As you, faithful reader, may remember, when I worked in the sm scene in Texas, I worked predominantly with the het/pan group and a women's group. There was a relatively small but distinct set of gay men who did not necessarily mix with the other groups on a regular basis. As much as I wanted to know more about them, my gender was an issue (not an insurmountable one, as there were many female "bois" who took part in many, but not all, of their activities). However, my time in the field was limited and I felt others had captured the ethnographic experiences of at least some, if not these, leathermen (see particularly Peter Hennen's Fairies, Bears, and Leathermen).
There were two main reasons gay men did not play at the pansexual parties that I identified. First, the gay male tradition is based solidly in leather, whereas the pan groups were predominantly kinky in orientation, with smaller offshoots that practiced the leather lifestyle. The differences between kinky heterosexuals and leatherfolk can be summed up in how each perceives the activities they engage in. One leather individual told me, "Men work - boys play" (the subtext being that real men are leather, boys, and those less serious, are somehow engaged in something more frivolous). Leather is more grounded in tradition and protocol while kink is more idiosyncratic. This is not to say that leatherfolk were always serious but they often carried themselves with a sense of propriety. This attitude did not always mix well with the laissez-faire approach to kink often found at pan parties.
Secondly, penetrative sex was not allowed at some (but not all) of the pan groups. In other posts, I have discussed the implications of this for how women's orgasms define (or rather do not define) sex in these settings. This injunction also served to deter gay men from playing in pan spaces as penetration was seen as an integral part of most play. Based on my reading and casual conversations with leathermen, it is not as easy to tease apart play(work) and sex as it was in the het community (as arbitrary as that distinction might have been).
For all of these reasons, I had very little experience in this subset of the community (some would even argue its own community outside of the larger kinky umbrella). So when a new acquaintance asked if I'd be willing to volunteer for the area's annual major gay male leather conference, I jumped at the chance. She was going to be out of town but I could volunteer on behalf of the local LGBT group.
Logistically, it was a tad frustrating. I started my volunteer shift after the registration table had closed and therefore could not get a badge. I spent a good portion of the night reassuring well-meaning men that, no, I was in fact supposed to be there, despite my obvious cleavage and girly dress. There were other female volunteers who didn't get asked, so I really do think it was my badge-less state.
Last year, the silent auction was situated around the play space in the ballroom. The woman who put me in touch with the organizers went on at length about the things she had seen during her shift there. A lot of it sounded pretty similar to my experiences, although horses and kittens were replaced with puppies. To my disappointment, the silent auction this year was set up in a hallway with no view of any action. Without a badge, I couldn't even go check out the setup.
However, I had a little glimpse into the gay male leather world. Or perhaps I should say, the 99.9% gay male leather world. Not counting the female volunteers, I saw a handful of women participating, including an incredibly hot Ms. International Leather and a member of a transmasculine leather group. I was feeling pretty tricked out, with my newly (half) shaven head and my trusty black boots. Despite my femme-ness and my cis-ness, the men were welcoming in ways I didn't have the chance to experience in Texas. I am not sure how much that has to do with the differences in local culture, my role as a volunteer, or my physical location on the outskirts of the convention.
One of the striking things I noticed was the lack of cowboys. I guess it's hard to pull that trope off anywhere but the West (or Texas), but it is one of my favorite hyper-masculine typologies. The other thing I noticed was that these men are *fit*. It's hard for me to say on average whether the people in Ohio are smaller than Texans because it varies a lot depending on ethnicity in both locales, but in general the white people here weigh less than their counterparts in Texas. This is not to say that the leathermen I knew in Texas were all bears, as there were some very lean and muscular men there as well. But here (in the Midwest of all places), most of the men looked fighting-trim. It puts me in mind of the fact that beauty is (usually) performed for the male gaze and therefore those performing beauty fall under the same hegemonic ideals, whether male or female.
Mostly, however, being there made me miss my leather and kinky friends. I saw some insane latex/steam punk crossovers and more leather bow ties than I could shake a stick at. The smells, the costumes, the arcane equipment, the easy laughter, and the erotic charge. I am not sure those translate well through text. And although I had never met any of those people before that night, I felt, just a bit, "these are my people."
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