Leather and Hyde: Market Niche Miracle

Leather and Hyde

Odysseys and Observations
Market Niche Miracle
by Debra Hyde

Going Commercial

Yes, leather/fetish has "gone mainstream"... it's been a long time coming and it may not be a wholly bad thing. It may, in all actuality, be just what leather/fetish needs.

noted leather historian and cultural anthropologist Gayle Rubin surmised that the big difference between leather today and leather of yesteryear comes down to "more people, more money, more commercialization." I have to admit that when I first read those words, I fought the usual knee-jerk reactions I get over old-versus-new-leather issues. It's an old bad habit, one where I sense a derogatory slant behind "old leather" observations, and it's a habit which, if I don't watch it, prevents me from seeing the truth in a statement. Certainly, Rubin's statement could've put me in that ballpark -- the assumption that my mid-life involvement in leather is nothing more than a thing of wide-spread commercialization had every potential of rankling me.

But I fought the temptation to presume and judge what sentiments lie behind Rubin's words. In doing so, I realized I agree with her. I didn't recognize that fact in those initial knee-jerk moments but, in flipping through a notebook of ideas I keep, I found I had outlined similar thoughts a mere half-dozen pages into a now nearly full notebook.

Yes, leather/fetish has "gone mainstream." It has taken on commercial appeal. But I'm going on the record to say that it's been a long time coming and it may not be a wholly bad thing. It may, in all actuality, be just what leather/fetish needs.

An Inevitable Evolution

Leather's moving mainstream for one simple reason: we live in an increasingly consumption-driven society. We base our success as a country and as a society on what we produce and on our ability to out-produce other nations. But that's only half the story. The other half? Simple: our ability to produce succeeds only if we consume. So, as each decade closes behind us, we become more and more entrenched in the fine art of accumulating goods.

You only need to compare the household inventories of the 1950s with the household inventories today to see what I mean. In the 1950s, acquiring a decent -- not necessarily new, even -- refrigerator, stove, washer and drier, car, and television marked a successful accumulations of goods. Today, those same items (plus automatic dishwasher and microwave) are givens... baselines if you will. Now, you're more likely to measure success in the number of phone lines, computers, home fax machines, cell phones, video game systems, and home entertainment systems (you know, stereos and televisions) that you own.

Call it rampant consumerism, a healthy capitalism; call it the steady march of free market enterprise, but I call it the path to legitimacy.

Legitimacy? Yes, legitimacy.

"The stock market is a cruel Mistress."

"So am I, and I don't want to make my money that way anymore."

--News Radio

Because in a consumer society, if it makes money, if it can be consumed, if it contributes to our gross national product, then it's good for the survival and success of our society. Oh, we fight the notion, especially in the historic face of morality, but the very prospect of dismantling any billion dollar industry -- take the adult entertainment industry, for example-- will have all but the staunchest conservative backpeddling into laissez-faire justifications.

When it comes to leather and fetish, you can see the signs everywhere. From sitcom dialog: "The stock market is a cruel Mistress." "So am I, and I don't want to make my money that way anymore." -- News Radio. From Madonna's Erotica and Express Yourself, and Nine Inch Nails's Happiness in Slavery and Closer. Even your local Spencer's -- gift store to practical jokers everywhere -- sells little floggers and crops right along side the edible undies and foamy body sprays. And I don't even have to discuss haute couture; fetish has waxed and waned and waxed again on the international catwalks this decade probably as many times as Gaultier's had his ears pierced.

Niche Mentality at Work

As consumerism matured in America, it gave rise to the notion of segmentation, to niches in the marketplace. Not every product is a Maytag washer that can be promoted across-the-board to all America, and industries left and right look for successful "niches" in which to make their millions. For example, of the 27 million televisions sold in this country, less than 20 thousand were high definition sets and industry experts admit HDTV won't become mainstream until it becomes as affordable as conventional televisions. For now, despite the hype, HDTV struggles to attain even niche market status. But niche is not a new thing.

I've long believed that we, as a society, have always held niche beliefs and practices, dating back to colonial days when people sought religious freedom. Despite historic high and lows in religious prejudice, we have, in the course of establishing the right to pursue religious freedom, also created an atmosphere of religious choice. Count up the number of churches, synagogues, and mosques in your town to see what I mean.

Then, our history of immigration gave us ethnic pluralism. We came from all over the world to be here, and the melting pot of amalgamation created a goulash of cultural ingredients. We may be one thing -- America -- but America is a thing of many influences.

In time, religion lost its strong influence in our society, ethnicity largely melted into assimilation, and we turned to consuming as we accumulated post-world war wealth. With that, came the questioning of institutions, challenging the status quo they expected of us, and, ultimately, a swift dismantling of them. As those institutions fell by the wayside, so went the taboos that helped define them. Why? Because our own pluralism exposed both our differences and our commonalities and forced us, over time, to question the definition of "the norm."

Certainly, increased secularism and consumerism has forced us to destigmatize much. Yes, it's sometimes required radical measures to accomplish that. The civil rights movement needed Selma and Montgomery, Alabama to force America to question segregation. Gay and lesbian freedom needed the catalyst of Stonewall to propel it forward. And baby-boomer women graduating from college and entering the workplace en mass compelled American society to accept the practicalities of feminism, if not the philosophies. Just try disengaging women -- or any segment of society for that matter -- from the workplace and see what happens to the gross national product.

Marginalization is becoming less and less of a driving force in our collective belief system. Look at the mental health industry.

Every effort to destigmatize SM sex... points us away from BDSM as a taboo and towards BDSM as an accepted sexual practice.

People who need and use its medical services call themselves -- with every justification -- mental health consumers. Not patients. Not victims. Consumers. Users of goods and services. All of which implies they have a right to be treated as any other consumer of the medical goods and services without prejudice. Which contributes to a better delivery of goods and services. Which builds the health care industry and its profitability as a whole. Which contributes to increased demystification, public awareness, and acceptance. Indeed, today's wide-spread acceptance of Prozac and "talk" therapy show that consumerism has influenced the public perception of psychiatric illness and the delivery of treatment for the better.

Leather, in fact, has had its own history, fighting old psychiatric stigma. Therapist/advocates like Guy Baldwin and Jack Rinella have dedicated decades to confronting the psychiatric establishment over the pathological slant that's always been applied to sadomasochism. Even today, there's a push to retool the definitions of sexual philiae to acknowledge that both healthy sexual expression and pathological expression exist. And, finally, more and more people walk into their therapists' office these days and declare, "I'm into SM, it's a big part of who I am, but I don't consider it a problem in my life and you should know about it as I work through the goals I've set."

Every effort to destigmatize SM sex, whether it's in the editorial boardroom of the psychiatric industry or in the lone office of a therapist, points us away from BDSM as a taboo and towards BDSM as an accepted sexual practice.

Coming into Its Own

So why the history lesson? First, I wanted to illustrate the ever-changing landscape of American society and how it has moved us into a level of consumerism that's become a linchpin in our social existence. It's hard to avoid commercialism anywhere because it's everywhere. Also, I wanted to illustrate that change itself is characteristic of American society. We have a history of continually remaking ourselves and, where we once changed over the course of an era, now we change every decade. Leather is no exception to that rule of practice. Just as the 1950's household looks different from the 1990's household, so does the 1950's leather scene from the 1990's. Every decade has brought change to leather existence. It has never been a static thing.

And now, perhaps, leather will gain some level of public tolerance, thanks to so many aspects of life becoming "consumerized." First, the gay, bi, lesbian, and straight SM avenues are beginning to converge, pooling us into one presence and purchasing power, into one visible niche. Both social and merchant support has sprouted up everywhere to meet that presence. Once, you once had to live near New York City or San Francisco to access leather/SM groups and leather shops; now you can live in any major city and find some level of resources. And, in just the last few years, small cities and regions also host what use to be the esoteric province of the biggest cities. Within my suburban New England existence, I'm a fifteen minute drive from three leather shops, forty-five minutes within three pansexual leather/SM groups, and no more than an hour from a number of clubs offering "fetish nights." A decade ago, none of these resources existed.

Too, the Internet has emerged as the driving force behind heightened public awareness of BDSM. (In many ways, it's the epitome of the kind of rushed social change we've seen this century.) The moment flat-rate Internet access became the norm, masses of people in search of sexual fulfillment seemed to find out about leather, fetish, SM, BDSM, whatever label you wish to apply.

For every consumer who walks into a leather shop and buys a flogger, even more people make casual, passing contact with information about BDSM.

And, while it has changed the very nature of leather, it has also assured its survival. Certainly, the cottage industries of leather makers, adult toys, public play sites, and erotica have immediately benefited from a larger pool of consumers.

Consider this: For every consumer who walks into a leather shop and buys a flogger, even more people make casual, passing contact with information about BDSM. Maybe it's free fetish pictures on a Web page. Maybe they're wandered into a chat room unknowingly or -- more likely -- SM-curiously. Maybe they're accessed SM FAQs and discovered that one can approach SM with reasoned thoughtfulness in even the edgiest of activities. Maybe they've encountered more and more "nice people" online who are into "this stuff." Just as exposure to our pluralisms made us question our rigid cultural institutions in the 1960s, maybe we're questioning the last of our sexual taboos in the 1990s.

And that's where I see the real benefit of "consumerizing" leather.

I'm not naive about the possibility of wide-spread tolerance. I don't think it's going to happen overnight or without some struggles. But it is going to happen more swiftly than we imagined, thanks to the Internet's widespread information and people's contact with that information. Touching taboo and finding you aren't instantly scathed leaves you to question whether SM is as evil as you've been told to think it is.

What do I hope will come from leather's mainstreaming? Well, I don't expect every little pub to start having fetish nights and I don't expect neighbors to gather over beers and negotiate impending play. The hopes I do have sincere and simple: I hope to someday have the freedom to practice my sexual without fear of arrest. I hope to practice it without fear of losing my children.

If swiping the credit card is one avenue towards social acceptance, I'll do it.

Kink in a Box

Yesterday, feeling stressed, I wandered into my local bookstore to do some browsing. Call it my own little calming technique. As part of my usual routine, I wandered back to the sexuality section to see its latest additions. Despite its odd placement between "Death and Dying" and "Recovery," "Sex and Erotica" is a section that's grown in leaps and bounds since the store opened a few years ago. There, I can find everything from Susie Bright's latest thoughtful book to a racy The Captivity of Insert-Feminine-Name-Here. This time, though, I found a new little how-to creation from Simon and Schuster. Called "The Erotic Way," it's a book-in-a-box and gives readers the ways and means for spicing up their sex lives. The ways are pages of scenarios; the means are props -- props which include a blindfold, silk curtain sash, and feather. Remember how the baseline for accumulated household goods changed over time? Well, it seems that the baseline for good sex now includes some basic bondage, simple sensory deprivation, and gentle sensation play.

Fine with me.

Let people touch it and discover it. Let them wonder and marvel. Because then they'll have some sense of what it is I do and, if they're thoughtful and open-minded, they won't routinely condemn me.

I'm glad to see the toys of sexual exploration move from adult book stores to accessible, mass-marketed kits and, if improving vanilla loving means toeing the waters of BDSM, so be it. Let people touch it and discover it. Let them wonder and marvel. Because then they'll have some sense of what it is I do and, if they're thoughtful and open-minded, they won't routinely condemn me.

Oddly enough, in the closing moments of writing this piece, I came across a notable thought from Nation Public Radio commentator, Peter Trachtenberg, in his recent memoir, "7 Tattoos." In it, he reflected on the modern nature of deviance, commenting, "The truth, the most painful truth of all, is that in the 1990s deviance is a marketing strategy." Alternative rock group, Sough Coughing 's Casio Tone Nation echoed Trachtenberg's conclusion. Everyone, they observed, belonged to a five-percent nation of some kind and they actually acknowledged "the five percent nation of nipple clamps."

Yes, consumerism has co-opted almost every aspect of American subcultures, leaving little untouched and underground. But, by being above-ground, we can confront the stigma that forced us into the underground in the first place. And perhaps, just perhaps, we can overcome that stigma and do what we do freely, in the light of the day.

About the Author

Debra Hyde is a mostly submissive switch who lives in New England with her husband, two children, three cats, and a dog. She says she is "well-owned and well-loved" by a very special Master, and shares a unique triangle with him and her somewhat submissive husband.

"When England Calls," one of Debra's short stories, graces the pages of the recently published Mammoth Book of Historical Erotica. She is currently working on a number of others, as well as the Great American Leather Novel. Her BDSM work has been previously published on the Internet by Leather Online and Section 12, but Leather and Hyde was her first regular column, originally hosted by About.com's BDSM site and relocated here with her kind permission.

Debra also maintains a personal Weblog called Pursed Lips and can be reached at 75222.2150@compuserve.com... but no junk mail or "Wannas," please.