Monthly Archives: June 2014

bdsm, community, dominance, events, rant

A Call For Leadership

I’ve received a few emails from readers (but surprisingly few visible comments…) about my posts, but my last post on The Feminist Dom seems to have gathered more attention than average.

I suspect that this is due to the current and ongoing focus on the #yesallwomen hashtag and discussion, but since I have neither a facebook nor twitter account, I’m not privy to a great deal of that information.  What I do hear is either picked up by the mainstream media, relayed through friends, or things that I see on fetlife (which is the one ‘social network’ of which I am, nominally, a part.)

The comments to my post have been universally positive, but there was at least one call to action – a reader (I don’t know what gender this person chooses to identify with, so I’ll use the colloquial ‘their’ despite it being grammatically incorrect – forgive me) has stated that in their opinion, I do not go far enough.  I make a bold statement about my beliefs and why I hold them, but it falls short of the force of Will that normally accompanies one of my Rants, and it is not explicit enough to be a call to action.  I have a duty to do more than that, and in my life in meat-space I do, but I can still do more here (and on fetlife as well) so I shall.

 

I am a Dom.  In my case this works for me because I have certain personality traits that facilitate me taking on that role – it is those traits that make me successful and that allow my submissive partner to feel willing to submit to me.  I have never taken the title of Alpha, or even claimed to be a ‘Type-A’ personality, but the truth of the matter is that I have many of the qualities that people look for in a leader.  If you are being true to your own nature and that leads you to take on the role of Dominant, then you do too, and it is directly to you that I am speaking now.

We are almost all the leaders of our peer groups – perhaps in both vanilla and BDSM worlds.

Some of us are the leaders of our communities.

Some of us are leaders in professional organizations.

Some of us are leaders in the workplace.

Some of us are parents.

Some of us are leaders in other contexts as well, but one truth remains even if none of these apply.

All of us, regardless of roles, regardless of gender identification, regardless of personal power – all of us are a role model to someone and there are people who will observe our behavior and incorporate it into what is and is not acceptable in their own minds.

The perpetrators of the vast majority of violence against women or against transgendered people or against any non-dominant group are men.  They’re not all Dominant men, and they’re not all social outliers, most of them are normal in almost every way.  In fact, this is part of the problem.  It is because society as a whole has divorced gender – specifically the male gender – from the problems of repression and gender violence (not all of which is physically violent) that we are in such a state.  It is because we don’t hold men accountable for our own actions.  We laugh things like catcalling off as isolated incidents by ‘other men’ but I’ve met self-proclaimed feminist men who will still ogle women and may even go so far as to say something stupid like ‘Daaayumm’ when they see a woman they find particularly attractive.

There are men who are now trying to ‘opt out’ of the #yesallwomen discussion by saying that it’s is #notallmen who perpetrate these things.  To a certain extent that is true, but like my original Feminist Dom post, it does not go far enough, and to make matters worse, it shifts the blame to the women making the claims.

Victim blaming is evil.

There is more that I could say on that particular trend, but the above line is succinct and sufficient for anyone who is actually rationally part of this discussion.

Sure, I have personally never catcalled at a woman.  I have never groped someone who I wasn’t very sure wanted me to.  I routinely turn down sex when I feel like the person I’m with is not able to give consent.  And yet, I know that in my past I’ve let comments like the illustration above slide without comment, and I need to stop doing that.  Comments like that, those types of actions, they are all hurtful behavior and they need to stop.

That behavior is part of the problem.

Glossing over that behavior is a much larger part of the problem.

One of my favorite movies is The Boondock Saints.  There is a great line at the beginning of the film, when the monsignor is giving his invocation at the beginning of mass and he says, “…we must all fear evil men. But there is another kind of evil which we must fear most, and that is the indifference of good men.”

This is where I get personal.

You.  Whoever it is that is reading this right now.  If you are a male Dom, I am specifically calling you out, but you if you identify as a sub or a switch or something else entirely, you are not immune to this either.  This is not because I do not think that women are capable of fighting their own fight, but because for too long we have made it their fight to carry, it never should have been their fight to begin with.  We men are responsible for our own behavior, but I am calling on you to act and to go even further than that.

Do not be a bystander.

Do not perpetuate the oppression that is holding down more than half of our society and making them feel unsafe, unloved, or unwelcome.

If you are playing poker and one of your buddies makes a comment like, “Dayum.. did you see Kim Kardashian’s ass in that dress? I’d tap that.” do not let it stand.  Do not laugh it off, do not agree, do not just let it slide.  That is an inappropriate thing to say and you know it.  What if he was making that comment about your sister, or your daughter?  I omit wife here because I know that would actually turn some of you kinky fuckers on, but that’s not the point and you know it – so don’t do that either.  Don’t dodge an important issue and attempt to deflect with humor.  Yes – that is why humor works – it allows us the ability to talk about things that are otherwise socially unacceptable and it has filled a very important role in its ability to do that since the dawn of civilization but we are on the cusp now.  We can now take this back and actually make a difference.

If we, the leaders in the male community, take this cause up and act with integrity and mindfulness we can change things.

#yesallwomen is not solely a women’s issue.  It’s not even really a people’s issue; it’s a men’s issue.  It is us, the men, who need to step up and make the asinine comments that our brothers have been making since the dawn of time unacceptable.  These are status-raising comments now and that is totally upside down and backwards.  A bigot should not be rewarded for his bigotry.  If we, men, leaders, Doms, stand up and make it known that this type of bullshit will not stand, if we remove and reverse the status-raising effects of these comments that put others down, if we instead make it so that everybody knows that those types of comments are unacceptable and that they lower your status, then we have the power to change this behavior.

We are the leaders of our community and now is the time to act.

The iron is hot and we have the opportunity.

This is a first for me in this blog or any forum at all.

This is a call to action.

This is a call for Leadership.

I am Rant.

Lead with me.

 

question, rant

The Feminist Dom

“I, with a deeper instinct, choose a man who compels my strength,

who makes enormous demands on me,

who does not doubt my courage or my toughness,

who does not believe me naive or innocent,

who has the courage to treat me like a woman.”

-anais nin

You see this quote all over the Internet.  Even though I cannot pronounce her name to save my life, I believe Anais Nin to be a genius of the highest caliber.

I make the claim here in the About Me page, but I have also had a profile at various times on one of the more popular dating sites where I make the same claim, and so I get asked a great deal:  “How can you be both a Dom and a feminist?”

This is usually followed with more questions closely on it’s heels.. more specific questions like: “How can you believe that it is okay to punish a woman for (failing to properly prepare your food//forgetting to call you Sir/Master/Daddy//being bratty//letting your drink go empty//eating the wrong things//etc…) and DARE to call yourself a feminist?!”

The answer to those questions lie in the quote above.

I take on the role that I do for two reasons:

1)  I enjoy it.  It fulfils me in a way that nothing else ever has.  I crave devotion.  I don’t fully understand this, but it is what satisfies me.  I am every bit as devoted to those who are devoted to me – perhaps moreso in some cases – but perhaps I am a bit of a narcissist for wanting this.. in any case, it’s true, and to deny it would be insincere.

2)  The woman for whom I play this role requires it of me.  She needs someone to fill that role for her every bit as much as I need to do it for her.  She wants someone who will make enormous demands of her, someone who does not doubt her courage, someone who pushes her boundaries and pushes her to be what she wants to be, she wants a man who will demand that she live up to her promises and who will punish her when she does not.

The service mindset is not a complicated one, and it’s far more universal than one might think..

This is taken slightly out of context, but it’s an interesting quote from a somewhat surprising source:

“Service which is rendered without joy helps neither the servant nor the served. But all other pleasures and possessions pale into nothingness before service which is rendered in a spirit of joy”

One would not be remiss to attribute that quote to someone who was known for giving his life in the service of others, and while Mohandas Gandhi did give his life in the service of others, it is his resistance to oppression for which he is most known.  How can one who loves service so deeply also be so strong in his opposition to oppression?

This is the logical fallacy that most people fall prey to when they think about the D/s paradigm.

Service and submission take strength and trust.  It is rare that the convergence of personalities allows for complete submission, but when it occurs, it is powerful stuff.

Many are those who will tell you that in a D/s relationship it is the submissive that really has control.  This is of course, total bullshit.  In a properly balanced D/s relationship, both partners share equally in the power exchange.  They both have the same right to walk away at any time, they both have the right to negotiate for what they want, but ultimately this always ends in the Dominant partner having more power than the submissive because that is what they both want.  The submissive is never in control and does not want to be.  However, this power is a gift from the submissive partner to the Dominant one, and the moment that either one of you forgets that, the dynamic is lopsided and doomed to fail.

I am a feminist, but that does not mean that I believe that women are exactly equal in all things.  Women are exactly equal in most things, and they are better at some things, and there are wonderful and amazing things that they can do that I will never understand or experience.  I celebrate those differences, and I hold fast to my own.  I believe that every person, regardless of birth gender, gender identity, desire, ambition, or anything else that might be used to label them, has the right to live the life that they want to live and to ignore, refute, or resist any attempts to cause them to do otherwise.

I am a feminist because I self-identify as one, because I do not sit idly back and allow the gender politics of the Internet or discussions that occur in meatspace while I am nearby to skew towards discriminatory policies towards women – or anyone for that matter, because I may be Dominant towards submissive women in my life, but I seek to break the dominance that society has put in place for men, and for caucasian men specifically.  I am quite aware of my position of privilege and I did nothing to deserve it other than being born who and where I was.  I believe that the rights and privileges that I have should be made available to everyone.  I let respect guide me.

More than anything, that is the essence of this ideal for me – I let respect guide me, I maintain mindfulness and an awareness of my own space and position, I do not seek to dominate those that do not wish it of me.  I endeavor to always do no harm, protect those that need protection, and advance the cause of those who are not privy to the position of authority that I have for being born a white male in America.  Honor, respect, and integrity are important to me.

This was not quite a rant, but it represents something I feel strongly about.

I am Rant.

Rant off.

love

Owning the object of your affection

1 Comment

It’s been awhile since I’ve made an entry and to those of you who had become accustomed to frequent updates, I apologize and will see that things get back on track in short order.   My life became pretty interesting for a couple of weeks there and I had to focus my energy elsewhere, but things seem to be normalizing now.

This is going to be a bit more of a personal entry than I’ve been making, with the possible exception of the Distillation of Rant entry.

That entry was about life and limerence.  This blog’s mission has been stated as to provide the views of one Dom (namely, me) on life, love, and limerence.  So far, I’ve avoided love.

Oddly, when I started this blog, just about two months ago, I believed myself incapable of feeling love again in the traditional sense of eros.

Most people who are likely to read this blog are probably familiar with the ancient Greek concepts of eros and agape.  If not, I’ll provide a grossly oversimplified definition and then urge you to do some research of your own.

The Greeks believed in two forms of love – other cultures have had more or less, but generally these two types are pervasive.

Eros is romantic love.  This is what you feel in the pit of your stomach when you’re around the object of your affection.  This is the thing that makes it feel like your heart has skipped a beat, like your mind has fled your body, and you’re mired in the depths of some kind of sticky, warm, comfortable trap from which you don’t want to escape.   When we speak of matters of the heart, this is what we’re talking about more often than not.  Often this gets equated to ‘lust’ in English, but that’s not quite right… it’s deeper and more fulfilling than lust.  And quite a bit more dangerous.

Agape is ‘brotherly’ or ‘familial’ love.  This is what you feel when you think about your children, your parents, your close friends, but also your romantic partner — if you find yourself in a relationship rather than an arrangement.  This is characterized more by loss than presence.  Whereas with eros, you feel it deeply when you are in the presence of your love, with agape you are more likely to notice its absence when you are away from the object of your affection.

Of course, there is a lot of bleed-through with these concepts.  It’s nearly impossible to feel eros without some agape seeping through, and it’s often the case that those for whom we feel agape (when not so prevented by taboo, and even sometimes when it is) will be the object for which we feel eros from time to time, if not consistently.

Semantics sorted, we’re left with a modicum of understanding about what this ‘love’ thing is, at least in Rant’s mind.

So – for possibly the first time in Rant’s life, he finds himself in love.

Please forgive that brief and annoying use of the third person to describe myself, but those concepts are so foreign to how I perceived the world a scant few months ago that I find it difficult to express in any other way, but here’s the defining statement for you: I believe that I have found the love of my life.

This is problematic for me for a few reasons, but those problems mask their own solutions, and they are a path to a deeper understanding, one that allows neither of us the luxury of seeing ourselves as soft or breakable, but something that strengthens us both immeasurably, together and separately.

Firstly, our relationship is steeped in the BDSM world.  Our friends routinely beat, bleed, berate, and fuck each other, sometimes where we can bear witness, and neither of us is a stranger to that sort of activity.  Blood and I are not the best of friends, and I’ve already mentioned my difficulties with humiliation, but physicality rarely bothers me – I am a very physical/tactile person.  I get off on tying girls down and smacking them with my hands or tools or shocking the hell out of them with my violet wand.  I bite.  I choke.  I enjoy sex when it is both soft and slow as well as rough and tumble, but there is little that gets me harder more quickly than my hand on the throat of a woman who has given herself to me, and little that does it for me as much as my hand coiled and firmly grasping the hair at the back of her head as I hold her down and fuck her with every bit of force I can put into it…

But can I do that to the one I love?  Can I watch someone else do that to the one I love?  I’m a protective person by nature – I will go to extreme lengths to protect and ensure the welfare of those I care about.  The dichotomy that this sets up in my mind when I think about someone delivering pain to the one I love, knowing that she has asked for and desires this, balanced against my desire to prevent it… it is interesting.  I’ve allowed her to play with others, and my love for her and confidence in her devotion to me allows me to experience true compersion, but the desire to protect and keep safe is always there in the back of my mind.

Devotion is my kink, and because she loves me every bit as much as I love her, the devotion I feel from her is worship, truly.   The call of one who shows me the trappings of devotion is normally quite strong, but when I see love and devotion coming from the same set of eyes, something in my heart breaks.  When my love commits an act that is disrespectful, our agreement, our understanding, our roles require that I correct that action.  To do any less than that would be disrespectful in kind, not just to her, but to myself and to us together.. so even though those puppy-dog eyes make my heart melt, I must follow through.  I have raised my hand to her in punishment rarely, only once that I can think of, and the punishment of all punishments – being sent to the corner – has been employed once as well.  But she is a good girl and I am a patient Master.

This is a process.

This is a deepening of our devotion to each other.  And despite what the dynamic would lead one to believe, despite the fact that my love is owned and collared by me, despite the fact that she has submitted to me and become my property, the partnership that we have formed together is stronger and more powerful than any other I’ve ever experienced.

Relationships are hard.  They require patience and work and devotion.

Did I mention that devotion is my kink?

I am Rant, and I am the big serious.

And I has a happy.

I hope this wasn’t too much of a departure, but I had to broadcast it.

Rant off.