Category Archives: bdsm

bdsm, control, dominance, life, love, story

A long time coming

It has been a very long time since I’ve posted here. I’m sure many of you thought I had abandoned the blog, and effectively I had, but that was never my intent.

I’ve been very busy lately with work and life issues, working on a side project of my own, and playing video games to distract myself, and while I’ve written the starts of several posts at this point, I never managed to press ‘Publish’ because I was discontent with the results.

I’m not gone, and I am beginning a process of refocusing my life and how I live it.

I’ve been complacent in too many areas of my life lately. I’ve been making progress on some things, but for most, I’ve let them slide and just allowed myself to live with things as they are. I resolve to stop that (again) and to take a more active role in my own destiny.

Funny, isn’t it? The big, bad Dom-type was drifting. Isn’t that supposed to be the last thing that a D-type would do?

Each person’s Dominance is unique, and each is a journey. My own journey has taken many turns over the course of the past couple of years – most of which I did not anticipate.

This is a source of tremendous anxiety for me.

I do not fetishize control, but Control is the thing that lets me be a Dom in this world. Control is the thing that reinforces my power, that gives life to my Will. Control is the thing that allows me to tame the chaos of my mind and live a successful life.

But it’s fucking boring.

I’m a dichotomy and I contradict myself all the damned time. I have a consistent set of values and desires, but there are things in my mind that get in the way when I try to enact them sometimes.

Lately, my life has been largely out of my control, and that has been a source of tremendous anxiety for me – but also joy. While control allows me to accurately (for the most part) predict how the events of my life will unfold, it also completely removes the ability for anything to surprise me, and it can be exhausting to try to force things to fit when that is a state to which they do not naturally gravitate.

I’ve had literally weeks where I was almost paralyzed with fear concerning a couple of lawsuits in which I have been involved over the past several years. But I’ve also recently had moments where I was comfortable enough to completely let go and allow the Primal in me to come out – something that has not happened in a decade or more.

Just last night, I attended a kink event with my girlfriend and I made a horrible misjudgment. I think it’s fair to say that I know her better than anyone else, but I erred, and not in a small way.

There are those of you out there who read this and already think that I’m too soft to be a ‘True Dom’ – and this is going to reinforce those beliefs.

I fucked up.

I take responsibility for my lack of preparation, my lack of empathy, and my disturbingly effective emotional distancing coping techniques.

I entered into a highly emotional situation without the ability to access my own emotions or to empathize with my girlfriend, and I made a huge miscalculation.

And that is precisely the correct word to use here, for my actions were calculated and predicated on years of experience that I have and she does not. I embarrassed her in a public setting in front of people that she very much cares for how they view her by treating her as if she should have known things that I never showed her.

And so, the evening fell apart, and when things were at their bleakest, I did too. Spectacularly, and in a way that has not happened for more than decade.

I relived moments that I wish I could forget. I went to the place in my mind where control is fiction and I didn’t possess control even over my own body. I went so deep that I actually caused myself to vomit – no mean feat when I’d not eaten anything all day.

But there is catharsis in surrender – as any s-type can tell you – and as I once lived myself.

When I broke, she came to help me.

I cannot possibly overstate the significance of that to me.

The big, bad, Dom-type was quite literally a blubbering idiot in the corner, and his protective and nurturing and beautiful girlfriend and submissive-in-training took control for a moment and gave me the strength to allow my mind to find the coping mechanisms that evolved in me over the years and Control came back. Briefly, and without form, but it came back.

I wrote once before on this blog that I thought I had finally found the love of my life, but it turned out to be untrue.

I have been reluctant to make the same sorts of claims with this relationship, largely because I did not see it coming the last time, and I didn’t want to jinx this time, but after weathering the battle and experiences of last night, I think it’s safe to say that this is the most stable and mature and balanced relationship that I’ve ever had.

We struggle with D/s.

This is my fault, not hers. She wants it, and I have a very hard time presenting things to her because I do not want to insult her by treating her like she knows nothing, but in so doing, I do her a massive disservice. How can one learn if no one is willing to teach? Sure, books exist, resources are available on the ever-mighty Internet, and there are even classes that you can take, but ultimately, at the end of the day, our D/s is between us, and it’s not every Dom in the world that she needs to cater to, just me. And there is no manual for me on the Internet – the closest you’ll find is this blog, or the defunct one I wrote years and years ago – so how I can I expect her to know what to do if I don’t show her?

This is a journey. I don’t want the same type of D/s that I’ve had in the past, but I haven’t yet formulated what it is that I do want, and until I do that, we’re going to flounder.

So, this is where I cast off the worries of the lawsuits that have since been settled (and very recently – I literally just signed papers to settle one case on Thursday) and I recommit myself to my life, my love, my joy, my friends, my family, and my community.

More posts will be forthcoming.

I threw out the 500 words a day goal when my life became overwhelming a couple of months ago, but I’m reinstating it now.

If I have time to play video games, I have time to write.

NaNoWriMo will be taking a back seat to the other parts of my life this year, but my circle of friends is widening, and my relationship with the woman who I intend to keep for the rest of my life is only beginning to really solidify – despite months of growing and a nearly complete merging of our lives.

I love my girl. I hurt her, and I cast myself into Hell for doing so.

Punishment is always a part of D/s relationships, but last night we both punished ourselves to an extent that I could never replicate. The worst punishments always come from within, don’t they?

Rant is a name that I took when I started this, and it’s not a bad one. It’s short, easy to say and remember, and accurately reflects the mindset that I was in when I began this particular journey, but it doesn’t quite fit any more.

This is not a rant. This is not a lesson. This is a confession and commitment.

I shall return. One small step at a time, I shall return.

bdsm, life

Tips for dealing with vanilla authorities.

Firstly, let me say that this article is for entertainment purposes.  I’m not a lawyer, I don’t claim to be one, and I am neither qualified to give nor interested in giving actual legal advice.  This article represents my own experiences, most of which fall completely outside of the written law (if not perhaps the spirit of the law.)

Secondly, it’s been almost a month since I added a new post and the last one that I did was pretty shitty, and yet, there are at least a few dedicated people who visit my page every day.  Thank you for your support or curiosity or whatever it is that keeps you coming back.  Believe it or not, it means something.  I appreciate it.

Obviously, with the lack of new content, readership and email volumes go down.  It doesn’t help anything that I was out of the country for a week and could not get or respond to emails, but I have received a relatively large number of emails lately about one topic in particular, and I have been working for some time on a post to address that issue, but this is not that post.  It is coming though.

So, I’ve been involved in kink for quite some time now, and that involves things like air travel with toys, dealing with the cops on unrelated matters while in possession of kink gear, and all sorts of other dealings with vanilla people when they stumble across something that to them is shocking.

The very first thing that I will say about this is quite simple, and I’m going to steal the line from one of my favorite authors (and former humans,) Douglas Adams – “Don’t Panic.”  If you can remember that statement and live by it, you can get through almost anything.  That and, “Always remember where your towel is,” but that’s a separate issue.

If you happen to find yourself in a security inspection line and they start making noise about something that the x-ray shows is in your bag, Don’t Panic.

If you happen to find yourself in a police pat-down and one of the officers starts asking pointed questions about why you have a handcuff key on your keychain, Don’t Panic.

If you happen to be packing up your apartment and your mom starts to lift your mattress off the bed and then notices the nylon webbing restraints under the mattress, Don’t Panic.

I’m a Dominant.  This does not mean that I spend all of my life ordering people around or even that I’m always going to approach every interaction with any person from a position of confidence and authority, but it does help.  I make mistakes, I falter, I even occasionally socially submit when it is appropropriate or when I’m not thinking about it.  Often, this is the right thing to do.  In the case of dealing with authority figures who have an ability to make your life miserable, this is usually the right thing to do, but it doesn’t always have to be a case of purely cow-towing to the cops, or something like that.

I’m also Caucasian.  I’m pretty sure that this is a huge benefit to me when dealing with authority figures.  It’s entirely possible that you may get roughed up for trying some of the things that I’ve done.  You have been warned.

Firstly, and most important, know the law.  Laws vary from country to country, state to state, and even municipality to municipality, and it is important to know what you might be dealing with before you begin.  For instance, in some jurisdictions, the possession of handcuffs, or even handcuff keys, can be legally limited to individuals who have gone through POST (Peace Officer Standards and Training) procedures or something similar – this can mean that only cops or security guards are allowed to have them in that jurisdiction.  However, in most jurisdictions, this is not the case, and anyone can possess handcuffs.  Therefore, it’s important to know what applies to you if you’re going to be putting yourself in a position where it might become a question.

Secondly, and nearly as important, realize that authority does not come with knowledge.  Oh, it should, that’s for damned sure, but often the police officer that you are dealing with is going to be more ignorant of the actual laws and statutes covering kink activities or equipment than you are.  This does not give you license to teach them… that was a lesson that I had to learn the hard way…  cops don’t like civilians lecturing them about the law, it tends to piss them off, and then you escalate things, which is something you definitely don’t want.

And finally… be pleasant.  Smile.  Laugh.  Don’t be confrontational.  When you get confrontational, you put the authority figure on the defensive.  They then fall back to their training and try to make sure that everything that they do is, ‘by the book.’  They will literally force down their own humanity and attempt to become robotic, just to make sure that they cover their own ass in case you try to file a complaint or take things to court.  Once they let go of their humanity, the odds of you getting out of the situation without involving the courts drop to almost zero, and no one wants that.

Remember, cops and security guards, like all humans, are inherently lazy people.  They don’t want to do more work.  They want to do a good job, and most of them got into the work that they do because they want to make the world a safer place, so if they feel like you are dangerous, they will arrest you.  It is your job to show them that you are not harming anyone, that you understand the difference between malice and fun, and that you can be trusted to decide how to act for yourself.  If they can be convinced that you are not a threat to anyone (including yourself,) that you understand what you’re doing, and that you are a responsible, well-balanced individual, then the odds are very good that they’re going to simply leave you be.  Arresting you makes more work for them.  They may even have to give up their day off to go to court to testify against you, and they’d much rather just be able to say that they spoke with you and determined that there was nothing illegal happening.

All that being said, some people are just dicks.  Some people get into positions of power because they like abusing that power to make other people uncomfortable.  In those situations, don’t let yourself be victimized, but remember, it’s probably better/cheaper/faster to just let the bastards confiscate your flogger and bear the expense of buying a new one than it is to go through the hassle of dealing with the courts, possibly having to hire a lawyer, and potentially even having to spend time in jail.  If the authority figure is hell-bent on exerting his authority and refuses to act like a human, sometimes the best thing to do is to submit.

Yep – I said it… even as a Dominant, sometimes the best thing to do is to submit.

There is fodder in that statement for a whole philosophical discussion, but not today.

So, to recap, be cool, get out of the way of yourself, and remember, some people are just dicks.

bdsm

9 Reasons to avoid a noob Dom

Preface: this is a bit of a different sort of post than I usually publish.  I was in an odd mood and decided to try humor as a vehicle for talking about some otherwise unfunny things.  I’m going to use foul language a great deal more than normal.  You may not like the results.  But rest assured, I’ll be back with my normal fare soon enough.  Until then, peruse and send in the hate mail…

Firstly, I’d like to go on record as saying that I generally abhor Top N lists, where N is any number you like to put there… They’re all over the interwebs though, and I’m told that if I write one, the readers will come in droves, that I’ll be featured on reddit and slashdot, and that I’ll immediately enjoy overnight success, fame, money, and of course, more pussy than I can shake a stick at.

Why I’d want to shake a stick at it, I don’t know… if you can tell me that, I’ll give you a dollar.*

Please regard this entry, in it’s entirety, as farce.

Of course, some parts of this may be using humor to tackle a problematic and sensitive topic.  Take it as you will… I just wrote it, it’s up to you to interpret it.

6) Bigger’n his britches syndrome

Otherwise known as “my cock is so big that I can’t fit it in my pants” – syndrome.

Let’s face it, the allure of BDSM for most of us is sex.  If not sex directly, it’s something related to sex.  It’s an expression of how we do sex, or it’s a way to more easily find suitable sex partners who will put up with our deviant pruriencies.

For many men (and possibly some women too) sex is not an altogether easy thing to get in the vanilla world.  A young man can become easily frustrated trying to chase tail and getting rejected implicitly and explicitly all over the place.

People who are attracted to the BDSM lifestyle tend to be highly sexually motivated.  They tend to be inclusive and are often more open with what they find to be physically attractive.  The important factors for submissives are often more about how you act than how you look.  To many of the newly initiated, this looks like a ‘magic sex switch’.

“Hey, if I just act like an asshole, I’ll be drowning in pussy,” thinks the naive young proto-Dom.

The problem is, that about half the time, he’s right.

It takes a little while before you can tell the difference between asshole and Dominant in some cases.  And often, that’s long enough for the naive proto-Dom to get his dick wet, and suddenly he thinks that he’s the Daddy Mac or the Mac Daddy or somesuch.

Eventually the proto-sub that our proto-Dom has been treating like garbage realizes that being treated like garbage has nothing to do with Dominance and she flees.  But our proto-Dom has just had more and better sex than he’s ever seen in his life, and he reasons that if he can just be even more asshole-ish that he can get even more pussy, and so the spiral begins…

Avoid these types like the plague, because they’re not experienced enough to be as promiscuous as they’ve become and they’re probably infected with a strain or three.

And yes, I realize that I promised 9 items in the title and I started my list with 6.  9 is not 6 and 6 is not 9, and while I am a huge fan of cunnilingus, 69 is not among my favorite positions, but it’s fun every once in awhile.

5) Over 10 years of experience!

Profile:

Screen Name: ClitMasterGodCommander848

Role: Dominant/Master

Gender: Male

Age: 25

Experience Level: Master (10+ years)

Activity Level: I live and breath it!

Seeking: Female Submissive

Profile Text:

“I have ben a DOM all my life. I live the DBSM lifestyle 24/7 n I will PWN you.  Cum now and pray to ur GOD!”

I don’t care how adventurous you are, but if you are 25, no one is going to believe that you have “over 10 years of experience as a DOM(sic).”

When you’re talking about years of experience, you should make sure that it makes sense.  I am 40 years old.  I claim to have been in and out of the BDSM lifestyle for the past 15 years (or slightly more) but if I were to claim ‘years of experience’ I would be most comfortable saying that I have about 5 years of active experience.  For the majority of the time since I’ve been inducted into this lifestyle, I’ve lived a pretty vanilla life.  I did some very intense things early on, then I ‘settled down’ and left the lifestyle behind for about a decade.  When I returned, I slow-rolled my reintroduction to things and I’ve stayed mostly out of the soft chewy center.

Anyone who is claiming levels of experience that they don’t have is a poseur and twit.  Anyone who attempts to engage in BDSM activities for which he does not have the appropriate amount of skill and experience is a danger and can get you killed.  Just stay away.

4) Bottoming from the Top

“Okay, I’m in charge.  You’re my slave.  Now tie me up and whip me!”

These poor boys are just confused.  Soon they’re going to call themselves switches, and eventually they’re realize that they’re really submissives and just make the switch.

Don’t get me wrong… there is nothing wrong with being a male submissive.  I was once.  It’s a lot more common than you would think.  I would go so far as to say that almost everyone has some submissive tendencies at times.  But there is a great deal of social pressure in both the vanilla and BDSM worlds for men to be men and that involves being the Dominant in a lot of people’s minds.

So, in order to get their needs met, many men will come into the scene as Dominants when they really don’t want to be.  You often hear about Topping from the Bottom, and this is exactly the same thing it’s just what you would call it if you reversed the labels. The roles are the same, the outcomes are the same, and it’s a broken dynamic.  Everyone leaves unfulfilled.  Avoid.

3) I know what you need.

“I just automagically know what your limits and needs are, we don’t need to negotiate/need a contract/need to talk about things.”

I’ve said it a million times and I’ll probably get out a million more before I croak.  Negotiation is the core of BDSM.  Safewords are essential.  Contracts can be useful in formalizing these negotiations.  But at the root of everything, negotiation is what separates BDSM from abuse.

Yes, yes, I’ve heard it a million times…  “But he really does know me so well.  He can always tell when I need to stop and he automagically stops.”

That right there is a mixture of endorphins, oxytocin, and wishful thinking.  It’s something that happens at the beginning of every new relationship.  The ‘Honeymoon Period’ – if you will.  When you first begin things, you’re both being extra careful, you’re also over the moon with all sorts of pain ameliorating hormones and feel like the world is a magical place.

It might stay that way for awhile, but try playing with someone you’re not actually in a relationship with, or who you don’t know very well, and somehow all of those magical ESP-like senses are gone.  Wait a few months until familiarity takes the place of passion and they’re gone as well.  And that’s when the mistakes start to happen.  That’s when the labels change… suddenly you start to wonder, “is this abuse?” or even “has he been this way all along?”

Avoid that issue entirely.

Negotiate in advance.  Stick to your agreement.  Understand – don’t just feel.  Feeling is great!  Feeling can be the most wonderful thing in the world, and I’ll never tell you not to, because that would be hypocritical of me.  I get off on NRE as much as the next person.  It’s my favorite drug.  But negotiate first, before you get blind, before you start down a path that only ends in tears.

2) Aftercare? What’s that? I’m done.

“Okay <insert pet name here> I just came, you can clean up and go home now.”

Newbie players, both Tops and bottoms, often treat BDSM scenes like sex.  They’re used to ending a date with sex and then going home.  This is pretty bad even in the vanilla world, but men can be afraid of ‘attachment’ – by which they mean that they’re afraid that the woman involved is going to develop feelings and then things will be messy and painful when the sex isn’t good anymore and he wants to move on to greener pastures.

The problem is that BDSM scenes up the ante by quite a bit.  We’re pushing physical and emotional boundaries and the need for adequate aftercare cannot be overstated.

Sometimes this is also merely a problem of a new initiate not knowing what to do or how to go about it, but those situations can be fixed.

As a general rule, aftercare should be in person, immediately following the scene, for at least as long as the scene itself, often much longer.  It also entails check-ins the following day and perhaps even further beyond that, since some of the emotional issues may not manifest right away.  A failure to do this will cause harm and resentment.

If you aren’t getting adequate aftercare, ask for it.  If the Dominant that you’re playing with is not responsive to your request or if the lack of aftercare is part of a pattern of behavior, you might be better off seeking a different Dominant.

1) Title inflammation

Email:

To: NewSubI’veNeverMet

From: SomeRandomDude

Subject: First message

I am your Master now, you will refer to me as MasterBigDaddy and you are my slave.  You will meet me at Starbucks tomorrow at 7:00pm and I will give you instructions on how to satisfy me.

Your Lord and Master,

SomeRandomDudeYou’veNeverMetOrTalkedToBefore

 

Yeah, I realize that ‘inflation’ is probably the right word, but I like connotations that ‘inflammation’ provides.

When I have talked to women – and it’s worth noting here that even Dommes apparently get this treatment – about their experiences on kink dating and social media sites, what I almost always hear about are stories about self-proclaimed Doms sending them unsolicited messages and ordering them to do things as if they were owned property.  It seems to be the general consensus that these misguided individuals believe that any female who posts a profile on a kink site is just begging to be taken control of by a strong and powerful man like them.

Guys – women in kink are still people.  You will get much, much farther with them by treating them as such, by listening to what they have to say, by learning what they want and then figuring out if you are a compatible match, rather than immediate assuming that you have all of the answers and that you just need to be forceful enough and they’ll bend to your almighty will.

And really, that’s what this is about, this whole post… we’re all people here.  We have failings, we have strengths, we have things that we’re good at, and we all have a lot more to learn.

Don’t think that bravado can substitute for experience.  Don’t think that arrogance can substitute for understanding.

I’ve been here for quite a long time, and my path is still evolving.  I’m still learning.  I’m teaching as well, but as I’ve known ever since my first days as a math tutor in junior high school – you never learn something better than when you try to teach it to someone else.

 

 

*Dollar offer Fine print: (Offer subject to verification.  Only one entry per person, per contest will be judged.  Offer may not be combined with other offers.  Odds of winning depend on number of entries received. The total value of all prizes awarded will not exceed one dollar in the currency of the contest provider’s choice.  All entries must be accompanied by a video of the contestant wearing only domrant.com branded clothing (wearing no clothing is accepted as a valid interpretation of ‘wearing only domrant.com branded clothing’) and reciting the Gettysburg Address.  Video and entry become the sole property of the contest provider and may be used for any purpose whatsoever, including, but not limited to the creations of promotional materials or masturbation fodder. Contest ends whenever I decide it’s over.)

bdsm, limerence, question, rant

State of the blog

I’ve been maintaining this blog for a year now.  Sometimes it seems much longer, sometimes it seems less, but the reality is that it’s been a year since my first entry (even though I deleted my first entry..) and I’ve been able to manage at least a post or two a month since then.  Sometimes more, sometimes less, but it’s been one of the ways that I’ve kept writing, and I think that writing is a very important part of who I have become.

In that first month, I had only a few page visits per day, most of which were probably me.

In the months that followed, my readership has gone up dramatically, which I’m not entirely certain how to process.  I’m getting thousands of hits per week now, and hundreds per day at seemingly random intervals.  One might think that it’s tied to when I post new entries, but that seems to not be the case all of the time.  Yes, I get a bit of a spike each time I post something new – I guess I can thank rss feeds for that – but I get an even bigger spike whenever Autumn posts something new at servingmaster.com, which I still find amusing and heart-warming at the same time.  And yet, my best day ever seems to not correspond with either of those events, it was just a random Thursday where my site got several hundred hits for no reason that I can think of, but I’m certainly not upset about it.

One of my friends suggested that I should start putting up ads, but I have no desire whatsoever to do that.  I did not begin this as a money-making venture, and I have no need of the couple hundred dollars a month I could make from serving ads here.

Another friend suggested that I should write a book and promote it through the site.  That is something that might someday do – I’ve got several unpublished and unfinished books on my hard drive that could use some attention, but even that seems an unlikely goal when I barely manage to write new entries for the blog itself.

However, all of this aside, one thing I can say about the past year is that I’ve enjoyed the experience and that I have no plans of stopping any time soon.

This is a wordpress site (which should be obvious) and wordpress gives me a bunch of interesting statistics about the site, my visitors, etc.  It should come as no surprise to anyone that most of my page views in the past year have come from referer links on the servingmaster.com site.  However, in the past few months, the number of people coming to my site from Autumn’s has been eclipsed by those coming from google and I seem to also get quite a lot of folks from yahoo.

Even more interesting is the fact that wordpress collates the search terms that lead people to my site.

Back when I first started this site, I did a series of posts that I called ‘unasked questions’ because they were topics related to BDSM that I felt strongly about and that I know many if not most newbies struggle with, but I hadn’t really achieved the sort of penetration that led to people actually asking me questions in email the way that they do now.

It seems that most of the search terms that people use to find my site are about these pages, and oddly, some of them are questions that I have not yet answered, so this year I’m making a pledge to do so.

The top search terms that led people to my site:

  1. limmerent submissive

This is kind of interesting.  This term has led people to my blog more than any other word or phrase for which people can search.  It makes some sense… I mean, I put ‘One Dom’s views on life, love, and limerence’ as the ‘mission statement’ for my blog when I created it, and my third (or fourth, if you happened to be one of the three people that saw my very first entry before I deleted it) blog entry is, itself, a story of my own limerent behavior as a submissive, but look at the word there as I spelled it and then look at the search term.

The search term is a misspelling!

I’ve gone back through my own pages, and I don’t misspell it anywhere that I can see, but somehow, when someone is searching for the misspelled version as above, I must be near the top of the pages that come up – and yet, when I did the search myself, that is not what I found, so this may have to remain a bit of a mystery.

  1. sub drop

This, again, makes sense.  I mention subdrop many times in my entries, and there are quite a few other similar searches that also hit on the same idea: ‘subdrop definition,’ ‘can you have subdrop without a scene,’ ‘sub drop missing your dom,’ ‘when does subdrop happen,’ ‘how to tell your dom you have subdrop,’ ‘ways to avoid sub drop bdsm’ – just to quote a few…

I’ve experienced subdrop.  I’ve witnessed it many times.  I think I address many of these questions already, but just to reiterate:  yes, you can have subdrop without a scene; yes, you can feel subdrop just because you miss your Dom; yes, there are steps that you can take in aftercare and communications to try to stave off subdrop, but no, you probably can’t always completely avoid it altogether if it is something that happens to you; and no, not every sub feels subdrop and there is nothing wrong with you if you don’t.

  1. dom rant

This one is kind of self evident, I think.  I’m kind of surprised that so many people are searching for me directly by name though.  It’s flattering, and also a little bit creepy.

  1. doms training submissive

Now this is also kind of interesting.  I have never written an article about training a new submissive.  I’ve been asked to a number of times.  I’ve started such an article a number of times.  I have several unfinished, unpublished entries that tackle this very topic, but I’ve never actually published one.  There are several variants on this one too: ‘is part of a doms training a submissive to ignore them,’ can i punish my sub with her hard limits,’ and ‘training a submissive before a scene’ just to name a few.

I’m not an expert in how to train a submissive, but one of the reasons why I’ve had such difficulty in writing the article that would satisfy this question is that I think it really depends on the submissive – and in situations where I am giving someone else advice on the Dom as well.  I think that each of these interactions is dependent directly on the people involved and the relationship that you want to have with each other.

If I am able to maintain cold objectivity, this is a much easier process for me, but if I become emotionally entangled, and even more so recently than in the past, the whole notion of submissive training becomes one giant clusterfuck for me.

Who then, am I to advise others on this topic?

I still intend to tackle it at some point, but I need to get my own ducks in a row on this concept before I can have any confidence in advising others.

However, there is one question up there that I absolutely want to tackle right here, and right now.

“Can I punish my sub with her hard limits?”

Absolutely not.

That, my friend, is what we call abuse, and I hope that you get the ostracization you deserve for trying such a thing, if not a full court press on the legal issues you expose yourself to with that.

Hard limits are hard limits for a reason.  Respect them or you disrespect the person and yourself and the entire BDSM community.

  1. subspace (or some variant thereof)

I added the ‘or some variant thereof’ bit myself in case that wasn’t apparent.  There are probably more distinct questions about subspace than anything else, but because each question is unique, the results don’t as easily correlate in the wordpress search terms page, I think.  Some examples:  ‘signs of subspace,’ ‘how do I get to subspace,’ ‘subspace bdsm’, ‘subspace mistress,’ ‘can I get to subspace without pain,’ ‘subspace sex,’ ‘how to get someone into subspace,’ ‘finding subspace,’ ‘subspace definition,’ ‘can your dom put you into subspace with a word,’ ‘ways out of subspace,’ ‘‘subspace commander’.

Obviously, that last one there is my favorite.

I talk a bit about subspace, and what it is, and how one might find oneself there, but it’s only really been the focus of one entry, so it’s a bit interesting that it seems to lead people to me so frequently.

Clearly though, it’s a topic of interest to people, and the more I think about it, the more I realize that it’s something that I should probably be spending more time focusing on in my own personal relationship, so I promise to give this topic some more thought and attention in the coming weeks and months.

Is there something that you are interested in reading about that I didn’t discuss here?

Write to me in the comments, or send me an email.  I try very hard to make certain to answer every legitimate email that I get, though they can sometimes get lost in the spam filter, so if I don’t respond, please take that into consideration or use the Contact Me page – since most of those seem to get through.

Thank you for your attention over the past year, and I look forward to more to come.

I am still Rant, and I’m not going anywhere.

 

bdsm, life, love, rant, story

Things that made me hard

Get your mind out of the gutter – that’s not what I’m talking about here.

On second thought, don’t – I like your mind in the gutter.  This is a pretty sinful website, after all, isn’t it?

Anyway – that really isn’t what I’m wanting to talk about today.

There have been a number of events in my life that affected me and the way that I interact with the world.  These are things that have shaped who I am and how I interact with people, places, and things – but most importantly, people.  These are the things that made me a hard man, that gave me an edge, that continue to give me the gravitas and presence that caused one of my former subs to remark, “you read as DOMINANT from about 1000 paces… I kind of went o.O GAH the first time I saw your photo… and you do the Dom voice.”

The funny thing is, I’m kind of moving away from that nowadays, by choice.

For much of my adult life, I’ve been hard like a brick.  I was strong, with edges that were mostly sharp.  But the thing about a brick is that while it’s very strong, if you pound on it long enough or hard enough, it shatters.

I had a real brick-shattering event a few years back, and it left me broken for awhile, but I learned from it, and with some minor stumbles here and there, I’ve come back stronger than I was before.

It sounds a bit arrogant to my ears, but I’d prefer to think that I’m more like water now.  I seamlessly mold myself to my environment, I resist blunt force, and given time I even tear down mountains.

But it took me a long time to get here.

I grew up in a mostly boring home.  I’m caucasian and have lived in California for my entire life.  My father is an attorney and my mother was a stay-at-home housewife.  We lived in the country, on a horse ranch.  My family always seemed to have minor money troubles. My father had a very feast or famine income stream and he did none of the things that one should do to even out such things, so there were always lean times to contend with, but my biggest worries as a young child were never about the necessities of life.  I was fed, clothed, housed, and had adequate medical care.

And yet, I suffered a bit from the problems that are endemic to that sort of life.  My father was absent most of the time.  Even when he was physically present, the power imbalance and lack of communication between my parents made him emotionally distant and my mother lived with a siege mentality.  Her livelihood depended absolutely on this man who was extremely cold, mostly absent, and who derived more enjoyment from his relationships outside of the marriage than with my mother and it terrified her.  She lived in a constant state of fear that he would leave her, and assumed that every relationship that he had with any other woman was a sign of infidelity.  While I don’t know that was ever actually the case, he did eventually leave her, so I could go off on a tangent on the topic of whether or not that was causal or predictive, but I don’t have enough information to talk about it and don’t really care.

I have a sister, and while my strategy to deal with early life hazards and isolation was to take up the family banner and try to show the world that we were a successful family unit – she took the opposite approach, as one might expect.

To borrow from psychology, in the dysfunctional family archetypes, I was the Hero, and she was the Scapegoat.  I did my best to excel in everything, and I achieved most of my goals.  She refused to compete and drew all of the attention she could by acting out and getting into trouble.

And, as the popular adage goes, “the squeaky wheel gets the oil,” and she was certainly a great deal more squeaky than I was.  Despite my accomplishments, within the family I tried to stay mostly invisible, but one can never completely hide from family (or relationship) dysfunction.

On the eve of my first wedding, my father met with me one-on-one and told me that I was a mistake – my mother was not meant to become pregnant when she did, and I was responsible for the misery that followed my father for the rest of his life.  I forced him to abandon his dreams and to instead do the responsible thing and ‘settle down.’

As if this were not enough of a blow on its own, I further led the discussion into tones of denigration when I asked him why he gave so much more attention to my sister than he did to me, and his response was roughly, “You have such a bloated ego of your own, I figured you didn’t need any praise from me.”

Perhaps I can forgive him for failing to recognize how my outward appearance was compensating for a lack of true personal confidence, but to use diction like that with your own child seems to be pretty inexcusable to me.  When he told me, “…you didn’t need any praise from me,” what I heard was, “you don’t deserve any praise from me.”  This is a notion that I do still have trouble with even today, but being aware of it takes most of the sting away.

Parents out there – do not make this mistake, please.  I strive to be certain that I encourage my own children without turning them into narcissists, but I also try very hard to remember that even as young children, the face that they show to the world, the face that they sometimes show even to me, does not always represent their true emotional state.  Children are much better at developing and showing these false fronts than even adults can be.  Love is the currency that they trade in, not dollars.

My father told me that I was a mistake and an egotist and that I didn’t need him so he didn’t either want or need me.  This wasn’t exactly a revelation – after all, he’d been showing me this same behavior for my entire life, making me hard, but that act was the kiln that fired the brick that was my personality.

He repeatedly told me, throughout my youth, that I was doing things wrong, and he seemed to want to compete with me ex post facto for all of my academic and athletic achievements.  Everything that I did was compared to something that he did better.  Every time that I would show initiative or innovation, I was told that I was doing things wrong, if only because I didn’t do them his way.

My mother was only slightly better.  She was effusive with her praise of my accomplishments, but she used my success as a lever against the mothers of the children in my peer group.  For every success that one of my friends would have, something that their parents would show pride in, she would rattle off five things that I had done which were superior.  I knew that she loved me, but I felt that love was always conditional.  I had to continue to succeed or I would lose my vaunted place on the pedestal of achievement.

I was loved, as long as I remained ubermensch.

So I learned that love was dependent upon my supremacy.  I could depend on none but myself.  My place in the world was tenuous, apart, aloof, alone, dependent upon factors that I could not directly control, but oh, how I did try to control them anyway…

I was an arrogant prick in the extreme.  I simply refused to acknowledge any event that did not show my superiority.  I would not even try to do something that I didn’t know I would dominate.  I was hard, but brittle, and my need to dominate things was established, for only through controlling every aspect of every interaction could I be certain that I would not need to depend on anyone but myself, and while I was absolutely certain of my ability to handle a small subset of possible interactions, I was completely incapable of handling anything else at all.

Eventually I came to understand how this was affecting my relationships with others.  I had a few sycophant friends who would follow in my wake, lauding me for my superiority in the things that I chose to take part in, as my ego demanded, but I was completely incapable of forming lasting and meaningful relationships with anyone who refused to admit my rightful place at the top of the order.

Is this my version of 50 Shades of Fucked Up?

No, of course not.  That whole notion is a logical fallacy and merely a straw man argument put forward by a woman who does not even really understand the dynamic that she was trying to portray.  I do not share the bilious contempt for her work that many of my peers do, and while I have suffered events in my past that instilled coping mechanisms in me that are not always the most efficient or beneficial, I am also a reasonable and rational human being who can learn from his mistakes, and I do not think that to be a superhuman feat or that it requires finding a naive virginal personality to fix me.

I choose this lifestyle because it is something that works for me, not because I am trying to compensate for some lack of affection in my youth.  The affection may have been lacking, but I’m not trying to solve the problems of my past any longer.  I look to the future and I look to the things that make me happy.  I look to fulfilling my genuine desires, and while those may have been informed by my past, they are not defined by it.

Of course, I am also motivated by my fears or repeating patterns that did not work for me in the past, even when I am rationally assured that the current reality does not match that old situation, and so, life is a learning process.

I’m still building my circle of friends.  People who respect me for who I am and who I want to be, not people who pity me for who I once was or who want to exploit me to achieve their own goals.

And while I may be more malleable than I was in the past, I am stronger for it, and I can accept the adulation and love that I am worthy of receiving.

I’m still hard, but I’m hard in a way that lends strength rather than projects it.  I am secure in myself and I offer that understanding and security to those that I choose to admit into my life.  Together we are so much more than the sum of our parts.  I don’t need people to be complete, but I can offer much to those that wish to join me.

This world has become hard.  In many ways, the world at large is harder and more brick-like than I ever was.  Just the other day I was walking through a mall and I could not help but notice how people treated each other, how strangers reacted to each other.. each unintentional bump was met with extreme vitriol, each interaction between strangers was tense.  As the population increases, and the economic status of individuals continue to stratify, and the stresses on each person increase, the tension that I can feel emanating from people increases dramatically.

Those in this lifestyle who still react to stresses as I once did, those who feel the need to assert their Dominance in every situation… they are becoming more and more obsolete.

I do not think that this is a sea change, and I do not think that I have all of the perfect answers, but I do think that there is strength in malleability.  There is strength in knowing when to remain silent.  There is strength in seeking harmony.

Each generation says of the next that cynicism is encroaching on our values and making us hate more, that the great reckoning or the great race war or the great revolution is coming, and the fact that this motif repeats itself from generation to generation without great upheaval makes it easy to dismiss, but just because a thing is commonly misunderstood does not make it entirely false.

The songwriter Nick Lowe wrote a song in the 70’s that has come to encompass many of my feelings on this idea.  The song itself has been covered many, many times by many, many artists in different genres.  It’s a meme that holds true and that we can all agree with if we take a moment to lose the veneer of strength that we’re attempting to project.  ‘What’s so funny about peace and understanding?’

If you are aspiring Dominant and you are reading this, know that compassion is a show of strength and Dominance.  Know that you prove your worth by reasoned interactions and that while you may some day be required to hold the line, there is strength in knowing where that line needs to be drawn, and letting people in and holding compassion can be stronger than holding people at a distance.

I’m every bit as strong as I ever was – in many ways I’m much stronger – but I am nowhere near as hard as I once was, and I neither need nor want to be.

I usually think that quoting song lyrics in a blog makes for an uninteresting read, but I’m going to violate my own policy here.  Think of it as poetry.. courtesy of Nick Lowe:

 

As I walk on through this wicked world,
Searching for light in the darkness of insanity,
I ask myself, Is all hope lost?
Is there only pain, and hatred, and misery?

And each time I feel like this inside,
There’s one thing I wanna know,
What’s so funny ’bout peace, love, and understanding?,
What’s so funny ’bout peace, love, and understanding?

And as I walked on through troubled times,
My spirit gets so downhearted sometimes,
So where are the strong?,
And who are the trusted?,
And where is the harmony?,
Sweet harmony

‘Cause each time I feel it slipping away, just makes me wanna cry,
What’s so funny ’bout peace, love, and understanding?,
What’s so funny ’bout peace, love, and understanding?

bdsm, rant

Trust, But Verify

A friend of mine was recently interviewed by The Atlantic for an article about this thing that we do.

They used very little of what she actually said, which was somewhat disappointing to me,  but if you’d like to read the article, you can find it here and while most of my readers are already well aware of her blog, just in case you are not one of those, you can find it here.

The article was supposed to be about the impact of the 50 Shades movie on the BDSM community, or so I was led to believe, but it turned into a condemnation of Fetlife instead.

I don’t think that the author of The Atlantic piece did a poor job, but I think that perhaps his lack of personal experience in the arena may have made him somewhat blind to the nuance involved.

By way of disclaimer, I should point out that I’m a lifetime supporter and member of Fetlife – in fact, it is the only social networking site of which I am a member, and I have had many good experiences facilitated by that site, but I’m neither a predator nor a potential victim, so much of what they speak about in the article is outside of my experience.  However, there is still the core of the message, which I still support entirely.

BDSM is not a license to be stupid.

There are people who use BDSM as an excuse to commit abuse.  These are not all outliers of the community.  Some of the core people who make up my own local community have engaged in practices that I find somewhat questionable, and I’ve heard accusations about others that I have not personally witnessed.  A person’s standing in the community is not a blanket endorsement by the members of the community and cannot substitute for caution on the part of newbies.  Even if they are wonderful, it is still very possible that your experience with them might not be satisfactory, and if you are not careful, possibly even dangerous.

It’s possible that Autumn will condemn me for what I am about to write, but I doubt it – I know her to be a rational and intelligent woman, and while she may not agree with what I am about to say, I doubt that it will lessen her opinion of me.

I have no doubt whatsoever that abuse does occur within the auspices of BDSM.  However, I understand and actually commend the people at Fetlife for the way that they have handled things – primarily by staying out of the conflicts.

Fetlife is a corporate entity and therefore is legally obligated to be largely blind to anything that is not provable, so they maintain a practice that is not unlike my own faith – in the absence of the provable, I choose to believe nothing – but they differ on some very important points that I will get to after an illustrative example to follow.

Add to this the fact that personal preferences and even the individual desires of a single person can vary greatly for a given time span, and you run into the fact that some interactions between some people are simply always going to be bad and there is very little that can be done to avoid this other than to communicate and negotiate.

For instance, as a completely hypothetical exercise, let us evaluate the following scenario:

 

A Top in the local community is well known to a lot of people, has many friends, is known to be particularly skilled at flogging, is well known for being patient and kind, especially with newbies, and he has had strong D/s relationships with multiple partners over the years, including a few that are currently going on.

Less well known are the personal proclivities of this person – things not shared except in intimate settings: he has a deep desire for anal penetrative intercourse, he likes asphyxiation, he thinks of himself as being able to read emotional and physical cues well and so he doesn’t place a great deal of emphasis on safewords, and he always has sex as part of a scene.

Now we introduce two newbie female bottoms to the mix.

Newbie bottom A becomes involved with the community and learns that our Top might be a good play partner for her first scene.  She has never been flogged, but thinks she might like it, she loves sex, including anal sex.  She has a deep desire to submit and to be used as an instrument of pleasure for her partner, and this, coupled with a desire to experience the sensation-heightening aspects of light pain lead her to believe that she wants an encounter with our Top.

She seeks him out at an event, they talk briefly, and with very little negotiation, agree to a private scene.  She meets him at his home, he takes her to his playroom, they engage in some petting, he binds her and flogs her, getting her into subspace for the first time in her life.  She is euphoric and he decides to extend things by gagging and blindfolding her to which she does not object.  He continues to flog her and she fights against her bindings, moaning and crying as she does so.  He interprets this as a good sign and then proceeds to take things further, having anal and vaginal intercourse with her while she is bound and gagged, sending her into even higher and tighter spirals of ecstasy.  When her thrashing becomes particularly passionate, he chokes her with his hands until she starts to lose consciousness and she immediately calms down as she surrenders and floats in subspace and then he lets go and she lies limp, savoring the experience.

When he is done, he un-gags and unbinds her while she is still floating.  She is euphoric and so is he.  She can barely move with the intensity of the experience that she has just had.  They share some quiet time together after the scene without speaking and then she leaves, believing that she has just undergone a transformative experience and is ecstatic.

 

Newbie bottom B becomes involved with the community and learns that our Top might be a good play partner for her first scene.  She has never been flogged, but thinks she might like it, she loves sex, but has some very deep personal aversions to anal sex.  She has a deep desire to submit and to be used as an instrument of pleasure for her partner, and this, coupled with a desire to experience the sensation-heightening aspects of light pain lead her to believe that she wants an encounter with our Top.

She seeks him out at an event, they talk briefly, and with very little negotiation, agree to a private scene.  She meets him at his home, he takes her to his playroom, they engage in some petting, he binds her and flogs her, getting her into subspace for the first time in her life.  She is euphoric and he decides to extend things by gagging and blindfolding her.  He continues to flog her and she fights against her bindings, moaning and crying as she does so.  He interprets this as a good sign and then proceeds to take things further, having anal and vaginal intercourse with her while she is bound and gagged, causing her to panic and fight against him.  He mistakes this as more of the same sort of euphoric passion and continues to have sex with her.  When her thrashing becomes particularly violent, he chokes her with his hands and she, unable to take any more abuse, begins to withdraw as the violation completely overwhelms her.

When he is done, he un-gags and unbinds her while she is still floating.  She is in shock and nearly catatonic and he is deeply euphoric.  He lies back to savor the experience and she lies there, unable to respond for some time until finally she wordlessly leaves, believing that she has just been raped and abused, while he thinks that things went extremely well.

 

Now – in this scenario, who is right?

You probably have your own opinion, but in my opinion, they are all wrong.

I’m going to momentarily overlook the complete lack of aftercare in this scenario (which is all too common in my opinion) and just talk about the interpretations of the scene itself.

It is convenient to assign blame for the bad experiences to either our Top or even to bottom B here, but in my own personal opinion the issue is not that simple, and turning Fetlife into a yelp-like rating system for Tops (or bottoms) is not going to help because the problem comes down to one of communication and personal preferences.

If you take the prevailing wisdom of the common culture from a few decades ago and apply it to these scenarios, it would tell you that our Top had no ill intent in either case and that the ideal scenario as presented with bottom A is wonderful and that the worst case scenario as presented with bottom B is the bottom’s fault.  She should have understood what she was getting herself into better and the fact that she didn’t object at a time where she could have objected is her own fault.

If we instead take the prevailing wisdom of today’s post-Feminist-revolution society and apply it we see the polar opposite.  The Top is entirely at fault for not explicitly getting permission for his actions at every step with bottom B and is even guilty of abuse in the case of bottom A, because while she enjoyed the experience, he did not fulfill his duty and it was mere happenstance that she felt good about things instead of bad.

Personally, I believe something different.  They’re all at fault for failing to properly communicate and negotiate.

Our Top did not do his duty in communicating up front, and as the more experienced partner, he bears the majority of the burden here.  He should have known better, but he did not intend to hurt anyone and felt that he was in the right all along.  That does not make him right.  He screwed up, to the point of breaking the law and deserves whatever consequences befall him, but if our bottom had been better informed, this scenario would never have occurred.  Our Top is not a predator, he was just criminally negligent.

I’ve said this before and I’ll say it until I can’t speak any longer.  The heart of what it is that we do is negotiation and unfortunately people just don’t do enough of it.

The reason that we have contracts and safewords (or other signals when gagged, etc.) is to help ameliorate situations like these.  If you are in scene with me and we didn’t negotiate something in advance, I’m unlikely to try it, but if I do and you don’t like it, I’m counting on you to use your safeword or other signal to cue me to stop.  If you fail to do that and I fail to stop, we are both at fault.  I misread your cues and you didn’t explicitly signal me.  Our lack of pre-negotiation creates a bad experience for us both.

I think I’m an anomaly though and that most people don’t see things the way I do.  People like black and white outcomes.  They like to feel that they are right, and sometimes that has to mean that the other person is wrong.

Fetlife does not have the resources to adjudicate these cases, and therefore they simply refuse to allow their platform to be the battleground, and I believe that is the only viable course of action they have.  That’s what we need to remember.  Yes, there are people at Fetlife.  Yes, there is the Fetlife community itself, and communities are often capable of policing themselves – as they should – but Fetlife is not a community itself, it is a platform that hosts many distinct communities, and unless we want that platform to fail (which I don’t think anyone is suggesting) we have to view it as a what it is.

Fetlife has not failed its users, because Fetlife has no stake in these arguments and they are right to try to remove them from the platform completely.

If you have been abused, you have every right to seek restitution, and you should do that through the channels available to you.  Your own local meatspace community is a good place to start.  Most real-world communities are generally self-policing, and word of mouth can get you ostracized.  You may be the Top in this scenario and may have an encounter turn bad on you despite your intentions, and if that’s the case, you screwed up by not negotiating properly and you deserve the consequences that you receive.  The police might be another good place to go.  Only you can determine whether or not what you experienced is actually abuse, and only you can determine what the proper course of action should be, but Fetlife is a platform for people to engage with each other and is not itself a policing force, nor should it be.

This is all, of course, very complicated, and I’m not a lawyer.

But if I can get one message through to my readers, it is this:  think before you act.

Have an exfiltration plan.

Have a check-in person.

Have a safeword

Negotiate in advance.  Contracts and limits lists are a great way to do this.  Check my earlier posts if you need some examples of these.

This thing that we do is extremely risky – for Tops as well.  Protect yourself.

Trust, but verify.

Distrust gets you nowhere, but misplaced trust can get you hurt, badly.

And the last thing I ever want is for anyone to get hurt.

Fetlife is a tool, and use it for what you will, but remember, no tool, no database of players, no word of mouth reputation, nothing whatsoever can take the place of mindfulness, caution, and good sense.  There is always a first person to be abused – make sure that it isn’t you.

 

bdsm, life, story

Pain vs Hurt

3 Comments

Pain is part and parcel of the BDSM lifestyle, but there is a difference of nuance in the meanings of pain and hurt in this context.  As practitioners of this thing that we do, we are no strangers to pain.  As human beings, we are no strangers to hurt, but while those words are synonyms, the English language has different words for similar concepts because those concepts are separated by subtle differences.

For the purposes of this entry, I’m going to define these words according to my own terms.

Both pain and hurt are used as verbs, though the use of pain as a verb is somewhat archaic.  One might say, “my arm pains me” to mean the same thing as, “my arm hurts.”  At the end of that second phrase, there is an implied “me,” but it is not usually explicitly stated in modern language.  Usually pain is a noun – it is a state of being, a thing that is being experienced, while hurt is a verb.. it is an action word and like all action words it requires an actor and intent.

However, while these synonyms can pretty much be used interchangeably if you so choose, I like to think that they have evolved to have subtly different meanings.

When I say that I am in pain, I mean that I am experiencing the physical sensation of pain.  When I say that I don’t want to hurt you, I mean that I don’t want to cause you unintentional distress.  For submissives under my care, I will often say, “I have no desire to hurt you,” and then proceed to slap, smack, spank, flog, whip, bite, and toss them into furniture.  In the absence of a way to properly distinguish my meaning, this would seem to be a case where my actions are not in line with my words, and yet, no one in this position with me has ever given me any indication of being confused on this point.

How is that possible?

I will attempt to elaborate by way of example…

The other day, I was in bed with my girlfriend, post-coitus, and she was expressing some concern about an interaction that we had has previously that day.  I failed to pick up on some of her emotional cues and created a situation where my lack of action caused her emotional turmoil.  I didn’t intend to hurt her in this case.  We do not have a TPE relationship and even if we did, I am not the type of Dominant partner who would ever want to create an emotional rift like that.  So in our discussion of what happened and how to best avoid similar situations in the future, I said to her, “I never wish to hurt you,” and then had to pause and chuckle, following up with, “well, you know what I mean…” and of course she did, but it brought to mind for me the unvocalized nuance that followed with that statement.

The words do not support this notion natively.  We have to imbue them with subtlety of our own.  And yet, because she is a smart woman and because she knows me rather well by this point, she understood my meaning without the need to elaborate significantly.

Hurt is a part of every relationship.. mistakes happen, people will fail to live up to our expectations, especially when those expectations are not vocalized – perhaps because the effort of so doing is extreme.

Pain is not a part of every relationship, and for most people, it really ought not to be.  I’ve said it before and I’m certain that I will say it again, but without consent, what we do is abuse.  For most relationships, there is no desire for pain, there is no discussion of appropriate applications of pain, and without the acknowledgement and discussion, the infliction of Pain is no different at all from Hurt.

Pain is a part of most BDSM relationships, but while we can revel in the pain, use the catharsis that follows, have a release of endorphins and emotions, we usually try to avoid Hurt.  Pain is part and parcel of the lifestyle that we choose to lead, but Hurt is abuse.

For my girlfriend, for my friends, even for my family, I try very hard to avoid Hurt.  I have felt Hurt from my family.  From some members of my family, that hurt has never abated.  We so very often hurt those that we love when we are, ourselves, hurt.  But I try very, very hard not to do so intentionally, and for those I love, this is especially true.

If you put yourself under my power, I will cause you pain with intent.  I will willfully bind you so that the bindings are tight enough to cause you pain.  I will willfully flog you with enough force to mark your skin and leave behind reminders of the experience.  I will bite you hard enough to leave a bruise that lasts for weeks.  But I will not intentionally pull the rug out from under you or cause you to question your trust.  I will not intentionally belittle you or put you down unless that is a specifically negotiated arrangement and executed at specifically designated times so that you can understand the difference between my words and my beliefs.

I respect those that I encounter, and even for those that have hurt me in the past or continue to hurt me now – I try to be respectful and forthright, but make no mistake, I will not idly sit by and continue to take the abuse, nor will I suffer it as you apply it to others.  I will at the least ostracize you and may even confront you, depending on the situation.

I have often said that I think I’m more of a masochist than a Sadist, and perhaps that fact is informing my opinions here.  I make no broad statements to say that a majority of Dominants feel as I do, nor do I necessarily think that they should, but this is what works for me, and it is a continuing part of my education and growth in this wonderful and scary world we inhabit.

I’m not sure at what point in my life I started to make this distinction, and I know that I’ve never successfully conveyed the nuance before, but I suspect that this is the kernel that exists behind my personal difficulties in causing pain in those that I love.

When you look back at me and say, “please hurt me,” this is the difficulty through which I have to process before I can act.  Like my grasp of other languages, I have not yet (despite my advanced age and position) been able to completely internalize these things and so I must go through a process of translation and change this to, ‘please render pain unto me,’ in my own particular and rather archaic idiom.

But my life, my experience in BDSM, and my experience in relationships is an ever evolving process and this is yet one more thing that I am refining and will probably further refine again over time.

bdsm, rant

Fifty Shades of Fucked Up

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The movie adaptation of E L James’s book, 50 Shades of Grey starts tonight at midnight in most parts of this country.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past couple of weeks, you almost certainly already knew that.

For those that know me, it’s no big surprise that I’m not much of a fan of the series.  I don’t really know anyone who thinks that it an accurate representation of anything, but because it is meant to be entertainment, it does not have to be.

I would like to make it clear, however, that I respect and admire Ms. James despite my opinion on the accuracy or quality of her writing.

I’d like to think that I’m a good writer, but objectively, I’m forced to admit that Ms. James is light years ahead of me in terms of success.  She is a millionaire many times over and I’m, well, not.  She has millions of readers, many of whom are die-hard fans, and I have a few hundred people who read this blog.  She’s a woman with wealth and power.  For those things and others, I actually have a great deal of respect for her.  She has a feel for the pulse of the populace at large, and I’m afraid I’ve become rather specialized.

Don’t get me wrong, there are some serious problems with her books.  I don’t think she did much fact checking, and it’s pretty clear that her understanding of the BDSM world comes from the point of view of an outsider.  I doubt very much that she had any exposure to a real BDSM community before she wrote her first book.  I would hope that she has by now, but since I have seen no evidence of it, I cannot remark on that.

Ms. James – if you are reading this, get in touch, I’d be more than happy to give you a true introduction.

But – that aside.. there is really one thing about her books that bothers me more than the niggling factual problems, internal inconsistencies, or use of repetitive plot devices and word choices.. and that is the underlying premise that the reason Christian Grey is a Dominant is because he is compensating for some psychological trauma.  He actually describes himself as ‘fifty shades of fucked up’ which is clearly the basis for the name of the entire series and a recurring theme throughout.

The implications are broad and rather harsh.  BDSM is a proxy for the world of darkness, of course, and a crutch for those that are not yet able to let go of their sordid pasts and wake up to join the real world.  It could almost have been anything – she needed a hidden and secret world for the protagonist to get caught up in, and since the vampire genre was already saturated she made a rather brilliant leap to pull in something that actually does  exist and make use of that instead.  It was genius on her part, really, but it paints those of us who actually are part of that world in a bad light.

She implies that anyone who would willingly make that a part of his life is somehow damaged.  The anti-hero in Christian Grey is a foil to the perfect innocence of the protagonist Anastasia.  He is dark and mysterious and larger than life and pulls her perfect innocent virginal person into his life of darkness and self loathing.

Now.. I can be aloof and mysterious at times.  I can be brooding and difficult.  I am the victim of several terrible things that happened to me when I was younger, but my role in the BDSM world does not mask anything and is not a foil for some true image of a more mainstream me that is waiting to be released.  This is who I am and I am unashamed.  Self loathing is rarely a part of my expression.  I have issues with physical pain and they can be frustrating but the vast majority of the time I feel happy and well adjusted.

I will admit, there are things that I do like about some of the interactions that the characters have in her books.  If I were a billionaire with very few actual job responsibilities I think that I might do many of the things that Christian does and act in many ways like he does, but certainly not in every way.  Perhaps part of that is because I’m older and wiser than Christian is meant to be.

I like the protective and overbearing nature that Christian takes towards Ana.  This actually did mirror many of the D/s aspects that my ex and I had as part of our relationship.

One of my strongest kinks is exposing the people that I love to new things, and that is certainly something the Christian does with a flare that exceeds my resources, but if I were to become an overnight billionaire you can bet that I’d be doing a lot of very similar things.

But I am not 50 shades of fucked up and I somewhat resent the image that she has created for those like me.

I doubt she wrote the novels with the intention of inviting these types of comparisons, and she likely could not have predicted the impact that her portrayal of the lifestyle would have on those of us who are in it, so I do not hold her personally accountable, but the fact remains that these comparisons are being made, and for most of the mainstream community, this is their first inkling of what BDSM is and they’re getting the wrong ideas.

The fact that this has started a dialog is a wonderful thing, but the fact that she, armed with too little information, has created a meme to describe BDSM participants.  This has enflamed the passions of many, interested many more in learning and exploring BDSM, and given some few just enough information to be dangerous to those that don’t know better.

BDSM can be a very dangerous thing to become involved in, and I am concerned that by bringing this into the mainstream she has helped to create an imbalance in the state of affairs.  The vast majority of her readers are female, and the interest that she has sparked for things kinky has created whole new streams of products and expanded some that were there before.  The number of proto-submissives is on the rise and only likely to become more so with the release of the movie.

As a Dominant, I should regard this a good thing, and I do, but sexual predation has long been a part of the BDSM community, which largely polices itself for such things, and has been largely effective to date in so doing because our numbers are relatively small and within the community, people become known for their behavior.  If a person is a predator, the word tends to spread.

Now – we’re beginning to see a rise in those interested, and they tend to be turning to online resources to satiate their newly found tastes for kink.

There are a couple of problems with this.

The BDSM community has been able to rely on self policing largely due to the fact that meetings are most often done in meatspace and where there are more than few practitioners in one place.  Sketchy things are noticed and corrected.  This does not, and perhaps cannot, happen in virtual space.

There is no formal process for induction into the BDSM community.  While there are leather groups with formal practices and some of us maintain a higher level of protocol than others, in general, any person can step forward at any time and declare himself a Dominant and claim at any background that he wishes.  There is very little that one can do to validate or refute such claims.  Sure, there are a few of use with specialized skills that can track people online and through public records, and sometimes it’s possible to refute ridiculous claims without the need to really do any research, but sometimes you simply cannot tell.

If you meet someone online you cannot know how much of their projected persona is real and how much is a fabrication.

This is true of online dating in general and certainly not limited to BDSM endeavors, but whereas social dating is often limited in scope, there are those that, under the guise of BDSM, are actually meeting a complete stranger for the first time and allowing this person to blindfold them, tie them up, and hit them with things.

This can and will lead to tragedy, I’m sure of it.

So – for those of you who are reading this and new to the concepts of BDSM, I urge you, go to a much.  Meet people who are in the community in person – in a public place – several at a time.  Talk to them in person, learn from them, ask questions.  The BDSM community locally has proven to be one of the most inclusive communities that I have ever seen or heard about.  Everyone is extremely approachable, and while there are always personality conflicts and differences of opinion, people are rarely, if ever, mean.  Well, until you ask them to be. that is…

If you meet someone online and really are drawn to meet them rather than first exposing yourself to a munch or three, follow safe dating practices!

Meet somewhere public.  Have a contact person who knows where you are and have a check in time.  Have an extraction plan.  And most importantly, don’t do anything dangerous on your first meeting.

What is dangerous, you ask?

If you really have to ask that, I suspect that you’re not listening to any of this anyway.

Be safe.

Be bold, be strong, be alive, satisfy your curiosity, satisfy your cravings, but be safe.

bdsm, control, dominance, protocol, question

The Importance of the Collar

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Collars can carry as many meanings as there are people to share them, but generally they are a few well accepted archetypes within the greater BDSM community.  However, even these can be somewhat confusing and entirely open to interpretation.

From my perspective, in my experience, and in my opinion, the three major archetypes are the Slave Collar, the Play Collar, and the Training Collar.

The Slave Collar is the most common within the BDSM community, and in fact, in most cases when a person is talking about having a collar, being collared, or collaring someone, this is what they are talking about.  Symbolically, this is intended to denote ownership.

Generally the person wearing the collar symbolically becomes the property of the person who placed the collar around the slave’s neck.  If I were to collar you with a slave collar, I would refer to the collar as ‘my collar’ and I might tell others that you wear my collar when defining our relationship.

While wearing my collar, you are my property, and the moment I take it off of you or permit you to remove it, that relationship ceases to exist.

For this reason, a slave collar generally never comes off except to be momentarily replaced with another collar.  There may be more than one collar to fill this role… for instance, one might have a collar that is worn only in private or around other kinky folks but is a bit too obvious for daily outside wear – this is generally referred to as the ‘slave collar’, ‘private collar,’ or even simply ‘His collar.’  Additionally, one might have a necklace with a lock pendant or some other indicator of its true purpose but that is less obvious to the uninitiated.  This is typically referred to as a ‘day collar,’ or ‘public collar.’

The term ‘Play Collar’ can have a couple of different meanings.  Generally this is used to either mean a collar that is used for a short duration – usually only the length of a single scene.  This can either be because the collared person is not actually your property – you are assuming that set of roles for the scene only – or because that person has a regular slave collar and the play collar is different in some way that facilitates your play.

For instance, I once had a rather chunky leather posture collar with three rings on it.  It would not make sense as a regular wear collar because it forces my property to keep her chin up at all times, which would make negotiating the world somewhat difficult, but sometimes that is exactly what I want.  It also has more attachment points on it, and sometimes you just need to shackle your property’s ankles to her neck, you know?

The Training Collar is a bit more uncommon and bit more nebulously defined.  It sits somewhere between the two listed above.

Where the Slave Collar is meant to be eternal and the Play Collar is meant to be used only for a short time, the Training Collar is meant to be used until the subject under consideration is either accepted or rejected.

The Training Collar is usually replaced with a Slave Collar or discarded entirely, depending upon the results of the training in question.

During a training period, there may be an equivalent ‘private collar’ and ‘day collar’ pair, but usually at least one of the two is intended to be replaced once the training is completed.

The training collar comes off and on a lot more frequently than the slave collar, and indeed, the right to wear the collar might be considered as part of the rewards to the sub during training.

For these reasons, Slave Collars (and their corresponding ‘day collars’) are generally well made, expensive, eternal sorts of items.  I’ve purchased and used Slave Collars made from leather, stainless steel, even titanium and day collars made from silver or gold.  Though of course, they can be made from anything at all.

Training collars are generally intended to be rugged enough to wear for a long time, but will eventually be replaced and are generally good quality but not jewelry level pieces.  I’ve used leather for these most commonly, but rubber, vinyl, or neoprene are also quite common.

Play collars really run the gamut, are often more interesting or gaudy than their longer wear counterparts, might often be used by more than one person, and can be anything from a piece of string or a ribbon to a dog collar made from nylon or fake leather, or even heavy pieces of wrought iron and chain.

It is important to note, however, that nothing about the materials that are used to make the collar can be inferred to denote the type of collar that it represents.  That is entirely up to the participants and their own particular aesthetic.

The most important thing though, and the thing that brings all of this together, is that all of these collars (and possibly others of which I am completely unaware) are intended to be powerful symbols that establish Dominance.

The collar is meant to be owned by the Dominant partner, and whether it is purchased by him or not before the power exchange takes place, it is understood that he is the Owner and Controller of the collar.

When he puts it on the submissive partner, he is symbolically establishing his Dominance, and the collar itself is intended to serve as a reminder to the submissive partner of his submission.  While the collar is in place, this is intended to be an absolute (subject to negotiated parameters) transfer of power.

I used to be what one might consider a ‘High Protocol Dom.’  By this, I mean that I used to establish a set of rules and expectations that I had for my property.  While you were wearing my collar, you would be expected to carry out my instructions exactly, you would be expected to anticipate my desires and fulfill them prior to being asked, you would be expected to understand what I mean when I call, “Front!” and to comply immediately.

The days of High Protocol seem to be waning, and I am not so strict any longer.  Hierarchy and order are important, but I find that as I grow older, these things are less and less compatible with my worldview.

In fact, I’m coming to believe that Hierarchy may be harmful…  But this is not an article on Protocol or Hierarchy.

Today, for myself and most of the others that I’ve had the opportunity to witness lately, the collar is more an expression of partnering and position than anything else.  It can be used as a reminder to fulfill a role, but it’s not typically used in the way that I was originally taught, and even my own use of collars has recently been much more lax than it used to be, but the collar is still a useful reminder and tool.

As with everything in BDSM, these things are evolving.  As a former High Protocol Dom, some of these new, more relaxed ways of handling things chafe a bit.

I see something that would have been corrected in my past life and I let it pass because the current paradigm does not place the same level of importance on these things, and there are a great many things about the current paradigm that I find myself enjoying lately.

BDSM is making it’s way into the mainstream, and things like this must happen for that transition to take place.

Where once power transfer and authority were the forces that drove me, now I find that inclusion and compassion are the things that I crave most.  Devotion remains my main kink, but I am learning that it may take more forms than that to which I was most accustomed.

Still though, if you’re wearing my collar, you can expect me to point out that fact every once in awhile, and to urge you to think about what it represents or even use it for corrective action when required.

I may be taking a trip down the path of Hedonism lately, but I don’t see those things as wrong or incompatible.   BDSM is evolving, and so am I.

 

bdsm, life

Out of the woodwork

Since I posted the ‘Stasis‘ entry, I’ve been receiving an even greater number of emails than usual.

Many of these were queries as to my emotional state – and I appreciate the concern that I’ve been given.  Some were a little more pointed…

Since my latest entry (Expectations…) the number of requests to meet in person and offers for play, both online distance play and in-person local-to-me play have increased dramatically.

I’m grateful for the attention, but I would like to set the record straight on a few notes.

Firstly – though my former primary partner and I ended things, I was not monogamous with her at the time of our split, and I am still not ‘single’ in the traditional sense.  I’ve been free to pursue other relationships for some time, but I am actually not seeking that right now.  Now is a time for reflection and taking things slowly.

I posted that I was going to, over the course of the next year, rekindle relationships that I had left to wither, that I was going to forge new ones, and that I would work to strengthen the ones that I already have.  That remains a true statement, but it seems to have been interpreted by some to mean that I am immediately seeking that, and I am not.

I do not have a specific time frame for this, and I am currently working to simplify things until such a time as I feel that I am emotionally ready for more.  I do not know how long that might be.

It will be some time before I am ready to take on anyone new, or even to seriously rekindle relationships that have faltered.  I am always happy to hear from people from my past, or to provide guidance to people that I have not had contact with before, but I currently require a certain amount of distance for those relationships.

I have one partner with whom I am spending my time right now, and while I work on myself (which is a never-ending process,) together we are beginning the process of working on her and finding the path to what it is that she wants and how that fits in with my desires.

Working with a new submissive requires a significant amount of attention, patience, and time.

I have made the mistake in the past of engaging with other partners while attempting to mentor a new submissive, but it has not worked out as well as it should have, and this is not a mistake that I wish to repeat.

So, while I remain available for advice as always, I am not looking to take on any new trainees, long distance D/s relationships, or even to begin playing with any new partners right now.

I still firmly believe that access to more information, more styles of D/s, and more personalities is a good thing for anyone who is interested in this lifestyle, and to the degree that I have always been available to my readers for such things, I still am.

I just need some more time before I start anything new with anyone, from either my past or future, and I hope that does not offend anyone or turn anyone away from asking me for advice or an opinion.

You readers are the reason that I keep writing here, so please don’t stop the emails or comments (I do have anonymous comments disabled, so if you are afraid of outing yourself as kinky, email is still your best choice) but understand that it may be some time before I agree to more than passing emails back and forth.

I remain yours, and I remain Rant.