Morally Erect
Iโm an artist who makes work that many people, maybe most people, would consider alienating. In my work I cry, I bleed copiously. Sometimes orifices are sewn or stapled shut, sometimes Iโm cut with a scalpel, sometimes Iโm shocked with electricity. My work often features hardcore penetration. And I speak frankly, sometimes in an erotic context, about my own childhood sexual abuse. My art is extremely not for everyone, and even my own spouse doesnโt engage directly with much of my artwork. Iโm a trans woman, Iโm disabled, Iโm a faggot, Iโm not white, Iโm a sex worker. All of these factors make it difficult for me to find support within the arts. All of these factors made me a perfect fit to be an artist in residence at the Tom of Finland Foundation in Los Angeles, California.
If youโre not familiar, the Tom of Finland Foundation is a house in Echo Park, named for the artist Touko Laaksonen (1920โ1991). Heโs better known as Tom of Finland, and he lived there on and off throughout the 1980s. The house is equal parts a gay porn museum, nonprofit headquarters, and co-op. The co-founder of the Foundation and former International Mr. Leather (IML) judge, Durk Dehner, was Tomโs lover, and it was his house originally. Heโs lived there for decades along with his partner, Sharp, and a rotating cast of leather weirdos. There are between one and three artists-in-residence living in the house at any given time, as well as occasional international visitors. Itโs weird, homey, intimate (thereโs only one indoor shower, equipped with a stainless steel enema attachment that everyone shares!), and not terribly professional. I fell in love with it from the moment I first took a tour in 2018.
> ITโS WEIRD, HOMEY, INTIMATE, AND NOT TERRIBLY PROFESSIONAL.
The Foundation is a weird place to live. There are dicks everywhere. There is leather everywhere. You literally canโt look at any surface in the house without seeing a drawing or sculpture of a hard penis, or a man being fisted, or a cop getting his dick sucked. Uniform fetishism is pervasive in the house, which is steeped in decades of gay leather aesthetics. Gay leather uniform fetishism is premised on the unchecked sexual authority and power that uniforms lend the wearer, so it is unsurprising that Nazi (especially SS officer) uniform fetishism is pervasive in leather spaces and has been, essentially, since the uniforms were first manufactured by Hugo Boss. When I would tell people about my residency, one of the first things I would say was: โThereโs a lot of Nazi shit.โ
Tom served in World War II alongside the Nazis and spent the rest of his life giving interviews about how hot he was for their boots and uniforms. (Finland initially allied with Germany against their common Soviet enemy until Finland and the Soviet Union signed an armistice in 1944, at which point Finland entered active fighting on the side of the Allies). Tomโs Finnish military uniform, proudly on display in his former bedroom, has a medal on its chest emblazoned with a swastika. Several of his drawings also feature Nazi uniforms and swastikas, making explicit the extremely obvious Nazi influence otherwise implicit in his work. From his earliest drawings, Tom was obsessed with a certain kind of Aryan ideal. His work is based entirely on the trappings of fascist aesthetics or, as he frequently said, on embodying the idea that gay men arenโt automatically sissies. I earnestly believe that it was his intent to subvert fascist ideology for his own horny purposes, even as he embraced their aesthetics. He was a skinny twerp. It makes sense to me that he so strongly eroticized men who wanted to kill him.
Thereโs a long tradition in gay pornography of men eroticizing violent trade (see David Hurlesโ work, for example) and Iโm very sympathetic to the freaky impulse to depict what scares and excites you. As far as the subversion argument is concerned, itโs almost certainly true that the Nazis wouldnโt have smiled at Tomโs drawings of muscular, Aryan men fucking each other in the ass โ at least not publicly. And itโs worth noting that this interest in repurposing Nazi aesthetics was certainly not isolated to gay culture. The decades immediately post-World War II saw a global reappropriation of Nazi paraphernalia in straight and gay spaces both as war trophies, curiosities, and deliberately provocative punk aesthetics. Nazi exploitation movies found popularity almost as soon as the war ended, ranging from the cheesy sexploitation of _Love Camp 7_ (1969) to the arthouse controversy of _The Night Porter_ (1974). Groups including the Californian โsurf-Nazisโ of the 1950s, British punks and skinheads, Hells Angels, and, later, skateboarders adopted Nazi iconography as a way of being deliberately provocative and to express contempt toward respectable society. These attitudes informed the way that the developing gay, leather underground approached Nazi uniforms and iconography as well. For (mostly white) gay punks, Nazi aesthetics could be perverted into authoritarian leatherdaddy pastiche and also express the same outside-of-society, fuck-you ethos that straight bikers were leaning into. In an essay written for the 2022 Sex Utopia edition of the periodical _Mein schwules Auge_ (My Gay Eye), edited by Rinaldo Hopf and Fedya Ili, Tom of Finland Foundation co-founder Durk Dehner wrote: โ[Gay men] also took the Nazi uniform and its accessories, improving it by making it out of leather and tailoring only a gay fashion-forward male could do. If there are any people who warrant the use of Nazi gear, it is those who have been abused by them. Gays are one such group.โ
> ITโS ALMOST CERTAINLY TRUE THAT THE NAZIS WOULDNโT HAVE SMILED AT TOMโS DRAWINGS OF MUSCULAR, ARYAN MEN FUCKING EACH OTHER IN THE ASS โ AT LEAST NOT PUBLICLY.
As an artist in residence at the Tom of Finland Foundation, I lived for three months in a gay sex museum thatโs full of Nazi stuff. โCarta,โ you might ask me, โare you a Nazi? Do you support Nazis?โ I think this is a reasonable question for anyone who lives in a house full of Nazi iconography! The answer is no, I am not a Nazi, I fucking hate Nazis, and I donโt personally find anything about Nazis to be sexy. I canโt stand cop uniforms in erotic contexts, either. I knew that living at the Foundation would sometimes make me uncomfortable, but I was also confident going into the residency that these menโs fetishes were not a threat to me. I was confident, based on my knowledge of leather history and the way the men had treated me on my multiple prior visits to the house, that their interest in Nazi iconography was as an avenue of sexual exploration rather than being rooted in ideology. Kink is complicated to explain to people who might exist outside its containers, but essentially, I felt confident that the Nazi stuff was a sex thing, in the same way that I feel comfortable living with people who participate in rough consensual-nonconsent play (also known as rape play) without feeling like they are rapists or people who do intense age play without feeling that they endorse or commit pedophilia. Iโm a survivor of childhood sexual abuse and a trans woman of color with a severe disability, and I know the hypnotic and restorative power of engaging in fantasy that directly confronts past traumas and things that scare you and threaten your existence.
_That said_ , white men engaging openly in Nazi play are not creating an environment that is inviting toward people of color, especially people who might not share their highly contextual irreverence toward racist, genocidal symbology. I know from experience that edge play based around racism and fascism is far from being solely the domain of white men and that there are many people of color who enjoy and participate in the same kinks, but the fact is that the face of the Tom of Finland Foundation was, until recently, a white man who publicly wore Nazi jewelry and clothing and whose organization is devoted to the legacy of a white man who was extremely on the record about fetishizing Nazis and having sex with them. Regardless of intention or broader context, that behavior sends a clear and unwelcoming message, and I canโt fault anyone for staying away as a result. The Foundation exists in a kind of self-selecting bubble, in that the people who are aware of it either stay away because they feel alienated or are drawn to it because theyโre the kind of people who are open to the concept of reappropriating fascist aesthetics for gay sex. During my time as an artist in residence, I often marveled at these messy elder faggotsโ seeming disregard toward any kind of public perception, and I frequently voiced surprise to friends that they hadnโt experienced more controversy or criticism from within the gay community.
In January of 2025, several posts went viral in gay kink circles spotlighting Durk Dehnerโs history of wearing Nazi and Confederate regalia at public events, as well as screenshots of his profile on a fetish site where his bio espouses some incoherent and satanist-inspired white supremacy. This was, in my eyes, the most predictable scandal possible. I was genuinely interested to see how the Tom of Finland Foundation, a nonprofit built on the work of arguably one of the highest-profile gay Nazi fetishists of all time, would respond.
The Foundationโs response โ and the response of International Mr. Leather โ shocked me. Rather than acknowledging the pervasive presence of Nazi fetishism in the leather community or initiating a conversation around (badly needed) boundaries within public leather spaces in regard to military and police uniform fetish, both organizations acted as if Durk was an outlier who had been hiding secret Nazi beliefs, unbeknownst to anyone else. In an official statement dripping with faux-shock, the Tom of Finland Foundation stated that Durk acted โon his own accord and without our knowledgeโ and that โThe Foundation will never tolerate hate while we work to preserve the legacy of Tom of Finlandโs artwork.โ IMLโs executive director, David Ronneberg, wrote a Facebook post saying, โNew information that came to me this morning regarding one of the IML judges clearly indicates he is not fit to be part of our organization. Hate has no place at IML. Period, full stop.โ Both organizationsโ social media pages remain full of photographs of men wearing Nazi-inspired military fetish leather gear.
Full disclosure: In addition to being an artist in residence, I served on an unpaid, board-appointed committee to select upcoming artists-in-residence until I resigned in March 2025 out of frustration toward the Foundationโs response to the controversy. I also wrote a letter to the board in January expressing support for Durk and the work heโs done to uplift marginalized artists and sharing my anger toward their unwillingness to engage with the material that the Foundation is literally built on. Yet I think the charge โ that by doing so, he alienated people of color from participating in Tom of Finland-related leather spaces โ is correct. Itโs my personal opinion that Durk should have stepped down from the leadership of the Foundation for several reasons, not least of which is his irresponsible decision to bring his Nazi fetish out of the privacy of his bedroom and into public spaces. I donโt feel anger toward anyone who called Durk out. My anger is pointed at those institutions that claim to stand for leather history and for obscene displays of queer sexuality but who canโt admit that Durkโs behavior is entirely consistent with their own culture and history.
There needs to be a broader community conversation around Nazi and cop iconography in spaces that are supposed to be welcoming to everyone. Designated uniform or military fetish bar nights are a start but not enough. I firmly believe that every consenting adult has the right to their own fetishes, however offensive they may be. But I also believe that it is the right and responsibility of people organizing community spaces to make reasonable requests of the people attending their events so that they can welcome as many people as possible and not accidentally or intentionally exclude marginalized groups from spaces they might otherwise participate in. โNo Nazi gearโ is a good rule for general leather events. At this time in history, thereโs no way to appear at a public event dressed as a Nazi without coming across, to strangers, as a Nazi.
At this point in time and in this country, institutions like the Tom of Finland Foundation are critical in defending the rights of queer artists to make work that would otherwise be censored and retaliated against. Itโs the role of the Foundation to provide a space for queer people to be messy little freaks, but it is _not_ the role of the Foundation to shield art or artists (or anyone else) from reasonable criticism. Intense work is going to generate intense discussions! Tomโs work is complicated, frequently racist, and hugely influential. Itโs possible to both acknowledge the impact he has had on the queer community and also not shy away from the fact that many aspects of his work are straightforwardly shitty. There are extremely obvious avenues of criticism of his work, especially of the way he approached race in his drawings. As much as he might have believed otherwise, his approach to drawing Black men is unavoidably fetishistic. The Foundation, following Durkโs example, is defensive of Tomโs motives and almost completely unwilling to accept criticism of his work.
Despite what I feel are substantial and damaging missteps on the part of its administration, I badly want the Tom of Finland Foundation to continue to exist. There are so few institutions that celebrate messy and ambitious erotic art, and fewer still with the legacy and community of the Foundation. It is desperately important to host artists-in-residence and explicitly work toward fostering new generations of talent who would otherwise be silenced. I would not be the artist I am today without the support of the Tom of Finland Foundation and the anti-respectability ethos that drives their mission. The Foundation, and archives like it, must recognize that they are the stewards of our freedom of speech and the complexities of gay history, and they need to be willing to acknowledge the bad and problematic elements of that history as much as they do the good ones. Knowing where we come from, warts and all, only makes our community stronger.
Postscript: Replying to a request for comment, the Foundation rejected my assessment of the scandal and replied in part, โWe understand that art can elicit discomfort. In fact, thatโs part of its job. Tomโs work has always been a lightning rod for conversation, critique, and complexity. But to view his imagery without its historical, political, and artistic context risks erasing the very struggle it emerged from โ a time when queer expression was criminalized, erased, or pathologized. His art was never just about sex. It was about survival, visibility, and the unapologetic celebration of queer masculinity. The article in question, while intending to raise meaningful questions, overlooks this essential context and _inadvertently positions the Foundation as careless gatekeepers of a problematic archive_. This framing endangers the very existence of a rare cultural institution that has always advocated for sexual freedom and artistic risk. What may have once been seen as a radical act of queer subversion must now be considered through a contemporary lens โ one shaped by a deeper understanding of systemic racism, white supremacy, and the need for intersectional justice in our communities. In light of recent revelations and the harm caused by images and statements associated with our co-founder Durk Dehner, we reaffirm: the Foundation does not condone hate, white supremacy, or fascist ideology of any kind.โ
_Carta Monir is a writer, visual artist, and sex worker living in Michigan. She was an artist in residence at the Tom of Finland Foundation, and her work has been exhibited and screened internationally. Her work deals with pain, disability, trauma, and perseverance._
_Photo illustration by Sharanya Durvasula_.
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I think this is important reading for those who operate fetish and geared spaces. The author says more better than I can summarize. It's worth your time.
https://lux-magazine.com/article/tom-of-finland/
