The Eulenspiegel Society, TES, pronounced “Tess,” is the first BDSM organization founded in the United States. It began in New York City in 1971 and is still a volunteer-run nonprofit aimed at sexual liberation for adults, especially people who want consensual S/M. In leather and kink history it is early infrastructure: a support group that became an educational body, a magazine publisher, a Pride marcher, a convention host, and a cofounder of the National Coalition for Sexual Freedom (NCSF). What TES stands for is negotiated consent between adults, not a how-to sheet.
The name, Till Eulenspiegel, and Reik
The name comes from Till Eulenspiegel, the “foolish yet clever” lad of medieval German folklore. Cofounder Fran Nowve chose it, from a passage in Austrian psychoanalyst Theodor Reik’s Masochism in Modern Man (1941). Reik argued that self-punishing or provocative behavior can show emotional fortitude, induce guilt in other people, and reach what he called “victory through defeat.” He describes Till’s odd pleasure walking uphill and his dejection walking downhill, and he links that paradox to masochism: gladly submitting to discomfort, even turning it into pleasure. TES did not name itself after a tool or a club night. It took a folk fool whose pleasure in hardship Reik had already tied to masochistic psychology.
The ad, the vote, and Jack Jackson
The group starts with a classified ad music teacher Pat Bond placed in December 1970, in Screw and in the East Village Other. Bond asked: “Masochist? Happy? Is it curable? Does psychiatry help? Is a satisfactory life-style possible? There’s women’s lib, black lib, gay lib, etc. Isn’t it time we put something together?” The first person to answer was Fran Nowve, using the name Terry Kolb. She and Bond launched the group in 1971. At first it was an informal association and support group for masochists. In August of that year members voted sadists in. Early meetings were in members’ homes, then in rented theaters and churches.
Through the 1970s sexual revolution and LGBT activism, TES marched in New York City Pride from the early years of that decade. It also started the magazine Prometheus, which for decades ran advice, personal ads, erotica, art, and philosophy of consensual kink. The magazine later moved online. Jack Jackson, a Black leatherman, was president from 1973 until his death in 1983, the first president and the only one. To signal that he remained “forever one with the title,” the organization has had no president since. Jackson was inducted into the Leather Hall of Fame in 2021.
Awards, Nitke, the anniversary, and RACK
As the group grew, the awards followed. In 1992 cofounder Pat Bond received the Steve Maidhof Award for National or International Work from the National Leather Association International. In 1993 Leather Pride Night, produced by TES with Excelsior MC, GMS/MA, LSM, and NLA: Metro New York, won Large Event of the Year at the Pantheon of Leather Awards. In 1994 photographer Barbara Nitke went to her first TES meeting to see underground photographer Charles Gatewood. The couples she met there caught her, and from 1994 she photographed them. That work became the book Kiss of Fire: A Romantic View of Sadomasochism (2003), one of the earlier mainstream books to look at BDSM relationships with a romantic eye.
In 1996, for its twenty-fifth anniversary, TES hosted what was then the first large BDSM convention. More than 1,300 people came, and the organization took over two major clubs, Hellfire Club and The Vault, and turned a disco into a play space. That scale pushed other leather groups to hold annual conventions. In 1997 the anniversary gathering received Pantheon of Leather’s Large Event of the Year. TES was a founding coalition partner of NCSF, created in 1997. In 1999 Gary Switch posted to TES’s USENET list “TES-Friends” and proposed RACK, Risk-Aware Consensual Kink. He noted that nothing is truly 100 percent safe, not even crossing the street. He compared BDSM to mountain climbing: risk is part of the thrill, and it is brought down through study, training, technique, and practice. The term, born on a TES-related list, became standard community language beside the older SSC wording.
How it runs, and the later names
TES is entirely volunteer-run, including an elected board. It pushes sexual liberation for adults, with special attention to consensual S/M, treats sexual freedom as a condition of a free society, and defends sexual minorities in the BDSM world. In New York City it generally holds two classes a week, more than a hundred a year: general meetings and special-interest groups, from bondage to novice meet-ups for people exploring alternative sex. Parties and social events are frequent. Members get discounts at participating stores and clubs. The organization supports AIDS prevention education. Allies include the Free Speech Coalition. NCSF is the coalition it joined as a founding partner. Weekly classes, a social infrastructure, retail discounts, and political coalition work are the mix later clubs copied. A dungeon night was not the whole model. It was a civic association for kink.
In 2002 the group legally reorganized as “The TES Association,” keeping rights to the original name and the historical intellectual property. The legal rename did not stop people using the old name. “Eulenspiegel” and “TES” stay interchangeable in leather memory. In 2003 TES won Pantheon Large Club of the Year. In 2011 it entered the Leather Hall of Fame under the name Eulenspiegel Society. In 2015 Pat Bond and Fran Nowve, the latter as Terry Kolb, were themselves inducted into the Leather Hall of Fame.
