ZoMbI3 CuPcAK3's blog: "I blog your face."

Most of my friends on here know I have a...weird education. I spent most of graduate school synthesizing what I had learned while obtaining my BAs in Anthropology and Religious Studies into a fascination bordering on obsession with the connection between burial practices, artifacts, the historical record and popular culture. As a result, I've written some very interesting studies on the human condition. I thought I'd give a sampling of some of my subject matter. It's good for an lol, if nothing else.

Master's Thesis:

Anthro: "Venus is a Doll, Mary is a Whore: How Feminine Iconography in the Artifact and Bone Records Has Influenced Modern Popular Conceptions of Woman, Witch, and Goddess"

Religious Studies (unfinished): "Pagan Celebrities, the Diabolical Witch, and Burning Stereotypes at the Stake"

Graduate School Highlights:

" 'Daughters, Use Your Consciousness To Rise Up in the Earth': 19th Century Feminism in Christian Science and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints." (a study of how "oppressive" religious practices actually created a feminist ideal, paired with mini-biographies of Emma Smith and Mary Baker-Eddy)

"The Mediumn's Chair: Theosophy and Spiritualism in the Victorian Era" (a study of 19th century mediums)

"The Saviour Myth and the Mixing of Religious Symbolism on Buffy the Vampire Slayer" (a study of Buffy as social commentary on the Bible, Wicca and even Shakespeare)

"Cyber Worship and the Congregation of Gamer Geeks"(a study of how gaming "cons" effectively serve as a church)

"Respect and Burial: A Study of Religion in the Funeral Industry" (a study of the variations in religious burial practices and how funeral homes deal with this)

"Nietzche, High Magic, and Mr. Crowley" (a study of the influences of the Church of Satan)

"Serpents, Lot's Wife, and Mary Magdelane: The Marginaliztion of the Goddess in the Bible" (a study of goddess iconography in the Bible and Hebraic era archaeological record)

"The Impact of Florida's Migrant Worker Population on the Study of Modern Forensics" (a...yeah that's self-explanatory)

"Shovel Shaped Incisors and Other Native American Oddities" (a study of the Bering land bridge theory via the evidence presented in forensic dentistry....*snore*)

"Do Non-Human Primates Have Burial Practices? Death and Grieving Amongst Chimpanzees" (written as my final after completing Jane Goodall's Chimpanzoo program at Tampa's Lowry Park Zoo)

**"Miladies and Masters: A Sociocultural History of BDSM in Western Culture"**

Here is my thesis statement from that paper as an example of my dry and boring academic brain:

“Considering D/s relationships within the context of modern gender paradigms reveals a web even more tangled than the vanilla world at large. While one would think that the Dominant partner is largely “in charge” of how these roles are expressed, a solid argument can be made that it is actually the submissive that plays a more integral place in defining gender within the bdsm community.  We will examine two kinds of relationships in the bdsm and fetish community, the traditional Master or Mistress/slave and the somewhat lesser known idea of the hotwife and cuckold. Both of these partnerships fall outside the norm of what it traditionally means to be a sexual male or female, and outside perceptions of them are largely inaccurate, having  little to do with self-definition and everything to do with what makes society comfortable.

 Four kinds of gender interactions can exist within D/s. For the sake of clarity, we will limit ourselves to the discussion of biological gender. The myriad complications that arise when including psychological gender as a factor in D/s is beyond our scope.  Therefore, the D/s interactions relevant here are male Dom/female sub, male Dom/male sub, female Domme/male sub, and female Domme/female sub.  Obviously these interactions become slightly more ambiguous if one or both partners identifies as transgendered, but the basic paradigm still holds. 

Within the modern world, and throughout much of history, gender has been defined as male dominant and female submissive.  While female submissives are often viewed as promiscuous, sexually permissive, and even desperate, they still fall within the parameters of what society can “accept” about sex and what a woman “should be”. For those aware of the sexual world outside of the vanilla,  female submissive based relationships are much more widely accepted. This serves to help create the double standard of perceptions of male and female homosexuality, whereas gay or bisexual men are consistently seen as deviants and lesbians and bisexual women are perceived as either bitches or as a sexual stimulus for men, but rarely as overtly perverted. It does not much matter whether the dominant is male or female;  it is the behaviour of the submissive that forms how popular culture views bdsm.  Since female submissive D/s is still registered firmly within the norms expected for women in western culture, it is much easier for us to find credulity in these partnerships being able to exist as deeply committed, functioning love relationships. Conversely, we as a society have a very difficult time granting the same courtesy to male submissive D/s. The idea of the male submissive is by no means a new one in the western world.  Knights were the original submissive men in history. The idea of courtly love is very akin to the Mistress/slave bond. Knights worshipped their ladies, served them, found them alternate lovers, often clung to gynocentric  Pagan beliefs in a resolutely Christian society, and exhibited all of the behaviours associated with modern submissive men.

The common stereotypes about male submissives are an added burden to the already misinformed concepts of why submissives behave the way they do.  Submissives  are already viewed as doormats, naturally indecisive, unable to care for themselves financially and often emotionally, and drawn to abusive situations. Male submissives have to deal with the beliefs they are somehow less than a man, homosexual, and sexually deviant. No matter how negatively she might be viewed, a heterosexual submissive woman will rarely, if ever, be considered to be less than a woman or a lesbian simply because of her submission. This is another double standard. Any D/s relationship in which the submissive is female is given the validation of being able to “pass” for a deep, loving bond. D/s relationships in which the submissive is male, however, are often seen as only induglences for perversion, and the possibility of a “normal” relationship existing between a male submissive and his Dom/me is seen as unlikely, at best.  These mores are reinforced in some male submissive behaviours such as crossdressing, sissification, and forced homosexuality/heterosexuality, practices rarely imposed upon female submissives. 

There is, however, one type of relationship within the fetish community that turns traditional gender roles upside down. This is that of the hotwife/cuckold.  It is generally accepted in western culture that men sleep around and women are faithful. With the exception of those engaged in polyamory, monogamy is the ideal in the modern world. This is usually only a surface assumption, though, considering nearly 70% of men and 50% of women are unfaithful to their partners at some point. Promiscuous people are generally looked down upon, no matter what their gender is,  but it still much more vilifying for women to be sexually permissive. The concept of the player and the whore are both very prominent in popular culture. More than 73% of the subject matter on any given talk show on television deals with deviant non-monogamy and the consequences thereof.  The hotwife/cuckold relationship is quite the opposite. A hotwife is a happily married woman, who, with the consent and encouragement of her husband, engages in sexual intercourse with many other men or women whilst the husband remains faithful.  He is called a cuckold, and this type of relationship is not only acceptable to him, but, rather, highly erotic. He often obtains additional gratification from receiving his wife back from the arms of another man/woman, and “fights” for her affection with gifts, the completion of domestic duties, and improved sexual response through the stimulation of having to impress his wife all over again. Often, but not always, this is a part of the Mistress/slave contract. Not all hotwife/cuckold relationships are also D/s oriented. Kinsey showed as early as 1963 that the three most common male fantasies are their wife/lover engaging in sexual activity with another woman, engaging in sexual activity with another man, and homosexual desires, in that order. All of these preclude the involvement of an outside source in the couple’s sex lives.  The hotwife and cuckold simply act out these fantasies. This practice usurps our perceptions of what men and women do. Sexual permissiveness for women, and fidelity and even chastity amongst men, is simply not a part of the western collective consciousness.”

Undergraduate Thesis:

"Zombies and Mojo and Veves Oh My!: Voodoo and Popular Culture in Haiti and New Orleans" (a study of the contribution of voodoo to both the tourist industry and the folk medicine practices of Caribbean culture)

Undergraduate School Highlights:

"Being Other Amongst the Other: Bisexual and Transgendered People and the Gay Community" (a study of how the gay community ostracizes bi and t/g people)

" 'Welcome to Goth Talk!' and Other Counterculture Parody in the Tampa Community" (a study of Tampa's goth community, the title is a reference to SNL's sketch "Goth Talk" being appropriately set in Tampa)

"Male Bonding in War" (a study of how the male/male relationship transforms within the context of being in the front lines of a battle, using Sparta, Rome, the French Revolution, and WW2 as the most prominent examples)

"Usurping Sexual Sterotypes from Hijra to Castrati" (an anthropological history of the role of feminized men in civilization)

"The Biology of the Undead: Forensic Contributions to the Belief in Vampires" (a study of how the processes that affect the body after death helped to create the myth of the vampire before the advent of modern medicine)

Anyway, I wrote about a million papers in college, or so it seems. These are just my favourites. If any of them interest you or you've written about/studied them as well, I'd love to discuss any of these subjects. I'd be especially smitten with said conversation if you can teach me something about them. I am forever thirsting for knowledge. This brain is never full, never satisfied. Feel free to come give me multiple intellectual orgasms.