Good evening Gentle and not so gentle Leather folx.
For many of us the world is just a shit show right now. From the never ending violence faced by our BIPOC siblings, to the members in the audience who are trying to figure out how long they can hold their bladder from the Georgia state line to their homes in Florida, the world isn't safe for us. And there is very little I can do about that from this stage.
What I can do is be an educator and an agitator. I've been a (usually) proud member of the Atlanta Leather community for a long time and proudly served as International Ms Olymous leather in 1998. Many of you have asked why run for another title and the answer for me was pretty simple. I've been in the community for more than 25 years and have watched it change, but it isn't enough. I want an evolution revolution.
That starts with hard questions and harder truths. Why is it the same handful of white people who go to BIPOC panels? Why are the vast majority of classes on gender identity primarily attended by trans and gender expansive folx?
We talk about honor, trust, and integrity as our core Leather values. Where is the honor when an event promises change but it takes years and finally a public call out to effect that change. Where is the trust that producers will adequately vet their presenters, vendors, or sponsors so that people with histories of egregiously harmful behavior don't have positions of prominence at events. Where is the integrity when we don’t own our mistakes or willingly go through a restorative justice process. Our values need to stem from our actions, not our words.
I want to radically re-evaluate how we teach, how we learn, and how we grow. I want us to decenter white, cis, male, dominant voices in our community. I want us to call in and call out harmful behavior. And it needs to be safer to do so.
I ask you to join me in educating, disrupting, and challenging our community to do better. I call upon all of us to become better accomplices and fight for our marginalized communities. I want to be at the forefront of an evolution revolution and I hope you will join me. Thank you.
