The Eulenspiegel Society, widely known as TES (pronounced “Tess”), is the first BDSM organization founded in the United States. Started in 1971 in New York City, it remains a volunteer-run nonprofit dedicated to sexual liberation for adults—especially people who enjoy consensual S/M. For leather and kink history, TES is origin infrastructure: support group turned educational institution, magazine publisher, Pride marcher, convention host, and cofounder of the National Coalition for Sexual Freedom. If American BDSM has a civic birth certificate, TES is on it.
Founding: Pat Bond, Fran Nowve, and the Screw Ad
Music teacher Pat Bond and Fran Nowve founded TES in 1971 as an informal association and support group for masochists; sadists were voted in later that same year. Bond’s December 1970 classified ad in Screw magazine 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 ad also ran in the East Village Other. Fran Nowve, using the name Terry Kolb, was the first person to answer. She and Bond launched the group in 1971; Nowve coined the name. In August 1971 members voted to include sadists. Early meetings were in members’ homes, then in rented theater and church space. The organization was active in the 1970s sexual revolution and LGBT activism, including New York City Pride marches from the early 1970s. It also launched Prometheus, a decades-long magazine covering advice, personal ads, erotica, art, and philosophy of consensual kink; the magazine later moved online. From 1973 until his death in 1983, Jack Jackson, a Black leatherman, served as the first—and only—president of TES; 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. 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 attended her first TES meeting to see underground photographer Charles Gatewood; the couples she met fascinated her, and from 1994 she began photographing them, work that became Kiss of Fire: A Romantic View of Sadomasochism (2003), among the first mainstream books to examine BDSM relationships with a romantic eye.
The 25th Anniversary Convention and National Influence
In 1996 TES hosted the first large BDSM convention, celebrating its twenty-fifth anniversary. Attendance was so strong that the organization took over two major clubs—Hellfire Club and The Vault—plus a disco converted into a play space. Over 1,300 people attended. That scale event inspired other leather organizations to hold annual conventions. In 1997 the anniversary gathering received Pantheon of Leather Large Event of the Year. TES was a founding coalition partner of the National Coalition for Sexual Freedom (NCSF), created in 1997. In 1999 Gary Switch posted to TES’s USENET list “TES-Friends” proposing the term RACK (Risk-Aware Consensual Kink) as a more accurate description of the play many people actually practice. Noting that nothing is truly 100% safe—not even crossing the street—Switch compared BDSM to mountain climbing: risk is part of the thrill and is minimized through study, training, technique, and practice. That RACK coinage, born on a TES-adjacent list, became standard community vocabulary alongside older SSC language. In 2002 the group reorganized as “The TES Association,” retaining rights to the original name and historical intellectual property. In 2003 TES won Pantheon Large Club of the Year. In 2011 TES entered the Leather Hall of Fame (under the Eulenspiegel Society name). In 2015 Bond and Nowve (the latter as Terry Kolb) were themselves inducted into the Leather Hall of Fame.
What TES Does: Classes, SIGs, Parties, and Advocacy
TES is entirely volunteer-run, including an elected board of directors. It promotes sexual liberation for all adults with special focus on consensual S/M communities, treating sexual freedom as a prerequisite for a truly free society and defending sexual minorities in the BDSM world. In New York City it generally holds two classes each week—more than a hundred a year—including general meetings and special-interest-group sessions from bondage to novice meet-ups for people exploring alternative sexualities. Social events and parties are frequent; membership includes discounts at participating stores and clubs. The organization supports AIDS prevention education and allies such as the Free Speech Coalition and NCSF (as a founding partner). That mix—weekly education, social infrastructure, retail discounts, and political coalition work—is the TES model that later clubs imitated: not only a dungeon night, but a civic association for kink.
Why “Eulenspiegel”: Till, Reik, and Masochism’s Paradox
The name comes from Till Eulenspiegel, the “foolish yet clever” lad of medieval German folklore. Fran Nowve’s choice was inspired by a passage in Austrian psychoanalyst Theodor Reik’s Masochism in Modern Man (1941). Reik argued that self-punishing or provocative behavior can demonstrate emotional fortitude, induce guilt in others, and achieve “victory through defeat.” He describes Till Eulenspiegel’s odd pleasure in walking uphill and dejection walking downhill, calling the paradox reminiscent of masochism: gladly submitting to discomfort, even transforming it into pleasure. Legal renaming to The TES Association in 2002 did not erase public use of the original name; “Eulenspiegel” and “TES” remain interchangeable in leather memory. The etymology matters for history nerds: the first U.S. BDSM org did not name itself after a tool or a club night but after a folk fool whose pleasure in hardship Reik had already linked to masochistic psychology.
Timeline Markers Worth Keeping Straight
A compact chronology helps separate TES myth from TES paperwork. December 1970: Bond’s ad in Screw (and the East Village Other) asks whether masochists can build a lifestyle movement the way other liberation movements had. 1971: Nowve answers; TES forms; August vote admits sadists. Early 1970s: home meetings give way to rented theaters and churches; Pride participation begins; Prometheus launches. 1973–1983: Jack Jackson’s presidency; after his death, the title is retired in his honor. 1992–1994: national awards for Bond and for Leather Pride Night; Nitke enters the scene via a Gatewood talk and begins the photography that becomes Kiss of Fire. 1996–1997: twenty-fifth-anniversary convention of 1,300+ people across Hellfire, The Vault, and a converted disco; Pantheon Large Event recognition. 1997: NCSF founding partnership. 1999: Gary Switch’s RACK proposal on TES-Friends. 2002: legal reorganization as The TES Association. 2003–2015: further Pantheon and Leather Hall of Fame honors for the club and for Bond and Nowve (Kolb). Those dates are the spine later histories lean on when they claim TES as the first U.S. BDSM organization rather than merely an early New York munch.
For bdsmwild readers mapping American BDSM organizations, TES is the mother organization: 1971 New York, Bond and Nowve, Screw ad, Jack Jackson as only president, Prometheus, Pride, the 1,300-person silver anniversary takeover of Hellfire and The Vault, NCSF founding, RACK’s USENET birth, Leather Hall of Fame, and weekly education that still treats consensual SM as a lifestyle worth defending in public. Every later munch, conference, and risk-aware slogan sits somewhere downstream of that first meeting room. The group’s ongoing class schedule and volunteer board structure are the quiet proof that “first” was not only a founding myth—it became a durable civic form for consensual kink.
