P R E S S  R E L E A S E

Leather Hall of Fame 2019 Inductee List

December 3, 2018

The Leather Hall of Fame honors and preserves the legacy of the extraordinary people and organizations that have significantly shaped the history of the leather/BDSM communities worldwide since 1950.

The Board of Governors is pleased to announce the nominees selected for induction in the Leather Hall of Fame in 2019: SAMOIS; FAKIR MUSAFAR; THE LEATHER ARCHIVES AND MUSEUM.

SAMOIS

Created in June 1978 in the Bay Area, Samois was the first lesbian and feminist SM organization. Like other contemporary SM groups such as The Eulenspiegel Society and The Society of Janus, Samois had three main functions: social, educational, and political. During the infamous feminist “sex wars,” Samois led the fight against Bay Area antiporn feminist organizations and, by becoming one of the major voices of sex-positive feminism, it gained fame well beyond the SM world and well beyond California.

FAKIR MUSAFAR (1930-2018)

A founding father of the “modern primitive movement,” Fakir Musafar gained a large audience through his art, his writings, and his classes. He became an extremely influential figure of what he called “body play” — body piercing, branding, body-sculpting, sensory deprivation, flesh hook suspension, etc.. In a society largely hostile to his explorations, Fakir’s passion for intense bodily experiences resonated with many kinksters. Fakir helped to broaden the scope of kink, and to expand awareness of, and access to, many of the now popular technologies of body modification.

THE LEATHER ARCHIVES & MUSEUM (LA&M)

Since the early 1990s, when Tony DeBlase and Chuck Renslow laid the foundations for a repository for the primary documentation, art, and artifacts of leather culture, the Leather Archives & Museum has become a premier, central, and unique leather institution. The LA&M houses an extensive library, with over 7,100 titles; a museum that contains over 1,500 artworks as well as 10,000 fetish objects and gear; and an unparalleled archive preserving the papers of over 125 individuals and leather organizations and making them, as well as oral histories, manuscripts, accessible to researchers.