Leather club
A leather club is an interest group of homosexual men who are active in the leather scene . As a fetish, leather is the unifying element of these groups.
The term leather club is not in the concept of leather premises to be confused (leather bar).
History of the leather clubs in Germany
After paragraph 175 was changed , the "leather guys " were among the most conspicuous representatives of homosexuals in West Germany in the 1970s, alongside the so-called " queens " . In the 1990s leather clubs were also founded in some of the new federal states (Thuringian Leather Club eV, Leather Club Dresden eV, Leather Club Leipzig eV - the latter later renamed Fetish Club Leipzig eV etc.).
Originally the leather men identified with the rockers , those in the public as particularly masculine and active, but also as aggressive motorcycle riders and men dressed in leather, a phenomenon that was often painted on the wall in public as a specter. In the normal gay bars, these leather men were usually not welcome, they were often shown the door.
Commercially operated meeting places for leather men were not yet sufficiently available in the 1970s. In order to be able to live out the common interest in the leather fetish, associations, also known as leather clubs, were founded. Since registering a homosexual club was problematic at the time, many clubs were founded under the guise of a motorsport club. For this reason, many leather clubs in Europe still have the "MSC" in their club name.
At the beginning of the 1970s, the first leather bars were opened in the USA and Europe, to which only people in leather clothing could enter.
The "Loreley Bar" in Hamburg was opened in 1971 as the first pure leather bar in Germany. Bars in Berlin, Frankfurt am Main and Munich followed. So-called motorcycle meetings were also created . The magazine "Der Stiefel" was published in Hamburg, informing interested leather fans about topics and dates of interest to them.
In 1974 the ECMC , the European Confederation of Motorcycle Clubs , was founded in London , an association of leather clubs from various European countries. In 2005 there were around 5000 members from 44 leather clubs across Europe in the ECMC.
In October 1974 a leather club was founded in Berlin, the Motorsport Club Berlin (MSC) , which was entered in the Berlin register of associations in 1978 and was called Motorsport und Contacte Berlin eV from then on .
In 1979 the German umbrella organization, the SKVdC , the permanent conference of representatives of German-speaking clubs, was founded . With AIDS , which appeared in the first half of the 1980s , the work of the SKVdC expanded to include the tasks of AIDS prevention. It created working groups that several times in the year with representatives of the AIDS-Hilfe German hits. The SKVdC changed the name to LFC - Leather and Fetish Community at its meeting in Erfurt in 2000 . This name change resulted from a new role for fetish-oriented homosexual interest groups. In 2006, 13 leather and fetish clubs from Germany, Switzerland and Austria were organized in the LFC.
Due to the increased emergence of commercial fetish bars and new communication options via the Internet (e.g. the chat platform GayRomeo ), the importance of leather clubs as meeting places for leather men dwindled. In addition to leather as a fetish, other materials increasingly appeared in the fetish scene, especially rubber, skingear, sportswear and uniform (army). The leather clubs today see themselves mainly as fetish clubs . Their role has changed fundamentally over the past 30 years. In the beginning, they were often the only way to get to know homosexual men with the same interests. Today the clubs see themselves as organizational platforms for joint leisure activities for fetish-oriented homosexuals, for mutual help, education and AIDS / HIV prevention and often as a family substitute for their homosexual members. Nowadays, leather clubs are mostly noticed by the public through large fetish meetings and motorcycle meetings. A few leather clubs operate their own club premises.
The members of leather clubs or leather gays themselves are sometimes referred to in the scene as leather sisters . Depending on the context, this designation is both pejorative and indicates belonging.
The gay leather man caught the attention of the general public in the early 1980s. William Friedkin shows scenes from the gay subculture in his film Cruising with Al Pacino .
Movies
- 1980 William Friedkin, cruising with Al Pacino
literature
- Gayle Rubin : The Valley of the Kings: Leathermen in San Francisco, 1960-1990. , 1994, Dissertation Abstracts International, 56 (01A), 0249. (UMI No. 9513472).
- David Stein, S / M's Copernican Revolution: From a Closed World to the Infinite Universe and Safe Sane Consensual: The Evolution of a Shibboleth under s / m-leather history (engl.)