The Women of Leather: Bringing a Sub-Subculture to Light
by Joseph Erbentraut
EDGE Contributor
Monday Feb 15, 2010
http://www.edgeboston.com/index.php?ch=news&sc=&sc2=news&sc3=&id=102313A timeline exploring the transgender community's kinky past is particularly significant to women's history in leather. Patrick Califia, the activist credited for the emergence the lesbian leather subculture in San Francisco in the 1970s, later transitioned to male.
Califia founded Samois, a lesbian-feminist BDSM organization, in 1978. It was one of the first such organizations for the subculture, and its tradition lived on through such groups as the Outcasts and the Exiles, a group still active today.
