Review: The Leatherman’s Protocol Handbook

Yes, it’s true.  I have read that book.  The one panned so severely by Guy Baldwin and others.  (I did not buy it, though.  Someone who shall remain unnamed bit the bullet and loaned his copy to me.)

Reviews on Amazon

Guy Baldwin on Leatherati


Jeffrey Payne on Leatherati


More from Jeffrey Payne on Leatherati


John Weal’s response on Leatherati

On some level, I am glad I read the book, because now I can put the comments of Baldwin, Jeffrey Payne, Patrick Mulcahey, and others into better context.  And it turns out that the big hulabaloo is really focused mostly on a single chapter, enhanced by author John D.  Weal’s reaction to people’s comments and unwillingness or inability to defend what he claims to be factual.

I came into leather in the early 1990s in the San Francisco Bay Area.  That was the height of the AIDS epidemic, before much of anything but AZT was around as treatment.  Much of the generation of leathermen who would be lost was already gone, and their history and knowledge with them.  I largely had to self-teach myself about leather protocols across that decade, picking up bits here and there from individual leathermen, learning by observation in leather bars, and picking up info where I could from books and magazines.  When Weal goes into detail about clothing styles and guidelines, dungeon rules, high and low protocol, I recognize large portions of this as things I learned in my early years, and thus anything which falls into realms I had no connection with, I can accept as likely valid (at least to the degree Weal experienced it).  (Although some of what is listed remains bizarre: a boy would not be allowed to use the toilet seat?).  And thus, I see good value in some portions of this book.  (But not that one chapter, which admittedly casts a shadow on any other parts I cannot independently validate.)

But let’s get one thing out of the way: this is not a good book, overall.  The content of the one controversial chapter aside, is not generally a well written book, nor a well edited one, nor a well focused one.  There is little narrative through line.  Some chapters wander all over the map.  Some concepts are introduced as though the reader should know them, only to be defined pages or even chapters later.  This book needs not just an editor, it needs a producer: someone able to establish direction and make sure that a viable product comes out the other side.

Just to pick on one aspect, Weal’s own timeline is inconsistent throughout the book.  At one point, he says he was collared by his master in 1968, but his bio says he has been “actively involved with the BDSM Lifestyle for Over 35 years” [caps per the bio], which would put his collaring around 1975 (the book was published in 2010).  And thus when he speaks of the ways of the Council, or delineates protocols for boys, just which decade he means becomes even more hazy: is this now, is it the 1970s, is it the 1950s (which he was only told about by his master)?  Every time the reader encounters a head-scratcher like these, he loses faith in the rest of the content.

Weal’s writing is also mangled by his need for continual completeness in terminology, forcing him to use “Master/Sir” and “boy/boi/submissive/slave” throughout.  When those phrases show up multiple times each in a single paragraph, the brain starts to drop out entire sentences.  The need to list all the possibilities every time prevents his message from coming through.

I was always taught to try and find something good to say about anything I review, since the writer put a lot of effort into the writing, and someone somewhere thought it was good enough to actually publish and release the work.  So here goes: the germ of a couple truly interesting books does exist in here.  First, Weal could put together a book of history and stories about the early leather scene as he knew it and as was related to him by those he knew; he might have to fictionalize some of it, change the names and such, but a lot of valid insight into how things were in the circles he had access to could still come through such a book.  Second, while there is doubt shed on the accuracy of many things Weal says about “Old Guard” practices — and common wisdom says that many rituals and protocols were highly regional and even individual — an analytic comparison of “Old Guard” practices with how those things are handled and performed today could be interesting, marking how our leather society has changed (and where it has not).

But I have no belief that either of those books are ones Weal is willing or able to produce.