 I would like to very, very much thank NotBound, who is our local Australian co-production team. I'm also extending sincere thanks to the iconic Stonewall of Sydney here on Oxford Street in Sydney, Australia, for donating this wonderful space for these interviews. I welcome Iskahnel to the fireside chats. Thanks Doug. I'm glad you're here. So let's begin right at the beginning. Tell me a little bit about where you grew up and about your family, your early life. So I grew up in a town called Merrywall, which is up the top of the Hunter Valley, roughly between Newcastle and Dubbo. Newcastle is about two and a half hours north of here, so Merrywall would be about a four or four and a half hour drive. So where we're filming today is on the lands of the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation. I just wanted to acknowledge the traditional owners of the land that we're meeting on here today for those of you from around the world who might not be familiar with this place and these peoples. But regarding where I grew up, small town, 900 people, sheep farming, cattle farming, close to the mines. Newcastle is very much a coal city, like it's namesake, Sydney. Newcastle in the United Kingdom. Okay. Yeah. What sort of life did you have there? Was there a lot to do or were you very isolated? I lived there until I was 10 years old and at that time I've moved to Newcastle. Since then I've moved to Sydney. So I would say that I spent my childhood in Merrywall and my adolescence in Newcastle. My childhood was in a lot of ways idyllic. I was the only child. I had a Jack Russell terrier and then a miniature fox terrier. Classic small Australian dogs that are good with children and good at chasing mice and cats. I grew up in the Catholic faith and the memories of my childhood prior to moving to Newcastle are very warm, very, very soft. I had a lot of friends and even though I was the weird one, they didn't seem to mind. In a lot of ways I was always the ringleader. It was when I moved to Newcastle that things truly got interesting. Okay. Building on that a little bit, you told me that you knew you were kinky as a child and a lesbian at a very young age. How so? Tell us about that. I think knowing that you're a lesbian is something that you don't always have the words for but you always have that internal feeling. You know that you're not going to fit into that particular mould that all of the other young girls are going towards. The town that I grew up in did have a very high teen pregnancy rate and part of why we moved out of there was because I believe my mother sensed that I was gay from a very young age. She worked in the preschool that I went to in a town of eight or nine hundred people. There's not many alternatives as you can understand. One day, I don't remember this, but she says that one day I told her that I loved Barbie and my mother said, well, that's okay, Isabel, my birth name. Lots and lots of young girls loved Barbie and I said, oh no, mum, I love Barbie and I remember having a big crush. I think my first real crush was on my physical culture teacher. Physical culture is a unique regional Australian form of dance that's kind of a hybrid between marching and gymnastics and dancing to pop music. Hmm, okay. Think leotards and fancy hair and in a lot of variants, six-year-old girls with fake tan, but not me. I'm as pale as, you know, it wouldn't work for me to have that kind of fake tan. What was your attraction to this teacher? Older woman, caring, nurturing. And I guess that when you're that age and you live in such a small place in a small town, you find someone to, or most of the time you find someone to project a lot of those feelings onto that you don't necessarily have the language to talk about at that stage in your life. As for the kink part of it, that came a little bit later. I think the first signs of it, and it goes to say now that I'm a needle top and a fisting top. The first signs of that were perhaps inserting pins and badges under the tips of my fingers and the palms of my fingers at school as a hobby. And my mother being horrified and consistently saying to me, no, don't do that, Isabel, you'll get an infection. I never got an infection. I just got into trouble. What trouble? Uh, told off. My mother has a way with words and that sharp tenacity has definitely been transmitted to me. So you were in a very sort of isolated situation. So any kind of kink that you were exploring was strictly from your own imagination. Did you have outside information coming that was educating you at all? From the time that we got the internet at my house when I was about 10 or 11 years old, we certainly did. I spent many, many hours unsupervised on a computer at the other end of my parents' house. This is back in the day when it was dial-up. We didn't have Tumblr or Reddit or anything like that back then, but we did have Google and a lot of other websites that you could look at. I went looking initially for information about gay and lesbian sex education because the teachers at my school flat out refused to teach anything that wasn't scientifically relevant to STI prevention or pregnancy prevention, which to me was strange because if you're going to touch STI prevention surely you should also talk about men that have sex with men at the very least. Perhaps not as bad as it is in the United States with abstinence-only education in a lot of places, but still not ideal, and then when you go from there with regards to gay and lesbian sex education, you touch on a number of relevant topics including kink. I find that fascinating that that would even be brought up in an academic situation. Kink wasn't in an academic situation. The internet, that old concept of rule 34, the internet is for porn. How did you even know where to look for any of this? I'm pretty intelligent and I was exposed to a lot of older people from the time that I moved to Newcastle, people who were much older than me and much smarter than me. Were they openly speaking of these topics? I'm trying to understand how someone in that demographic even had a clue about homosexuality. I think that there are obviously cultural differences between the United States and here. Over here, Mardi Gras is mentioned on the news regularly at the time that I was growing up. This will make you shudder. I was 11 years old in 2004 when John Howard intentionally redefined the Marriage Act to prevent same-sex couples from marrying in Australia. Naturally, that had a massive furor and then in 2009 there were policy changes so that we can't get married, but de facto couples have the same rights and therefore the same responsibilities as opposite-sex couples. It was an ongoing theme across my childhood, adolescence and early adulthood of the slow and ferocious rise of LGBTIQ rights in Australia. Now we're at a stage where the right-wing are now taking out their fury and their discriminatory values on transgender and gender-diverse people and also you look at some of the disgusting political comics and they always equate homosexuality with BDSM. And for me, the issue is not the equation because a lot of us do like both. The issue is the degradation and the insinuation that that is a bad thing. Yes, yes. Was there anything shocking to you that you discovered in your early exploration on the internet? No, I think that it came real for me the first time that I attended Mardi Gras. It was 2008 or 2009, so I was about 15 or 16. We'd caught the train down from Newcastle and I remember standing in Hyde Park back when you could still stand in Hyde Park and taking photographs on my Nikon D60 and seeing the bears and then seeing the Leather Pride float. And I believe it was that year that there were cages and whips and live displays. And I look back at the photos that I took of that now and there's only a couple because the parade moves so fast and I recognise basically everyone in those photos. How fascinating. You mentioned that you could stand in Hyde Park at that time. Is that not permitted anymore? Just logistically, so for those of you who have been to Mardi Gras or have marched in Mardi Gras, you'll know that a lot of the surrounding streets in Hyde Park, parts of William Street and Euron Crescent, even parts of the city in Liverpool Street because there are so many floats. All of that is blocked off for the entire day as like a marshalling or start area. And now Hyde Park is obviously part of that as well. It has its own little pre-parade vibe. It's quite amazing. So you were very young when you initially came down to see this parade. How did your parents feel about a young girl coming in doing that? My mother came with me. Oh. Yeah, I'd already come out to them by that stage and obviously there's a lot of fear there. My parents are quite open-minded and accepting people. There's not much that scares my mother. She worked in public health for a number of years. Tell us a little bit about your coming out. I think the first time that I openly said mum, I'm a lesbian and from what I gather this is a very common thing. I made sure that she was driving me somewhere in a car. That way she still has to focus on what she's physically doing and she can't lash out in any way. And I knew my mother would not lash out. But when you're gay and you grow up in a toxic homophobic society there's always that fear in the back of your head. Sure. Well, tell us about your first sexual relationships. Oh, I actually don't remember the first person that I had sex with. It was that long ago. I had a series of affairs and flings between the ages of about 14, 15 and 23, 24. It's only really been in the last two or three years that I've actually done serious relationships of any kind. A lot of those were with older women. The last woman I dated and we dated, you know, the amount of time that we were sleeping together and then the amount of time that we dated was about a year, which is a bit of a record for me. She's 33, so she's seven years older than me and she's the youngest woman that I've ever really dated. So I think that older women and particularly experienced leather women are my thing from a very young age. How did you locate these people? I think the way that anyone meets other people, as much as a lot of people my age in Australia use Tinder or a set, specifically lesbian, they might use apps such as Her and Zoe and I can't even remember. I'm not a dating app kind of girl, but I met a lot of them, you know, friends of friends out at social events, going specifically to various events because I wanted to meet those kinds of people. I discovered during my high school certificate years, which is the equivalent of the last two years of American schooling, so junior senior year. We do year 11 and year 12 to receive the high school certificate here in New South Wales. I did visual arts for that as a specific subject and in trying to find images of the gay community, I stumbled across the works of Tom of Finland. And I knew that I liked that look, but instead of it being a handsome man with short hair, I wanted it to be a handsome woman with short hair, especially as I'd grown up next to a Butch Femme couple in Mayfield. I loved them both, but it was the Butch Chef that I did fantasise about a lot. How did the women receive you as a young woman coming into the situation? Was there any awkwardness? I'm not sure about overseas, but in the gay community here in Australia, it's an unspoken thing that quite often there are large age discrepancies in our relationships. I know gay couples that have been together for 20 odd years where one man will be 40 and one man will be 70. The lesbian community, sometimes it's like that. Quite often it's not. You only have to look, I guess, at the woman, what's her name, the woman who was in Two and a Half Men and her girlfriend Sarah Paulson, Holland Taylor. Holland Taylor's in her 70s and Sarah Paulson's in her early 40s. So I think there's a lot of stigma around it, but it still is common and it also, therefore, is common in the leather community. Well, speaking of the leather community, you entered the scene at age 18. Tell us how that happened. That's very young. Yeah, your country doesn't really do it that young because your drinking age is 21, right? I remember in 2015 coming over to International Women's Leather and being 22 and when I told various people, because they all assumed I was very fresh, and when you tell them that you've been in the community for four years at that stage, their mouths kind of pop open. The Americans are very hospitable and warm, but as to how I got involved over here, I went to Fair Day, which is like a massive pre-parade event held usually two Sundays before our parade. And it's at Victoria Park, which is a massive park near the university, near Central Station. And we get, I think it's like 100,000 people at Fair Day. My gosh. Stalls, fairs, dog show, performers. And I came across the Bear Tree, which is where the bears hang out, and next to them the Leather Folk with the Sydney Leather Pride Store. And I think it was Dean from Demon Leather who doesn't, as far as I'm aware, create leather. Items anymore was selling some wristbands, and I bought one from him. My mother was impatiently tut-tutting and waiting to move on as soon as possible, but I saw people that I had recognised from the floats. And I knew that I wanted to suss that out. From there, when I did Turn 18, I believe it was an ex-boyfriend who sent me a link to an event that was held at the Red Ratler Theatre, another independent queer arts venue here in Sydney in the suburb Maricville. I went to that event, and the first night that I was there, I got to see Matt Steg performing in Dickey and Dickey, which is where he and another performer dress up in drag, but it's not drag as we know it. It's crotchety old lady drag. It's tits falling out and saggy tits and gray wigs and camp humor. And gay men in leather harnesses and a real queer aesthetic vibe to it of all sexualities and all genders and all presentations rather than the strict white gay men in a harness stuff that you might see at other leather parties here. Things float on from there. Well, tell us about the Harbour City Bears. I mean, a moment ago you alluded to finding that group and the Leather Group, you were affiliated with Harbour City Bears, and how did that come about? Like a lot of things, one thing led to another. At Camp Betty, I met Kerry Bashford, who is basically the Australian epitome of the daddy. He's a Newcastle boy, just like I grew up in Newcastle, and he introduced me at a bad dog party, which is a queer dance party that gets upwards of 500 to 800 people in all manner of crazy costumes and delightful outfits. Vaguely themed, but most people do whatever the hell they want from the wildly outrageous to the politically incorrect. He introduced me at this party to another Newcastle boy called James, who we immediately fell in love, and my mother refers to him as my husband, which is hilarious, because I've never had sex with a man and he's never had sex with a woman, so she also likes to say, if he was 10 years younger and you were 10 years older, you guys would have a kid together, and I said, pregnancy's not really my thing, but okay. Not my fetish. He encouraged me to go to bear events with him, and from there it was a slow trajectory of about three or four years where I volunteered at various events, and I was eventually not so much invited but requested by Johnnie Tyndall to run for the committee in 2017. I was the first woman elected to the committee of a bear club in Australia, and it's a rarity here because a lot of the bear clubs here are strictly men only. There is a slow shift now. I've noticed that brisbears for their northern exposure events in Brisbane this year actively invited and welcomed women to some of their events, but I know that my involvement has been largely welcomed here in Sydney because women have always been involved in this club, especially Leather Dykes, but at the same time because of the regional differences in behaviours and expectations and cultures, wildly controversial in other places. What set you apart in order to become the first woman to make that big step? I was the first one that wanted to do it. Okay. I think that would have been open to it from any number of other women that were involved in the club long-term, but I was the first one that put my hand up and I believe that that election looked a lot of the guys knew me from back when I was on the committees of Sydney Leather Pride, back when I was the women's officer there and also from my involvement in a lot of other different community groups. I've been everywhere, man, to quote that song. But at that election I believe or I've been told that I received the most votes out of anyone that contested the election. So it's nice to see that while some segments of our community do uphold staunch men-only politics, the bear is not necessarily. How did the women's community react to your achievements getting involved with the bearers? It depends which segment of the women's community. I've started riding a motorcycle and I've always had some involvement with dykes on bikes, at least on a friendly or associate basis. I know that a lot of the extended women's community were supportive, but as for any kind of formal or widespread consensus or recognition, they're not good at that over here in any sense in the first place. And I've never really felt a true connection to any lesbian communities here in Sydney. It's a hard one because I'm not a gay man. I don't date men, but I find the leather community to be my home even though it is fairly male-centric here in Australia. It's a hard one. I dragged my last female partner into the leather community and she loves it. She loves the boys, all of my exes do to an extent. But I guess it's a challenging one for me in a lot of respects. Was there any animosity from the women's community? Animosity, no. Confusion, yes. Those that knew me and knew my involvement with the bears thought it was fabulous, especially the ones that had always wanted to get involved. And even now, this is my third year on the committee, and I'm often having women and trans people of all sorts of genders come up to me and say, I'd like to be involved. You run the volunteer program. Can I help out an event? Even though I'm not a member. Even though I'm not a man. And I say, absolutely, this club's for anyone that wants to be involved with the bears, the epitome of a big Harry gay man, whether you're a twink, whether you're a leather boy, whether you're someone that loves bears or fucks bears, or whether you're a straight woman that we would call a fag hag, or whether you're a lesbian. Do you guys have that term, fag hag? Yes, yes, yes. I think in the same way that what I saw at International Miss Leather was inclusive, what I really admired about that event was the concept of men of IMSL, that strong supportive contingent of men, cis and trans men who knew that IMSL wasn't about them, but wanted to help and wanted to support in constructive and meaningful ways, putting their money where their mouth was. I think that the women that do that here, it's a lot smaller. I would say that it's in the double digits in Sydney, but we still contribute to the community in quite a strong way. I can't help but ask. There's a lot of division in many communities between men and women in the leather community. What you're depicting is a very specific niche you have for yourself. How do you see that in comparison to the division that we more commonly see? I like to put my finger in many pies of all types, often not just a finger, but a whole hand. Hashtag red on the left. I think that I've been involved with a number of different communities that feature or focus on women organisations such as Twisted Sisters, Leather Pride, when it was still more prevalent. I would say that here in Sydney a lot of the events can be classified as either gay, male or pansexual events such as Hellfire run by Ultra and Tom. You'll be meeting Ultra later in the week. There are a lot of spaces for a lot of people and whilst I might prefer or feel like I belong in certain spaces my parents raised me to be someone who can be comfortable in all spaces and talking to all people. You've served on a lot of committees though too, not just with the bears. Tell us a little bit about that. It started off back to when I was 18. I wanted to go to everything and anything that I could get my hands on, meet new people, learn new things, have new experiences. Quite often there's a price for admission in terms of a fee or other associated expenses and when you're an 18 year old university student you can't always afford that. So volunteering and even actively offering to volunteer became a really good entry point for me. I found that a lot of promoters and a lot of events are really open to the idea of if you volunteer for me for an hour or two with either set up or on the day, come in for free. We might even give you a few drinks and when you volunteer you meet people because you're involved in the logistics and the operation of that event. So from there I was often either invited or encouraged to join various committees because I studied law, I have a good background in that and now I've completed an honours degree in social work and so I would say that my professional interests are persons and professional practice and systems and that translates into my personal interests of social justice and human rights which is what a lot of these communities do focus on. The leather community and the bears, we fund, raise and we donate a lot of money to various causes, dykes on bikes do as well. What causes? A lot of the popular ones are ACON which is Sydney's formerly known as the AIDS Council of New South Wales, so an LGBTIQ health promotion charity. 2010 which is a Sydney based LGBTIQ youth service for people between the ages of about 12 and 26. The Gender Centre which is for trans and gender diverse people. Even smaller groups and peripheral organisations like even stuff that has nothing to do with the community but queer people volunteer for like Wires which is an animal rescue service or Bee Miles which is a women's housing charity. We try and help out where we can because we know what it's like to be discriminated against and we want to also therefore make these services in the wake of an increasingly conservative government which directly underspends on people with disability for the sake of an imaginary surplus. It's up to each and every one of us to keep doing what we can for the community in whatever way we can. Have you any idea of how much money you've raised? Personally. Or the organisations? I would say that if I put together all of the figures for all of the organisations that I've volunteered for since I was 18, it easily hits the six figures. That's significant. And I'm also one of the few people in the LGBTIQ community here who are eligible to donate blood and plasma. So I march myself down to Town Hall Blood Donor Clinic every two weeks and I donate plasma because I know there are people here in our even in our community who need blood and plasma products to survive. You said you're one of the few people eligible to do it. Australia don't allow men who have sex with men to donate unless they've been celibate for a year. And that's a hard ask for a lot of people and an unrealistic ask. So I do occasionally cop a lot of flak for donating. Why? Some leather men have said to me, why do you bother? We can't do it. Why are you bothering the discriminatory? To which I say I completely agree with you. They're doing it based on outdated science, especially as Truvada and Prep are now... I remember when Dale Apple ran for Mr Harbour City Bear and he talked about Prep on stage and he asked the audience. He said, how many of us here are on Prep? He put up his hand and I looked around the room and I was expecting to see maybe a couple of people and it was at least half the room. That's encouraging. It's really good. But as I'm a woman that only sleeps with women and I am in fairly good physical health and I meet all of the other really stringent requirements to donate blood and plasma, I do it every two weeks. I'll continue to do so. That's wonderful. It's a really important thing for me to do because I can't necessarily donate $800 every two weeks, but I know that those products add up to the value of about $800 to $1,000 based on the value that the healthcare system... And we are lucky to have such a robust universal healthcare system here in Australia. It's not perfect. It does have its teething issues, but it's a good thing. You're not going to go broke if you have cancer. So if I can help in some small way, whether it's that or the leather community or any other community, it's part of my values as a social worker and as a leather woman to put my money where my mouth is, even if that money comes out of my arm. That is a beautiful statement. Thank you. But switching gears slightly, when we were preparing for this interview, you mentioned that there are... What do you call them? Lockout laws that apply to many of the venues in the community. Please talk with us about that. What does that mean? So the lockout laws are a series of laws that determine how late in the evening you can enter a venue here in Sydney in specific areas of Sydney, and they were first trialled in Newcastle where I grew up. So I do enjoy snarkily telling people here in Sydney that it wasn't an issue for you guys until it actually hit Sydney. You never gave a fuck about Newcastle. They were introduced here in Sydney ostensibly to keep people safe because a number of young men were king hit and killed. But it often happened at 9 o'clock at night outside of venues. So relatively early? Relatively early. It's the advice of keeping people safe. And there are other add-ons like you're not allowed to have shots after midnight. The bar has to stop serving alcohol together at 3 a.m. You're not allowed to enter the venue after 1.30 or 2 a.m. depending on their licence. And once you leave, you can't get back in. At that time? Yep. So this was done ostensibly to protect people and to protect the interests of the wider community, but what has ended up happening is clubs suffering, bars shutting down, venues dying, venues being brought, bought by bigger organisations like Merravale, run by Justin Hems, who's worth like a billion dollars and owns like 30 odd venues in Sydney. Universal hotel group who own a lot of our venues. But I would say Universal are a really good organisation and they support the Harbour City Bears and a lot of minority groups in a really meaningful way. But a lot of real estate has been sold off to developers at bargain basement rates. And the gay community has certainly suffered because even though none of that violence happened on Oxford Street for some reason, we were included in those lockouts. Where was it happening? The violence. Yes. King's Cross. Oh, okay. Different part of town then. Down there, about a kilometre, a bit less. You can walk between here and there easily. But there was no consistency or coherence in terms of how they applied those laws and it's led to a greater police state. Drug dogs that go through venues and harass people at Mardi Gras ostensibly under the instruction or direction of the police, but it's often led to homophobic and racist profiling of people we see in an outside or adjacent to our communities. It concerns me and it also makes me angry because as I came of age and as I was finally legally able to go to these venues the restrictions clamped down so tightly that the scene started to perish. Yeah. And now our premier has announced that she's getting rid of these lockout laws and I truly believe that a lot of that has to do with the fact that we've just won our bid to host World Pride in 2023. Uh-huh. And you can't have an international event of that size if no one wants to come to it because they've heard that the city is so... austere. Do you think it's strictly for that timeframe or do you think this is a sincere overall discard of the laws? I don't know. There's been no real timeframe announced as to when these laws will be changed. We're having a lot of debates here in Australia about do we decriminalise illicit drugs? Do we make it a public health issue instead of a criminal issue? I personally want to see it go that way because I've lost too many friends to drug and alcohol issues. My favourite young boy who I went to school with died when we were 21 and bearing a friend at that age is... shit. Yes. Well, I didn't bury him, but I wasn't able to talk to him for the last 12 months of his life and support him in his involvement in the leather community because his addiction was too hard for me to handle. Sure. I've had family members who grew up in abusive households that involved addiction and I need to stay away from that. Whilst I don't... whilst I seem to have missed out on the addiction gene, I do have the compulsion gene because of comorbid psychiatric issues that I do have and a lot of that is trauma. Trauma from growing up in a homophobic society, trauma from violence, trauma from abuse. I've learnt a lot, especially in the last year or two, about boundaries and self-respect and about making sure that I'm treated correctly, even in the face of people who don't value me or respect me. As such, I tend to hang around with the people that do. That's reasonable and that's a very strong statement that more people really ought to learn. I think that even as women, I've copped... I'll go out dressed like this on Oxford Street and wear shoes like this all the time. If you ever come to my apartment, you'll see that along the window and along some of the walls I've got boots hung on. Definitely a boot fetishist. But a lot of women, because they were not raised to have firm boundaries around who and how they can consent to their bodies being touched, they expect me to be the same and they will get angry if I enforce that and say, no, actually, don't touch me. I'm not a sideshow exhibit. I dress this way because I want to dress this way and I've spent many years refining my aesthetic and I'll continue to do so. I'm really inspired by women in the wider leather community like Lani Devi at Mistress Tokyo, others who have a real sharp sense of who they are and how they want to look and I take those cues and I make them my own. Taking a brief step back, you spoke briefly about drug use in the community a moment ago. What are your thoughts on the greater issue of drug use? I noticed when I went to the United States that there's very much what I perceived as a stratification between sober and addict. America doesn't seem to have a concept of recreational drug use. People at other parties will take substances or they will drink to excess or they'll do both. I know that when I go to extra dirty or to hide or a lot of other leather events, I will consume alcohol. I will probably consume a lot of alcohol. I'm surrounded by people on dance floors, men on dance floors coming together and sniffing ammo or giving each other wristies or that's a... Do you know what I mean by a wristy? I'm sorry I don't. I was going to ask. Hand job. Oh, okay. Some of the vernacular doesn't carry one continent to the other. No, no. America, I noticed at IMSL that they do have that real stratification and this idea of you don't play unless you're sober. And whilst I do subscribe to that largely, I don't think it tells the full story and I know that I've seen it. International sash bearers or title holders have come over here and we've taken them to events and they have been horrified by the level of drug use here. They don't understand that a lot of people or a lot of us can get munted as we say wildly fucked up on all sorts of substances and I'm not disclosing whether or not I use those substances but people can use those substances on a Saturday or a Friday night and then go to work on Monday and don't need to do anything like that again for a week or several weeks or even months. It might just be a public holiday type of thing. What you're depicting is very similar to what I encounter in Amsterdam. Yeah, same thing. Kind of like Berlin as well. Having been to Folsom over there in 2013 I went there with Lioness and her then-husband and Aaron Sinclair who is a former president of Leather Pride and a queer man who was living over there at the time with his wife before they had kids and we did see that. We saw a lot of hedonism and it really broadened my experience of Leather and I know that a lot of the men were so amazed to see us because they don't see a lot of women at Folsom. Yeah, true. There is a fair bit of uniformity. A lot of variants but a lot of uniformity nonetheless in terms of that classic Leather men. Yes. I like that in a woman. But yeah, I think that we're closer to Europe in terms of our behaviours than we are to the United States. Whether that's a good thing or a bad thing I think it's a bit of both. I know that there's a greater transference between America and the United States. We've sent a number of Sydney Miss Leathers and other associated people. Girl Ange and K.L. Joy they both competed at Imzal and Imz Baba. Yes. I really should refer to that organisation by its proper name now, Imzal Baba. Yes. It's been a while since I've been. I still have strong friendships at least online with a lot of the people I met there and that's been of real value to me and helped me develop as a Leather woman. Speaking of women how do you see the overall role of women in the Leather community? In the segments that... Sorry. In the segments that I hang out in most of the time we're not as prevalent as I would like. I feel like there are a lot of barriers to entry. I hear a lot of talk and a lot of real meaningful ambitions and desires for women to be further included in these events but the outreach is really slow. I know that as part of Sydney Fetish Week we organised and ran a group motorcycle ride between road runners, the fetish boys and dykes on bikes and that was the first such communal motorcycling event that this city has had in years. Oh my gosh. For a long time back when I started there was a concept of kindred organisations so I believe it was Harbour City Bears, Dykes on Bikes, FEMBuild and another organisation, maybe the wrestlers or the silverbacks or something, don't quote me on it but those organisations gave members of each organisation kindred recognition and associate discounts to their events. Somewhere along the line that fragmented, especially in the wake of the lockout laws and now a lot of us are trying to get that back. There are struggles in terms of politics. I was one of the people who was directly involved in the massive fraction in CalRiders Gear 365 group where he wanted to open it up to women and people of other genders and I saw a lot of comments during that time in those few days that really upset me and offended me regarding the validity of female leather identities so Cal was really really smart he turned the main group into an inclusive group and he created a side group which was a men's discussion group. I believe that every minority within our community has the right to create autonomous spaces but I don't believe that that autonomy should come at the expense of the overall inclusion of people who don't fit the main mould. That's a very strong statement. So as to where women fit in in the leather community we've always been here we'll always be here we built the table or we helped build the table to expect us to go off and build our own is actually insolence and really wrong I think that things will continue to improve but at the same time I'm an optimist so I guess we'll look back in five years and see where it's gone A moment ago we spoke a little bit about primarily the different attitudes about drug use in the different geographic locations of the community what from your perspective what other differences do you perceive between for example what you experienced in Germany North America and here I found in Germany that a lot of the women at the parties I went to didn't want to talk to me because I didn't speak German that was a bit upsetting but it also could have been because I am inherently a shy person the reason why I wear a lot of these specific leather and latex clothing and six, seven, eight inch platform boots even on a standard night out at the Oxford or Consellors or Palms is because I want to create that space that are not in our community to be curious and to ask questions I don't want them to touch me but I'm open to them having discussions and asking respectful questions I think that in terms of drug use I also as a social worker have always been open to people asking me questions about what is okay for them and their bodies in terms of drug use the most common drugs that I see being used in the scene here in Australia really depend on what a person's sex or sexuality or gender is and also just their individual tastes you might see someone sneakily having a joint in a smoking area at a venue or outside a venue speed was pretty uncommon for a while because ice seemed to be the drug of choice but I see speed coming back into fashion now because there's been a lot of paranoia regarding ice rightfully so, ice is a really intense drug, ice is what we call crystal meth ecstasy very popular Australia I think we use the most ecstasy in the world per capita you sure it isn't the UK no it's us even though we pay maybe three or four times more than the UK does for it we're still the most prolific consumers of it in the world and obviously and specific to the leather community I see a lot of boys using GHB and ketamine as well and amyl if someone's accidentally dropped a bottle of amyl or smashed it on the dance floor chances are there's a gang of women hovering around somewhere how do you want to be remembered in this community I'm playing the long game at 26 I know that I'm the youngest person you're interviewing here in Australia I've been on the scene and in the community for a very long time I've developed a little bit of grey hair as a result of it not as much as my poor mother she went grey when she was 16 and I think she's a bit envious of how much blonde or brown I still have I love my mother but she often comments on that I don't intend to go anywhere I do occasionally have issues with men who come into the leather community and the gay community especially dominant men it doesn't matter if they're gay or straight they see me and they see how young I am and they assume that I'm a newbie and quite often I have at least half a decade or more of experience on them and they do find that intimidating as to how I want to be remembered as I said I'm playing the long game I intend to continue being here in my 50s, 60s and 70s assuming that climate change doesn't destroy everything I think there is an attitude in the lesbian community of oh I'm too old to go out anymore they often will get into a relationship and hibernate and then the relationship will continue and they'll adopt a cat and then somewhere along the line they'll break up so I can set my watch by it I'll say oh it's February and it's the third year I'll see such and such in a couple of weeks because her relationship will be over by then quite a few exceptions to that I see a lot of long standing leather lesbian couples who do make the distance or continue to make the distance but some people cycle through like it's buying a new buying a new appliance with a three year warranty I don't intend to go anywhere I believe that I will have a break from the committee of the Harbour City Bears at the next election in August 2020 I'd like to before and after that focus A on my career B on helping everywhere I can with making sure that World Pride in 2023 is a successful event I want to really be involved in that I've put the work in I will continue to put the work in and I continue to expect the credit that I deserve I hope that I live a long and prosperous life I know that growing older is a privilege denied to many of us Strong statement Sad to say I hope that when I am gone people will remember me as someone that was strong in what they said and what they wrote I am a writer one of my big strengths aside from my physical strength and my abilities as a kink star and as a social worker and as an empathetic person who genuinely connects and cares with people in the community my big strength is writing using words and controlling the narrative everywhere that I can as someone that told stories and taught things that they wouldn't have even considered from a perspective that they might not have known I learnt a lot of that from my father he was an English teacher for 30 odd years here in the Australian public school system I want to be remembered as someone who cares about the little guy and who stands up for what is right I want to be remembered for being funny for being witty for being a little bit controversial at a lot of times and for having crazy outfits and I guess overall I want to be remembered for the tenacity that I've developed to be myself and I reserve the right to keep developing and keep changing as I grow older what are your favourite fetishes? well I believe in giving everything a go at least once just to get my head around it and see if I like it or not my mother always said to me and I'm not someone that eats a lot of vegetables because I have sensory processing issues with regards to taste and smell and my mother would always say oh Isabel you need to eat it at least 20 times that way you can say if you like it or not and I would say well not if I'm going to vomit it up 20 times no way but I'll give most things sexually at least to go once I would say that my favourite things at this stage in my life I flag purple and red on the left obviously I'm a blood top I'm a fisting top I flag yellow on the left but that is a fairly private thing for me I wouldn't do that in public I don't really play in public to begin with I do have a bit of anxiety with regards to performance anxiety and for a long time there I flagged Hunter Green on the right I love lesbian and dyke daddies I think it's certainly possible to be fisting someone and having them top you the entire time and that energy exchange since the first time I did it has just been the most powerful and intense thing that I feel I could do at this stage um I'm a switch I'm an exhibitionist sometimes I can be a power bottom sometimes I can be a service top really depends on the dynamic I have with the person but I think my ideal would be to have a relationship with a butch a masculine dyke who is predominantly a top but lets me get mine as well hmm what's the biggest misconception about you oh god everyone has one to some extent I I remember meeting my friend Drew up in the blue mountains at a queer party and she said to me I thought you were taller than that because we'd only met online before and that was the most outrageously offensive thing that someone could have said to me that night because I was wearing these shoes but I laughed because it was funny it was funny I think in terms of perceptions I don't think about this too much because I already have enough anxieties and insecurities of my own but the major ones that I hear are that I am intimidating that I intimidate people I'm sorry but if you find a powerful woman intimidating that says a lot more about you than it does about me there you have it hello chances are that I will either want to be your friend or I will be friendly I'm not going to bite you I don't have that relationship with you when I meet you unless I'm out at a party and I'm looking for the toilet hookup I think the other main misconception that I hear is that I am overly political I believe the personal is political because I've experienced a lot of discrimination in my life I've had eggs thrown at me from cars in Newcastle while walking to the gay bar I've been fired or discriminated against in finding employment because I was either gay or because I looked gay sexism it's a state the obvious it's still a thing it's still a big thing I also acknowledge that I'm a white woman I'm a cisgender woman no one has ever been racist towards me and no one whilst I have been confused for a drag queen once or twice and told that I have a nice talk I've never copped it because of what people have to say about my body beyond sexism it's not transphobia I think that in terms of misconceptions everyone's got one and the only thing that I could really say to that is come up and say hello in person and don't believe everything you read on the internet unless I wrote it myself is Connell thank you for being an amazing interview it's really nice to be here and it's really nice to meet you in person I'm glad you're meeting you hopefully soon I can go to Chicago and we can hang out there as well absolutely I would love it I would love that thank you alrighty and that's is Connell in Sydney, Australia