On the Future as Joseph Bean Sees It
by Jack Rinella

To fully understand this column, I suggest you first visit Joe Gallagher's fine website and read his posting of the speech that Joseph Bean, Executive Director of the Leather Archives and Museum, gave at the Great Lakes Leather Conference held in Louisville, KY on September 30, 2000. The URL is http://www.leatherpage.com.

(board editor note... the full text is also available here
on the bdsm board at: Joseph Bean's original speech)

A friend from NY asked what I thought of Joseph's speech, which of course necessitated that I call Joseph and ask him where I could find a copy of it. I knew he had given it because another friend had told me about it two days before. He had described it as biographical and depressing, though well-received.

Joseph spoke from his substantial experience, tracing the evolution of Leather as a subculture from the hidden SM communities of Gay men to today's pansexual crowds of Leather folk. He made three significant points that are sure to keep eyebrows raised and tongues chattering for months to come. The first was that we have made "mistakes" and secondly that whatever the future may be, we need to step aside and let the youth among us create it. Thirdly we must find a way to renew the passion of Leather.

Let me quote Joseph: "The Future of Leather is either something new, invented and ruled by the young, or it is nothing of leather/SM at all. To go on along the path of least passion as we are going today is to become what we imagine our grandparents to have been - dull to say the least. But, to stand aside and allow the newcomers and the young to create around you a new SM world may well rekindle in you the very instincts and urges that drew you into leather to begin with.

"I say 'you' not us, because I believe that I have another leather destiny. I won't be one of the people populating parties or playing for fun. I won't continue to adjust. But I will do the things I believe will give the greatest liberty to the creators of the next and forward looking world of leather/SM, so long as no one asks me for the kind of instructions or advice that usually misleads the young hotheads into the paths of the old farts.

"I come from a time and world in which leathersex was a life apart - not a thing apart from life. It's all very well to have a museum and lobbyists and committees and conferences, but the time has come to ask what we are lobbying for the right to do, and is it worth that? To ask seriously what is the future of the historic reality recorded in the Leather Archives & Museum and is there something important that is different now - not better, not even intentionally changed - just lost?

"I can not tell you what will be the future of leather, but I would ask you to ask yourselves as you make and live in it: Don't you want lives in leather to be something more? "Bring back the darkness. Bring back the passion, and give leathermen and leatherwomen hereafter something to live for, something to anticipate and fearfully shiver about. Only then will the museums, art shows, legal battles and conferences be justified."

I can't agree with my friend Joseph more. He has hit the nail on the head when he reminds us that we have lost touch with the power of SM. We have all made mistakes, myself included. I'm not the first one to be criticized for revealing the "secrets" of Leathersex, for popularizing the culture and thereby watering it down to a fashion statement. You have heard some of my discontent in the past several years. Joseph has done a superb job in putting it into words.

But what he only hints at is important too. The future holds what is in the present. There are two distinct, but not easily separated, Leather communities. There is the public crowd of players and watchers, of thrill-seekers and hangers-on who don't know much more than the superficiality of black cow-hide, the temporality of a quick trick, and the shadow of something exciting but elusive.

The other Leather is hidden, a mysterious and committed cadre of passionate men and women, seekers of deep experience, strong bonds of endearment, and like minds who pursue a lifestyle of individualism, passion, and daring. One defined not so much by mores or rules, but by the beat of their own hearts.

At times it seems that the first group has flooded, submerged, even drowned the second. Certainly the fears and game-playing of the first have distorted the meaning of SM to the point that many who would seek to join the inner cadre have little hope of getting past the self-made Masters and pretense-filled thrill-seekers. When people can change their personality with the mere flip of a screen name, there is little hope that the genuine can be told from the insincere.

But it is forever so, simply part of the human condition. As a member of a New Testament Jesus-freak commune in the 70s we had the same conversation about the impossibility of dividing the "sheep from the goats." Organizations of men and women naturally form themselves in concentric circles of commitment, a dedicated core surrounded by increasing less sincere voyeurs and part-time hobbyists.

Even a leader as charismatic as Christ had an inner core of three, surrounded by twelve apostles, surrounded by seventy disciples, surrounded by hundreds of listeners, surrounded by, at times, thousands of curious tourists.

But groups of bridge players, union members, and corporate functionaries fall into the same traps. We all do. And we all drift in our intensity, our devotion, and our promises, too easily moving from and into the center, sometimes at the core, sometimes at the edge, mostly moving as time and inclination change from one stage to the next.

I feel the conflict in my own life. When I am the columnist, when the sadist? I admitted to the guys at last weekend's MAsT meeting that there were things I do in my bedroom that I would never write about in my column. My private life moves from darkness to light and back, from lust to love, from passion to boredom.

I write for the masses, hoping in some way to touch one or two, exposing for them a secret reality, not because I showed it to them but because they took hope from my words that they could find it.

Unlike Joseph I have no long history, no fathers in Leather, no apprenticeship. Yes there were mentors and teachers but they were few and far between. Jack Rinella sprung to life at the approval of a publisher who needed a leather columnist. Nine years later I trust I have proven the wisdom of his choice, but fully admit that true Leather is lived, not read. There are, after all, two drumbeats: that of the throbbing crowd and that of the quiet heart. We can't but hear both and hope to live by the one.

Have a great week. You can leave me email at mrjackr@leathermail.com
or visit my website at http://www.LeatherViews.com/

Copyright 2000 by JackRinella, all rights reserved.

[This message has been edited by editor1 (edited 19 November 2000).]