The Islands

OK--so now I will 'splain why I gave this blog the name I did.

A few years ago a friend of mind posted an essay that gives an interesting view of subcultures and what is it like to dwell in one (or several). So now I am going to do a lousy job of paraphrasing it. Maybe I can get permission to just post a link to the darned thing in time.

Now, said friend comes from a much different subcultural angle than I do, but the main point of the essay seems to hold up.

The cultural world can be seen to be divided into a mainland and a bunch of islands (some large, some small). Some islands are arranged into archipelagos which, perhaps, can be tagged with names. Islands can be near the mainland, or farther away.

Now, the mainland represents "mainstream" or "normal" culture. Most of my local friends would call mainlanders "vanilla". SCA folks would call the mainland "Mundania". Etc.

The mainlanders hold most of the economic might and influence in the world, and many are barely aware (if at all) that the islanders exist. Often their awareness is distorted, spiked by stereotypes and legends. Islanders of all stripes, however, know the mainlanders exist. Since their general survival often tends to depend on it, they also tend to more much more about the mainlanders than perhaps the mainlanders are aware.

So I, and most of my friends, reside on the archipelago of Alternative Sexual Practice. BDSM is here, with all of it's isles. We have the Masters and slaves, the sadomasochists, the D/s crowd, the bondage fetishists, etc. Spanking enthusiasts sometimes get filed under this umbrella label, though individual members of that isle will often insist that they live closer to the mainland, a step away from vanilla sex. You have other folks too--the foot fetishists, the transvestites (not to be confused with the drag queens and kings and performance artists, though these islands do carry a brisk trade with each other), etc.

Close by is the archipelago of alternate sexual identity, or alternate gender identity--the LGBTQ denizens. Of course many folks hold citizenship on multiple islands.

And close by one will also find the body mod crowd, the tatoo aficionados, the modern primitives, vampires of various types, etc, etc, etc.

Sometimes a reciprococity if formed between two otherwise distant islands when a strong enough personality decides it might be useful to fuse cultures. What does Zen Buddhism have to do with BDSM? Besides the kyosaku? Or Paganism? Might I introduce you to my friends?

And there are those of us who may winter and summer on a few islands (I like to winter on the island of sadomasochism and summer on the island of the Spankos) but we also like to travel a lot, for whatever reason.

You get the idea. And Hera knows where I will drop anchor next.