New guard

What is new guard?

New guard, also called new leather, is the name for the looser, more open current within leather culture that arose after the 1970s, set against the strictly ordered old guard. Where old guard leans on lineage and protocol, new guard turns on negotiation and on rules you choose together, with the safety motto SSC as its firm ground.

What new guard looks like in practice

New guard does not begin with a master but with a conversation. You agree beforehand what happens, how far it goes and where the limit lies, and only then do you do anything.

The encyclopedia entry on leather culture sets the term new guard, also new leather, against old guard, with the two often cast as opposites: casual against strict, informal against formal. In practice you see that in how people learn the craft. No longer by reading the mood in one leather bar for years, but from books, at workshops, at a munch and online. Someone starting today can book a rope course within a week without anyone checking her lineage first. That is the heart of new guard: the door is open.

What keeps the same shape is the emphasis on consent. The rules are not fixed by tradition, they are fixed because you agree on them.

Where new guard comes from

New guard arose as a counter-word: it exists only because there was an old guard to define itself against. The name covers everything that became looser, more open and less hierarchical as the leather scene grew and broadened from the 1980s on.

One reference point can be dated. The motto SSC, safe, sane and consensual, was coined in August 1983 by David Stein for the New York group Gay Male S/M Activists. Those three words shifted the center of gravity from lineage and rank to the agreement itself, and became the ethical foundation the new guard is associated with. The broader causes, the AIDS crisis that broke mentor lines and later the internet that opened knowledge to everyone, are often named, but are harder to pin down than that one date.

Why people are drawn to new guard

The appeal of new guard is access. You do not have to earn your leather with a closed circle; you can join, learn and ask questions without first standing on the sidelines for years. For anyone who never felt welcome in the classic leather picture, a woman, a straight person, a beginner, that is the whole difference.

What it gives you is room to build your own form. You choose how much structure you want, from loose to strict, without taking on a historical model because it sounds stricter. And because everything rests on negotiation, you learn from the start to talk about limits, which at every level is the safest habit there is.

The downside is real. Without a fixed line of teaching, the quality is more uneven: a weekend course does not replace years of shadowing, and not everything circulating online is correct. And the contrast with old guard is smaller than it looks. Anthropologist Gayle Rubin showed in “Old Guard, New Guard” that the differences are “more a matter of degree than absolute distinctions”.

What new guard is not

“New guard means anything goes.” No. Looser than old guard does not mean without rules. The foundation is precisely SSC and the negotiating of limits, which is often stricter about consent than the old model.

“Old guard and new guard are two separate worlds.” They are cast as opposites, but in practice they blend into each other. Rubin calls it a difference of degree, not of kind; in the 1950s formal and loose styles already existed side by side.

“New guard is an official movement with a charter.” Also no. There is no board and no manifesto. New guard is an umbrella label applied afterward to the more open scene that came after old guard.

What I see myself

I’m Victor, a gigolo, twenty-five years active in BDSM and trained as a psychotherapist. New people almost all come in through the new-guard route these days: first read, then ask, then finally do. I rarely still hear anyone dream of a strict line of teaching under a single master.

That suits me, with one note. The openness makes the scene accessible, and at the same time the odd person thinks watching a clip is the same as being able to do something. Most people have the talking down; the handwork still takes years. So I say honestly what an evening is and is not, and where, for something heavier, you are better off going to an experienced rigger or workshop.

More reading on new guard

On this site the counterpart is at old guard, and the safety motto that props up new guard is at SSC. How much structure you want you arrange apart from any tradition with high protocol or low protocol.

Beyond this site, the encyclopedia entry on leather culture gives the contrast with sources, and the essay “Old Guard, New Guard” by Gayle Rubin puts question marks on the sharp division.

Where this fits on this site

If the open side of new guard appeals to you, that you may learn and ask without first belonging somewhere, that fits exactly how I work. You do not have to prove anything or know anything. The page on the BDSM date lays out how we decide together how much structure you want, and how such an evening is built up.

Sources

• Leather subculture. Wikipedia. Provides that the term new guard, also new leather, arose in distinction from old guard, that both are often presented as opposites (casual against strict, informal against formal), and that the classic old-guard image is heavily romanticized.
• Old Guard, New Guard. Gayle Rubin, Cuir Underground 4.2, 1998, after a 1997 talk. Provides that the differences between old guard and new guard are more a matter of degree than of kind, and that formal and loose styles already existed side by side in the 1950s.

Related terms

• Old guard. The protocol-heavy older tradition new guard is the freer counterpart to.
• SSC. Safe, sane and consensual: the 1983 motto that became the foundation of new guard.
• Low protocol. The looser code of conduct that sits close to the new-guard style.
• Scene. The community in which this shift played out.