LEATHER 101: Primer

To those just coming out, and the rest of the world, the multitude of subcultures within the gay community is often shocking and daunting.  
How do you accept, or even fit within such a rainbow of interests and desires that go against the 'norm' of society?  

Is it any big wonder that a minority who is victimized and reviled by just about everyone, (I'm talking about gays in general), would come up with a way of life that would fly in the face of so called "decent" and "moral" people?

Rupal has a famous saying, "you're born naked and the rest is drag"....and there's a lot of truth to that.

Mention leather, and immediately dark rooms, scary alleys, big gruff looking men and raw SEX come to mind......and that's a big part of it.  But if you step back from the shock value there's alot more to it, and it is fascinating.

Throughout history, gay men and women have had to come up with ways to identify each other as a matter of networking, practicality and even survival.   When the sexual revolution struck in the US and gay rights took off?  There was an explosion of expression in the birth of the gay community, and one of those forms of expression was leather.

Built on hedonsitic practices and expressions, those living the "Leather Life" were unapologeticly geared toward a specific kind of sex.   The immediately identifiable, brutal,  in your face heirarchy, type of sex......but of course even the Leather Marys had to dress it up a bit, and borrowing from the biker culture, and a few other influences adopted the acoutremonts of leather.