Category Archives: rant

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, 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, rant

Radical Consent

I’ve just spent the majority of the past couple hours reading other people’s journal entries and notes and whatnot on a relatively popular kink social site, and one thing is abundantly clear… there are some gifted writers and smart people here, but these concepts that we’re tackling are hard to grasp, difficult to enumerate, perhaps even impossible to grok in a universal way.

There were several writings that struck a chord with me, but I’m going to pick on one in particular, because I both respect the author and think that he got a few things wrong.

I don’t know what makes me believe that adding my voice to the chorus will make a whit of difference, but here I embark upon that quest anyway.

Consent is one of the pillars upon which we build our community and trust.  Without consent, what we do is abuse.  This is an important statement, so please bear with me as I ask you to read it again, and be sure that you see there are no hedge words here: without consent, what we do is abuse.

I would never take it upon myself to invade a scene and put a stop to any actions that I saw taking place, even if, to me, they looked like abuse.  This is a conditioned response, and it was *not* something that came naturally to me.  This thing that we do is a highly ritualized and distinct universe from the reality that makes up day-to-day life for most people.

I have been witness to things that would make my blood boil and invite violence if the context from those actions was missing in my mind.  I can walk into a public dungeon and see things that if I saw them in a vanilla nightclub would warrant intervention, and I have.  But because I understand that the playplace I am at has house rules, and I accept that it is valid for me to assume that the people in scene have pre-negotiated their own terms, any intervention on my part is unwarranted, unwanted, and indeed harmful.

I have a great deal of respect for the writer of the piece I’m talking about — he goes by the name of Master James — and in his writing, he talks about consent, but he throws context out the window.  He lambastes the masses for failing to understand something that I have difficulty with even after more than a decade in this lifestyle, more if you count the years I spent at the periphery.  Our community is the only place I know of where people are able to give informed and radical consent.  Outside of the ivory tower, this is a much more muddled subject matter.

I have a contract with my partner.  She signed it willingly.  In fact, the task of writing the contract was a task that I delegated to her, because I wanted to be absolutely certain that her consent was informed, deliberate, and incontrovertible.  Not that the document itself has any legal standing, or that it cannot be changed (she was very insightful when she put the clause that allowed for modification of the contract into the contract itself) – but whether it has standing or not, whether it can be changed or not, it represents the pinnacle of consent.  It outlines the terms under which I can take action, the things that are expected of me, and most importantly, the things that I am not to approach.

Because of this, she is the only person in the world with whom I would have sex if she were intoxicated.  Because I have sober and persistent consent from her, I do not worry that she might not be able to consent to things for which we have previous history, but erring on the side of caution, I would not, even with her, attempt to push boundaries that we have not approached before when she is intoxicated.

This is all well and good in a perfect world, but the world is not perfect, not even in the highly idealized world in which we reside as kinksters.

However, this is the point where the illusion breaks down and Master James’s argument takes hold…

What if **I** am also intoxicated?

Now, I *am* a feminist, and I object to the term ‘radical feminist’ on the premise that the word ‘radical’ has become demonized and to apply it to a person is an attempt to discredit them by appellation, but I will admit that there are variances in the degree to which people cleave to this ideal, and since I am not a woman, I will never probably be as fully cognizant of the struggles of women as I should be, so I may not be as adherent to this ideal as I could be.

As far as I understand things, this is the argument that the feminists would make:

1) Alcohol and other intoxicants alter your inhibitions and cognitive abilities, making informed consent impossible.

2) Social pressures exist for women that take hold in the situation described in 1) above, and therefore, for a woman, even simple consent (as opposed to informed consent) is impossible for women even when only moderately intoxicated.

3) I am a man, and the dangers for me are significantly less than they are for a woman, so I should endeavor to err on the side of caution in all of these situations, and I should police my own actions.

On the face of it, I agree with all three points.

Point 1) is a simple fact, proven over and over again by numerous studies and real-world scenarios.  This is only reinforced further by the fact that the number one date-rape drug of all time always has been and will continue to be alcohol.

Point 2) is arguable, but you’d have to be something of a horse’s ass to make that argument.  There is no doubt in my mind that women have pressure put upon them from even before they reach sexual maturity to ‘put out’ for the boys – this is something that we can change, and changing perceptions like this is the reason I call myself a feminist.

Point 3) is also arguable, but again, it’s a reasonable argument to make.  As an atomic argument, I have nothing to say against it.  The first part of the statement is pure fact – sex is much more dangerous for women than it is for men.  There are STIs that are much easier for women to contract and for which the consequences are much more dire than they are for men, but even if that were not the case, unwanted pregnancy is a huge problem for a woman and significantly less so for the man.

If you take each of these individually, I would say that this represents a very strong argument.

However, the problem comes up with the intersection of points 1) and 3).

Sex is less dangerous for me, so I should err on the side of caution.  Roger, I’m with you there, totally on board, 100%, no problem.

Alcohol reduces inhibitions and impairs cognitive function.  This is every bit as much true for me as it is for her.  I have been taken advantage of when intoxicated.  I didn’t report it, because, well, that point 2) up there? there are societal pressures for us men as well…

But more importantly than my own experiences as a victim, when I am cognitively impaired and my inhibitions are reduced, remembering point 3) is potentially impossible for me, and I think it is not a broad generalization to apply that to any person.

Rape is a really ugly word.  Worse than ‘radical’ by a long shot.  The thing that many feminists are trying to do is to divorce the concept of intent from that of rape.  This is where I think the problem lies, and something that I disagree with, vehemently.

Rape is legally defined as the unlawful compelling of a person through force or duress to have sexual intercourse.

This is an overly narrow definition, not the least of which because it explicitly calls out sexual intercourse when I would classify a whole host of other sex acts as potential rape, but inherent to this definition is the concept of compelling someone to do something, and that requires intent.

If I don’t intend to rape you, I cannot rape you.  At least, not in the eyes of the law, and I’m pretty sure that intent should also be the litmus test that we use for applying that term outside of the law as well.

Intent can take on many forms.

If I am at a party and I see a girl who is alone and drinking a lot, and I encourage her to drink more with the idea that I will then take her back to my place and have sex with her, that is rape.

If I am in a long term relationship with you, but things are rocky and we haven’t had sex in a while and I keep refilling your wine glass because I know that you loosen up when you’ve had a bit to drink and I hope that I can then coerce you into having sex when we get home, that is also rape.

If I am at a bar and I’m flirting with a pretty girl who is matching me drink for drink and then she invites me back to her place to have sex and I go along, is that rape?

I don’t think it is, but I’m not sure, and if I wasn’t just as drunk as she was, I would have collected her contact information and NOT gone home with her, because of point 3) above, but I’m drunk, and I’m human, and she’s pretty and she invited me to her place…

Have I ever violated the consent of someone?  It pains me to say so, but I probably have.  Not all consent violations are rape though.

No one has ever told me that I have violated her consent.  Not once, not ever.  None of the actions of my youth resulted in my incarceration, or even arrest.  I have never lost a friend because we had sex and she later decided that she didn’t want to.  I have never cultivated a friendship on the hopes that one day in a moment of weakness she would sleep with me because that was what I really wanted from the beginning…

However… I have had one night stands.  The premeditated intent to have sex was never a factor in any of those one night stands.  Never have I ever set out at the beginning of the evening thinking, “I’m going to get laid tonight,” but that doesn’t mean that it hasn’t happened.

Does this make me an evil person?  I don’t think so, but I’m not sure.

Have I ever had sex with someone, while drunk, that I would not have, had I been sober?

Of course I have… and you can bet your last dollar that it will probably happen again at least once before I can’t get it up any more, but I am a man, and those incidents were a lot less dangerous for me than they are for a woman.

Determining intent can be hard to do, even when you are making every effort to be honest with yourself, and in the end, adjudicating rape may end up much like Justice Stewart’s famous description of hard core porn versus art: “I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description [“hard-core pornography”]; and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it, and the motion picture involved in this case is not that.”

In his well-written and thought out piece, Master James makes the connection between a woman’s inability to consent while inebriated with being a child, and that’s where I think he’s just dead wrong.  Women are facing more danger than men in these situations and that must be considered by any rational man.

Feminism goes beyond seeking equality between the sexes because they are inherently distinct and unequal.  No matter how much I would like to be able to do so, I can never conceive a child, and that is both a blessing and burden that I can never face.

Let us, as rational beings, make things equal where they are, and accommodate the things that are not, and this is one of the things that is not equal.

I will continue to do my best to hold to points 1), 2), and especially 3) above, but I will not always succeed perfectly, because these three things are not complementary and they are not even really points, but instead they are spectra, but I know who I am and what my motives are, and I sleep very well knowing that I do the best I can.

I believe that is all any feminist, ‘radical’ or not, would ask of me.

I guess I was in the mood to rant…

I am Rant, and I have opinions, but I’m not always right.

Rant off.

bdsm, life, rant

Desperate is the Death of Sexy

Sex is a funny thing.  When you’re not getting it, it seems like the best thing in the world.  When you get plenty of it, it’s still pretty fucking wonderful, and when you are having as much as you want, with one partner or ten, people can usually tell.  I’m not sure exactly why, but people who are regularly having sex – not just any sex, but good sex – tend to stand out.

Actually – I’m pretty sure I do know why… it’s all about confidence.

There are several ways to describe the unconfident person, and desperate is often an accurate description.

Desperate is the Death of Sexy.

The intra-sentence capitalization there is a bit hokey, perhaps, but the emphasis is warranted.

Nothing moves you from ‘dark and mysterious’ to ‘lonely and pathetic’ faster than the simple realization on the part of the observer that you are not, in fact, mysterious, but that you are, instead, merely pathetic and some of my more timid friends are in awe of my ability to stay in the ‘dark and mysterious’ camp without having to resort to the ‘douchebag’ camp tactics.

I’m here to tell you that it is entirely possible to be both kind and sexy.  Contrary to the current conventional wisdom, you do not have to be an asshole to get girls to like you.  In fact, you just have to not be a pushover and you have to ask for what you want.  I’m not the most attractive man in the world, but I have no trouble whatsoever in finding sex partners because I am confident, intelligent, kind, and patient.  And by patient, I don’t mean that you stalk the poor woman for four months and hope that she’ll relent and have pity sex with you – the fact that that ever works is a serious detriment to us all, but that’s another rant entirely…

Somewhere in the twentieth century, Western society started to view women as people.  This is an amazing and long overdue accomplishment.  Someday, perhaps we will get to the point where we view women as equals as well, but that is something that I’ve harped on to various degrees in previous posts and won’t get into again here.

Anyway – the reason for mentioning the above is that prior to about a hundred and fifty years or so ago, there wasn’t much of a concept in Western society of consent as being important to the act of having sex.   Women were quite literally the property of their fathers or husbands and it was up to those men to decide when the women in question were allowed to have sex and with whom.   Women were viewed either as assets or liabilities, but never as people.  They were something to be sold away or bargained with.  And once the woman in question was of ‘breeding age’ she would be disposed of by her father and taken possession of by her husband who would then gain exclusive access to her, sexually and in every other way as well.

Fucking barbarian viewpoints if you ask me…

Anyway… somehow we managed to pull our asses out of such depravity and recognize that women have a right to control access to their own bodies.  This gave them the right to say ‘no’ and they often did, because out-of-wedlock children are still viewed with a stigma attached, it’s a very difficult thing for a woman to raise children on her own, and for the first time women were being given a choice about whether or not this was something they wanted to do.

When the birth control pill hit the streets we had a brief period where sex was viewed as something that could be experienced for pleasure alone and without all of the consequences that were commonly part of that equation before.  Women were actually, finally, and for the first time ever, able to choose to have sex for the sake of pleasure alone – something that men have enjoyed since the dawn of time.  The era of ‘free love’ was born and because the impetus was on women to go on the pill – a choice which they alone were empowered to make, reversing the power dynamic on a fundamental human drive for the first time ever – they became the de-facto gatekeepers of sex.

This put the choices that led to ‘consequence free’ sex into the hands of women alone.  Of course, this isn’t completely true – condoms have been around for much longer than the pill – but they require some forethought and for some reason which I cannot understand, are anathema to a lot of people’s enjoyment of sex.

So – the common belief evolved that men always want sex and that it is up to the woman to decide when and where this occurs because the preparation for this is her responsibility.   This is a naive viewpoint, but let’s let it slide for now…

This is a pretty new paradigm shift, but it is at least a couple of generations old now, and pretty firmly entrenched.  When the AIDS epidemic killed ‘free love,’ the changes to the way society views women and sex were already firmly in place, so sex became a lot scarier, and women started to say ‘no’ more often.  This is relaxing a bit now that HIV is treatable, and thus no longer a death sentence, and because infection rates have dropped in most of the world other than sub-Saharan Africa, but it is something that still plagues the minds of those in their 30’s and low 40’s.

So, now women had multiple good reasons to say, ‘no’ more often, and for the first time, the fact that they were saying ‘no’ mattered.

Guys in my generation were raised to respect this.

This is a good thing.

But society is a very poor teacher.  In order for the message to carry through all facets of society, it must be delivered as bluntly as possible and the consequences for failing to meet with expectations must be severe.  The end result was that the message, as delivered, was somewhat emasculating.  It came with the worldview that said, basically, “you can have sex with a woman only if she ‘gives it up to you.’”

This is a dangerous and harmful idea.

Firstly – this makes the assumption, once again, that men want sex with anyone and all of the time.  Secondly – this makes the assumption that women are reluctant to have sex in general, and that you will only succeed in getting into her panties by performing some kind of heroic act for which she is so grateful that she decides to go against her normal nature and allow you to have sex with her.  Implicit in this assumption is that women don’t want to be having sex normally.  And lastly, this also includes the assumption that sex is a taboo topic that should not be discussed openly, and that hurts everyone involved.  My general rule in life is that if I can’t talk about it openly, I should probably not be doing it.

Women like sex every bit as much as men.  Especially with patient, kind, and confident men.  Their tastes with the actual experiences differ considerably from woman to woman, but this is true of men as well.  Some women like to be called dirty names, some are totally turned off by the very thought of that.  Some women like to have their hair pulled or their asses slapped, but others respond only to gentle touch.  It behooves one to learn about what she likes before you start trying to push her into unknown territory.

In my experience, once you earn a woman’s trust (and I’m sure the same goes for men) she’ll be willing to at least try anything you ask her to do.  So if you have a particular kink that she doesn’t share, be patient, be kind, and be confident.  She’ll probably come around, and if she doesn’t you can address that once you know that you’ve at least given it the best possible chance for success.  But if you lose your cool, or you whine at not getting what you want, you can be guaranteed that she won’t even consider it.  She’ll lose respect for you, and if you ever even got into her panties, you probably never will again.  Once the respect is gone, it is extremely difficult to get back.. not impossible, but difficult, and the longer it goes on that way, the harder that climb back uphill becomes.

So – gentlemen of the interwebs – this is my advice to you:  Be calm, be sure, ask for what you want, and respect what she likes.  If you can do those things, you have a much better chance of not only getting what you want, but of getting it often and with enthusiasm.  It doesn’t really matter what you look like, how much money you make, or really any other of the myriad of criteria that society tells you are important.  Of course, it never hurts to be a billionaire Adonis type, but even if you are one, you’re going to get much less actual action if you act like a whiney toad than if you hold your head high, believe that you are valuable, and ask for what you want.

Desperation is the Death of Sexy, and I’m determined to bring Sexy back.

Was this a rant? I’m not sure.

Either way, I am Rant.

Rant off.

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.

bdsm, rant

Rant: Safewords

When I was inducted into the BDSM world, one of the very first lessons I learned was on the use of a safeword.  For this reason, it surprised me to learn how infrequently these are actually used.  In some ways, this isn’t so bad.  Some groups/pairs have other negotiated ways to stop activities or scenes if they need to, and that is all well and good, but there is one important difference between some of those things and what I was taught a safeword was supposed to represent…

I don’t know if it was the 50 Shades books that made this popular, or if it was popular before they were released, but I hear a lot about the use of the words ‘yellow’ and ‘red’ as ‘safewords’.  While on its own, this is not a bad innovation, it seems to have come at the cost of damaging the protocol for how to treat safewords – at least, insofar as my understanding of them has gone.

The protocol I was taught is very simple:

* There is ONE and only one safeword.  It should be a word that you would not normally use in play and it should be deliberate – something that you wouldn’t utter on accident or that might be misinterpreted as another word, and not a single syllable – something you have to mean it when saying.  Anything else is intended as part of the scene.

Sometimes this can be difficult for me to accept, I’ll admit, especially in things like rape fantasy scenes… I sometimes react to ‘No’ even when I should not.  It is a limitation that I’ve been unable to completely overcome even after 15 years, but this protocol helps and without it, I would likely be unable to take part in such scenes at all.

* If your play restricts the ability to speak, another gesture/movement will be used to convey the same meaning – this gesture/movement should fall into the same category as the word above – something deliberate, something that can’t be mistaken for something else.

* Either person (or any person in scene) can use the safeword to stop the scene/play/activity at any time for any or no reason.

* Use of the safeword stops everything for everyone.  Action will be taken to immediately stop all activities, pull participants out of bondage, cutting bonds if necessary, and begin aftercare to establish a sphere of safety and comfort for all participants.

And that’s really all there is to it.

I cannot stress the importance of the concept of immediate stop here enough.  What we do can be dangerous.  Permanent nerve damage is possible, as is asphyxiation, severe physical trauma, even death.  However, much more difficult to quantify, but possibly much more lasting in terms of long term damage and the need for repair are the possible psychological trauma that can occur from what we do.  The physical nature of things requires obvious action when the safeword is called, unless you don’t know what you’re doing – in which case you should not be doing it! – you will be able to easily spot where the tension is wrong or where there is too much torque, or where the beating is in danger of causing nerve damage or things like that, but it is nearly impossible to spot the signs of psychological trauma, and the only reasonable thing to do is to always assume that is present.

I keep a set of EMT shears with me at every scene.  I would recommend that every Dom do the same, whether you are intending to enact a bondage scene or not – just have them with you.  They’re second only to condoms in importance of having nearby, in my opinion, and with a fluid bonded partner, much more important.  This is a good example of what you should have : link  – I’m not recommending these specifically, and there is no affiliate link in there, so I don’t get any kickback if you order them from that link – do your research, find a pair that you like, get those.

I actually have a full trauma kit in my home, as much for use in possible civil emergencies as for things that might go wrong in a scene (which, thank the gods, I have never needed for either case) but I don’t usually take the whole thing with me when I’m going somewhere else.  The EMT shears are non-negotiable though, even if it means I have to check a bag on a flight for which I could have otherwise avoided doing so.

I have never needed the trauma kit, but I HAVE needed the shears.  I did a bondage scene with rope once where my submissive called out the safeword that I had set for her, and I cut her out of some complicated knots as fast as I possibly could have and it still felt like too long.  I’ve used leather restraints with carabiners and hooks before, and while those do obviate some of the need to cut someone out (since releasing a carabiner is much faster than untying a knot) I would not have hesitated to cut right through the leather if I had to, and I’ve tested the shears to be certain that they can do just that.

Pulling my submissive out of that bondage scene and then holding her and telling her that she was safe and that I was there to take care of her now and that the scene was ended was an intensely emotional thing for me as well as her.  She claims that she has no lasting psychological trauma from the scene, but it could easily have gone that way.

And this brings me to the reasons why I am not fond of ‘yellow’ and ‘red’ as safeword/codes…

One – having two words adds confusion to something that can not really stand to be confusing.  

That is more colloquial English than I am used to using, but I want to make this point very clear: confusion is your enemy in a BDSM scene.  This is why I push on open communication and  negotiation hard.  Confusion will get people hurt.  If not physically, people will get hurt emotionally or psychologically.

Two – having an ‘almost safe’ word detracts from the power of the ‘safe’ word.

I am not a fan of this ‘new’ development at all.  I call it ‘new’ because there was no such concept when I first started in BDSM.

It is my duty as Dom to understand what is happening in the scene and to control it, and that includes making sure that my submissive is okay no matter whether she uses the safeword(s) or not.  I should understand that if my submissive is not comfortable that I am encroaching upon her limits and be careful.  I am more than happy to make her uncomfortable, but I never wish to injure her.  Walking that line is usually pretty clear to me, because I make an effort to understand my submissive and what her body language is like before I begin any physical or even psychological contact, but everyone makes mistakes.. and that is what the safeword is there to resolve.

Hearing ‘yellow’ and then transitioning to ‘red’ leaves the feeling that there may be yet another level above that, or invite the question, “did you really mean ‘red’ or are we still at ‘yellow’?”  In my opinion both of those scenarios are dangerous and uncalled for.

The responses that I’ve seen advocated for with ‘red’ even are to back off and reassess, which in my not-so-very-humble-opinion is not nearly enough.  When I’ve been called upon to play by those rules, I’ve tried to do so to the best of my ability, but I would really rather have heard ‘hurricane’ and dropped out of scene entirely and gone straight to aftercare.

This is where this instructional message turns into a rant.

If I am your Dominant, I do not want to injure you.

I will hurt you.

I will bring you right up to the breaking point and show you how deep your own well goes.

I will push myself every bit as hard as I push you to achieve these goals.

I crave nothing more than the trust and worship and catharsis that comes from knowing that I can push you as hard as I think you can take, as hard as I myself can take, because that safety net is there – the safeword.

I have known couples that claim a safeword is not useful, or, even worse, say that use of a safeword is somehow not “real BDSM”.  That a slave who uses a safeword is not really a slave and that they have no place in these things.

That is an ignorant and dangerous position to take, and frankly those people scare the shit out of me, and I’m honestly not scared by much.

I need to be able to trust you to know your own limits, and I need to be able to know that I can push those in a safe, sane, and consensual manner.

If you take away my safeword, I cannot do that.

And yes, I have used a safeword as a Dominant.  I find that it provides a more complete catharsis and begins aftercare in a more distinct manner than simply pulling away and saying something like, “you’ve had enough.”  That is a condescending and unnecessarily brutal way to end a scene.

I care too much to not care about safewords.

This is my opinion.  This is not a call to action.

This is a rant…

Rant off.

bdsm, rant

Living the lifestyle

I’ve been around the block once or twice.

I’m not old, but I’m no spring chicken, that’s for sure.

BDSM today is a lot more complicated than it was when I was first putting my toes into the water, so to speak.

Firstly, there seems to be this conceptual gap that people can’t seem to see past that I don’t think was ever present before, at least not in the circles that I swam in.  “The lifestyle” is all there is to some people, and anyone who is not living in a 24/7 Total Power Exchange is not ‘real BDSM’.

One of the things that first attracted me to BDSM was the acceptance that followed with being with a group of like minded people who were unafraid to express who they were and what they liked.

What happened to that?

When did it become okay to order around someone else’s submissive without permission?  I saw that happen recently and I was shocked.  Never in a million years would I be so disrespectful.

I don’t recall so many alpha contests happening in my youth.  Perhaps I wasn’t interested in playing, but then, I’m not all that interested in it now.

My pack is not your pack is not the pack at large, and I don’t have to challenge every other Dom to know where I fit.   I can be respectful and even deferential to an equal, especially when I am in His house.   And I have a right to expect the same respect when you are in mine, and there is no violation of hierarchy or protocol involved.

There are no absolutes in BDSM, and that is its strength.

BDSM uses contracts, but more than that, BDSM is a contract.  No matter who you are or what your role is, your place in the shared construct is determined by everyone’s willingness to play.  If you don’t play fair, you can go home.

Just because I claim to be Master Rant, does that give me the right to assume that any submissive must bend to my will?  Where I was raised and inducted into this method of expression – because never forget, that is what BDSM is, it’s a shared fantasy, it’s a choice – where I was raised and brought into this way of life that would never fly.

Not every D/s pair likes to share.  And that is their right.

Not every unclaimed sub is looking for some random Master to come pull him off of his feet and drag him away to be beaten.

There seem to be a great many un-Dom-like Doms out there today, and I’m not sure where they came from or where they got their sense of entitlement and lack of morals.

If I saw a sub kneeling beside her Dom at a club or event, never in a million years would I approach her without first approaching him and seeking his permission and approval.

If I saw an apparently unclaimed sub, never would I just walk up and give her orders, or attempt to punish her for failing to refer to me as Sir.

Honor.  Respect.  These are concepts and ideals that are eternal, or at least they should be.  The strength of any society is in the willingness of its members to remain a part of it, the moment that we break the implicit social contract that comes with this lifestyle we place the whole edifice in danger of collapse.

Being a good Dom does not mean wearing arrogance like a badge and demanding that others see you as you want them to, because anyone with any experience sees right through that.

I am a Dom, and I have no difficulty at all in navigating the currents of this shared fantasy we live in because I know who I am and I do not need you to tell me.

That is the weakness that masquerades as strength.

When you insist that I call you Lord Thunderbottom or that my slave refers to you as Sir whenever you address her, you are showing me your fear.

If you would like to converse with my slave you will ask me and I may even consult her before I give you permission.  That makes me strong, because I understand the bond that we have, and if you call me weak for allowing her to have an opinion, you are showing me that you are afraid of your own shadow and I call you not-Dom.

 

This is my opinion. This is not a call to action. This is a rant…

Rant off.