A Brief History of Kink¶
Let’s talk about where we began, and how we got to where we are.
Founding of the USA¶
Once upon a time there existed Victorian England, and they were in general, rather uptight and sexually repressed people. But there existed another group of people so repressed and uptight that the Victorians got tired of them and literally voted them off the island. So they came to the New World and founded what would become the USA. These folks, called Puritans, who were so uptight even the British could no longer stand them, kept their judgments and repressed nature. And that is a lot of why folks in the USA are still some of the most uptight folks ever. And the British still think we’re a bunch of boring prudes.
Later, in San Francisco¶
Later, in the era before the Internet, there lived a lot of really kinky, really gay, people. We’re talking like ancient history here, the 70s and 80s! They lived in what would become the center of modern Kinkdom: San Francisco. Kink wasn’t really an accepted feature of the city, and there were efforts by those in charge to stamp it out. In New York, the Stonewall Riots of ‘69 inspired the first Pride marches in San Francisco, and other cities the following year, 1970.
Veterans¶
Negative associations with the military
Some folks have a negative reaction to hearing that OG is derived from military tradition. For you, I suggest reading the information in a proper gentleman and trying to imagine that instead. (Or perhaps watch some episodes of Downton Abby for an idea.)
So, it all started with veterans. Yep, gay veterans. In a weird mashup of the hippie love culture of the 60s, a little bit of acceptance, and a lot of discharged soldiers getting off-ship in San Francisco, something fucking magical happened. A lot of men came to the conclusion that they really liked:
- Ritual
- Structure
- Black leather
- Ranks
- Titles
- The company of other men
- Being told what to do
So suddenly you had a lot of unemployed officers who could become good dominants and unemployed enlisted men who were already good submissives. They basically just settled down and started a culture, without ever really meaning to.
That weird combination was somehow perfect: the discharged soldiers and hippie love movement mixed like peanut butter and chocolate to make something magical. It all came together at the perfect time and the perfect place to create the culture that is now sometimes called “the Old Guard”.
Their military traditions and experience, their comfort with giving and following orders, it all just carried over to their new kinky culture.
So gay¶
In the early days, it was all gay, all the time. Straight folk were not welcomed at this party, and women definitely were not. Which was hella’ sexist, but not in the usual gender roles way.
All the good BDSM clubs were up in San Francisco, and women were not even allowed in the door. Instead, the submissives were ripped bodybuilders who could probably bench press you, and really, really, wanted to suck your cock.
You learned quickly how to nonchalantly say “Sorry, not interested” when you felt an unfamiliar hand caress your balls through your jeans.
Wild times man. Wild times.
Where did everyone go?¶
tl;dr version: We all died of AIDS.
As the Leather community in San Francisco in the 80s and 90s was almost exclusively gay, it was decimated by the HIV epidemic of that era. This is why there are very few openly gay folks over the age of about 50. Ever wonder where they all went? As long as Washington DC was in the hands of the Republicans, they sat back and let us die. HIV didn’t see real money in its treatment until it started affecting ‘mainstream’ folks.
The above picture was taken in 2018 of the surviving members of the San Francisco Gay Men’s Choir. In the background of it, you can see an earlier 1993 version of the same picture. In both pictures, members of the Choir who had died of AIDS are represented by men in black suits facing away from the camera. The men in white suits are survivors. There were 8 survivors in 2018.
While I have had male playmates, I don’t identify as gay, just somewhat “heteroflexible”. This had two major effects:
- I existed kinda on the outskirts of the ‘traditional’ Leather culture since the ‘cool kids’ were all gay veterans.
- I didn’t contract HIV.
And it is by the luck of those facts that I’m still alive to tell this story.
It was bad. We all just lived through COVID, so try to imagine that with a 95% fatality rate, and targeting a marginalized population that the GOP president at the time would rather see die. In the early days, HIV was almost always fatal, with an average lifespan after diagnosis of a little over a year. It probably would have been less if there had been any meaningful early intervention. But unfortunately, much of the US decided that we deserved to die. “Good Christian Folks” would routinely pray for our deaths on national television, and talk about how we all deserved this plague as punishment for our ‘immortality’. When asked about AIDS research or treatments, the White House press secretary laughed aloud at the idea of doing anything at all. In fact, they did so multiple times, for several years.
And so, we died. By the tens of thousands.
The coming of the Internet¶
So, in the mid-90s, a vice president named Al Gore had been talking about this horrific plan to build “The Information Superhighway”, a fiber-optic cable TV network with 500 channels of shopping and garbage. But then someone taped him on the shoulder and pointed out that the USA had already built the Internet, and it was way cooler. Suddenly he stopped talking about the “Information Superhighway” and told everyone about the Internet instead.
Waves upon waves of new people found the Internet, and the tiny niches of BDSM pics we had online at the time, and they were suddenly very hard, or very wet, at what they saw. But they had no context. The pictures they could see and, sorta, understand. But the values, the culture, all the things I’m writing this Manual about, were invisible. All the rituals, culture, and more were lost in the noise of millions of people finding some naughty pics and unzipping their jeans as fast as they could.
But now the secret was out and more people were invited to the party. The floodgates were thrown wide and the kink community would never be the same again.
But… We’re still all insane if you ask the nice people in the white lab coats. This nicely segues us to the next chapter…
The decriminalization of BDSM¶
Beyond the stigma and criminalization of same-sex relations, there was also the near-criminalization of BDSM itself. The DSM, or the ‘big book of all the mental illnesses you can have’, listed BDSM as a mental illness up until 2013.
For all this time, I and other like-minded individuals had to hide who we were for fear of reprisals. Meanwhile, we worked through organizations such as the venerable National Coalition for Sexual Freedom to lobby to get the DSM changed. Around this time, some surveys showed that about 25% of us had lost jobs for being kinky, and some had lost custody of children.
Kink-Aware Professionals database
One big service that the NCSF provided, and actually still provides, was the creation of a database of professionals who wouldn’t report you to the authorities for being kinky. Try to imagine how nerve-wracking just a basic physical checkup could be when you are worried that your doctor might see a bruise and report your spouse to the authorities for domestic violence. Or where your therapist would be required to report you to welfare services and you might lose your kids for admitting you like it when your partner spanks you during sex.
Over time the ‘Kink Aware Professional’ database grew to include more than doctors and therapists. Today you can find lawyers, accountants, plumbers, and more. You never know when you might need tax help for your pro-domme business or a plumber who nods knowingly as he installs an enema nozzle in your shower for your slave to use.
So, you can still find the big underground database of kink-friendly professionals at https://www.kapprofessionals.org/.
Finally, in 2013, we got our wish and were no longer branded as ‘mentally ill’ for enjoying a little bit of spanking with our sex.
Crappy films, but now we’re famous¶
So, now authors and writers started to talk about us. They never got it right. But some interpretations were vastly better than others.
Sadly the most popular one was a fan-fiction, written in the universe of a movie about vampires made out of glitter of all things. That would have been the script for an episode of “Law & Order: SVU” if he hadn’t been rich.
And don’t even think about watching the film based on the number of days in a year. That’s just Stockholm Syndrome in a bad wrapper.
What now?¶
I don’t know. I’ve told you my story.
What’s happens now isn’t my story, it’s your’s. 🤣
Next: Read my thoughts on consent in a long-term D/s relationship
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