[LeatherWeb]



PROGRESS,

on the direction of leather, fetish: SM & kink.

[Town Council]

HI,

The following was first a letter to a friend - and now it's an essay for "Ross's Corner" on LeatherWeb. Ross's Corner is also a feature on our new internet radio station, K-LTHR. It is part of the broadcast archives.

Greetings friend,

Thanks so much, for the info on ONYX in the South.

Ya know, as an educator I'd think you'd be very happy about the turn of events in the SM-Fetish-Kink & Leather communities. Over the past few years I've noticed the popularity of educational forums all across the country.

This seems to be coming on the heels of the lesser support for the bars due to a general reduction in smoking and drinking - or in the case of L.A. and elsewhere, the making of smoking illegal (If a bar doesn't have a patio - or it's wintertime, who wants to interrupt their crusing to go outside?

And then theres the internet - no one has studied what's happening there so far as I know.. whether the newsgroups and chatrooms are driving people to seek real contact at gatherings and such. An interesting way ;to test this though, would be to announce an event _only_ on the net and see who shows up. Actually we did see something like this over in Guerneville last weekend. The Eagle bar has a chat room - and then they host a gathering of those on the list

on Thursday nights at the bar. That's cool. It's a very small town and so it may well be that in a sense, it's the only game in town so to speak and therefore it'll work better than in a big city.

I've been studying demographics to see where the largest populations of gay men and women are moving – And there's a difference for gays and lesbians , especially in towns of 200,000 to 700,000 population. But overall the high-tech cities in the US are also the homosexual citiesi n America. San Francisco is on top - but it's changing here radically as there are now more gays living North and south of the City than actually _in_ the city. Santa Rosa, 75 miles North and Santa Cruz, 100 miles south have larger queer populations than does S.F.

This makes it much more like L.A. which has always been segregated and widespread. L.A. is also the most 'electronic' city in the country. But at the same time, due to the XSM culture - SM'ers under 30, the commercial establishments are gathering closer together - especially in Silverlake where Mr. 'S' has opened it's first store outside San Francisco in a block-long' alternative' complex. One might suggest that L.A. has more to offer than NYC these days in terms of organizations and establishments.

It's interesting to note too, that in L.A. there are two major factions in the community, the commercial which includes the party circuit and titleholder draw. And ELF, the Educational Leadership Forum which is a coalition of all the pan-sexual mentorship programs in the area. San Francisco has yet to do this, and as a result, there were actually two (2) titleholder contests going on at the same time next weekend - one up at the Russian River and the other one down in San Jose. Not good for either of them.

Cities where you'll find "us" are Lexington, Kentucky; Columbia South Carolina, Mobile Alabama: Autsin, Houston and Madison Wisconsis; East Lansing, Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan and the West Coast of Florida.

The other thing that's happened is the maoinstreaming of fetish/kink. I went to the tire shop this week and the owner askes me, "How many piercings does your partner have/" (He'd seen me w/rodtney previously). Kids, 10-12 years old stop rodtney on the street and want to know about his nose ring. It's not a secret society anymore. Every little hamlet across America that's big enough for a liquor store also has a piercing/tatoo parlor. (Skinheads notwithstanding.)

As to 'secret socities', there is more than a small number of people who are resinting, who do not want, who want to return to, some sort of underground society; Joseph Bean being one of them I think. And there are still those who have never come out - and never will; whom I suspect actually vote against anything that would tend to 'out' themselves - our communities haven't talked about that at all yet.

No one in the kinky set is talking about how we're being represented in the media either. Do we 'like' the way we're being represented on the eight or so sit-coms now running with gay characters? I don't. There's way too much perpetuation of old stereotypes and little to no portrayl of the diversity we taut. Whassup with this?

Personally I'm shifting my support in two not totally unrelated arenas. We've seen reckless reference to SM;-Leather-Fetish and Leather-Fetish-SM; etc, etc. etc. My position is that a more _correct_ calling is to put Leather 'outside' of SM-Fetish-Kink. The case for this is that it's humanly impossible to live SM-Fetish-Kink 24/7 whilst Leather has always signified a state of be-ing. The crucial difference is that Life"Style" is not Life"Path".

Certainly not everyone wants or can or will do 24/7. But those of us who do, deserve a distinction that honors this. For me that's "Leather" whether we embrace cowhide as fetish or uniform within this context or not (Not all leatherfolk actually sleep in their hides). By the same token, a person who wears leather as a fetish, is not necessairly a "leather" person. This distinction requires education. And it requires involvement - indeed it requires experientation. However the community choses to identify it is all experiential nonetheless. White coat and clipboard analysis is passe'. The operant word here is "commitment" -- or lack thereof.

That's the other thing that sets "Leather" 24/7 far and away from the 'play' aspect of SM/Fetish/Kink - Spirituality. I look at it this way, one can "play" and get a high - like going to church on Sunday (actually Saturday night in the dungeon); but some of us chose to use the discipline of Master/slave itself as a ritual for enlightenemt - for maintainig Spiritual awareness..

24/7 protocol is applied as a life path. Orgasm is not the essential desired outcome - living in Spirit is. And we chose to do this in monogamy. One of the beautiful outcomes of this is that we find ourselves living outside the box - outside any gay or kinky getto mentality. We're fully integrated into the mainstream and that's no small fete. There is far too much hetrophobia among gays.

Do you inow who Skip Chasey is? He spoke for a minute at the MMOW and is reported to have said what the Lether community wanted to say to the gay community for a long time. "He is a man of faith and not ashamed to say it", writes David Rhodes. But what did he say? Who is he? I've written David to ask but have not received a reply. Why did our press not report on this? Why was our press not even present aparantly? No Lolita, No Marcus, No leather reporter whatsoever it seems.

As you know, travel is getting more and more expensive. The IML hotels this year are $139. and $189. plus the 'package'. That's a hell of a price to pay for getting laid as so many go there to do. It can easily cost $1,000 to attend a weekend event - and if you're a couple it's at least half again as much... and we've already got our sex guaranteed so that's not "all that" for us. We've been to IML once in our lifetime - and that's perhaps enough. It's what we do day to day - how we live our lives - that counts.

Not that if we had $50,000/year to spend on being a circuit rider we wouldn't. We probably would. The 'fast lane' looks good in full leather doesn't it. Hell, you do it don't you! - and more power to ya! We have yet to fly on an airplane together. We drive everywhere. Life, for us, is in the process of living it. And I truly believe we're doing a pretty good job of it. At least we can positively say we've been together "walking the walk" almost constantly for over four years! Sure, it's not for everyone - but hey, it's working for us. And therefore our experience deserves a 'look-see'. Maybe there's something there to gleen for one's self.

What we have is "kindred-spirit". That's our blessing to share.

Have a great Thanksgiving! We are truly grateful.

Peace,

Phil & rodtney Ross

Play Safe, Play Hard, Play Real and Play in DIVERSITY!

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