Does anybody besides me get tired of all these labels thrown at them?  i feel like i'm swatting off mesquites some days.

i'm a model.  i'm not a poser that just likes to wear leather (yum), pvc (yum), latex (yum) because i do play.  i'm a masochist, to the right match, you can go deep into the well of S&M with me.  i'm a fetishist.  i love everything about leather, damsel in distress, feet, boots, shoes, yadda-yadda-yadda.

i have a leather title.  i am the current title holder of North American Pony.  i so love Pony Play, which is the major form of play i do outside my work (i'm a professional submissive).  i have given my time and energy to form a group in Los Angeles, the Los Angeles Pony and Critter Club, which is very active, doing animal role play events frequently.  i travel to various BDSM events and give workshops in Pony Play.

The ladies and gentlemen i have met in Los Angeles that, like me, are professional players, offering our services for hire, are also people that are involved in the leather community, they model, they have fetishes. Those that aren't in the leather community, are labled BDSM players or kinksters.  i have had the pleasure of a leather woman tell me that because i am not gay/lesbian i can never be truly leather, i culturally and spiritually can never belong.  Therefore i belong in the fetishist or kinkter or BDSM player category. Other leather people totally disagree with that statement.

What i hate about these labels being tossed around and stuck on people, is i get this dirty taste in my mouth, like it is more altruistic authentic to be in the BDSM community and be leather, a lifestyler, than to be a hobbyist.  As if there is brownie points in heaven if you live BDSM 24/7 rather than enjoy some kink with your sex sometimes.  There are even sub-groups in the leather community than demand it to be spiritual to the point of an ooooooooo factor with mystic qualifiers or you aren't all that - seriously.

For me, i think people should lighten up.  We are a minority of the population, anyways.  Fracturing our vote to pull together for the freedom to express ourselves and enjoy our kink with our sex, pointing figures amongst ourselves, won't assist us in the big picture of standing together to keep the freedom to express ourselves alive.

How any of us does our kink, our fetish, our play, our sex isn't important.  It is important that we play, explore the journey, take the grand adventure of being open to the sensations, the vast buffet of alternative sex/kink/fetish that is out there.  How much, how you do it doesn't make you better than the vanilla guy that decides tonight, he is going to find a babe that wants to be bound to the bed with a blindfold on and he is going to fuck her lights out.

i'll just step off my soapbox now.  thank you for allowing me to rant.  

~a

Excellent post, as usual.  Sometimes, people in the scene forget that it's called "play" for a reason!

The latest metaphor that I use when speaking to newbies about BDSM is that it's kind of like an ice cream parlor.  Yes, everything in the store is ice cream (or yogurt), but there are soooooo many different flavors of ice cream, and not every flavor is for you (but someone else might really love it).  We all get lumped together, but the reality is that we can be quite different.  For example, I'm still trying to wrap my head around "littles" groups (adults who like to pretend to be children or teens).

Short of us walking around with our FetLife profiles, asking about one's kink orientation is turning into the equivalent of "What's Your Sign?"  It's kind of a quick compatibility test before (potentially) wasting too much time on a person who might be very physically attractive to you,  but not at all into the same kinks as you, so that you can quickly move on if there's no compatibility.  It's really a very bad habit to try to narrow a person down into a few labels, because people are generally so much more complex than that . . .

P.S.  Feel free to stay on your soapbox -- it's easier to see up your dress that way!  

The provider who called leather an aphrodisiac had the right idea. I'm also a coriaphile (to trace the word's origin, look at this link: http://www.thefreedictionary.com/coriaceous ). Wearing snugly fitted leather, leather-grained PVC, and latex all multiply the hotness of a woman for me. It adds an assertiveness to a woman's appearance that I find exciting, or else it seems to assert itself on the woman as a gentle suggestion of bondage.

Funny thing about a connection some make between leather and homosexuality: the French word for if "cuir", pronounced like "queer". Whatever.

The hetero BDSM culture owes an enormous amountl to the gay male leather subculture that began in the late 1940s.  Soldiers back from World War II often found themselves disillusioned with mainstream culture when they returned to civilian life, the same way a soldier returning from Iraq or Afghanistan might feel today, and many of them took to motorcycle clubs.  Since biker groups were a great way for gay men to hang around with other gay men in kind of a "macho" way in a very homophobic country, the gay male leather culture began to thrive, as gay men were able to openly explore their kinky side.

Many of the trappings of that biker culture then became the trappings of the BDSM leather community, first for gay groups, and then, later, for hetero groups.

I agree with you, octovert . . .  I love the smell and feel of leather, on me and on women, and I can't walk past the leather goods store in the mall without getting a chubby!

a luxury item, at $500 to buy at Mr. S, but imagine grabbing your partner, rolling, shoving their face into the leather sheet, rough sex, the smells.......

seems like a cheap price now, ;-D  ?

That does sound sexy as hell.  

How would you launder those, I wonder?

Still kicking myself for missing your Atlanta trip.

You have a "presence" even in videos. Couldn't imagine how strong that would be in person.

Categories are absurd. Be careful lest you start to hear about "intersectionalism" or "kyriarchy".

I don't care to be labeled it's the same when they ask your race on forms I am of the human race & am blessed to be of many cultures.  Why try to categorize everything is beyond me because I love to be open-mind when it comes to playtime!

i can post a thread regarding leather care.