Why the Leather Community is better than the Suit & Tie Community.

In a post from a while back, a leather instagram account asked followers about the role that leather plays in the LGBTQIA+ community. The responses were beautiful and heartwarming. People spoke of the fetish as a means to empower, a way to bond with other fellow outsiders, a way to connect, a way to not feel alone. They also spoke to the role that the leather community has played in the queer liberation movement. It was extraordinary, and also saddening. I thought, why is it that these people in this fetish community feel such solidarity and hope, and my fetish community does not?

In the suit & tie fetish community, I see pettiness, division, a supposedly "apolitical" mindset. (Anyone who studies politics for five minutes knows that "apolitical" means "smug support of the establishment.") Some of us are here to extract money from others (findoms are the worst), or advertise a page on OnlyFans. The suit & tie fetish Discord actively discourages any discussion of politics, and, indeed, the few times I've tried to bring up politics, I was mocked and shut down. And so we suit up in our private little bubbles, jack off, and log off.

So, why are the leather folks a viable, active, politically engaged fetish community with solidarity, belonging, and diversity, while we suit & tie guys are just a bunch of corporate poseurs jerking off to one another? I have a theory: suit & tie guys are like a modern-day Mattachine Society, only even more milquetoast. It is notable that the Mattachine made well-mannered requests for legislative change through polite protest: Frank Kameny, their founder, mandated a suit and tie dress code for his protesters, hoping to channel an image of respectability. "We are just like you:" that was the Mattachine's message. The Leather community, on the other hand, fought on the front lines agitating for change, bypassing the politics and imagery of respectability to win people's hearts and minds. "We're here, we're queer, fuck your norms:" that was the message of the Leather community. While the suits & ties preached Puritanical conformity and inoffensive normalcy, the Leather folks celebrated their queerness, unapologetically.

In short, the Leather community has a future because it has a revolutionary past. We, the suit & tie guys, were the "squares" that the LGBTQIA+ movement rallied against. And in many ways we still are. Instead of questioning the power dynamics represented by the suit & tie, we simply reproduce those power dynamics again and again, for the dull sake of personal pleasure. Solipsism, seeking to shut out the real needs of our queer siblings. "I'm just here to put on a tie and jerk off."

And so, as the world grows increasingly casual, as suits and ties drop away from the dress codes of corporations, where will we be? The Leather community was wise to forge a political identity that transcended its gear, a mythos and a culture that have endured and created a sense of solidarity and power. Meanwhile, we're busy bragging about double windsors and repeating the same silly corporate fantasies over and over again. A costume of the past, that has invented no present and no future for itself.

It doesn't have to be like this.

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Tom of Finland understood how suits & leather work together.