Culture

Chicago’s Leather Museum Is a Love Letter to a Misunderstood Queer Subculture


Once we reached the ground level, Noah and I made a beeline for the library, filled with rare erotica and BDSM theory. Since we’d last visited, they’d added NSFW coloring sheets and art materials. We sat in silence for a while, reading and coloring, and I was overwhelmed with gratitude toward all those who had put in decades of labor to create and archive this rich history and culture.

The Leather Archives and Museum in Chicago.Brittany Sowacke

I had spent my teen years parroting the morally conservative rhetoric I saw all over Tumblr and Twitter: that leather queers didn’t deserve to be at pride, that kinky folks were out to corrupt children, that kink was elitist and for rich white cis gays. Yet anyone who has been even marginally involved in the leather community knows that this is far from true. My partner, who uses a cane to walk most of the time, has remarked on multiple occasions that they’ve never seen as many other visibly disabled queers as in kink spaces. The infamous Etienne, whose art fills the LA&M’s auditorium, was a man of color, Filipino just like me, which I was delighted to learn. While there are certainly higher-end events, so much of the leather community is about volunteerism, and many events operate on a sliding scale so that no one is turned away due to economic need.

I’ve learned that disabled folks, trans folks, women, people of color, sex workers, working class people, and people who live at the intersection of all those identities have always had a place in these communities, and that has been revelatory. I’ve been around the puritanical, politically correct affinity groups that seem hell-bent on divorcing eroticism and degeneracy from queerness and queer activism. But to me, the joys of queer sexuality lie in its excesses, its dangerous flirtations with the taboo. For myself and many others, erotic practice is inseparable from our everyday queer lives, a truth that I’ve been denying all my life. Coming to acceptance, coming to power, and coming to the LA&M feels far more like coming home than ever before.

The Leather Archives and Museum in Chicago.Brittany Sowacke

Whether you like it or not, leather history is important queer history. And in the age of SESTA-FOSTA, endangered net neutrality, and a general renewed sense of moral conservatism, a place like the LA&M is perhaps more important than ever.

Get the best of what’s queer. Sign up for our weekly newsletter here.



READ NEWS SOURCE

This website uses cookies. By continuing to use this site, you accept our use of cookies.