History of New Mexico Alternative Communites
Venues • Artisans • Groups • Events • Media • Individuals
This is an item of leather historical detail. Information, links, emails, etc. are not current.
NM Alternative Communities History:
Being Alternative
By Bear Mike, Version 15Aug2026
For the context of this History of New Mexico Alternative Communities, we wanted to define ‘Alternative Community’ and how it changes in order to be more consistent in our approach.
Being Alternative
For this history, we define a community as “alternative” because some important part of its identity, practices, relationships, values, or social structure exists sufficiently outside the surrounding normative culture that the community develops separate spaces, customs, networks, or institutions in which those things can be expressed.
My premise is that this often happens for a combination of reasons:
-
External Constraint
The dominant culture actively punishes behavior or identity: arrest, employment consequences, violence, family rejection, public humiliation, loss of housing, professional harm, censorship, etc. Underground bars, private clubs, coded language, pseudonyms, membership rules, and secret gatherings can arise because there is an actual threat.
-
Protective Separation
Even when the threat is less impactful or non-existent, community members may stay separate to avoid impacting the normative culture or avoid having to explain themselves. That may produce practices of privacy, discretion, specialized venues, invitation systems, euphemisms, clothing signals, online aliases, closed events, and other forms of boundary management.
-
Specialization
A community may come to feel alternative simply because the activity is too specialized for ordinary social institutions to support it. A rope group, leather club, pup group, or historical gay motorcycle club needs people who understand the activity, even if nobody outside is actively persecuting them or impacted by their presence.
-
Divergence
Some alternative communities may develop different assumptions about relationships, hierarchy, sexuality, gender roles, family, aesthetics, ownership, service, bodily autonomy, or social organization. Such separation may not just come from a concern about punishment. It may also come from realizing ordinary society does not provide the social structure they need.
-
Belonging and Identity Formation
Once people discover others like themselves, the community acquires symbols, language, rituals, stories, titles, heroes, institutions, and eventually a history. At that point it may remain culturally alternative even after the original external pressure diminishes.
-
Desire for Inclusive Environments
People who spend time in highly, or even radically, inclusive alternative spaces may come to enjoy, expect, or even need such environments to thrive. Time away from inclusive spaces, where acceptance may be questioned, becomes draining. This preference can create alternative community space over time or through intentional action.
-
Intentional Nonconformity / Exploration
Some people deliberately seek the alternative because it is alternative. They enjoy experimentation, unconventionality, transgression, novelty, or rejecting prescribed ways of living. They aren't necessarily escaping repression or seeking an identity group. This mechanism appears in art, music, bohemian communities, sexual experimentation, counterculture, kink, fashion, communes, and many other domains.
Alternative Community Change
Communities don’t just exist, they evolve. Community boundaries and norms are not static. Because this is a project about history, we will observe this change over time and must account for it in our documentation and analysis.
(A) Interactions with Normative Culture
-
Normative culture usually pushes inward, through acceptance, commodification, appropriation, regulation, or suppression.
-
Alternative culture may push outward, through experimentation, differentiation, new identities, new practices, and resistance to normalization.
-
Alternative and normative communities change each other, thus changing the boundary, norms, and interactions between them. Absorption, normalization, commercialization, commodification, appropriation may also occur.
(B) Internal Community Interactions
-
The populations from which alternative communities draw their members change over time.
-
Modes of communication change as technology changes.
-
Communities will: split, merge, cross-pollinate, compete, borrow rituals, reject rituals, revive old practices, invent traditions, forget traditions, rediscover traditions, and reinterpret their own histories. Generational succession and historical memory are a part of this process.
-
Institutionalization and collapse are recurring elements. Groups and events may form through enthusiasm, followed by increasing structure. Bureaucracy, infighting, burnout, or leadership changes may then contribute to decline or dissolution, after which other organizations may fill the gaps.
Note that, in general, formation of alternative communities is a normal feature of human societies. It applies to cultures everywhere, not just those involving power dynamics, BDSM, Leather, or sexual freedom.
The following diagram is a notional draft of some of these concepts:
Domain of this History Project
Focus of this History Project is defined as:
-
New Mexico Relevance + Preservation Value + Alternative Community
Primary focus:
-
Leather, BDSM/kink, power dynamics, M/s, pup, furry, swinger, sexual freedom and relationship structures (e.g., polyamory), and other poorly preserved local alternative communities that emerge through research.
Contextual coverage:
We don’t intend to cover the following communities in depth. We will have brief contextual coverage of these alternative communities where they intersect the primary focus. These communities are already substantially documented through other historical resources and preservation efforts.
-
LGBTQIA+, Pride, drag, motorcycle culture, gay rodeo, feminism/womyn's history, etc.
Intermediate/bridge histories:
-
Burlesque and perhaps others that have substantial histories of their own but repeatedly function as connective tissue among otherwise separate alternative populations.
This framework helped define the focus of the New Mexico Alternative Communities History Project.
Have more ideas to contribute or critique of these thoughts? Additional information or corrections to the history content? Let us know. Write head@houseofleatherheart.org.
Note: The history compilation on this page is courtesy of and Copyright 2024-2026, Domum Corium Cordis, House of Leather Heart. Have more ideas to contribute or critique of these thoughts? Additional information or corrections to the history content? Let us know. Write head@houseofleatherheart.org.