I've been working on this for three months and it's finally done. 78 pages on the history of leather, sluts, and families at US Prides, from 1965 to 1995. Includes background on Pride as a polyvocal celebration and leather as a queer subculture; multifarious sexual and gender expression at Pride; the Lesbian Sex Wars; reaction from the right; and the interplay of radical and normalizing forces within LGBTQ activism.

https://aphyr.com/posts/358-a-history-of-leather-at-pride-1965-1995

This work is far from comprehensive, but I sincerely hope that it helps people who may be new to discussions around public sexuality develop a deeper and more nuanced understanding of our history and present-day exuberance.

San Francisco Pride monitors attempted to expel the first organized SM contingent (Soc. of Janus) in 1978, and moved to ban attendees from even wearing leather *clothing* at Pride in 1979. Lesbian S/M group group Samois successfully fought that ban.

https://aphyr.com/posts/358-a-history-of-leather-at-pride-1965-1995#san-francisco-pride-1978

Leather individuals and motorcycle clubs joined the first Pride marches in 1970. Organized S/M groups participated in New York and Chicago Pride by 1972, and full-blown exhibitions of whips, chains, and boot-licking were well-documented by 1975.

https://aphyr.com/posts/358-a-history-of-leather-at-pride-1965-1995#leather-at-pride

Leather people helped organize the 1978, 1987, and 1993 Marches on Washington; SM/Leather had a seat on the committee for the latter two marches. Video of the 1987 MoW shows organizer Brenda Howard wearing leather and leading a smiling person on a leash.

https://aphyr.com/posts/358-a-history-of-leather-at-pride-1965-1995#march-on-washington-1

When New York Pride experienced a budget crisis in 1983, the local leather community organized a kinky fundraising event at The Spike. Leather Pride Night contributed a sixth of NY Pride's budget by 1985, and became their largest sponsoring event.

https://aphyr.com/posts/358-a-history-of-leather-at-pride-1965-1995#leather-in-support-of-queer-life

Infants, toddlers, kids and teenagers have been marching in and attending Pride since its inception in 1970. SF Pride started offering childcare in 1978. The first kids to be exposed to kinksters at Pride were literally boomers.

https://aphyr.com/posts/358-a-history-of-leather-at-pride-1965-1995#young-people-at-pride

From at least the 1970s through the mid-1990s leather, drag, and trans people were commonly lumped together as forms of sexual deviance which hurt the cause of lesbian and gay rights--both by religious conservatives and by more normative gay people.

https://aphyr.com/posts/358-a-history-of-leather-at-pride-1965-1995#reaction-3

During the Lesbian Sex Wars, anti-porn feminists developed a critique of BDSM as fundamentally degrading to women and inimical to lesbian feminism. That rhetorical framework provided a powerful tool for conservatives who moved to censor SM and queer art.

https://aphyr.com/posts/358-a-history-of-leather-at-pride-1965-1995#obscenity-laws

For anyone who asked for a reading list: I got you. https://aphyr.com/posts/358-a-history-of-leather-at-pride-1965-1995#further-reading