The history I hear at munches is that our modern American kink culture came from hippies mixing with vets after the war and it grew to replace our lack of authentic culture that had died and that it was self consciously patterned after the gay leather community. People been fuckin' I get that part. I just mean that as a self conscious community it came up to help replace working class intuitions in the post war era. I am sure there was stuff before that, but no one currently has a strong cultural memory of it that I am aware of.
identifying as a public, self-conscious community is a bad benchmark. that was part of a struggle for civil rights, the people didn't spring out from nowhere when they started organising.
there's plenty of literature & art predating the 50's, it's safe to say some group of people were the audience & praxists even when they weren't self-identifying
The history I hear at munches is that our modern American kink culture came from hippies mixing with vets after the war and it grew to replace our lack of authentic culture that had died and that it was self consciously patterned after the gay leather community. People been fuckin' I get that part. I just mean that as a self conscious community it came up to help replace working class intuitions in the post war era. I am sure there was stuff before that, but no one currently has a strong cultural memory of it that I am aware of.
identifying as a public, self-conscious community is a bad benchmark. that was part of a struggle for civil rights, the people didn't spring out from nowhere when they started organising.
there's plenty of literature & art predating the 50's, it's safe to say some group of people were the audience & praxists even when they weren't self-identifying