Gay leathermen

Beyond the sensual masculine appeal of leather, wearing leather boots, accessories and gear is an expression of ones identity with the leather community. The gay male leather culture began to emerge in the late ’s out of the post-WWII biker culture. To be a Leatherman is to be an individual within a collective. While we hold traditions that are stemmed from a long history with struggles both within and outside the gay community at large, we know the future belongs to the youth, the pups, the kinks.

I didn't know it at the time, but I needed to find a subculture within the gay community that would embrace me. The night of the party, I dressed up in a full leather daddy outfit. Leather subculture denotes practices and styles of dress organized around sexual activities that involve leather garments, such as leather jackets, vests, boots, chaps, harnesses, or other items. Wearing leather garments is one way that participants in this culture self-consciously distinguish themselves from mainstream sexual cultures.

While sapphic people have their own unique relationship to the leather community (and the closely related BDSM community), gay male leather subculture is heavily documented as an essential feature of sexual nonconformity. Each leg stands tall; one rooted in history while the other walks towards the future. Boots that have stood in the seedy, the sleazy, the sexy, and subversive cultures long misunderstood, are buffed to a military polish.

The harness encompasses the heart that has struggled for identity and visibility, adorned with a vest shielding it from the elements and provide a canvas to mark its history. Muir cap crowns the head and as worn hands slide into gloves, a man is transformed, the reckoning of a Leatherman. To be a Leatherman is to be an individual within a collective.

While we hold traditions that are stemmed from a long history with struggles both within and outside the gay community at large, we know the future belongs to the youth, the pups, the kinks. They will define the 21st century look, as leather evolves and blends with rubber and neoprene, each with their own story and their own journey.

It is a history with much strength in our virtues and have had to forge a new community from the ashes of the AIDS crisis, which decimated an entire generation.

I came out as a gay

It celebrates our collective affinity towards the use and wearing of leather, all the ways we use it, and how it defines us and who we become while wearing it. Brotherhood is more than lip service, it is represented in actions towards acts of service, education, and inclusion. There is honor to respect those who have paved the present we have now, and a duty to strive forward to assist men coming into their own. Enter Mike Ruiz, with his professional background, Mike has an opportunity that many do not: help share and enlighten so many people with what it is to be a Leatherman.

Reflecting our diverse brothers within, people like Mike are showing the full colors of the leather community.

Visibility means everything. He understands what it means to carry that namesake as a brother of leather, and the responsibility that comes with it. The future is looking for history, for identity, and for belonging. May you enjoy this project, and hope it promotes conversations, builds understanding, and echoes the belief that there is more that unites us than divides us. From the very first time that I picked up a camera, photography has been a powerful catharsis for a myriad of emotional and psychological issues.

My fascination with the leather community is something that has been brewing beneath the surface all of my adult life. I finally decided to do something about it. MR: My intention initially was self-exploration and curiosity but the more that I learn about the history and protocol of the leather community, the more I become invested in documenting the generations of men who have contributed so much to the LGBTQ community.

Is this project partially a sexual exploration for you? MR: Yes. For all of my adult life, I suffered from the toxic shame of being a gay man. Sixteen months of pandemic-induced celibacy gave me the opportunity get in touch with what it was that I really wanted out of sex. MR: From I worked on a celebrity driven project called Transformations. In I worked on a project called Pretty Masculine which was my effort to reconcile my masculinity with my softer, more sensitive side.

That project foreshadowed this current project a little with a lot of the imagery being Tom of Finland inspired: lots of leather and military uniforms. In I worked on a project called Transmutation which was a metaphor for how he have to mutate in order to survive. MR: Fear of death! MR: Who the hell knows?!

A Leatherman is defined by His relationships to the Men of Our tribe.