With Blood sweat and tears a Rose is still a Rose.

Dear Leather Journal,

I have seen in my experience within both the Gay community and the Leather community that there are so many broken folks who are trying to break others.

I remember when watching the movie Fifty Shades of Grey and the main character said that everyone and BDSM were broken. Members of the king in the fetish community were very upset with that statement, however, I found it to be true. I see the brokenness, however, many deny it and are unaware which only leads to unresolved issues that tend to be later triggered while they/occupy space within the leather community.

Many of them try so hard to remain relevant in one way or another. They will often succeed at breaking some folk during their journey.

However, be shocked and even upset when a few of us just bend a little and remain unbroken!

We are the ones who are willing to march to the beat of our won Drums, and willing to do the work it takes to lead by example rather than follow the pack in fear of being blackballed, cancel cultured, and /or ostracized.

I’ve researched to discover the driving force that draws people's energy to the leather community. From history, it’s derived from three separate entities. The Biker community ( mostly pansexual community)

The Swingers (mostly from the straight community) and the GAY LEATHER MEN (from the GAY community.

Understand that for a long time Bikers & Swingers never wanted nor desired GAY people to be in their company.

Gay Leather had no choice but to develop on its own.

The AIDS epidemic didn’t make it any easier, and for the most part, it damn near made the Gay leather scene Extinct.

Many gay/lesbians who were among the Gay leather men, had to take the helm doing this time.

Seeing BLACK Leathermen in the 70s-80s and 90s was far and few.

To find a Black Leatherman who could guide/ mentor or tutor another POC on what leather culture and BDSM we’re about was a rare relationship to come by.

Black men and women coming from brokenness with unresolved life traumas all to join a community and its culture to recreate themselves without having healed from their vanilla life.

From my perspective, I wish to believe that from the core W/we all are looking for acceptance, and pleaser and to be embodied to be authentically who W/we are. We all desire to be in contact with other like-minded folks intimately and socially.

To be in Presents with someone who we can TRUST to honor and or obey and be empowered by.

What I have found in my journey that I still haven’t wrapped my head around is how the one thing many of us have joined the LEATHER COMMUNITY for is the one thing that people continue to us hurt one another outside of the vanilla society.

In social policing, however many newcomers within the leather community often challenge the idea of gatekeeping but will bandwagon onboard with others to police others in how their relationship dynamic should work or not.

I’ve witnessed Leather folk trying to stigmatize certain kinds of relationships which is ultimately just another form of social policing. At what point do we need to engage with people who are trying to socially police a social construct and by that I mean, when people feel like they ought to do something step in someway to intervene in somebody else’s relationship because they think something has gone wrong the way that we create what I call the socially constructed with the elements of love.

Particularly in the scene of romantic love

Which for me starts looking much like constructing norms with the expectations of creating what is normal when it’s far from what BDSM is for me.