Interludes are short segments between regular episodes with no editing but WITH leather creaking. It's a chance to hear a little more about what's going on in my life.
Have you ever considered the fascinating shift in dynamics within the leather, kink and BDSM community? Join me as I unravel the intriguing transition from public spaces to more private gatherings, drawing from my own participation in local leather dinners and cocktail parties. I reflect on whether this 'going underground' trend is a survival tactic reminiscent of the old guard days or a natural progression towards fostering more authentic bonds within the community.
In this candid discussion, I delve into the socio-economic implications of such a shift, musing on the potential barriers and exclusivity it might create for newcomers or those without the necessary privilege. Drawing from my experiences in Fort Lauderdale, we'll explore the future of the leather community and the possible advantages and drawbacks of these private get-togethers. This podcast is a must-listen for those keen to understand the evolving dynamics of the leather, kink, and BDSM scene.
Interludes are short segments between regular episodes with no editing but WITH leather creaking. It's a chance to hear a little more about what's going on in my life.
Have you ever considered the fascinating shift in dynamics within the leather, kink and BDSM community? Join me as I unravel the intriguing transition from public spaces to more private gatherings, drawing from my own participation in local leather dinners and cocktail parties. I reflect on whether this 'going underground' trend is a survival tactic reminiscent of the old guard days or a natural progression towards fostering more authentic bonds within the community.
In this candid discussion, I delve into the socio-economic implications of such a shift, musing on the potential barriers and exclusivity it might create for newcomers or those without the necessary privilege. Drawing from my experiences in Fort Lauderdale, we'll explore the future of the leather community and the possible advantages and drawbacks of these private get-togethers. This podcast is a must-listen for those keen to understand the evolving dynamics of the leather, kink, and BDSM scene.
Welcome to Full Cow, a podcast about leather, kink and BDSM. My name is Edge, my pronouns are he, him, and I am your host. This is another interlude, the episode between episodes offered raw and unfiltered, but with Langlitz, leather creaking and right now in my refrigerator I have a lime cracker icebox pie, because I am going to a leather dinner tomorrow and this is sort of slightly off topic of this interlude, but I thought I would share. I'm not a very good cook, like there's something about proteins I just don't get. I under cook them or I over cook them. Very rarely am I good at cooking a protein. Nor do I have that kind of home ec mentality where I can just plan out a week of menu of what I'm going to eat for dinner every night. So I don't cook but I do like to bake, probably because I love eating dessert.
Speaker 1:
And this is a leather dinner that's been going on. A couple of my local friends host it and it's been going on for several months now and people gather. It's a potluck and the first time I brought my tried and true favorite, which is a flourless chocolate cake. I use the King Arthur's Flour slash Baking Company recipe. It is so easy, so flawless, so delicious. And people are like you didn't make this, you bought this. I'm like no, I actually made this cake. It's actually, you just microwave things and mix them and put them in the oven. It's very easy. No, no, no, no. And I'm like well, now I'm the dessert person for this leather dinner. So I've been trying to expand my baking repertoire every month when the dinner shows up and I saw this recipe for a lime cracker pie and it looked really easy and I thought, wow, it's so hot in the summer, that will be so refreshing between the coolness of an ice box pie and the refreshingness of a lime. So I've not tried it, so we'll see how it goes. But my point is about this leather dinner, right? So I recently did a video on my socials about how leather seems to be going underground and it was a good video. But I thought, wow, this topic really means some deeper exploration and that's why I thought I would focus this interlude on that. As I said in the video on the socials, we really need to break apart.
Speaker 1:
This notion about the leather community is going underground, because all of those terms are questionable. I've never thought there was a singular leather community. We are amalgamation of allied and interconnected communities. So I want to dispel this notion that the community is going underground. I want to also dispel this is going notion Like although it seems to be a trend I'm noticing here locally and I've had conversations with leather folk both locally and around the country who've noticed something similar. The truth is that people have always had parties at their house. People have always had play parties, people have always had dinner parties, people have always had leather dinners. But there does seem to be something different, or it seems to be on the rise in some way.
Speaker 1:
I also want to really press against my own use of this term underground. When I say leather is going underground, back underground kind of invokes the old guard. Right, but the problem is the old guard was quote unquote underground as a matter of survival. That was a time when you could have been arrested for being homosexual, so imagine what would happen to you if you were kinky. So the undergroundedness, the extreme, closed, secretive nature of that old guard that we carry around with us all the time is a matter of survival and I'm not really using it. That's not what's happening now. What's happening now is people are getting together in leather in their homes. That's what I mean when I say the leather community is going underground, and this would be fairly unremarkable but for the fact that I'm not the only one to have noticed this, that I've had conversations with others who've been noticing it in their own local communities as well, and so I thought it was worth some exploration.
Speaker 1:
So let me start by talking about what's been happening here in Fort Lauderdale. It started probably about a year ago when I got invited to a leather cocktail party and I thought I was so excited. I'm like this is absolute genius and it's put on by a group of people, it rotates houses, it's every month, every few months, it kind of variable, but it is connected to the origins of mid-Atlantic leather, so it's very special. I was so excited and I think the notion of this private leather social event is so endearing and appealing, because if you're into leather ironically leather bars are not a great place to go right now I went out last night to the Ramrod. It was kind of dead. I think I was the only person, or one of very few people, in gear, so I can totally understand why people would say hey, I'm into leather, I want to wear leather. Let me contact my friends who are into leather and want to wear leather, and let's all get together and wear leather. That just makes perfect sense to me. I got excited because I knew these people, I knew who was going to the party. I got excited to wear gear, around people wearing gear, and I think that's a beautiful natural impulse.
Speaker 1:
There is also something quite appealing about it happening in a more private social space. Bars are loud. Bars are focused on drinking. Bars are often focused on cruising. Bars are often too crowded or too smoky. Bars are not ideal places for the formation of deep and effective social connections. Homes are when you get together in someone's home, then you have a greater opportunity to talk one-on-one. In small groups you get to quote unquote mingle talk to other people. So I think there's an incredible logic behind the impulse to have more events in people's homes. It is a beautiful way to foster community around people who have something in common, and in my case it's leather. But you can imagine a rubber dinner party or a pup dinner party or a pony dinner party or whatever your fetish is slash dinner party, cocktail party, rupaul's drag race party, right Whatever kind of party.
Speaker 1:
Now, on the other hand, I do recognize that there are problems with this configuration as well. And the first has to do going back to the old guard, and that is who gets to go. Now, you only get to go to these parties if you know someone going to the party who thinks to invite you. Either you need to know the host or someone has to be invited and be like hey, you want to come with me. And I've made an effort for these various events and there are at least three cocktail, leather dinner type things going on in Fort Alderdale that I'm aware of. That I'm aware of, and each time one comes up I try to invite someone to come with me. Maybe they're in town, maybe I know they're, they're kind of fine, you know they're new to the community and just finding it, and I say, hey, come along.
Speaker 1:
But if you don't know someone and if the community quote unquote the community quote unquote people who are in gear, who are in kink, who are very connected, if we are all meaning in private, what the hell happens to people who want to come into the community if there's no visible entry point. And I'm aware that that is a risk, if we have this trend where things are moving more to homes, that then we lose visible access, visible points of entry for people who are curious about the community. The other big issue, I see, let's keep in mind that all these people well, there's one leather dinner that's happening at a restaurant, but even that assumes a certain level of socioeconomic privilege that you can afford a nice dinner out the people who have homes, they have space to host 20, 30, 50 people and that also implies a certain socioeconomic status. So not only do you have the problem of the community being closed off people who want to enter the community can't find it, can't see it, because it's all happening in people's homes but you also have the fact that where it is happening is happening within a particular space, a socioeconomic privilege, people who can afford their own home, people who can afford a condo or apartment enough to host a party, people who can afford to buy liquor for the party and food for the party, or people who can afford to go out to a nice dinner. That it requires people to have a certain class privilege, economic access that not everybody has. In particular, people who are just entering the community, people who are slightly outside, people who are very young, are also the people who probably don't have the ability to do this on their own, to create their own parties, to create their own leather dinners. So, on the one hand, I'm thrilled to see these sort of private social leather events happening in my town because they provide me a beautiful space to wear gear in comfortable, cool air conditioning, with friends, meeting new people, making new connections, having in-depth conversations all the things that make community community. I now have a new space for them to happen and I celebrate that and it is fantastic. But I remain aware of the fact that it is a space that is privileged and that, for me, can be a little problematic.
Speaker 1:
Now the good news is that the way it's happening here in Fort Lauderdale, I think we're okay, for, first of all, we have a lot of visible public entry points for the community. Our local store, leatherworks, does classes on all kinds of King topics. That's a point of entry. Leatherworks has open play parties in their dungeon that's a point of entry. We have two bars and we have a lot of people who are out in the community being visible so that people can come up and ask them questions or get to know them. We are quite blessed that we have so many public venues that provide access points for people who are interested in kink and leather. We are very blessed by that.
Speaker 1:
Then, when you go to the kink class and you make some friends or you go to the bar or you go to a play party, then you will eventually find your way right, because every community is small. Eventually you will find your way to these private social events regardless of your own socioeconomic status. You can be invited to these things, as I try to invite others. That's not true for every city, that's not true for every place, that's not true for every person who's in kink or interested in kink. I will say I find a lot of inspiration from my recent international travels, both Dublin last year and Glasgow this year. These are both cities. They don't have a public leather space, they don't have a bar. What each city does is they have a social and what that social pops up at lots of different bars, maybe a different bar every month. That provides the visible entry point, the doorway to access the community. However, I know, particularly when I went to Glasgow, someone was telling me they hosted a rubber Eurovision party the night before for the Eurovision final.
Speaker 1:
There are private events going on. There are private spaces in these cities where people are able to gather and have dinner or hang out or watch TV or have sex. But there is also that public entry point that I think is critical. It's great to have the private community the quote unquote underground. I think we want to make sure we don't privilege it as the proper community or the true community or the right community. I don't think we want to give it that point of privilege. I think we want to think of it as a community, a circle of friends, a network of kinky people. It's great to have those private spaces. I want to encourage that because they do provide support and affiliation and all the things community does, as long as we continue to have and strive to create visible points of entry, public spaces where people can meet others into kink, find out they're not weird, find out they're not alone and find out who they are in relation to others who are like them, which then provides them a way to get to those private parties. The takeaway, first of all, is if you're coming to Fort Lauderdale on any given month, I can probably bring you to a leather dinner or leather social or leather cocktail party of some sort, and I will be thrilled to do so. The other great takeaway is, wherever you live in the world, one option for you if you don't have a leather bar is to create maybe just an embryonic leather game night, right, and to begin to build a private social community in your home, in the homes of others, and, when that has its own sort of self-sustainability, to create some public-facing component, some sort of leather workshop, leather meet and greet, leather social, something that allows new people to enter in, and then I suspect that's the best of both worlds. Now, I'm always reexamining my positions as I move through life and as the world around me changes, but for today that is my thinking.
Speaker 1:
As for the lime cracker pie, it is a new recipe. I'm not sure how it's going to taste, but it was really easy to make, and the secret ingredient is Ritz crackers, which of course are classically used in a knock-apple pie as well. I am hopeful because the ingredient list was pretty simple. It's condensed milk, heavy cream, lime juice. Obviously that acid interacting with the dairy really thickens the dairy, almost making it a little bit like a curd, and then layers of that and Ritz crackers and that, and Ritz crackers and that and Ritz crackers, and on and on and on. So I mean the ingredients are simple enough and tasty enough, but I think that I mean this is a place where, literally, the proof is in the pudding. So I will find out tomorrow how my lime cracker pie tastes. In the meantime, I want to encourage you to seek private spaces of connection, but also public points of entry. Have a great week.