TOM TEAM - ART FAIR 2016
Daffy London on Durk Dehner
I place my statement here so that people can see the man. And not judge him out of context based on the emblems he wears.
Queer aesthetics - especially the leather look popularized by Tom of Finland - have always involved reappropriation. Tom’s art deliberately borrowed from hyper-masculine and militaristic imagery, including uniforms and symbols once tied to oppression, to imagine a liberated, empowered queer identity.
This is not unlike how Black communities recontextualized the N-word: a term once weaponized against them became, in certain contexts, a marker of solidarity or defiance.
Queer leather culture flipped authoritarian symbolism into something playful, erotic, and subversive. The goal was never to honor fascism but to reclaim power - to take imagery that once oppressed and repurpose it as part of queer liberation. That’s a difficult legacy to explain to those outside the scene, especially in a time when visual symbols are judged instantly, often without historical context.
At the same time, it’s critical to distinguish between the actual practices of neo-Nazi groups and the symbolic play of queer art. Real Nazis and white supremacist factions don’t engage in irony or subversion - they gather to enforce racist, homophobic, and antisemitic ideologies, using symbols as direct propaganda. Their goal is violence and exclusion, not transformation or reimagination.
Durk Dehner, founder of the Tom of Finland Foundation, has operated within this complicated lineage for decades. Wearing controversial symbols within queer spaces is part of that tradition - not necessarily an endorsement of hate, but often a provocative commentary on it. That doesn’t mean the conversation is over, but reducing it to a headline risks erasing the very history of queer subversion and survival.
By questioning the safety of queer spaces simply because Durk is present, we risk demonizing the very ideology of what it means to recontextualize, to liberate, and to mock systems of power. We risk forgetting that this aesthetic tradition was built precisely to challenge oppression through subversion—not to reenact it.
If you wear black leather as part of your sexual identity, then know you are directly taking cues from Tom - from his mind, his art, and his erotic legacy. And if you feel there is something to be guilty of in that lineage, then you yourself are no less complicit than Durk Dehner.
I've known of Durk since I was 16, and known him directly for 30 years. He might get angry if you put a coffee near an original, or if you don’t recycle at the Tom House - but that’s where his hate ends. He doesn’t attend rallies, he’s never killed another, and he doesn’t identify as a Nazi
On Insta, someones also notice a confederate flag. Please understand that I had to self evict myself from Frazier Park, near LA, because people who fly the flag in a NONE ironic way were actually threatening me. Actually bigoted, actually hateful. I've seen the difference. The queer scene mostly operates in a bubble, and doesn't see the world at large, nor get that this level of witch-huntery without debate, is the reason people actually fly that flag... with pride.
He was accused of apologizing because he got caught. I'd say it’s more because he understands the hurt this has caused - amidst the toughest fight of all right now, trans rights.
We live in a cancel culture world. This guy is in his 70s, and he’s dedicated his life to protecting and solidifying our identity, and embracing art the rest of the world still considers perverted. I’m disgraced that he’s being put under the spotlight like this - and that he’s had to step away from the very Foundation he built.
By coming at him this way, oversimplifies the topic of fetishisation and appropriation, and comparisons to Elon Musk actually DO create an unsafe space. We must do better.
#ImWithDurk #FreePalestine