queerbychoice | Lifestyles and Subcultures: A Question

Body modification enthusiasts, especially people into extreme body modification.
Lifestyle bondage/domination fetishists.
Amputee wannabes.
Street punks.
Neonazis and racist skinheads.

And, to some extent, furries. I have no intention of joining furry culture, though I'll admit I feel far more sympathetic to them than to the other groups listed here. Also, people in my queer subculture who have different identities from mine, and from what's "intelligible" in the mainstream culture - does that count, as long as I'm quite sure their sexual/gender identities are definitely not the same as mine? I just really like learning how different people understand their sexuality and gender, since those experiences can be different for everyone.

Furries would be on my list too. And I suppose to some extent the extreme body modification people, although I also have definite impulses at times to not want to hear any more about them (which I don't have with furries, because I don't find furries particularly squicky just for being furries, or just for having furry-themed sex lives either).

But I think at the top of my list right now would be the

anti_shampoo community.

Wow... anti-shampoo... but... why?

To save money? To eschew efforts to conform one's natural appearance to mainstream beauty standards? Just to be different?

The only thing is, everybody in that community must be completely immune to dandruff. Otherwise the level of masochism involved in their endeavors would be mind-boggling.

*nods* I've known some incredibly beautiful people in dreadlocks, and into more-natural-personal-hygiene than daily showering, drying, and artificially re-moisturizing.

Not washing is not something I can do, though. I've gone at most a week without washing my hair (since it has been chin-length or longer) and it begins to look like I'm a gross-out derelict. Oh well.

(On the other hand I have also known a few people who really should consider showering and washing their hair more often.)

(I suppose I should add "hippies" and "anarchists" to my list, though I've formed a poor impression of the latter the last time I attempted to grok their ideas.)

wow, at first i wasn't sure that i could think of anybody to put as a comment...then i looked at the anti shampoo community....now i'm really fascinated too. anti shampoo? echoing http://www.livejournal.com/userinfo.bml?user=sammka ...why????

now that i'm considering the original subject (intriguing groups that you have no intention of being part of), i think i have to say anarchists, needle drug users, trans persons, sex as industry,...ooh, i guess there's a lot of different groups that interest me but i don't plan to join...

a fun think though!

None

"Straight" and "gay" people.

1) Furries: I'm amused at how common this answer is) from what I know of that community, if my life had gone a bit differently and I'd connected with it in college, I'd likely a furry.

2) Anarchists: I share much of their ideology, but their community is fairly alien to me and so I watch it from afar.

3) Satanists: Specifically Left Hand Path Temple of Set type people. I've encountered a few online and they are absolutely fascinating, but also people that I'm not inclined to spend time with in real-life.

From what I understand of the loosest definition of furries, I think you are one, actually. Well, a "scaly," to be exact.

joannasatana is a Satanist friend of mine. I don't know anything about specific paths and such, though.

Very true, but I am most definitely not a part of the furry community, although I now have a fair number of connections with it because I'm back in touch with a good friend of mine from college who was not then a furry, but most definitely is now.

Hee hee! Left handed or right handed paths? I prefer the ambidextrious path myself. I identify more with the LaVey-an brand o' Satanists, but they often take themselves a little too seriously for my tastes. I'm sure the actual practitioners of "Satanism" would oust me or call me a poseur or hypocrite if given the chance. I can't really embrace the rituals, ceremonies, and hoo hah that often go hand and hand with what those cats are into, but I identify and label myself a Satanist because of LaVey's writings and philosopies and my ability to really see eye to eye with his outlook and views on life in general. And the guy had SUCH a beautiful and wicked sense of humor. That in itself was one of the biggest draws towards his "teachings" for me. As far as the Temple of Set folks, I am fascinated by them as well, but again, they tend to take themselves FAR too seriously for me to be able to do the same.

Erm, I was having this same conversation with another friend of mine just the other day. As for reading material, webcomics are most prominent in my thoughts because I read them very often.

I follow Venus Envy (http://venusenvy.keenspace.com) pretty religiously even though I don't have any close personal ties to transgender issues.

I used to follow Jack (http://jack.keenspace.com) when I had more bandwidth even though anthropomorphic/furrys aren't a big deal to me. I think I like it more for the Heaven-and-Hell settings than the anthropomorphized characters. (And as a stanch atheist, I don't really understand why I find that so intriguing, either.) :)

I was a devoted fan of Unicorn Jelly (http://unicornjelly.com/) while it was being created. That touches on queer, transgender and androgyne issues.

Heh, I read all kinds of "comics about gamers" (Penny Arcade (http://www.penny-arcade.com), Little Gamers (http://www.little-gamers.com/), etc.) even though I rarely immerse myself in computer or console games. I definitely can't relate to computer-game obsessiveness, I have too many other things to do with my life. ;)

I've dabbled in the BDSM scene and discovered that neither the dom nor the sub lifestyle really rocks my world, though it is quite fun to see friends who are into it really enjoying themselves with it.

There's a book entitled "Third Sex, Third Gender: Beyond Sexual Dimorphism in Culture and History" by Gilbert Herdt sitting in my bookshelf behind me begging to be read.

These are all topics that—aparrently!—I find intriguing to read about. But I wouldn't really make such a bold statement as that I do "not having the slightest intention of ever joining" them. I don't see anything inherently wrong or repulsive about any of these subcultures... There's just no real motivation for me personally to... erm, enlist?

(I'm also sometimes concerned that someone who has personal/emotional ties to these subcultures will discover me and shout "hey loser, you're not one of us, you don't belong here!")

Basically I'm a tragically vanilla mundane who is a fan and advocate of anything deviant that could—in any way whatsoever—push the boundaries of society's idiotic taboos.

I'm curious... can we hear your responses to your own question? :) And: what made you ask? What prompted the question?

I did give my responses in comments above. You should hurry up and get to that Gilbert Herdt book, though - there's a completely different Gilbert Herdt book sitting on my bookshelf about 2/3 read and what I've read of it is mind-shakingly brilliant.

I'm definitely not a fan of anything and everything deviant - only very specific things. It's fairly rare for me to take any great interest in a lifestyle or subculture without wanting to join it, so when I do, it usually means that that lifestyle or subculture is either unusual enough that I can learn things about human nature from it that I wouldn't learn elsewhere, or else that it has a lot of merits in my eyes even though not quite enough for me to want to join. I'm interested in hearing other people's answers to the question because I might hear about some new interesting subcultures I'd want to start paying attention to also, and because it helps give me a sense of what people are intrigued by (which says something about who they are) that I'm not likely to have learned from most people's journals, since most people write in their journals mostly about subcultures they are members of.

I find the people who participate in these "Live Action Role Play" thing intriguing and interesting, but the idea of participating in one holds no interest to me at all, whatsoever. I guess that they call it LARPing.

What's a furry?

Is that a serious question?

Originally, "furry" was a term for fictional animal characters who talk like humans (in cartoons and children's books and such). Then it came to mean real people who identify as being animals. Some of them just identify that way in their minds or draw a lot of pictures of anthropomorphized animals doing human-type things. Others dress up as animals. The ones who dress up as animals during sex as a sexual fetish (and frequently draw a lot of pictures of half-human-looking animals having sex) are the most known and most often made fun of.

There are one hell of a lot of furries on LiveJournal. And some who read my journal, and some whose journals I have read.

:-) Thanks.

And that question was not a joke! :) I had never heard that term used before.

I wonder how influential LiveJournal itself (and the internet at large) has been in contributing to furry subculture--even just by letting people know that they aren't alone in their "weird" ideas or feelings. Or pretty much any subculture, really...

Oh, there's no question at all in my mind that more people acquire furriness, queerness, trans-ness, leftist politics, rightist politics, any lifestyle or culture at all really, if they have encountered or at least heard of others with such feelings first.

Polyamory for I have no intention to share my body or my loved one but reading some experiences are interesting.

Radical Faeries. Being an atheist I am not down with their animisitc/paganistic rhetoric, but I keep wanting to go to a retreat to see what it's like.

Gay men.

Yeah, I find them pretty intriguing too. But then, I might join them too if it wouldn't require physical alterations. I'm not fond of physical alterations.

Hmm. Freemasons, heavy occultists, radical survivalists, religious mystics, flash mobs, stoics, people who obsessively collect things.

Do only surviving lifestyles/subcultures count?

No, obsolete lifestyles/subcultures count too.

That's quite an unexpected list. Why do Freemasons, heavy occultists and religious mystics interest you?

With occultists and religious mystics I am usually fascinated by the level of depth and ritual they put into their beliefs. I also find the amount of superstition that goes into them very interesting psychologically. ("Superstition" not in a condescending way, but in the idea that one believes in greater, mystical omnipotent forces and also believes that they can manipulate those forces through direct action.)

I'm kind of more interested in the oddity of Freemasons, their ideas of ritual and an "ancient order," their very inflated sense of self and why fully grown, emotionally mature (men) feel the need to join this sort of fraternity. I also like how you can bring up Masons in pretty much any conversation and suddenly everyone will jump in with conspiracy theories of their own. I can’t take them too seriously. There’s a Masonic temple in Penfield that actually has a ladder you have to lower to get in, just like a fancy treehouse.

Joining a flash mob seems like something relatively painless to do once or twice...I want to, if I ever hear of one in advance... why would you definitely not want to? (Just curious.)

With any sort of mischievous behavior, no matter how innocuous and even if a million other people do it, I’m always afraid I’m going to be the one person who gets in trouble for it somehow. Like there will be some kind of anti-flash mob legislation I don’t know about and I’ll be the last person out the door, blah blah.

But maybe “definitely never ever” is a bit too extreme in that case. :)

People who talk to non-partners openly about their sex lives / other sex related stuff, if that counts as a lifestyle or subculture.

That would be very much my lifestyle or subculture. ;-)

And I do read you! Although not primarily for that reason.

I've been thinking about this a lot because I like to read about a lot of different subcultures of which I am not a... member? But just as I feel ready to say that I would never join them, I think, well, if I were bored, I might try it... or, if I had the money/time/living arrangements, maybe I would...

The best I can come up with is the transgender lifestyle. I don't actively seek out the stories of transgendered people to read, but those who I know are great people, and the "I did this and this and now I finally feel right in my body" stories are generally uplifting, in that people took brave steps to make themselves happier people, without caring about biological or social impediments. And yet, the only reason I can think of for wanting to be male versus female is that men tend to be paid more than women. That really isn't enough of an incentive, though.

Maybe I could add "gay men" to the list also, then.

Heh. I don't find those stories uplifting at all - I find them severely stressful and worrying because I have far too much experience seeing people who have already had a sex change suffering horrible awful regret for it and I cannot read about people considering doing such things without immediately feeling guilty no matter what I say or don't say because I'm far too aware that no matter what they do it could end up being the wrong thing and no matter what I say or don't say it could be encouraging them in the wrong direction or failing to discourage them from the wrong direction.

My own reason for wanting to be male would be to see what it's like. But I would also want a way to turn back female afterward with no harm done and preferably I'd like to be able to switch back and forth an infinite number of times. Obviously this is not possible, unless perhaps I were to develop unexpectedly fantastic talent at cross-dressing, which is extremely unlikely, especially in view of the fact that I long ago gave up hoping for it and therefore will not be working at it.

I should add gay men (or white, middle class gay men) to the list too, because eventhough I am one, I do not feel connected to the media portrayal of/for gay men, even when it is written by gay men. I mean things like Out Magazine and The Advocate are so different from my life and experiences. I am not middle class, urban or a "professional" and I don't go on vacation to Key West for circuit parties or whatever. I also don't go the gym much or like Queer Eye For the Straight Guy or read GQ. I am so far removed from that subculture it's fascinating to me, but usually not in a positive way.

The anorexic communities. Fascinated/repelled by that self-control-tipping-over-into-self-destruction thing. Had the strongest response to a piece of music ever the first time I heard '4st 7lb', I feel no need to control myself that way.

Im fascinated by cannibalism, amputee wanna be's, pro-ana folks, necrophiliacs, ADULT BABIES!, low end sex workers (street hookers not neccessarily escorts or call girls), junkies, cults (as in Jim Jones and Koresh kinda worshippers) Televangelists, Bug Catchers and Gift Givers (remember when I pissed Mikie WAY off when I posted briefly about this topic) serial killers, Pygmies, Feeders, plastic surgery obssessives, ummmmmmmm, and Im sure there are tons of others, but I cant think of any more right now. OH and circus freaks and the carny circuit.

Lifestyles and Subcultures: A Question

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Hail Satan!

Do web-comics count?

Re: Do web-comics count?

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GREAT question!!!!