Take a moment to look around yourself. Everything you see has a name, a symbol of existence. Our entire experience of our world(s) depends on drawing distinctions through identifying symbols and sounds. The faiths that many of us grew up in recognized this:

Genesis 1:4,5 God saw that the light was good, and God separated the light from the darkness. God called the light Day, and the darkness He called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, a first day.

In the story of Genesis, the Hebraic god separates the light from darkness, but light is not Day until it is named such. Likewise with darkness and night.

The mythology and lore of a great many religions, as well as magical and spiritual traditions, abound with stories of the power of names and naming. From the fairy tale of Rumpelstiltskin, to Isis learning the true name of Re and in doing so becoming his equal, to the Judaic child naming and blood sacrifice ritual, to the taking of a partner’s name in a marriage, and the choosing of a new name as a step of gender transition, the importance of names is easy to see. Names bind us together into tribes, whether based around nationhood, faith, or a preference in computer technology or truck manufacturer. The first part of an introduction is someone’s name. It could be said that until a person has a name to go with their face, they aren’t really known to you.

I travel frequently in two worlds in which people frequently take new names and identities. In the pagan world we call them circle names. In kink/BDSM they are scene names.

On the surface the two seem the same, and for some people they likely serve an identical purpose. However, if we delve a bit deeper into the two cultures we see some critical differences. In the pagan community a circle name is often representative of one’s pagan identity. Perhaps a deity one relates to, or much like my own name, characteristic of an individual’s place in the spiritual world and pagan community.

In kink/BDSM space, a chosen name is often a shield. It serves as a layer of insulation designed to separate one’s kink identity and activities from the real and potentially disastrous consequences of having one’s kinky life known to an often hostile non-kinky world. Despite advances in pagan visibility, this reason remains a secondary, or even sometimes paramount reason that circle names are taken as well.

What both communities share is that they put great weight in knowing someone’s real name, by which I mean the name on one’s government issued ID. This is a fascinating concept, that one name is inherently real. By extension, it implies that the others are, if not false, then lesser. How would this concept be extended to the gods? I serve the Lady, does my service of Her in that aspect in some way diminish the worship of those who know Her by another? In my own tradition at least, that idea is patently ridiculous.

In our spiritual tradition we believe that while the gods are unique and separate entities, they can have different aspects to their being. Perhaps where I have seen this most dramatically, has been in my Work with the Northern Tradition deities. Odin the Allfather, Odin the Wanderer, and Odin the Shaman-King, are but a few of His immense number of names or titles. Likewise with his oath-brother: Loki the Husband of Angrboda, Loki the Trickster, and Loki the Mad/Destroyer of Worlds, arguably an aspect in itself of Loki the Husband of Sigyn, represent distinctly different aspects of the deity and phases in His existence.

A colleague of mine Works very closely with Odin the Wanderer, and when He appears to her, He comes with both of His eyes intact. That aspect of Odin exists in a state before His transformative journey that cost Him one of His mortal eyes. My own patron has multiple names and titles. Other deities have called Her The White Lady, or Tashrisketlin’s White Lady. To us, She is simply the Lady, or the Mistress of the Forest Fire. For over a decade we strove to learn the name that She is more widely known by, having been assured that there was one. Only when we stopped caring, did we finally come to learn it. But worshipping Her in that aspect is as foreign to me as any unfamiliar deity.

The gods are not unique in having names and titles with power. Over a half-lifetime as a magician and spirit worker I have accumulated my share of titles, which have their time and place. Likewise I have and have had a number of names.

Wintersong Tashlin or on occasion Wintersong G. Tashlin is the name that carries me through the world. In Vreschtik tradition, our names have to have some form of symbolic meaning. Wintersong is quite specific: the sound that a winter wind makes whistling and tearing through bare branches in the forest.

Wintersong is not the first chosen name I have had. Before I was Wintersong, I was Stardancer. Before that, Oceandreamer. Oceandreamer looked towards the future with expectations and hopes as vast as the great ocean, but like the ocean herself, was helpless to resist the push and pull of outside forces. Stardancer, is a story for another time. There is also a spirit name known to a few intimates, which is where the G in Wintersong G. Tashlin comes from. Like some other magicians, I took a spirit quest long ago to find my true name, and having done so, never shared it with another soul, living or otherwise. All that said, of course Wintersong was not the name given to me by my parents.

The name I associate with myself most often is Wintersong Tashlin. But while not a stranger to her, my mother does not relate to me as Wintersong. To her I will always be Eric, a name that in its own way represents an aspect of me as clearly as Wintersong does. I would never expect my mother to call me Winter or Wintersong, because to her I am not a mage, shaman, or kinkster. Not the cold wind in barren trees, but rather the child who’s diapers she changed, and who she watched grow into a man. There is no reason for me to expect her to relate to me as Witnersong, and doing so would reject a vital part of myself that is Eric. Becoming Wintersong did not make Eric cease to be in the way that Wintersong supplanted and replaced Stardance and Oceandreamer. For that matter, when I changed my legal last name, Eric L. Leshay was in fact supplanted by Eric L. Tashlin, an evolution of one aspect of self.

Where a name comes from can have a great deal of power. A frequent, and inappropriate question asked of transgender individuals (or others who have changed their names) is what their name was before transition. Even with the intense work involved in changing one’s gender legally and socially, the attitude persists for many that one’s name given at birth is somehow more real than a taken name. The name we grow up with can be seen as shaping us, whereas a name taken is shaped by who we are. To know someone’s birth-name is to understand a piece of their journey.

There certainly are those who take names and titles frivolously or without due consideration. In the BDSM scene this can be seen in people who assume the name or title of master, in some cases without understanding the power and meaning of the word, or the work the community requires of one before that title can be used. Likewise, I have seen the terms shaman and spirit worker used to self-identify by people who see in those words either aspects of their own experience or echoes of their future selves, but whose spiritual journey as yet does not fulfill the weight and nature of the Work associated with them. Names and titles have power, and sometimes the assumption of a title can set one inextricably on a path that can be longer, and more complex than one would ever wish.

The powerful, and often nuanced nature of names and titles is something that bares deeper consideration in many traditions and communities.

Certainly much strife could be eased in the pagan and spirit work worlds if the varied aspects of deity were more greatly respected. Infighting has consumed segments of the community in recent years, much of it over whose perspective on individual gods and traditions is right. Understanding that one who calls on the One-Eyed King will have a very different experience and relationship with Odin than one who calls on the Wanderer would go a long way to defusing tensions that leave many of us walking on metaphorical eggshells, and has rent more than one community asunder.

In the kink/BDSM community we need to learn how titles should be earned and claimed, and develop constructive language for addressing people who take on titles that they perhaps do not yet have the right to. Also, recognizing that while the names people use when in BDSM space may or may not be the name on their government ID, for some a scene name is far more real than the name used in their non-kinky lives. This goes equally for circle names in pagan space.

Personally, I travel through the pagan, LGBT and kink/BDSM worlds as Wintersong Tashlin, although most people simply call me Winter. In a sense, it is my real name, if indeed there can be such a thing. In keeping with the traditions of my Lady and the nature of my shamanism, I strive to exist at the intersection of many worlds while remaining inherently myself. The continuity of my identity is vital to maintaining that role. What my name means to people in different spaces may vary quite a bit, that is the power and weakness in a name.

Finding words to define the people, objects, and concepts in our world represents one of the greatest powers every thinking person wields. Like any other power, names and naming require care and attention to understand and to wield to great effect.

A few technical changes are in the air.

I have moving my “Previous Appearances” page to be a child of “Appearances” instead of “Presenter.” I have also added a dedicated page on being a Demo Bottom for my classes, which is where you will now be able to find a list of my current and upcoming demo needs. Special thanks are due to Tristan Taormino and Sarah Sloan for allowing me to post their fabulous and much needed Demo Bottom’s Bill of Rights as its own page here on BarkingShaman.com.

I believe in the United States of America. More specifically, I believe in the idea of the United States of America.

This is of course, ironic in some ways, since as a pagan/poly/queer/pervert, it is safe to say that there are many “defenders American values” who would just as soon have me somewhere else. Probably Copenhagen if I had to wager a guess.

In truth, we in Tashrisketlin have frequently debated leaving the country for greener, and perhaps saner pastures. Thus far we have elected to stay, not because we are thrilled with the direction this nation is headed, but because to brutally paraphrase Sir Winston Churchill’s famed dictum on democracy: America is the worst country we’ve found, except all the others.

The problem with democracy is that people are hard. We’re complicated and inconsistent, gentle and brutal, we want low taxes and bountiful social programs, free speech and freedom from speech we don’t like. We need the cake not to be a lie, and live as if wishing hard enough will make it truth.

I came across two news articles this evening that drove home just how complicated a government of the people, by the people, for the people can be.

The first addressed the deeply troubling fact that the vast majority of Republican congress members steadfastly hold the belief that anthropogenic climate change is a myth, or in some extreme cases, a liberal conspiracy. In the spirit of representative government, the meager number of Republican congressmen and woman who accept the scientific data on climate change closely matches the scant number of GOP identified voters who do.

Acceptance of climate change science is rapidly becoming a purity test for legislators wishing to run as Republicans. In the 2010 mid-term elections, every GOP candidate save one denied the existence of anthropogenic climate change. A few days ago, a Republican presidential candidate (the one with a Google problem) declared steps to address climate change part of a coordinated attack on personal freedom by the liberal left.

The economic consequences of a concerted push to reduce carbon emissions are real. However, so too are the economic, environmental, and humanitarian consequence of doing nothing. The problem is that taking steps to address global climate change hurts us now, and in ways that economists can reasonably predict. If these steps aren’t taken, the burden of that decision will overwhelmingly be felt after the lifespan of most GOP congressmen and voters. Moreover, while the economy is a complicated thing, modeling its behavior is simplistic next to modeling the behavior of a planet-wide and rapidly changing ecosystem. To maintain their integrity, climate scientists must speak in theories and potential consequences, which opens their data and predictions to dismissal by legislators for whose agendas carbon reduction measures pose a concrete threat.

And now, for a shift from the global to the personal:

A few nights ago, comedian Tracy Morgan, said some stupid and deeply offensive things during a stand-up performance in Nashville TN. Included in his diatribe was his belief that being gay (or presumably lesbian/bisexual/trans/queer) was a media influenced choice, that we need to stop “whining” about bullying, and that if he had an effeminate gay son he would stab him to death. It’s that last part that elevated the incident from “he’s not getting an invite to the GLADD Media Awards” to “full-out media blitz.”

Which, to my way of thinking at least, is exactly right. The inevitable weak statement of apology from Mr. Morgan’s publicist was met with derision from all corners of the LGBT media world, from the “Gay Inc.” blue chips like GLADD and HRC, to the queer blogosphere. Where I become concerned, as someone who believes in America, is when the focus of the community’s ire turns from what he said to the fact that he said it.

Tracy Morgan has, through his words, shown himself to be worthy of our deepest contempt.

However, because I believe in the American experiment, I have no choice but to defend his right to speak those words. The LGBT civil rights movement has legitimate and heartrending arguments in favor of restricting hate speech towards our community. It is all too easy to imagine the deleterious effects that Mr. Morgan’s public affirmations of hatred could have on vulnerable members of our community, particularly queer youth of color. In comparing his routine to speech that the Supreme Court has found legal to ban, fellow comedian and out lesbian Wanda Sykes had this to say as reported in the second article of the evening: “…but for a youth in TN or any other numerous place, Tracy just yelled, ‘Fire,’ in a crowded theater,”

The LGBT civil rights movement, and indeed other civil rights movements in U.S. History including the struggle for African American rights and the Suffrage Movement, could not have achieved any real measure of success without free speech providing a stable platform from which to challenge an entrenched society. It would be selfish and counterproductive to undermine that foundational American principal in order to punish those who attack us.

Go after Mr. Morgan’s livelihood and I will be there right beside you. Boycott 30 Rock, picket or send letters of protest to venues that choose to book Mr. Morgan’s stand-up performances, call him out on his bigoted and violent hatred towards us at every imaginable opportunity. In this country we have the right to speak our minds, but we also have the right to make choices based on our fellow citizen’s speech.

Free speech is dangerous, anyone who says otherwise is either lying or ignorant. However, it is the dangerous aspect of free speech that also makes it so valuable. We owe it to the generations and civil rights movements that follow ours to safeguard free speech from internal and external threats so that others can follow in our footsteps.

What these two articles have in common is that both address subjects that are far from as straightforward as invested populations would choose to believe.

In the midst of a national and global economic crisis of historic proportions, introducing any additional financial burden on the American public or our straining economy could be reasonably be argued to be foolhardy. Moreover, it could, and indeed has been argued, that the climate change skepticism found in the GOP is a reflection of their constituents’ beliefs, as required in a representative republic.

Likewise, it takes a harder heart than mine to dismiss even one vulnerable member of our community pushed into suicide or other self destructive behavior by Tracy Morgan’s destructive words as the “price we must pay” for free speech. Ms. Sykes makes a fair argument, and it is dangerously tempting to put our community’s needs first and support her perspective, leaving other minority communities to struggle without the robust right to free speech that made our successes possible.

I fear that this country is not weathering well the era of the 24hr news cycle, Twitter, and an age where one can access the sum total of human knowledge through a device that fits in a shirt pocket. Governing a deeply fragmented nation of 300 million people, who have sub-divided into socially and culturally isolated echo chambers is a Herculean, if not Sisyphean task.

As the fictional American President Andrew Sheppard once said: “…America isn’t easy. America is advanced citizenship. You gotta want it bad, ’cause it’s gonna put up a fight…” It is hard sometimes to know if the American people remember how to fight that fight. And more importantly, if we remember why we need to.

A year ago today I had a milestone birthday, which I let pass unremarked upon. The reason I passed on the opportunity afforded by my 30^th birthday to publicly reflect upon the preceding decade (or three) was simple: turning thirty depressed the shit out of me.

Despite the lack of my public acknowledgment of my birthday, I nonetheless had a great many personal reflections on what entering my third decade meant to me. For instance, when one lives with chronic health complications, it is easy to mark time in relation to them. I have been barking more than half the time I have been alive. In December of 2011 it will be more than a third of my life since I was free from constant pain. Moreover, as someone who’s health has been problematic for so long, I have at times questioned whether thirty represents the same point in my life’s course as it does for others. While there is nothing in my medical situation at the moment that actively shortens my life, there are many reasons to realistically question if I will see the same age my cohorts.

Outside of my own health, there were many other life markers that appeared to me a reflection of the overall tone to this turn of the Wheel. My relationship of eight years had painfully disintegrated, earning me the dubious distinction of following my parents footsteps into divorce. After a mixed run, our company had collapsed under the combined weight of a disastrous economy, our own inexperience, and the departure of one of the partners. For the first time in years the specter of insolvency haunted our family, and we were surviving only on the generous financial support of my parents.

Lastly, in moving east to the Raymond NH area, we had abandoned a vrescht that the Clan had put quite a bit of work into, adding to looming questions about where our magical and spiritual work was going.

In short (I know: too late), I faced the eve of my 30^th birthday from one of the bleakest places I have been. There were good and happy times behind me, and I doubted circumstances could develop such that I would see those times in years to come. My feeling crossed dangerously close to suicidality on more than one occasion. Only love for my partner and family, my oaths to The Lady and Tashrisketlin, and the able assistance of a gifted therapist, got me safely passed those feelings.

But then something changed. Some part of me said fuck that and decided to try to make the best of what I could. What followed was a year of change, if not always easy or pleasant.

A new medication gave me some relief from the worst of my odd migraine condition, though sadly not my pain. While in the long term, that medication’s side effects outweighed its benefits, it opened up parts of life that I had thought lost to me and put me on a path to finding a viable medication to replace it. For starters, as I am typing, the Cruxshadows are playing on my mp3 player. In the last year I have rediscovered music, which had been completely lost to me because of said migraine condition. Over the four or so years in which I could not listen to music for more than a few minutes I had forgotten how meaningful it could be in my life.

Also, I decided that at a crossroads in life with so much change, I would allow myself an early mid-life crisis. With a complete lack of experience, but a lot of determination, I bought a 1979 Suzuki motorcycle and declared that within two months I would pass my road test to get my motorcycle endorsement. I had never even sat on a motorcycle before, and in fact until I was thirteen there was doubt as to whether I would even learn to ride a pedal bike. But that is why I did it. I needed to set a challenging goal and fight to achieve it so I could remember how.

Tashrisketlin did establish a vrescht here in Raymond. And while we have not been able to do what we initially intended with it, the experience built our confidence. This vrescht has been a useful teaching tool for our journeyman and our students. Before we leave it in a few months it will be turned towards one of the most challenging masterworks our clan has ever attempted.

While we have not found another partner to become part of our primary relationship, Fire and I have had time to heal the emotional wounds of the break-up with Evan. We still do not work ideally in a binary relationship, but Fire and I have rediscovered what made us fall in love in the first place and have worked hard building solid foundations on which to build our larger family when new primary partner(s) do come along.

Having accepted Brigantian Designs’ failure, I devoted much needed attention to improving my skills as a presenter and went on to a number of joyous personal successes through the year. I also tried my hand at selling cars at a local Nissan dealership, which taught me much needed lessons about the limitations imposed by my health and my spiritual spiritual path. Plus I now know more than anyone could ever want to know about the 2011 Nissan product line.

With fake-it-till-you-make-it confidence I set about actively trying to make friends for the first time in a long time. Along the way, Evan and I stumbled and plowed through the challenging territory of building a meaningful friendship. I also began to date outside of my relationship with Fire, and have embraced a richer poly life than ever before.

Now I sit here typing in the fading twilight of my 30^th year (it is my birthday, but I haven’t yet reached the hour of my birth) and unlike a year ago I can see a path through the forest of shadows. It is a dark, twisting and dangerous path, but I can see it.

Our financial situation is just as dire as this time last year, although I have fledgling ideas of how I might contribute more meaningfully than I do now. And there are dark clouds on the horizon for all of us, they tug at the awareness of nearly every diviner and spirit worker I know. I also know that my health is not going to become perfect anytime soon either.

But I have dragged myself up off the mat. I am a Master Vreschtik magician, the White Lady’s shaman, a damn good public speaker, and I have people who love and support me, and whom I support in return. This last year has brought home what Raven meant by wear your scars with pride. Sure this turn on the Wheel has seriously kicked the shit out of me for nearly all of my thirty years, but I’m still standing. As I look towards thirty-one, I find myself feeling ready to get back in the fight.

Numerous academic studies have shown that rape is among the most common of sexual fantasies. My anecdotal experience as a sexuality/kink educator has certainly born this out. Even within the alternative sexuality and kink/BDSM communities however, the subject of non-consent and rape, both in fantasy and consensual roleplay remains a delicate subject. As a community, there has been movement towards most people accepting that what gets one hot in bed does not inherently translate into how one lives their everyday lives. Moreover, there has developed an understanding that finding rape fantasies or play erotic indicates neither a predilection towards rape/desire to be raped. Nor does it mean that someone finds the grotesque violation of sexual assault to be any more acceptable than someone whose erotic imagination or play is focused in other directions. This has not always been a smooth journey, and many people struggle mightily to reconcile their fantasies with their own spiritual, ethical, and even political beliefs. As a community, we have evolved language and support to help people understand their desires, maintain a clear mental divide between fact and fantasy, and learn to explore their kink in safe and ethical ways.

However, this is not an essay about rape fantasies and play.

Except in the ways that it kind of is.

Presenters in the kink/BDSM scene each have our own strengths, areas of focus, and specific skills that we offer. I believe that the best among us also each have a few causes or particular themes that we try to work into nearly every class we teach. One of my biggest is that of owning and accepting our unique desires and finding ways to safely explore them. This focus of mine is born out of a deeply challenging aspect of my own erotic journey. One which I have shared with very few people.

Long time readers of Notes From a Barking Shaman, and people who know me personally or have attended particular classes of mine are well aware of my staunch opposition to the practice of male circumcision, as well as my own journey of non-surgical foreskin restoration. Not to mention my own clear preference for intact (not-circumcised) men when it comes to my lovers and play partners. I have not addressed the ongoing debate around the practice on this blog since I wrote “Issue Fatigue” several years ago, for the reasons illuminated in that essay. I will say that since writing “Issue Fatigue” further research has not born out circumcision as a practical HIV preventative, and the rate of infant circumcision has continued its steady two-decade long decline in the United States, where it now closes in on less than %50. Which still is the highest in the Western World by a vast margin.

However, despite my unshakable dedication to this cause, my vocal encouragement and support of men pursuing foreskin restoration and my ongoing personal struggles around my own genitals, there remains another side to my relationship with the topic. Circumcision is one of my biggest sexual fetishes.

And you know what I’ve discovered? That’s way more common than one might think.

I don’t mean fetishizing of circumcision, that is not too hard for most to imagine. I specifically mean the fetishizing of circumcision by people who are deeply opposed to the practice. I know a number of intactivists (activists opposed to circumcision) and foreskin restorers who have this as a fetish. Often as one of their biggest. I also know quite a number of intact men who simultaneously have circumcision fetishes and fantasies, but absolutely no desire to have their foreskins removed. From a BDSM viewpoint, does not seem like much of a conflict at all. After all, as I pointed out at the start, rape fetishists overwhelmingly feel no desire towards rape outside of the realm of their imagination and/or the carefully constructed pretend games of roleplay and negotiated non-consent.

Even more interesting, I have encountered quite a number of circumcision fetishists who have chosen circumcision as adults who still oppose the practice on non-consenting children. The sentiment I have heard these individuals express distills to: while this was a choice that they made, they know that it is not the one that everyone would choose. It was too personal a decision to make for another person.

The nature of circumcision fantasy and roleplay is as complex and varied as with any other fetish. What turns on one person may not another. I could talk in detail about the many variations and expressions of the fetish, from humiliation play, to porn choices, to roleplay scenarios and more. None of it is relevant except to say that it is a complex subject, deeply individual and often interwoven with catharsis and emotional processing, although that is far from universal.

This revelation is all well and good, if perhaps Too Much Information, but why write a BarkingShaman post on the topic?

There are actually multiple reasons. First foremost, I spend a great deal of time in front of audiences talking about the need to be authentic in our play and be able to own our desires. Anyone who has been steeped in the culture of activism can likely relate to how this particular fetish became one of my darkest secrets. There have been times while teaching that I found myself intensely self-censoring to ensure that no specific mention of this fetish slipped out. I know this censoring process has at times distracted me from the more important goal of offering an informative and enjoyable workshop. Moreover, it made me feel like a hypocrite, which I despise. After all, who am I to argue with or council people in accepting and joyously embracing their erotic lives while being bound up in shame about part of my own? It is my hope that my openness on this difficult topic will empower others in exploration and acceptance of challenging aspects of their own erotic selves.

Of equal importance though, is that through my shamanic work I have an obligation to illuminate truths that people choose to ignore. Shamans are often forces of change and disruption. It is one reason we were traditionally relegated to a hut on the outskirts of town.

In the intactivist world, people who fetishize circumcision are seen as an ultimate enemy; a short step below doctors who promote the practice on the basis of outdated medical thought, pop psychology, or an unspoken commitment to the almighty dollar (in countries where a neonatal circumcision doesn’t provide physicians with many hundreds of dollars a pop, medical resistance to change has been perceptibly lower). Interestingly, while a stated anti-circumcision view is not overly controversial in many online circumcision fetish communities, the reverse is manifestly different.

This is problematic for the intactivist community, even if for the most part they remain unaware of it. The cause has traditionally not had many friends, and the emotional responses on all sides of the issue has at times led to excessive rhetoric that damages the movement’s message. To be summarily expelling or forcing self-closeting on intactivists and supporters because of our kinks and erotic imaginations is foolhardy. Equally mistaken in my opinion is encouraging silence in members of the adult-circumcision or circumcision fetish community by saying that we don’t want their support. Holding firm belief in a cause, while still acknowledging the nuances of human experience, is something that many movements struggle with, and this one is no different.

Beyond depriving the intactivist cause of potentially valuable figures by summarily declaring them impure, this message is also harmful to individuals in the community. Male intactivist, and particularly tuggers (people non-surgically restoring their foreskins), deal with a wealth of emotional and technical issues. I have spoken with restorers who shy away from the restoration and anti-circumcision community because, though they are not open about their fetish interest in circumcision, they know that they would be received incredibly harshly  their desires were known. When one’s community so forcefully rejects part of one’s inner experience, it can be beyond difficult being open about the sort of intimate details by necessity shared in giving and receiving support from fellow tuggers for instance. Beyond that, some men who struggle with their feelings and physical experience of having been circumcised find comfort and healing in their explorations through fantasy and erotic play. Denying access to that tool through cultural pressure is a mistake.

Thus, in a spirit of self acceptance and in rejecting an activist culture that denies the depth and complexity of human desire and experience I say this:

I, Wintersong Tashlin, intactivist and staunch opponent of circumcision/MGM, openly state that I am also a circumcision fetishist. My intactivism informs my fetishism, but it in no way diminishes it. What’s more, I know from first-hand experience that I am far from alone. As long as the intactivist movement says that people like me do not exist, and if we did, that they would not want my voice, I will be here as a living embodiment of a rejected reality, a voice of dissenting agreement.

In that regard, this post is exactly what Notes From a Barking Shaman has always been about.