Mara

a long time ago at a Leather bar far far away, a preciously young Mara donned their tightest jeans, tucked up their hair into a leather baseball hat, and jumped on a subway to try to find the kind of men they lusted after found on the well worn pages of their stolen copy of Drummer magazine. Mara's journey has been a long and winding road that includes being a boy, a girl, a slave, a daddy, a sadomasochist, an educator, a title holder, a producer, a ritual facilitator and many other stops over the last 35 years in the Leather community. Today Mara (they/them) identifies as an opportunistically omnivorous queer, gender expansive, Slave (with a capital S). They are the current SouthEast Person of Leather, a proud member of the ATM Leather Collective, a facilitator for Ritual Steel events and was International Ms Olympus Leather 1998. Their passion for service and lifetime of being on the right side of the slash has guided their education efforts to design and present classes from and for other s-types (including hands on technique classes). Mara's other guiding principles focus on diversity, equity and inclusion efforts to help create spaces for Leather people who don't fit outdated norms, and smashing through gatekeepers when necessary.