Is the old guard a thing of the past?

17. June 2008 by The Twisted Bear.

It used to be one earned his leathers. There were leather “families” and the old guard had a pretty rigid protocol. Are those days gone? Here’s what you told us -

• The families are still around and quite a few are visible if you know where to find them. Myself, I’m part of a rather large Canadian-based Leather Family that, at points, has extended as far south (and west) as Texas, as far east as Washington DC and Nova Scotia, and as far north as Winnipeg with a number of members in the Greater Toronto Area.

• As Aids took away the older members of the leather community, we lost our teachers and mentors. The young ones wore the uniform, but never were taught the code of ethics. There are pockets of the Old School, but they are few and far between. I miss them. Not only “safe, sane and consensual” but honesty, respect and discretion were part of being a leather man.
• Yep. Replaced by contests and spotlights. The remaining “old guard” leather folk are underground, once again. You pretty much have to be invited in.
• I have several major theories as to why Old Guard seems to have disappeared, or is disappearing and rather than list them and get my head chewed off and spit back out, I’ll simply say this: I believe simply that those Old Guard members who ARE still out there, have just chosen to return to the “underground” if you will. Tired of the onslaught of folks young and old who rally against the protocols the Guard holds near and dear, claim they are outdated and too rigid, etc, as well as fighting the gentrification or assimilation into mainstream and mixed sex (read vanilla and straight crowds), they have chosen to return to the shadows where their lives are not exposed and therefore deemed outdated by the mainstream, and more importantly, subject to the rules of society that say we should all play nice-nice and follow someone else’s rules that has (to borrow a phrase) marched in someone else’s boots. I’d feel a little safe to say also that they are a bit tired of supporting bars that don’t support them in favor of other venues and crowds.
• The loss of an historical perspective on the old guard is the real loss. We need to remember where we came from, and what it meant to us. Respect and trust were the founding principals; we need to instill those attributes in the new guard. Good luck to us all.
• The internet killed the old guard.

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