Customer Reviews

Leatherfolk: Radical Sex, People, Politics, and Practice

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Leatherfolk's author list includes some of the best known names in the leather community: Dorothy Allison, Geoff Mains, Sam Steward, Jack Fritscher, Mark Thompson, Guy Baldwin, Wickie Stamps, John Preston, Pat Califia, Joseph Bean, and others. The writing is honest and insightful. (This is not another how-to manual.) I highly recommend this book to anyone seeking SM roots; this book offers history, politics, spirituality, and anthropological self-study.

This book sat on my bookshelf for quite a while before I finally sat down and read it cover to cover. I was amazed and impressed by what I read. This anthology features essays by some of the most well-known authors in the leather community including Dorothy Allison, Geoff Mains, Mark Thompson, Guy Baldwin, Pat (now Patrick) Califia, Gayle Rubin, and Joseph Bean. The essays offer a "glimpse" into what "is" the leather community. Topics covered include leather history (from the 1940's through the 1990's, including an excellent essay on the Catacombs, a now legendary San Francisco male fisting and SM playspace), scene politics, spirituality, and numerous other topics about consensual power play.

As other reviewers have pointed out this book is not a "how to guide," but it is of equal value to "SM teaching manuals" in that it gives the reader a "feel" of what this community is about. Those looking to get a better idea of what it is to be in the leather community should read this book, not just for the historical and/or sociological essays here, but just to get the sense (that this anthology conveys) of what the leather scene is about.

This is one of the 4 or 5 books that I always recommend to people who ask me for a reference on the Leather Lifestyle, its meaning and history. This is also a book that I personally use whenever I need to refresh my own memory of events and protocol. If you have any questions about what the Leather Community is about, you need to have this book on your bedside table.

The Leatherfolk Anthology is full of valuable information and first person accounts from within the BDSM community. This book goes beyond the scope of a how-to-manual with more theoretically based essays designed to inform people not directly involved with BDSM and challenge people in the leather community itself. This book is probably not for anyone who doesn't know what "vanilla sex" means or is other wise sexually non-deviant.

The classic work on the leather underground provides a history from the 1940's to the present, resource lists, and 20 black & white photos.

This is a great book for those of us who are interested in the histoy of BDSM and how it clashes or co-exists with mainstream culture. Written at the end of the Bush-Reagan era, this anniversary edition is itself a historical document that shows how far kinky sex has come as well as how thin the social on which it stands truly is. The only strong negative I have is that the vast majority of the contributing authors are homosexual and hets have serious concerns and problems because of their BDSM that gays and lesbians may not have -- it would be good to include everyone in such a colllection because if one group falls, the others may follow.

I expected this book to give a broader view of bdsm than it does: almost all of the contributors are gay men. It's also somewhat outdated, as the newest entries are from the 1990s. I think its best material is in the section "Six Decades of Shadow Dancing," which gives an interesting historical perspective on bdsm (once again, a predominately gay male perspective). The last portion of the book focuses on spiritual aspects of bdsm and includes articles by a former monk and a self-identified shaman. As someone with no background in bdsm, I felt Leatherfolk had some interesting bits, but large chunks of it was too radical for my tastes (I wasn't convinced that all humans should experience the "cosmic erotic ecstasy" of fisting). Something of a disjointed, mixed bag.

This book is pretty good, I think it assumes a little more knowledge than I began with though.

The stories in this book communicate the history and a chronology of the SM and Leather community through various individual's experiences, thoughts and impressions. After reading Thompson's compilation I felt I had a deeper understanding and curiosity for the intricacies of the leather/SM community. The voices are from all over the spectrum and give insights into various multi-layered identities. The editor's determination to portray the chronology and the ancient origins of SM give important foundations for the contemporary commentaries by members of the community. I am a student in a Gay and Lesbian Ethnography class and this was my favorite book over the entire semester and I learned so much through the varied perspectives and historical foundations. It inspired discussions and reflections on sex and how it tends to function socially and personally outside of the SM community and how there is a lot to be learned from that community regarding communication and respect. I must also mention that the piece by Dorothy Allison was one of the most passionate, poetic and evocative excerpts I have read from a lesbian perspective!