librarypunk - 035 - Leather Archives & Museum

Episode Date: November 19, 2021

We’re finally here! The Leather Archives & Museum episode! We talk about… the Leather Archives. Just listen to it.  https://twitter.com/leatherarchives  https://www.instagram.com/leatherarchives/ Become a member of the Leather Archives ROAM Program benefits References Bound together: Leather, sex, archives, and contemporary art Sex Museums: The Politics and Performance of Display “Thinking Sex”, Gayle Rubin leatherdyke gender technology - by Daemonum X - Dead but Delicious

Um, I didn't come up with an intro. Jay, do you have an intro? Look at Jay's outfit. It's library. I'm Justin. I'm a Skalkan librarian. My pronouns are he and him. I'm Citi. I work IT at a public library and my pronouns are she and they. I'm Jay. I'm an academic metadata librarian and my pronouns are he him. I'm Carrie. I'm a health sciences librarian. And my pronouns are she, her. And we have a guest. Would you like to introduce yourself?

Hi. I'm Mel. I work at the leather archives and museum, and my pronouns are they then. Yay, we're excited. We've been wanting to do this episode for a while. So thrilled. Cool. Yeah, when you first got back to Justin, I was like, Sim, I noticed us. Yeah, it's exciting to meet the mind behind the memes.

The memes? I mean, you're just social media, right? Oh, yeah. I do those, yeah. I do most of our social media posts. My friend Warren and I are huge fans of the Leather Archive social media because of how well it contextualizes the collections and the content of what a leather archive is and what consent culture is. So we just want to offer our mutual appreciation for your work. It also just brightens my day to be like dune scrolling and then see like a lot.

leather daddy. There's nothing that like it boosts your mood up, you know. I mean that too. Yeah. More leather daddies on Twitter. Hotters, et cetera. Yeah, I'm slowly trying to indoctrinate Instagram into sex positive politics. It's going okay. Good luck with that. I try to spread it where I can and, you know, so do my friends. Well, you know, I don't do a lot of rapping, but, um, going through the house with the pickle in my mouth. Misbehavior. See, I'm just a pervert, so.

That's not my perversion, if you want to call it that. My wife called me a simple pervert yesterday. I was in like, I am but a simple pervert. It was. It's like you're, uh, you're the turnip farmer of perversion. Apparently, yeah. I cannot remember the context, but I'm sure it was more hilarious than I'm letting on.

So, Mel, I wanted to ask, how did you get involved with the leather archives? And what was your career trajectory? So I went to the University of Utah and then the University of British Columbia where I did archival studies. And after that, I worked in Indiana for a few years doing several jobs. one of which was Starbucks. And I worked at Indiana University as an archivist for the recreational sports department. I worked in their digitization program. And it was while I was working down there that I saw this job posting.

And it was perfect. And I'm really glad to be up here. I remember that job posting because I was also job hunting at the same time. I did not apply for this job, though, because I haven't done. I've left archival work far behind me. And I'm also health sciences. I used to work at the University of Utah a few years ago. That's cool.

I really liked there. Yeah, when were you there? Well, I just did my undergraduate there, so I graduated in 2012. Oh, okay. I was there in 2017 to 2019, so that's when I worked there. And then so when you got into the leather archives, what is your job there, actually, since Carrie saw the job posting, I didn't. What do you do with the leather archives?

My job title is archivist and collections librarian. I essentially manage all the collections, including the archives, the library, and museum collections. But because we're such a small institution, we have two full-time staff at the moment. I do a lot of other things. I also work on exhibits, and I do most of our social media,

and all kinds of just everything that to do with people accessing and using the collections as well. And so you get to do, I imagine, since you're doing everything, you are deeply embedded with all the collections. So do you have a favorite collection? My favorite collection is the Tony de Blas collection. Tony de Blas was one of the founders of the museum in 1991. and a really incredible leather community activist and leader of his time. He's the inventor of the leather pride flag.

And he was an extensive documenter of his own life. That's something I really appreciate is people who document themselves and keep records of themselves. And we have about 55 feet of Tony's life. And as I was processing it, I felt like I really got to know him and have intimacy with him, even though he died long before I would have been aware of who he was. And his collection is one of my favorite, just because of the size of it, really allows a deep dive into his life. And he was just such a wonderful person.

And like most of the collections, the leather archives are centered around, like, a few people who were, like, artists and what's what I'm looking for? Like, creatives, like people who were, like, mostly creating things that were, like, cultural signifiers? Is that, like, the main core of the collection? How extensive is it past like the founding collections? Oh my gosh. I recently did a measurement, but I cannot tell you the number. I can't remember. So the size of the archival storage space, just to give you an idea is about the size of a two-bedroom apartment.

And it's pretty full. It's very full. And then the bulk of our collections are, it's really a mix. I really couldn't say what the bulk is. So it's a mix of artists, like you said. Etienne was one of the founding collections. We have several others, including the Hun, who was another major leather artist. And another big category is community organizers and activists.

And a third category is, for lack of a better term, ordinary people who documented their lives. And specifically, their leather and kink and BDS. lives and activities in a way that we could collect. I'm guessing it's mostly manuscript collections, but I've read in the book bound together, there's some like artifacts that go on exhibit. The museum's great. Oh, thank you.

When were you last there? It was when I was in grad school. I think it was 2015, was when I went like the spring of 2015. No, not 2015, 2017. I don't know dates. Yes, spring in 2017 was when I went. I really liked the, I was looking up his name because I can't remember, but the

Bakir Mustafa, stuff, he was the corset tight lacer. And I liked his stuff that was on display. That's cool. Yeah. So, yeah, we are a museum, and that's what most people see when they visit is just the museum part. So minority of people come to access the archives. and what's on display includes a lot of garments, sex toys, devices, some furniture, and then we also collect what in the museum catalog is just categorized as Rialia,

which is almost anything, almost any kind of artifact that's not a garment or a leather item. And we have quite a large T-shirt collection. We collect patches and pins. We have so many of those. Yeah, I was taking a little. look at the collection development policy and like how has that potentially like evolved over the years? Like have you had to make any adjustments to that during your time there? Or is that something that you've had to update as things have come up? Or is that like a growing document that is subject

to recurring assessment? Yeah, it's a growing document and it's changed over time. So originally, we essentially welcomed any and all kinds. of donation of any format and did not appraise or select among those. The museum, after its founding, essentially just accumulated, just kind of sucked in and vacuumed in as much as possible, because a lot of it was undervalued and being lost and at risk. So that made sense for the time while they were trying to build a collection. But we've reached some storage capacities, some storage limits,

especially with regards to the leather garment, the majority of which are vests and sashes, and they're quite large on wieldy objects that are very expensive to store and take up a lot of space. And like the care for those is like really expensive too. The care is ongoing and expensive and we have someone on staff who takes care of that. That's awesome. Yeah. So now I really discourage and have pretty strict criteria for what leather items we take, what garments we take.

and for a long time we weren't accepting trophies and plaques but I've started taking them because you can, I guess I didn't realize this but you can remove the plate usually the metal plate from the actual wooden object and the metal plate is, you know, takes up as much space as a piece of paper so I don't know why we wouldn't take them now.

It's more difficult when it's a trophy or like a big plastic or glass or marble plaque. In that case, there's a lot of those too that I have to turn away. You know, I don't know why that never occurred to me, but yeah, we did have, when I worked in archives, we did have just Hollinger boxes full of wooden plaques, and I really could not figure out why we had any of them. But anyway, reminiscing. I have to ask, like, what's the thing that's, like, stuck out to you most, like, the weirdest thing

at the Weather Archives, you're just like, how did we get this? Or you can just say the coolest thing. I don't know. It's weird. I feel like so much of our collection in any other context would be the weirdest thing. So it's hard to say, like, what's the weirdest or coolest thing in the collection?

We have people really like the eight-pound butt plug. It's on display. It's on display. That's hefty. People love that. As far as we know, it was always just an art piece in a sex shop. It was not an item that anybody used. I love the qualifier as far as we know.

As far as we know. It's like some clockwork orange shit. Like, you never know. It's just what you call a stretch goal, okay? Literally. Well, yeah. We have hair in the collection. People get really excited about hair and body stuff in the collection.

Human hair and body stuff? Explain this. So when we receive a garment or another item that has been used sexually or has body fluids and other, like, a fluvia on it, we try to maintain that as much as possible to the extent that it doesn't cause active damage to the item. So like a jock strap with a cum shot in it is something that we have in the collection. And I watched, so Leslie is the person who does the leather preservation at the archives, Leslie Anderson. And I've watched her carefully work around cum stains to not disturb them. That's amazing. I would love to see the preservation document for cum.

Yeah, I was like really into like, I'm really into the preservation aspects of these materials because of like, the rubber and the leather and these like really kind of like fragile used potentially used materials and like the bodily fluids involved in the materials too like also make them further vulnerable to other kinds of decay in the collection. So like there's all these vulnerabilities that play with them in the collection. So like on a preservation front like what does the archive in museum do. While we tried to maintain it as it is as much as possible, Leslie actively conditions and cleans and checks on and removes things like verdigris from the

letters to prevent their breakdown over time. And then you just have to accept that it's organic material, that it does decay, no matter what you do, it's going to eventually degrade and be nothing. Which seems so antithetical to the purpose of an archives. Like, it's this very zen thing of collecting something and preserving it, knowing that at the end of the day, it will decay eventually. It's pretty zen. I like that.

Do you document the objects in, like, other ways, like photographs or, like, I'm sure there's, like, metadata and, you know, like, records for them, but do you, like, document their physicality in any other way? Yeah, mostly with photographs. Although I do have an idea. You could start like a SketchFab website and start doing 3D scans of like the 8 pound butt blog and then put that up for people to like do 3D printing at like their engineering school. Do you think we could sell that design? Probably.

I mean, yeah, you can copyright anything. You can make NFT if you want to. Do like one of those like plaster things where you like create the mold of it like, you know, people do with their actual. Going. You know, dicks. Yeah. Yeah, no, we haven't said anything like that. As we're working on something, especially a leather item that is going to change appearance after it's been cleaned in conditions, we take photographs through the process. So we know what it looked like in its form as we received it.

And then it's cleaned and conditioned you look afterwards. In situ photographs. Geez, I didn't even think about body fluids. that would have prepared like a whole series of questions. But now I'm just, I'm just taking it in for a moment. You're assuming there's a lot of stuff with blood on it too. Some.

Yeah. Some. We've just received a whip that is blood soaked. And it's definitely the goryest item that we have. Actually, that brings me up, brings me to something I read in the Bound Together book, which was there is a leather sword,

scappered or what's it a flog that was quite possibly an antebellum slavery relic that was then used in a kink community? Do you know about that object? Because I just read about it. I thought that was kind of a strange thing. I have heard about this object. I have not seen it or encountered it. And I don't believe it's in our collections anymore, but that it was at one time. So you can read more about it and it's context in Jennifer Tyberski's book, which is called Sex Museums. She has a very good chapter that talks about it and the context of it.

Yeah, it's I imagine there's a lot of things when it comes to the museum that have to be, how do you give context to a lot of this stuff? Yeah, I was going to ask so please feel free to build on that. When I was there as part of the

women in weather section at the museum, there's a mannequin wearing an SS hat, like in in Nazi regalia, and that is a fetish. So, yeah, I was just about to ask, like, I know a lot of special collections and archives are starting to do, like, harmful language, and I'm putting air quotes around this,

because I kind of object to the term, but harmful language statements where they're sort of describing, like putting a statement out of, like, we might be using language people might consider offensive or harmful. We'll change it in these circumstances, and we won't in these. Here's why the Digital Transgender Archive has a really good statement on their use

of potentially outdated or offensive terms. And so when you are collecting these kink items and that are maybe more taboo, what is the process for that? Anything you want to say about it? Currently, we don't have any kind of statement or framework that really contextualizes those symbols and items in,

the museum or on the website. I do avoid, I do self-censor the things that I put out on very public platforms like Instagram and Twitter, social media, and the catalog of digitized

material. And because I wouldn't want to, with some of these, it's already out there, like in old motorcycle club logos, you'll see, you'll see, Iron Crosses, for example, and you can definitely see those if you go to our patch collection online. That is a bit of a edge case.

I believe there's a database of hate symbols that has a page about it that discusses its history and says that outside of a certain context it's not seen as a hate symbol. But there is stuff like that where people see it and they immediately have the association of its usage in the context of Nazi Germany. So things like that, we currently don't have any kind of, like if you were open the record for one of those patches with that symbol, there would not be a contextualization on the page explaining it. And there are other things that are much more explicit

of what you're talking about. For example, Tom of Finland drew fantasies involving Nazis in his artwork. And I would not digitize that and put it online without some kind of context. But I'm curious about for exhibits, too. Are you careful about what goes on there? Or do people know what they're signing up for when they walk into the leather archives? I'm trying to think of any specific thing like that that we've had out other than that hats, that cover, which is no longer on display. If I were to create an exhibit involving that kind of imagery, I would absolutely.

include a framework and in contextualization, including at the start when somebody was entering into it. I believe the best example you'll find about that is when that particular historic whip flogger knife item was portrayed in an, was put on display in an exhibit that Jennifer Tiberski did, and that's the one that she writes about. Makes sense. I'm kind of interested in what kind of, you said most people aren't using the archives,

but what kind of researchers are coming in and using the archives? Like, what kind of projects do you think they're working on? It's a mix of sociologists, historians, anthropologists, and artists. Artists are a big category. And in the bound together book, they talk about, I should give a proper citation, Andy Campbell's Bound Together, Leather, Sex, Archives, and Contemporary Art. There's a chapter on the Leather Archives. And there's certain definitions that are used in the book,

Like for instance, Andy Campbell gives a long definition of like how he's using the word fucking to incorporate like a wide swath of behaviors and also using leather. I was kind of interested in when you're when you're cataloging or when you're building exhibits or anything internally when you're thinking about these metadata issues. How does the language work? Because Jay works on the homosaurus. And so, you know, I was just wondering if they should probably create a very low. long definition of fucking as well. I know there's currently some work that we're doing with the leather archives if I'm not mistaken, but yes, please tell me everything.

Teach us about fucking. Oh my gosh. And I'm at a data way. Yeah, so I recently joined a subcommittee with the homosaurus team developing kink terms to add to the thesaurus, which will hopefully be. enable us to use it and be our thesaurus after that, because right now we don't have one. Yeah.

I imagine it gets semantically tricky. In terms of using the term leather, like, holistically, do you find that that works for most of the collections of the leather archives in terms of, like, the large swath of, like, behavior is just calling that leather? I can't remember what the other term was. This is why I needed Jada to help me out on some of the terms. I think it's, like, leather. what's the word I'm looking for.

Is it leather BDSM kink and fetish? Not as one term, but like the longer term of like leather. People say leather sex. Yeah, things like that. But yeah, it's like leather is a preferred archival term and a descriptor. But I feel like there's like it also encompasses things like, Cidomazochism or it can include like just the whole swath of behaviors that are tied up with the community? Does that work for the collection, do you think? It's really tricky.

So leather is a very specific queer subculture. And it does not encompass all of kink and sadomasochism and fetish and so-called alt-sex. There are many, many kink and fetish communities and styles, which are don't consider themselves leather, don't even really know what leather is maybe as a separate sub-community. Now we kind of, I've heard people distinguish, between the kink community and the leather community, kink being like everyone who does SM and kink outside of the leather community, essentially. So it's tricky.

So our name is leather archives and museum. We were definitely born in the leather community of leather men. But our mission statement is to collect materials related to leather, BDSM, kink, and fetish, which is a lot of different things, all packaged. together and all associated together. And I think you even see that, like, on some level with, like, the sex shop model. Because, like, in Dallas, there's a store called Leather Masters. But, like, that's one of the major, like, kink and BDSM suppliers of Dallas.

But, like, they started out as a leather shop, essentially. And that's what, like, they're known as, like, a gay band leather culture shop. but they also accommodate this other faction or community within that. So it kind of serves this dual purpose. Oh, cat! Oh, can you see her? Yeah, I see ear. Oh, baby.

Okay, that was a welcome. But yeah, it's like, it's, I think there's a way of like, they have a relationship with each other in a certain way that I don't know how to quite articulate it. but it's, they're related, but they're not quite one. It's almost like, it's like a trap.

It's almost like trapezoids in rectangles on some degree. Like they're both quadrangle, but like they're, that's like what they have in common, right? So they hang out together and they shop at the same store. And they go to the same museum. But like, they're just like not a triangle.

Yeah. even though they like maybe both use a triangle as a simple. But like, you know, like that's, that's potentially like what they have in common. Yeah, like I've seen some good... As far as classification goes. I would have to find the author who wrote it. I, um,

I followed them on Twitter. Um, and it was like in their sub stack or something. And it was about, um, like leather dyke, leather dyke stuff, um, sort of,

and the exploration of gender, but also what does sex, as in the act, not the biological category. Like, even mean and how fluid everything is within leather dyke culture specifically. Like, you'll have this, like, butch lesbian daddy with, like, a little twink, right? Like, and that's still, like, leather dyke stuff. And sort of, like, putting that in sort of contrast with the way a lot of just, like, kink and BDSM communities tend to operate as spaces. and how they explore gender and stuff.

Because there's like queer kink, but then like this like leather, it seems like there's a lot more gender happening in it, at least contemporarily what's going on. But like, you know, there was like, um, PAC Lefia is huge in like kink writing and stuff like that.

So yeah, I'll try to find that. so Justin can put it in the show notes because it's really good. Yeah, I really love Pat Cliffier. I highly recommend all of his nonfiction and essays about leather and kink history and culture. So, yeah, there's not really, the problem is there's not really, there's sort of a nascent umbrella idea of perverted people, people who do kink, people who are fetishy.

but there's not an umbrella term that everyone accepts as the umbrella term. I think the closest one is possibly kink. But again, there's still disputes. So there are a lot of people who practice kink and fetish and what they consider to be kink and fetish without a sexual contact or a sexual relationship or the experience of sexual desire. And those people consider themselves to be kinky,

to be practicing fetish. But the mainstream definition of kink and fetish is that it is sexual. And that there's this completely invisible unacknowledged way in which

kink is parallel to sex and isn't sex for a lot of people, but it's just as powerful as a somatic and physical experience. Right. It's like it can even be things like financial domination or like anything in that realm too like falls into that

same category of power dynamics and relationships or you know and I mean it doesn't even have to be a power dynamic relationship like there are kink and kinks that um right play out over different kinds of dynamics yeah there's both people who practice kink acts as a thing they enjoy to do, like whipping and pain play and playing with different materials like rubber. Right. And then there are people who have power exchange relationships, which are also included in the umbrella of kink and leather. And they may or may not practice things that we consider kink acts. It's just that their relationship dynamic is non-normative. And so therefore, they're included in the definition of kinky people,

or not they actually practice any kink or whether they just have a power exchange dynamic, like you said, with consensual financial domination or something like that. Yeah, I was thinking about this today because I weighed into the discourses. I mean, I don't because no one cares what I have to say about it. But I was reading, you know, kind of how difficult it is. And I imagine it's so difficult to come up with new definitions at a time where it seems like we're trying to hyper-specify things in terms of definitions. And then so people, there seems to be like a lot of,

someone described it as LGBT conservatism, which was not trying to be transgressive. But, and so, you know, the whole, oh, my God, I can't believe I'm going to bring it up. But the queer is a slur discourse. I know I brought it up. I didn't want to. But, yeah, like self-identification.

I imagine it's just so hard to get any consensus in terms. Like, I don't envy homosaurs in your work in terms of trying to get a consensus on that. Because it seems so much of the inherited terms just come from people who are just like, yeah, fuck it. There's no one's going to care what we do anyway. So they're not going to like us. And then you inherit a whole lot of terms. But then, like, trying to positively construct them seems really tricky. It's really difficult.

Yeah, we had an interesting email complaint suggestion the other day. It was where it's like we all agreed with the outcome of it, but we're like, this is for turfy reasons, though. So it's complicated. Yeah, so LGBT conservatism, a term I see around a lot in which I've used as Neo-Puritans. That's what people say on Twitter. Puritines is another term. because the stereotype and belief is that many of these people who are LGBT expressing these very socially conservative beliefs are quite young. Sorry, that one took me a second.

Yeah, Puritans. That's pretty good. I mean, that's... Oh, no, I got it. Because I'm descended from Puritans and I'm a teenager if you didn't know. It's tricky. And we're in a difficult position because there is quite a lot of, for lack of a better term, kinkphobia, kink negativity, kink criticism. in LGBT communities and especially whatever we want to call them,

these sort of like new conservative LGBT communities. And we have a very broad mission statement and scope. And we absolutely do collect representations of kinks and fantasies that are not considered politically moral by these groups and these ideologies and mainstream ideas about what. What is a correct fantasy to have? Yeah, well, I mean, fantasies are complicated like that, right? So I'm in a, I'm taking a feminist theory seminar right now.

And this week we read Gail Rubin's thinking sex, I think is what it's called. And she is one of the founding members of, and it's one of those terms that I've never actually heard out loud, but is it Samoa? Or is it? Samoa. It's Samoa. Okay, yeah, because it's from like a French term, but I wasn't sure, which for those listening who don't know. It's like a lesbian S&M organization during like the lesbian sex wars when that happened. And this essay is sort of in like direct response to like anti-porn, anti-sadomasochism

feminism. And one of the things that it talks about is like by labeling certain behaviors as like good or bad, like you're creating this like hierarchy and, um, in the same. inflating morality and consequence. It was just a really interesting essay that I feel bad for not having read before, but it talks about how like the repression and oppression of sexuality, no matter what it is, is like harmful on like a societal level. So I was happy to learn she was on the board of directors for the leather archives. I didn't know that until like yesterday.

It was a fun fact to learn. Absolutely. Gail is incredible. That's a very good essay. Yeah, I was, I think it was also because I read, I watched the movie Dangerous Scene Method the other night, which is the, Kinky Kroenberg. I took my mom, so I took my mom to see that movie at the theater when it came out, and I was in the middle of like a severe depressive episode that lasted several years. which is like, you want a fun metaphor. Yeah, that's how I saw that movie. And then I rewatched it the other day as well.

Yeah, which is like, anyway, sorry to derail. That's my job here. I'm doing my job. I'm derailing, choo-choo-choo. Chushu. Yeah, I was thinking about it because it's a biopic for those who don't know. It's a biopic about Carl Gustavus Jung and Sigmund Freud. Carl Gustavus Jung, the Swiss.

Sabina Spirond and the other guy, Spilrine. And the other guy, Otto, whatever. Groch. But it got me thinking about like the pathologization. And I think this is something it's brought up in the Boundtogether book is, like I was mentioning before, these were a lot of like just situations where you're not going to really care what other people think. But it was also a lot of pathologization was going on with with kink and sexuality. I mean, just until extremely recently. And like, you know, we're all stoked to have

you on here, but we forget, like, you know, there's not only internal debates in the queer community, but you've also got to deal with like the Jesus freaks. And there's the big fish. And then there's like, you know, there's the micro fights, right? Like, and then there's the macro fights. Yeah. The puritines and the pure boomers. actual pay-pkins. Yeah. Yeah, sometimes I take it for granted. I at least take it for granted that the leather archives exist and that its collections

are valued by so many people. When at the time of its founding, you know, only 30 years ago, that was absolutely not the case. Yeah, we're all older than this archive. And it's just so extremely recent. And I actually was wanting to ask. ask you about this because we mentioned like deteriorization of things but in terms of like the structure of the leather archives because it is as far as I understand it's currently independent in terms of like

the longevity is what an archive does in terms of preserving for a long time in the future are these collections is something about the nature of the collections different in terms of making them more ephemeral if you're understanding what I'm trying to get at in terms of because it's community based because it's contextual in a very certain way. It just occurred to me that maybe we should be talking about the ephemerality of these collections in the different way, but I don't know if you had that thought. Is part of the question what would happen to the collections if the institution was dissolved? Yeah, sorry, I combined two questions there. Would it be better for the institution to have longevity as part of, you know, a university collection,

or would it be better to remain independent and deal with the ephemorality of the possibility of slowly losing funding or having to merge or something like that? I honestly don't know. There are tradeoffs either way, like you've pointed out. I would be, even in the current climate, when the collections that we acquire are being, purchased by institutions like Cornell. Even in the climate when the things that we collect are now considered valuable by a lot of institutions,

I don't necessarily have faith in that. And political circumstances can change so rapidly and so unexpectedly. So based on that, I think it's important that the L.A. and M is independent. and we don't currently have a disposition plan if the institution was dissolved, but I would certainly hope that the collections would be picked up or that we could develop a plan. But I would hate to see them disappear into an institutional archives and sort of be smothered and concealed and censored.

Yeah, that's what I was thinking was like mothballed. It would be very easy if you were a very large institution to swallow up an archive like that. And so, I mean, all archives are ultimately ephemeral, but I was just wondering if there was something because of the politically sensitive nature of it. It's so tenuous that, I don't know. Not to mention the rotting organic material. Yeah, true.

Man, I'm trying not to make really bad jokes. All right. I hope everyone's at home is appreciating my restraint. Not talking about weird shit I've said on the internet. Always appreciating your restraint, Justin. Thank you. You're just bound together tonight. Oh, God.

There's a part in Bound Together that's talking about reading archives on the diagonal in terms of trying to create. And this is where we get into Foucault time. Oh, crap, crap, crap. I wish to reloaded the page. Bree's going to be so mad at us. You didn't even call it Foucault mode. You could have called it Foucault mode. You said Foucault time.

Foucaulte mode. body. Toilet Joe. Yeah. Now, you're right. You should have written the notes for this. Reading the collections diagonally in terms of something that Foucault did, in terms of which is a joke I have as a historian because he really likes genealogies,

which is when you do history without a thesis. And so the Bound Together book talks about reading horizontally in terms of just like, and they specifically like piss play. And they talked specifically about like anything, what was it? They had a yellow file, I think, was what was it was called? Because different things are obviously not, not everything is interoperable in terms of all the metadata. So they were just collecting things as they went through. Oh, this is related, this is related, and this is related.

I just wanted to get your read on how people are doing their research. And is that, I don't know, how did you feel about the depiction of the research process in that chapter? If for political reasons you can't comment, I can cut that question. No, I can comment. Andy's great, and I just reread that chapter today. And I love what he's done and I love the way he talks about it. So many people, many researchers approach the archives looking for an origin to something that is contemporary. So for example, I have people who come into one.

want to study the history of the culture around a specific fetish or a specific kink. Like pup play, which is where you role play as a dog and a trainer and play as dogs together. So pup play is very popular. And there are pup events and pup clubs and all kinds of pop culture and around like how you name yourself and your dynamics with other people and what you wear and how you behave. So a pup play and pup culture is currently really big. And there are a lot of people who are interested in how it started. But historically, there's, like, going back even to the 80s and 90s, there's very little representation and history of people role playing as dogs. Like, it simply wasn't very popular. It just wasn't the thing that a lot of people did.

It was not a thing that was represented very often in erotica even. So I have people who come in who want to learn about the origins of things. But what they're really interested in is the present day, because what they're looking for isn't in the archives. Like, they're not interested in engaging with the archives as the archives are and, like, what they actually contain and actually represent. They're interested in, like, solving a question they have about today. So I really love what Andy did, and I really appreciate a researcher

who can come and simply be with the archives and figure out what the archives contain and how they're and how to interpret it as opposed to coming in with a question with like a specific information that they're trying to find an answer to yeah i used to i mean like this is a really interesting parallel and i used to have this this kind of problem with this is like what i call the bad student problem which is like and especially in like health sciences you see this with like the really bad students which is like I want to prove that like abstinence education will reduce teen pregnancy and I'm like well you're not going to find evidence for that because it doesn't fucking exist but like you know you have to find a professional way of telling people

like there's just not evidence for this like this is just not and that's just like knowing your archive knowing your collection and I think that's that speaks so much watch to like knowing your subject matter and that's just really cool um just gonna go out on a limb and say that's pretty fucking cool um but i think that's like i think that speaks to another thing that like speaks to another thing that like any kind of subject specialist would experience in the course of work but like this just applies to something very kink specific but like if it's a kind of a newer occurring trend in health research. I would be like, oh, this is a newer thing.

We're not going to have a lot of research on it. But that's kind of similar to this kind of research on puppy play. Which, yes, I have seen the trends in the dog masks. I've been seeing those everywhere, the leather dog masks. I think people just like the leather dog masks. But anyway, or they might just be genuinely into it. But yeah, it's been very popular. I was going to ask you about, like, you said a lot of the researchers focus primarily on kind of these humanities and social sciences related disciplines.

But I think the, like, archives on sex-related collections have a lot that they can teach researchers in the sciences, particularly health sciences. What kind of materials do you think might tie into researchers looking into sexual health or sexual health literacy or sexual literacy or sex education? Oh my gosh. So it's hard for me to say because that is very much not my area, but one possible projects and one, like the first source of information, the first source of archives that comes to mind is the development of models for behavior in kink communities and while practicing kink and having sex. So the development of consent models has primarily happened

and been driven by people in leather and BDSM communities. And I have someone who's looking at the history of play party rules and dungeon rules, rules that govern behavior, how people interact with each other in the space. So some of those will be very simple. Like, don't touch somebody without permission.

It's an obvious simple thing that will be a rule for a playspace or a dungeon or a party. And then others are very time period specific and have changed depending on the larger context. And we've experienced this with the pandemic, many of our rules and how we interact have changed. The HIV-AIDS epidemic absolutely changed the way people interact in kink and leather spaces and affected and created a lot of the rules that still apply in certain play spaces, which don't allow certain kinds of sexual contact. So that would be one research project that comes to mind.

But health sciences is so much not something that I've really thought about or engaged with professionally, so I'm not sure. Yeah, well, that's one thing I always try to tie in because I have a background of the humanities, but, like, I became a science queen later on or a science comrade later on. say queen and then self-correct to comrade. But like, there's a lot of material that comes out of, like, own voices and queer community materials that I think definitely needs to be paid attention to, like, especially if there are newsletters and things like that.

That's something that needs to be brought to the attention of health researchers as, like, educational materials that are worth looking at and worth incorporating into your research and knowing that these things are available and accessible. at locations like this. How has, like, pop culture sort of influenced, at least what you see, like, I imagine it probably wouldn't long form influence, like, the museum or the archives, but, like, do you see, like, fluctuating interests depending on, like, pop culture stuff? Like, I hate to be the person to bring this up, but, like, 50 shades of gray.

Like, I don't know. Yeah, if you were at the archive during that period, but. like did you did you see any like dynamics shifting there like and how people engaged with the museum or archive or its materials or was it just business as usual and then the straight people went back to their boring vanilla lives and it was all normal again you know i i was not at the archives during that time i was a person on the internet during that time weren't we all i worked at a public library during that time. Same. I was working customer service at that time. Yeah. So I don't really know how that was any blowback or waves from that were experienced at the museum. I don't know about that. I certainly remember lots of very angry and also self-righteous kink and BSM and leather people talking about 50 shades of gray and how awful it is. But like you mentioned that like poppy play is really popular.

Like has that influenced, like you said it influenced like what people come in to do research on. But like is that your main like bead on sort of what's happening in like the leather community is like who comes into it? Or are there like other avenues where you can kind of like think about like maybe. what to add to the collection or, you know, what's going on in the world is relevant. Yeah. So partly we maintain connected to the community as staff just by being members of the community. It helps a lot, of course. But also, I try to stay up on reading. There's the, So the social networks of kink fetish BDSM leather communities are extremely broad, like way beyond my knowledge of them and so dispersed and often completely unrelated and

unaware of each other. So it would be impossible for me to really have a read on like the broad landscape of kink at this moment. I honestly couldn't tell. I feel like I couldn't tell you. I'm very aware of how narrow like my social life is and my awareness of even the internet is being on it as much as I am. So yeah, it's just a mix of like remaining a member of the community being involved in things. And the people who are coming in, the conversations I have,

I'm still completely capable of being surprised by like niche fetish fetish communities I didn't know about. And which is really exciting. And yeah, so there, I would say, um, like, you asked about pop culture and so there are like pop, there are pop cultural moments that like bring up, drive like kink trends. I don't know that there are definitely the moments like 50 shade of gray that make the mainstream public become aware of kink and like give them a safe quote unquote access to it.

And there are moments like that. And often people are going to assume that kink is what it was portrayed to be in whatever that media was. So a lot of the, I mean, one of the biggest problems people had with 50 shades of gray is the specific portrayal of what Kink and BDSM and Kink and leather BDSM relationships look like as being a very fantasized, specific and unrealistic and unsafe version.

So there are those pop cultural moments that like bring people to Kink and enable. can enable them to discover it. But I honestly couldn't tell you what drives the actual trends in fashion and kink within kink communities. I don't know. Like, I've had several people who have tried to figure out, like,

what are the major influences behind the explosion of pup play? Like, what was the influence and combination of things that made it all of a sudden really popular thing for people to do? And no one's really been able to answer that question. I just realized I pretty much just asked the same question these researchers are asking, like, where did it come from? Like, and you already said, you know,

it comes from wherever. Yeah, I don't know. It's funny. I really, but thinking about it and observing these things, observing these trends, really drives in how non-natural sex is. Like, to what extent sexual and things. physical expression is culturally created. And also like all the interesting new ways that people invent and create to have fun with each other and to like experience sensations that they enjoy. So one thing that I was thinking of recently was ASMR. Do you all like ASMR? I hate it.

Oh, fucking love ASMR. Okay. So ASMR was invented essentially really recently. It's a really recent concept. And it's a physical sensation that people really enjoy. And it's really weird to think that for millions of years no one knew about or had a name for this physical sensation that millions of people love and have a name for now and like to enjoy and like create communities around and which is very profitable. It's really weird to think that that's a new invention that you can just like invent a new feeling, a new physical sensation. It's really strange and kink communities do that all the time.

Yeah, like I follow Anna Valens and she is a trans writer and I think she does sex work. She's really great. And she's written a lot about like giantess fetishes in like video games and writes like lesbian giantess and bore video games for like itch and even I think like makes things in blender and stuff. And I was like, I had no idea this was a thing. But it's just been fascinating to just like see that scroll by every once in a while. And she's like, oh, hey, buy my video game I made about like lesbian, boring and giant fetish. I was like, cool. It's like, which kind of leads me to like with the sort of rise of like video games, like people being able to create them.

There are erotic video games and there always have been. Does the collection have any. have any, collect anything like that or especially like the twine games that come out now? Like, is there any like boring digital things you all collect? No, we do not have a digital collecting program. And I would absolutely love to develop one. There, I mean, so much kink culture and creativity and art, as well as archival records, like people's conversations,

don't happen through postcards now. They happen through instant messages and their Instagram DMs. So so much for the archives of kink communities as well as their creative output is online, like possibly like 90% of it now. And we're not actively collecting it. Yeah, like you mentioned, people who document their lives. It's already a selective historic record of people who are going to, you know, donate their correspondence or save their correspondence and not like just throw it away

as you get letters and stuff. But when it's digital, you, you just forget about the physicality entirely, which is why 2022 is the year physical media. It's kind of my thing. Just thinking, getting people thinking about physicality and media. But yeah, I can imagine doing digital collections is just so hard. We've done whole episodes of talking to people about digital humanities, video game collections, like, this is, you know, we've gone over all the problems with trying to do this. Absolutely. It's a huge project to take on, even just to plan.

Yeah. It's almost as if, like, projects, like documentaries are really some of the best ways to, like, just get something recorded at one point, even if it's a secondary source, like a documentary, because it's really the only way of preservation is going to happen. I think that'll be a really cool project for anyone listening who wants to do documentary series about queer spaces and king spaces and leather spaces online. I was just about to say somebody who's listening to this, volunteer your time to the leather archives and museum to digitize some stuff. Your time. For the good of us all in the future.

Yeah, your servers. There's got to be a fetish for that of people being like, yes. give you my server space. Server DOM. Yeah. I want to be server dom. It's the opposite of the NFT bros. I want to be,

I'm a server sub. I like to have, I like to have my garage Yes. Hey. Rule 34. I'm just saying. Yeah, it's true.

People started getting real horny for gender swapped Columbo the other day on my timeline. And like you said, It's amazing what blooms and you discover. Oh, man, I had a question. Just thinking about pop culture, I just feel like people are going to watch Dune and distill suits and maybe come in and be like, you guys have any of like that recycled Timothy Shalame sweat that I can like buy? This is another thing that came across my timeline. I follow a bunch of depraved people.

Sorry for asking that question. No, if that's invented, it will absolutely have a fetish market. Yeah. So we're at an hour, and we usually try and close on something like action-oriented. So I wanted to ask you, how can people support the leather archives and what can they do to support your work or support the field more generally? Well, you can become a member of the leather archives. You can do that online. It's essentially our version of a Patreon.

It's an annual gift to the museum. You choose your donation amount when you become a member, and then you get certain benefits depending on your membership level. A lot of people go for the Rome membership level. That's, I believe, a national program, if not an international program, where you get free admission to hundreds of museums when you have a Rome membership with one of them. So that's a pretty good deal if you're a museum person or a traveler.

And then you can make a donation to us anytime online. You can find us on Instagram and you can find us on Venmo. Yeah, if you want to fend sub to the leather archives, I guess I'll put a link to that. Yeah, so I'll put a link to all the social media stuff. and everything else, and the donations page for the leather archives. Any last questions before we wrap up? No, no, no.

My nests are kicking in, so my brain is like this right now. Gotcha. Yeah. Okay, Mel, thanks so much for coming on. We really appreciate it. Yeah, thanks for coming on. It was an awesome discussion. It's outstanding.

Thank you so much. And thank you for the work you do. I'm sure you probably don't hear that a lot. The Weather Archives is the happiest place winner. Yeah. I would really love to see any and all of you if you come visit. Let me know. I live in Milwaukee, so it's doable.

Milo from Kuzap and I have been meeting a fun day down to go see the leather archives soon. That would be cool. I also, I love Milwaukee. Well, yeah, let me know if you're ever up here. Yeah. Thanks for having me. I really enjoyed talking with you.

It was good. Awesome. Good night.