Plots of hour-long television dramas and sitcoms include or revolve around a TV version of a leather lifestyle, though the stories always seem to include a murder, as if having SM sex inexorably leads to death. The more malignant reason for the increased visibility of the leather community is that we have come under greater scrutiny and lobbying efforts to contain us are more frequent. Anti-porn legislation includes SM content by name. Images of SM from parades, marches, and demonstrations have become grist for the filmic mill of the Christian right wing, churning out propaganda to justify the legislative infringement on civil liberties. The SM community also runs into problems with the mainstream gay and lesbian community that seeks to distance itself from what it perceives to be a radical fringe.
Difficulties persist within the leather community itself as well as with the world at large.
After all this, Califia does has very concrete, do-able ideas for what to do and how to survive as individuals as we help our community thrive. The first duty of a revolutionary is to survive. Just finding meeting spaces or papers that will take SM personals is hard and saps a lot of energy. We talk to each other, but we need to talk to the mental health professionals in order to depathologize SM sexuality. This is made difficult because those other organizations don't want anything to do with SMers, despite the amount of fund-raising that goes on in the leather community.