Use the force

Stabbity has started an interesting discussion on ‘forced’ scenes over on her blog Not Just Bitchy. There are a lot of ideas worth digging into, both in the post and the comments. For the moment I’ll start with her basic idea, which is that the fantasy of being forced to submit (imagine quotes around that if you prefer) is partly a fantasy about submission and domination being easy. It removes the risk of screwing up on both sides of the D/s equation. I kind of get this from the dominant point of view, but I’m not so sure about the submissive side.

For a dominant there are always a lot of choices in a scene. Just picking up a bundle of rope raises issues of where to tie it, how tightly, what to attach it to, when to loosen it, etc. And that’s before anyone has even been hit, shocked, pierced or penetrated. Adding force into the mix adds a safety margin to decisions. It suggests that the scene isn’t primarily for the benefit of the submissive and therefore there’s less to get wrong. If that wasn’t enough warm-up for you or that penetration was a little rougher than you like, well that’s just tough. I’m forcing you to do it.

On the submissive side I’m more skeptical, because personally I don’t worry all that much about screwing up in a scene. That’s not to say I’m some perfect submissive. I worry about communication. I worry about the intensity I can take. I worry about getting a cramp after we’ve spent 30 minutes getting me bound in just the right position. I worry about a spider scuttling across my naked body when I can’t move. But all these things are just as much an issue in a forced scene. I’ll safeword out if a major limit is exceeded whatever the nature of the scene (particularly if arachnids have decided to crash the party). Similarly the quality of my communication isn’t affected by being forced. I worry about being a good or a bad submissive, but not typically about screwing up.

That’s not to say force doesn’t offer some interesting possibilities for the submissive, but I’ll save further thoughts for another post. In the meantime I’ll leave you with some artwork by Eric Stanton. He was always a great illustrator of powerful forceful women who could physically bully and dominate weaker men.

Eric Stanton artwork from his story entitled 'Bonnie and Clara'
Eric Stanton artwork from his story entitled 'Bonnie and Clara'

Nothing ventured, nothing lost

Ferns has published an insightful new post entitled ‘Being submissive can be scary.’ It addresses the risks and emotional challenges of setting a foot onto the path of submission. Accepting that role, particularly after suppressing it for a long time, can be a scary decision.

The post does a good job of highlighting the specific worries a submissive may have. However, from a personal perspective, I’d refine the list Ferns uses a little. It’s not that I disagree with it; I’d just categorize it a little further. The first few issues she raises were definitely worries I had before I ever took a single slap from a paddle.

Scared that this D/s thing wouldn’t be what he expected.
Scared that the reality wouldn’t live up to what was in his head, in his imagination.
Scared that he wasn’t really submissive, that he was ‘faking it’ somehow, fooling himself.
Scared that he wasn’t really a masochist, that his fantasies over all those years were false.

Those concerns were very real to me. I worried that it would all seem ridiculous and that I’d simply start laughing. I worried that I’d safeword immediately and that nobody would take me seriously. It seemed like doing what you were told should be simple, but I was sure I could find a way to screw it up.

Ferns goes on to list some fears that she describes as tenfold of any of the above, all related to how the submissives self-perception might change.

Scared of leaving behind nearly 40 years of thinking that he knew who he was.
Scared of losing his comfortable place in the world, as part of the ‘normal’ set.
Scared of admitting that he was not the person he had been pretending to be all of his life.
Scared of the idea of never again finding a ‘vanilla’ relationship enough.

For me these were (and still are) real issues, but they played no part in my early submissive experiences. They were, in the words of Donald Rumsfeld, my unknown unknowns. I was worried about failing, the immediate risks, not the potential costs of succeeding. I saw BDSM as a potential addition to my life. Something that would enhance my options, not diminish them. It was only in hindsight that I saw the risks of not being able to go back and no longer finding vanilla relationships satisfying. There’s absolutely no part of me that regrets what I did, but I can’t honestly say I entered into it with foresight that Fern’s submissive did.

A good grip on the situationI think the image is from the charmingly named Bitches-Femdom site. I found it on Equally Deep In Your Eyes tumblr, which has absolutely the worst UI of any tumblr I’ve ever encountered. There are some good images there, but I suggest browsing via the archive. If the owner of this tumblr happens to read this: Please change your theme. You’ve chosen some great images but the navigation mechanism currently sucks ass.

Is a bad reason worse than no reason?

Does it matter why someone is kinky? Are the reasons important? In some circumstances, can ignorance be bliss?

Miss Margo recently put up a post that got me thinking about these questions. The post itself is a complex one and touches a lot of issues. It’s not my intent to try and unpack it or even respond directly to it. There’s just a single section that I want to use as a jumping off point. It concerns a client of hers named Mel. As a child he was physically abused by his father, and as an adult he now roleplays very heavy corporal scenes as an authority figure to Margo’s errant child. In talking about that childhood abuse, the following exchange happened…

Mel tilted his head to the side, considering, and then said the most incredible thing I’ve ever heard come out of a client’s mouth: “It’s not like it screwed me up or anything.”
I almost started laughing–it was clearly a joke. I waited for him to laugh, but he didn’t.
He wasn’t kidding.
Yeah, that was an instant classic. I kept my mouth shut because I didn’t want to offend him, but I wanted to ask, Buddy, do you SEE WHERE YOU ARE? You are compulsive enough to act out the same scenario, over and over again, at the expense of many thousands of dollars, for your entire adult life.

I think most people, both kinky and not, would respond the same way as Margo (although perhaps without the same restraint). The childhood trauma certainly did seem to screw him up and to be re-enacting it without that awareness doesn’t come across as a healthy action. But then it got me thinking about my friend Sal, who I just made up. He’s a nice guy, very competent, friendly, and happens to like exactly the same roleplay and activities that Mel enjoys. The only difference between him and Mel, besides the minor detail of Sal not existing, is that he has no idea why he enjoys what he does. He had a happy childhood with no physical abuse. He’s just kinky and, like a lot of kinksters out there, he gets upset when I tell him he’s screwed up. “Paltego,” he’ll never say to me, “you like women sticking needles in your nipples, electrocuting your genitals and pissing on you. So who’s the messed up one here?”

Now obviously I know I’m completely healthy and normal. Sal seems to be as well. But what about Mel? If he likes exactly the same things as Sal, can he be screwed up? Does the reason matter if they’re both now in the same place?

Given this is just a thought experiment, we can push it a step further. Let’s assume all kinky people can be ‘cured’ via therapy or drugs. Should we treat Mel? If he came to his current state because of abuse, it seems right to treat it. But then what about Sal? They’re different in background, but both identical in their current kinky activities. Can we say Mel should be treated but Sal shouldn’t? What if they’re both happy the way they are?

Alternatively, we can flip it around. Let’s say we know for sure that kink is a sexual trait set at birth. Your later life only influences how it ultimately manifests itself. In this case Mel was always going to end up involved in BDSM. The only thing his father did was to direct his interest, not create it. Is he still messed up? If we can trace Mel’s influences but not Sal’s, does that matter? And if Sal has ended up liking the same activities without the traumatic background, what does that tell us about how we’re influenced?

These are obviously all rhetorical questions. I’ve no idea what the answers are. From Margo’s description it doesn’t seem that Mel is using his play to work through issues or address the trauma. He’s simply letting it inform his sexual life, which seems messed up. Yet, why should those of us with no clear reason for our interests somehow get a free pass? Is my desire to be beaten somehow healthier because I’ve no idea why I like it?

Domestic DisciplineGiven the theme of Mel’s sessions, a corporal focused image seemed to be the right one to use. Obviously this is femdom rather than maledom. I found it on the Hommage to Dominatrixes tumblr. I’m afraid I don’t know the original source.

The bad sex awards can go fuck themselves

I flew in to a wet Seattle from sunny Las Vegas today, minus lots of dollars (due to food/drink not gambling), and plus a stuffy head cold. Not my most fun flight ever. Matters didn’t improve when I booted up my laptop and spotted a bunch of articles on the Bad Sex in Fiction Award. I can’t express how much I hate that prize and the attitude of those associated with it.

It doesn’t get a lot of play in the US, but it’s widely covered in certain segments of the UK press. They love the excuse to publish sexually explicit quotes from the nominees and snigger about them. If you’ve never heard of it before the stated rationale is…

to draw attention to the crude, tasteless, often perfunctory use of redundant passages of sexual description in the modern novel, and to discourage it

As far as I can tell this means picking on writing that actually tries to detail the physical act of sex, rather than coyly drifting the camera towards the bedroom curtains as the lovers embrace on the bed. There’s certainly an excess of amusing metaphors, strained similes and overly ornate prose in some of the nominees, but little that matches their stated criteria. You can read a sample from this years winner here. I’m not particularly a fan, but really? That’s the best bad sex writing they could find? They should get out more.

The whole exercise strikes me as puritanical and condescending. If they had any guts they’d publish a Good Sex in Fiction Award for particularly interesting, stimulating and relevant sexual descriptions. That would at least be constructive. Unfortunately praising something as complex and revealing as sexual writing is personally exposing, so I doubt these prudish jackasses will ever do something that risky.

I’ve no idea what the appropriate image to accompany this post should be. So I’ll switch it around and publish something that looks like particularly good sex. Or at least something very clearly being enjoyed by at least one of the participants.

Mirror shot
I found this on the Desire and Devotion tumblr.

Oh Lord, won’t you buy me a Mercedes Benz?

I’ve always had some degree of discomfort about the idea of financial domination, although I could never put my finger on exactly what it was. It doesn’t push any of my buttons to be described as a ‘pay-piggy’ or objectified as a human ATM, but I could say the same thing about plenty of other styles of play. I’m not into adult/baby roleplay or public humiliation, yet my lack of interest there doesn’t translate into an active discomfort with the activity.

It was only when I was reading this article on a financial domme in NYC that I managed to put my finger on at least part of my problem. I’ve no idea how much truth is in the article, but it certainly reflects an attitude and approach I’ve seen on a lot of fin-domme sites. What bothers me about it is the lack of a ‘duty of care’. All participants in a BDSM scene have a responsibility to ensure it’s safe and consensual, but due to the natural dynamic there’s obviously a particular emphasis on the dominant’s role. She has a duty of care to try and ensure the submissive eventually emerges healthy and undamaged.

This duty doesn’t absolve the submissive of responsibility, and it doesn’t make the dominant responsible for everything and anything that happens. Accidents can happen, both in a physical and emotional sense. But the intent should always be there, and it’s often an intent that seems to be lacking from what I observe of financial domination. It would seem like an area where the risk of harm is particularly high, and therefore greater care should be taken. Yet most of the fin-dommes I stumble across fit the mould of the one in the article. They’re inexperienced, not particularly into BDSM and express little interest in the overall health of their clients. There seems to be a lack of self-analysis and critical evaluation of what they’re doing and why.

In a physical BDSM session there’s also a very clear element of self-interest for the dominant to make sure everyone is safe. Nobody wants to end the scene in an emergency room. And anyone injuring submissives or pushing scenes beyond comfortable limits is going to have difficulty finding play partners (one would hope). I’m not sure what the equivalent feedback mechanism for a financial domme is. The goal would simply seem to be to extract as much as possible without losing the client.

I should be clear this is purely a personal opinion based purely on what I’ve seen on-line. I’m not saying it’s a bad thing to be involved in or to enjoy. Doubtless there are ethical and talented financial dommes out there. I just found it interesting to finally identify what sometimes niggled me about this very specific dynamic.

Tamara Ecclestone standing on a pile of banknotes

The photograph is by Tyler Shields, and features the back of Tamara Ecclestone’s shoes (daughter of billionaire Bernie Ecclestone).

Too much kink

I’ve been debating putting up a profile on one of the kinky dating sites. For some reason, my plan A of sitting alone in my apartment anonymously blogging has not led to a throng of dominant women breaking my door down. Plan B might be in order. Plans C through Z are also not out of the question.

The first step in such a plan is to decide which site(s) to use. This in itself is problematic, as they’ve all got such a lousy reputation. There is a femdom specific one, Femdom Match, but the introduction on their front page does not fill me with great optimism.

IF you are looking to meet a Dominatrix to fulfill your fantasy of female domination you are at the right place. Your job as a slave/servant is to be at the service of your dominatrix.

My first thought on reading this was that obviously I wasn’t in the right place. I already know plenty of dominatrices who fulfill my fantasies. They’re called pro-dommes, and I think they’re wonderful people. But that’s not what I go to a kinky dating site for.

My second thought was what the reaction would be of any dominant woman reading that. What does it say about the kind of men she’ll meet on the site? Who is going to read that and want to sign-up to fulfill men’s fantasies? It’s the equivalent of a conventional dating site having the slogan – “A great place to meet hot women for sex.” I somehow can’t see Match or OK Cupid adopting that as their new tagline.

Ironically I think that the problem with most kinky dating sites is that they place too much emphasis on the kink. I know a few people out there have very specific fantasies that they need a partner to fulfill. If your only way to get off is wearing a pink onesie while being chased around the bedroom by a woman dressed as Margaret Thatcher brandishing a rubber chicken, then you should probably list that in your profile. But I suspect most of us are a little more flexible in our desires. No one individual activity, such as piercing or breathplay or spanking, is a deal breaker for me. As long as she’s dominant and GGG then that’s a big tick in the kinky box. What matters after that is what matters in any dating/friend situation. Is this person fun to hang out with? Do we have interests in common? When she pulls the gag out, will we have anything worthwhile to say to each other?

I do have some thoughts on how a good femdom dating site should be structured, but I’ll save that for another post. Instead I’ll finish with a picture of what looks like a fun dating moment found on the 24-7-Sub tumblr.

Dating

Lessons learnt

During my web wanderings over the weekend I came across this insightful post from Mitsu entitled “Lessons I learned as a dominatrix: 10 things that don’t exist.” It’s a thoughtful list and any one of her points could have formed the basis for a follow-up post. However, I’m going to pick the first item on it: There’s no such thing as intimacy without vulnerability.

Sometimes, a client would come to session with me with his heart set on having the amazing kinky experience he’d always dreamed of, but it would end up disappointing because of something I had no control over: the walls wouldn’t budge. He wouldn’t be able to communicate specifically what he really wanted. He wouldn’t be able to let go, of his ego perhaps, and let the scene happen.
Mitsu

As Mitsu goes onto say, this need for vulnerability and lowering your guard is a key part of any intimate relationship, not just a BDSM one. It’s something that rarely gets addressed directly. People come at obliquely, talking about sharing, trust or communication. But the heart of it, something necessary for all those things, is taking a risk and making yourself vulnerable.

The interesting thing I’ve found about doing BDSM scenes is that they can be a two way street when it comes to vulnerability. It’s necessary to let go to make them work, but the scenes themselves can also help you to do that. Pain and psychological stress can put a lot of pressure on any cracks the submissive wants to expose in their personal walls. It’s hard for the ego and super-ego to do their stuff when basic fight-or-flight impulses are ruling the roost.

One of the most powerful moments in any of my scenes came at a moment when I was feeling supremely vulnerable. I’d been in a bondage chair for a couple of hours, watching Lydia at close range, face to face, as she tortured me. I was bound but exposed, pushed deep into sub-space as she caned my inner thighs, applied clamps and zapped me with electricity. Towards the end she applied a number of viciously sharp clips across my body and then stepped back to watch as I struggled to breath through the pain. My thought process was long gone, there was really no me there, just a lot of pain and Lydia. As I stared up at her she came to me and gave me a gentle hug. It was a beautiful moment, comforting and reassuring, and I emotionally dissolved in her arms. Then, still holding me, she slid her body along mine, dragging the clips back and forth. I just about died. That little moment of vulnerability and intimacy combined with the sudden savage pain of the moving clips still gives me a shiver when I think of it today.

IntimacyImage of intimacy was found on the Girls Rule, Subs Drool tumblr.

When anything goes

Mistress T has an interesting and instructive post up about negotiating a scene. Her key point is that a submissive saying he’ll do ‘anything’ the domme wants is both useless and highly unlikely to be true.

My go-to (smart-ass) answer these days if they say they’re into anything that will make me happy is: “Great. You do the house work while I watch TV in my PJ’s and ignore you. Just leave the money on the counter.”

Her point is an excellent one but from the submissive point of view, it does touch on a real point of dilemma. How do you negotiate a scene without making it feel like you’re ordering from a restaurant menu? I’ve done scenes with new dommes where I’ve an expressed interest in X, Y and Z, and ended up with 40 minutes of each in that order. Pro-dommes typically complain when clients get very specific about scripting a scene and controlling how it should unfold.  But the reverse situation also applies. I don’t want to feel I’m controlling exactly what the domme does.

Mistress T goes onto to suggest that of the 120 fetishes she has listed, the number of things a random submissive would hate is far longer than the list of things they’d like. I’m not sure about that. I don’t have access to her list, but I know of other examples from domme’s I’ve played with. For example, Domina Yuki’s and Lady Lydia’s. They both have 50 or so activities listed. Of those there are probably 2 or 3 that are hard limits for me and a couple of things that I’d do but aren’t particular interesting to me. The other 40+ things are all just dandy as far as I’m concerned, and I’ve done almost all of them at some point. Yet, in my experience, negotiating a very open scene based on 40 potential activities really doesn’t work well. Most domme’s tend to classify you as one of those ‘anything but not really’ guys, and assume you’re going to be unhappy when reality sets in.

I don’t have any great answers to this problem. The best advice I can give is to slowly build trust by doing multiple sessions, each featuring a limited number of different activities. Once you’ve built chemistry with someone and demonstrated a genuine breadth of interest, you’re more likely to be able to transition into a more natural and free-form dynamic. When I play with Lydia these days I suggest only a single idea as a possible direction and let her improvise from that point on. She knows by now that I’m open to a lot of different activities, and don’t have a fixed idea of how a scene should play out. I think last time I simply suggested something involving bondage on her bed, and ended up trapped in much rope, sporting an electrified butt-plug, with several piercings, many scratch marks and a plastic wrapped face.

Mistress T and Amica BentleyI’ll leave you with an image of Mistress T and Amica Bentley, originally from The English Mansion that I found on Mistress T’s blog. I suspect for a lot of the ‘anything you want’ guys this particular activity is likely to transition into a ‘but not that’ response.

Openly Submissive?

I stumbled across this post over at the Masculine Submission blog recently. It’s on the ever thorny topic of the perception of male submission in society. This is a reoccurring theme on many D/s blogs, and I’ve written about it in the past (which resulted in my most heavily commented post ever). I’ve played devils advocate before, and I’m about to do so again, although puzzlement would be a better way to summarize my attitude. I don’t want to be critical or diminish someone’s views, I just have difficulty relating.

Tomio’s whole post is worth reading, but the thrust of it is about the difficulty of being an openly submissive man in common environments that are hostile to that characteristic.

Why don’t submissive men hang out in the gym? That’s like asking why fish don’t hang out in the middle of the Sahara. It isn’t a friendly place for submissive men (let me be clear – I’m talking about guys who are openly submisisve…there are TONS of guys who pass as macho but are submissive when no one is watching)

If a man feels insecure about expressing who he is (security is the second level of needs); then he is incapable of achieving higher levels of existence.
Tomio Black

The part that puzzles me here is the idea of being ‘openly submissive’ in this kind of context? What does that really mean?

I don’t go to the gym regularly, a fact that’ll surprise no one who has seen any of my session shots. But the reason isn’t because of hostility, but because I find working out to be incredibly, brain numbingly, shoot-me now, tedious. I’m not really sure how open submission would manifest itself in a gym scenario. Actually, that’s not true, thanks to these kind of posts from Olivia Fitzgerald I do have some pretty good fantasies. But in reality, the daily interactions I have with people and places don’t normally touch on my innate submissive nature.

I find submission, like masochism, is entirely contextual. At work I tend to the forceful and aggressive. That’s not something forced on me by society, but just a natural function of working in a very competitive intellectually demanding area. In social groups I’m normally easy going and a facilitator of conversation, but not at all submissive. Only with the right person to accept my submission does that side of me come out.

I totally understand the potential difficulties in being a D/s couple in society, but that doesn’t seem to be what Tomio is talking about here. So am I just missing something here? Do other male submissives feel the need to openly express their submission in daily life, outside the specific context of a D/s relationship? Is the pressure to act like a ‘real man’ in conflict with how they intrinsically feel?

'leave me the way i was before' by BenegesserittA black and white version of this image has been floating around a lot of tumblrs (I found it on Red Snapper). I believe it is by the artist Benegesseritt from deviantART, and entitled leave me the way i was before.

Cultivating the palette

I’ve been pondering on pain in recent days. What draws some people to it? What makes a masochist and why do other people find them so strange?

I think if you asked most people why they didn’t like pain, they’d assume you were crazy. It hurts. What else is there to say? However, when I look at how people experience pain in everyday life, I suspect that it’s not the sensation itself that’s the primary issue. Instead, it’s the fear and uncertainty that comes with it. Sure when you hit your thumb with a hammer there’s that brief flash of agony that temporarily blocks out coherent thought. But after that, as it subsides to a dull throb, what stays with you is the uncertainty. Have I fractured something? Did I damage the nail? Is it going to swell up? Will I need a trip to the ER? It’s a similar story with chronic pain, like a bad back or a damaged ligament. The pain might be manageable, but what stresses people is the lack of control. They don’t know when it’ll stop, when it might flare up, how much it might impact their daily life.

It’s hard to find examples of pain in normal life that doesn’t have this element of fear and uncertainty. However, there are a few – working out, eating spicy food or playful biting and scratching during sex. The sensations here are often painful ones, but are not described that way. There is no fear or uncertainty, the situation is a controlled one, and therefore the perception is a much more positive one.

When discussing masochism there’s often a lot of talk about wires getting crossed in the brain, as though there’s something fundamentally different about masochists. I wonder how true that really is. Growing up I was never particularly interested in pain. What fascinated me was exchanging control. Pain seemed like an interesting way to emphasize that exchange – I can hurt you and you can’t stop me – but it didn’t seem like an end in itself. It was only when I got physically involved in BDSM that I began to think about it differently. The very safe and defined limits of a play session allowed me to experience the sensation of pain, but divorced from the negative connotations it usually has. I began to explore and appreciate the sensation both in its own terms and as a tool for play.

I therefore wonder if there are a lot of other people out there who would be masochists, but never have the chance to find out. Is appreciating pain perhaps something not inherent in certain people but – at the risk of sounding like a cross between a Bond villain and a Cenobite – just something that needs to be cultivated? People can learn to appreciate oysters and good wine. Maybe nipple clamps and leather floggers are a similarly acquirable taste.

I’ll leave you with a couple of shots from Divine Bitches of Mistress Madeline helping somebody cultivate their own particular palette for pain. If he hasn’t developed one already, this looks like the perfect time to start.

Mistress Madeline applying a cane

Mistress Madeline doing a zippering