Stop and Listen

Posted: May 31, 2014 by Isaac Cross in Advice, Learn Something, Philosophy
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Last night, I went and experienced a live performance by an amazing artist, a violinist named Lindsay Stirling. If you are unfamiliar with her work, here are a few of my favorite pieces of hers, including several of her joint ventures with some of my other favorite artists, including Peter Hollens and Pentatonix.

Pure Stirling:
Crystalize
Elements
Zelda Medley
Shadows

Awesome Collaborations:
Shatter Me, featuring Lzzy Hale from Halestorm
Mission Impossible, featuring The Piano Guys
Radioactive, featuring Pentatonix
Star Wars Medley, featuring Peter Hollens

Ok, so now that I have adequately promoted the artist, it time for me to complain.

I was about 8 layers of people back from the stage, and yet for half of the performance, all I could see was this:

(Image Courtesy of rollingstone.com)

(Image Courtesy of rollingstone.com)

I will admit, I took about a dozen pictures during the concert. But a lot of these people, never dropped their arms. For the entire concert, all they paid attention to was whether they were getting a good shot, either in stills or recorded video.  Read the rest of this entry »

A Couple of Site Upgrades

Posted: May 31, 2014 by Isaac Cross in Life Log
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First of all, I have saved everyone’s fingers a little bit of effort buy purchasing the domain “XCBDSM.com” for this site. The old address “CrossCultureBDSM.com” will still work for the next year, at least.

I also set up an email address to go with it: Cross@XCBDSM.com which is also considerably shorter than the old one, “crossculturebdsm@gmail.com”, which will also continue to function.

There is also some boring background stuff that none of you will notice. But those are the big ones.

Thanks for the continued support.

Kinky Business

Posted: May 23, 2014 by Isaac Cross in Advice, Learn Something
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So, a few of you may have noticed that CollarMe.com is gone. If you bother to read the blogs and comments, you will know that this is due to a long running business dispute between the site’s two co-founders.

The root of the problem seems to stem from the fact that one of the partners trusted her “friend” to do the honorable thing and did not have a formal agreement in place to protect her interests and assure that she was treated fairly.

Unfortunately, this happens all the time when friends or acquaintances go into business together. Even if everyone involved is acting in good faith, you all might have different ideas about what the best course of action is, and if you don’t have a written agreement in place, there are going to be serious issues.

And within the Kink community, people’s reluctance to do things “on the books” makes things much worse. Read the rest of this entry »

My First Time in a Dungeon: The Merits of Not Censoring Scenes

Posted: May 12, 2014 by Isaac Cross in About Me, Learn Something, Life Log, Philosophy
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I first held a knife to a girl’s throat in a sexual/BDSM context in 2001. I was 16 and I cut myself pretty bad during that experience. This would not be the last time I cut myself during knife play, but I have never drawn blood from a partner unless I meant to.

A few years later, in spring of 2005, I started playing with the girl who is now my wife. We were 19 at the time.

We were not allowed into play parties, our local convention, or most other other types of events in the area. Because everything was 21+. This meant that we took most of our cues and early BDSM ideas from internet porn (which, it turns out, is not a reliable source of accurate information about responsible play). There were mistakes, some of them resulting in injury.

When I was finally turned 21, in 2006, it was a mere few weeks before Thunder In The Mountains (TITM).

Now, if you have never been to TITM, I will simply describe it this way: Hundreds of people, sometimes as many as a thousand, the largest dungeon you will probably ever see (at nearly 50,000 square feet) and some of the most famous or notorious names in Kink from around the world. Read the rest of this entry »

An Interesting New Milestone

Posted: April 30, 2014 by Isaac Cross in Uncategorized
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I have been in the public BDSM community for 8 years. I started teaching about 5 years ago, and I have been running this website for about 4 years.

A few months ago, one of my articles, (SSC vs RACK) was cited in an academic research paper published in a law journal based out of the University of Edinburgh in Scotland.

That’s just really, really cool. Over the years, my work has been referenced by wikipedia, other blogs, and various other websites, but this is the first time (that I know of) that I have appeared in an actual, physical publication. Read the rest of this entry »

You are Not the Police: The Hazards of Investigating Consent or Abuse Allegations Within the Scene

Posted: April 24, 2014 by Isaac Cross in Guest Posts, Uncategorized
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As I do from time to time, I am re-posting a work by another author who is more qualified than I am on a subject that is both timely and of high importance. This was originally posted on Fetlife.com, and I wanted it to be out here where people can see it without a password. 

So here it is, posted with permission of the author, Rigel, who asked me to simply link to www.atouchofflavor.com, where people can find lots of great articles on various challenges of the BDSM lifestyle. It is a website I highly recommend. I have done my best to preserve the original formatting. 

You are Not the Police: The Hazards of Investigating Consent or Abuse Allegations Within the Scene
by Rigel, www.atouchofflavor.com

Read the rest of this entry »

Understanding the Utah Polygamy Ruling

Posted: April 11, 2014 by Isaac Cross in Uncategorized
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In December of 2013, a federal Judge in Utah struck down a portion of the state’s polygamy prohibition, and basically decriminalized poly households.

I know I am, like, four months late on this, but I just saw a very long online discussion where pretty much everyone was confused as to what this meant, so I thought I would try and help as someone who has worked in a variety of different roles around issues of marriage equality and other modern rights issues.

The disclaimer is that, while I have a lot of experience with these issues, I am not a lawyer and nothing here should be taken as legal advice.

(HEY! By the way, if you want a really awesome book about all sorts of non-monogamous relationships, check out my BOOKSHELF PAGE for a book called “Opening Up” by Tristan Taormino. It’s really good.)

ImageImage from lanesoflove.files.wordpress.com

Read the rest of this entry »

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