T Slur Collective

A grainy black and white photo of a dyke in black leather pants holding a knife at their side. Text in red reads "T Slur Collective's Seattle Leather Market. Jan 31, 11am to 4:30pm. 18+, masks required and provided, no entry fee. Kink Center, 814 E Pike St."

Seattle! We're hosting a leather market at the end of the month! Come give all your money to a bunch of incredible leatherworkers and artists!

We'll have some mini workshops and demos, and we'll be selling our zines as well!

We've started uploading scans of our small collection of magazines that are important to us as leatherdykes to the Internet Archive, and we wanted to start with Venus Infers Vol. 1 No. 1

At IMsLBB. Under Hir boots.

A promotional image for the talk, "A Trans Leatherdyke History", with the IMsLBB logo at the bottom left, captions labeling this as a lecture for beginners, and a card with a black and white photo of a leatherdyke in a crowded bar, and the text "Come learn the history of leather, as lived and told by trans women! This talk presents the history of leather by tracing feminist theory, aesthetic developments, pornography, exclusion, and practice through the lens of trans women. We will talk about the golden age of porn, where the aesthetic sense comes from, the sex wars, and transness. This talk is the result of years of research, multiple books, dissertations, and years of zines and correspondence. Presenter: chastity vale (she/her)"

Another promotional image, this time a bio for chastity vale. From the top of the image to the bottom, there is text reading "presenter chastity vale she/her", then a photo of chastity in a leather jacket sitting on the floor and tying her Sir's boots placed next to the text "chastity vale (she/her) is a white leatherdyke, a submissive, a trans woman, a dyke and a faggot. she is an artist working mostly in fiction and video, a writer, and a leather archivist and historian. her research has focused on trans women, inclusivity in leather, and submission. she believes that honesty about desire can be radical, rebellious, and liberatory. chastity fucks in Seattle, Washington. she flags red, teal, black, and purple on the right."

While leatherdyke history has been buried by decades of censorship, the role played by trans women in the leather scene has been doubly suppressed. But we've always been here. If you're at IMsLBB this year, make sure to catch chastity vale's talk on trans leatherdyke history!

A pair of hands holding a rosary, cuffs chained which is also attached to a collar.

A pair of legs wearing ripped fishnets. Another leg, wearing a boot, is descending towards the crotch.

Two people, one seated on a chair, another on the floor. The one seated in the floor is unlacing boots.

Modern love 🥰🥰🥰

(📸: @alayynay.bsky.social )

Two women, one is on her knees. The other is holding a small whip, striking the one kneeling.

Worshipful

A woman’s breast. she is wearing a dog choke collar. The skin of her breasts is red, indicating a recent impact scene

A woman’s body. she is visibly trans. her legs are covered in small round red marks, new bruises on top of old…

A casual night!

A forearm and hand. The hand has black stiletto nails. The forearm is covered in little round bruises. In the background a leg covered in bruises can be seen

A forearm next to a thigh. The thigh and forearm are covered in perfectly round bruises

A forearm with raised circular welts

Thursday night 🥰🥰, Ze always knows what i want

Leather, rope, poppers, estradiol.

A trans woman’s clit, semi erect. A series of deep indents can be seen up her clit. In the background several clothespins, several leather belts, and rosary beads on a bed can be seen.

A trans woman’s thigh. Marks can be seen in her flesh. In the background rosary beads are gleaming

Supremely worshipful 🙏🙏

(Those indents are due to a spiked crusher hehe)

excellent thread full of great sharps advice from a pro

A black and white photo from the 60s focusing on the crotch of a person wearing loose jeans and what looks like a fringed, suede vest. The crotch of the jeans is held closed by three large nuts and bolts.

Found a photo by Karlheinz Weinberger while looking for info about Levi's and denim in the leather scene that GOES SO HARD

A trans woman lying on her back on a wood floor, shot from the right. In her thighs are some small bruises. She has tattoos on either hip: on one side a pair of bound hands, on the other a pair of hands holding a crucifix. Her hands are behind her head, with her elbows forward. Her clit is out and uncovered, and a ring is pierced through its head.

A trans woman lying on her back on a wood floor, shot from the left. Similar to the other image, small bruises can be seen in her thighs.

i was good on Friday, so i earned some bruises 🙏🙇‍♀️

To quote from her essay:

"I'm a dyke, woman, female. I love women, other dykes. Some dykes love me."

she was in those debates using the terms they set. She cedes so many points, accepts so many false premises, in the spaces that she needed and needed her.

Tala passed away in 2015 and is incredibly important to our class on trans leatherdykes. Her essay Dyke with a Dick is so important to me.

Tala Brandeis is an interesting, polarizing character. She remains incredibly important to me, personally, as someone who walked down the path i follow now. But wow did she have some bad opinions. She was a trans leatherdyke in a time where trans exclusionists set the terms for the debate, and

Her next paragraph, btw, outlines the issue directly, but i'm hesitant to reprint it here. She claims it is fallacious to believe a man could emerge into womanhood fully formed. This is just radfem shit, Tala is being One Of The Good Ones here, and she's assuming her enemies would give her womanhood

Who will grant you your womanhood? Who granted Tala hers? mine was claimed by me, actively choosing it against societal, social, and political pressures obsessed with denying me that. Who granted me my womanhood? me, i did, fuck you.

More than that tho, the focus on there being a class of woman external to the transsexual woman says that she has to assimilate into a type of womanhood. This is pretty counter to a lot of trans experiences of needing to claim womanhood rather than be granted it, esp. in a transphobic society!

I'd like to comment on the difference between self-identity and recognition by others as that entity. One may enter into the psychology of metamorph woman, what some call transsexual, and implicitly understand gender iden- tity as an internal representation with an external representation. If that internal personification has been relatively stable over the whole of one's life, then presumably a transsexual is woman even if she's never ingested hormones or had surgical procedures. However (this is a BIG however), for a transsexual to be accepted by her social peers as female, .sh /how to interact, how to communicate with the world as a functioning member of the class of women. She needs to be recognized by dyke function as same. Some are. Many aren't. Some are still working on it

Here you can start seeing the problem. This is paragraph 3, and her position is effectively that "dyke" is a rank. That rank is achievable through some sort social recognition as a dyke, but then also that transsexuals must learn to be a woman. If you squint, you can see "male socialization" in that

Dykes and (Ugh!) male to Female Transsexuals by Tala Brandeis im an out S/M leather dyke. My sexual relations are with other leather dykes. Some time ago I made a transition from male gender role to female gender role. Claiming identity as woman, as dyke, angers certain lesbian sep- aratists. Other people are delighted.

Damn Tala, same.

Sadly, this whole article is sort of a trainwreck, but Tala's words are worth hearing echoing through time. i'm going to critique them as i go here.

Tala was an important SF transsexual leatherdyke, and was a party to a lot of our history. And was in Bloodsisters a lot!

The Outcasts! The Outcasts were a descendant of Samois, the legendary SF bay area leatherdyke support group responsible for launching the careers of Pat Califia and Gayle Rubin (and which was founded by the very same. Neat that it calls out to transsexual women specifically!

Omg, LINKS! LINKS was a pretty well visited dungeon party in SF in the 90s. Susan Stryker's essay Dungeon Intimacies revolves around LINKS parties.

What I ended up realizing by going through this self-examination was that the only constant feature of my identity over the years has been change, and that my identity will always be a work in progress. The fluid nature of my identity makes it difficult for me to capture on paper. After all, the expression of this My identity ranges from teenage hood to sissy dork to cynical bar dyke. identity is influenced by (but not limited to) whom I'm with and where I am. It is thoroughly episodic, ranging from teenage hood to sissy dork to cynical bar dyke. But lately... I've been fancying myself a "gentleman butch." I drive, open doors, carry packages, and offer my coat to femmes. (Of course, this assistance is always offered with the direct or implied acknowledgement that, on her own, she is fully capable!) But... if it's pleasurable for her to play this game, then I too am a willing participant. And that's the main point, I think—you get to create your own identity. Have fun with it!

Cynical bar dykes, unite!

this is a test: How do you identify-butch, femme, butch queen, glamor femme, dandy, tomboy femme, femmy-butch, butchy-femme, sissyboy, princess, scruffy punk femme, androgyne, fagdyke, other? ♦ Who are you attracted to? Is there a connection between who you're attracted to and how you identify yourself? E.g., do you call yourself a femme because you are attracted to butches? ♦ How do you define butch or femme or whatever term you choose to identify yourself? ♦ What are some of the beliefs you have about butches/femmes? E.g., butches don't have feelings, femmes are histrionic. ♦ If you're butch, do you resent femmes for their access to heterosexual privilege because they can be mistaken for straight women? If you're femme, do you resent butches for their ability to pass for men or their being easily recog- nized as dykes? ♦ Do you feel that FTMs are more butch than butch women? What value do you attach to "degree of butchness"? Is there such a thing? ♦ In your personal experience, what is the relation- ship between maleness and butchness? (mas- culinity and butchulinity?) Between femaleness/ femininity and femmeness? ♦ Write about your experiences of being neither or both genders. Describe any characters you might use during role play.

A doll with interchangeable genitalia

Someone dressed in a button up and slacks is directed to the bathroom by a butch bartender. A punk in leather looks on.

Four frames, hand drawn. Someone has their underwear pulled down while at a toilet, then their arm with a single handcuff. Then, their face forced into the toilet, with their arms extended as if they are chained to it. Then the Dominant stands above then, their penis in hand, as if to piss on the submissive.