Latexistentialism

It’s the “existential question” that philosophers and poets have been asking for centuries… “Does my life have any meaning?”

The answer to this is generally something like “You make your own meaning”.  In other words, your life can be given meaning depending upon what you do with it.

Most people regard fetish as a form of “entertainment”.  It’s “good sex” but after the act is over and done with, it becomes, at best, a fond memory rather than having any real meaning. Yes, it may have enhanced an act of love and there may be a tiny bit of meaning in that, but mostly, it’s merely titillation followed by satisfaction and dismissal.  It’s like television or sports — we are caught up in the action and the story, our emotions are moved and played with but when it is all over, we change the channel and look for some new source of entertainment. Our lives are not affected by it in any long range sort of way.

For something to have real meaning, it must affect our lives in some way — we must grow from it somehow. For something to have meaning, it must lead to some sort of self-actualization.

One does not “grow” from “conventional fetish”.  There is no forward movement, no upward climb toward the peak of the mountain.  No skills are developed or improved. It does not evolve us toward who we can be. One does not become a “better” Rubberist by doing “conventional fetish”.  One does not take any steps toward being all that he can be… One does not evolve toward self-actualization.

If you are reading this, you are probably a Rubberist.  Like it or not, life has somehow dealt you the “fetish” card.  It’s part of you. There’s not much you can do about it. You might find life easier to take and even enjoy if you accept your fetish.

However, as fetish is intrinsically intertwined with your sexuality, it is a very powerful force. Some say that sex, the propagation of the species, is the single strongest force affecting the behavior of any living creature.  Sex is magic. It affects all of us in just about everything we do. In our younger years when our hormones are strong, physical sex is the driving force of our lives.

So, here’s my proposal.  You’ve got this rubber fetish running a good part of your life. It’s a strong force and it’s not going to go away. Mostly what you have done with it in the past is enhance your sex life.  But in and of itself, it provides very little meaning to the rest of your life.

Why not use the power of your fetish to drive other things which do bring meaning to your life?

Use it as a catalyst, a conduit, or “fuel” to push other aspects of your life which can give it meaning and a sense of purpose. Use it to go beyond sex. Become an explorer of your fetish (“RubberNaut”) to find out what lies beyond. Look for personal “mountains” to climb with it. While there is nothing wrong with sex, you can use your fetish to power new practices in your life.

(NOTE: Slippery Seal, of the IAR, was the first person I know of to use the term “latexistentialism”. )

The Art of Rubber Fetish

I have been researching for many years and am slowly developing a “theory of happiness”. I think people are happiest when they are growing toward self-actualization. This is often referred to as “transcendence”. That is, they are in the act of becoming who they are. (this is deep Maslowian psychology.)  It is the quest that is important here, not so much the results, although one needs to feel a  sense of forward movement as encouragement now and then.  In my case, I see my primary identity as that of a Rubberist so I strive to become the “best” Rubberist I can be.  This implies the building of a skill. (I am not sure exactly what “skills” are involved in being a Rubberist, so that is a big part of my exploration.) This does not mean doing it more but, rather, doing it “better” or, more specifically, doing it with a higher level of consciousness — making each moment in rubber more meaningful. It’s all about practicing mindfulness.  (The study of mindfulness is a good place to start!)

 

For example, a big part of my growth in the last several years has been in developing what I call transcendental rubbering. One aspect of this that I have been working on a lot is applying meditation techniques to my rubbering. Meditation is really nothing more than focused attention.  In my case what I am trying to do is develop the mental skills to keep my mind focused on the sensation of the latex against my skin to the exclusion of attention to all else. This is sort of like a “Zen of Rubbering”, so to speak.  It’s easy to understand the technique but very difficult to do.  Try focusing your mind on anything for more than a few seconds — it’s very hard to do. Even the Zen masters who spend their entire lives in meditation find it a constant battle.  I might add, however, that even if you can only focus for a small % of the time, the act of trying to do so can be deeply satisfying.  It is a major source of happiness for me.  It gives me a way to see my fetish as spiritual practice. (Spirituality is NOT the sole province of religion. It refers to the quest to transcend oneself; to evolve towards higher levels of self-actualization; toward becoming who you are.)

Rubbering, then, is my “art”. What is yours?

I think these principles could be applied to other kinds of orientation, such as BDSM, etc.  In fact, they could be applied to just about all aspects of your personal identity.  For example, they could even be utilized in your job.  It’s mostly a question of which ones seem to be the most prominent and deserving of the most attention.

Decide who you think you are and then work at becoming more and better at it.  Make a “practice” of it.

Grow. Evolve.

Become!

Living In Rubber

What is “Living in Rubber”?

“Living in Rubber” probably means different things to different people. However, there are probably some elements we all pretty much hold in common.
Mostly, Living in Rubber (“LIR”) is an attitude (rather than a specific act) that you define for yourself.  It’s like living a mantra of “I will wear as much rubber as possible, as long as possible and as often as possible“. The key word here, of course, is “possible”. It is a lifestyle choice in which we deliberately and consciously decide to celebrate our fetish to the greatest extent within our means.

LIR is based in an almost pathological compulsion shared by most deeper Rubberists to be totally enclosed in rubber 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. It is the special dream that much of the Rubberist Tribe shares. Of course, very few people can actually fulfill this dream. Reality gets in the way. Most people also need to live “regular” lives in which wearing rubber 24/7 is significantly interrupted by family, jobs and society in general. The high cost of latex garments is another significant factor. There are also issues related to body overheating, skin problems, etc.

Consequently, the act of “living in rubber” is, of necessity, a symbolic, ritualized gesture toward the higher ideal of being total enclosure all of the time. It’s really more about not only accepting one’s fetish but also fully recognizing it as our primary identity and being joyful in that. LIR is a celebration of who we are. We make our fetish sacred. We give it meaning.

We make it special… deliberately!

What is RubberSpace?

Just like everyone has their own definition of spirituality, no two people will agree entirely on what RubberSpace is.

Part of the problem probably stems from the inherent ineffability of RubberSpace — it’s similarities to shamanic trances, journeys and mystical experiences tend to make it defy explanation or description. The English language simply does not have the words which can be used to adequately explain it.

It’s also quite probable that different Rubberists have different experiences of RubberSpace at different times. There are no standards by which to evaluate these experiences for continunity.

For the purposes of attempting to establish a reasonable definition of RubberSpace we can, however, observe some common elements:

It tends to be trance-like. Most of one’s consciousness is heavily focused on tactile sensation and/or fantasies.

it is something that can only be experienced by people who have a fairly pronounced fetish for rubber. (Rubberists) The sensation of latex against the skin produces a psychological and, usually, erotic stimulus that defies explanation and which, in theory, non-fetish people are probably incapble of experiencing.

RubberSpace is an Altered State of Consciousness (ASC). That is, it is not “normal”, every day reality. It is something different.

It is significantly focused on sensation and, more specifically, the tactile feel of latex against the skin.  This is often to the exclusion of the other senses (as in Total Enclosure) and may result in a kind of sensory overload which ultimately produces the effect.

Time and space are either distorted or not perceived. If fantasies are present, they may not be linear or the result of cause and effect.

A trance-like meditation or medibation* may be experienced.

It is usually accompanied by strong eroticism though this may be of a purely mental nature. It often leads to orgasm.

Physiological factors resulting from a “session” in rubber may also induce the RubberSpace ASC. Many of these are also found in shamanic practices. Examples may include

mild dehydration (the “sweat lodge effect”)

sensory deprivation (usually hearing and/or vision)

sensory overload (all emphaisis on tactile)

immobility and discomfort (from bondage)

body temperature irregularities (mild heat exhaustion)

oxygen deficiencies from the use of breathing control paraphenalia,

*”medibation” =  masturbatory meditation

 

 

What is a “RubberNunk”?

A RubberNunk is a monastic who seeks to continually transcend him/herself specifically through her rubber fetish as the primary focus of her life. He regards his fetish as a kind of “monastery” into which he becomes “self-ordained” as a Nunk after passing some significant, personally-imposed initiation activity that tests his resolve and perseverance over a period of several years. Nunks are are solo agents unrelated to any organization or religion.

The word “Nunk” is derived from Nun + Monk to indicate gender neutrality, but without any sort of religious connotation beyond basic spirituality, which is the quest for personal growth and inspiration; i.e. transcendence.  One could study to become a RubberNunk whilst still holding a regular job, having a family and going to church on Sunday.  It is all a matter of degree of life-focus based on circumstances and motivation levels.

A “monastic” is someone who focuses on one thing in life to the practical exclusion of most everything else as much as possible.  A deep monastic, such as a monk, devotes his entire life to some single purpose. (It does not, by the way, have to be religious in nature.  The church does not have a monopoly on the term.) Depending upon the depth of his goal, he may “renounce” all other aspects of life -even that of food, clothing and shelter (become a beggar), so that he may study or contemplate his vision or goal to the point of being an ascetic. I’m not, however, suggesting that one needs to become a beggar to become a rubber monastic but a significant degree of personal focus is necessary.

Note that it is entirely possible, within this definition, to be a “monastic” and also have a day job, a family and a fairly normal “life”.  The key words in the definition above are “focuses” and “practical exclusion”.  Monasticism is a matter of deciding what your focus is to be about and working your life around to meet that.

Above all, a RubberNunk has made a deliberate decision to utilize rubber fetish as a path to “happiness”.  “Happiness is activity in pursuit of excellence” ( Aristotle). It was the ancient Greeks who began to realize that happiness is an attainable goal rather than a “gift of the gods”. We make our own happiness.  It is much, much more than pleasure — happiness is an attitude about life that makes us feel good over time. Happiness is the result of an internal process, not an external event.  Happiness is not hedonism nor is it the pursuit of wealth or pleasure.  It comes from the quest to evolve personally– to grow. The operative word here is “quest”.

A RubberNunk transforms his fetish from something he merely “does” to something he “practices”. He regards his fetish as a skill that he passionately strives to continually learn, develop and master over his life.

Why would one want to become a RubberNunk? The biggest reason that jumps out at me is that it changes the very nature of one’s fetish from an activity  driven by hormones to a practice inspired by a mental concept. Your fetish becomes a quest.  It is the acknowledgement that “I am a Rubberist” and the conscious decision that “I will be the best Rubberist I can be”. It is a decision to choose rubber fetish as a path to self-actualization. It is as decision to climb Maslow’s Mountain in a rubber suit because that is who you are.

POINTZ – A Standard of Measure — (RubberMetrics)

Suppose someone tells you “I wore a lot of rubber yesterday”.

OK, what does a “lot of rubber” actually mean?  Did he wear some rubber gloves for a few hours or was he Totally Enclosed for the entire night? Being in a “lot of rubber” is actually a matter of his perspective which may, or may not, coincide with yours. See the problem?  In most cases, it is purely subjective and relative to an individual user.

Suppose, however, there was a standardized, reasonably objective way to measure both the amount and duration of our rubbering sessions that was the same for everyone? This “universal standard” would allow all of us to describe our rubbering experiences with consistency and accuracy. It would also allow us to track or journal our sessions in a more meaningful way, as well.

The “Pointz” system has been around for years but has been presented mostly as a vehicle for bondage and role play. However, at it’s heart is a simple standard of measure that could be used by Rubberists to accurately describe the intensity and duration of their rubber experiences. Ignore the bondage aspect for now – think of Pointz simply as a way to measure and track your rubbering experience. (If you want to include some bondage, that’s fine but it is not required.)

How it works: In the Pointz system standard is based on the duration a garment is worn in proportion to its total body surface area (TBSA) and is expressed in “minutez”. (Note the “z” at the end.)  A “100%” TBSA situation would be to be entirely enclosed in rubber from head to foot with no skin anywhere on the body exposed to the air.  Rubberists call this “Total Enclosure” or “TE”.

The basic idea is actually very simple. The formula is: % of TBSA times duration in minutes = Pointz.

If you are in 100% Total Enclosure for 100 minutes you earn 100 Pointz.  If, however, you wear some item that covers, say, only 50% of your body for 100 minutes, you would acquire 50 Pointz (Abbreviate as “50z”) .  If you wore that same item for 60 minutes, your Pointz score would be 50% of 60 = 30z.

Where is becomes a bit more complicated is trying to objectively determine what % of the Total Body Surface Area that a particular garment covers. T-shirts, stockings, etc. can be a bit challenging to assess. Fortunately, there is a fairly universal standard used by medical people for assessing burns to the body called the “Rule of Nines” which makes this fairly easy to do.

The Rule of Nines defines each of the following eleven body areas as being approximately 9% of Total Body surface Area. (Genitals make up the final 1%)

• Head
• Right arm
• Left arm
• Chest
• Abdomen
• Upper back
• Lower back
• Right thigh
• Left thigh
• Right leg (below the knee)
• Left leg (below the knee)

(Also see Lund-Browder Chart for diagrams and much more detail.)

So, for example, a hood would cover 9% of your body. If you wore that hood for 100 minutes, you would earn 9 Pointz.  Also using this chart, a catsuit with gloves and feet but no hood would cover the entire body except the head, and, therefore would provide 91% coverage. If worn for 100 minutes, you would earn 91 Pointz (91z)

Of course, large numbers of Pointz (minutes) can also be expressed as “Hourz” by dividing by 60. It’s just simple time math.

Using the Pointz system you can create journals or diaries for  documenting your sessions and tracking their cumulative intensity and duration. I have used an OpenOffice Spreadsheet to track my Pointz for several years. The spreadsheet has a line for each item I have worn and includes start and end times, Pointz earned and cumulative totals in hourz.  A reference list helps me keep track of the Pointz % values I have assigned to  each garment I have. I have documented over 5,000 hourz as of this writing.

If you are not inclined to use an electronic spreadsheet, you could journal your Pointz  in a simple paper diary or accounts book.  Just make some columns for start, end, time in minutes, % coverage, item total and cumulative total. Enter and calculate these values for each item you wear.  Keep a reference in the back of the book for listing the TBSA %’s for each of your garments.

Why Bother? Calculating and logging your Pointz is a way of celebrating your fetish. It adds a new dimension to your rubbering sessions by giving you a numerical measure of their intensity and duration as well as a sense of accomplishment as you watch your cumulative totals grow. This “universal standard” also makes communicating about your sessions with other Rubberists more accurate and understandable.  Once you get into the habit of logging your sessions you’ll wonder why you didn’t start doing this years ago!

Here is extensive discussion about the PointZ System.

What is consciousness?

What is Consciousness?

Consciousness can be described as “awareness with focus”.

Western culture has always been deeply suspicious of alternate states of consciousness (ASC) and has, in fact, often demonized anyone whose focus on reality has fallen outside the cultural norm. In contrast, other cultures, such as the Hindu, Japanese and Chinese have venerated, honored and widely promoted the exploration of ASC’s. It’s built right into their culture and the way they view life and the universe. 

For example, Sanskrit has about 20 nouns for “consciousness” or “mind” compared to only a few in western languages. How many English words can you think of for it?

Our consciousness — our focus of awareness– has been defined and “installed” in us by our parents, mentors and culture since our earliest infancy. What we focus our awareness on — what we perceive as “reality” — is governed by the consensus of our culture. Other possibilities are inherently excluded.

Consensus reality is a kind of “democracy of reality” based on what the majority thinks we should perceive — a sort of “truth designed by a committee”.

Most of us are trapped in this and are not even aware of it. Our egos are inherently designed to “protect” us from wandering into other states of consciousness outside of our cultural norm. We are unable to even consider the existence of other possible focuses for our awareness.

As Gurdjieff so succinctly put it, “We are asleep…”

Once in a while, however, a few of us wake up, even for just a moment or two, and get a glimpse of something way beyond our current “focus of awareness”. We “transcend” the consensus reality to a whole new level of being. Something very exciting and profound happens to us – we realize that our world can be much, much richer than we thought. A door is opened…

We may also discover that the words of consensus reality are wholly inadequate to describe the new realms of mind we have found. It’s like trying to describe the taste of orange juice to someone who has never eaten an orange.

Exploring alternate states of consciousness is one of the highest “calls to adventure” known to mankind. It greatly transcends the quest for power and wealth and may give our lives a whole new meaning and Purpose.

Fewer than 1% of us will hear that calling. The remaining 99% of us will be the critics, the nay-sayers, the ones who role their eyes and ignore… the “sleepers”.

Are you listening? Or will you remain asleep?

Carpe Rubber Diem!

Carpe Rubber Diem! — Seize the Rubber Day!

Your fetish is a gift. Celebrate it!

One way to do celebrate it by wearing rubber mind fully and with a sense of purpose and devotion to yourself. Let it add new levels of richness, passion and depth to your life well beyond the sexual side of it. Make it “sacred” in your mind. Ritualize it. Wear your rubber as a “symbolic action with style” which speaks to your mind and heart but does not need to make sense in a literal context. Cultivate a sensitivity to symbolism and metaphors. Use your rubber rituals to provoke your imagination and creativity in the mundane acts of everyday life.  In a life animated by rituals there are no insignificant things. Think of your garments as a “shrine” to your inner being.  Try doing simple rubber acts every day, solely and deliberately, for the purpose of doing those acts as an end in themselves. They do not need to be grandiose or lengthy or involved. Doing them with regularity is much more important.  Focus your attention on the “now” of the rubber on your body. Practice rubber mindfulness. Keep in mind that rituals are symbolic acts. Wear rubber for the sake of wearing rubber.

(Note that a “ritual” is an act or symbolic gesture deliberately intended to mark an event as special or sacred. It need not be logically connected to nature of the event itself. Shaking hands when you meet someone is a classic example of a ritual to symbolically mark the occasion as being special. It can be totally spontaneous, unrehearsed, unscripted and it need not be repeated. It is the intent of the ritual that matters. It is very different from a “habit” which is mindless repetition of a mundane act. A “habit” lacks the deliberate intent of a ritual.)

This does NOT mean that you have to wear several layers of rubber for hours and hours, totally enclosed, etc.  Certainly, these more demanding, intense activities can be rituals, but there are also many, many much simpler, much less demanding rituals as well. For example, you might keep a box of disposable latex gloves in your car and create a daily ritual of deliberately wearing a rubber glove only on your left hand during your commute to work.  This simple act, done regularly and with a sense of purpose and ritual symbolism, becomes an act of devotion. It is a way to “seize the rubber day” and express your life more creatively as an “art”, which makes it more worth living.

Research the concept of “mindfulness”. This is a very simple meditative technique that anyone can do virtually any time, any where and for very short bursts of time — even just a few seconds at a time.. It can be readily adapted to your rubber rituals and will add significant depth to them and, ultimately, richness to your life.

Be an explorer of your soul — a pioneer. Look for possible pathways to spirituality through your fetish. Think of yourself as a kind of “Priest/ess” of your own temple. Seek value, virtue and substance well beyond mere sexuality in your fetish. Use your fetish energy to create a personal culture to improve the quality of your life and, perhaps, enhancing it’s spirituality whilst not disturbing or conflicting with your real “religion”. Think of it more like an “art of living” concept much like Yoga or meditation.

For whatever reason, your fetish is part of you — it runs deeply within you. It’s a fundamental part of your identity.  Do something positive with it! Make it a creative expression of your soul.

Make your fetish your “art”! Celebrate rubber!

Seize the Rubber Day! Carpe Rubber Diem!

Seize the Rubber Day! Carpe Rubber Diem!