Hardy Haberman: Dallas Leather Educator, Author, and Filmmaker

Hardy Haberman is a writer, filmmaker, educator, and designer who has long lived in Dallas, Texas. In leather and BDSM circles in the United States and Canada he is a public figure people actually know. For readers who only have the coastal cities in mind, he is one of the people who made Dallas a real node on the national map. Decades of organizing, classes, books, and film built that network.

He got moving in the mid-1970s. He came into LGBT work through the Dallas Gay Political Caucus, later the Dallas Gay and Lesbian Alliance, the city’s first major LGBT advocacy group. In late 1976 he got interested in leather. In 1980 he co-produced the first Cedar Springs Carnival during Dallas Gay Pride Week. It ran alongside the Dallas Gay Pride Parade, organized by Oak Lawn merchants, the first pride parade in Dallas since 1972. In 1984 he joined the board of the Dallas chapter of GLAAD and kept working on LGBTQ+ rights from that seat.

Classes and awards

By the late 1990s Haberman was a known leather educator. He taught at Texas Leather Pride in Austin, Spring Iniquity in Houston, Southeast Leatherfest in Atlanta, Kinky Kollege in Chicago, the Leatherman’s Discussion Group in San Francisco, and plenty of other events in the U.S. and Canada. The awards followed the teaching. In 1999 he and Bill Schmeling received the Steve Maidhof Award from the National Leather Association International for national or international work. In 2007 NLAI gave him a Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2010 the Pantheon of Leather Awards gave him the President’s Award. In 2017 he took the South Central Regional Award at Pantheon of Leather and served as media director for Jeffrey Payne’s 2018 Texas gubernatorial campaign. In 2019 Pantheon of Leather gave him the Mr. Marcus Hernandez Lifetime Achievement Award (Man).

Outside the contest circuit he is an active member of the Cathedral of Hope in Dallas, known for one of the world’s largest congregations that is predominantly gay and lesbian. He formerly chaired the board of the Woodhull Sexual Freedom Alliance. He writes the column Flagging Left for Dallas Voice, the city’s LGBT newspaper, putting leather and left-politics language into local queer press instead of leaving it in scene zines. In January 2014 he became a columnist for Leatherati. He already had a long list of print and online bylines by then.

The books

The practical books and the personal books do different jobs. The Family Jewels: A Guide to Male Genital Play and Torment came out from Greenery Press in 2001. The sequel, More Family Jewels: Further Explorations in Male Genitorture, came from Nazca Plains Corp in 2007. Both put male CBT — genital play and torment — into plain language: technique, anatomy, intensity ladders, and risk, for men who wanted instruction rather than a shock reel.

The personal side is Playing With Pain: Stories from My Life in Leather (Nazca Plains Corp, 2007), Soul of a Second Skin: The Journey of a Gay Christian Leatherman (Nazca Plains Corp, 2007), and Shouts in the Wilderness: Daily Meditations for Leatherfolk (Adynaton Publishing, 2017). Those braid leather identity with Christian queer life. Haberman has lived that combination in public and does not treat it as a contradiction. The last two give leatherfolk who will not pick between a faith community and a harness a spiritual frame and a daily meditation practice.

Film and the rest of the record

He directed and shot Leather (1996). He directed the documentary Out of the Darkness: The Reality of SM (2001) and The Big Fair – Inside the Great State Fair of Texas (2001). His site and blog are Dungeon Diary. He has been on podcasts, including Dart’s Domain, and he has an IMDb listing. The films sit next to the books. Together they are the public record of how he has talked about leather.