REDIRECTED TO MAYBEMAIMED.COM: Maybe Maimed but Never Harmed

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I cycle a lot. (Not a surprise, really, for many reasons, but moving on….) Sometimes I'm all submissive and hurt-me-use-me and sometimes I'm not.

I haven't felt very submissive lately. Not "not submissive" in the sense that now I'm a top or a dominant, not like "oh, see, you're a guy so you're not really submissive anyway." I fucking hate that crap, which is the same thing as "you're a woman so you're really a submissive, at least a little bit."

I feel like anyone, anyone who's expecting me to get down on my knees for them is going to get smacked upside the head. Get me on my knees? Hah. Laughable. Because secretly, you see, I am actually the incredible hulk and when I am irritable or angry—or not feeling submissive—I become the emotional equivalent of a raging juggernaught. Only way you'll see me on my knees is in seven-inch thick steel, because I could break anything thinner and I would actually take a bullet before I voluntarily unlock my knee.

I don't like that I don't really understand why or where this comes from. I probably would enjoy the seven-inch thick steel, but I'm probably too ornery to actually make it a good scene.

Maybe it's been all the tech geekery that's turned me off from the submission for now (temporarily, I assure you; this has happened before). I spend all my time "being productive" and then when I'm feeling this way playing just feels like a waste of time. Like I could be doing something better with my time, as stupid as that sounds.

I am very picky about who and what gets access to my time. My time is very valuable to me. I only have so much of it. I've already used up 23 years of it. I loathe the idea of wasting anything.

I typically don't spend time thinking about things I don't care about. I get angry at people who I need to interact with when they are slow, physically or mentally. Of course, sexual playtime is hardly what most would call a waste of time, but I digress.

Naturally, this is sometimes problematic relationship-wise. Eileen calls it "not being in sync" (or something like that?) which sounds an awful lot like biorhythms, something I'm skeptical about at best. Still, there's no denying the cyclic nature of everything about me, which itself would be a complete summation if I were willing to accept it as such. (I'm not, of course.)

When "not in sync," however, what happens? One of us gets frustrated, in the bad way, about not getting to do what we want. "It's been a long time since you've wanted to get hurt," Eileen tells me a lot. "You used to get all moany when I pulled your hair, now you just say 'ow.'" I had to remind her: "I was all moany at the fact that there was a beautiful and sexy dominant woman paying attention to me. The hair pulling always made me go ow." (Yes, Eileen's attentions were my first that count. Being pissy about that is another rant entirely.)

Relationships cycle just like I do. Or maybe my relationships cycle because I do. Whatever it is, it's pissing me off. But don't try to put me on my knees because I will hurt you.

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.

People often draw analogies between things in kink sex and vanilla sex. They do this sometimes out of necessity and sometimes out of a desire to avoid the overhead of defining every term they use, but mostly they do it (as I'm about to do) because it's something they've heard done before.

I've never "flown" in a scene. That is to say, I've never "checked out" or "seen my body from outside itself" or "felt like the pain was sexually pleasurable," or many of the other things lots of people who do what I do and claim similar labels as I claim have often told me about their experiences. Typically, they call this experience flying, and I've usually heard it discussed as though it was the BDSM version of an orgasm.

Well, if flying is the BDSM version of an orgasm and scenes are the BDSM version of sex, then I've never come.

Of course we all know that different people play differently and for different reasons and different goals and it's all good no matter who you are or what you're into or whatever, but whenever this subject gets brought up it makes me feel a little anorgasmic in regards to kinky things.

A part of me is always wondering if I'm just too technically-minded, too focused on comparing experiences with descriptions that I've missed the boat already in the same way vanilla people sometimes seem to me to be so concerned with orgasms and ejaculations that even when they experience them they sometimes didn't know that they had. And then part of me says to myself that it must be practically impossible not to notice something like an orgasm ("oh, you'll know!"), so a kinky scene orgasm should be similarly impossible not to notice, and since I've never noticed one I've probably never had one.

A lot of people talk about flying by talking about how pain, when experienced at a certain intensity, rhythm, and circumstance, makes the rest of their existence kind of fade out and brings into focus only the lovely sensations of the moment. I can understand that very viscerally; one of the reasons I love BDSM (and kinky sex, and sensual experiences in general) is because they help me get out of my head and into my body, for lack of a better description at the moment.

However, these same people tell me that the pain is sexually exciting. That's not something I can relate to. Friends have told me stories about whippings and beatings that have left them wet or hard and rutting in place, making their very thought processes change somewhat dramatically. I wonder what that sort of an experience would be like. It honestly doesn't really make a lot of sense to me, because as I've said before, pain doesn't turn me on.

As a perfect and somewhat humorous example, take a very sexy takedown scene that happened recently. Having been pulled away from Eileen for purposes completely unbeknownst to me at the time, I got worried about her when a friend said they had ended their scene because Eileen seemed "a little ADD at the end." Strange, I thought, Eileen only gets that way when something is wrong. I should go check on her.

I quickly turned around and started walking back toward her when several more friends appeared and stopped me. No, hang on, I told them, I need to check on Eileen and make sure she's okay. Then, when they pulled a hood over my face and quickly grabbed me by my limbs, you want to know what my first thought was? It was:

Oh, this is a takedown. Eileen's probably fine.

This was no surprise to Eileen, who later remarked, I knew your brain would keep working. It did. My second thought was, "In takedowns, the victim gets to struggle. I'd enjoy doing that!" So of course I struggled as much as I could while staying (as) careful (as I could) not to inadvertently kick the wrong person in the genitals.

This illustrates a very typical experience that I have when I play: I'm very often completely conscious of what's going on and very aware of the reality of a situation. When Eileen and I play with knives, I'm not scared that she'll purposefully cut my throat, or gouge my eye out, I'm scared that she'll do it accidentally. (The risk is what's appealing.) When she whips me, I'm often adjusting my position and I'm motivated to do so by the conscious awareness that my back is no longer straight after that last stroke and that it should be made straight again, or that the sound of the whip and the feel of the air it pushed toward me means the whip is approximately four inches in that direction so I should turn appropriately.

Really, and I'd hate to destroy people's illusions of my kinky sex if they have any, but I'm actually extremely unsexy in my head when I play. Rational thought processes are not really that sexy no matter how you try to dress them up. Everything sexy is entirely about emotion.

Getting beaten with a nightstick is just that; a stick and a body. It's all very mechanical and not very hot. However, with some feeling in there, like being forced to the ground and invited to violently show the emotional aspects of aggression by fighting back, then physically losing and giving in to overwhelming force, now that's sexy.

It's very, very hard to get me out of my head. The only two things that have ever succeeded in doing so have been intense pain and intense pleasure (not necessarily orgasmic pleasure), and even these things don't manage to do it for very long stretches at a time. The way lots of people describe flying, it seems as though they experience some kind of emotional or spiritual climax too abstract for words. This is all wonderful, but is far too abstract for me.

I don't deal very well with abstracts. I'm a rather technical person, obviously, so I like things that make sense and which are grounded in rational thought. When people try to explain things to me that they say are based on "auras" or "energies," I usually just smile and nod. I have no problem with these things, most recently evidenced by a sudden interest in my social group with tantric practices, but I'd prefer to keep a critical eye pinned consistently in that direction.

So when I think about flying, in all the experiences I've had the one that comes closest to it has been getting suspended in rope bondage. Because that's when I was in the air, swinging around, and that's what flying means to me.

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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I've never been a manly man. When I was younger, I watched quite a bit of television. I remember lots of the imagery I was presented with quite vividly. In almost every case, I wanted to be the girls. Growing up, I quickly learned that wanting to be more like the girls was a desire frowned upon by pretty much everybody else—not least of all, by the girls.

These days, the same things still come up in daily conversation as they did in years past. "I wish I could lose ten more pounds—I don't feel pretty," I hear women say all the time. In response, everyone simultaneously begins talking about the oppressive nature of our culture's media campaigns. "Oh, come on. You don't have to look like every model in the magazines. You're smart, you're kind; of course you're hot," they'll say to her in an effort to comfort and sympathize.

Most of the time, I think women's self-image issues are physically, though not emotionally, unfounded. All but one of my girlfriends were, to use the obvious example, heavier than the BMI charts would have them feel comfortable about. My femdom fantasies have always been tilted toward larger girls. Hula dancers were an ironic motif, but I attribute this mostly to the healthier, more attractive weight Hawaiian girls tend to carry. I'll never understand the fetish for stick-figure girls. That can be sexy but I think women are sexier if they're shapely.

Issues men may have with their body image, however, are almost never even recognized. If they are, they discuss how unmanly boys feel and offer ways to feel more manly. Nothing we see in our culture tells boys that it's okay to want to feel pretty, to want to be treated in ways similar to the way we see people treating girls. If a boy, like me, wanted that, they call him a sissy and expect him to want to feel bad about it. I find this fact, an association often cited between cross-dressing and humiliation, nothing less than repulsive.

Furthermore, every time I've ever hinted at having body image issues of any kind at all, a very strange thing happens. Rather than address these issues, people turn to my girlfriend and give her a once-over. Then, they turn back to me. "How can you think of yourself as not attractive?" They ask, puzzled. "Your girlfriend is so hot."

Granted, my girlfriend is hot. But what, pray tell, does that have to do with my own self-image? You've just told me that my own self-image should be measured by how hot my girlfriend is. Call me crazy, but my girlfriend's attractiveness should not be the scale by which I measure my own.

Is that what you'd say to a fat girl, by the way? Oh, you're totally sexy because your boyfriend is super skinny. What kind of logic is that? It's not only completely missing the point, it doesn't make her feel better. In fact, it often makes her feel worse. And that's exactly what doing that does to me: it makes me feel worse.

Why is it a taboo to discuss men on the basis of their looks? Even in romance novels, where the gallant and obligatorily handsome man plays center stage, most descriptions about his looks center on his other attributes. His strong muscles. His virile penis. His healthy hair. It's not about the way he looks, it's about what he can offer in every other realm; wealth, health, or power. Even here, men's sexual attractiveness is being judged on everything except their looks. This is crazy.

To top it off, even the pretty men, who were called the derogatory term "twinks" in gay slang for quite a while, are usually portrayed in as decidedly not delicate a manner as possible; sweating profusely, working out, doing some manly chore, or otherwise being rough and tumble. The message? Be ruggedly handsome, sure, but don't be pretty.

By this culture's dogma, being pretty is a woman's job. Women are the ones who are "supposed to" do the attracting; men are supposed to be attracted. But this is insulting, and unfair. Wanting to feel pretty often goes hand-in-hand with wanting to be pursued. The emotions are the same: love me, I'm precious. But being pursued is the woman's job, as if they are the only ones allowed to feel as though they are precious and worthy of loving attentions.

This whole fucked-up mess does a lot of things for men. It makes us get paid more at work. It makes it easier for us to attract people into old age (where, I'm sorry, looks are just not going to follow). It makes it harder to objectify us in ways we don't want. And, unfortunately, it makes it a lot harder for us to talk about body image issues—especially if you're like me and you don't even want to have the traditional Vin-Diesel-the-body-builder look and instead want to look like the lithe, nubile, pretty young things you only see cast in the gender role of supreme femininity.

Well, I have a confession to make. I like dressing up as a girl because, in part, it makes me feel pretty. It does this because putting on frilly panties is the only time I feel the culture in which I live is telling me that I might actually get away with being pretty.

This confession, low and behold, is not uncommon. Men who want to feel pretty end up wanting to emulate women because we have no other choice. Why can men, secure in their masculinity, not also be pretty? Even the dictionary is stupendously unhelpful here. Defining "pretty" results in this definition from Princeton's web dictionary:

pleasing by delicacy or grace; not imposing; "pretty girl"; "pretty song"; "pretty room"

(Emphasis added by yours truly.)

I have been called graceful. I have also been called delicate. I've been called pleasing a bunch more times than these other two things combined.

People I don't know ask me if I dye my hair when they look at its color in the sun (I don't). They ask me if I've ever played the piano when they notice the way my fingers curl around cups as I drink (I haven't). They have remarked on how carefully I treat all my belongings, and how thoughtful I am when I am hosting a guest. But they have never called me pretty.

It may surprise some of you to hear this, but Eileen is actually the first person I have known that has called me pretty. She is fond of my ass and these days I might call it one of the prettiest parts of me, but it was not always this way.

One night many years ago, well before I even consciously thought about why I kept wanting to feel pretty, I was lounging with my then-girlfriend in the bedroom I shared with my brother. I remember only a single sentence from the conversation we had that night. It was this sentence that my girlfriend said to me that cued six years of body image issues centered around my butt: "I would like it if your ass was firmer."

What did firmer mean, anyway? It meant that I should have more of a boy's body. I didn't have a muscular gluteus maximus; I didn't have the body of a strong, rugged, self-respecting man. But you know what, I didn't want that body, either. And that should've been okay.


Addendum: For those interested in a bit more academic self-education (the best kind, if you ask me), I would highly suggest reading the Wikipedia articles on sissyphobia and effeminacy, for a start.

A particular passage of interest is cited below, and serves as a wonderful example of the fact that cultural ideals change with time. My message in this post, if you are to take one from it that I did not actually intend when I started, would be to stay aware of this constantly changing cultural stereotype—in all cultures and in all situations—and to avoid letting cultural noncompliance result in prejudiced or oppressive actions of any kind.

Pre-Stonewall "closet" culture accepted homosexuality as effeminate behaviour, and thus emphasized camp, drag, and swish including an interest in fashion (Henry, 1955; West, 1977) and decorating (Fischer 1972; White 1980; Henry 1955, 304). Masculine gay men did exist but were marginalised (Warren 1972, 1974; Helmer 1963) and formed their own communities, such as leather and Western (Goldstein, 1975), and/or donned working class outfits (Fischer, 1972) such as sailor uniforms (Cory and LeRoy, 1963). (Levine, 1998, p.21-23, 56)

Post-Stonewall, "clone culture" became dominant and effeminacy is now marginalised. One indicator of this is a definite preference shown in personal ads for masculine-behaving men (Bailey et al 1997).

My personal experiences written above are likely the result of my interaction with New York City's leather subculture, as that community is my primary social outlet (for now).

I've been really, really pissed off the last couple of days weeks months years. I thought it was getting better and I was beginning to get out of my bitter and jealous funk, but it's just not happening. Might even be getting worse; instead of ranting on my own blog, now I'm ranting in the comments on Elizabeth's blog (sorry about that, by the way). Pretty sad, really.

I had a long converastion with Lady Lubyanka today, whom I am almost certain thinks I am a very angry and very smart troubled young boy. (She would not be entirely incorrect either; but I did have to look up the word erudite when she called me that today. She's such a sweet charmer.) Then, later, instead of spending dinner with friends I became too upset to be social and wanted to leave early, and this ended up as a very long conversation with Eileen about what was wrong.

So what is wrong? A lot of things are wrong and were never right; these things have hurt me from the first moment I interacted even remotely sexually with another person, but they are especially painful right now because of a few personal experiences that I'd much rather not go into on such a public forum. I mention that now to tell you, dearest reader, that these things are not solely the belidgerant words of an angsty youth. These things do happen. They happen all the time.

Even though there's no help in this post, I ultimately thought that writing about how to make things better without also showing the hurt may not actually be that effective. So here is the bitter taste of reality submissive men drink day in and day out:

I wanted to write about the incredibly aggravating notion that regardless of orientation, dominant or submisive, men are expected to be the pursuers while women, dominant or submissive, are expected to be the pursued.

I wanted to write about why many submissive men are just as responsible for debasing their own sexuality as the many pro- (and so obviously not-so-pro-)dommes who take delight in squashing them down while lifting them of that burdensome weight in their wallets. ("Thank you for stealing my money, Mistress, would you like another dollar?")

I wanted to write about the lack of empathy so prevalent in the public BDSM scenes where more often than you'd probably think (more times than I can count and over the course of two relationships) people of all sexes befriend you if you're a guy for the purposes of getting closer to your girlfriends, both significant other(s) and otherwise. After all, you're a guy: you're just a dime a dozen anyway and another twenty like you will walk through the door in the next two minutes. But oh my god, is that a breast standing next to you? Is there a photographer in the house? Someone must capture this moment and make it last a lifetime! (I still remember the near stampede bee line that was made towards my then-girlfriend when we came out to our first public BDSM meeting. It's happened lots of times since then, too; mostly I'm just used to it now.)

I wanted to write about how most people assume that if you're a guy you're probably controlled by nothing more than that little blood-shot rod of tissue called a penis, and how incredibly shameful I feel to be male because so many times these people are actually correct in their accusations of men. (See above. 'Nuff said.)

I wanted to write about how submissive men will pretty much always, without fail, lose a race for sexual satisfaction out of any gender/sex/orientation combination you can come up with. Always. I've had a sex life that any submissive man you point at would kill to have, yet stick me in a room with other orientations and I'm still the first one sidelined, the last one standing by the fruit punch and chips, so to speak. It's not like it hasn't happened before, and it's certainly going to happen again.

I wanted to write about how if you're a submissive guy you're treated with near-fear if not written off if you don't call youself worthless or think you're only value comes from how much money you make. My god, he's submissive but he likes himself. He's gotta be like the unabomber or one of those kids from Columbine—he's clearly fucked up in the head. No self-respecting male would actually be submissive. I mean, he's submissive? Doesn't he not want to be respected? (Yeah, keep talking Einstein.)

If you are a man and you have had any experience at all interacting with almost any sexually oriented community (including non-kinky contexts), maybe you're pretty pissed off, too. Worst of all, maybe a lot of people are telling you that you don't have a lot of reason to be upset. After all, you're a man, and the world handed you an easier time of things than, say, if you were a woman or if you were living in a third-world country. Shut up and be grateful, you selfish little prick.

I'm not ungrateful, you should tell them, I'm very grateful for the things I have. But that does not negate the unjust, oppressive, systematic starvation of my sexual identity, the hurt caused by the intentional and the unintential assumptions made about who I am and what I should enjoy based on it, or the pain from seeing how excruciatingly invasive all of this has become in my bedroom.

That's what I wanted to write about, but I'm clearly in no state to be writing such things. I'm way too angry about it to make any kind of coherent sense. So like I said, move along, keep channel surfing. There's nothing to see here that you haven't seen a million times before.

I've been thinking about this all day, intending to satiate myself with my own musings, however I think that the firestorm of outrage could use a little level-headedness. Not that the outrage is misguided, unexpected, or even inappropriate. I'm pretty outraged myself, but outrage does very little to ease my own need for understanding. Only rational thought can fan those flames.

Smart people are very good at rationalizing things, by the way. History is full of examples of smart people doing lots of things with lots of reasons. Reasons are one of the things humans are best at manufacturing, even though we are not as good at reasoning about them. We construct meaning for our own purposes very much in the same way that we eat or drink or breathe or sleep. We are built to do it even though it can be pretty difficult to accomplish at times. We can't help ourselves, and it's rather a helpful thing that we can't, too! It would be pretty horrible to live a life without any meaning, wouldn't you say?

Understanding that is the first step towards rationalizing your reasoning, whether you are trying to reason through thought, action, or emotion. (The latter is particularly difficult due to our particular neurological evolution, but possible nonetheless.) In other words, know that your reasons are meaningful only because you have given them meaning. If it were not for that, your life would be meaningless. It should not be a disheartening insight if you understand the empowering nature of such a statement.

But I digress. This is about the idea of supremacy, that one person, place, or thing (we'll call these options a noun, collectively) is superior to another, different noun. Here are a few examples of nouns that I've heard many people compare with one another throughout my lifetime:

• Apples and oranges.


• Glasses and contact lenses.


• City dwellers and suburban dwellers.


• Democrats and Republicans.


• Americans and foreigners to Americans.


• Men and women.


• Heterosexual people and people who are not heterosexual.


• Light-skinned people and dark-skinned people.


• Jewish people and Christian people (and Muslim people and Hindu people and on and on and on).

Here's one funny thing about such comparisons, in case it wasn't clear to you from the list above: each set of nouns contains members which share an enormous number of characteristics. In my experience encountering comparisons intended to determine superiority, this rule of likeness has never been broken. Actually, I am eager for the day when it will be. On that day I will have met someone "truly" deranged.

Apples and oranges are both fruits, glasses and contact lenses are both corrective eye-wear, and (I did focus on the human comparisons purposefully) the rest are all humans. I have never heard an apple compared to a Jewish person, for example, nor have I heard a woman compared to a pair of glasses. Why? Well, naturally, it's because the comparison to determine superiority in a way people can get emotionally invested in requires the act of measuring both nouns against the perceived value of a common property.

That is to say, in order to determine that one thing is superior to the other and have people care about it, your measurement must measure a characterstic that both things have. If you instead measure a characteristic that only one of your member things have then no half-thinking or half-feeling person would give your comparison any meaningful meaning. (See what I did there? I went back to the meaning thing from the beginning of the entry. Remember that. It'll come up again, I promise.) What does it mean to make something meaningful? It means to give that opinion weight, to use it as the basis for your reasoning and the motivation behind your actions, whatever they may be.

There are some very smart people who use this argument to try and prove the idea of absolute superiority of one form or another, citing nuance or complexity to hide their absolutism. The previous link, in particular, leads to a man named Alexis's writings, who believes in the potential superiority of all women over men.

Alexis (who is very clearly superior in his intelligence when measured for such things by means of analyzing his grammar, punctuation, vocabulary, and the like), says the following—after a very long-winded but informational digression about the merits of apples over oranges or vice versa—about making such comparisons:

My point: accepting any measure as a guideline means that one option will not rate as high as the other option. And it is the measure that is argued, not the superiority of the two options. Statistically, by changing the measure you change the results.

Preceeded immediately by this (in my opinion very accurate) statement:

If we could ever get two people to agree on the subject of what measure could be used as a guideline.

This is, unfortunately and unsurprisingly, a circular argument. A measure of superiority without defining superiority of or in a specific something is not a persuasive argument because it is statistically (and otherwise) meaningless. (Oh, there it is again! Did you see it?)

To combat that very simple point, reasons are concocted. For example, the argument changes from an absolute statement "Women are superior to men" to a qualified statement "Women are potentially superior to men" to a theory "Women are potentially superior to men if they can be shown to be smarter/stronger/better/whatever" to a belief "Women who have been proven to be smarter/stronger/better/whatever are superior to men." Is it just me, or is it smelling a little One True Way® in here all of a sudden?

God bless our puny mortal souls and our meaningless lives. (Sorry, I couldn't help myself. The opportunity for satire is rather irresistable.)

The problem with all this is, I dearly hope, obvious by now (especially since the really smart female supremacists said it first, even if they may have missed the point a little): you're not going to get everyone to agree. The disagreements aren't about measures to use for determining one gender or sex's superiority over the other. They are about the idea that any one measure or collection of specific measures are an accurate depiction of unqualified superiority whether it is applied to gender, race, religion, or anything else.

I can disprove absolutist remarks stated as fact. I can't (and won't try to) disprove belief. Neither can they.

Wow. How anti-climactic. I know, I'm almost disappointed, too.

I have this lovely little buddy icon of this pretty boy on the floor, leaning back wearing a sweater jacket that reads, "Protect me from the things I want." I love that icon because the boy looks so sultry and so vulnerable and so seductive and so helpless all at the same time. I want to be that boy. (I also want that boy, but that's another entry entirely.)

Why is it that I want the things I don't want to actually happen to me. And do I really want them to happen to me for real or do I just like the threat of them happening?

Mean things. (Backhand me.) Deadly things. (Suffocate me.) Bloody things. (Stab me.) Things I just don't like. (Bite me.) I fantasize about having all of these things done to me. In some cases there's a part of me that really wants it to happen because I think I'd enjoy it. I've had too many fond experiences with pain to feel bad about liking that so much.

And then there are the things I'm not really eager to have happen, but I'm so nervous or frightened about them happening that a part of me wants them to happen just to get them over with. And hell, being nervous and frightened is kind of fun too. And there are the things I just don't get off to, but I know my top likes so what the hell. I like getting my top off—doesn't quite matter how they like as much as I like doing it.

But then there are the things that, no, I really don't want them to happen and if you do them to me I'll fight and scream and cry and beg you to stop. And those are the things I want to have happen because I love the fighting, the screaming, the crying, the begging, but most of all the very fact that I'm not enjoying myself. I won't like it when you do it, but I'll love that you did it. It probably won't turn me on while it's happening (though it might), but I'll masturbate to the memories of it later. And oh, it'll be good.

I do want to be tortured. I don't want to be tortured, but I want it. I have no idea how to explain that in simpler terms because everything else about this fact in my head is just circular logic. But y'know, a lot of things about submissiveness and masochism is pretty paradoxical.

Take orgasm denial, for instance. A classic example to be sure, but an appropriate example nonetheless. The wanting to orgasm is what gets me all hot and bothered. Once I've come, well sure I'm enjoying it, but all the goodness of wanting that orgasm is sated and the replacement satisfaction just isn't the same. It's the same with the death fantasy. Dying is pretty awful but, for me, it's only awful because once I'm dead I can't be bothered to care about the dying anymore. It's like, "Oh look. Here's death. Well, the dying was fun while it lasted. So…what's the weather like in hell these days?" See? Not hot.

I want what I don't want because I don't want it, but I also want my top to want it. It's similarly not hot if I'm being pierced by someone who doesn't enjoy piercing me. The reason I do it with Eileen, despite my preference not to actually be poked with sharp things more than necessary, is because she has a great time with it. Back to the getting my top off bit again. Yes, I know I'm a total whore.

Is this service? If so, then could I conceptually extend the service theory to the point of torture, or death? And now that I'm thinking about it, doesn't that sound a lot like some very well-known cultural and religious imagery? How many times have I been reffered to as Jesus on the cross when I've been whipped in a public setting? (I bet my hair doesn't help avoid the analogy, but still.) Martyrdom is hot for tops, I guess. It's not the martyrdom that turns me on though, it's the suffering. Martyrs who don't want to be martyrs.

Make me suffer. Please.

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I gotta say, I'm glad the world has someone like Bitchy Jones, who in her famous irreverent ranting style has sunk her claws deep into the hypocrisy that is the common (mis)perception about cuckolding, but I really wish all this talk of those truly sad and pathetic conversion project guys (who should totally read Tom's comments) and the firestorm around this kink or that's validity would cease.

Frankly, I'm just not intereted in any of it because I am neither the target audience or feel as though there is (much) to learn from these discussions (though I can't say that there is no knowledge ripe for the picking from them). I don't care about what other people are doing wrong because I am far more interested in what I can do right.

And, frankly, I'm way too selfish a human being to fight this fight for the benefit of others. It is truly unfortuante that there are not others out there in greater numbers who are actually self-aware enough to discover the excitement of authentic connection and erotic power exchange, but that is mostly their loss, not mine. Besides, though I don't want to go into specifics, I have done a lot for my community on this front already, and I am still doing steadily more.

Really, though, I just miss the level of introspection I was finding on the blogosphere in much more abundance before this hailstorm of things-gone-wrong came about. And after all, not that it isn't sometimes necessary, but isn't focusing on the things gone wrong counterproductive anyway?

I think I figured something out just now, in the shower. I was thinking about the whole issue of professional BDSM and what the deal is with prodommes and what not, how money plays into the equation and the economics of the situation when it struck me: the men are the whores.

What I mean is, the reason I get so pissed off at the other submissive men out there who are willing to pay for domination is because in my view they are cheapening something that I find to be priceless, namely my own submission. How dare they willingly say, "Dominating me for an hour is worth two (or three, or four or whatever) hundred dollars to me." I could never say that and mean it the way they do, because frankly, my submission is earned. I don't just give it away to the prettiest girl or the strongest man or the cheapest dom I can find.

I can't understand why these men sell their submission the way they do. It's insulting to me, as a proud human, bottom, and submissive, that they even consider the thought. No wonder I have such a hard time respecting them. What's there to respect about someone who so willingly sells such a deeply important part of themselves, and furthermore, cheapens the entire idea by placing finite financial value on the thing?

These men are the most unethical of sluts I can imagine. They are more unethical than the prodommes because the prodommes (usually) know what they're doing emotionally and they make conscious choices to protect themselves. But these men…they know what they're doing and they're doing it on purpose anyway (and if they don't, they're just too dumb to be respected on any level other than the basic respect I'd accord a fellow human).

I'm not sure if that made any sense to anyone except for me. Whatever, it's just my two cents anyway.

Sometimes it's strange that it's actually difficult to write about this kind of stuff—kink, I mean. You'd think it would be easy, you know, comes from the heart and all that, but it's not. So many personal things hinge on the acceptance of this sort of writing. What would she think? What do you think? What will I think, looking back, reading my own words a minute, a week, a month, a year, a decade from now?

I can't help but think, though, so I do it all the time. It's shocking, sometimes, how central kink is to who I am, to what I do, to why I do what I do. It doesn't just manifest in the bedroom (or the club), either. It's everywhere, all the time, involving itself in my relationships with friends, even employers in some indirect ways. (When thinking about living choices, one of the first questions I ask is, "What's the scene like there?")

That is not what I sat down intending to write tonight, but it's certainly worth thinking about. I'm sometimes amused at the directions my thoughts wander when I let them. I sat down wanting to write about some of the recent experiences I've been having.

Last weekend was the first time in a long time that Eileen and I made it out to the club. I used to hang out there religiously every Friday and Saturday night, long before I knew her. I used to miss the club because it was the club, it was my hangout, where everyone knew my name. But for a while, I was missing it—we were missing it—because it meant play, the kind of play that works better in noisy dark spaces with (I'm almost ashamed to admit it) onlookers you know are watching because you can feel their eyes but you can't see their faces. There's something delicious about that space, so fun, so personal, so intimate, yet so public.

It was an absolutely amazing night for the most part. I was chained to a metal frame and took lash after lash of the singletail 'til I bled. I didn't bleed much at all by our typical standards, but I bled. It felt good to bleed from a whipping again. Strangely, she thought, and I concur in some ways, in part of the scene I kept saying, "I'm not a masochist!" only to breathe in deep and obvious pleasure when she would strike me again.

She is getting bolder with the whip, which I like, making it dance on my back in the way she knows I enjoy but also starting to let her crueler side out a bit more. I noticed it most when she picked up a fast and hard rhythm that seemed to purposefully stay at the same spot on my back stroke after stroke. It hurt, a lot, but I was so happy to have her hurting me again that I wanted more of it.

I'm really not a masochist in the way the dictionary defines what a masochist is. The definition I've seen most often is:

Someone who obtains pleasure from receiving punishment.

Wikipedia, naturally, does a better job:

The counterpart of sadism is masochism, the sexual pleasure or gratification of having pain or suffering inflicted upon the self, often consisting of sexual fantasies or urges for being beaten, humiliated, bound, tortured, or otherwise made to suffer, either as an enhancement to or a substitute for sexual pleasure.

Without being baited by these definitions or going down the dark path that is defining "punishment" or even "sexual pleasure" for that matter, why was I saying I'm not a masochist? Well, because I don't like pain. To put it bluntly, it really hurts. It's uncomfortable, it's painful (duh), it's not a state I really enjoy being in for the sake of being in that state. It certainly doesn't turn me on in the make-my-dick-hard way most often associated with "sexual pleasure." However, I have found no equally intimate experience to share a moment with a loved one in any other way, and that's probably one reason why I enjoy being beaten so much. I cried a little by the end of the scene. It was from joy though, not from pain. It was just…so loving.

The whip marks are fading by now (I've been told I heal like Wolverine, apparently an invaluable trait for a sub as far as a dom's concerned, though rather annoying if you, like me, enjoy the visuals of the marks), but they're still there. And hopefully I'll have more in a week or two, when I'll be the demo bottom for a singletail demo again. Now that brings back memories. It's how Eileen and I met.

Over a very, very late lunch (or early supper), Eileen made the rather endearing comment that she was somewhat intimidated by the profuse amounts of blogging and writing that I do. My response surprised me. I told her, "Well, all subs write more than doms," and just as I said that I asked myself if it were really true.

Now, I certainly can't speak for everyone and I typically dislike over-arching generalizations except when they are understood to be such a thing, but I really do think that submissives typically write more than dominants. In fact, to be even more specific of my own observations, most experiencial writings are publisehd by female submissives, most fantasy was published by male submissives, and most "how to" articles and technically-minded material was published by male dominants. This is an interesting observation in itself, but on the whole my observation is that subs write more stuff.

My theory on this is very straightforward (by which I mean completely unfounded, untested, and underdeveloped): submission is ultimately a very internal process, whereas domination is far more externalized. In other words, submission is largely passive and receptive and domination is active. (This sounds a lot like sex psychology 101, right?)

My hypothesis is thus, perhaps as a result of these properties, submissives (by which I mean myself) tend to take the opportunity to write--and especially blog, due to it's easy push-button publishing nature--to externalize their own submission. Certainly domination also requires high degree of self-analysis, but dommes who play with their subs regularly are already externalizing a lot of things, and perhaps don't have the desire to do so as much as subs seem to.

So there's my completely underdeveloped theory as to why subs write more than dommes do.

On an off-topic but tangentially related topic, finding the wealth of femdom material online that I have is rather new for me. I've never been that interested in it because the last time I really looked for this sort of material was ages ago, and it was really hard to find anything at all, much less anything good. Furthermore, all the femdom stuff I found was so focused on D/s and light play such as light spankings, sissyfication, verbal humiliation, and orgasm control (not that there's anything wrong with any of these; please, bring them on!) that there was very little material about the really fun stuff like hour-long singletail whippings that left men's backs bloodied, threaded piercings used for bondage, torture and interrogation scenes, and brutal cuttings and intense knifeplay. It's just not that easy to find female dominants talking about playing much physically at all. (Of course, I'm really thrilled to have begun finding exceptions to that remark!)

These intense things are, of course, not everyone's cup of tea and that's okay, but they are at the heart of most of my deeper fantasies and so I sought them out where they were available: fictional erotic literature. Granted, these things may not be written about nearly as often because they are really hard to do well, or even at all. Do you have any idea how much preparation an interrogation scene takes? A really involved one that lasts more than a night? A lot!

Ironically, this is the second time I'm writing this entry because my Web browser ate it the first time. How utterly frustrating! Grr on it! Of course, I think the first entry was far more interesting and insightful. Oh, and it was longer too.

Laura Goodwin (whom I know very little about) wrote an interesting post on how to train a man to be a sex slave (via Femdom Blogs). While there are a few things in this post I don't feel is right for me, here are a few things I do strongly agree with this:

The ultimate object of sex training is to get your slave to the point where they can successfully do you, so you can just relax and enjoy yourself.

[...]

If you know you like penetration then teach him or her how you like that done, and don't let up on them until they get it right. Then praise and reward.

[...]

It's very frustrating for a sex slave to remain untrained. If you are going to be using the person at all, then devote yourself to teaching them right. One of the most rewarding things for a slave is for them to know for certain that they have satisfied you. If your sex slave cares for you, he or she will want to please and satisfy you even without the threat of punishment. You can help him or her to really feel like a slave and love being yours simply by making sure they know all the good techniques for getting you off.

An able slave is a proud and happy slave. It's good for your slave's self-esteem for them to know that they are *capable*.

It took me a relatively long time to figure out that my interest in ensuring my partner's happiness wasn't necessarily such an altruistic goal, but rather that it came out of my slavish desire to be owned and controlled. I craved pleasuring my partner because it made me feel accomplished. That feeling of success is far more pleasuring to me than anything else I can imagine, so a lot of what I cited above strikes deep chords in my psyche.

I still don't know how much of it comes from the desire to be a slave and how much of it comes from other things. I suspect it's sort of a chicken-and-egg scenario, however, because both facets of the emotion feed upon the other and strengthen the whole. It is, perhaps, more comforting to think of myself as more than the sum of my emotions anyway.

Mistress 160 has a lovely description of a scene involving CBT with clamps and pegs and clothespins. What's awesome about the way she desribes the scene is that her descriptions are analogous to a creative act like painting.

While my hand moved up and down his cock I considered my next artistic endeavour, as the canvas in front of me (sol's family jewels) was now blank again

This brought to mind the observation that so many activities in BDSM are likened to these sorts of things. I think it's wonderful, fulfilling and very satisfying. There have been many times when designs of wings, flowers, or abstract curves and shapes have been cut into my flesh (usually on my back or my ass) by my love. She would stand above me and admire her work in very much the same way she was doing so when she was proud of any other accomplishment she had achieved. I loved the feelings of closeness it gave me to offer her my body as the medium of her expression.

While this feeling was coupled with my submissive (and completely "normal" loving) desire to make sure I do whatever I can to enable her to do what she wants, to make her life full of happiness and pleasure, I found that on more than one occasion, she would offer the same for me. The typical vanilla example is a hickey. For us, a hickey is also a mark akin to a bruise from a beating so on the occasions when she encourages me to mark her like that, I feel priviledged and grateful that she's offering her body to me.

Ultimately, I think these makes a lot of sense. Creation is experssion. People very frequently talk about using the body as a means of expression. It fits in many ways that we would choose our bodies as the medium of that creation. It's primal, and a part of who we are as human beings.