REDIRECTED TO MAYBEMAIMED.COM: Maybe Maimed but Never Harmed

Tech geekery in both my professional and personal life has kept me away from this blog for a short while, but it was relationship angst that initiated the suspension of my time here. I got upset with Eileen for one reason or another (it doesn't really matter for this entry).

When you're in a relationship—any relationship—it can be hard to express being upset. When you're in a relationship that's specifically structured around power imbalances and the notion that things are unfair, it's that much harder to express being upset. Being actually angry doesn't always even present itself as an option.

Something somewhat astonishing to me is the fact that a lot of people who are enticed by the "things are unfair" idea seem to think this kind of emotional repression is actually the way such relationships are supposed to work, and that there's nothing wrong with that. Some people even use phrases like "Master/slave relationship" or "protocols" or other intelligent-sounding words to codify this behavior into a full-fledged system or "lifestyle."

Ultimately, this is not actually so hard to understand. Like so many other things, this behavior is an example of people structuring their relationships around their fantasies instead of structuring their fantasies around their relationships. The trap is in a particularly persistent blind spot most people have: their sexual desires.

Kink in Exile articulates one manifestation of this so clearly that I simply have to quote her:

I have seen more than one d/s relationship that seemed to be founded on at least one of the partner’s fear of being an adult and having to make decisions. Explain to me again how you willingly give power to your master or mistress if you don’t have that power to begin with? Submitting has to come from a place of power and control over your life, otherwise what’s the point? Otherwise you are not handing control of your life or even your evening over to your dominant, you are seeking out a caretaker.

Of course, doing anything like this is what we tech geeks call a Bad Thing. When people do this, they consistently fail to identify distinctions between different components of their relationship to one another and in doing so they often fail to address even the most basic of relationship concerns. In other words, a slave in a "Master/slave relationship" is still a person in a relationship first, and a slave second.

There's this concept of layers, or more technically a stack, that is fundamental to the construction of many things in our world today. The basic idea is that one layer builds upon the things it receives from the layer beneath it and provides things to build upon to the layer above it. In this way, a robust and reliable system can be developed—and maintained—by segmenting different pieces of the system.

I think that a D/s relationship could benefit from a construction similar to this. It's the way I think about my relationship with Eileen. I am at once her friend, her lover, her boyfriend, and her slave. Indeed, I am her slave because I am her boyfriend, and I am her boyfriend because I am her lover, and I am her lover because I am her friend.

Our relationship developed in a decidedly organic way; right place, right time, right person. I'd been playing for long before I met her, and I'd been looking for submission in a number of venues. When I didn't find fertile ground, I thought maybe submission wasn't for me. That's why I was a self-described bottom and not "a submissive." Of course, I'm submissive now to Eileen but this is because submission is the top (or last) layer that rests upon quite a few other things.

It turns out that, at least for me, any meaningful submission requires a foundation of both friendship and sexual attraction. Only once these things are established does the opportunity for submission seem to be present.

Being aware of this construction helps in many ways. One of the first questions I ask myself these days when confronting some kind of emotional obstacle (or novelty) is: "In which layer does this interaction belong?"

For instance, it's clear that asking for her permission before I allow myself the pleasure of an orgasm is an interaction that belongs in the D/s dynamic we've engaged in. Thus, it's a higher-layer interaction, and it relies on the well-being of lower layers. Contrastingly, cleaning the bathtub because it's dirty and we don't want our drain to clog is probably something that belongs in the friendship layer; I'd do that for any roommate, not just one that sexually dominates me. As Tom puts it, doing nice things for each other is one of the lubricants of a good relationship.

For the first time in over a year, I asked Eileen for a break from orgasm denial that weekend when I was feeling upset. I had already accidentally had two orgasms, felt terrible about them, and was in an emotional state in which I couldn't deal with maintaining that explicit D/s dynamic because the boyfriend dynamic was having trouble. Of course, this was an extreme case, but it serves as a useful illustrative example of this concept in action.

This entire concept is, of course, a drastic simplification of emotional interactions. Obviously, I clean the tub sometimes because I am submissive, and I'll ask for an orgasm because I'm Eileen's lover and my own sexual gratification is served by the asking. The difference between theory and practice, is, of course, that in theory practice is the same as theory whereas in practice they are different.

That said, the point still stands. When there are problems, you need to address them at the layer or with an approach that actually confronts the issue, instead of sidestepping it. That's what Eileen and I do when we have issues to work out. She never pulls the "but I'm your Mistress" card when we're not dealing with an issue that's a part of the D/s layer. It would be harmful to do so.

This Kink on Tap is kind of an extended addendum to our previous episode where we talk about and introduce the topic of sexual teasing and denial and chastity play. If you haven't listened to that episode already, I strongly urge you to do so.

The best part, however, is that Tom Allen from the Edge of Vanilla joined Eileen and I to talk about his personal experiences. Of course, the advantage of having someone on the phone is that you can ask personal qusetions and get immediate, personal responses.

There's no shortage of that in this converastion, where Tom shares a lot about his own reasons for enjoying chastity, the way in which this kind of sexual power play developed in the relationship with his (very blessed) wife, and of course why this kink in particular is often thought of as being very "vanilla." I couldn't help but share some of my own opinions and experiences as well, and Eileen does the same.

Lest you think that Tom's always this cerebral, however, don't forget about his super-hot chastity porn. My own fantasies tend to drift towards slightly more painful tastes, but that doesn't stop me from being the first to admit that I've sprung more than my fair share of hard-ons looking at Tom's stuff.

As always, I hope you enjoy this episode of Kink on Tap and invite your feedback of any kind (though especially regarding audio engineering) either as comments here or by emailing kinkontap+feedback@gmail.com. Have something you want to hear talked about or a story you want to share? Write to me at kinkontap+viewermail@gmail.com (and don't question why it's called viewer mail, 'cuz I wouldn't know what to tell you).

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Just earlier today a friend sent me to this Savage Love article in the Village Voice. It's about pegging, aka strap-on sex. We've all talked about this before, remember. The reason this article stuck out like a bright and red sore thumb in all the otherwise mundane vanilla-oriented sex advice columns was the nugget of wisdom by the ever-wonderful Violet Blue shared in response to this woman's concerns:

Everything I've come across so far seems to be playing into the stereotypes that plague male- on-female anal sex. ("You're going to take my cock up that little ass," etc.) I don't peg my man to work out my aggression, I peg him because the prostate is a wondrous thing.

When I point at other submissive men who are blinded by their own irresistible cravings to think before they act and tell you that they have hurt me in my sex life, this is (an example of) exactly what I mean. When I point at pro-dommes and tell you that they are cheapening me to other dominant women, this is exactly what I mean. When I point at the media and say that this is why I feel like it is invading my bedroom, this is exactly what I mean.

Violet Blue responds with some much-needed reason to all the craziness:

Pegging in most porn is festooned with stereotypes of shame and pain, like most sex in mainstream porn," says Violet. "And, unfortunately, these stereotypes have seeped into online sex culture. But you don't have to be Mistress Asscrusher, and he doesn't have to answer to Worthless Buttslut, in order to enjoy strap-on sex. Like I explain in my book, most couples who peg do it because it's fun, intimate, new, exciting, and quite loving.

I've said it before, but I guess it behooves me to say it again: I don't see anything wrong with Mistres Asscrusher or Worthless Buttslut, but if you start to expect that of me (by behaving in ways that show it—I couldn't care less what positions you fantasize about me in as long as they remain fantasy) then you are actually hurting me and it doesn't matter who you are or what your orientation, submissive man or dominant woman or albino monkey or whatever, you're not going to see much respect beyond that I accord fellow humans coming from me. Respect like that is and always should be earned—you don't get it just because you're of an "alternative" sexuality.

Addendum: I was just talking to that brilliant friend of mine who asked me what the hell my beef with pro-dommes is. It's a fair question. She asked me to describe it in twenty words or less, because she was tired. So I did:

Pro-dommes have a monopoly on the expression of female domination in the majority of online and real-world kinky contexts.

One thing led to another in this conversation, when she finally remarked that she never thought she'd see "the personal is political" from this side of the sex wars, but yeah, ok, I can see it. Being completely untrained in feminist theory I'd never heard that word before, so I did a little bit of searching to find out what she's talking about. I have no conclusions, but I wanted to share what I found because I feel it is inherently relevant to the above post.

• A Z-Magazine editorial on the various meanings of the phrase "The Personal Is Political" through time since the late 1960's. (I highly recommend reading this first.)


• Wikipedia's article on identity politics.


• Newsgroup archives discussing the origins of the phrase "The Personal is Political".


• and more….

In brief, I am beginning to wonder if this phrase and its related political associations are an accurate description of the feelings of systematic marginalization in the post above. I'll leave further speculation, however, for a time after more significant rumination.

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At one of the BDSM organizations I attend, I volunteered myself to participate at an "introduction to kink" panel presentation for another discussion group that had invited us to speak. When I heard back from the group, I was asked to speak on two things: definition of terms and bondage. Yay! Both topics that I truly love. :)

What follows is the notes I put together in a stream-of-consciousness sort of way over the last half hour or so. They're obviously not very refined or comprehensive because, keep in mind, I kind of wrote them as if I was speaking to the audience and this is supposed to be a mile wide, inch deep overview of what BDSM is about.

Feedback is always welcome.

Definition of Terms

Vanilla isn't so much a definition as an anti-definition. Technically, “vanilla” means not kinky. However, this is actually a complex issue because the effective meaning of that definition depends on the definition of what is (and what is not) “kinky.”

For example, do you consider spanking to be kinky? I would consider that as an activity within the broader set of sexual activities called impact play, which we'll cover a tad more in a little bit, but a lot of very so-called “vanilla” couples engage in spanking all the time. So, you can see how much of this terminology will need to be interpreted as you see fit, by what feels right to you. Suffice it to say for now that when I say vanilla, what I mean is “not as kinky as me.”

If you didn't notice, I also introduced another term there surreptitiously: play. What is play? This one's easy because it's exactly what it sounds like: play is having fun doing something that you enjoy. In BDSM parlance, playing means “engaging in a BDSM activity” such as spanking or flogging or sexual teasing or role-playing, or whatever is of interest to you.

When two people are playing together, what they are doing is called a scene. A scene in this context is similar to a scene in a live-action play (see the fun we have with terms!), where people get together, interact with each other, and then the activity stops. A scene marks the time period from when the play begins to when the activity (though not necessarily the playing) ends.

Defining the beginning and ending of a scene is difficult because scenes can involve more than one kind of play. It's a little bit like the geometry statement “a square is not a rectangle, but a rectangle is a square.” A scene is not play, but playing is a scene. Most people seem to use emotional peaks and valleys to mark the beginnings and endings of scenes; when the emotion or activity has taken on a high intensity, that's part of a scene, and when it has subsided significantly, that's the end. Other people use time as the distinguishing factor; one block of time spent doing one activity is one scene, another block is another.

Then, of course, there's the actors involved in the scene. Typically, there are at least two, and one is dominant (the partner doing the dominating) while the other is submissive (the partner doing the submitting). Alternate terms that have less emotional context attached to them are a top and a bottom, respectively.

Finally, there's a concept called polyamory, which literally means “many love.” Polyamory is not strictly a fetish or BDSM term, but actually a relationship paradigm that is in many ways the opposite of monogamy. In fact, there are entire communities centered around practicing and learning about polyamory that are completely separate from the BDSM world. Where monogamy is committing to be with one romantic and/or sexual partner at a time, polyamory is, for lack of a better word, different. In essence, it means being open to more than one love at any given time.

It's important to note that polyamory is not polygamy, nor is it noncommittal, carelessly promiscuous, or emotionally insensitive. Interestingly, the ideals of polyamory have little to do with the number of sexual partners you may have (or want), but rather focus on the quality of your relationships, a fluid definition of what a successful relationship is, and encourages honesty, communication, negotiation, self-awareness, and emotional intelligence.

Bondage and bondage safety in the blink of an eye

Bondage is a huge subject, and there's no way in hell anyone can cover all the really important bits in five minutes, but I'll give it a shot. As always, if there any questions about this or anything we've spoken about today, please don't hesitate to ask me or anyone else about them. Also, I'll provide a list of resources that you can check out on your own time on my web site (at the bottom of this page).

Bondage is all about physically restricting someone's movement or ability to act. This covers everything from handcuffs, ropes, shackles, gags, straightjackets, to cages, and even corsetry in a way. Anything that can be used to aid in the goal of restraining someone is fair play for bondage enthusiasts, so this also means standard clothing, scarves, belts, plastic wrap, bed sheets, and a host of other objects can be used.

There are three primary (but many more secondary and tertiary) ways you can categorize bondage. These are:

• what object you're binding or being bound with,


• what interpersonal dynamic you've engaged in while being bound and


• what position you're being restrained in.

As I mentioned, many objects can be used for bondage. However, many people have a preference for a specific type of object. Personally, I'm in love with rope and extremely heavy metal shackles, but everyone has an individual preference.

Similarly, everyone's preference for how they like to be tied is different, too. Some people prefer to try and avoid being tied up by fighting against the efforts of their binder, or forcefully capturing and restraining a partner who is acting reluctant. This is often a major facet to scenes like rape and kidnapping fantasies for a lot of bondage lovers. There are many techniques and even martial arts that are specifically designed to teach you how to take someone down and tie them up such as hojujitsu, or Japanese prisoner bondage.

Others see bondage as a means to relax and enjoy a cozy sensation of snugness, or to focus on creating the perfect rope harness or to find the most creative position they can get their partner stuck in. For such people, bondage is as relaxing as a warm, hot bath after a stressful day. Yet others see bondage as a means to some other end. Once you've got your partner bound, that's when the fun can really begin! So bondage really is, to a very large degree, what you make of it.

However, regardless of why do you it or what you do it with, there's some general safety information you absolutely must know. Keep in mind that despite the seemingly benign nature of the play, bondage is one of the more dangerous, more physically stressful and demanding forms of play you can engage in. Yes, it's okay to take a scarf and tie your lovers hands to the headboard, but you really ought to know what you're doing if you get into more serious positions like hog-ties or suspension.

So the first rule of bondage safety is this: never leave a bound person alone. Just don't do it. You never know when an emergency will pop up.

The second rule of bondage safety is always have a fast way to release the bound person available to you. My girlfriend and I always keep EMT safety scissors right with our rope, so they're never far away. Also, if you're doing that, be sure to actually test the scissors to make sure they cut the rope you're going to use before you start playing, for obvious reasons.

Thirdly, be careful of how tight and how long you are keeping someone bound. Essentially, you want to achieve a snug fit that does not cut off circulation to your partner's extremities or cut off their breathing. (And if you're worried about cutting off their breathing that means you've got neck bondage happening, which is one of those things you should never do until you're feeling really comfortable in your ability.)

Good things to remember when you're tying someone up is that you want to be able to slide one or two fingers comfortably underneath their bonds. If you can't, it's too tight. One way to tell that circulation is being cut off is if the bound person's skin feels very cold. A little bit of coolness is okay, as is some tingling, but if your partner reports either of those sensations or you can feel that their body part is getting cold, you need to keep a strict eye on the clock from then on out. Don't leave them tied that tightly for too much longer.

Furthermore, try to avoid tying knots that press directly into veins or arteries or joints, such as on the wrists, elbows, and the back of the knees. These are often uncomfortable for the bottom and indicate a sloppy knot on the top's part. I won't go into knots here because it'd take too long, but there's a ton of information about this stuff in books and on the Internet. Just search or “how to do erotic bondage” and you'll hit a plethora of tutorials.

Finally, but certainly not least, use common sense to avoid accidental injury. In other words, do remember to do things like have your partner holding on to something or lying down if you're tying their ankles together. Especially if they're arms are already bound, you don't want them falling down and breaking their nose by accident. If you want that on purpose, that's one thing, but an accident is just not sexy.

Before I hand it over, I just want to reiterate one last time that this is absolutely, positively, not an all-inclusive guide to bondage or bondage safety. If you're interested in this stuff, come talk to me and do your due diligence. It will probably make the experience a hundred times better, and it may just save you an embarrassing (and costly) trip to the hospital.