Leather Times News from the Leather Archives & Museum Spring 2004 Inside: Gayle Rubin on the history of Samois Leather Colors Art by Etienne and the Hun Capital Campaign LA&M and the Chicago Library System and more! In this issue: Samois.......p. 3 6418 North Greenview Ave., Chicago, Illinois 60626 USA In Memory: Tel: 773.761.9200 Fax: 773.381.4657 Thom Gunn www.leatherarchives.org ...................p. 7 Visiting the LA&M LA&M staff Our True Col- Open visiting hours are: Rick Storer - ors: The [email protected] History and Thursday 12 p.m. to 8 p.m. Executive Director Evolution of Saturday 12 noon to 3 p.m. Backbatch Sunday 12 noon to 3 p.m. Natalie - Insignias ...p. 8 Admission is free, donations are appreciated [email protected] Chief Librarian Requests to see the museum at other times and In Memory: requests to conduct research in the LA&M archives justin tanis - Alan Selby can be arranged by contacting the LA&M. [email protected] .................p. 11 Newsletter Editor Donations and Tax Deductions Jeff Wirsing - LA&M Collec- [email protected] tion News The Leather Archives & Museum is recognized as Facilities Manager .................p. 11 tax exempt under the US Internal Revenue Service section 501c(3). Donations are deductible from your Federal Income tax, subject LA&M Joins to IRS deducation regulations. Chicago Librar- ies ...........p. 12 I would like to make a donation to the Leather Archives & Museum. Thank yous Name: and donor Club or Organization: corrections Address: ...............p. 12 City, State/Province, Postal Code: I represent Thank you! Phone: An individual Fax: Donor Updates An Organization E-mail: .................p. 13 A Business I will contribute: Capital Cam- $30 and become a Member of the LA&M for one year paign Adop- $100 and become a Voting Member of the LA&M for one year tions ........p. 13 $500 and become a "Full-Brick" donor to the LA&M Building Fund $600 and become a Voting Member & donor to the LA&M Building Fund Capital Cam- Please send information on: paign Donors A codicil to my will Vacation Volunteering .................p. 14 Donating Materials Local Volunteering Regional Volunteers Major Gifts LA&M, p. 2 Reprinted by permission of: Samois Encyclopedia of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender History in America, Edited by Marc by Gayle Rubin Stein, New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 2003 Founded in San Francisco in June 1978 and increasingly antagonistic lesbian disbanded in May 1983, Samois was the first communities. Prior to the formation of known public organization devoted to lesbian Samois, lesbians who practiced S/M sadomasochism (S/M) and was a key player in apparently did so primarily in small, private the early phases of the feminist sex wars. Samois networks or isolated couples, or else grew out of the confluence of the feminist, gay socialized along the borders of the more and lesbian, sexual freedom, and S/M institutionally established S/M populations movements of the 1970s. “Samois” is a place- of heterosexuals and gay men. Public name taken from the famous S/M novel Story of discussion of lesbian S/M expanded in the O (1965), in which it is the location of the home mid-1970s as S/M women became more of the sole female dominant and a site for S/M visible in their communities and more vocal activities conducted entirely among women. Like in the lesbian, feminist, and gay press. other early S/M organizations, such as the This amplified visibility of S/M among gay Eulenspiegel Society (New York City, 1971) and women in turn sparked a barrage of the Janus Society (San Francisco, 1974), Samois condemnation asserting fundamental chose an obscure name intended to evade incompatibilities between lesbian feminism unwanted attention yet provide legible signals and S/M. The escalating hostility toward to the knowledgeable. S/M provided additional motivation for S/M lesbians to mobilize in self-defense. Emergence of Lesbian S/M Groups Samois and other early lesbian S/M groups Ironically, several acrimonious battles over attempted to create social worlds where kinky the relationship of S/M and feminism lesbians could find friends and partners and to enhanced the process of nascent carve out protected space in otherwise LA&M, p. 3 We believe that S/M must be consensual, mutual, and safe. S/M can exist as part of a healthy and positive lifestyle....We believe that sadomasochists are an oppressed sexual minority. Our struggle deserves the recognition and support of other sexual minorities and oppressed groups. We believe that S/M community formation. Extensive coverage can and should be consistent of these debates in the feminist and lesbian with the principles of feminism. press telegraphed the presence of activist As feminists, we oppose all S/M women in several cities, including forms of social hierarchy based Philadelphia, Boston, Iowa City, and Los on gender. As radical perverts, Angeles. As they made contact, these we oppose all social hierarchies women formed larger networks and began based on sexual preference. to assemble organizational resources. (Samois, 1979, p.2) Nationally, networking among S/M women intensified from about 1975. By 1978 a Samois never claimed that S/M was critical mass was reached in the San particularly feminist, only that there was no Francisco Bay Area that resulted in the inherent contradiction or intrinsic conflict formation of Samois. Controversy over between feminist politics and S/M practice. Samois further raised the public profile of Moreover, while addressing the prevailing lesbian S/M and propelled the formation of feminist discourse on sexuality, Samois did groups in other cities. LSM was founded in not frame its critique in purely feminist New York City in 1981, quickly followed by terms. It was instead groping toward a Leather and Lace in Los Angeles and Urania proto-queer politics that contained a broader in Boston. While LSM is the only survivor of and more inclusive sense of sexual that first wave of lesbian S/M groups, large oppression based on specifically sexual and diversified lesbian S/M communities inequalities. have since become well established in many of the major urban centers. Samois projected these ideas through bold public events and original publications. In addition to informational presentations at Defending S/M local women’s bookstores and lesbian bars, Samois articulated a bold defense of S/M as Samois produced the first Women’s Leather a legitimate eroticism, even among Dance (1981), the first Ms. Leather Contest feminists. The Samois statement of purpose (1981), and the first Lesbian Pride Leather proclaimed: LA&M, p. 4 Dance (1982). In 1978 Samois printed the first women’s “Hankie Code,” adapted from the gay male hankie codes then in widespread circulation. Samois published the booklet What Color is Your Handkerchief in 1979 and the landmark anthology Coming to Power in 1981. Many feminist and lesbian newspapers published excoriating reviews of these two Samois publications, refused to print supportive commentary, and rejected paid demanded the “end to all portrayals of advertisements, while some feminist women being bound, raped, tortured, bookstores simply banned them outright. mutilated, abused or degraded in any way Despite the vociferous censure, the books for sexual or erotic stimulation” (September were wildly popular and sold out quickly. 1977, p.3). WAVPM repeatedly condemned What Color is Your Handkerchief went into any visual representation, pornographic or five printings and Coming to Power three not, in which any women were shown editions. The publications, as well as the “bound, gagged, beaten, whipped and prominence and passion of the arguments chained” (November 1977, p. 1). The they provoked, all helped consolidate the organization conducted street protests emerging lesbian S/M community. In against S/M images and picketed theaters addition, the books marked San Francisco showing the film version of Story of O. Since as a known location for lesbian perverts, WAVPM was treating all visual portrayals of making the city a magnet for migration in S/M as violent and calling for their much the way steamy pulp novels drew elimination, Samois and WAVPM were on a lesbians to Greenwich Village in the 1950s collision course. and 1960s. While WAVPM denied having a position on Feminist Sex Wars S/M, members of Samois quickly perceived Samois’s greatest notoriety came from its that WAVPM’s program was as much anti-S/ role in the feminist sex wars, the first M as antipornography and that its critique skirmishes of which took place in the San of pornography entailed a series of negative Francisco Bay Area between Samois and presumptions about S/M. In the course of Women against Violence in Pornography and confronting such implicit suppositions, Media (WAVPM). Founded in 1976, WAVPM Samois challenged the fundamental was the first group dedicated to opposing credibility of both the logical structure and pornography on feminist grounds. However, empirical claims of WAVPM’s case against much of what WAVPM actually found pornography. Samois and WAVPM thus objectionable in pornography was S/M engaged in a series of disputes over both content, and its attacks on pornography pornography and S/M that prefigured a invariably included denunciation of S/M decade of subsequent struggle in feminism imagery and practice. For example, WAVPM LA&M, p. 5 rape, murder, and violence; cease to single out S/M erotica for picketing; and either admit to having a position on S/M (which may then be discussed) or take a position supporting S/M between consenting adults. (Samois, 1980) Although WAVPM steadfastly declined to adopt any official position on S/M, several of its fervently anti-S/M members went on to produce the anthology Against Sadomasochism (1982).