Leather Life -- Gay and Not Gay

I'm not into the leather scene as such -- although I enjoy the macho atmosphere of most leather bars -- but in honor of this weekend's Folsom East Leather Pride fair in New York, I'm posting an article I did last summer for The New York Blade [it's no longer available in the paper's archives, unfortunately]:


LEATHER SCENE NOT AS GAY AS IMAGINED


by Bill Schoell

Last June 22nd 2008 a Leather Pride Fair took over the far west end of 11th avenue and was well-attended despite the afternoon downpour. This coming August 15th t0 17th the New Jersey Convention Center in Edison, New Jersey will play host to Floating World, a leather/S&M/ kink/ alternative-sexuality gathering hosted by over 32 groups who expect nearly 1000 attendees. There will be a host of classes, workshops, and parties dedicated to everything from “pony play” to “whips” to the old reliable bondage and discipline. [Registration for the event is now closed.]

How many of the Floating World attendees will be gay or lesbian? “Hard to say,” Dan, one of the organizers of the event, told The Blade, “as we don't ask and many people come for many reasons. Someone may be here for Pony Play and we would never know if they're gay or straight, just Pony - Or M/s [Master/slave] or bondage. And we really don't care. Still, I would guess about 20% or so. But then, how do you measure transpersons? Or bi people, or poly? We just take everyone as they come and try to make them as comfortable as possible.” [For the record, “Pony Play” does not refer to bestiality, but to role-playing where one participant pretends to be a horse or pony and another pretends to be a trainer or rider etc.]

Still, events like Floating World make it clear that the leather/s&m/fetish scene – which many people have always seen as being somehow exclusively or predominantly gay – is something separate and distinct, pansexual in nature. Likewise, gay people, traditionally looked upon as strange sexual outlaws, have been seen by straights (and many gays) as somehow “kinkier” than heterosexuals. Or at least more open-minded about outre sexual practices. But some erotic activities practiced by alternative sex groups may make standard gay sex seem blase in comparison, as well as raise the eyebrows even of the most sophisticated members of the LGBT community.

Why has the leather scene long been considered a sub-culture of the gay community? In every large city gay men in their leather regalia can be seen heading towards the local Eagle or Ramrod. Because there are no equivalent heterosexual leather bars (although there have been underground s&m clubs), people have come to the erroneous conclusion that the leather/s&m/kink scene is strictly a gay phenomenon. Nothing could be further from the truth. For instance, The Eulenspiegal Society is a New York-based S&M group that caters largely to straights.

“Since there are other groups in NYC dedicated to gay-males and lesbians, TES tends to get bisexuals and heterosexuals as members,” Susan Wright of TES told The Blade. (Wright is also a spokesperson for the National Coalition for Sexual Freedom.) According to Wright, “It's true that there are more gay leather bars - there aren't any het BDSM bars because you can't play in the same space as liquor is sold. BDSM clubs that allow playing are non-alcoholic, and these clubs cater to gays as well as hets and bi's on different nights under different promoters. Gay men don't play in the leather bars - they go there to meet other gay men. Very similar are the many swing clubs around the U.S. that meet at bars where the members socialize, and then if they want to play they leave to go to another location.”

She adds that “The large majority of the 500 BDSM social and educational groups in America are pansexual and tend to have bisexuals and heterosexuals as members.” Gays and Lesbians account for only 20% of the scene.

It’s also true that many homosexual leather people identify more with the leather scene – or the particular fetish scene they belong to – than they do with the gay community. Asked if leather people resented the fact that leather/s&m was not included in “LGBT,” Tip, the President of New York’s Iron Guard BC [Brotherhood Club] felt the need to deny the very premise. He told The Blade: “As one of the many fetish groups, the Leather community feels more comfortable with Leather Men and Women – we all share a similar code of behavior, tradition, kink, and protocols [that is] not shared by the entire LGBT community.” As for the misapprehension that all leather men are gay he said “Don’t let the Hell’s Angels hear you speculating they are mostly gay ” (But one could certainly speculate if there are gay Hell’s Angels )

Being part of the leather scene can simply mean one has a fetish for leather outfits or “it can signal a vast ocean of sensual opportunities,” according to Tip. These not only include BDSM but puppy-play, water sports and fist-fucking, which “was practiced in India long before there was any s/m associations.” Tip feels that “‘real’ leather bars no longer exist in NYC. ..While I can never get my fill of leathered eye candy,” he says, “leather men aren’t known for their trimmed, svelte and/or buffed bodies. Today it seems there’s more of a leather-for-fashion fetish than leather men.” (It should be noted that while some leather men are non-svelte bears, most bears are not into the leather scene.)

When it comes to women in the leather scene, what comes to most people’s minds are stereotypical whip-wielding dominatrixes who are straight and have a male heterosexual clientele. In fact, there are many lesbians who are into leather, s&m and fetish play. New York’s Lesbian Sex Mafia is only one of several groups for gay and other women who are into the scene. Others are Tribe/New Jersey Leatherdykes and Dyke Uniform Corps.

Fearful of discrimination for practices that others outside the scene might find childish at best or repellant at worst, Leather people – regardless of orientation – seem to be more closeted and secretive than gays. [Neither the board of Lesbian Sex Mafia nor Gay Male S/M Activists, also based in New York, responded to The Blade’s request for an interview.] Perhaps the secrecy is part of the appeal of the scene.

Tip of the Iron Guard says “I believe Lucille Ball is credited with saying ‘There are some doors better left unopened.’ Leather men have opened them. [They] see the world, even the ‘regular’ gay community, through a different pair of glasses.

“We know things, play with sensations, excite eroticism that vanilla sex doesn’t even dream of.”

Originally published in The New York Blade 2008.

Final Thoughts on "Chuck and Larry"

NOT TO MENTION STRANGE BEDFELLOWS

A fireman begs his best friend to pretend to be a gay couple with him so that they can reap financial benefits, but have to keep up a deception when an official comes around to investigate the veracity of their claim.

Sounds like last summer's movie I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry, doesn't it?

Actually it's a 2004 Australian film entitled Strange Bedfellows, starring Paul Hogan (Vince) and Michael Caton (Ralph). Yes, it has the exact same premise as Chuck and Larry. (The last I heard, the producers of Strange Bedfellows were suing the producers of Chuck and Larry.) Strange Bedfellows was written by Dean Murphy (who also directed the film) and Stewart Faichney.

Chuck and Larry was accused of being a mass of stereotypes with a message of tolerance tacked on at the end. Actually, that description is more apt of Bedfellows, which is pretty much the movie everyone was afraid Chuck and Larry would be.

Bedfellows takes place in a small town, while C&L takes place in a big city. Bedfellows begins with Hogan, hit with a huge tax bill, reading a story in the paper about a (mythical) law allowing tax benefits to same-sex couples. As in C&L, one of the two guys seems more live-and-let-live about gays than the other.

In Bedfellows, the two men take photos of the town "faggot" (not referred to as such, although "poofter" is used now and then throughout the film) or hairdresser, a very stereotypical gay male, so that they can mimic his mannerisms for the tax official. There's a twist when it turns out that the effeminate man is actually straight, or at least having sex with half the women in town. While this bit could have made the point that there are girlish straight men and masculine gay guys, it's all ruined by the revelation that the hairdresser's mannerisms are all put on. He acts gay because "it's expected of" him and because he can sneak around having sex with half of the wives and daughters in town. Sure, as if any straight guy would want to be known as the town faggot!

Perhaps the worst scene in the movie has the straight if nelly-acting hairdresser teaching our two heroes how to "swish." At least Chuck and Larry doesn't have an equivalent sequence. The hairdresser also says that gay men refer to themselves as "girls" and "she." Indeed in a gay bar scene later on, there are leather men calling themselves "girls." I don't think so. (There may still be some gay men who do this, but they are a dying breed and they are definitely not leather men or bears.)

The gay bar scene presents most of the customers as freaks of one sort or another -- or at least wants the viewers to see them that way for the alleged comedic value. One perfectly "normal" man has a conversation with Hogan at the bar but he's vastly outnumbered by much more "fabulous" characters, all of whom are at least likable and who seem a bit perturbed when Ralph makes some comment about what's stranger than being a "poof." Still thinking he's gay, they pause and then giggle.

Unlike C&L, in Bedfellows there is no scene when an official suggests how wrong and obscene it would be for straight people, liars, to take advantage of laws supposed to benefit a minority group that has had to struggle for its rights for decades.

At the end of the film, we learn that Ralph's daughter is gay. While her girlfriend thinks her father is cool, the daughter herself, besides being closeted, seems full of internalized homophobia. "I don't want you to be that way," she says, because gay people are laughed at behind their backs. I can understand why a gay child might be uncomfortable with a gay parent -- most children don't even want to think of their parents as being sexual, gay or straight -- but her reaction is decidedly negative and even old-fashioned. You imagine that if a gay gene is ever isolated, this gal would want any kids she might have to be "straightened" out. Of course, she's only onscreen for five minutes so we learn very little about her. She's introduced to set up the ending, and her complaining about "being laughed at" is the springboard for her father's speech. But it makes her seem a very regressive character.

After learning his daughter is gay -- and not before -- Ralph gives the well-intentioned "tolerance" speech at the end of the film. He makes the point that everyone has known him and Vince for many years and what they do in the privacy of their homes shouldn't make any difference. I won't go into details, but it all comes down to the fact that Ralph and Vince really love each other -- aww-- albeit not in the romantic or sexual sense. The tax official, Russell (Pete Postlethwaite), who may or may not be gay, sort of forgives them and let's them off the hook because he hasn't seen "a stronger bond or a greater love between two men in many a year." So let's see, two straight guys can love each other more than two gay men who are in love with each other?

Strange Bedfellows may mean well -- or at least it tries to have some pro-gay sentiments to offset all the stereotypical crap -- but it just doesn't get it. The film is well-acted by all, has some mildly amusing moments, but it's too stupid and even offensive to make a positive impression.

So now we come to I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry, which -- believe it or not -- is an improvement. Very few gay people that I know have actually sat through the movie. I think nobody actually wanted to go to a theater, plunk down twelve dollars, and possibly have to sit through the picture with a bunch of homophobic teens making crass remarks all the while.

Curiously, C&L, while it'll never be one of my favorite films, and there were aspects of it that I really disliked, was not nearly as bad as I had feared. DISCLAIMER: Remember that I didn't watch this in a theater with a straight audience, but at home with a gay friend, which probably affected my perception of the film to a certain degree. Had I seen it with a straight -- especially a straight homophobic audience -- laughing at or commenting on the stereotypes, I would have found it a much worse experience than watching my borrowed library copy at home.

First of all, contrary to popular belief GLAAD did not "endorse" Chuck and Larry. You can find my New York Blade story and interview with GLAAD's president here, which explains what really happened and how GLAAD tried to improve the film and may have helped to do so.

Okay, Adam Sandler's not a horrible-looking guy, but it's pretty comical (in the wrong sense) that he would wind up with half a dozen gorgeous twenty-something babes in his bedroom at the same time, as he does early in the movie. The real Adam Sandler, a billionaire movie star, probably has no problem getting babes, but an average-looking firefighter on the cusp of middle-age? But that's just typical Adam Sandler, aging-stud stuff that all geeky movie comics from Bob Hope to Jim Carrey indulge in. And especially in a movie with a sort of gay theme, Sandler probably felt he had to establish the character's heterosexuality in an as over-the-top way as possible. That is also the reason for a really stupid scene in which the lady social worker who helps them (Jessica Biel) let's Chuck (Sandler) touch her naked boobs so she can prove to him that they're real. Sure -- as if a professional woman would allow a male -- or any -- client to do such a thing!

On the positive side, the film makes fun of homophobes, and while there's a silly sequence when Chuck and Larry try to find some "gay garbage" to fool the domestic partnership inspector, they never swish around and act stereotypically gay as the guys do in Strange Bedfellows. Chuck makes a speech about how ugly and hurtful the word "faggot" is, comparing it to someone calling him "kike." I liked the gay mailman, and I especially liked the way the film winds up with a gay wedding instead of a straight one.

On the negative side, I could have done without the way Larry's supposedly gay young son Eric was handled. He hits all the stereotype buttons and literally screams when he looks at a nude female centerfold. Eric and his father get into a fight with another man and his kid, not because of the latter pair's homophobia but because they say Eric is gay (but the film is supposed to be saying that it's okay to be gay). After he comes out of the closet, butch firefighter Duncan (Ving Rhames) turns kind of "queeny" -- he sings "I'm Every Woman" in the shower -- the tiresome old notion that masculine gay men just "butch it up" but are big "fairies" inside. Then there's the whole business about whether it's Chuck or Larry who's "the woman" in the relationship, and the social worker taking Chuck out for a "girls' day," which she would hardly say to a masculine gay guy like Chuck. And I don't believe for one second that the gay community of New York would come to see Chuck and Larry as some kind of gay heroes or icons, especially after they've been exposed as straight. Sandler socks one of the homophobes outside of the gay bar, but I would have liked it better if an actual gay character had thrown the punch. (I have to admit that the fireman's calender that ends the film is kind of funny.)

Of course, some of the good points that are made about gays are kind of blunted or made pointless because Chuck and Larry aren't really gay (if only the film had had the courage to have one of them sincerely come out of the closet at the end of the picture.)

There are people who think Chuck and Larry is a lot tougher on Asians (part Filipino Rob Schneider's minister, who says "loom" for "room") and very obese people (the funny-gross opening with the guys rescuing an enormous home bound man from a burning building) than it is on gays.

Would I have gotten my old Gay Activist Alliance buddies to picket this film the way we did Cruising, A Different Story and Windows? -- Maybe not. While I can understand the negative gay reaction to the film, I can't quite understand why even straight reviewers were so brutal.

Was it because they objected to the stereotyping -- or, privately, to the message of tolerance and gay marriage equality at the end? Considering this was an Adam Sandler film geared toward a young, unsophisticated audience, it could have been much, much worse.

I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry was written by Barry Fanaro, Alexander Payne, and Jim Taylor. The director was Dennis Dugan, who had a role in the execrable "gay" movie Norman ... Is That You? in 1976.

New York Blade 10th Anniversary Party

Went to a nice party on Wednesday November 28th 2007 at the Gay center on 13th street to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the local gay paper The New York Blade. A number of people agreed with me that it didn't seem as if the Blade had been around that long, but it may only seem that way because I became a regular reader only within the past couple of years. The Blade has published a couple of my rants in their letters column, and I did a piece on author/activist Wayne Besen for their annual pride issue this summer.

I met quite a few nice and interesting people, male and female, of all ages at the party, so many that it's hard to place a name (on a business card) with the face or conversation. There was Dirk McCall, the Executive Director of the Greenwich Village/Chelsea Chamber of Commerce, and Daniel Tietz, Executive Director of ACRIA (Aids Community Research Initiative of America). I believe one of these gentleman was the great, friendly guy who introduced me to nearly everyone he knew at the party, which seemed to be half of the people there! Conversations tended to be brief, as they usually are at cocktail parties (there was much more to drink than eat, not that I'm complaining!) but I had longer talks with a young lesbian (I didn't catch her name, unfortunately) whose spirit of activism reminded me of my own, as well as a nice conversation with another young woman who just started working for GLAAD (I had just reported to the group a vile joke told by an alleged comedian on the Late, Late Show -- more on that on another post). I told her that I basically did what GLAAD now does when I was with New York's Gay Activists Alliance years ago, but today's young career activists seem pretty much unfamiliar with GAA and all that it accomplished. Too bad. But the once militant days of the Gay Rights Movement have been replaced by the "nicer" (but not necessarily ineffective) tactics of the GLBT movement. I also met Karl Hampe -- hope I got the name right -- a cartoonist whose strip The Regulars details what "might happen if a gay urban attorney wound up running a coffee bar." I also met Trent Straub, the editor of the Blade, but we didn't have much of a chance to talk.

There were some highly attractive men in the joint, but I kept my flirting to a minimum, as this wasn't Ty's on a Saturday night. There were a couple of very bizarre moments, which I'll mention in more appropriate posts. I remember shaking the hand of a guy who was described to me as "an openly bisexual" politician of some sort or another, which for some reason I found amusing. I overheard him telling another guest that he was just too busy to date. Jeez -- not a bad-looking guy, presumably likes both men and women, and he's too busy to go out on a date!

Nice party, nice people. All good. Here's wishing the New York Blade many more years of success!