Tony DeBlase
American leatherman and zoologist
Anthony DeBlase (April 3, 1942 – July 21, 2000) was an American author. A member of the BDSM and leather subcultures, he was the designer of the leather pride flag.
Leather and BDSM activities
In 1979, he founded DungeonMaster, a magazine about sadomasochistic technique. Running from 1979 until 1994, he also wrote for it.
In 1982, under the pen name Fledermaus, he published a collection of fictional sadomasochism stories, titled The Fledermaus Anthology.
In 1986, the leather magazine Drummer was sold to DeBlase, who sold it in 1991 to Martijn Bakker, owner of RoB Amsterdam.
On May 28, 1989, DeBlase first presented the leather pride flag (which he had designed), at International Mister Leather.
Initial reaction to the flag was mixed. According to DeBlase's article A Leather Pride Flag,
"Some, particularly on the east coast, reacted positively to the concept, but were quite concerned, some even offended, that I had not involved the community in helping to create the design."
On September 18, 1990, Clive Platman (Mr. Australia Drummer) presented DeBlase with an Australian version of the flag, incorporating the Southern Cross, which is from the Australian national flag, with the original design of the leather pride flag.
“Tony DeBlase” enters the record as american leatherman and zoologist. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Tony, DeBlase and American can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 21, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q66424848. VIAF identifies the subject as 26682480. The Library of Congress control number is no98073236. 2 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1942, 2000, 1979 and 1994.
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This entry incorporates text from “Tony DeBlase” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.