In 1999, I wrote a history of Society of Janus, the San Francisco-based SM group, which was celebrating its 25th anniversary that year. You can download a copy in PDF format by clicking Janus history. When I interviewed numerous past and present Janus members for this project, I was constantly reminded of how very little is really known about the history of our scene. I surfed the Web and found very little there either. I strongly feel as members of our community we have the right to know about our past.
One of the truisms about BDSM is that if you ask 10 different SM folk what is SM, you'll get 10 different answers! The same seems to hold true for our history. I've compiled some links below about leather history and if you know of one or have a link not listed here that you feel I should know about, email me at thawley at tdl.com.
There are very few books that contain much, if any history about the leather scene. Besides the list David Stein has compiled that I link to here, there are three books I recommend. They are LeatherFolk, edited by Mark Thompson (Alyson Publishers, 2001, ISBN 1555836305), which has some essays about leather history and The Second Coming by Pat Califia & Robin Sweeney (Alyson Publishers, 1996, ISBN 1555832814), which contains some good essays about the history of some US womens SM groups. Unfortunately, The Second Coming is currently out of print. The third book is Ties That Bind: The SM/Leather/Fetish Erotic Style: Issues, Commentaries and Advice by Guy Baldwin (Daedalus Publishing, 1993 ISBN 1881943097).
There seems to be lots of interest about "Old Guard" and what exactly it was. I have links to a few articles about it here and offer my own thoughts about the online interest in Old Guard in an column I wrote several years ago for a now defunct onlinze zine known as D/s World called Old Guard, New Guard?
I also list the Canonical Hanky Code, which rumor has it actually started out as a joke back in the 1970s and seems now to have become "fact."
Here then are links to sites that I feel say something about our past:
A Modern
Application Of Old Guard Philosophy
Dark Connections History
of Black BDSM
Historical Timeline Woman to Woman SM This site hasn't been updated in three years, but the timeline
still covers 1970-2004.
Jay Wiseman's Essays On the Old Guard
Jay's thoughts about Old Guard.
Leather
Archives and Museum Home Page A Chicago-based project devoted to preserving the
history and artifacts of the leather/SM/fetish community.
Leather
Culture, 1945 - 1985: A Bibliography of Printed & Online Resources
Oregon
Leather History Project
s/m
- leather history slave david stein's essays about SM history.
The Janus
Society: Kiss and Don't Tell 1979 Drummer article about Society of Janus.
The Myth of the Old Guard
by Jack Rinella.
The Old Guard Guy Baldwin's
excellent Old Guard article.
Old Guard
Avant Garde by Joseph Bean
Old Guard? If You Say So
by Joseph Bean.
Old Guard, New
Guard Some of Gayle Rubin's thoughts about Old Guard.
Unsafe At Any Speed But
Making Good Time Laura Antoniou's speech at the 2005 South Plains LeatherFest
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