why I’m not doing bdsm

I realized a few weeks ago that I don’t want to do bdsm right now. I realized that, in fact, it would be satisfying to just say, “I’m not doing bdsm right now.”

I still live with Joscelin (though we broke up over 2 years ago), and occasionally we play together, sometimes just for a quick fuck, sometimes for a week or more at a time. But we haven’t done anything lately. He’s been working on some projects that he might like a guinea pig for, and I realized it might be helpful to let him know I’m not doing bdsm right now, so we had a good long talk about it.

Partly it is that I don’t like the local bdsm community — at least, the part of it that I’ve seen. Our most “local” club (45 minutes away) is almost entirely heterosexual. Even though I’m sort of mostly straight myself, this doesn’t work for me, and it’s not because of some theoretical objection. I not only enjoy watching gays and lesbians do bdsm, I also seem to require the presence of gays and lesbians to legitimate the scene for me.

At this club, I find the kind of yucky thing I didn’t find where we last lived, or didn’t find enough to bother me – gender/role essentialism of some kind. It feels like there is a community there in which some are recognized as submissives and others as dominants and submissives are collectively regarded as cute or adorable or precious or funny. It’s hard to express clearly, and it may be more about me than about what’s actually going on there, but that’s how I feel.

When I go there, I end up interacting mostly with people who are either jerks or obviously troubled. By “obviously troubled” I mean the kind of people who I can tell, in my first conversation with them, are too emotionally damaged or somehow delusional for me to want to play or be friends with or even talk to more than I have to. And by “jerks” I mean, for instance, the guy who told me to smile (and then I did, which only makes me more angry), or guys who insist on telling me about things they like to do and which squick me out, or just that guy who sits next to you and tells you about himself in a way that makes you hate him.

Of course, there are plenty of other people there, but the ratios are wrong for me. I’m also not the easiest person to approach socially (I’m sort of shy and tend to maintain a gaze/body language that makes it impossible to talk to me), so maybe only maniacs (the kind of people who hit on and/or tell their life story to everyone in the room) even try.

My own history of doing bdsm is not so great. I had amazing, moving, sexy times with Joscelin – I’ll never deny that. But I think a lot of the choices we made were fundamentally misguided. Some of what he wanted was stuff I no longer really think it was OK to do.

That’s sort of beside the point, because right now, my desire to dominate people is basically non-existent. Being firm, creating experiences, making up the story, guiding people, etc. – those things don’t come very naturally to me, and my current job uses up every scrap of energy that I have in that direction, and then some. Maybe that’s part of it. I wouldn’t mind being submitted to, if submitting to me completely freely was satisfying enough for a partner, without my needing to do anything to make the experience complete, but I don’t expect such a person to exist. (Frankly, I think the idea is crazy, and I’d have to satifsy myself that a person who presented himself that way wasn’t just ridiculously emotionally damaged somehow.)

As for being a submissive…well, it does align with my innate desires pretty well. All of my masturbatory fantasies since early childhood have involved force, control, punishment, training, denial, and/or overstimulation directed at me.

In real life, I find submitting to be extremely compelling and satisfying and good…for a little while, like a couple of weeks. After that, I still find it compelling, but no longer really good. I start to hate it but I’m unable to see that I hate it, and so I just do it in a way that makes things impossible for my partner, while still believing fervently that I want to be doing it. And I’m devastated when it ends.

In general, submitting turns me into an emotional wreck anyway. Even in the early parts, I fall apart at the drop of a hat and need constant and deep reassurance all the damn time. (I’m not like this in everyday life, though I’m not a supremely confident person either.) That seems to suggest that maybe it’s not the healthiest thing for me to be doing.

Of course, this is all in a 24/7 type of setup. There are other ways to do bdsm, but over the years of knowing Joscelin and being around the scene I have kind of lost this knowledge.

It also takes a fuckload of trust for me to want to bottom to someone more than extremely casually. It’s not the physical risks — I’m not too worried about someone ignoring my safewords or raping me, etc., though I probably should be — it’s the mindset. If I learn later that there is gender essentialism in the other person’s mind or [fill in the blank with other things I find objectionable] I’m going to be really rageful and feel shame over what I participated in. It’s a lot to demand of another human being, really.

So, damn, what about the fact that it’s mostly only bdsm (or at least sex with some kind of power imbalance) that turns me on? Well, whatever. I’m not trying to constrain my future self from having whatever funtimes she chooses. But right now, sexual gratification doesn’t actually feel very important to me. I masturbate and that’s enough for me.

If I met someone I wanted to have sex with, then I would (assuming it was mutual, of course), and if we wanted to do some bdsm, then we would. But right now I’m not looking for that to happen, and certainly not going and seeking it out.

are we crazy?

After the three posts (here, here, and here) I wrote during our scene Tuesday (a scene that consisted of conversations and my being assigned to write those posts), two things happened.  Three things, actually:

1. Graylion commented on the third post about how disturbed he (she?) was by what I had written, and how much he (she?) feared for me.
2. Jos’s New Lover X, who seems reasonably experienced in the bdsm community, told him (as I understand it) that what we were doing was misguided.
3. Jos started to ask, “Are we crazy?”

Well, if we were, it wouldn’t be the first time.  Someone recently said that we must kink on dysfunction, or we wouldn’t have so much of it.  I actually disagree, for the most part, that we are dysfunctional.  I think we are highly functional – so highly functional that we get into all kinds of crazy scrapes as a result.  I do think we are both drama queens who are into heavy relationship work.

I’d like to describe what I think are the current understandings and desires between us, and I’d love to hear from commenters whether we actually do sound insane or not.  I’m sure this description will be incomplete, and it may turn out wrong in some particulars, since I’m going to be speaking for Joscelin as well, but, if nothing else, he may find it illuminating to see what I think is going on.

Joscelin and I had a whole 3.5-year relationship (documented in the rest of this blog) in which he was my slave approximately 99% of the time, with varying degrees (some quite high) of success.  It stopped working recently, and he broke up with me, which seemed like a good idea to me at the time, but ended up filling me with regret and heartbreak.

The few times that we switched and I was on the bottom, it was very hot for me, but also challenging, and in some cases I was left feeling angry or disappointed at how things had gone, feelings that are not uncommon for me after having a scene on the bottom with anyone.  I am sexually submissive to the bone – certainly I never have an orgasm without thinking about bottoming – but I am also allergic to sexual submission when it comes from a woman.  (I’m not proud of this.)  It kind of grosses me out and raises my hackles.  This effect is very mild when it comes to other women, but can be pretty strong when the woman involved is myself.

Joscelin sees himself as a slave, or at least he historically has.  His fantasies, however, are all about female submission.  In his younger days (and perhaps now, I’m not sure) he always was a woman in his fantasies.  However, he seems uninterested in being or being made feminine in real life.

I have never quite hit Joscelin’s buttons, in the general sense.  He says he did not have New Relationship Energy with me, though as I recall he simulated it extremely well, so that I had no idea I was alone in it at the time.  He often hasn’t been sure whether he loved me, but at other times, he clearly does love me very much.  He’s been a great friend to me always, by far the best lover of my life, and I’m usually content with his feelings towards me.  (Lest he should sound like a jerk, this is honestly not game-playing on his part.  He’s just a confused little guiltbucket.)

So here we are, broken up.  We had a scene with me on the bottom and afterwards, I just couldn’t let go of the role.  And he let me stay, and encouraged me to stay, and we’re trying to figure out (partly) whether we want some kind of a committed relationship, or whether we want to just keep living together, being friends, and having hot sex however we like it at that moment.

It’s momentous for me.  I’ve never gone this far in submission–not even close–and it’s been very moving and very hot.  And at times it has been very difficult.

We were talking yesterday, I think it was, about how Joscelin does not trust me, partly (I think) because I say so many different things.  It was a hard conversation for me.  He also doesn’t believe I know the meaning of commitment, which is fair.  Eventually I said, eyes closed, “Then let me earn my collar.  And don’t listen to what I say, since you don’t trust me.  Just judge me by my actions.”  And that is what we are doing right now.

These are my motivations, as best I understand them, in no particular order:

• I’m in love with Joscelin and I want to be in any kind of relationship with him.  This is a particularly intense kind, which suits me well.  I want him to love me and keep me.
• Submitting is super hot.  So is being controlled and dominated.
• I’m curious whether I can actually be submissive on anything like a long-term basis, and what that would be like.  I honestly can’t quite imagine myself choosing to do this “forever,” but I don’t want to lose the opportunity to try doing it.  I don’t have doms lining up at my door to try owning me, and nobody understands me like Jos.  I have crazy trust for him – maybe enough to overcome my own prickliness.
• I’m attracted to the idea of someone being in a godlike role to me.  I want to feel that someone deeply understands me, accepts me, and is strongly, irresistibly pushing me in a positive direction.  I want someone to “turn my tin into flesh.”  I want to be unable to lie or hide anything about myself.  I want to learn humility, get over myself, learn to be neither proud nor ashamed.
• Did I mention that it is hot?

Some of Joscelin’s motivations, as best I understand them, are as follows.

• He’s attracted to my “turning tin into flesh” idea.
• He’s always been interested in my relationship to my own submission, since I’ve always been sexually submissive (or been able to be; obviously I was dominant towards him for most of our relationship), but have also always been conflicted and somewhat in denial about it.  He wants to push me to figure out what I want and what I am.  I think from his perspective I am a self-hating submissive and he wants to teach me to love and be proud of that part of myself.
• He’s very attracted to the idea of the slave who knows her place and occupies it perfectly, who submits graciously and willingly and is beautiful doing it.  The idea of taking someone and transforming/training her into that person is very appealing.
• It’s ridiculously hot.

So that’s where we are – just trying this crazy thing.  How crazy does it sound, folks?  I’m genuinely curious.

thoughts on a scene gone wrong

Thumper’s recent post about a scene gone awry (“Punishment and the Reluctant Rabbit”) brought out all of my inner judginess and triggered an interesting (?) train of thought.

In the post, he talks about his recently faltering service to his wife Belle, and the fact that they were planning to have a scene that night.  This was apparently understood to include things Thumper would enjoy, rather than being, as much of their sex is, mostly about Belle’s pleasure [though carried out in a way that Thumper finds satisfying].  (I hope I’m not totally fucking up my summary here.)

Anyway, a few things went wrong.  First, Thumper wasn’t in a good place for the scene that was about to enfold:

By the time we were in bed and the kids were sleeping, etc., I wasn’t in the mood for a whippin’. I still wanted the other part of our “special time” very much, but just as easily I could have gone to sleep.

…

I knew I wasn’t really up for the hitting part, but the subspace brought on by our relative physical positions fought my urge to say something.

Then Belle unexpectedly brought punishment into it:

As she was hitting me, she berated me for my unacceptable service lately. She called me out on laundry I had fallen behind in and generally criticized my lack of focus on her. In between whacks, she said she had grown accustomed to my service and felt it should resume. So, as opposed to the way I had been beaten in the past, this time we were cloaking the event in the cover of a punishment. My discomfort grew. I thought this should have been hot to me, but in combination with my headache and overall tiredness and previous desire for a more loving encounter, it just made me feel worse.

But Thumper didn’t safeword:

I told her I couldn’t take it anymore. She assumed it was part of the game and told me I could always safeword my way out. I did not want to do that. It wasn’t that she was hitting me harder than I could stand. It wasn’t physical pain I was struggling with. So she kept hitting me. Finally, I sat up and said I did not want to be hit anymore.

And Belle handled the aftermath this way:

She left the room momentarily and I curled up on the bed, desperate for some tenderness (aka, aftercare). She came back in…

I can’t remember her exact words, but she accused me of only wanting to be hit when the manner in which it took place was one I was comfortable with. That’s a fairly sophisticated charge for her to throw at me. On the one hand, no, I don’t want to always be comfortable with the way she smacks me around. It’s entirely acceptable to make me uncomfortable. And no, I was not suggesting she should not be able to punish me. But, on the other hand, it wasn’t at all what I was expecting. I thought she’d hit me in a loving way, not a punitive way. I wasn’t trying to top her from below. I hadn’t pulled the plug in a state of pique over not appreciating her set-up of the scene. Not at all. I just hadn’t been capable of doing it.

I’m not sure she bought it. After our short conversation, she told me to get the lotion. She wanted a foot massage.

Topping/domming is hard work and I’ve certainly been in a situation where I didn’t know how to take care of Joscelin.  If we can take it as read that to be critical of other people’s best efforts is basically shitty, these were my thoughts, roughly in order:

1. If you’re not up for the scene that is unfolding, you have to tell the top.  We are not mind-readers.  (This is part of why, though it may seem that Joscelin is too stressed or tired to have a scene inordinately often, I work hard on not giving him any grief about it, and on not even feeling a way that would make me give him grief.  If you can’t have a scene you can’t have a scene.)
2. You can’t spring a generalized punishment on someone in a scene.  That is all kinds of bad head-fuck material.
3. That situation where things are wrong for you and you’re not sure exactly how or why is exactly what safewords are for.  That’s the type of situation, as a top, where you have to trust that your bottom will safeword.
4. A top has to act responsibly.  When a scene crashes it is not the time to criticize the bottom – doubly so if the bottom is submissive to you.  Nor is it the time to initiate a detailed or difficult conversation.  Assuming you yourself are reasonably OK (put your own mask on before assisting another passenger), you really need to focus on taking care of the bottom.  And if you did get hurt in the crash, about all you can do is mutual hugs and reassurance.

Now, because I have what some would say is a warped view that says the top needs to be more responsible than the bottom (a position with which Joscelin would not agree), I find myself blaming Belle for the way things went.  Yeah, Thumper didn’t communicate what he should have, but Belle didn’t pick up very well on the communication that was there, and what she did in the scene was (IMO) kind of obviously not a good idea, and she didn’t provide aftercare.

All of that comes partly from my idea that if you’re going to dominate someone you should learn what you’re doing and try to do it right and be careful with the trust that is placed in you.

But then we get to this point: Belle is only doing any of this at Thumper’s behest, because it’s the kind of sex that turns him on and satisfies him.  The deal must implicitly be that she’s not supposed to be required to be super excellent or have studied under the Finest Masters of the East.  She’s basically doing him a favor, even though it’s a favor that is extremely important to him and thus (probably) to the marriage.

(Of course, I have also made a huge number of egregious errors in the course of my relationship with Joscelin, so where the fuck do I get off judging people anyway?  But let’s conveniently ignore that for now, if for no other reason than that it makes the blog more interesting.)

This of course brings out my inner curmudgeon, who says, “See?  This is the problem with having your vanilla parter do d/s.  You have no recourse when they screw it up because you basically made them do it, and thus have to be grateful for whatever you get, all the while taking care that you don’t scare them off the whole endeavor.”

The main thing that forces me to be any good as a top is that, if I’m not, I can’t get the really good stuff that I want.

Also floating around in my head is the idea we have that because Thumper is a man and Belle is a woman, she can’t really harm him – she isn’t the dangerous one – and thus her screwing things up doesn’t bring up the kind of protectiveness we’d feel if a man were doing it a woman.  And how messed up that is.   (Or maybe that’s just me and other people view the situation equally.)

Ultimately, of course, it is (always) about the individual couple figuring out what works for them, and Thumper and Belle seem to be going about that in all the right ways, with good communication, learning, and tons of hot sex.  So it’s not like one setback or bad time says anything at all (because, as I said, I’ve had plenty myself).  They’re doing it right.

being liberated

I’ve been thinking lately about how one should go about being, in the feminist sense, liberated. What types of actions should an enlightened person take?

I have a lot of freedoms that my foremothers didn’t have. I live with my boyfriend, unmarried, and we use birth control to avoid babies. I have a good job that pays real money. I can vote.

I am sure that some of my personality, my desires, and my beliefs are nevertheless formed or influenced by patriarchy. I can’t say for sure which ones, but if we look at people as a group, this becomes clear. Even among feminists, more women choose to be homemakers, substantially fuss over their appearance, or dream of weddings than men do. It could be biology, but I doubt it; I think it’s probably culture.

So, a question: if there is some behavior that you enjoy or find useful, that is morally neutral outside of possible feminist concerns, but that you think you might not enjoy if you were more enlightened or free (or hadn’t been abused, etc.), should you try to avoid taking that action? If I believe that the daughters of the future won’t be more likely to wear makeup than their brothers and boyfriends, but I like to wear makeup, should I not do it, out of fear of perpetuating the system from which I think it arises? Will choices like that bring about a more enlightened future?

I really don’t think so.

I think the way towards freedom is to execise and stretch the freedom that you do have, whatever that is. If something is keeping you from doing something (ethical) that you want, then you should fight the something. If you are a housewife in the 1950′s and you feel trapped and unhappy, you absolutely should organize with other feminists and fight for the freedom to have a career.

But if you are a housewife in the 1950′s and you are happy and want to continue, then no matter how much you agree with your feminist sisters, I don’t think you should go have a career out of solidarity or politics. I think you should keep living your life exactly as you want, and let that be your example. I think that’s true even though the culture has influenced you to be happy as a housewife, when you might have chosen differently in another time or place.

And that’s how I feel about BDSM sex. Will the (I hope) more liberated people of the future want more or less of it? Hell if I know. But I think I can help those people come into being by doing what I want to do now, not by guessing what they would want and trying to replicate it.

I’ve written this before and I’ll repeat it. I don’t really care what patriarchy has made me want, among the things I enjoy. I care about the stuff patriarchy makes me do that I don’t enjoy, or that reduces my enjoyment or productivity or abilities. I care that patriarchy makes me feel like I should wear makeup even though I don’t want to (and don’t), but if I enjoyed makeup, I wouldn’t feel bad just because it was probably the patriarchy. I would think about it, I would explore whether I was just doing it because I felt ugly otherwise, or other soul-destroying stuff. But if what I found in myself was pleasure and enjoyment, then I’d keep right on doing it. Because fuck that shit.

And if it’s the nasty patriarchy that makes me get sexually excited by dominance and pain, so be it. I don’t have the fantastic enlightened turn-ons of some imaginary future people, so I’ll use what I do have.

I have a friend (an atheist, actually, like me) who says that every action we take is a prayer to the universe about how we want it to be. I want the universe to be such that people are free to make choices and seek their own fulfillment and enjoyment. The best way I know to bring that into being is to enact it for myself.

bdsm is not safe

Hope over at Hopeful Descent has an interesting post up that details most of an email correspondence she’s been having with someone (Becstar) who is skeptical of how BDSM can ever not be a bad thing.  I really enjoyed seeing Hope’s responses as well as Becstar’s questions and comments; it was a long read but very worthwhile.

It did bring something up for me, and that is my disagreement with calling BDSM safe.  Hope writes:

The most important parts of BDSM as a mode of sexuality are consent and safety.  We know that what we are doing can be dangerous, that if we are not careful someone could be seriously emotionally or physically harmed.  Most people who practice BDSM have thought more about sexual negotiation and consent than probably the majority of vanilla people.

and, later

I thought I tried to tell you how I define BDSM in my last email, but maybe I didn’t do the best job. It’s a blanket term that means lots of different things to different people. For me, and most other people who practice it, the most important aspect is the explicit focus on safety, negotiation and consent. Without that, regardless of the particular activity involved, I wouldn’t call it BDSM and I might call it abuse.

I don’t disagree with this exactly, and in fact it may sound like what I’m saying here is an exact echo of what Hope has said.  But I feel like my emphasis is slightly different.

What I want to say to Becstar, who sounds as though she is considering trying some stuff, is, No, look, BDSM is exactly as dangerous as you’d think.

Let’s imagine for a moment that we live in a world where people don’t routinely play sports, and you have a friend who tells you about this thing called “football” that he’s really into.  (This is American football, if that helps the visuals.)  He tells you about how a group of people line up facing another group.  The first group has an oblong leather ball, and they try to get it to one end of a field while the second group tries to stop them by grabbing them, pushing them down, hitting them, and so on.  When the first group succeeds, or after a while if they don’t, they have to give the ball to the second group, and everyone reverses roles.

You might say, “Wow, that sounds kind of dangerous, what with all the hitting and pushing down and stuff.  Don’t people get hurt?”

And your friend might say, “Oh, no, it’s not dangerous at all, we are all about safety.  Safety is our main thing!  We have a lot of rules about how you’re allowed to push and hit, and we wear all kinds of equipment and for really serious players there’s usually medical staff right there at the field, just in case. “

And you say, “Wait – why do you need medical staff and all those rules and equipment if it’s pretty safe?”

And they say, “This is how all the responsible people do it, because we know it could be dangerous otherwise, but if you do it without that stuff, I wouldn’t call it football – that’s just people messing around being stupid.”

And, you know, I see the football-playing friend’s point, but I also think it’s kind of wrong.  It is, at least, not the right point to be making.

People get hurt doing bdsm all the time.  My boyfriend once got a 3rd degree burn on his scrotum (not from me, btw, though I was around and slightly involved; this was before we were dating).  You can strain a muscle, dislocate a shoulder, sprain your wrist, end up with unintentional scars.  You can be shaky for a while because something was traumatic.  (This happened to me recently.)  You can go through a period of melancholy as endorphins come and go.  You can get dehydrated.  You might pass out.  Someone could accidentally take out your eye with an ill-placed whip strike.  You could let someone do something, thinking that you’ll like it, and find out it makes you feel horrible instead.  You could hurt someone, with their consent, and end up feeling rotten about it, because you decide you shouldn’t have.

And not all people who do bdsm are paragons of sanity and responsibility.  People (not me) do bdsm drunk, or stoned.  People do it with uncontrolled emotions.  People sign ridiculous contracts and try to live up to them.  Some people are assholes.  Some people don’t know what they want.  Some people consent when they shouldn’t.  Some people are just not that bright, or not that educated, or not that experienced with whatever equipment they’re using.

And even smart, ethical, well-informed, thoughtful people make mistakes.

The question becomes, is BDSM safe enough for you, as practiced by you, given whatever you get out of it?  Are you taking the steps you need to take to make it safe enough?  Is/are your partner(s) supporting you in that?  Are they sane and responsible?  Are you willing to bear the risks that you or they will make a mistake?

All kinds of things in life are dangerous.  Regular sex.  Mountain climbing.  Racquetball.  Running with scissors.  Snowshoeing.  Surfing.  We do them anyway, because they bring us joy, and it’s not worth living a life where you never do anything because you’re too afraid.  But you should never trust that certain practices simply are safe.  Do your own research.  Use your common sense and self-knowledge.  Decide what is smart and worth it for you.

communication: you have to get it right

I was reading a blogger the other day who was writing about how she and her boyfriend both have trouble when the other complains while being topped.  (I’m not linking because I don’t want to pick on anyone and this is a pretty common problem anyway.)

These are universal concerns.  What kind of things “should” bottoms complain about?  Does being submissive mean just taking things as they come, and doing things however the dom wants them?  How can you keep things easy and fun enough for the top that they’ll keep doing the delicious stuff you want done to you, while still helping to make things even hotter?

When I’m topping Joscelin in a scene, if he complains too much or gives me too much advice, I’ll basically shut down and not be able to continue, or at least not be able to continue with any enjoyment.  When I’m bottoming to Joscelin in a scene, incompetence on his part will make me confused, possibly angry, and unsure how or whether to communicate about it.

Here is a recent example.  Saturday night we had a scene, and the last part of that scene was him fucking me on the floor.  I had been forbidden to speak.  After he fucked me, he got up and sat in a chair and said, “We can go to the bedroom whenever you’re ready.”

It sounded like aftercare, but I hadn’t yet been given permission to speak.  And I was addled anyway from the scene.  Had he forgotten that I couldn’t speak?  Was this really aftercare?  Part of me wanted to passive-aggressively simply refuse to speak until he gave me permission again.  Part of me thought I should ask if this was aftercare.  A huge part of me wanted to just lie on the floor and zone out in a dazed pleasureful state.

After I asked if I could talk, and he said yes, and I asked if it was aftercare, and he said yes, and apologized for not making that clear, I was still confused and a little irritated at the idea that we could go to the bedroom (and I could then lie in my nice comfy warm bed) “when I was ready.”  Didn’t he know I was incapable of getting up on my own, of making a decision, of taking any kind of lead in that moment?

Eventually I said, “I need you to put me in bed.”  And he did.  (Not literally – he didn’t carry me to the bed or anything.  But he did stand up, make me take his hand, help me up, and walk me to the bedroom.)

That is (to put it in the harshest terms) an example of incompetence in topping, but there are other cases where the top or dom just isn’t giving you what you want.  Well, isn’t that their right?  Isn’t that how it’s supposed to work?  Isn’t that the point?

It’s really not.

The more I do this, from both sides, and honestly I am talking from my perspective as a dom here more than from my submissive point of view (because I can’t quite go here as a submissive), the more I am convinced that you (the dom) just have to get it right.

Now, it might be that you’re playing with someone who is actually a callous, insensitive jerk who just wants everything in life to revolve around himself (or herself) and doesn’t give a shit about your feelings or needs.  You should probably stop seeing that person.

Otherwise, your lovely bottom or submissive actually does want to feel of service and/or dominated and is likely cutting you every bit of slack they possibly can and mostly only complaining or making suggestions about stuff that is important.  That person has exactly as much right to fulfillment in the relationship as you do, and that person has exactly as specific of needs as you do (in their own way), and that person is probably a bit stymied in expressing those needs (because submissive feelings do that to you), and that person should be listened to by you.

And it may make you feel like crap to hear that your flogger technique is no good, or that the person really hates to be called “little one” but thinks “dirty slut” is kind of hot, or that they would really do ever so much better in a scene if you took a few mintues to tie them up first, or that if you don’t (or do) tell them what you’re going to do ahead of time it will ruin everything, or that the way you looked at them when they asked that question made them break into a million pieces inside, and not in a good way.  It probably will make you feel like crap, and then you should ask that person to hold and reassure you.

But you should also listen.  That shit is important.  You have to get it right.  It’s not about conforming to another person’s exact fantasy – it’s about hitting that sweet spot where things are mutual and work for both people.  If you can’t call them “dirty slut” or you only want to play if they wiggle when you hit them or you really want to be called “Supreme Goddess Angora, My Lady” then you should let them know that too, and then they really need to listen and do their best to accomodate you as well.  (They probably want to anyway, and are dying to learn this information.)

But somehow or other, you have to come to things that are mutually satisfying, and that means listening to each other even when it sucks and the information is unwelcome and you feel like they must hate you or why are they being so fucking difficult when you all you want to do is beat the crap out of them and hear a little yelling for god’s sake?!

I suspect that what I’m saying here either sounds obvious to you, or it sounds completely wrong-headed.  It’s taken me a while to really get here, to really understand the point I’m now making.  You have to listen.  You have to get things right.  You have to fight your own feelings to make that listening and learning happen, because sometimes it will hurt your feelings.  But there is no other way, in my eminently fallible opinion, to build something mutually satisfying.

bdsm and feminism

I am a feminist, and if you’re not generally sympathetic to the aims of feminism, this post will probably just annoy you. But you can fuck off anyway.  (Seriously.  Go to hell.)

So, Nine Deuce over at Rage Against the Manchine is writing a series on bdsm, which starts with this post.  I seriously do not recommend reading it if you are not at least familiar with radical feminist writing and ideas.  I find the posts wrong-headed in a whole bunch of ways but am able to compensate because I’m sympathetic to the general stance although I am not a radical feminist myself.  I read (and sometimes enjoy) other radfem blogs.

Radical feminists* are pretty much universally opposed to bdsm, and this is not surprising.  Radical feminism tends to hold that all power imbalances are oppressive and intrinsically patriarchal.  (It is easy for them to ignore F/m pairings but it doesn’t really matter anyway; if women dominate and oppress men they’re still participating in patriarchy.)  If you see the world that way, it’s hard to support people consensually mimicking the worst parts of our culture.

There are always the women who will tell you that anything they freely do is a “choice” and thus feminist.  “Isn’t feminism about choices?” they ask.  “So why should I be criticized if I choose to wear high heels and makeup because it makes me feel sexy?  I’m not doing it for a man, I’m doing it for myself!”

Let me make it clear that, presented with individuals who wear high heels and makeup because it makes them feel sexy, I don’t have a personal problem with it.  We all do what we can to feel good and get along in the world.  But I find those practices problematic in general, in that they are symptomatic of (and act to perpetuate) societal ills.

So from that perspective, I can certainly understand condemning bdsm along the same lines.  I’m just not certain that it’s true of bdsm, and I admit that because I am attracted to bdsm and not to femininity, I have a bias.  I mean, it sounds crazy to say, “Lipstick is a social ill, but beating up and dominating your lover for fun is just awesome!”  What planet do I come from?

One thing I’m curious about [she types, neatly sidestepping the central issue] is, as feminism succeeds, will bdsm become more or less prevalent?  Will people who are not steeped in patriarchy from birth never develop the kinks we have?  Or will power exchanges remain intrinsically fascinating to people, and perhaps become even more prevalent when they are not associated with so much real-world badness?  Will there be more dominant women if women are not expected to suppress their sexuality and conform to the desires of men?  Will there be more submissive women if we don’t associate it with regressive social ideas?  Will more people, or fewer, dress up as Nazis as fascism and antisemitism become less and less threatening?

On the “social ills” front, I do not think that my practice of my sexuality contributes to patriarchy.  I don’t think the bdsm community in general does either.  Most of the community encourages negotiation, personal expression, finding out what you want and trying to get it, and other good, anti-patriarchal values.  And I know I am not willing to give up the best kind of sex I’ve ever had just because it might come from a bad place.  I’m just not.

I think I’ll end it there.  I could add a million caveats and clarifications to everything I’ve said, but I won’t.  If you’re interested in the intersection of bdsm and feminism in general, I recommend Trinity’s blog, let them eat pro-sm feminist safe spaces.

[* It's important to note that by "radical feminists" I do not mean "feminists who are radical" and I am not using "radical" as an insult or to mean that they are crazy.  There is a branch/type of feminism that I - and others, I think - call "radical feminism" and I am merely identifying these feminists as belonging to that branch.]

guess!

It’s interesting reading the kinds of suggestions I get from the commenters here.  Between them and the other blogs I read, I get a very clear indication that different things work for different people (which seems obvious until you actually encounter it). I was going to write a rundown of some things that don’t work between us, but I realized that the ones I had in mind are all a variation on…guessing games!

• I’m upset about something but I’m not going to say what because you should already know.
• Find something that I would enjoy and do it.
• You forgot something this morning; you can kneel here until you remember what it was.
• Don’t ask me if you’re allowed to do x, just do what makes sense.
• What do you think I meant when I said it?

A mild guessing game like the second thing I listed is now within our reach.  He trusts me enough for that, especially if I were to acknowledge in advance that I know that sort of thing makes him uncomfortable.

But in general, a prime directive of our relationship is that I give clear communication and work to resolve ambiguities that arise.  Otherwise, Jos’s uncertainty leads to fear which leads to anger.  Anger is especially likely if he initially blames himself for not understanding or knowing something, then realizes it is not his fault.  He feels betrayed in that type of situation.

Generalizing a bit more, what does not work for us that I see working for others is unfairness or injustice.  It’s hot and fun for some people, and I could probably play with it myself.  Of course we have unfairness in the sense that, for instance, I might get to have an orgasm while he does not.  But the kind of injustice where I set up impossible conditions or hidden traps, or hold him accountable for things outside of his control…that just does not work for us.

I think the more he trusts me, the more he is able to work through the momentary appearance of injustice or intentional ambiguity, but for me to commit injustice or act ambiguously outside of tightly determined bounds would harm that trust.

It’s interesting, because it’s not as though behaving unfairly is intrinsically dangerous or anything.  For instance, punishment of the kind Elizabeth finds hot does not entail some special physical risk.  It does not imply that the submissive partner is not loved or valued.  It is a game played for its hotness, like the other things we do.

But one thing that is striking about our relationship, kink aside, is that justice and fairness are very strong values and we take the same positions on them.  I think they are so foundational to Joscelin that one of his ways of ascertaining that his partner is mentally balanced and sane is that she adheres to these principles.  Flouting them suggests being out of control, out of touch with reality, and ultimately untrustworthy.  If you cannot recognize the most basic and obvious facts about what is going on in the exchange (in terms of fairness, ambiguity, etc.), you certainly can’t be trusted to manipulate the feelings of your intentionally vulnerable partner.

It will be interesting to see if, over time, playing with unfairness and ambiguity continues to become more possible.

a bit more about safewords

After I wrote the previous post, I had a feeling I had left something out, but I couldn’t think what. It came to me later that I may have left the impression that I now think I can push Joscelin just as far as I want and he’s somehow promised not to break.

This is not the case.

One of my questions to him in the conversation in which we came to this agreement was, “OK, so let’s say you stop me. And I give you a minute or two to collect yourself. And then I continue at the same intensity, and you find yourself freaking out. Because you might. Then what?”

“Then I’ll safeword and let you know that,” he said.

“And it’s still up to me whether to continue?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“What if you think I really shouldn’t?”

“Then I’ll say ‘Mistress, I advise you not to continue,’” he said.

It’s really unlikely that I would continue after getting such advice. I am not foolhardy with Joscelin’s mental health, nor with my own. (My second fear after “something will go wrong in a scene” is “and it will be my fault.” I have to suppress the fear of being at fault a little bit in order to address things sometimes, but I don’t want to behave recklessly and have to account for that later, to myself or to my partner. And I would have to. And of course I don’t want him actually traumatized or hurt.)

So I still have the same responsibility as before to be reasonable, sane, and attentive. To keep enough empathy and level-headedness to treat him with kindness and respect (even while I’m putting him in agony on purpose). And I can’t emphasize “pay attention” enough.

And I have a little bit of extra responsibility in that I can no longer trust my partner to simply stop me if things are going wrong. I can trust him to tell me, as best he’s able, but there’s no longer a rule that says I have to take his advice.

When he proposed this and I said I liked it, he seemed surprised that I would want this. Because of the extra responsibility? I’m not sure. He asked if I wanted this independent of him wanting it, and I didn’t quite say “duh” but it was kind of obvious. It was obviously right to me.

And that led to its own conversation, the one about why so many things in the relationship have gone “his way” as he perceives it. I’ll write about that later.

But what I want to emphasize here is that we haven’t “agreed away” anything like the limits of his pain tolerance or the emotional responses he might have to our play. It doesn’t work that way. This is a change to the style and rules of our communication, not an attempt to create that consequence-free environment I’m always hankering after.

a changed understanding on safewords

I mentioned that Jos and I have changed our understanding about safewords.

It came out of a lot of discussion about intensity.  It’s hard to explain how it went exactly, but the bottom line is that he doesn’t believe he should be able to safeword over intensity.  And yet it’s kind of tricky because safewords are for situations that aren’t safe (including emotionally), and that can arise pretty easily from intensity.  Between the first and second conversations we had on this topic, I considered and rejected approaches like doing away with safewords or having him tell me later if he felt he had safeworded wrongly.

The primary advantage of a safeword for us (given our arrangement) is that it is easy and simple to express.  “Yellow” is easier to say than “My hand is numb” and it’s far easier to say than “I find myself becoming increasingly enraged, I think, though I’m not sure why, but you should probably stop.”  So, safewords need not to go away just yet.

And the problem with my second idea, in case it’s not obvious, is that one of the principle ideas about safewords (for us, anyway) is that safewording is not wrong.  If something is going wrong for you and you have to stop and consider whether safewording is a violation of a rule or agreement or whether this is one of the allowed times, well…it’s just not a good thing in the midst of a scene, which is often a confusing time (especially when something is going wrong).

Joscelin’s idea, when we talked again, was this: if he needs to safeword, he will, but if he safewords about intensity it will only be to get a little time to adjust himself to the reality of what is happening.  It would go like this, in the mock-conversation he gave me (which I repeated back to him later because it was so goddamn hot and I wanted to make sure he heard it):

Him: Yellow.

Me: What’s wrong?

Him: I can’t take this.

Me: You are going to take this.  I’ll give you a minute to prepare yourself, but then I’m going to continue at exactly that level.  And if you can’t take it, I’m going to do it every week until you get used to it.

It went something like that, anyway.

This differs from our prior arrangement in that, previously, once he safeworded I could not (was not allowed to) proceed until and unless he was ready to continue.  I have to say, I don’t think he has ever used safewords to be controlling or to avoid something he hated, so it’s not as though we had a glaring issue to be fixed.  But this new approach – where he safewords and tells me what’s wrong or what he’s experiencing and then I decide – is more congruent with the rest of our relationship.  It means safewords are no longer some kind of other universe with their own laws.  And it feels right to me.

It means he has to trust me to make good decisions.  I don’t think I’m likely to do anything very stupid, but I still appreciate the trust required.

It also does not impact his ability to withdraw consent.  I don’t think anything can ever remove that from him, and in most cases I couldn’t continue against his will even if I chose to.  But withdrawal of consent is a whole different issue which I bring up only to avoid confusion.