Our Chosen Ancestry: Those Who Came Before
More Reflections on South Plains LeatherFest, and the incomparable Mama Vi Johnson
At South Plains LeatherFest a couple of weeks ago, I had the privilege of attending a keynote brunch by Mama Vi Johnson. It was inspiring for some very personal reasons (which I will go into later), but it made me think a lot about the kink community as a whole, and how so much of it is a chosen family. Even if we don’t identity as LGBTQIA+, aspects of our lifestyle, including our nonmonogamy, polyamory, and kink itself can cause us to feel estranged from our “vanilla” lives and relationship structures. Granted, for cis/het people like me, having multiple partners and being kinky is something that can be easily “masked,” and we can “pass” as vanilla in specific ways. And by no stretch of the imagination do I have to deal with the kind of harassment and violence that LGBTQIA+ folks do. But adding kink and/or polyamory to any lived experience adds a certain dimension difficulty and potential alienation.
Last year, when I announced I was leaving my job, I was honored at an event (along with a few others who were leaving/retiring) for my years of service. Each of us got a “plus one, ” but I also had the chance to invite others to this somewhat informal event (Other poly folx may see the predicament that’s coming). I was so happy, as were my partners. The joy of having both of them with me to share in the celebration quickly turned bittersweet when my spouse held my hand. I instinctively found myself reaching for my slave’s hand as well, only to have to pull back because all eyes were on us at the time, and in our small town, where my slave is also employed, the complications, questions, and possible blowback would have been potentially difficult. I know, some of you might say “to Hell with those people, you should have done it anyway.” But I also know many of you understand the potential professional and personal implications – not just for me or my spouse – but for my slave and her nesting partner. Yet I could also feel the complicated emotions coming from my slave as she “shared” in the moment, but was still alienated.
It was an awkwardness that highlighted a certain feeling of being “closeted.” Now, again, as a cis white male, I cannot and will not appropriate the deep history and roots of the “closet” when it comes to my LGBTQIA+ friends and partner. But in most places, your kink and/or your polyamory can’t be public. It’s definitely its own closet (or perhaps a wardrobe? Curtain?). Regardless, we can’t simply “be” out loud. And each of us knows where those lines are, and that they are deeply personal and contextual. I know plenty of leathermen who don’t give a damn and are proudly out in their kink, just as I know people in polycules who are out to their circles of friends. But each has unique circumstances which make that possible: they work remotely, or they live in larger cities where they have been able to cultivate understanding and open friend-circles; or their local friends are also part of their kink communities. We each live in unique personal contexts, but chances are if you or your slave has a “day collar” that is worn “in public” or where you or they work, you can understand this on some level.
For many, the joy of large kink events – particularly those where the entire hotel is reserved – comes from the fact that for a few days, in that bubble of the hotel, we can all be as we are, without filters or fear (for the most part). When I attend events like this, those aspects of my life are not things I have to keep secret. I have a freedom that I don’t have anywhere else. And then when I am around other kinky folx, there are conversations I can have with them – ways that I can support them and that they can support me – that simply can’t happen in public spaces outside of those events. As I have recently been navigating some tender spaces myself linked to my kink and my authority-based relationship; the friendship, support, and camaraderie I needed there was readily available, as was the reassurance that my friends were “my family.” At some point, we have all shown up for each other, and have supported each other through some of the most difficult times.
So yes, while I have not experienced the same level of alienation (or abuse and violence) that my queer and trans chosen family has, I have come to value the bonds that we have created together, and the safety we can offer each other. I cherish those opportunities I have to support them and be supported myself.
Something that is implied in chosen family – but isn’t necessarily explicitly explored – is the fact that with “chosen family” comes an ancestry. Earlier that weekend, Mama Vi was interviewed during a “hot seat” luncheon. As a founder of the Carter-Johnson Library, her final remarks were (and I’m paraphrasing): go to the library, and let your ancestors speak to you. That really hit me in a deep way, because I have seen the term “ancestry” be appropriated in some questionable ways, similar to the way white people use the term “tribe” (as in, ‘these kinky folx are my tribe’), or when white folx use the term “two spirit.” Most of the time, neither is done maliciously, but ignorantly, which we all know does not mitigate the impact of the appropriation of those terms. Now, there isn’t necessarily anything culturally-specific to the term “ancestry,” but I’ve heard it thrown around in ways that give me the ick.
In my professional life, I had a colleague who loved to use the term “ancestor” in ways that weren’t quite racially insensitive, but they were most definitely insensitive-adjacent. He was, like me, a cis/white/straight male academic. Unlike me, however, he would often walk the line between straight-up appropriation of indigenous cultures and true inquiry over the implications of understanding one’s place in a broader ecological movement. If you didn’t know him, it would be easier to give him the benefit of the doubt; but if you did know him personally, you knew that he was most certainly appropriating indigenous cultures with impunity. And the hypocrisy of it all could be made apparent by his inescapable narcissism on social media: pictures of him reverently listening to a tribal elder in the Midwest are juxtaposed with photos of him and his family being pulled around in a rickshaw in India: A fair-skinned, blue eyed tourist family being pulled around by a local in threadbare clothes. Was he contributing to a local economy? Making the conscious choice of not utilizing a fossil-fuel burning vehicle? Or was he perpetuating old Raj-era stereotypes. It’s hard to say, but having witnessed several of his fallings-out with indigenous scholars, as well as run-ins with students of color (which ultimately cost him his position), I have made my judgment.
So prior to hearing (and then later having a beautiful one-on-one conversation with Mama Vi herself), I felt an uneasy relationship with the term “ancestry” when it came to kink and leather. But Mama Vi’s simple direction to “let your ancestors speak to you” in the library space at the conference became a needed validation. Walking among the books, I realized that I actually own several of them, and have used selections from them in classes that I’ve taught both inside and outside of kink spaces. I started to see my own place in a long line of those who came before me.
It may not be an ancestry tied to land or blood, but it is an ancestry tied to histories and experiences. My allyship/accompliceship to the LGBTQIA+ community can only go so far. It was inspired by several factors, not the least of which was experiencing the death of a gay family friend to AIDS in the 80s, or watching my own father continue to struggle with his own sexuality. These were always adjacent experiences. But my experiences being polyamorous and kinky, of having to hide aspects of myself, of experiencing a failed attempt to out me at my job two years ago, are themselves valid and weave me into a larger kink community.
I know the history of Leather. I know that it was and is firmly rooted in gay men’s culture. I know the historical struggles that ensued (and still do) as the leather community opens to (and at times struggles with) greater diversity: from welcoming women and straight folx, to also incorporating BIPOC communities and acknowledging the complex intersectionalities of race, gender, orientation, and class. The leather tapestry isn’t just the physical tapestry of patches of leather houses past and present, it is also tapestry of lived experience, and its awareness of the value of preserving said history through organizations like the Carter-Johnson library.
But in this case, a chosen ancestry isn’t one of appropriation, it is one of love and support. I think of it this way: in my chosen family, I show love, respect, and support by being there as I can, when needed, and particularly in moments when my own privilege may provide some sort of protection or help. But families come with ancestors, do they not? And in a chosen family, we also have ancestors – those chosen families who have supported those who came before; it is the tradition of love and acceptance, traditions of taking in those who need a space to be who they are, and who wish to learn the traditions and safe practices of those who came before. It is an ancestry of education and learning.
At the keynote brunch, I was profoundly affected when Mama Vi asked for everyone under 35 to come up on the stage and join her. She told the rest of us in the audience that these were the generations who were on the front lines, and who needed our help, needed our experience, our respect, and our recognition. She asked that we stand with them and not in front of them. Then she turned to the generations on the stage and said (I’m paraphrasing), look at these people in front of you: they are your elders, your “parents,” and your “grandparents.” Learn from their experiences, they have much they can teach you.
It was a moment that felt like a punch to the heart, which was still healing from stepping away from my university. It reminded me of who I was, and that I was part of a greater legacy of not just kinksters, but educators. Mama Vi reminded me that I had a responsibility to work with others to help guide these next generations. In that moment, I was implicated in an “ancestry” of kinksters and educators; of those who had to learn about kink from books and a very nascent internet, and, as a GenXer, had to work through the deep distrust coming from the generations before. My first experience with a “community” when I was in my mid-twenties was far from ideal or welcoming, in fact, it made me turn away from that community and educate myself.
Yet, I can look beyond that slight with compassion and empathy. I could only imagine how threatening it was to have a new generation of kinksters (particularly one who was cis/straight and a D-type) in the mid 1990s coming in with a basic knowledge of consent and kink gleaned from [and say it as sarcastically as possible] ‘world wide web’. But I was in grad school, and knew how to actually research. I could discern good information from bad. Ironically, what I had learned on the internet then had been written by the very people who are now considered foundational pillars of the kink education community.
So yes, I do rely on a certain ancestry as an educator. That does not mean that I know everything or that it brings any kind of inherent authority. Like the honorific of “Sir,” I expect no one to use it unless they choose to, because any authority I may have as either the Master to my slave, or as an educator or even an elder, that authority and/or respect must be earned. I have a responsibility to keep educating myself, and keep doing the work.
I realized in that moment that even deeper than my kink is my desire to educate. I have always been a teacher and a guide. I have always moved people forward and gotten them to where they needed to be. And in many ways, I saw that, too, as a kind of ancestry. I am the product of the best teachers and professors I had when I was in college and grad school; and I feel that I am part of their greater legacy; and now I see my own students going on to get their PhDs and teaching. The line continues. And when I hear that one of my favorite professors from the past has died, I honor them deeply.
So yes, in our chosen families, we can claim that ancestry, but only if we honor it by giving back to it; only if we recognize it with the same honor and respect that we would show our chosen families. It’s not an ancestry we “own,” but a community in which we “practice” and adapt to the world as the world needs it. A different speaker that weekend asked the audience to embrace changing communities, and uphold and create values that welcome those coming in, and all our new family members have to offer. I jotted down something that I didn’t understand at the time, but do now:
“Our ancestors would not have the capacities to deal with the world as it is now, but we do.”
That’s not an insult to our ancestors, but an acknowledgement that we are the ones who are alive and have efficacy in the present. We are the ones who survived. We will always carry the memories of those who came before, and we have the responsibility to remember them and teach about them, but we also have the responsibility to respect, protect, and uphold the living: to see them, and to support them without holding them back. That can only happen when their physical safety – and very much their right to exist – is protected with our last breaths.
Most importantly, we also have the responsibility to learn from them. They have much to tell us and much to teach us, and we have the capacities to make sure that they remain seen, heard, and respected … and that they can kink not only responsibly, but joyfully.
Vi Johnson is a leather/kink scene treasure. She embodies everything good about our scene.