Bottoming Out: Can a Sir Take It Up the Ass?

A lot of people have an image in their head of a “Leather Sir” which is strongly influenced by Tom of Finland’s “Kake” comics.

What they conveniently forget is that a few pages of the comic later, Kake was often bottoming as well as topping.

(from Kake 13 [1973] and Kake 7 [1970], © Tom of Finland)

There is also pretty broad acceptance that a leatherboy can be, if not a top, at least not just a bottom.  But acceptance that a Sir can like to bottom is harder to come by.

Let’s be frank here: I have been in leather since 1991.  It was that nipple play scene with Jean-Baptiste that really triggered things, I guess.  I have bottomed a lot over the years and topped a lot as well.  And after more than 20 years, I have found there are things I really like to do in each role.

When pressed, I call myself probably 90% top for BDSM play these days.  My last significant sessions as a bottom for flogging or spanking or bondage were a couple years or longer ago, although there was a nice nipple and CBT scene last October.  Guys tend to come to me for these things rather than the other way around.

For “insertive play” — sucking, fucking, fisting, etc.  — I call myself 50/50, willing to take as much as I give.  And I do.  Give me the chance and I will happily hop into the sling first, but if you want the first round, just say so.  Especially for fisting, the connection is as powerful no matter which end of the wrist I am on, and I love love love seeing a guy on my hand processing the same sensations that I have had in the past; it is truly a case of bottom skills informing top skills, and vice versa.

So how does this fit in with my self-image as a Leather Sir?  How do I reconcile taking it up the ass with being a Sir?  First, I do that by remembering the Kake example above: the character we most associate with our top leather imagery wasn’t a total top and seemed to really like some bottoming action mixed in.

Second, I remember that the words I use inform the meaning they impart.  I top, but I am not a Top — I am more than that.  I bottom, but I am not a Bottom — I am more than that as well.

Third, I remember that while LeatherSir is a “players” title, as a regional and potentially international titleholder, being a “Sir” is more than just beating and buttsex.  My title agreements included both fundraising and workshops — serving the community and passing my skills onto others.  In it’s ultimate form, a LeatherSir is (to me) someone who is known for his skills in leather and who is sought out for them (and by extension, who passes them on, whether in group workshops or one-on-one with a partner/boy/someone being mentored).

A man who is not known for his skills is invisible; he may be great at what he does, but he doesn’t participate in his leather community and his skills benefit no one but himself.  A man who is not sought out for his skills is too private or too quiet — or to self-effacing to admit that his skills are worthy.  A man who does not pass his skills on will see them die with him.

These are what truly qualify a leather Sir to me.  What those skills are — be they making leather gear or throwing a whip or taking a fist in the ass — matter less than the fact that he has them, is known for them, and shares them with others.

If I can achieve that (and I think I have), then anyone who looks askance at me being really good at getting fisted (and doing it in return) is actually observing his own limits, not mine.

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Updated on August 6, 2012:

Touch-up edits and added links.

Updated on August 9, 2012:

Better example images.

Updated on February 24, 2015:

Pussied-out the naughty bits on a pic to try and keep Google from blocking the blog.

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.

Are “Earned Leathers” Important?

There has been a significant attention in the leather community in the last few years regarding “earned leathers”.

One of the questions in my contest interview was whether any of my gear was “earned” leather, and my response was roughly “I earned the money to buy my leathers, and I have several items I acquired second hand, but no, not in the traditional sense of the term.  However, I have loaned or gifted items to other leathermen in the past.”

“Earned leather” is an attempt to capture one of the (mythical) rituals attributed to “Old Guard” leathermen, which holds that bottoms/subs/slaves/boys enter the leather scene with no gear and acquire it from others along their journey as they pass milestones in their leather life.

The truth behind this myth, of course, is that in an earlier era, there wasn’t a decent shop or two in every major city catering to the gay BDSM crowd were you could go and purchase the gear you needed (wanted).  Leather gear was harder to come by and proportionally more expensive than it is today, so not everyone could reasonably have a full wardrobe to choose from, especially a newbie.  Pieces were treasured, maintained, and handed down as appropriate; some leather was heirlooms, not mere clothing.

The myth also holds that bottoms/subs/slaves/boys are not to acquire leathers on their own, only from their tops/doms/sirs/masters/daddies.  Presumably at some point, when they have achieved enough, they may directly obtain the items they need.  Of course, the myth also dictates that everyone comes into the leather scene as a bottom and transitions to being a switch or a top at some point; logically, the transitions from being a bottom and the transition to being “allowed” to acquire ones own gear occur at the same time.

We no longer expect that everyone starts as a bottom (and maybe we never really did expect that) — where would we get those 22 year-old “masters” from, eh? — although we arguably still hold it as an ideal.  (There’s the myth in action for you.)  And thus I would submit that “earned leathers” likewise is an idealized (idolized?) scenario which only really plays out in the leather world in isolated cases.

When I came into the leather scene in the early 1990s in the San Francisco Bay Area, “earned leather” wasn’t a phrase I ever encountered, probably not until nearly a decade later.  (Then again, I only lightly connected with Drummer and related magazines at the time.  Maybe if I had been more aware of that piece of the leather community, I would have encountered it, or maybe not.)  Lots of other concepts that we embrace strongly today likewise weren’t conversed about in any circles I ran in during the 90s: leather care, bootblacks, polyamory, service tops, and so on.  (I do recall that the San Francisco Eagle and the Timberline in Seattle both had bootblack chairs in the 90s, but I don’t think I ever saw them used for that purpose.  Not once.)

So for me in my early leather days, the concept that I needed to find a top who would identify leather life milestones and present gear for me when I achieved them wasn’t even in the air.  Lacking that in either concept or reality, I naturally purchased items for myself that I felt I needed to partake in the scene — a vest, then chaps (custom fit, and I can still wear them 20 years later!), then non-cowboy boots, and so on).  Later, in the 2000s, I have provided items for men I have connected with to ensure they could partake as well — rubber boots for one guy, a vest for my boyfriend and later a uniform shirt when he competed for a national title, a harness and a rubber shirt for another boyfriend, and I have loaned items like vests and harness for boys who I was taking out and about — but these haven’t been “earned” items in the ritualized sense.

Don’t think that I don’t support the idea as a concept, though.  I know tops who have been in a “covering ceremony", ritually presented with a master’s cap; a boy who only earned his collar via an extreme display of trust in a scene; a leatherman who lovingly describes being gifted with a special leather jacket from a top now long deceased.  The power of ritual is immense, within a couple or as part of a small community, a leather family; it imbues power and value into the object beyond any intrinsically, physically there.

I just don’t support the idea that “earned leather” something that everyone in today’s leather community needs to have experienced, and especially that not having “earned” your leather leather somehow lessens either the items or the leatherman himself.  The personal value of the experience of “earning” your leathers does not make you a “better” leatherman.  Someone is “better” (both quantitatively and qualitatively) because they have skills or community connections or practical experience or depth of character, not because they have gone through a particular ritual that others have not.

Leather is life, not religion.