Brother:

 

Male leather culture grew organically in different cities across the country after the Second World War urbanized masses of queers and gave them a chance to form communities in major cities.* We are told that leather culture grew out of the shared desires of former military men who had eroticized the hierarchy and discipline of military life. Simultaneously motorcycle clubs entered the American landscape with their thinly veiled homoeroticism and masculine subculture. It was a short jump from one to the other and urban male leather culture was born.

 

The problem with answering your question is that romantic idealization of the Old Guard presupposes a unified, cohesive movement with a single code of behavior. Nothing could be less true. The rules, iconography, dress codes, hankie codes, protocol and sexual mores varied from city to city, from club to club, from even bar to bar within the same city. Reading oral histories we come upon a variety hierarchical systems that varied dramatically across the country. (If you read some old copies of Drummer and study them closely, you will come across a mass of contradictions regarding behavior.) Even when I came out into leather and SM 30 years ago in San Francisco there were conflicting rules and expectations within the community: Does a slave follow his Master into the bar, or precede his Master to make room for him? Does a prospective slave approach a Master, or wait to be approached? There seemed to be as many answers as there were men to provide them.

 

In some clubs, everyone entered as a slave and was expected to service anyone with seniority, including other slaves. The aspiring slave addressed everyone as Sir and waited to be used by senior club members. According to the mythology, leathers were earned and given as vestments when the aspirant slave had proved himself. In some leather venues (notably private clubs), slaves were public property and expected to serve any Master who came along; in others the slave was the private property of one or more Masters and could not to be used, or even approached, without permission.  

 

In some communities, an aspiring Master could enter as a Top but be forbidden to own a slave until he was trained by his Seniors. This training would often include bottoming to his seniors as well as learning the techniques and protocol required for safe play as a Top. Again, we are told, leathers had to be earned. 

 

In yet other groups, according to the mythology, there were men who fitted between Masters and slaves, men who were expected to obey and serve the Masters, and to discipline the community’s slaves, but were not allowed to own their own slaves. These men may have been on their way to becoming Masters, or perhaps they were happiest being in the middle and able to enjoy all aspects of leather sexuality.

 

There were also a variety of rituals that varied dramatically from place to place. These rituals signified acceptance into the community, membership in the club, contractual subservience, or rank within the community. [One can’t help but note that even on this website we are ranked per our participation in our online community, perhaps a faint echo from earlier leather culture.] The communities were, however, secretive, since man sex was a crime, and sadomasochism seen as a sickness. Which is why we have to rely on so many contradicting oral histories, and even some works of fiction, to piece together even a glimpse of what we now call the Old Guard.

 

So the short answer, little brother, is a question: Which traditions from which community from which era?   There is a tendency to think of the Old Guard as Camelot, the shining pure form of leather sexuality to which we should all aspire, when men were men, et cetera. But there was no Camelot; just a lot of little communities, each unique with its own rules and protocols, that, over the years, cross-pollinated and grew into the semi-cohesive leather culture we have today. During the post-Stonewall years, changes happened all over the country, making queer life less secretive and, as a consequence, leather culture less rigid. 

 

Some, the more romantic among you, will see these changes as a loss, but I see it as part of the organic development of our community and one of the reasons for its richness. But to contradict myself in the same breath: Rules are good: They help define our roles within the community and our relationships with each other. It is only when the rules get in the way, impose an unnecessary rigidity, and prevent the organic growth of our community that I despair of them and the idealization of the mythic Old Guard.

 

This writer’s Sir has rules the writer has to obey; they will probably differ from the protocol enforced by your Sir. All relationships require some fluidity as they grow and mature, and some of the rules will probably change over time. Having been owned by the same Sir for 15 years, I can tell you that my need for him and his ownership has only grown with the years -- but I doubt that it fits into any mold (anymore than your own would) that some would call Old Guard. For instance, you and I identify as collared boys rather than slaves; this wouldn’t fit into the molds we read about in our oral histories. The idea of boy being a leather identity only emerged in the 1980s, and pup more recently still.

 

When we talk about Old Guard traditions, we are usually talking about protocol, the rules for which still vary dramatically depending on where one lives and with whom one is speaking. This writer thinks we do well to honor our elders, to take what we learn from them and apply it to what works for us today in our own relationships and/or communities. If a Sir has rules regarding his slave, boy or pup, he (or the sub) should make them known to the community but not assume that their rules are strictly Old Guard since such rules were not, in fact, universal, nor should they expect that everyone will assume that your household’s protocols are a given.

 

Our community has grown organically, forged by some strong, brave men that wanted to feed their souls with the brotherhood that became the crucial quality of our culture. It has grown and changed with the times, as it must, and it will continue to do. So rather than focus on what must, perforce, be a piecemeal understanding of their traditions, this writer believes we should create our own traditions and ideals to pass on to future generations of kink men. The first leather men, the legendary Old Guard, were mavericks -- in the true, and not the Palin, sense of the word -- and it would be ironic and sad indeed if we failed to honor this, the most important Old Guard tradition of all, as we continue to forge our community’s future and nurture the next generation of young kinky men needing the brotherhood that only our community can provide.

 

 

* See the late Allan Bérubé’s brilliant and meticulously researched Coming Out Under Fire for more about the queer urbanization that began with World War 2. Bérubé was himself a leather man and his insights into queer history help us to understand how leather culture developed.