OUR ROOTS IN CONFLICT
When I'm not hammering Leather, I spend too much time for my own good pondering the massive cultural divide between BDSM and leather people. We really do inhabit two different worlds and the older we are the more different the words.
The cultural roots of Leather are pretty well known, even there is a lot of mythology associated with it. And those roots are responsible for the aspects of the Leather subculture that are, well, mysterious and unapproachable to BDSM folk of a certain age range. The post WW2 mythos of authority, of groupthink, of the military as something worthy of emulation and respect permeate it, as well as primitivistic tribal notions of honor and respect and social hierarchy. What is forgotten, or simply not realized, is that Het BDSM has its cultural roots in things that rejected all of the above.
Ok, first we have to deal with a simple fact. What we now call Het BDSM roots that go back to the beginning of time and as far as numbers go, Leather is not even a snowflake on the iceberg in comparison to it. But we are not interested in that here. Het BDSM as it is now practiced has its roots in the Adversary Culture of the Late Victorian Era, the Sexual Revolution of 1964-1973 (the widespread use of the Pill in 1964 which set it off and the publication of The Joy of Sex in 1973 which marked its triumph), the anti authoritarianism of that period and the science fiction culture of the 1980s--Gor, Post Holocaust and Cyberpunk.
We do not have to go into Gor very deeply. The Gor novels were probably the biggest recruiting tool that BDSM ever had, sold millions of copies and the folks who read them became the geeks who created the internet. What is not realized is the role that Post Holocaust sci fi and Cyberpunk played in the development of the Het BDSM culture.
The visuals of Post Holocaust film were a BDSM fashion plate. All you need to do is look at Road Warrior and you can see that. That became reflected in both the fashion world, where the phrase Post Holocaust meaning fashion and not a lot of dead foreigners came from. And BDSM reflected the fashion world as well as vice versa. Then there was Cyberpunk, the world of Blade Runner. Hi tech, ruthless, no past, no future, only a present without value or meaning.
People coming out of that culture were a lot different than the people coming out of Leather, even though on the surface there might be some visual similarities. They held to totally different value structures. And they were from a different social class and that really matters. The simple truth is that it is safe to say that the folk into Leather, sexual orientation notwithstanding, were, for the most part, from a lower social rung. They really were the Archie Bunkers of S&M and some of them would have had to move up on the world to get that far. Het BDSM was a middle class operation, a weekend sport of the Yuppies, who had the money to build dungeons in their homes and the leisure time to indulge it.
But it is the cultural differences that those divisions produced that are of interest.
Leather was concerned with place, position, hierarchy and community. Acceptance mattered. While it contained individualists, it was not a culture in which individualism was accorded value. It was a "uniform" culture, in that it was important to wear the uniform and certain individuals in it were accorded social rank through various mechanisms. And this rank showed. The visual, horrific to Het BDSMers who viewed the use of tobacco as a sign of union membership or worse, of a Leatherman sitting on a bar stool, taking out a cigar and a dozen worthless toadies fighting over who will light it for him would have been absurd to a Het BDSMer but it was a sign of recognition in that culture. But what makes it absurd is not the action itself, but the idea that anyone would be given that recognition in the first place. In the world of Cyberpunk, social hierarchy was despised and the people who held to it treated with contempt. To those who internalized that value structure the idea that anyone is accorded special respect for any reason is suspect to say the least. Leaders are liars and anyone who lays claim to the role is never to be trusted. The Cyberpunk culture was not tribal and tribal mores were both alien and primitive, unworthy of being taken seriously. In the world of the Post Holocaust, the tribal were the other, the enemy, fit only for destruction.
And that brings us to the notions of Honor and Respect. I was a club officer for years in a Het BDSM club and we never even heard those words used. We would have laughed if we had. Honor? Honor was, and is, a joke and so were and are the people who use the word. In the world of the Cyberpunk there was no such thing, as there was no such thing in the real world. Survival meant knowing that everyone was out to get you if it served their purposes to. And in the real world of people who matter, or even come close to mattering, if someone talks about honor everyone else will say, "What?" and then break out laughing. The concept is absurd and those who hold to it viewed as not quite sane, certainly not civilized.
The notion of Respect, so bound up with the notion of social hierarchy and the importance of the group has no place in the world of the Cyberpunk. There is nothing to respect, and no one worthy of it. The very notion is illusory, foolish. Everyone has feet of clay and the proper attitude is always one of studied irony and contempt. We may like people, people may serve our purposes, but few deserve respect other than for being our friends and maybe having some accomplishment that actually matters, not some fake title given to him along with a silly hat by a bunch of stinking drunks in a bar somewhere. And as far as institutions and groups go, the concept is absurd on its face.
Now, if you put people from those two cultures in the same place, things are going to become interesting because there cannot be an assumption of shared values, there cannot even be an assumption of shared language because the very words have different cultural meanings.
When I'm not hammering Leather, I spend too much time for my own good pondering the massive cultural divide between BDSM and leather people. We really do inhabit two different worlds and the older we are the more different the words.
The cultural roots of Leather are pretty well known, even there is a lot of mythology associated with it. And those roots are responsible for the aspects of the Leather subculture that are, well, mysterious and unapproachable to BDSM folk of a certain age range. The post WW2 mythos of authority, of groupthink, of the military as something worthy of emulation and respect permeate it, as well as primitivistic tribal notions of honor and respect and social hierarchy. What is forgotten, or simply not realized, is that Het BDSM has its cultural roots in things that rejected all of the above.
Ok, first we have to deal with a simple fact. What we now call Het BDSM roots that go back to the beginning of time and as far as numbers go, Leather is not even a snowflake on the iceberg in comparison to it. But we are not interested in that here. Het BDSM as it is now practiced has its roots in the Adversary Culture of the Late Victorian Era, the Sexual Revolution of 1964-1973 (the widespread use of the Pill in 1964 which set it off and the publication of The Joy of Sex in 1973 which marked its triumph), the anti authoritarianism of that period and the science fiction culture of the 1980s--Gor, Post Holocaust and Cyberpunk.
We do not have to go into Gor very deeply. The Gor novels were probably the biggest recruiting tool that BDSM ever had, sold millions of copies and the folks who read them became the geeks who created the internet. What is not realized is the role that Post Holocaust sci fi and Cyberpunk played in the development of the Het BDSM culture.
The visuals of Post Holocaust film were a BDSM fashion plate. All you need to do is look at Road Warrior and you can see that. That became reflected in both the fashion world, where the phrase Post Holocaust meaning fashion and not a lot of dead foreigners came from. And BDSM reflected the fashion world as well as vice versa. Then there was Cyberpunk, the world of Blade Runner. Hi tech, ruthless, no past, no future, only a present without value or meaning.
People coming out of that culture were a lot different than the people coming out of Leather, even though on the surface there might be some visual similarities. They held to totally different value structures. And they were from a different social class and that really matters. The simple truth is that it is safe to say that the folk into Leather, sexual orientation notwithstanding, were, for the most part, from a lower social rung. They really were the Archie Bunkers of S&M and some of them would have had to move up on the world to get that far. Het BDSM was a middle class operation, a weekend sport of the Yuppies, who had the money to build dungeons in their homes and the leisure time to indulge it.
But it is the cultural differences that those divisions produced that are of interest.
Leather was concerned with place, position, hierarchy and community. Acceptance mattered. While it contained individualists, it was not a culture in which individualism was accorded value. It was a "uniform" culture, in that it was important to wear the uniform and certain individuals in it were accorded social rank through various mechanisms. And this rank showed. The visual, horrific to Het BDSMers who viewed the use of tobacco as a sign of union membership or worse, of a Leatherman sitting on a bar stool, taking out a cigar and a dozen worthless toadies fighting over who will light it for him would have been absurd to a Het BDSMer but it was a sign of recognition in that culture. But what makes it absurd is not the action itself, but the idea that anyone would be given that recognition in the first place. In the world of Cyberpunk, social hierarchy was despised and the people who held to it treated with contempt. To those who internalized that value structure the idea that anyone is accorded special respect for any reason is suspect to say the least. Leaders are liars and anyone who lays claim to the role is never to be trusted. The Cyberpunk culture was not tribal and tribal mores were both alien and primitive, unworthy of being taken seriously. In the world of the Post Holocaust, the tribal were the other, the enemy, fit only for destruction.
And that brings us to the notions of Honor and Respect. I was a club officer for years in a Het BDSM club and we never even heard those words used. We would have laughed if we had. Honor? Honor was, and is, a joke and so were and are the people who use the word. In the world of the Cyberpunk there was no such thing, as there was no such thing in the real world. Survival meant knowing that everyone was out to get you if it served their purposes to. And in the real world of people who matter, or even come close to mattering, if someone talks about honor everyone else will say, "What?" and then break out laughing. The concept is absurd and those who hold to it viewed as not quite sane, certainly not civilized.
The notion of Respect, so bound up with the notion of social hierarchy and the importance of the group has no place in the world of the Cyberpunk. There is nothing to respect, and no one worthy of it. The very notion is illusory, foolish. Everyone has feet of clay and the proper attitude is always one of studied irony and contempt. We may like people, people may serve our purposes, but few deserve respect other than for being our friends and maybe having some accomplishment that actually matters, not some fake title given to him along with a silly hat by a bunch of stinking drunks in a bar somewhere. And as far as institutions and groups go, the concept is absurd on its face.
Now, if you put people from those two cultures in the same place, things are going to become interesting because there cannot be an assumption of shared values, there cannot even be an assumption of shared language because the very words have different cultural meanings.