Leather Unchained: A Brief History of the National Leather Association
In its heyday, the National Leather Association (NLA) was largest and most politically active BDSM organization in the United States and Canada. The NLA’s rapid growth in the late 1980s and early 1990s, its decline in the first decade of the 21st century, and its successes and failures in these years both influenced and reflected trends in the larger BDSM community.
Unlike most BDSM and leather organizations, the NLA’s founders kept good records, and their successors continued this tradition. As a result, we know a great deal about the NLA’s history. We know why it was created, why its leaders made certain decisions, and the problems they and their organization encountered. As a result, it offers lessons for other BDSM activists and organizations, particularly those seeking to operate on regional, national, or even international scales.
Steve Maidhof, Founder of the NLA
Steve Maidhof, a product of the vibrant and diverse BDSM community that developed in San Francisco in the 1970s, was a critical founder of the NLA. After caring for his ailing partner until his death, Maidhof moved to Seattle, whose BDSM community welcomed him and helped heal his spirit. Encouraged by new friends, Maidhof won a local leather title and then unsuccessfully competed at the 1986 International Mr. Leather (IML) contest.
Maidhof’s experience at IML convinced him the BDSM/Leather/Fetish community needed a different kind of event — one focused on education and political activism. His experience in San Francisco, where BDSM organizations regularly hosted mixed gender/orientation events, convinced him men and women needed to work together to make this happen.
Diverse BDSM, fetish, and leather constituencies shared information, which enhanced education and made BDSM play more fun, innovative, and safe. Unifying these constituencies around shared interests was essential to provide the political activism needed to push back against government harassment of BDSM practitioners and to change mainstream attitudes about BDSM.
What seems easy and obvious today was quite difficult in the mid-1980s, both in conception and execution. The very idea of kinky people meeting in public forums to discuss their sexual interests and organize politically was radical. So was Maidhof’s insistence that gays and lesbians work together.
Maidhof established the precedent for gender parity among the NLA’s senior officers. Along with Maidhof, three men, Wayne Gloege, Billy Jefferson, and George Nelson, and three women, Cookie Andrews-Hunt, Jan Lyon, and Vik Stump, played critical roles in organizing the first BDSM conference, which they named Living in Leather (LIL), in 1986.
The Goal
The NLA’s founders aimed to bring men and women together in a supportive environment. They learned from one another, enhanced BDSM education, encouraged safe practices, and collectively addressed political issues. Their influence was felt in topics as diverse as the AIDS crisis to the sexual repression of the Reagan Era, epitomized by police raids on BDSM events, censorship of fetish publications, and legal harassment of people participating in kinky activities.
The NLA’s founders attracted many supporters, but also encountered opposition, not only from mainstream society, but from within their own gay/lesbian or BDSM/leather communities. The homes of several early NLA leaders were vandalized and one was burgled. As a result, several early NLA members hid their real names.
Living in Leather
The conference itself, Living in Leather 1, was a rousing success, which inspired BDSM activism around the country. It became an annual event and sparked the formation of NLA chapters in Vancouver and Portland.
While publicly described as a gay/lesbian organization, the diversity of the NLA’s early membership is best captured by one woman who remarked that her “head is dyke,” but her “cunt is straight.” A growing number of heterosexuals attended LIL conferences and joined the NLA, which became a pansexual organization. It became a meeting place for a diverse array of people exploring the boundaries of their sexuality. Its Living in Leather conference, held annually from 1986 to 2000, established a model that other organizations followed when they hosted their own conferences: daytime educational seminars, workshops, and discussions, and nighttime entertainments ranging from fashion shows, erotic contests, and dungeon parties.
The March on Washington
In 1987, for the first time, a national LGBT organization accepted the visible participation of members of the BDSM and leather communities. The organizers of the March of Washington for Lesbian and Gay rights accepted the participation of a designated SM/Leather Contingent.
This success was largely the work of Barry Douglas, a leading member of GMSMA (Gay Male S/M Activists). Founded in New York in 1980, GMSMA quickly became the largest men’s BDSM organization in the United States. Focused solely on education and political action, it became a leading voice for gay rights in New York, and the single largest fundraiser for many local gay and lesbian charities and services. Assisted by local and regional coordinators, Douglas and GMSMA led the organizing of the SM/Leather Contingent, which marched in Washington behind a banner bearing that name.
The day before the march, a few hundred members of the SM/Leather Contingent attended a day-long conference organized by the NLA. Focused on political activism and organizing, conference participants discussed forming a national BDSM organization. While the NLA used the word “national” in its name, it was far from being a national organization.
Safe, Sane, Consensual Adults
So, in February 1988 roughly 120 people representing several dozen BDSM organizations and businesses gathered in Dallas to discuss creating a national BDSM/leather/fetish organization. Best remembered for vitriolic arguments that exposed divisions in the community between men and women, the East Coast and West Coast, old clubs and new, and those not affiliated with any club, the conference created a new organization named Safe Sane Consensual Adults (SSCA).
Members of GMSMA coined the phrase “safe, sane, consensual,” a few years earlier, adding “consensual” to the “safe and sane” phrasing popularized by Tony DeBlase in DungeonMaster magazine, a widely read publication — and the first of its kind — that explored the practical aspects of BDSM activities. The phrase “safe, sane, consensual” gained national attention at the March on Washington, and was formally adopted by BDSM activists in Dallas. This, along with assigning a host of political and organizing tasks to the SSCA, was the conference’s only positive accomplishment.
NLA Becomes Truly National and Pansexual
Burdened by the political infighting of Dallas, which continued afterward in nasty exchanges of letters and magazine editorials, the SSCA failed to gain support among leading BDSM organizations. Its leaders, who included Tony DeBlase, concluded that only by merging with the NLA could they advance the agenda discussed in Dallas. The NLA, which had added chapters in other cities and was slowly growing, was the only functioning, national BDSM organization, and the only one performing many of SSCA’s assigned duties: hosting a national convention, publishing a newsletter with national club and event information, and engaging in political action and fundraising.
Merging with the SSCA accelerated changes already underway in the NLA. It became a truly national organization and avowedly pansexual, open to people regardless of sexual orientation, which the SSCA required. Between January 1989 and September 1991, the NLA grew from 289 to 827 members scattered across 46 states. Chapters increased from three to 16 and new ones continued to form, giving the NLA a presence in practically every major American city.
Community Across the Gaps
The NLA aimed to bridge gaps of geography, experience, gender, and sexual orientation. As Laura Antoniou, who helped found New York’s NLA chapter, later noted: “It was NLA that dared to believe we could call ourselves a ‘community,’ 25 years ago. Today, we use the term as if we’ve always thought of all the myriad parts of our BDSM/kink/rubber/leather /fetish/whoozits groups as somehow connected. But it was NLA that gave us that truly radical notion — that the kinksters in Butte had something in common with the players in Raleigh, and with the clubs in New York City.”
Diversity Overcomes Divisions
Overcoming these divisions was not easy. While NLA leaders worked to popularize pansexuality, several NLA chapters split over that issue or lost members. Most of NLA Denver’s gay members left the group, declaring that NLA really stood for “nasty lesbian association.” Other chapters experienced tensions over cultural issues, usually the extent to which they should follow traditions common to gay motorcycle clubs, so-called “backpatch” clubs, and similarly organized fraternal BDSM groups, such as the prestigious Chicago Hellfire Club, the nation’s second oldest BDSM organization.
Both TES, the first BDSM organization, which formed in New York in 1971, and Society of Janus, which formed a few years later in San Francisco, lost most of their gay and lesbian members over time as dedicated men’s and women’s BDSM organizations formed, such as Gay-Male S/M Activists (GMSMA), Samois, and the Lesbian Sex Mafia (LSM).
In contrast, the NLA thrived as a diverse, pansexual organization. Rather than cause for division, the NLA’s dedication to diversity became the source of its strength. The NLA’s leaders embraced pansexuality and encouraged members to use the term.
The NLA’s annual Living in Leather conference thrived, attracting more people each year as it moved from Seattle (LIL 1, 2, and 3) to Portland (LIL 4 and 5), and then Chicago (LIL 6 and 7). Attendance at LIL 7 topped 700 and cemented LIL’s place as the premier event for BDSM education and organizing, even as other local BDSM groups (and NLA chapters) began hosting their conferences. LIL attracted the community’s best-known leaders, speakers, and teachers. Activists launched new initiatives at LIL, and its attendees discussed and debated BDSM techniques, both old and new.
The Fight Against Censorship and Disparagement
The NLA fought against censorship and supported organizations and people harassed by the police and raised funds for local and national political causes. Chuck Higgins led the NLA’s best known initiative of these years: raising funds for the appeal of the Spanner defendants, a dozen British men convicted and imprisoned for up to four years for engaging in consensual BDSM activities. NLA members demonstrated outside the British consulate in Chicago and spearheaded American fundraising activities that quickly raised more than $50,000 and eventually paid more than half the Spanner defendants’ legal expenses.
Other NLA members lobbied for changes in the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic Standards Manual (DSM), which pejoratively defined sexual masochism and sexual sadism. Like gay activists a generation earlier, they hoped changing the opinions of medical professionals would contribute to changing mainstream attitudes and destigmatizing their sexuality.
Domestic Violence Project
The NLA was also the first BDSM organization to directly address the problem of domestic violence. Led by Jan Hall, it raised awareness about the issue, formed dedicated committees to address it, and issued detailed statements explaining the difference between consensual BDSM play and domestic violence. In particular, the NLA worked to address people within the BDSM community who perpetrated violence while claiming it was BDSM. Consensual play and domestic violence, NLA leaders repeatedly declared, were incompatible.
The NLA’s Domestic Violence Project was important in its own right but also supported the NLA’s larger political goal of ending harassment of BDSM practitioners, businesses, and organizations. Winning mainstream acceptance of BDSM activities required presenting them as “safe, sane, and consensual.” This required rooting out domestic abuse and violence within the BDSM community.
Scandals, Challenges, and Burdens
The NLA’s rapid growth in the late 1980s and early 1990s, though, concealed several problems. The SSCA’s complicated charter required the NLA to form a National Council that included representatives from each chapter and affiliate organization, along with matching individual representatives. Filling every position on the council proved impossible. Yet, even with empty seats it was too large to function effectively.
The NLA’s growing administrative burdens required a paid employee and office, which added to growing printing, mailing, telephone, and other costs. Embezzlement by an NLA treasurer, a trusted and revered member of older leather clubs, made matters worse.
The rising death toll of NLA members devastated the group. While precise numbers are uncertain, more than 50 NLA members died between the organization’s founding in 1986 and LIL 7 in 1992, most of them from AIDS related health problems. Another 27 members died between LIL 7 and LIL 8. In less than a decade, roughly ten percent of the NLA’s membership died including its founder, Steve Maidhof.
Guy Baldwin (1989 Mr. NLA and International Mr. Leather) once commented that the NLA never fully recovered from the embezzlement scandal. Certainly, its membership never again approached its peak of roughly 1,000. Nonetheless, the NLA instituted rigorous administrative and financial reforms, and returned to what it did best: hosting the Living in Leather conferences and providing a forum for discussion and political organizing. Membership, along with LIL attendance, rebounded, and the NLA played an active role in raising funds for numerous causes including the Houghtons, a New England couple who lost custody of their children and faced serious criminal charges when a relative discovered their BDSM activities.
Despite administrative changes, though, the NLA continued to reflect its mid-1980s origins. By the mid-1990s, hundreds of new, local BDSM organizations had formed. Several dozen hosted their own annual conferences, as did many NLA chapters, including Austin, Dallas, Houston, New England, and San Diego. The NLA created a model of club formation and conference organizing that anyone could follow. New conferences and events crowded the calendar and competed for attendance with LIL, which became less and less unique. BDSM publishing flourished, showcased by the works of Laura Antoniou, Race Bannon, John Warren, Jay Wiseman, and others who made BDSM information (and erotica) more accessible than ever before. The growth of the Internet in the late 1990s accelerated this process. People no longer needed to join a local BDSM group or attend a conference like LIL to acquire BDSM information.
The NLA’s leaders hoped to expand their organization internationally, and in fact changed its name to the awkward NLA-International, for the first (and only) Living in Leather conference held outside the United States, LIL 9, in Toronto, Canada. In addition to more than two-dozen chapters in the United States, the NLA formed Canadian chapters in British Columbia, Calgary, Edmonton, and Toronto. For a time, it had members in Japan, Australia, New Zealand, and several European countries.
NLA Co-Chair Chuck Higgins traveled repeatedly to Europe where he shared his experience and encouraged the formation of local BDSM groups. Apart from an Australian chapter, which left the NLA and became an independent organization after about a year, efforts to form NLA chapters outside of North America failed. Even Hawaii proved too distant, the small chapter there lasting only a few years before folding.
Coordination and communication problems plagued relations with all these chapters, which tensions over dues, the exchange rate between Canadian and American dollars, and how that money was spent, exacerbated. There seemed little the NLA could do for its distant chapters, and thus no reason for them to belong to the NLA.
New Organizations Fill Gaps
While the NLA’s leaders struggled to redefine their organization for the new millennium, new organizations filled needs previously met by the NLA. The National Coalition for Sexual Freedom, founded in 1997 by Susan Wright, a member of several New York BDSM organizations, including NLA Metro New York, helped members of sexual minorities with legal problems and devoted much of its attention to the BDSM community. The Leather Leadership Conference, which grew out of meetings at the LIL conferences, provided a forum for political discussion and activism.
Attendance at both LIL 14 (Fort Lauderdale, 1999) and LIL 15 (Seattle, 2000) proved disappointing and left the NLA deeply in debt. Membership declined. LIL 16 was canceled for lack of registration. Morale plummeted. A ballot initiative to dissolve the NLA failed, but solutions to the NLA’s problems proved elusive. The NLA’s Dallas chapter hosted LIL in 2002, but this proved the last LIL.
Disputes among the NLA’s local chapters and the confused relations between those local chapters and the NLA’s national apparatus absorbed a disproportionate share of their leaders’ attention. Arguably, they prevented the NLA from launching more ambitious initiatives. Yet, it was the NLA’s local chapters, particularly those in Columbus, Dallas, New England, and Oklahoma City, that kept the organization afloat over the next few years as it struggled to find new leadership and direction.
A succession of interim presidents stabilized NLA-I and paid off its debts, which paved the way for renewed growth in chapters and membership. NLA leaders decided against bringing back Living in Leather, a huge, expensive national convention, and instead worked to support conferences hosted by its local chapters, including Dallas (Beyond Vanilla), Houston (Spring Iniquity), and Oklahoma City (Tribal Fire).
While the NLA’s Mr. and Ms. NLA title contest never caught on and was disbanded in the mid-1990s, annual awards for BDSM writers, inaugurated in 2007, proved popular and celebrated the works of the community’s leading authors, including Laura Antoniou, Jack Fritscher, Lee Harrington, Mollena Williams, and many others.
Ties That Bind
The NLA’s complex local/national structure and the diverse background and orientation of its members produced tensions and disputes over the years. Many have pointed to these as weaknesses, and various critics have written off the NLA as dead over the course of its history. Yet, the NLA survived. In fact, the NLA’s very diversity helped it survive and proved the source of its strength in its darkest hours. As in the past, this diversity also fueled growth. None of us is so wise that we cannot learn more, and every educator knows that diversity enhances education. We learn from one another, and we support one another. This is how communities are built and this, more than anything else, was the central, shared ethos of the NLA’s founders.
A common truism of democratic politics is that “all politics are local.” The same proved true for the BDSM community. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, the NLA’s leaders worked at the national level to change mainstream attitudes toward BDSM and end the harassment of its practitioners. As much as the average BDSM practitioner may have appreciated this, they cared much more about attending their local BDSM conference or play party than how psychiatrists defined their activities. The NLA’s strength was in its local chapters. When its chapters grew, the NLA grew. Increasingly, though, the NLA’s chapters focused on local rather than national concerns. Many, including Portland, San Diego, and Seattle, left the NLA entirely at the request of members who felt little connection to the NLA’s national leadership and mission.
Members of the BDSM community commonly evoke the phrase “the ties that bind us,” referring both to their own BDSM activities, which may involve getting tied up, and how their shared interest in kinky activities brings them together and binds them into a community. At its best, the NLA exemplified this, its growth fueled by a diverse, national membership. That same diversity of interests, though, could be disruptive.
While the NLA recovered from the worst of its crises, it did so by largely abandoning its national mission. The challenge for the NLA — or any organization that seeks to supplant it and represent the BDSM community at the national level — is to find a way to meet the needs of local community members while developing a larger political agenda and pursuing goals of national — or even international — importance.
At the moment, those goals are undefined, in part because no organization exists to define and promote a clear agenda as the NLA did in the late 1980s and 1990s.