World War II. Suddenly men were mustering out of the army and navy in coastal cities like Los Angeles, San Francisco and New York. A good portion of them were gay (Yup, we won WWII with fags in the military, lots of them). These men were faced with the prospect of moving back to a closeted and isolated existence in their home towns in the heartland. Instead they found each other in these large coastal cities. They began to form gay communities. Some of them found they really enjoyed the structure of military life, the uniforms, the protocol and the other men. They slowly began forming leather clubs that mimicked much of that order. The leather became their uniform. As leather became their uniform, motorcycles became the method of transportation. Hence many older leather organizations still have "MC" hanging off their name. Many still host runs, but their focus has shifted from bikes to other events.

While Sadism and Masochism have much deeper roots, I will bet clear back to the first two humans with leisure time and a stick. A lot of the organized BDSM culture in North America is also an offshoot of this movement of gay men looking for structure. A lot of the traditions of these early groups of gay men are being copied and sometimes distorted by this change.

Some of those traditions are worth preserving while others are artifacts of an age when groups were small, and the closet was very necessary for survival. The context of leather in our culture has changed so dramatically in the last 15 years that it will be a real welcome surprise to see what this and other new groups come up with for a structure.

You can participate in the next Bellingham Leathermen social at Rumors Cabaret on April 9th at 7:00PM or you can join the Yahoo group.