We are almost there. Women of Drummer 2026.
I have spent a lot of this year talking about connection, sisterhood, accountability, history, and what it means to make the path a little wider for the women coming behind us. For my final blog, I want to talk about something just as important.
I had fun.
Women of Drummer comes from a movement of badass Leather dykes. Women who played, flirted, fucked, laughed, challenged expectations, built community, and made room for us to be fully ourselves. It is also a play title, and I never wanted to carry it so seriously that I forgot that.
Six regionals gave me six very different experiences and a whole lot of stories.
Some of those memories are big, and some are wonderfully ridiculous. My first regional was San Diego, and SuzyBear was one of the people who helped coordinate that experience and welcome me into the year. Somewhere in there, I also jumped into a ball pit with a first timer, which felt like a pretty perfect way to begin a title year centered around connection and play.
In Oklahoma City, I bonded with Spicy Kitten over the fact that both of us are clumsy and goofy as hell. It is still up for debate which one of us is the bigger clutz. OKC also gave me my first opportunity to try cigar service topping, something I had been curious about.
Across the year, I somehow managed to scratch my tickle-top itch twice. If you know how people react when I tell them I enjoy tickling folks, you understand why I consider this an accomplishment.
Florida gave me some of my favorite playful moments of the year. There was water, silliness, laughter, and our mermaid moments. I loved the reminder that grown Leather women do not always have to be teaching, serving, leading, processing, or doing serious Leather business. Sometimes we can just get in the water and be ridiculous together.
VLU was another reminder of why I wanted to travel this title. People whose names I knew became real people, and some of those people became folks I genuinely care about. Suki Snow is one of those connections. That was one of the best parts of this entire road for me. I did not want to simply visit regions, take pictures, and go home. I wanted to actually know people.
Play helped create some of those relationships too. SuzyBear and I later shared some pretty magical primal play at SPLF and Bootblack Roundup. Someone who had helped welcome me at my very first regional became a friend, a play connection, and eventually my head judge. That feels like a pretty good example of what I hoped this year could create.
In Chattanooga, I found myself throwing single tails. In Costa Rica, Morpho welcomed us with warmth, mountains, water, laughter, and an infinity-pool roundtable that still makes me smile.
Somewhere between airports, bars, brunches, roundtables, play spaces, pools, and conversations happening way later than any of us should have been awake, I also got to just be Dee.
Not only Woman of Drummer.
I got to be the bratty Princess, the baby sadist still figuring out all the delicious ways I like to hurt people, the woman laughing too loudly at the bar, the one saying, “Ooh, can I try that?” and the one cuddled up somewhere after a long day.
Those moments matter because Leather cannot only be responsibility, protocol, history, service, conflict, and who is doing the work. Leather is also pleasure, curiosity, flirting, play, laughter, friendship, softness, desire, and freedom.
Joy gets to be part of the movement too.
One of my biggest goals this year was connection, and looking back, some of the connections I value most did not happen during an official program. They happened while eating together, playing together, telling stories, traveling, laughing, being silly, or sitting around long after the official schedule ended.
So thank you to every regional producer who welcomed me and every woman who sat in a circle with me, played with me, laughed with me, taught me something, challenged me, hugged me, fed me, hosted me, or simply came over and said hello.
Thank you to Toni for carrying this wild thing called Women of Drummer. Thank you to everyone who traveled some part of this road with me, and to the people at home who helped hold my life together while I was out collecting airline miles and questionable stories.
Most of all, thank you to the badass Leather dykes who built spaces where women like me could be this free.
To the Woman of Drummer 2026, good luck. Serve your community. Learn the history. Make connections. Carry the title with intention.
But please, play too.
Try something new. Laugh too loud. Let somebody love on you. Make at least one memory that probably should not go in the official blog.
The title vest eventually comes off.
The stories stay.
And I have some damn good ones.
See y’all at Ramblewood.
Dee, Woman of Drummer 2025
Thank you, too, Dee. For all that you do 🩷🩷 -Rosie