The 1960s revolutionary Eldridge Cleaver had a troubled youth in LA, but a rape spree earned the 18 year-old a long sentence to San Quentin and Folsom prisons. His book SOUL ON ICE was published by Ramparts Magazine. Controversy followed his stating that he initially raped black women in the ghetto “for practice” and then embarked on the rape spree of white women, describing these crimes as politically inspired, motivated by a genuine conviction that the rape of white women was “an insurrectionary act”

Cleaver never expressed any contrition for these crimes and upon his 1968 release from prison he joined the Black Panthers as Minister of Information. A failed ambush of police officers in Oakland forced him to flee the country to Cuba and then Algeria. Cleaver returned the States in 1975 after his conversion to born-again evangelism and many within the radical movement questioned whether Cleaver had been police plant within the Black Panthers.

While in exile in France Cleaver tried his hand at fashion, inventing the penis pants, which had a codpiece for a man’s cock to hang out of his trousers in a sox.

“I want to solve the problem of the fig-leaf mentality. Clothing is an extension of the fig leaf — it put our sex inside our bodies. My pants put sex back where it should be.”

I can’t recall anyone wearing one.

Certainly the police have never mentioned them when looking for rapists, although a few years ago Bas Kosters Studio are selling penis leggings for women costing $151. The print has thousands of penises on them and are a little square in comparison to Clever’s penis pants.

Their website noted that they are “also available for men.”

I’m not into leggings and wish I had a pair of the Cleaver Classics, but none were for sale on Ebay, meaning either that no one bought them or anyone who has them isn’t through with them yet.

Classic.