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
Old Guard
What exactly is the "Old Guard" in leather culture? It's a question that sparks heated debates, reverent whispers, and sometimes bitter divisions within our community. This episode cuts through the mythology to reveal surprising truths about leather history and traditions.
Dr. Ty, clinical sexologist and leather title holder, joins Edge to share groundbreaking research from his dissertation defining the Old Guard. Rather than simply referring to the original leathermen of the 1950s, the term has evolved to describe a style of play centered on "obedience, structure and protocol." Most surprisingly, Dr. Ty's research reveals there was never a singular "way" of Old Guard practice—different cities developed different traditions long before national leather organizations formed.
The conversation challenges common assumptions about mentorship in leather communities. Despite the perception that Old Guard practitioners had formal mentoring structures, Dr. Ty's research found no statistical difference between how Old Guard and New Guard approached mentoring. This finding has inspired his work developing a more accessible mentoring program, addressing a critical gap for newcomers seeking guidance.
We also explore the often-conflated relationship between leather and kink identities, title holding traditions, and practical resources for those seeking knowledge. Dr. Ty shares details about his Kinky Book Club, which provides a non-sexual space for exploring leather history through literature and other media.
The episode concludes with an all-Texas edition of Ask Edge, featuring questions about advice for younger selves and the challenges of properly vetting title holders in today's community. Whether you're a leather veteran or just curious about these traditions, this conversation offers fresh perspectives on how we understand our shared history and build a more inclusive future.
Useful links:
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.
Let's talk, old Guard, that you are an adult. 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 we're going to be talking about the old guard, and in some ways, this is another episode that returns to a previous episode, because the very first episode of this podcast, Origins, talked about the old guard, but it is a topic that is perennial, which is another way of saying we can't get away from it, and so I am bringing my good friend and leather person and title holder and sexologist, dr Tai, to just have a conversation about the Old Guard, based in part on his academic research on Old Guard, new Guard and mentoring structures academic research on old guard, new guard and mentoring structures. Then we have an all-Texas edition of Ask Edge. I have two questions from two friends and they will be adding to the conversation as I answer their questions and, if I have some time at the end I might give you some personal updates.
Speaker 1:But our focus today is to really dive into the old guard. I know people always want to hear about it, always want to learn about it, always talk about it. So let's go. I am so thrilled to have my friend Dr Tai with us. Dr Tai, welcome to Full Cow.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much. I've listened for a long time and I'm a fan of this podcast and of you and I'm really honored and excited to be here with you.
Speaker 1:Oh my God, I'm a fan of you too. That's great. So can you start by telling us your pronouns and how you identify in the community?
Speaker 2:Yeah, dr Tai he him. And in the community I am a chameleon. I go where my passion, my love, my desires take me.
Speaker 1:I love that. So we're here to talk about the old guard, and I understand that in your dissertation research you actually created a sort of official definition or academic definition of the old guard, so maybe we could start there the old guard, so maybe we could start there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I, um, I was floating around with with trying to figure out what I wanted to to do my dissertation on, and, uh, I wanted to focus on what I thought was going to be helpful for the community, and one of the things that I know is is a big, large, divisive wedge in our community is the old guard new guard debate. But as I started to do my research, there's a lot of like anecdotal writing about it. There's a lot of conversation about it naming the old guard new guard, but I couldn't find an actual definition, and so my dissertation is the definitive definition of what the old guard new guard is.
Speaker 1:Definitive by definition, because it's defining it right, yes, sorry for the redundancy. No, I love it and your phd is in leatherology or a clinical sexology is the phd. Yeah, even better so how did you end up creating a definition? What is the definition?
Speaker 2:yeah, so my, my, my. The dissertation is the definition. Yeah, so my the dissertation is the Old Guard versus New Guard an exploration of the impact of mentoring in the gay men's leather BDSM community.
Speaker 1:Wow.
Speaker 2:So the definition of Old Guard and I have one for the New Guard too, but this episode is on the Old Guard. So the Old Guard is a term, title and sometimes self-identification of a subculture within the traditionally gay male leather community who are intellectually and or sexually attracted to a type of role playing that is rooted in dominant and submissive roles, often includes BDSM and strongly resembles materialistic themes of obedience, structure and protocol.
Speaker 1:That definition sounds a lot just like Leatherman. So what makes the old guard old guard to you, or what did you discover in the course of your research that makes it old guard?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I mean this is a larger conversation. I think that one of the things that we struggle with in the community is that how we view the old guard has evolved over time. I think in the old days the old guard uh like when it was first used this term was in reference to older folks in the community, and I think that that's how we use the term in the vernacular right. How most people talk about old guard or the OG right Is the original folks, the folks that started this thing. But as we've progressed, the characteristics of the old guard have evolved beyond that. We're no longer talking about old players like people that have been in the community for a long time, and has nothing to do with age, but it has more to do with how we like our play, how we like to engage in the community.
Speaker 2:So really it's a point of negotiation, just like we would negotiate anything else in our scenes in our play. So in contrast and this was a big piece of the struggle of defining the new guard which is there's nothing out there, it's always in contrast of what it's not compared to the old guard. So the difference in the definitions is old guard, specifically, is around themes of obedience, structure and protocol and there's a rigidity that comes with that. That was one of the common terms that was used. In contrast, the new guard is much more about social progression, inclusion, fluidity and self-expression. It is less about protocol and structure.
Speaker 1:All of this is quite fascinating to me because I was sort of around when we made up this term New Guard. I remember it from the late 1900s, shall we say. The late 1900s, shall we say, and my sense of it was that it was a reaction to the total unstructuredness of the community in attempt to kind of be more old guard in a new way. So it's interesting that this has evolved even more to be a much younger, fresher, socially progressive term, because my memory is that is not how it manifested.
Speaker 2:Did you find any of that? That's what I was saying. It's progressed over time, like how we first used the term old guard was much more about tradition and values and like this is the way it's been. So this is the way we must continue our traditions, and it's moved more away from tradition per se se and more into the structure of how we like our play. So originally, as you're saying, when the term first kind of came out, it was much more about the tradition and the way that things have been. But it's progressed as many things do I'm also.
Speaker 1:I'm kind of surprised, like the other, really defining feature of the old guard. For me is this notion of exclusivity Very much a closed circle, very much have to know someone and be vetted by them before you're introduced into the community and I'm wondering why that didn't make its way into the definition or if it had some role in your research.
Speaker 2:It did. It just wasn't one of the main themes that arose. I did a qualitative analysis in my research and it was a theme. It just wasn't one of the major themes and so when I was actually making the definition, I didn't want to include outliers as part of the actual definition. But it was relevant. It did come up many, many times and people did reference that sort of thing.
Speaker 1:um, but again, it wasn't, it wasn't one of the main themes actually I love that you kind of separated it out, because that exclusivity was less about. This is our sacred knowledge and we must guard it, and more. We're living in 1950s america and if the wrong people find out we're all going to get killed, right.
Speaker 3:So yeah, so I don't know that it was structurally part of self-identity so much as safety yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, it was a root. I mean, we were very and today we call it gatekeeping, right, and there's an aspect of that, especially back then, we didn't want to gatekeep, we did want to keep the people that weren't part of the community out of it as a way of protecting ourselves, because it very much was life and death at times.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm really glad that you're focusing on that and that what looks like gatekeeping in the old guard was really survival skill.
Speaker 2:And that's a piece that I think is really important when we talk about just keeping things in context, is the intention of why things were the way they were. Evolve, and our community has. Our society has evolved in the past 50 years, and it's important that our definitions also evolve with it.
Speaker 1:So now I want you to kind of chameleonize and be not just Dr Ty leatherologist, but also Dr Ty Leatherman. I see a lot of people online in various contexts claiming to be quote unquote old guard, and in my mind there's no unbroken chain, like the HIV pandemic broke a lot of things, but also the sort of opening up of the community in the early 70s. So when I see people who are old guard, I become immediately suspicious. And what's your take on that in terms of legitimacy? Let's start there with legitimacy.
Speaker 2:Right, and so it depends. Again, how are we operationally defining old guard? Are we talking about the OG folks and does that mean that you were raised as a leather person from the OG people? Or does that mean that you in like, you're the newer version of the old guard term? Is it just means you, you were raised in a place of high protocol and structure and tradition and like? Are those your values? So it really depends. I would start with asking questions of like. When you say old guard, what does that mean to you? Because it's going to be different.
Speaker 1:It is going to be different and I'm giving you credit for legitimizing those people because I look at them with a great deal of suspicion. I don't know what you're talking about, but I look at them with a great deal of suspicion. I don't really talk about it, but I look at them with a great deal of suspicion. So part of, I think, why I become so suspicious is a lot of them adhere to these protocols that they claim are part of the originals. But from my knowledge of people who were actually in the originals, but from my knowledge of people who were actually in the originals, are not original and there was a book that came out that I won't call out by name but that really manufactured a lot of history around protocols. So can you dig a little bit into the complication of people who are calling themselves old guard and is it legitimate for them to be like no, this is an old guard tradition because you know they are affirming it? I mean, go into that a little bit.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think part of the struggle that we've had of our history being passed down verbally is that there's not been research, no one's documented our history that well except from personal anecdotes and personal stories, is that? It's just that it's a personal story. And when anyone starts to generalize to the larger community it's really problematic. And even if we do it today, it's problematic because our individual story cannot be generalized and this was the problem of overgeneralization.
Speaker 2:So this person, whatever book that was I don't know exactly which book you're referring to may have in fact been his lived experience. I don't know him, I can't speak to that. That might have been his lived experience, but the problem is he generalizes and said this is the way it was in the community. And I think that is the biggest flaw of that, is the generalization of it. You know, if he had just taken the book and said this is my story, this is my lived experience and this is one way of doing things that happened to me in this time period, it would have been a different thing than saying this is the definitive book of how things, the way things were Like. That's where we have some problems. And even to this day, when we generalize and say this is the way I was raised, is the way it is the right way, and everything else is wrong or problematic. That's where we have some issues in the community.
Speaker 1:So, then, is it fair to say that, historically speaking, we do not know the way of the old guard? And, in fact, what we know of history is that there were a lot of pockets in different cities that might've had different ways of doing it. That's scientific fact. At this point right.
Speaker 2:There is. No, the way it doesn't exist. It did not exist Because, I mean, this predates the internet, it predates our ability for LA to communicate with Chicago, to communicate with New York, right, and when NLA first started to form and it was the first time and we had, living in Leather was the first kind of like actual events where people came in from a national level to communicate like, oh, you're doing a hanky coat this way, we do it this way, and it was the first time where we started to actually see that there were differences in how we were showing up in our kinks and in our communities or in our play. And so the comparison never started until NLA started in the 70s, right.
Speaker 1:So- NLA is National Leather Association. For my listeners Stars yes.
Speaker 2:And LA is National Leather Association. For my listeners, yes, and the first conferences predating IML, predating CLAW, predating any of the other events, was Living in Leather. It was the first big event and it was completely mixed. It was not just the gay men, it was completely integrated. It's only more recent that we've started to separate and segregate out our community.
Speaker 1:And do you know when that conference started?
Speaker 2:Oh gosh, I don't know the date off the top of my head, but I believe it was early 70s.
Speaker 1:We're going to call it early 70s. It's a podcast. A quick Google search will find that yeah. What I also love in the way you're talking about old guard is, even though we're sort of saying no, there was no the way to do it, you're also creating space for people to legitimize themselves as old guard and saying, no, this is my style of play and this is what I carry as a tradition from people I've learned or from sources I've covered right. So it is entirely possible and legitimate for people to call themselves old guard, right.
Speaker 2:Totally, yeah. Yeah, it's, I mean. I mean the one. The place that we struggle the most in our community is when we start to should on other people about how they should do their kink or their play. We have no business telling people how they should do anything. Right If that works for them and it's consensual and everyone's involved in agreeing to it and it's not causing permanent harm, that's agreed upon Like what is the problem? Stop policing each other.
Speaker 1:So then, do you consider yourself old guard, or how do you relate to your understanding of old guard today?
Speaker 2:I am way too much of a psychotherapist to be that rigid therapist to um, to um, to be that rigid, uh, my, my, my being is far more expansive and progressive and um, there there is a healthy piece of me that has OCD and I really enjoy protocol at times, um, but I don't, um, I don't. It doesn't speak to me as a kink, it speaks to me intellectually and I enjoy the exercise of that and I enjoy routine and protocol. But I would not ascribe to that, I would not take on the identity as old guard.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think that you know. I feel like some people might look at me from the outside and assume I'm old guard, because they're conflating a kind of Tama Finland aesthetic with automatically meaning old guard, and that is also incorrect. Am I right in saying that?
Speaker 2:Absolutely yeah.
Speaker 1:That old guard is a style of play and self-identification that comes almost internally and should not be universalized. Awesome, Totally agree. So where do you think? What is the future of old guard?
Speaker 2:Honestly, I wish we would move away from the guard system altogether Me too. Can we just abandon it? And actually I say that in my dissertation as sort of a call to the community of asking to move away from this language because it is so divisive and we can't agree on the definitions, right? So when we get really upset with each other and there is these heated debates about what was, what wasn't, what is their personal identification, so they feel righteous in identifying with it and everything that comes with their identification. So they assume everyone agrees with that.
Speaker 2:Because it's so problematic, it continues to serve as a wedge to divide us rather than bring us together. That we're all kinksters on a spectrum of how much we enjoy protocol and rigidity in our play and it's something to negotiate. Just like are we going to have protective sex or not? Like, do we want that? Do we not want that? And it's something that we can negotiate. And if someone likes high protocol, then they're not going to play with someone, a puppy, who doesn't like protocol at all. Right, like no, that's not a good fit and we're just not going to be play partners and that's okay. You will find other people out there who want that level of protocol and it's just about a negotiation. And it's dating, it's kinky dating.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I love that you're zeroing in on divisiveness, because I think part of what Old Guard has become code for is real, like if you're Old Guard, you're a real leather person, right, and if you're not, then you're not Right, and I think that's part of the problematics. You're pointing to that, if we sort of put a certain kind of play on a pedestal, then other kinds of play get delegitimized.
Speaker 2:yes, and and and you're touching on something that's also really important to discern out is that you know old guard, new guard, the entire identity around this is a system that is specific to leather folks. It's specific to, it is not, cannot be generalized to kinksters, and those are two separate communities that are overlapping. There's a large piece that overlaps, but there's huge pieces that don't, and the identification of old guard, new guard is specific to leather. It is not, cannot be generalized to all kinksters.
Speaker 1:I love that. Can you expand on that a little bit and help people understand this differentiation between leather folk and kinksters?
Speaker 2:Yeah, leather is kink, but not all kink is leather. Can you give us some examples? It's like projecting Christian values onto a Muslim. It's just not going to make sense to them, it doesn't apply, and so we have to stop projecting our values and assuming that everyone in the entire kink scene ascribes to leather values and the old guard and protocol and all that stuff is a leather value.
Speaker 1:It is not a kinkster value. Yeah, and another example of this sort of kinkster leather divide I'm chatting with someone right now on Instagram who identifies as very dominant but doesn't wear leather at all. So this is just more general. And I also know people who wear leather who are not kinky at all. They just like leather and they'll take it off and fuck or they'll fuck in their leather, but they don't do anything kinky. So I'm glad our conversation has evolved this way to let people know there are more positions for them to stand. Is it also fair, then, to say that old guard is specifically a leather man culture versus, like I don't know of any female. I don't know that females were part of the old guard historically?
Speaker 2:I don't know that they weren part of the old guard historically?
Speaker 1:I don't know that they weren't, oh yeah.
Speaker 2:Okay, I don't have any evidence either direction around this. I think we stereotypically assume gay men and that is the narrow focus of my research. I will admit that it was one way an issue that arose. Originally. It was to the kink community in general. An issue that arose originally. It was to the kink community in general, but as I was being advised by my dissertation committee, they encouraged me to narrow my focus just to get the dissertation done. So it is certainly. I am in the process of converting the dissertation into a book because I want this information to be accessible and right now a dissertation in any realm just sits on a shelf in the library of my university and is not accessible. People can't read this. So I am in the process of converting it and I am going to expand to include all kinksters. That is my intention, but the dissertation itself is a narrow focus to the gay men's leather BDSM community.
Speaker 1:So you have no evidence either way.
Speaker 2:I have no evidence either way and I don't know that it exists. Again, we will get anecdotal information, but unless we do a large-scale quantitative study, including non-male presenting folks, then I don't know that we'll have that information, but it's certainly something that I would love to do. And I don't know that we'll have that information, but it's certainly something that I would love to do.
Speaker 1:Yeah, alternatively, if you're a listener and you know of women who were old guard, particularly historically, let me know.
Speaker 2:That would be a really great episode In the new definition of the way I'm presenting this, because it's just a level of protocol that we like to engage in. I don't see there's any reason why a female bodied or non male bodied human would not engage in old guard, right?
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, I absolutely agree that if we think about it in your liberating, enabling sense of a style of play, then it's available to everyone. I'm just also curious about the history, but really that's a question about the history of the women's leather community, which is another podcast episode. Let me make a little bit of a transition. You know you talked about how part of Old Guard's appealing to you because of your beautiful OCD-ness and that there are sort of things that you do like a set of unwritten rules around my cover and I was. For example, I was once in another city at a leather bar and had my cover sitting on the table because it was hot and some guy came, picked it up and put it on his head and, like all the leather folk I was with, we were all kind of horrified, right, Like that was clearly Grass with pearls. It was a very clutch of the pearls.
Speaker 1:And it was a good revelation for me to be like, oh okay. Well, that is clearly something I have taken from this notion of old guard that that I've made a specialness in my cover. Do you have similar things where you find yourselves with traditions that might be old guardish, or is there parts of old guard tradition that appeals to you?
Speaker 2:um, yeah, I mean there's. There's some things that just ways of working in acts of submission, in everyday sort of thing my protocol are really subtle. It's my boy always opening the door for me. It is him getting. I'll give him my credit card and he'll get our drinks, or he'll always step a step behind me, like one step behind. He'll always step a step behind me like one step behind. Like these sort of things are just small things that I think do stem from tradition and old guard, sort of things that just speak to me around levels of submission that I think are beautiful. But some of those things aren't going to speak to other people and so it's very much a make it yours.
Speaker 1:It is a make it yours thing and it's also a kind of for me. I inherited things from my mentors that presumably they inherited from somewhere else, that I think are possible to trace back to the actual historical original old guard, but that I wasn't aware of until they kind of get violated and then I'm clutching my pearls. So, and even like some of the things you're talking about, the sort of walk, the step behind, really I think harkens back to the militaristic aspect of the old guard, if we think about military protocol and where do officers work and where do they walk and where do people who are below them walk? Yeah, any other thoughts on old guard that you want to open up here?
Speaker 2:I think it's important not to assume that everyone shares our values. Right, and I know I've kind of talked about that before. But in these types of examples I think it's a learning opportunity. It's not a time to shame and blame and saying this is the way, and you just don't touch someone else's cover, whether it's a garrison cap or a master's cut. I mean there's a certain level of just common courtesy, Don't touch other people's shit.
Speaker 2:Don't do that, but I think that there's a real learning opportunity too, and for some people that maybe didn't have a leather mentor or have someone to talk about protocol, then there's the opportunity then to have that conversation and just going hey, just raise some awareness. Like that happened recently. I was giving a talk and someone used the term muggle to describe a non-Kinkster. Right, and there's not a right nor wrong, but I think it's important that we're aware of the context of words, and that word stems from Harry Potter, which is RK Rowling's thing, and there's a huge problematic around our trans community and JK Rawlings. So a lot of the community is starting to move away from using anything associated with Harry Potter.
Speaker 2:Like I didn't shame on them, I was like, hey, I don't know if you know this or not, but there's a context here that you may be missing. And now you are informed and you can choose to use that word or not, but do it with knowledge. That's the important piece. Right, and consent only works if it's fully informed consent. If we don't have all the information, we can't make an informed decision. If that touches me and I share that value, then I can do that. But if I don't have the knowledge, then how am I supposed to know if I actually have that value or not?
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I want to now pivot to talking about mentoring, which has cropped up a little bit in all the things you've said, and certainly one way to look at the old guard system is that it was a rigorous, absolute mentorship system, like you really were only getting in if you had a mentor.
Speaker 2:Yes and no. From my understanding of the history, yes and no.
Speaker 1:Well, let's talk about that. Well, let's talk about that. Historically, in the original, actual 1950s Old Guard, what have you discovered in terms of mentoring and how it happened or didn't?
Speaker 2:It didn't Sucking. It's one of the like what. There was no statistical difference in our approach to mentoring. From the old guard to new guard responses in my research no difference at all. But people were more likely to identify that they had formal mentoring as if they identified as old guard than if they identified as new guard. But how they actually approached it, there was no difference.
Speaker 2:I think this is one of those what's it called the mandala effect or mandala yeah, where there's a cultural shared misbelief about how something happened, and I think that that happens a lot in the old guard, new guard mythos of what was old guard and what wasn't, and I think that book is a great example that is presented as fact but it's not actually how things happened and mentoring is one of those things. Now, there were absolutely mentors and people that took people under their wings and sirs taught their boys, but they're teaching them their way. Right, that is just their way, but that's exactly how it's done today. There's not an actual difference in. There was nothing structural, there was nothing formal around that mentoring, which was through. This research is what sort of inspired me to to move towards launching an actual mentoring program.
Speaker 1:Talk about that. How's your mentoring program going? What's the plan, what's the vision? How can people who are listening help participate, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker 2:It's still infant stage. I'm wanting to get the research done first, because the research is the foundation. I want to know where we've been in order to know where we need to go, networking with established mentoring programs that already exist the Leatherman's Discussion Group, onyx and House of Janice are great examples of that and I'm in the process of connecting with those folks to see about those best practices. But all of those areas are specific. They're not generally accessible. I'm a white person and I can't access Onyx's mentoring program right, so it is exclusive and I'm not knocking that at all, I'm just white person and I can't access Onyx's mentoring program, right.
Speaker 2:So it is exclusive and I'm not knocking that at all, I'm just saying it's limiting.
Speaker 1:Not everyone can access that, and so I'm wanting to tap into that and make some of these best practices in our overall community more accessible you suggesting out of your research is that mentoring has always occurred in some form in the community, from the historical old guard through the quote unquote, whatever the hell, it is new guard to today. Is that your sense, that we are a community that relies on some sort of mentoring in some ways?
Speaker 2:I do, I absolutely do. And the mentoring comes in many facets. One is the social how to navigate socially in our community, whether it is at a bar or in a dungeon, like there's different rules that are not posted somewhere. Well, I guess they are somewhere, but you'd have to Google. I'm really searching. And again, it's going to be different per dungeon, but there's some general etiquette that I think is just it's going to be different per dungeon, but there's some general etiquette that I think is just it's common knowledge but it's not actually taught at times. So, like how to navigate at the bar and navigating if some, how to approach someone or not approach someone there's just so much that kind of goes into the history here that it's important that we do mentor folks along the way for that. There's the literal skill building around mentoring. Right, if you're brand new to the scene, you have no business picking up a single tail period. Right, you have no business touching that toy, at least with the intention of touching another human with it.
Speaker 2:And there's many aspects of kink play. That is a I see it. I use the analogy of grad school, like I'm a therapist. We go through and we do the theory, we take all the classes and everything before we ever sit down in front of a client to practice the art of therapy. And then we get into practicum, then we actually start practicing, but only after we've done a ton of research. In theory, right, and I think kink should be the same way. Pardon the should, but this is my philosophy that we should do a lot of our education without touching things. And then we have an idea of what we want to do and then we start to explore with some mentoring. So those are the two, three and then the last piece is our history Again requires a little bit of mentoring of people that have either walked that walk or done some research ideally a little bit of both who can speak on those sort of things. So those are the three main areas where I think mentoring is absolutely necessary in our community.
Speaker 1:So if someone's listening to the podcast, they are brand spanking new to the community. They don't have access to Onyx, they don't live in San Francisco, so they can't do the Leatherman's Discussion Group. You haven't started your program yet. It's still an infant. Where would you suggest people go for some of this informal knowledge, for any kind of mentoring? Are there strategies people can use today to try to find their way into the community?
Speaker 2:This is why I'm being called to launch this, because I don't think it exists unless you know the resources. The number one book that I refer to folks that are just baby interested in kink altogether is Lee Harrington's book Playing Well with Others. It's a beautiful 101 introduction and Lee is fantastic human being. I love them. It's just a great 101. It talks about some of this etiquette and what to expect in a play space versus the bar, versus a big kink event Like. It talks about some of the protocols, some of the not protocol, but the etiquette, the things that are expected for people to know and what you might expect from those situations, as well as just kind of setting expectations. So it's a great resource for baby kinksters getting into the scene. Check out Lee Harrington's book playing well with others.
Speaker 1:Thank you for that. I will include it in the show notes and I actually didn't know that resource. You're mentoring me. Yay. I mean, ironically, I know Lee, but I didn't know about the book. The book I usually recommend is Leather Sex by Joseph Bean, which again is also good at like a lot of the knowledge stuff. And then I think I'm going to start recommending the Leather Man's Handbook, which is back in print, not as a how-to, but it is such a rich piece of our history. I don't know if you've read it.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, it was one of the first books that we read in the Kinky Book Club.
Speaker 1:Oh, tell us about this Kinky Book Club you have.
Speaker 2:Love to. The Kinky Book Club is based on Facebook. If you search KBC, Kinky has an exclamation so we can get around algorithms. So the Kinky Book Club I started I don't know a year and change ago. Um, and we we pick readings, uh, kind of Austin Abernathy, it was Mr Fire Dancer 2024. Uh, and I kind of got this baby going and it's been going um since last, since April last year, and uh, we we pick kink related content. Uh, it's mostly books, uh, half mostly books.
Speaker 2:We're doing an every other month sort of thing, so every other month is a book. So we get two months to actually read a book, and then the alternating month we're consuming other types of media, whether it's an on guard salon episode, or it is what's the safe Word episode, or watching the Pamba Finland documentary or whatever. And then we have a guest on, and we've been very lucky that every book that we've chosen of authors that are still alive have joined us, including Lee, and we actually read Lee's book and were playing with others, and so it's been really fantastic building some community of folks that are actually thirsty for this knowledge and to have conversations around the content, around these things. It's been really fantastic of building some community of folks that are actually thirsty for this knowledge and to have conversations around the content, around these things. It's been really amazing. In such a short amount of time we've actually grown to over 1,900 members internationally.
Speaker 1:How many are actually showing up?
Speaker 2:Not 1,900. No, it's actually a tiny fraction of that. It definitely lets me know that there's a lot of interest in it. But being able to actually show up and read a book is very challenging and part of the reason why we edited when we launched it it was a book every single month. We read a book every single month, which was very challenging for everyone, including myself, so that's why we moved to this every other month book sort of approach. But we get 20 to 30 folks having a conversation every single month, which is lovely, and invariably we'll have a couple of international folks pop in, which has been pretty cool and very humbling that people are thirsty for this type of content.
Speaker 1:Well, and what you're also indicating is that there's another important pseudo mentoring resource, which is the Kinky Book Club, which can get you to read these books that include some of the unwritten rules, some of the history, but then also connect to kinksters and leather people in a not-sexual, not-pressured space. So you are already doing a pseudo-mentoring?
Speaker 2:no yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's not unintentional but thank you absolutely absolutely.
Speaker 1:Oh god, where am I gonna go after that? Something else about the book oh, the other reason I love that you're doing a book club is I know so many of my followers on the socials are nerds, like there's a huge young gamer with a Y community, you know, tabletop role playing game community and those people often are readers. They actually read books. So I think it's great to give them a kind of forum that allows them to access knowledge in a way that they may be tuned to do it Well done.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I was just having this conversation with my Texas folks literally yesterday. There's the cross-section between kinksters and cosplay and D&D folks and neurotypical or atypical folks, neuro-spicy folks. There's a huge cross-section and overlap because a lot of this is about fantasy and role play and an exploration right, it's. It's a headspace. Right, we're able to get into a headspace. These are common denominators through them all.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, you also mentioned in passing um your title holding your miss are were you were mr well, I will forever be Mr Texas Leather 2024. What motivated you to pursue the title? How was your title year? What did you learn? What did you hate? What did you love? Tell us a little bit about that.
Speaker 2:That's a whole episode Barkley.
Speaker 1:I mean, I'm planning a title, whole episode, so we might get back to that.
Speaker 2:But just you know, tell me a little bit. So it was an amazing experience. The reason I wanted to run, both for Mr Texas and, hopefully, to move on to IML which I was able to do, and I was very excited and humbled to make top 20 and give my speech was this exact thing I wanted to put out the information about Old Guard, new Guard and challenge some of these old myths that exist and are problematic in our community, and that was the sole reason I decided to run was to put this information out there, because I knew that that was going to be faster than me finishing my book and getting that published, and so that was. My platform was mentoring and education in our community. So this was it. So thanks for helping continue to highlight my platform.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely. And you know, I think, particularly historically, we only had certain mechanisms for people to lead in the community and porn was one of them, leading in a certain way, aspirationally, in terms of looks, um. But title holding has always been like historically, this sort of mechanism for leadership which maybe might be shifting. I don't know, title holding is complicated now, would you say it's complicated.
Speaker 2:yeah, I think we have a theory of um, an aspiration of what title holding is supposed to be, but our actual application and practice of that is problematic and not always in alignment with our aspirations. But that's life. We always have our idealized self and our actual self, which don't always align. But I think there's a movement, I think there's effort in that. But I think there's a movement. I think there's effort in that.
Speaker 1:I think there's a want for us to, for title holders to be representatives of the best of us, right, and the people that are actually out there doing the work and committed to trying to build community. But sometimes it's not. Sometimes it's a popularity contest, sometimes it's the hottest person. It's not always about the work. Yeah, and spoiler alert, you're going to be hearing again from Dr Tai later in this episode because he did submit an Ask Edge question. In fact, we have a whole Texas edition of Ask Edge because Austin also submitted a question. Of course he did, so you all have that to look forward to as well. So I just want to kind of make sure we wrap up with a single message that people can take away. And so what I've heard and you can correct me or add to this is the old guard.
Speaker 1:First of all, when we talk about the old guard, there is the actual historical people living in the 1950s old guard. But, more importantly, as the community has progressed, it's become a style of play that is very protocol, heavy, very formal, very militaristic. As a style of play, it is perfectly legitimate to call yourself old guard and as part of that, you might have some unbroken thread of tradition. Maybe not, but it's important to not universalize old guard in any way, because there never was a universal old guard. That part of the old guard was mentoring, but so is part of the new guard.
Speaker 1:So, as part of the not guard, that mentoring has a role to play throughout our community and it manifests in many different ways, sometimes more formally, sometimes less formally, but hopefully, as Dr Tai continues his crusade, there will be a larger formal mentoring program emerging that people can access. In the meantime, there are books, there are resources like the Kinky Book Club, which not only is itself a resource, but it's been pointing you to different resources like En Garde and like what's the Safe Word and like what's the safe word, and so to access mentoring, you have some avenues more are coming and as you enter into that mentoring you can make a decision of whether or not you want to be old guard and ideally, eventually we will move away from this whole notion of guards completely. Is that a good summary?
Speaker 2:That was beautiful. What would you add? What would you add? Add a little something.
Speaker 1:Put some Dr Ty spice in that.
Speaker 2:It was very good. I don't know that I would add. I think you did a wonderful job of kind of summar.
Speaker 2:We've defined the guards and an urging, a call to action for people to move into this place, of trying to negotiate protocol instead of an identification, which is rigidity, and anytime we pigeonhole ourselves into anything, it limits us into that box, and that's what a lot of the movement of society and community is about is seeing things more on a continuum instead of a box.
Speaker 2:But if you live the box, live in the box, and that's what a lot of the movement of society and community is about is seeing things more on a continuum instead of a box, which but if you live the box, live in the box, that's perfectly okay. But just allowing ourselves to be the full range of a human and being able to play around with this and that's the whole point of this, is why we call it play is to go in and have fun and enjoy ourselves, and when we limit ourselves, sometimes it limits our ability to play. So yeah, if you don't mind, I would love to invite your audience. Like, if you are part of a community where you have a mentoring program, I would love to hear from y'all as part of I do my research and build our best practices. If you could reach out to me, instagram is probably the best place for me, and my handle is Dr Ty D-R-T-Y Leatherman, which ironically spells Dirty Leatherman without the I Happy accident.
Speaker 1:I'll put that link in the show notes so people can just click on it.
Speaker 2:Thank you very much. I appreciate that and because it really takes a village and I think we need a place where we can highlight and come together and practice mentoring as a community, because I think it's definitely needed.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, given how important it is, it's really shocking how few official formal mentoring programs exist in the community. And I think you've named the ones I know. Plus, I didn't know about Janice, so that's one I guess doesn't surprise me, but one I didn't know. But when we're looking at just three mentoring programs period, that's interesting. So there might be smaller ones and hopefully they'll get in touch with you.
Speaker 2:So that you can and I know there are. I know that there are like localized ones, the people that are a small group. I know there's one in austin that I didn't know existed and uh, but I I just haven't been able to connect with it, especially the pan community, um, and our heterosexual side of the community, like I don't have a lot of access to those communities. It's not my circles and my experience is very much around gay men, so there's just a lot I don't know. But those practices, those around mentoring and teaching, like those are absolutely valid and my hope, my wish, is for us to be more integrated and to be able to share our best practices as a community.
Speaker 1:Yeah, actually I have a boy in Phoenix who's a member of the Phoenix Boys of Leather and just recently got a mentee, so a lot of these are also then embedded in clubs or groups to various degrees of formality. So hopefully, if you know of mentoring programs, you will reach out, because I think Dr Tai's looking for best practices but also to get as many voices in this and as much in engagement with the community as possible.
Speaker 2:Absolutely yeah, thank you very much Awesome.
Speaker 1:Are you going to run for any other titles or are you kind of done with that?
Speaker 2:Literally. I was having a conversation with Austin yesterday. Austin from Houston, Austin from Houston, but has a Dallas title. Hi Austin, Cause I know he'll listen to this. We were just talking about that. The drummer. Drummer title is back in some, some capacity, and I don't know exactly.
Speaker 1:International leather serve. Boy is back.
Speaker 2:That is back as well. Community boot black, oh you mean the drummer NA.
Speaker 1:Is that back again too? Yes, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the actual drummer. Drummer magazine title is back, so I don't know if it's an international. I don't know what that is, but it hit my radar yesterday so it piqued my interest. But, as of this point, I have no plans to run for another title. I this, this mentoring thing, is going to be a massive undertaking and I'm really excited about that and, um I it's going to take a lot of energy.
Speaker 1:So running for a title, I don't know, I don't know I mean, besides all the practical good you did in your title year locally, I mean I think it also did boost gives you the signal boost you needed. Like you stood on the stage and talked about mentoring and so I think you had a good wide broadcast of what's going on and that might've done enough for you to then focus on the mentoring and have people come to you to enlist in that, I hope, cause title holding is a lot of work.
Speaker 2:It is a lot of work, yeah, but it's a labor of love. Like again, like the aspiration piece of this. I hope people run for titles because they want to serve and it is not and I see it that way philosophically it is not a leadership role, it's a service role and I hope that that is why people run for titles, because ultimately, that's what I think it's about is serving the community.
Speaker 1:Yeah, if I have an episode on title holders, will you come back?
Speaker 2:I would love to yeah.
Speaker 1:Awesome, I think. For now, we're going to wrap it up.
Speaker 2:This has been a really fantastic conversation about the old guard and I want to thank Dr Tai for joining us on Full Cow. It's my pleasure.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much for having me, and now it's time for Ask Edge, the segment where I answer questions from all of you. If you would like to submit a question and please, please, consider submitting one you can leave me a voicemail at speakpipecom slash leatheredge, that's L-T-H-R-E-D-G-E or you can email me at ask at fullkyleshow. Both of those links are available in the show notes and in this episode we have an all-Texas edition of Ask Edge and, in fact, people who have been on the podcast before, because I'm pretty sure certainly Austin, I believe, has submitted a question before and Dr Tai is in this very episode. So our first question is from Austin, from Houston.
Speaker 3:Hi Edge, this is Austin from Houston. I'm glad that you've picked up season four and you're doing it in a way that is sustainable and healthy for you. I'm happy that it's here. My question is what would you tell your younger self now, let's say age 21. What piece of advice, with today's wisdom, lived experience and hindsight, what would you tell your younger self that you really needed to hear?
Speaker 1:anything about my past, because I live in this really amazing present where I have so many blessings. It's crazy. So on the one hand, I wouldn't want to tell myself anything and on the other hand, I also think this question is very sort of dripping with a kind of nostalgia that I like to kind of resist, because when you actually start aging and I'll be 55 at the end of October you find all these cliches turn out to be true and then the only thing you can do is repeat the cliche, fully aware that you are repeating a cliche. That being said, let me engage with this wonderful question from Austin. I think the biggest message I would have for my younger self is slow down and enjoy the journey.
Speaker 1:Especially in my early twenties, I was hyper-fueled with testosterone. I was horny all the time and I was constantly seeking more, more intensity, more scenes, more men, more, more, more, more, more. Now that may be related to the hunger of youth and the testosterone fueling. For me, it may also be related to my disease of addiction, which was always craving more anyway, which was always craving more anyway. But looking back at 55, I do feel like I kind of rushed through a lot of my journey, or not rushed. I was always so busy looking to the next thing that I wanted the next item of gear, the next scene, the next fetish that I don't know. That I always appreciated right where I was.
Speaker 1:Gratitude is an important practice in my world now for my mental and spiritual health, and I wish I had had those tools of gratitude, because gratitude for me always roots me in the present. It puts the focus not on what I don't have but what I do have today, and I'm using it quite a bit because I continue to struggle with being single. I try to focus on all the blessings I have and really put my time, energy and attention there and not on the future. Or if I had X, I would be happy. If I had Y, I would be complete, and that's a message younger me probably really needed, and I think it's a valuable message, in part because it wouldn't change my journey. I would still be making good decisions, bad decisions. I would still be moving along.
Speaker 1:I would still be exploring more, more, more, more, more, but I think I would have a greater capacity to appreciate where I was at, to appreciate the journey in the moment, and that's something I do now and something that I did not do then, I mean I would also say buy Apple stock, buy stock in Zoom, become politically active very early and don't do drugs, but none of those things would change the person I am today, saying, hey, practice gratitude, practice being where you are and loving where you are in this leather journey, and not only always be looking for the next that I can give myself, without really changing the wonderful person I ended up being today. So, uh, our second question is from, as I've said a couple of times, now Dr Ty.
Speaker 2:Dr Ty here a long time listener, Enjoy your show. Thank you for continuing to do this. Uh, you always inspire me to think of new things to think about and to talk about. My question is coming from something that you said in terms of a future show around title holders and something has come up a little recently in the Texas community around vetting. What does community vetting look like in best practices? What would you suggest communities producers can do to better vet potential title holders beyond a standard background check? How can the community better check our people and make sure that the people actually running for our contests or actually that are earned titles are worthy of it? We've seen multiple instances in the community of recent where that's been a challenge and proper vetting was not done and later came out that there were issues with that person or they were problematic, and I'm just curious if you have any thoughts on that.
Speaker 1:Thanks, I think this question presupposes that title holders are supposed to be leaders in the community and by default we have sort of turned to title contests as a way of shaping and elevating leaders. But I don't know that title contests are well-designed to select and produce leaders, nor do I think historically they were ever supposed to. Now my history on this might be a little mushy, but my sense is title holders started as a way for bars to bring people into the bar to celebrate the local community, to choose a really hot man, and I think at the local Ramrod bar we still have a battle of the bulge contest, we have a best butt contest, and those are not about selecting leaders, they're about who's got the best bulge, who's got the best butt. And I think historically, if we reach all the way back, that's really title holders, how they began, and I think that's a lot why embedded in title holding contests is a lot of kind of pageantry. I'm not the first, certainly, to observe that the title contest and the pageant contest are not unrelated in some of their expectations, some of their procedures, some of their unwritten rules. So what we really have is something that was about selecting someone not just hot but aspirational, someone you wanted to look like and someone you wanted to sleep with. They were aspirational models for the aesthetics of who we wanted to be, perhaps, but I don't think the contest was designed to ever select leaders.
Speaker 1:So if we want to say hey, let's start title holder contests that really create leaders, then you have to change all sorts of things. You wouldn't have categories like jockstrap or barware. You would have categories like fundraising and part of the contest who won would be who did the best fundraiser or raised the most money. You would have more emphasis on public speaking. There's usually like a brief, silly question on stage. It'd be a little bit more like IML, but more expanded, because you want a leader who is articulate, who is passionate, who can connect with a crowd and rouse a crowd. You would have interviews that aren't about what's the most significant item of leather you own, but much more diving into their leadership skills and how they have proved that in the community. The application wouldn't be tell us how big your cock is. Your application would be much more like a resume.
Speaker 1:So if we expect title holder contests to produce leaders, then we need to center the contest on leadership, and I think some of that happens, especially when you get to IML. The interview process there is remarkably brief, the speech is remarkably brief, but it begins to give you a sense of who this person is going to be, how they will move in the world to represent IML as an organization. So we get that sort of at that national level, at local levels, though my experience judging local contests is that they're a little bit more pageant-ish, just a little bit and so if you want this to become a way of producing leaders, we need to completely revamp what the contest looks like. We need to completely create a new kind of title that doesn't have to displace the beautiful, aspirational, aesthetic title that we have now that perhaps can run alongside it. In terms of vetting, that's also a really complicated question, because human beings are whole messy organisms, and so everyone's got a little something that maybe doesn't look great in the public eye, and sometimes it is unacceptable in relation to the mores we have established as a community. Sometimes it's just not great, it's not a great look. Community. Sometimes it's just not great, it's not a great look. And if we are going to weed out everyone who's messy, you're going to be left with very few individuals.
Speaker 1:Certainly, I would think, background check man. I never, I've never, heard of a contest that has a background check. That seems pretty severe and pretty expensive. I I would imagine that at some point social media checks will be rigorous for a contest, because usually that's where people get in trouble. They've posted something on social media that is not aligned with the values of the community and may have been years and years and years and years and years ago from a former version of themselves who they are not anymore, but it's there, because once it's on the internet, it's there forever. So I would imagine, if we are thinking title holder contests as they exist today, we want to shoehorn them into producing leaders, then we are going to have to become more rigorous. The judges will have to become more rigorous at evaluating every contestant's full social media profile, every post they've made and sometimes every post they've commented on, because that's where the trouble happens. That's a big lift. That is a big, big lift. I think.
Speaker 1:Instead, part of what we need to do is build in a little bit of generosity. Some things are going to be unacceptable. Some things are simply this is not aligned with the title and the organization that supports the title, and this isn't a good fit for us anymore. You will no longer be able to be this title holder. It just can't work right. There are some things that are going to be unacceptable, but there are a lot of other things that are just people being messy human beings. So my ultimate answer is first, completely change what a title holding contest looks like. Create a new class of titles that are much more about community service and leadership and therefore have categories of judging that are connected to community service and leadership, and therefore also have judges that come from the community, that come from leaders in the community. That's how you create this sort of vetting process, is that you start judging on the qualities you are looking for.
Speaker 1:However if we are keeping title holder contests mostly as they are now, which is largely pageant-based, largely based on someone's overall aesthetics, then we need to at least, if you believe in vetting, do thorough checks of social media and then we might also extend the interview portion. You know a lot of people. I've judged a lot of contests and the crowd at the bar often seemed surprised by who won because they weren't at the interview and a lot happens in the interview. It may not be a bad idea to open up the interview process to everyone so the bar can see the interview happen, which then creates more opportunities for sort of public speaking and connecting with an audience, but also makes more transparent the judging process, because if you are in the interview, usually the person who won is very obvious. Who they won. So much happens in that interview you have no idea. So we might make the interview process more visible, more transparent, but also longer, a little more thorough. You know, I want to say I get maybe, you know, 10 to 15 minutes in times that I've judged with a candidate. I don't know, maybe I'm trying to think, I don't even think I get a half hour and if we get a half hour it's a panel of eight judges, right? So maybe each judge gets to ask one question, maybe a couple of judges get to ask two, and so that's not really enough time for the kind of vetting you're suggesting needs to take place. So I would expand the interview option and make it public. But really what I would do is create a whole new title. I don't know what it'd be called, I don't know if it would feed into IML, I don't know if it would feed into some other international title, but it would be organized in categories around leadership. Alternatively, take the current title contests and do some social media checking. Make the interview public and expand the length of the interview so that there's more thorough conversation. Even then, people are messy, messy organisms and you may still end up with title holders who end up not aligned with the values of the organization that created the title. I think that's just the way things are and those are my thoughts on it.
Speaker 1:If you have a question for Ask Edge, please, please, please send it on, because I am always eager to hear from my listeners and to create a kind of dialogue between us where I can share my thoughts and help you explore questions on your own, because I'm never giving the answer. I'm giving my answer and when I give my answer, it helps you figure out how you feel about something. It might give you a new perspective, it might reinforce your perspective. It might provide clarity for what you really think if you object strongly to what I'm saying. All of that's good stuff, and that's it for this episode. I'm so happy to be proceeding with the podcast and season four and I'm so happy for my Texan friends who submit questions and I'm so happy for all of you for listening. Thank you, and that's it for this episode. Thank you so much for joining me. Please consider subscribing or you can send feedback to edge at full cow dot show, as always. May your leather journey be blessed.