Change Is The Norm

Kinksters, leather people specifically, sometimes decry the changes taking place in their community. But change is normal and good.

My kink origin story begins deeply entrenched in the gay leather scene of the early 1970s. I’ve been around for a while. This gives me a long view perspective on leather or kink or fetish or whatever it is we call this uniquely erotic scene or ours these days. Kink seems to be winning the day as a general term, so I’ll use that here although some of my thoughts pertain specifically to the subset of the larger set of kink communities often referred to as “leather.”

Should anyone reading this balk at me not equating kink and leather, they are not the same. At least not always. While it’s likely most leather people would define themselves as kinky, not all kinksters would define themselves as leather people. The distinction between leather and kink is important to acknowledge.

As I communicate with other kinksters, whether they are local or from elsewhere, I consistently hear comments about how the scene has changed. Generally, such comments are complaints bemoaning the loss of a past and too often mythologized version of the leather scene specifically. They decry how people dress, identify, behave, and play nowadays. I should note though that I don’t usually hear such complaints from younger people. The complaints mostly come from older people like me. It’s the leather version of “get off my lawn.”

"Leather isn't what it used to be." "So much of our scene seems to be about contests now." "We're losing our bars." "Those younger kinksters don't respect the old ways." "The scene has moved online." "It seems that you need a degree in kink to be qualified to play these days." "What happened to our mentors?" "Our community has been diluted with too many people who aren't really kinky." "Everything's so expensive now." And on and on. I could list dozens of such common complaints. And for all of them I have but one bit of advice.

Accept the ways things are or do something to change it so that they're more to your liking.

One of the tenets of numerous philosophies that I’ve always gravitated to is the concept of attachment. The belief is that attachment leads to much of life's suffering. Attachment to an idea, including ideas about the past, is as poisonous as attachment to things. Everything, everyone, every tradition, every society, every subculture is ephemeral. That includes kink and its subset leather community. The sooner an individual accepts that, the happier they'll be. If you resist accepting change, unhappiness is a foregone conclusion.

I don't see the morphing and adaptations of what we often refer to as leather to be much different than the organic way any community or subculture evolves. Change is the only constant. It's why I find it amusing when anyone bemoans "the way it was." I have too at times I must admit. But there is no way anything can remain fixed in time. That's just not how things work. Everything changes. As Winston Churchill once said, "To improve is to change; to be perfect is to change often."

I think a big disconnect occurs because many do think leather is fixed in time. That's why there's a continuing churn over traditions, history, protocols, and other such things because people want to believe that some golden era of leather in the past was the ideal and that what we have now is not. I disagree.

The landscape of today's leather and kink world is vast, diverse, and rich with more experiences, events, social life, and play opportunities than ever before. True, it looks and functions differently than it used to. So what? Most of life from the past looks and functions differently today. Many would call it progress. Yet many leather-identified people hold on to the past for dear life as if somehow accepting reality will lessen them as a leather person.

Today there are certainly intersections among the various kink and leather sexualities, but those intersections might be large or small. The scene is less monolithic than it used to be. I see that as a good thing. And while it's true that the scene sometimes sends out mixed messages about inclusion when it appears to some to be exclusionary, the same can be said of any group or subculture. I believe our scene is generally good at embracing decent people who want to be part of what we have to offer.

For every possible negative someone suggests about our scene I can offer an abundant collection of positives or a way to make it more positive for your own individual experience.

If you seek them out, there are social circles, clubs, groups, events, and venues that will cater to your individual desires. Where I live, San Francisco, is particularly blessed to have an assortment of such options. Locally and nationally, you can find a plethora of offshoot events and groups focused on BDSM, rubber, sports gear, pup play, cigars, uniforms, power dynamics, and much more. These are smaller subcultures within the larger leather and kink umbrella subculture and there's room for anyone who wants a place at that table.

The natural human tendency is for us to want to feel that we belong to something special. If a subculture morphs over time into a bunch of more diverse groupings that might have only a modest amount of overlap, in time each of those groupings will want to exert their specialness (unconsciously usually) and form their own separate social circles, language, identifiers, and so on. So, while the term leather meant one thing a few decades ago, it now means something quite different to many. I can't get too worked up over how it's changed because I don't want to be one of those old cranky people ranting about younger people or scene newcomers who don't "get" leather culture. They get it just fine. It just doesn't look the same as the leather culture I came out in during the early '70s. And that's quite OK.

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