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Glossary
Old guard
The old, strictly ordered leather tradition where you had to earn your leather, and the image that got polished up a lot later.
What is old guard?
Old guard is the name for the older, tightly structured leather tradition with fixed protocols, ranks, and rituals. In the common image you earned your place inside a closed community of men with high protocol on a military model. Facing old guard is new guard, which handles the rules more loosely.
| In Dutch | sometimes oude garde, though the scene mostly uses the English |
| Category | a tradition within leather culture |
| Opposite | new guard, the freer, more open current |
| Features in the image | high protocol, ranks, initiation, earning your leather |
| Origin | United States, after 1945, partly among returning servicemen |
| Main caveat | the image is heavily romanticized; historians call it partly an origin myth |
What old guard looks like in the image
Old guard stands for leather with rules: whoever wanted to belong learned the manners from someone who had been in it longer.
The encyclopedia entry on leather culture sums up the classic image: old guard is usually presented as a closed, tight-knit community of like-minded men, for instance in the form of motorcycle clubs, that developed a uniform hierarchical set of BDSM practices on a military model. Think of a fixed order of rank, of protocols that go on and off at an agreed moment, and of the idea that you earn your leather rather than buy it. Someone who walked into a leather bar in the seventies as a newcomer was not told everything at once; you read the atmosphere and followed whoever was standing there.
Where old guard comes from
Old guard is rooted in the years after the Second World War. According to the encyclopedia entry, a sizeable part of the early leather community consisted of returning queer servicemen who gathered in large American cities in 1945 and 1946. From those circles, and from the postwar motorcycle-club culture, comes the military model the protocol leans on.
The term itself arose largely after the fact. Anthropologist Gayle Rubin, who studied the San Francisco leather scene from the inside starting in 1978 and earned her doctorate on it in 1994, wrote in “Old Guard, New Guard” that “the shorthand terms can exagerrate and oversimplify our past and our present.” According to her, most of the differences are “more a matter of degree than absolute distinctions”, and many people nowadays treat just about everything before the eighties as “old guard”, while by then the scene had already been through several upheavals.
Why old guard draws people
The appeal of old guard sits in clarity and weight. Fixed protocols take the uncertainty out of an encounter: everyone knows what is expected of them, and it is exactly that limit that gives calm and charge.
What it delivers differs per person. For someone who likes to serve, an order of rank gives a clear place and the feeling of earning something rather than being handed it. For someone who leads, protocol gives a frame in which nothing is left to chance. And for a couple or a group, a shared ritual creates a bond and a history that loose agreements do not give.
What old guard does not deliver is a seal of quality. Stricter is not more serious and not safer; it is a taste and a style. Whoever confuses protocol with quality is looking at the form and not at the bond beneath it.
What old guard is not
“Old guard is a precise, documented tradition.” No, and that is exactly the point. The encyclopedia entry calls the early period so heavily romanticized that some call it the origin myth of the leather scene. Rubin shows that by the fifties several styles already existed side by side, from formal-military to rough bikers.
“Old guard and new guard are two sharply separated camps.” They are often set up as opposites, strict against casual, but in practice they run into each other. The difference is one of degree, not of kind.
“Old guard is the same as high protocol.” High protocol is a way of doing things you can agree on any evening today. Old guard refers to a historical tradition and a community. You can do high protocol without having anything to do with old guard.
What I see myself
I’m Victor, gigolo, active in BDSM for twenty-five years and trained as a psychotherapist. Old guard I mostly hear as a longing for clarity, not for history. Women who ask about it rarely want a motorcycle club from 1965; they want to know that there are rules and that someone holds to them.
What strikes me is how often the word is used as authority: “this is how it is done, that is old guard.” Then I ask further, because a tradition is not proof. The protocols that work, work because you both choose them together, not because someone in the seventies did it that way.
What you can do yourself
- Ask further if someone uses “old guard” as a rule. A tradition is not an argument; what counts is whether an agreement works for you.
- Choose the protocol that suits you, from high protocol to low protocol, instead of taking on a historical model because it sounds stricter.
- Agree on when the protocol goes on and off. Even in the strictest form it applies between a start and an end, not all day.
- Measure the bond, not the form. Stricter feels more serious, but says nothing about how safe or how good a relationship is.
More reading on old guard
On this site the two settings of the protocol are at high protocol and low protocol. What protocol arranges exactly is at protocol.
Beyond this site, the encyclopedia entry on leather culture gives the classic image with sources, and the essay “Old Guard, New Guard” by Gayle Rubin nuances that image from her years of research in the scene.
Where this fits on this site
If it appeals to you that there are clear rules and that someone holds to them, you do not have to take on a whole tradition for that. The page about the BDSM date sets out how we agree beforehand how much structure you want, from loose to strict, and how that works during the evening.
Sources
- Leather subculture. Wikipedia. Gives the classic image of the old guard as a closed community of men with a hierarchical, high-protocol set of BDSM practices on a military model, the postwar origin among returning queer servicemen in 1945 and 1946, and the observation that the early period is so romanticized that some call it the origin myth of the leather scene.
- Old Guard, New Guard. Gayle Rubin, Cuir Underground 4.2, 1998, after a 1997 talk. Gives the insight that the terms old guard and new guard exaggerate and oversimplify the past and present, that the differences are more a matter of degree than of kind, and that by the fifties several styles already existed side by side.
- Gayle Rubin. Wikipedia. Gives the background that Rubin studied the gay leather scene of San Francisco from 1978 as an anthropologist and earned her doctorate on it in 1994 with the dissertation “The Valley of the Kings: Leathermen in San Francisco, 1960-1990”.
Related terms
- New guard. The freer, more open counterpart that came after old guard.
- High protocol. The heavily emphasized way of doing things associated with old guard.
- Low protocol. The looser setting of the same protocol, closer to what new guard favors.
- Protocol. What a protocol arranges exactly, apart from which tradition it comes from.
- Scene. The community within which old guard exists as a concept and as a way of doing things.
Frequently asked questions
What people still ask about old guard.
What is old guard?
Old guard is the older, tightly structured leather tradition with fixed protocols, ranks, and rituals. In the common image you earned your place and your leather inside a closed community of men, with high protocol on a military model. Facing old guard is new guard, which handles the rules more loosely.
Is old guard a real tradition or a myth?
A bit of both. There was a postwar leather community with protocol and hierarchy, but the image was heavily romanticized later. Anthropologist Gayle Rubin, who studied the scene for years, calls the old guard versus new guard opposition exaggerated: the differences are more a matter of degree than of kind.
Is old guard the same as high protocol?
No. High protocol is a way of doing things you can agree on any evening today. Old guard refers to a historical tradition and a community. You can do high protocol without having anything to do with old guard, and that is also what happens most often.
Who can you turn to with questions about old guard?
Victor, gigolo with twenty-five years of experience in BDSM and a background as a psychotherapist. Often under the question about old guard sits a longing for clear rules, and he is glad to talk about that. You can send a message without obligation through the contact form or first chat for free.
Blog
Articles on the unwritten rules of a scene
Old guard is about protocol and reading how things are done. This article is about exactly that: walking into an evening where the rules are already fixed.
Learn more
Still have questions about old guard?
I'm Victor. Does it appeal to you that there are clear rules and that someone holds to them? You do not have to take on a whole tradition for that. Send me a message, no obligation, and I'll message you back at your leisure.