Before reading this, I would like to encourage people who don’t know me to visit my Bio first.
Indonesian often says if you don’t know the person, you don’t care about them.
With all due respect, please do not pay any care of my articles before knowing more about me first 😀
Contextual articles I would recommend you read before this.
The kink community within the gay culture received influences from many aspects. Some of them are positives, but there are negatives. Some people probably will find this article unpopular. However, I think I will write this from my perspective.
We also need to recognize that the leather community encompasses a diverse and wide-ranging umbrella of subcultures. We have the more circuit-party folks, stand-in model folks, BDSM-focused folks, many different kind of fetishes (eg: leather, puppy, rubber), and clubs/ orgs.
There’s one very common thing that’s unfortunate in this gay community, however. Patriarchy and the cult that involves it. Unfortunately, the community has mostly defaulted to white-cis-male to be elevated to pedestals as community leaders. We might have someone that being presented as “Mr. Leather XXX” that is not a white-cis-male. But at the end of the day there’s someone pulling behind the screen that is a white-cis-male.
Having a white-cis-male as a community leader is not wrong per se, but unfortunately, it shallows the pool of leadership and causes the community to be brittle, vulnerable to integrity issues. A person can change and they can change into a better person, but they can also change into the worst.
CW, the man whom I used to respect as the person who helped me, got elevated to the role I have. He had succumbed to alcoholism, which ruined all of his finances and leadership. He became corrupted and started stealing stuff from whatever he owned. We had a spectacular breakup when he insulted me by calling me as a privileged asian for having a day job (I know, it was unbelievable). But his integrity was completely falling apart. And he also turned into online bullying the same way that PR doing with Eagle Dragon.
Then there’s RS. He was a well-respected person in the community for leading academic research on kink and D/s relationships (he was like the north star of master slave relationship). He also led a mentorship group in SF. Then he got caught being on the board of a white supremacist group. He did that because he didn’t want to get divorced with his Nazi husband and instead choosing his husband over his community that he loved.
That being said, the wrong person on a pedestal is not always white-cis-male. Many people are non-binary, black, women, Latinx, (so far I haven’t heard any from asian :D), have gone corrupted and decided to abuse the community from their pedestal.
But in general, if you’re trying to elevate someone to a pedestal, we can use this guidance:
Alcohol & Drugs
Don’t elevate anyone who is an alcoholic/ drug addict, these days new organization applied a bylaw that anybody that got caught not sober would automatically be ejected.
Finance & Health
Don’t elevate anyone with a bad financial record or health record. They need to focus on their finances/ health, not the community.
Self-centered Narcissistic
Don’t elevate self-centered narcissistic people. Some might argue that almost everyone these days needs to be narcissistic thanks to social media. Well, test this, if they’re narcissistic to the point that they would have no hesitation to push people out from the stage so they can be the king of the hill,, this is red flag. Sorry drag queens, we can’t have you.
DEI
I personally don’t believe DEI is the right thing in corporate setting, but DEI should definitely be implemented in Government, Academic and Non-profits.