The Mythology of the "Old Guard"

The Mythology of the "Old Guard"

If people start telling stories not as they were, but as they would like them to be, that procedure can be used by anybody for any purpose. So I think that we need to be consistent in the truth.
- Robert Bryan, Stonewall participant

• Old Guard? If You say so. By Joseph W. Bean
• The Old Guard History, Origins and Traditions By Guy Baldwin, M.S. (from The Ties That Bind)
• Old Guard, New Guard By Gayle Rubin
• The Myth of the Old Guard By Jack Rinella
• Multiple Tops: Master, Mistress and Daddy Makes Three By Master L.J.E. An Old Guard view of 'Net Generation polyamoury.
• Marginalia on the Old Guard, Leather Traditions, and BDSM History by Ambrosio contains "Leather's Military Heritage," "Six Contrasting Definitions of the 'Old Guard,'" "Napoleon Bonaparte's Imperial Guard," and "What was the First Use of the Term Old Guard in a Leather Context?"
  • Rover's column in the December 1973 issue of California Scene Magazine: Earliest documented use of the phrase "old guard" in a Gay Biker --- and possibily Leather --- context (depending on whether you think Gay Biker qualifies as Leather.)
• Why Old Guard? by David Masterson

If we are demanding that our history be respected, then we have to respect it ourselves. You have to apply the same criteria to our history that it be worthwhile, that it be accurate, that it be well-researched. We should recognize our warts as well as our flowers, as it were.
- David Carter, Historian