At SELF last weekend, I caught a Puppy 201 class that was
one of the best discussion classes I’ve seen in years. It was a class by Sir Justin, IPTC Trainer
2014, and the class was on pup roles… sort of.
The class was something of a bait-n-switch. It was about pup roles, but really it had a
lot to do w/ the general new guard/TNG/kinkster scene and how it differs from
traditional leather… and how pups exemplify that. It was a good discussion that offered a
helpful new paradigm for understanding the community, past and present.
Sir Justin began by drawing a contrast between “traditional”
leather and “modern” leather/kink.
“Traditional” is the word he proposes to replace “old guard.” I totally agree w/ this! “Old guard” was coined by Guy Baldwin c.1989
and recently even Baldwin has said that he regrets the
term b/c it wasn’t the best choice for what he wanted to describe, and people
have misused it to mean all kinds of things.
For the most part, it’s come to refer to something that never really
existed – at least not like the way most people mean when they say “old guard”
or, “I’m old guard.”
Not long ago, I did some research on my own (mostly using
the website of the fantastic Leather Archives and Museum – check it our) and
wrote a series of three posts about this topic, which I think still has gotten
more hits than anything else I’ve written (over 1400).
So, if I could get three wishes from the Leather Jinni, one
would be to do away w/ this term “old guard” and the muddy and inaccurate
concept that goes w/ it. Let’s just stop
using it! I like “traditional” so much
better. For one, something doesn’t
become a tradition until after the fact, right?
“Traditional” is an inherently backward-looking term. So “traditional” leather self-evidently isn’t
something that started in the 40’s or 50’s or even the 60’s. It’s the Baby Boomer leather culture that
congealed mostly in the 70’s, 80’s, and early 90’s. I also like “traditional” b/c something doesn’t
have to be based in real history to be a tradition. Hanukah is a perfectly valid tradition even
though almost all archeologists and Egyptologists agree that there never was a
time when all the Hebrews were enslaved in Egypt,
the pyramids weren’t built by slave labor, there was never a mass slave exodus
from Egypt, and
Ramesses the Great didn’t drown under the Red Sea. None of that matters in as much as Hanukah is
still a perfectly good tradition that does the things rituals and religious
institutions are supposed to do. Or take
Christmas. December 25? Nobody has any idea when Jesus of Nazareth
was actually born. So we can, likewise,
talk about the tradition of awarding the master’s cap w/o having to claim that,
“This is really how it was done back in the 40’s by the old guard.” So far as I can tell, the master’s cap didn’t
become a tradition until the 80’s or 90’s.
What else became a thing around that time?
Recently Master Ron K was on the KinkyCast podcast. One of the things he talked about, which I
found to be rather interesting, was that the word “slave” is not the best,
healthiest word we could choose.
“Slave,” he argues, is an inherently negative, pernicious word. By calling our submissive partner our “slave”
we tack on to them all of these negative associations and it ends up sabotaging
the relationship and perpetuating the stereotype that BDSM is inherently
abusive and the people in it are “fifty shades of fucked up.” The label is “a disempowering, energy sucking
kind of thing” (Master Ron K), and while we continue to use it, we will
continue to see Masters who abuse their partners and justify it by, ‘He agreed
to be my slave,’ and submissive who continue to allow themselves to be abused. Language influences attitude; attitude
influences behavior.
This Master/slave dynamic is now traditional leather… but
it’s a great example of how traditions don’t often perfectly reflect history
and most traditions don’t go back as far as we think. According to Master Ron K, this use of
“Master/salve” stems from the 1980’s and early ‘90’s. Prior to that, “master” referred primarily to
a mastery of skills (recognized by the community) not a role in a relationship
dynamic (i.e. “He is my master.”) Jack
Rinella wrote: “You can read [Larry Townsend’s] Handbook, for instance, all you want and you'll find only few
references to slaves… You see, a person into Leather in those days was called
an "S" or an "M," which stood for sadist and masochist and
had little or nothing to do with dominance or submission. Even the words top and bottom are rare in the
Handbook, as they were rare in the
seventies.” I don’t think D/s or M/s was
a big part of the Leather scene until after AIDS scared everyone off from
raunchy, primal sex.
Okay, so that’s traditional leather and where (I think) it
comes from. Now, let’s contrast that w/
modern leather/kinksters. Start w/
puppies. Puppy play started in
traditional leather clubs as a way to punish misbehaving boys and haze probies
through public humiliation and degradation.
But modern the puppy scene is not about humiliation but fun and play;
it’s more silly and has less structured D/s dynamics; it looks more like having
a loving pet than a “slave”; and we have a lot of overlap w/ furries and
primals – groups still sometimes shunned by traditional leather men.
In modern kink (and puppy dynamics) w have less rigidly
defined roles. I’ve frequently said that
I don’t think of myself as “a submissive” in some generalized sense. Rather, I say, “I submit” to two specific
people (well, now going on three).
However, I don’t walk intoa
dungeon or leather bar w/ the expectation that I am going to “lower my
eyes” to anyone but my Ma’am and Sir.
Instead of clearly defined roles of Master and slave – and
you absolutely can NOT be both, right? – we have more fluidity. I remember one switchy guest who was on the NoSafeWord
Show talking about all the shit he would get from his fellow leather men by
showing up at events wearing both his master’s cap and his slave collar. Traditionalists would be all, “You can’t do
that!” But modern kinksters are much
more comfortable w/ switching – and sometimes two partners may even switch off
roles together (as our current joke that Hunter is my Alpha and my omega –
LOL).
In place of M/s, puppies organize around a looser, more
organic, pack structure of Alpha, beta, and omega. I often confuse people coming from a
traditional leather perspective b/c Cuddles is collared to me as my omega. However, I’m not a switch, and I’m not a
Dominant or a Top. For me, beta/omega is
much more of a mentor/mentee relationship, or big brother/little brother. But I don’t generally order him around, and I
don’t generally Top him…
Another trait of modern kink is that complex polycules are a
lot more common. Traditional leather was
patterned on either military chains of command or Victorian manner house
hierarchies. However, what’s becoming
the norm in modern kink is complicated families where A might be over B and C,
but B and C are equal, and B has D, E, and F under him, but only D is also
under A where E is collared to both B and F, and A is married to G, but G isn’t
kinky and has little to do w/ the rest of the family, and… I call them “complex polycules”: when your poly
family structure maps like a carbon polymer molecule. If anything, we look more like dog/wolf
packs.
Let me highlight two more differences here. In traditional leather, you started at the
bottom (as a submissive probie) and had to earn your way up (to Master). (At least, that’s the tradition, we can
disregard how often that was actually the case.) Now it’s not uncommon to have a 20-something
“Master.” Many traditionalists mock
this, but it’s a legitimate sign of changing times. Hunter is currently acting in a Dominent role
to me w/in our pack structure, even though our difference in years and mileage
is pretty significant. (I started going
to fetish clubs when he was in the 3rd grade, and I identified as a puppy
before he hit puberty.)
Finally, traditional leather is insular and exclusive; like
a biker gang, you had to earn your way in.
Modern puppies tend to be among the most open and accepting segment of
our community. Puppies just want to play
get scritches, so we’re usually cool w/ all types of people regardless of
gender, orientation, or whatever their particular kink is. At least that’s been my experience. Whenever “issues” arise about furries showing
up at a mosh or female pups joining the mosh, it’s almost never the pups
themselves who have the issues; it’s the Handlers and the event organizers and
the leather guys coming out to watch.
The puppies are usually just, “Yea, more people to play w/ me!” And frequently the puppies are the first ones
to lend support to outsider groups like transgenders, furries, ABDLs, etc.
Puppies are kind of on the outer edge of the leather
community right now. Sir Justin made the
point that we are largely modern fetishists coming into traditional spaces
(leather bars, runs and title contests), and that can be a source for friction
and misunderstanding. Both sides need to
have understanding for one-another, and that’s where this new paradigm seems
very useful. I know, the more I thought
about it after Justin introduced it, the more it made sense to me. Your thoughts?
Until next time, may a doggie bag always reward your wait.
