Thoughts on “Old Guard” Leather

This was prompted by a post on Fetlife’s Gay Mens Virtual Leather Bar from several months ago.

Here is a collection of thoughts on the subject of “Old Guard” Leather.  It is not intended as a complete survey of the subject, nor even a complete picture of my own views on it.

Codewords and Definitions

• When someone describes himself as “Old Guard” or “Old Guard trained”, this is a code phrase, attempting to distill a communal understanding of what this person accepts and expects into a sound bite.  Which means that if you don’t have the same understanding as he does, the communal part of it can get lost.
• What are they guarding?  Does it even need guarding?  Or are they guarding against something?
• Interesting definition of “old guard” (from Wikipedia): “A conservative, reactionary faction that is unwilling to accept new ideas.”  Boy, that doesn’t sound like something positive for the leather community.
• The Wikipedia entry on “Old Guard” leather is is pretty sparse, and loaded with “citation needed” notes, indicating pretty clearly that it shouldn’t be trusted as complete (and maybe not as accurate).
• So far as I know, the term “Old Guard” in reference to leather generations dates only to 1989, to an editorial from Andy Mangels in Drummer Magazine.  Like many things dubbed ever-so-important to leather today, the concept didn’t exist at all 20-some years ago and didn’t gain the mindshare it does now until somewhere around the turn of the millennium.
• As a lover of puns, may I offer up that leathermen who like old Thor comics are Mid Guard?  Or that leathermen who are graphic designers and typesetters are Avant Guard?  Or that anyone who wants to battle about this subject should be required to say “En Guard!”  (And that if you don’t get these jokes, I think you need to get out more.)

The Myth of “Old Guard”

• Some people treat “Old Guard” as an identifiable or definable era or set of people, typically as a set of originators, although the actual definition or identification is never pinned down.  Unless you buy into “intelligent design”, though, you recognize that the leather community as we know it was not created wholesale on the first Sunday after autumnal equinox (the old traditional date for Folsom Street Fair, of course) in 1956.  What we have today is what evolved from what we had years ago.  Whatever we had in that never-quite-definable era that is dubbed “Old Guard” also must have evolved from what came before it.
• As a result of that evolution, tagging any particular era or generation as “Old Guard” and implying that they were the start, or at least the first self-recognized group, has problems.  In general, no grouping of leathermen is going to say “We were first”; they will say “The guys who came before us were first”.  Which is why we can’t pin these things down, box them up, and put a nice bow on them (with a fancy shibari knot, of course).

The Truth of “Old Guard”

• If you feel you have to tell me you are “Old Guard”, then you probably can’t show me.
• If you have to tell me you are “Old Guard” because you’re not allowed to show me, then I know you’re full of shit.
• Proclaiming yourself as “Old Guard” is one-upmanship, a way of saying “I’m a real leatherman (and you aren’t).  Prove me wrong.”  (Challenge accepted!)
• Saying that you are “Old Guard” or “Old Guard trained” tells me clearly that you aren’t.  It invites me to look for the cracks in your claims, where otherwise I would be content to take you at face value.