Random stuff on my mind. Some ranting, some TMI.

[kiya]

So I subscribe to a mailing list for Slavic reconstructionism, because I want to know about this sort of thing, and it's a pretty good resource.

Last couple of days I've been pondering leaving, because they clearly don't like my kind around there.

It started out with the random bashing of Wicca, which irritates me because it's bashing; it also irritates me because clearly the people doing the bashing didn't know what the fuck they were talking about. The BTW folks on the list pointed that out, to no actual effect. That wandered off into a generalised bashing of eclecticism which included the claims that eclectics "only take the fun stuff" and also that they all use a Wiccish format. No amount of bothering with facts makes their minds less made up.

When I pointed out that eclecticism required doing the work, sometimes different kinds of work than doing something within an established tradition, I got a rather snide/baffled, "What's this 'work' you're talking about? You don't have to work at being in a folkway." Um, dude. You have to make the offerings, perform the rituals, deal with the entities. For a reconstruction, you have to do the goddamn research. You have to make it fit in your life rather than be some kind of fucking hobby. That's doing the work.

Meanwhile, the folkishness -- not the really hardcore racism kind, but the tacit presumption of "These are the gods of our ancestors, so of course these are the gods we serve. Those other gods should have their own people follow them." With a few backhanded slaps at Wicca again, of type, "You are taking people away from their proper folkways!" And a treatment of this whole gods-of-the-ancestors as essential to the whole reconstruction thing, which irritates me no end. Both because I am not in service to the gods of my ancestors (since none of Them asked) and because I have my doubts that the Slavic gods are more limited than other gods or entirely uninterested in speaking to appropriate followers from other ethnicities.

Nnnnngh. I think I'll be sticking to lurk mode, strictly, if I stay around there.



Every so often I poke my nose in some BDSM resource group or another and am struck with the profound sense of alienating cases of Martian anthropology. I don't understand what the hell is going on, you see. I don't speak the subculture, I'm just a sub.

I feel like I ought to speak the subculture, mind. I mean, I'm a switchy sub and mild masochist who gets off on playing with boundaries (among other things), and ... it would be nice if that was enough to make any of it make sense.

This was partly provoked by a giant thread that was initiated by an idiot. The idiot is completely irrelevant to the thought train; the bit that started me going confounded was the bit where someone was commenting on the clothes they needed to wear to fit in in the community.

Which is sort of ... I'm used to being tenuously a member of communities with weird protocols that I don't share, right? I call it "Living on the planet Earth". But the thing here, I suspect, is that I'm not a participant in the in-person subculture in the slightest, I don't go to the parties or whatever, so the idea that there's some relevant factor of what a person might choose to wear as being a part of acceptance as a community member (when the 'community' is not defined in terms of, y'know, image) blows my little mind. It makes the whole thing hit all of my 'performance' buttons, what brooksmoses referred to as "X-Rated LARP".

It reminds me a bit of a conversation I had partially on poly-boston a while back (we took it to email fairly quickly) where one person was asking for advice on dealing with a sub with multiple doms. The whole "do I let someone scene with someone else" thing I don't get; I don't do 'scene', and the fact that I'm a sub isn't something that compartmentalises out of my sexual responses so that it only appears in the acceptable box. The stuff that hits people's 'obviously sub' identifiers mostly only comes out in sexual context, but it doesn't not come out in that context either. It doesn't show up all the time, but it's a part of my natural response set; I don't feel inclined to fake it and suppress it when it's an appropriate response. This means, in practical terms, that the only way I "have only one dom" is having only one partner, which is not an option I put on the table even when I'm having an asexual streak. This was apparently baffling, unheard of in 'the BDSM community' with which she was familiar, the idea that it wasn't a role to me, just a matter of being and appropriate response. Or something. There's major rupture here and I don't trust that I understand where it is well enough to render it.

I don't get the rules. Fortunately, I don't have to go in there to get anything I'm looking for ... I just wish it wasn't so damn confusing. I could probably go on more about this, but it would get less coherent than it already is.


Also, for the amusement of all and sundry, not only am I the sort of person who would say "Your egotism is charming, but slightly confusing" to a partner, I just did.

And I'm out of rice vinegar. So sad.

Comments

[booklectica]

Well, I also find clothes helpful when doing scenes with people. Being topped by someone wearing - say - black leather is very good for my state of mind. :)