The History of the Emblem
Once upon a time, before America Online (AOL) was The Hated Giant, it was a feisty little upstart company going up against the big boys and home to a number of great little communities--including a warm, spunky and often persecuted BDSM community. By the end of 1994 AOL had grown enormously and the BDSM community had grown with it, overspilling its one original meeting room and splintering into several subcommunities. Still, much of the interaction among long-timers took place in a couple of chat rooms and a D/s folder in the Relationships bulletin board of the Issues in Mental Health area.
It was on that bulletin board sometime in late '94 that a discussion about a BDSM symbol evolved from this progression of questions: How many of us there really were out there in any random crowd? So many people could not afford to be out about their BDSM interests for fear of many types of persecution. So the question was whether there could be a way to spot each other in a friendly, non-trolling way. Was there perhaps a symbol we could wear to identify ourselves to each other without anyone in the often hostile vanilla world being the wiser?
The conversation progressed both on the board and in private email. The Leather Pride flag came up, of course, but that didn't suit various peoples needs for any combination of 4 different reasons:
My volunteering to come up with a symbol and look into having pins made met with immediate encouragement. So my first step was to solicit input on ideas. I set out these guidelines:
![[design 1]](design1.gif)
One
idea was repeated several times--take it from the description of the ring
from The Story of O. At least one person drew a quick sketch of what
they thought that looked like, which paralleled the way I saw it in my head
at the time. The sketch to the left became my initial proposal to the group.
This drawing was created in CorelDraw through some convoluted approach that
I'm sure any real graphic artist would get a hearty laugh over, but By The
Sticky Fingers of Harcourt Fenton Mudd, I did it and I'm proud of it!
:-)
This design did not remain long, however, for various reasons, most of them having to do with my not wanting to create forseeable confusion or, worse, get sued.
I soon learned that other people had an alternate idea of what the "O" symbol was, and it was somewhat different from what I'd drawn. In the other descriptions I read, the ends of each spoke, rather than terminating into the rim, continued to curve back down and around until it formed something like a curved P. Furthermore, I heard that some company was already marketing "O" jewelry in that form. The difference in design was actually a relief because I was having second thoughts about duplicating the book's description. It sounded like possible copyright infringement and I wanted no part of any such thing. I protect my own intellectual rights and I respect others' as well. Therefore, the idea of a design inspired by, but not identical to, the "O" design made far more sense. I pointed this out to the rest of the group and got little response and no disagreement. Apparently, the whole thing had pretty much been left in my hands to do with as I saw fit.
Even if this was not the "O" design, however, there was another potential legal problem. It was such a simple and nice design. What were the chances that somebody was already using it for, say, a corporate logo? They seemed too high for my comfort. I had visions of people wearing pins like this--or perhaps shirts with the design--at a company picnic and being approached by smiling folks to chat about favorite whips. Or even company executives who were BDSMers themselves discovering the Emblem and turning red, directing their lawyers to send one of those "It has come to our attention" letters my way.
What I later realised is that I had indeed seen that design before, but not as a corporate logo. It's a design common in old Celtic artwork and often referred to as a Celtic Triskele. It's still popular as a symbol of Celtic tradition and is used by those who follow Celtic Pagan spirituality.It's frequently found in jewlery, in historical art and even, yes, in logos. In my mind, that opened a door of opportunity. What could be better, from a standpoint of discretion, than having a symbol which was just similar enough to something neutral so as not to raise attention? It would be a form of camouflage. What was needed were differences in detail to make the Emblem recognizable as the BDSM symbol and not something else.
The Emblem's resemblence to a 3-part version of the Yin-Yang symbol had, of course, been obvious from the beginning. So my first thought was to add dots inside the black fields. That thought did not stay with me long. For one thing, that might turn out to be an existing copyrighted symbol just as easily as the other. And there was a nagging feeling that I had seen such a design as that before too--this time as an Eastern religious symbol of some kind. I have since been told that the design I was thinking of is known as a Chaos Wheel, but I've yet to verify that. I do now know that variations of a dotted version have a rich history in Asian arts, particularly in various Buddhist and Taoist traditions. I needed a variation virtually certain to be unique--either that or a lottery win that would enable me to pay for an expensive trademark search.
When the solution struck me it seemed both so obvious and so perfect that I actually chuckled out loud. I would use holes instead of dots. The use of holes was highly significant. For one thing, it would mean that the Emblem reveals its true design only in 3-dimensions. Not that holes can't easily be portrayed in 2-dimensional drawings, but they are an unecessary complication--not the sort of thing that somebody would take as a copyrighted corporate symbol. Furthermore, the meaning for the Emblem was already beginning to form in my mind and holes fit into the scheme beautifully, as you know from reading the explanation.