Everyone needs to be the Leather Guardian of Chaos.

Do we need guards to ensure that our community is a safe space? Yes.
Do we need guards to dictate how things should be done in that space? No.

We often hear about this ‘Old Guard’ and ‘New Guard’ thing in the leather community. I despise those. It prompts people to stereotype the diverse community we have. It assumes that every white cis-male boomer is this conservative old guard. It assumes that every young unicorn furry is a new guard.

I instead called those that have conservative values ‘Old School’ and those who have more progressive values ‘New School’, trying to stay away from the label of identity but more into the label of learning.

Some Old School definition typically entails those who follow the strict interpretation of leather uniform; those who follow the strict interpretations of relationships, whether Dominant/ Submissive (D/s) relationships or Monogamous or Polyamorous relationships, to a rigorous understanding of how kinks should be done. Perhaps I can also call that this old school believes are the followers of conformist. There is probably something that was said by a Dominant in the past and it was passed to their Submissive, then passed to the next. This in turn somehow became a religion that everyone has to follow.

Which brings me to the subject of pontification. There’s this battle of people trying to pontificate the community. I think the patterns usually come from those who used to submit under a previous Dominant and are now a Dom. These new Dom are trying to get some level of validations that they are the new rightful dom. Rehearsing what they have learned from their own dom, they would find a group of newbies and try to pontificate the community by setting a certain standards of how to do kink.

Well,,, guess what?

There’s no right way to do kink. The only thing we have; is just making sure people know what’s safe and consensual, what’s not, and how to mitigate the risk of what’s unsafe.

So,,, let me pontificate this to you. Be the Guardian of Chaos. It’s okay for everyone to do whatever they like. It’s okay for people to know what they want and be what they want. It’s up to them whether they have the capacity to love you or not. We just need to make sure they don’t put themselves in their own danger for the sake of everything that we love.