From A Canceling To A Covering

My pen name is Karma Said. I’m a journalist, a happily married mother, and a sex slave. I’m the consensual, freelance sex slave of a man who is not my husband. He’s a pro-Dom -- the male term for a Dominatrix -- and the co-founder of my Leather tribe, the Kink Collective. He goes by ‘Master Joshua’ In the kink scene; I refer to him here as my “Maker,” because he was the one who initiated me into the kink and Leather lifestyles.  

When we first met, six years ago, I was researching a feature about the #Metoo movement in the kink scene, to which I was a stranger. Joshua was one of my subjects: a professional Dominant and kink event organizer, battling rumors of sexual abuse.  The rumors, which originated with a Fetlife post by an ex-submissive, were now going viral on social media, he had told me, with people whom he had never even met calling for his “cancellation”. Joshua wanted me to investigate his story so that he could clear his name. I didn’t. First, because my feature aimed to examine a broad social trend, not prove or disprove any specific claim: and second, because -- and this was to my great dismay, as a then monogamous married woman -- I was already getting too personally involved with him to maintain journalistic integrity.

Over the following year, as our relationship transformed from professional to romantic, I watched Joshua slowly lose. First, he lost his standing in the kink and leather communities. Then he lost his business ties, followed by his personal ones, and finally, he lost his partner, home, and his confidence. 

During this period, Joshua often railed against the injustice of it all. He had set out with noble intentions, he had said, seeking understanding Now an outcast, he dreamt of fostering his own community, one better aligned with his idea of Leather values: integrity, transparency, loyalty, respect, and other lofty words, which he seemed to be reciting off a leather themed Hallmark card. I didn't see it. Not in this compelling but sullen man, beating the drum of Injustice, not in the community that so casually cast him aside, and not in myself. An unfateful wife, who strayed off the path and was now lost somewhere she really didn’t belong. 

“I want my own village”, I remember him saying, dreamily. “a village of heroes and monsters.”  

Joshua’s story exemplifies the same social cycle that gave rise to the kink and leather communities as a whole. “Kink” is a broad term for any non-normative sexual behavior; the “kink community” is composed of those who feel excluded from whatever "normal” is,  and are seeking their own clan. “Leather” is a particular subculture within this group. It was formed in the late forties, by gay men who were cast out of the army for being gay,  yet couldn't affiliate with the effeminate gay culture of the times. So they created their own culture. In his “Leatherman's Protocol Handbook”, Leatherman John D Weal describes this first incarnation of Leather as an ultra-masculine secret order, which regulated its often dangerous Sadomasochistic practices with military-style protocols, rituals, and an established hierarchy. Gaining popularity through the 60s and 70s, the movement expanded to enfold various outsider groups and BDSM practitioners from more orientations and genders. It was practically wiped out in the 80s by the AIDS epidemic,  revived in the 90’s as the spiritual base of a different and more diverse set of sexual outliers,  shapeshifted again with the invention of the Internet, and again with 50 Shades, and again with Covid, and probably many times in between. With each new generation, groups that felt rejected or misunderstood by their predecessors would faction off to form their own sub-communities. If these survived, they merged back into broader society, adding their own strand to the weave of kink history. 

Or... so I believe. Most of what I wrote here I learned from books. The only history I can truly vouch for is my own, and that of my own Leather tribe.

From the friends and lovers that stayed by his side, Joshua resurrected what he called his “Kink family”. In 2019, Joshua and his new partner, Cat, expanded this family into our Leather tribe, “the Kink Collective”.  I was quietly skeptical as to its sustainability.  My Maker likes to say  Leather culture is like any other spiritual path or religion, but I know of no other religion fueled by BDSM and dopamine rushes, or reliant on a hierarchy that's derived from erotic and romantic power exchanges. Those kinds of ties are emotional, and volatile. They turn on a dime.  How long before another scorned lover takes to the Internet, and burns the whole thing down again?

But life actually improved, for all of us.  Joshua took me on as his submissive. He and I adopted a strict moral code, and it served me well as I negotiated my way honestly into non-monogamy. Joshua’s kink family became my tribe, and his tribe became my community. It was, indeed,  a volatile one: romantic relationships and power exchanges were endlessly shifting, ending, restarting, reforming. But even when the relationship that brought them into the Kink Collective ended, most people stayed. 

When I asked him, the week before the covering ceremony, how that worked, Joshua looked at me like I was an idiot. “Integrity, transparency, loyalty, respect”, he reiterated, eyebrows arched. “Those aren't just pretty words. It's how I relate to my people,  how my people relate to each other. So even when a relationship ends, this is still their village, still their tribe. It’s where they feel like they belong.”

I myself wasn't feeling it, not until the covering ceremony, when the co-founder of my tribe recognized his disciples for all that they did for the community that once rejected him -- and that community cheered us on. At that moment, it felt like all the outcasts that came before us and all those that would follow were lined up on the same path, leading home.