Map of Human Sexuality: Franklin Veaux

Spotted over at The Sex Carnival, Franklin Veaux’s awesome Land of Human Sexuality Map shows us some of the roads less traveled, places we’ve been and where other people might spend too much time (in addition to those holiday destinations we dream about). It’s an update on Katharine Gates’ Fetish Map — remember her? She wrote a subculture book on fetishes, mostly pictures, essays and interviews in a tome that was neat eye candy but relatively low on practicalities or insight. I agree wholeheartedly that Gates’ map skimmed the surface, and Veaux goes into detail with his map, telling us,

The land of most folks’ awareness is the Island of Mundania and the surrounding islands. Across the Straits of Fear is the portion of the continent that folks are generally aware of to some extent (gay sex, threesomes, light bondage, and so on). Beyond the Great Barrier Mountains and the Lesser Barrier Mountains, which demarcate the limits of common knowledge of different fetishes, lie the more exotic forms of sexual expression (natori, shibari, cosplay, fisting, puppy play, and so forth). In the frigid arctic wastes to the far north are those activities which only a very, very tiny percentage even of veteran, seasoned kinksters finds appealing (nullification, erotic cannibalism, necrophilia, and that sort of thing).

There’s no particular meaning to the size or color of the various areas; it’d be an impossible task to try to, for example, figure out how many furries there are compared to how many folks are into TENS units. Likewise, some of the activities listed could reasonably belong to more than one classification, and some things (like “gay sex”) are within the realm of knowledge of most folks but aren’t really activities per se (most sexual activities not requiring physical possession of a penis or a vagina can be done by people of any sex or sexual orientation). Nevertheless, when folks think of “sexual things to do,” gay sex does seem to be considered its own thing, even though it’s not actually an activity by itself, so it’s on the map–right across the Straits of Fear. (…read more.)