Full Cow: Edge Talks Leather and Kink
Join Edge as he shares his 30+ years of experience in leather, kink, and BDSM. Each episode centers around a theme, explored through several segments. In the first, Edge shares his leather journey in relation to that theme in order to draw some larger lessons about the leather community. In the second segment, the focus is on practical knowledge and history. Then, we speak with another member of the community who shares their knowledge and experience in relation to the theme. Occasionally, there will also be bonus segments, like erotic story time or kink centered meditation. Come learn more about leather, kink, and BDSM with Edge.
Full Cow: Edge Talks Leather and Kink
Interlude: Resist
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. This time it's trauma responses, visibility, and resistance. But hey, there's also a lighter note. Check out this kinky puzzle book from my friend boy paul:
Ask Edge! Go to https://www.speakpipe.com/LTHREDGE to leave ask a question or leave feedback. Find Edge's other content on Instagram and Twitter. Also visit his archive of educational videos, Tchick-Tchick.
Welcome to Full Cow, a podcast about leather kink and BDSM. My name is Edge, my pronouns are he, him, and I'm your host. And this is another interlude in the episode between episodes offered raw and unedited, but with Langlitz, leather creaking and I have good news on that front. You know I've mentioned before that as my Langlitz jacket breaks in, it's getting a little less creaky. However, I have deposits placed at Langlitz now for new items, including a Sidewinder jacket, so I'm hoping there will be new creakiness about 10 months from now. So in this episode I want to think about activism and resistance.
Speaker 1:These are topics that have been very much on my mind lately and in general, I've been watching myself go through a trauma response in the last week. Specifically, I have moved between fight, flight and freeze. So in terms of freeze, I've been very disconnected this week. I've just not really been texting as much. I've not wanted to be around people as much. I've been hunkering down a little bit more and practicing self-care. In terms of flight, well, I've already looked into the possibility of citizenship in Italy through my great-grandmother. I don't think it will work because it looks like she had my grandfather after she got naturalized as a US citizen. Great job, mary Montalbano. Why would you do that to me? I have also looked at the possibility of immigrating to Canada. I need to take an English test so that I can get into the skilled worker pool. So I am thinking about flight, but in the meantime I'm thinking about fight.
Speaker 1:I'm thinking about ways in which I can resist, and mainly that means being more queer, being more leather, being more visible. That means I'm diving back into my social media and doing even more videos, and I'm thinking about softening these boundaries I tend to keep between my social media presence and some other parts of my life. I'm not quite sure about that, I'm still thinking and reflecting on it, but I'm thinking about softening those boundaries a little bit to increase my visibility. I am also considering wearing leather more often in my daily life and there are a couple of reasons I haven't done that. In part. Leather for me is very sacred and therefore I don it when I'm entering sacred spaces the playroom, the bar, the leather event and I don't know if I want it to become mundane, but I do think there is power in visibility and a kind of activism. Now, along with that, I am thinking about buying a gun, for my own self-defense, of course, but if I'm going to be more publicly visible in leather, more obviously queer, I want to make sure that I'm able to protect myself.
Speaker 1:None of this, none of this, is good news, and it's a little sad that that's where I'm at in my life right now and perhaps that's where we are as a world right now. But it is what it is and I've not made firm decisions about any of this. I am still processing through my trauma response and working out who I want to be in this new world. Because it feels to me like a new world. It feels like there's a change. It feels like what was is not what's going to be, and I have to decide who I'm going to be, and I don't like a lot of what I'm doing so far.
Speaker 1:My heart is hardening a little bit. I am more distrustful of people that I see around, like when I am out running errands. I am more distrustful of people and I'm less likely to be kind. None of those things I think are good things, nor are they who I want to be, but at the moment it's who I have to be. But I'm thinking instead about being a little bit more strategic, about my visibility as an act of resistance, and it's important for me to acknowledge that. Sorry, this is unedited, I had to clear my throat, I hope that wasn't too jarring. It's important to realize that I am able to be more visible. I am able to be more visible in the real world and in social media because of the package of privilege I carry with me. You know, I've just finished up the video series on communication on my social media and the next series I'm going to be doing is about a concept I've been bandying about quite recently, leather privilege, and I have to check. I'm sure someone else probably has talked about leather privilege. Someone with less privilege has probably talked about leather privilege, and I want to really lift their voice up and not steal the term from them. Hold on, I'm going to clear my voice again there. At least I got away from the microphone.
Speaker 1:The notion of leather privilege for me is bound up with other kinds of privilege. Well, I'll just sort of talk about it, writ large right Like. Leather privilege for me means access to leather people, access to leather spaces, access to leather gear and access to leather experiences, and I have quite a bit of leather privilege right Like I can text former IMLs. I can text people who own leather manufacturing or leather clothing companies, leather stores those people I have access to, direct access to. I have access to leather spaces. Not only can I walk into any bar, but I have the resources to go to most events that I want to go to. Actually, if I put my mind to it, I could go to any event I wanted to, but I also have access to leather parties that most people don't have access to, to leather play events that most people don't have access to. I have extraordinary access to leather gear and I have access to leather experience. Not only do I have a lot of experience, but if I wanted to learn how to do X, I would very rapidly find a teacher who knows X.
Speaker 1:I'm excited for this video series. I will say I think it's going to be a really good one and pretty timely, so I hope you will find it. Oh goodness, so I'm recording this on Monday, november 11th, because it's a holiday. This will come out on Friday. Yes, so the podcast is coming out fairly contemporaneously to the video series.
Speaker 1:The point about leather privilege is the reason I have it is that I have all this other privilege. Obviously, primarily, I have a lot of economic privilege socioeconomic privilege because I have the financial resources to buy a lot of leather, to get more langlets, to go to leather events. Those require financial resources. But there are complicated packages of privilege involved here, including pretty privilege and body privilege and able-bodiedness, and urban privilege and Western privilege, and I could go on and I will go on in the video series. But the point I want to make here is that for me, what allows me to be more visible in leather, what allows me to flex my leather privilege, is the fact that I carry so many other privileges, and this is a way of saying that part of why I'm moving into resisting through visibility, through outspokenness, through just spokenness let's not even talk about outspokenness.
Speaker 1:The reason I am moving into resistance through visibility and spokenness is because people with less privilege than me can't. It is more dangerous for them and I don't think it is without danger for me, which is why I'm thinking about buying a gun, of all things. I don't think it's without danger for me, but I have a package of privilege that gives me a little bit more protection than people who are less privileged in terms of socioeconomic status, in terms of age, in terms of able-bodiedness, in terms of neurotypicalness, all the things right, all the things I like to say I have the only privileges I don't have. I'm sure there's more, but the two privileges I feel like I don't have. First of all, I'm not straight, because that's pretty high privilege, and I'm not six foot or taller, which is also a kind of privilege that relates to different kinds of body privilege. But the rest of the privileges that I'm aware of I carry around in my privilege backpack and that makes me able to say things other people couldn't say without putting themselves in danger. It makes me able to be places where other people couldn't be without putting themselves in danger, and I am very cognizant of that.
Speaker 1:All of this came out of the keynote I gave at the Glue event in Houston put on by the Misfits, and this interlude was originally planned to be a reproduction of that keynote speech. It's a little, you know, my keynote speaking is a little bit different from my podcasting. The voice is a little more animated instead of this soothing podcast voice that people are apparently very fond of. So it would have been a little bit of a shoehorning to move that keynote into the interlude and recent events pushed me in another direction, but there will probably be an interlude down the line about that will reproduce the keynote. But the point is that in the keynote I was thinking about leather privilege and especially who gets to fit into the leather community, who gets the privilege of fitting, and as part of that I talked about how the history of our community is a history of building spaces where we fit, and the people who did that were the white, cis, urban, rich, gay men specifically men, because they had the privilege that made them space builders. Right, starting a bar, opening a bar takes a lot of resources, takes a lot of privilege to open a bar, and so the leaders, the ones who were making space for leather, were using their privilege.
Speaker 1:Now the other thing I say in the keynote is I could give up. If I could wave a magic wand and give up all of my leather privilege, what would happen is someone who looks exactly like me would step into it. Some new, pretty privileged, body-privileged, able-bodied, neurotypical, cis, white, urban, western, gay, socioeconomically privileged male would become the next edge. So giving up privilege doesn't change anything. I'm very aware of that. I could give up my privilege and nothing would change. The system would just notch down to the next person in line in the privilege parade.
Speaker 1:The way for me to try to create change is to use the privilege I have to create space for other people, for other voices, to listen to them and believe what they say, and to speak with them, next to them, to give them places to speak, to make space, literally make space at the bar for them, make sure there's room next to me for them to lean next to me, and so that has cultivated in me this awareness that at this moment in time, I am privileged to be able to have resistance through visibility and through spokenness in ways that other people do not, and that I need to exercise my privilege to make leather queerer, to make queer more visible, to make queer more spoken and outspoken. Yeah, probably something like that. Now, at the same time, I'm still also considering my flight response. This is a perfect time for me to fall in love with a handsome Irish-German-Spanish somewhere in the EU. Please, gentleman, and marry him and live the fairytale fantasy of leaving this country and having this grand adventure, this last grand adventure of my life, of a married life, but a married life in another country, and that's just a fantasy, as much as I'm exploring flight and as much as I probably at some point will take the English test and put my name in the pool for Canada because I think that's the easiest post for me to aim for, as much as I am imagining flight, I also realize if I had a husband in another country, like immigrations are not easy period, and spousal immigration is not going to be easy, so it's not an easy solution. There are no easy solutions for me at this moment and so as much as I consider the fantasy of flight, the truth is I'm probably going to do a little bit more fight than flight. I'm going to do a little bit more resist than run. We'll see. I'm working my way through that and will be, I think, for a little while. I don't know that I will be quote unquote, back to myself, for I'm not sure when, I'm really not sure when, and actually I'm not sure which self I am coming back to, that I don't really know who I am or who I'm going to be. When this trauma response subsides, I might be a little more aggressively queer, I might be in general a little less trusting. I don't like that, but it might be necessary Because, even with all my privilege, an increase in my visibility could risk being hurt. There could be consequences to that, but I'm really trying to think about whether or not the potential consequences are worth what could be gained by making things a little more visible. Now there are other forms of activism. There are other forms of resistance which are even more active, which are even more resistant.
Speaker 1:I've thought about doing a podcast episode all about activism. Actually, you know, I've been getting my podcast topics from ChatGPT because it's actually pretty handy if you ask the right questions, and that was one of the topics ChatGPT had suggested an episode on activism. So that may come. That may come. I am now heavily thinking there will be a season four of the podcast because the anecdotal feedback I receive from people is that it's necessary. So there may be an activism episode next season. There may be a next season. We'll see. I'm still figuring things out.
Speaker 1:I'm sharing all of this because I imagine many of you not all of you, because I have to imagine I have listeners of all around the world in my podcast, but also of all political persuasions. I'm imagining that many of you are also experiencing your trauma responses and I think one of the powerful things for me was to name it a trauma response and to see that what I was doing was fight, flight or freeze. That was really powerful for me. So I hope, in sharing my experience, it gives you some perspective on what you're going through and then perhaps some tools to cope with it, a chance for you to reflect on who you want to be in the world. That is the world that is now and that's the interlude part of this, you know.
Speaker 1:I also want to give a quick plug. I have a friend, boy Paul, who's a really great boy, lives to be under a pair of boots, very, very boot-focused, but in general just a good boy. He's a good boy. You're a good boy, paul, Good boy. He has written a book called Quips and Chains, which is a book of leather word puzzles and there are anagrams and ladder puzzles and word searches and I've been doing the jumbles because they're really cute. There's a little cartoon and a little kind of punny thing and then I like the jumbling and it requires my mind to focus on something else.
Speaker 1:So, as we are approaching a season that is traditionally a season of gift giving for many peoples, I think it makes a great gift because it's affordable. It's a kink gift that's affordable and most kink gifts are not affordable. New pair of boots, box of cigars, a leather uniform those things are expensive. But if you have someone kinky in your life, particularly if they like doing any sort of word puzzles, I think it makes a great gift and I will be placing information about that in the show notes, so please check it out. Beyond that I am going to be.
Speaker 1:Next episode is our season finale. We've made it through another season of Full Cow, so I'm looking forward to that and in the meantime, I hope that, in the wake of what's happened, that you find yourself in a place as best place as you can be. I don't know that I can wish anything more than that, but that's what I will wish, and just know that I'm going to be more visible. I'm just working out the. I'm working out the. I'm trying to calibrate my visibility versus the risk I feel I might be facing and I might flee. If I fall in love with someone in another country, I will gladly flee, but that doesn't mean I'll stop doing this. This work is important and, I think, probably more important than when I started it, so I think I'm going to continue doing it and I'm going to continue doing it for you and with that I hope your leather journey is amazing.