Lifestyle VS Pro and The Male Sub Loot Grab

So I was recently reading the advice of the blogger Cara Sutra, on the difference between professional and lifestyle dominants. And I’m sorry, she got it wrong. Cara is an experienced and award winning sex journalist and I have nothing personally against her, but this post is rife with errors and the sort of general misinformation that is not helping anyone.

As far as what she said, initially she wasn’t too bad: one of them charges by the hour and the other one doesn’t. No big deal, right? Then she got into more detail and things went tits up.

There is a world of difference between a talented Dominant who is financially recompensed for her time and talents, and a sex worker who chooses to incorporate bondage and corporal punishment into the services she offers. Too many people make the mistake of assuming that the two are one and the same.

Professional Dommes are not prostitutes. Any remuneration is for her Domination skills and expertise, not for sexual contact or sex acts. Sexual contact will not be a part of any session with any Professional Dominatrix worth her salt.

No, not really- this has a problem in that it’s trying to distance the penis touchers from the people who just do hit & bossy while not considering the broader context of the differences. There are reasons why this makes sense (much like the efforts to convey that in strip clubs, there isn’t usually sex in the champagne room) but it’s a problem, which I will explain.

Sex worker is a broad continuum of people in a diverse industry, and includes everyone from porn performers to street walkers, but prodoms are part of that club. Like all people, professional dominants have their own personal comfort points and limits, but this is one of those things that’s more on a spectrum and heavily determined by your local vice laws. While professional dominants obviously focus on D/s and generally don’t do vanilla sex acts with clients (and get fed up with being offered an extra $20 for a happy ending), many also limit themselves to specific BDSM related things, for example no strapons or otherwise sexually touching the guy based either on what the local laws allow or what they feel is okay, VS professionals who are happy to snap on a glove and edge or finger clients.

But by trying to protect professionals from being asked to do things they are not comfortable with, Cara Sutra is perpetuating the idea that mixing sexual stuff with your D/s is bad, and that this is all about dom skill, when in practice, fucking your subs doesn’t make you less dominant. This is a particular sort of snobbery born out of frustration- when it comes to the pros I feel like a lot of the women with this attitude are pulling rank because claiming you are more dominant this way sounds better than explaining that the average client doesn’t get you horny, you don’t need that kind of risk in your life or that you have enough problems with the legality of your profession as it is.

But then Cara Sutra talks about lifestyle, which is where I fall, and she hits one of my pet peeves.

That is not to say that Lifestyle Domination equals “getting it for free”. The nature of FemDom shows that submissives would do well to recognise the value of their Mistress and show their appreciation of her time once accepted into her service. Not merely through obedience and submission, but regular gifts should at least be offered. If nothing else, it’s good manners and part of BDSM scene etiquette.

No. No. No. Arrgh, Fuck no. This taken for granted male sub loot grab is a marker of what I call “grey area prodoms”. These people bill themselves as ‘lifestyle’, but it’s said with palm extended, because as the reasoning goes, doms are scarce, so they decide they are worth it. It’s kink plus extras, right?

Look, I don’t care if you, in your own personal dynamic, give gifts to your lover- there are many ways to express affection. And yes, findom is a valid fetish. However, just being dominant and a woman in no way means I deserve to be compensated for my interactions with the opposite sex. Seriously, nobody tells lesbian subs to get out their wallets if they really want to show their appreciation. A male dom asking for prezzies would probably get laughed out of the dungeon. But somehow having tits and a desire to dominate means that male subs should presume gratitude by default. This is a problem because:

  1. It’s rife with exploitation, with newbie subs getting fleeced for trying to explore their kinks.
  2. It perpetuates the idea that a femdom is a service provider filling the male sub’s fantasy, rather than two or more equals coming together to do power exchange and kink for mutual satisfaction.
  3. It teaches malesubs they are worthless and opens them up to all sorts of abuse.

In discussion about this, a couple of times, the conversation has turned to the subject of how if he’s not gifting me, he’s exchanging something else, right? Like service! Like how femdom also assumes in a way that femsub doesn’t, that the sub has to bribe me for being willing to play along somehow.

Talk about being alienated from your own sexuality! While some of us are only doing it for the warm and fuzzies emotionally, I do this because it makes my cunt feel good, and I am in the majority of kinksters, not the minority. Look, seriously, this is not a rare gift I was given to play out on an audience of deserving men, this is what the fetish fairy handed me when the kinks were being given out.

When I spank Wildcard, it’s not because Wildcard drapes me in diamonds or folded all my laundry – the only compensation is his upturned ass, his willing and enthusiastic consent and his arousal. When I beat the shit out of my friend at a play party and he’s in tears, he doesn’t buy me dinner for the grace of getting a unicorn to kick him in the balls- getting to do that to him is as much a privilege as a dominant as it is a privilege as a sub to be doubled over clutching his candy. Because you know what? Without a partner, my dominance is just me, my hand and my fantasies in ForeverAloneVille. Just like a partnerless sub.

You could argue that if Wildcard walked under a bus (god forbid), the demand for femdoms is such that I could find a male sub, but the reality is that while there are certainly more men apparently identifying as male subs, he’s kinda irreplaceable. Much like how Dee over at Dumb Domme wouldn’t be so ripped up about her boy having to move, or Ferns of Domme Chronicles would not be on such a lengthy search if a good partner was something female dominants really could take for granted.

Cara Sutra is selling the idea that rather than being an inherently good match, you should expect to jump through thirty kinds of hoops, backwards with a wad of cash in your mouth. But really, this sort of blurring of lifestyle VS pro also pops up again in her advice to femdoms on how to decide which role suits you.

A good answer to the question of lifestyle VS pro is that the latter are sex workers, so you shouldn’t do it unless you are prepared to be a small business owner/independent contractor in a marginalized industry. Easy, right? Let’s see what Cara Sutra says:

Knowing whether you are a Professional or Lifestyle Mistress, or a submissive drawn to Professional or Lifestyle Domination, comes down to a number of factors. These include your understanding of and attitude to your own kink as well as your personal life circumstances.

For instance, you may be a woman with no desire to manage a submissive outside of a set session, or a submissive who cannot commit time beyond a session to serve a Mistress on a more day to day basis. Professional Domination would suit both of these cases.

Dafuq?Hmm… uh, I guess people who aren’t 24/7 don’t exist? I’m really surprised someone with Cara Sutra’s background appears to literally not know what the fuck she is talking about. If you don’t want to do D/s outside of defined ‘scenes’ you should go pro? Reeeeally. How did we go from “pro doms are skilled professionals” to this being the better option for women doing short haul D/s?

I really hope this is a typo, but again, it’s not really good advice to male subs that if they are not into round the clock D/s (eg bedroom only) a prodom is a better choice for them either.

Then she talks about some of the challenges of trying to figure out your orientation and spits out this gem:

In order to reduce the chance of psychological, emotional and sometimes even physical hurt, it is important to determine your orientation and Domination needs as early in your kink journey as possible. Investing time and emotion into a Dominant/submissive bond which does not combine the right facets for one or both people involved is a painful event which can potentially take years to heal.

Thoughtlessly experimenting with D/s relationships is no less hurtful than toying with a person’s emotions in vanilla relationships. Ensuring you are both on the same page will mean you’re doing your best to guard against any loss of interest, feeling neglected, getting hurt or hurting someone who is investing time and emotion in you.

I’m not entirely sure what this had to do with deciding if sex work is for you, but it’s still silly. it sounds nice and considerate- after all, relationship failures suck! It’s even the subject of my last blog post, where a couple discovered they had to renegotiate their relationship after it was already established. But you know what? That’s not the same thing as being a shitty partner, that’s a normal part of human sexuality.

I don’t know how you could get physically hurt by, in effect, breaking up with someone, but if you do, you are doing something wrong. Realistically, you generally need to try stuff to confirm you like it, and claiming testing this stuff and being wrong is the equivalent of being intentionally emotionally manipulative is unreasonable.

Assuming you are a new male sub or female dom reading this, or just someone curious about some kink ideas they have, Cara Sutra’s blog post is going to actively spread misinformation. Not only does it encourage taking up being a prodom without any sort of realistic look into what that involves, but it gives a very skewwed idea of what is okay behaviour in a non-professional relationship, as well as putting way, way too much weight on getting your feelings hurt.

It’s shit like this that lowers the quality expectations for women trying to make a living doing this, while discouraging women who are personally into it from indulging their curiosity and for male subs to lead with a huge pile of promises and presents that get in the way of getting to know the guy, while reflecting the deep shame he feels for being saddled with a kink that gets treated like a burden. It’s also stuff like this why I wrote things like “why I make a big deal out of not being a pro femdom“, and part of why it took me until my early twenties before I was confident enough to call myself a dominant.

MRA, PUA and Weird Male Dominance Fixations

So, there’s moments when one becomes utterly mystified by the state of other people’s sexual psychosis. Especially places that take a whole range of vocabulary you use or one thing and twist them into something else. One of them is the Manosphere’s absurd obsession with being Alpha and Dominant.

So, what’s the Manosphere?

To bring you up to speed with the subject of the post: as you are probably well aware, we live in a world that is full of inequalities. One way that these manifest is along the arbitrary binary of gender roles and expectations that are attached to them. This fucks over a lot of people, male and female. I’m a feminist and unapologetic about this. However another segment of the population, mostly expressing themselves online, deals with these challenges with other methods, mostly by making a damn fool out of themselves in a way that’s collectively embarrassing to men and women.

MRA, (Mens Rights Activists) take the inherent problems that come with maleness (other men trying to kill you, poor social tolerance for weakness, poor tolerance for acting in stereotypical ‘female’ ways), and, for the most part, blame feminism. They’re joined by PUA (pick up artists) who are by and large men who decided that the solution to all life’s problems are at the bottom of someone’s vagina and they need to figure out an elaborate algorithm that lets them access as many as possible in their search. As you might imagine, failing to see women as people is a criteria for both groups, so there is extensive overlap. As, for some reason, with Libertarianism, because governments are seen as the pesky enforcers of such things as welfare for single mothers and child support arbitrators.  These (mostly)men generally share a strong thread of gynophobia but also intense social anxiety- not so much misogyny, as outright “get her before she gets you!” thinking that often extends to assuming everyone is out to get you and that they exist in a world of nasty inter-male competition. A side effort is put into describing men who do not buy into this system as chumps or ‘manginas’ who hurt the glorious man cause.

This is leaving aside the ones who have decided to swear off women completely (to everyone’s mutual relief, thanks MenGoingTheirOwnWay!), there is a rather absurd trend to want relationships with women but go to elaborate lengths to have the upper hand and the belief that women all want a particular kind of man who is Very Dominant. So dominant as to require an exhausting degree of emotional manipulation to maintain the facade that you rule all your relationships.

Now you say “Male Dominant” and outside of my sometimes unfair snickering about rope tops in utilikilts, I will imagine a true cross section of the male population. Well, in practice men who identify as doms are statistically more likely to identify as feminists and kinky people tend to be more likely to fit into the PolyPaganNerdy bubble, but they’re going to be all sorts of different kinds of guys, from cuddle kitten to catpiss. Ask your Manosphere wannabe dom types though, and you have something very different. Precisely speaking, the push to be Dominant-to-Women functions on the premise that there will always be someone in charge- and if you don’t take charge she will be in charge of you and use you- and, in general the MRA brigade emphasize that if she was a pre-feminist good old fashioned girl she would be a lot happier- she just has to find her inherent submissive. Take this advice from popular MRA/pickup artist subreddit, the Red Pill, on developing a long term relationship (Unicorn Hunting):

Women are as miseducated as men about what is effective and what they should want. The delusion is pervasive, and any woman won’t fully know she wishes for a strong leader until she feels this leadership first hand, and that’s your job. You are a Captain. It’s your job to inspire loyalty, trust, and devotion. The “natural Unicorn” has these things, but they can otherwise be developed in a good, reasonable woman. I’m not suggesting you snatch up an attractive feminist shrew (a sort of Unicorn in its own right) and expect good results, but I’d be stunned to see the transition and result. This would be TRP on Nightmare mode and would be worthy of… So. Many. Field reports.

At best, some of them conflate dominating a situation with simply having a strong opinion. That’s mostly harmless, other than basically encouraging people to go further down the path of jibbering crazy. Some of them cast themselves as metaphorical pet owners, who think that women need to be trained like dogs- if indeed dogs do respond best to Caesar Milano style training over other methods. It’s not uncommon to find either what boils down to femdom fantasies of evil matriarchies ruling the world or on the flip side, fantasies that if society were to collapse, all those Wicked Women Would Be Sorry.

Expect, if you spend time in the Manosphere, to be told that the occupations of women are make work that’s destroying the economy and that there is something wrong with western women that has made them all aggressive and, often treated like a sin against the social order, ugly. These chaps will fantasize about how Eastern European/Asian women are ideal and wax lustful about it at length, stickying their keyboards with heavily photo-shopped pictures of Korean or Ukranian models, or babble about the significance of hair length. That’s really popular at the moment, and many of these men are positively obsessed with the idea that women are Wrong if they do anything to change up an outward appearance that’s compliant with cultural signifies of femininity.

You also get a lot of debating about straw feminists, usually with a misquote or two from Dworkin, which is like trying to argue against neurobiology by referencing Jungian archetypes… incorrectly. Most MRA would not know what a feminist was if they walked into one, which is part of what makes the whole thing so unbelievably embarrassing.

As far as MRA behaving badly, at the extreme end of things, you get Mark Lepine and the guy who shot up an women’s exercise class because younger women didn’t want to date him, or for that matter, Breivik, who was generally anti-left but included the idea that women should be barred from access to graduate studies as part of his vision for the future- being Scandinavian I suppose even he couldn’t imagine anyone not getting at least some higher education. Because of unfortunate associations, this also means that much more issues focused lobby groups, such as those looking to increase custodial rights for fathers, often need to distance themselves from the cuckoo groups.

On the other hand, long term reading of MRA and PUA generally causes me to over emphasize the value of their voice in popular discourse and I occasionally have to take a step back and remind myself that while what you have is people who hate everything about me that makes me who I am and call for what is a reduction of my civil liberties and my enslavement, they are a minority of voices. And yet…

It also makes me wonder what, among men so desperate to be Dominant, they would make of my dominance, or really any kinky dominance.  Some of them make a concession that there’s a small bubble of “Lantern Jawed Lesbians”, women who are unfortunate men-trapped-in-the-bodies-of-women, in their estimation. In this context that means that they also tend to accuse women who embrace feminist theory of being ugly and trying to rework the social order to avoid their just punishment for this failure to conform with how the MRA wish women were like. This also generally involves a lot of flailing about claiming that say, women of the past were much happier than modern women. Well, I mean asides from the massive infant mortality, dying early of preventable diseases, over work and malnutrition- but don’t worry, men are natural providers and protectors. 😛

It’s pretty much the same drum that’s been banged since the ancient Greeks:

The tribes of women
come in four breeds: bee, bitch, and savage-looking sow,
and mare with long flowing mane. The mare
is sprightly, swift, gadabout and most lovely in form.
The savage-looking sow is neither good nor rotten,
and the bitch is troublesome and fierce-tempered.
Yes, the bee is best: a good housekeeper
who knows how to work. Dear friend, I tell you,
to win a desirable marriage, pray for a bee.

Phocylides (Greek, ca. 600 B.C.)

But, what precisely, does the world view of someone who sees women in charge as either mentally ill or being tricked by society into being led astray stack up against sexual kinks?

I know guys who ID as sub men, who are equally proudly anti-feminist. When I say ‘know’, I mean avoid- but my point holds that D/s is hardly a perfect unassailable bastion of humanism. And yet on the flip side, these MRA focused communities will simultaneously hold up sexual behaviour that’s right out of a kink playbook (rough, degrading), while swearing up and down that they ain’t kinky. The women who buy into this are particularly bizarre, kind of like the Christian Domestic Discipline quadrant who want their spankings while claiming it isn’t sexy- these women obsess over being ‘submissive’, but get offended if people pigeonhole them into kinky.

So does it follow that you could be a MRA and sexually submissive? I posed that question on the reddit debate forum, The Purple Pill with mixed results.

Mostly, other than a shy man who sees himself as super Alpha in his relationship except for the whole humiliation via sissification thing, I got a lot of people doing things like explaining to me that since dominant women were scarce, I effectively didn’t exist. Some argued that male submission violated some sort of natural law (like gravity,  guess?) and got hung up on explaining BIO TROOFS.

One thing that’s particularly striking is the habit of the guys to justify themselves based on the fact that it’s not that they really value all of the Alpha-as-fuck aspects personally, but it’s what women want… so clearly they can’t help but give women what they crave, right? Or women will never let them use them as a penis cozy!

But I’m A Nice Guy from Scott Benson on Vimeo.

More Inbox Detrius And Spanking

It is a factor of the open and relatively accessibly nature of the internet that you will end up talking to people you never would have met outside the free flow of online communication. From feeling less alone in the company of fellow people with a shared perspective on your already uncommon sexual kinks to watching rage filled forum flame wars between an articulate but poorly informed 14 year old with infinite free time and a 45 year old academic who wouldn’t even let the kid into their classroom under normal circumstances, you end up alternating between feeling like you’re part of a fantastic global community and contemplating becoming a hermit.

And then there’s the inbox spam.

If you maintain a bunch of accounts on various kink communities, and you are female, you will receive various and sundry unsolicited messages from men. Much of these are drive by, copypasta trying the spam approach to find a femdom, case in point:

Respected Ma’am, I want to be your slave. My team viewer ID is 601 922 712 and psswd is 1101. Please accept me as your slave ma’am. I have been a sub or into this mentality ever since my puberty ma’am. I know am not privileged enough to be your slave, but please give me an opportunity ma’am. I read your profile and I want to tell you frankly that no matter how hard I try, I can never deny the fact that am longing to serve a mistress truly and be her permanent slave. Please provide me that opportunity ma’am.

(Note, if he actually read my profile he’d know that the sort of deal he’s offering is decidedly not my style, and the “team viewer” thing just feels like an accident waiting to happen). Hundreds of messages like this get sent out, much like how there’s an effort to convince you to buy cheap V1gra form Canada for potency, or my spam traps on my blog collect recycled news articles with links hawking designer goods.

Or you get the more banal:

Want a dish of ballz salad ?

Which is not so much insulting, as degrading to the twit that decided to send it out. I imagine that message was the grand achievement of the poor silly bugger’s day.

And you get dragged into the weird psychosis of people who are looking for a wank under their terms, like the person trying their best to convince me they were an Arab woman who wanted nothing more than to send me large amounts of money to be insulted by a superior white femdom. And sent me dozens of messages, from multiple user accounts being unable to figure out why I’m just ignoring them. And pretending to be someone else telling me how I should wear my hair in pigtails. Because nothing makes a dominant woman happier than a stranger telling her how to style her hair to turn them on.

Now in “hurt me for being an Arab’s” case I’ve always had a hard time with ethnicity/race play. It’s not that I can’t be that flexible, it’s that asides from having a twitch-delete reflex about messages from people presupposing to be from North Africa and South Asia (or really anything in a particular equatorial zone) after one too many unfortunate mash notes, my inclination is to try to find a character motivation- and not being at all inclined to think of people as inherently superior/inferior on those lines, well, I’m kinda a lost cause unless you want British Empire themed porn. I could, in a fit of whimsy, colonize the hell out of you, but it would be like trying to discriminate against people from Minnesota.

Then there’s the arrogant male doms. Not content to limit themselves to harassing female subs, there’s a particular cadre of guys among whom hope springs eternal and all women are fair game, or who specifically target femdoms. They tend to come in two flavours: fast creep and slow creep.

Fast creep is the very forgettable “nees bich” bloke, or the ones who otherwise proposition everyone and everything female seeming with no particular targeting. The result comes across  like a horny blind man feeling up tree galls, and similarly show up in your inbox with the “mistress i am so submissive 2 u” messages that accumulate like chip wrappers under a poorly maintained shrubbery. You also get the men who ask you if you want a discreet chance to sub to them, or the ones who say they want to explore the other side a bit and can’t seem to understand why you don’t want to be propositioned to spank strangers. No big deal, just tedious.

Slow creep, on the other hand, doesn’t ask you to submit right out the gate, and often claims to be extending a hand of friendship, wanted or not. Then then start trying to flirt by being bossy or by mansplaining how you are Doing It Wrong. This sort of man usually goes from being vaguely like a creepy jovial uncle at you, to telling you how he can see the submissive inside just waiting to come out, or some such rot.

Once again I’m on the receiving end of another presumptuous dominant asshat’s efforts to be friendly and helpful. This one is happily dictating to me how I’m going to fail at as a dom for liking someone. He started off by asking who owns me now and how, since I have my profiles set to “no! taken!”, to discourage people only looking for a relationship bitching about me being off the market and not warning them.

Then he sent this:

Once a Mistress like you “forms an attachment” then her Mistress persona is diminished.

I dare say your gentleman nemesis now has the upper hand. That’s not to say that he will be spanking you. But you know what I mean. He’s really the one in control now. Right?  🙂

How did this slave/sub / boy come to own you so badly?

I really love it when people who have no insight into my life feel the urgent need to tell me how it is and should be run. Not only do I choose not to ID under the title of “Mistress”, the whole concept of my dominance it being a “persona” I maintain is slightly alarming. Here, he is simultaneously arguing the harmful idea that D/s is powered by differing levels of affection and mansplaining the shit out of things to me.

I mean, theoretically as far as fitting into ideals, this guy’s “Master” persona is diminished by him acting like a giant douche canoe. This is also always the problem with “find a mentor” advice, because a lot of people try to express dominance through it and nominate themselves chief guiding light where it’s unwelcome, like this eager little glowworm is trying with me.

And I suppose I should address the “Spanking” thing.

Read more

Reader Letter: More From Crazy Jeremy!

The guy who sent random hatemail last time appears to have become a regular fan- this time with thinly veiled rape and death threats from the comfortable anonymity of the internet, apparently after reading this scene wrap up:

(From “Jeremy Smith” or [email protected])

Subject line: What a cunt you are

Ever tried being on the receiving end of it as you say many domes do? Maybe you should be leashed just like the dog you are. Is the artists impression an accurate one? Even in a drawing, you’re better looking from the back.

Once again this poor foamy gentleman is deeply offended that I exist. By the way, that’s “Doms or Dommes” not “Domes”, Jeremy, but maybe it’s a challenge to type when your fingers are slippery with the mixture of drool, fecal matter and semen that seems to form the basis of your communication online. And yes, my dear little broccoli rot, I have have been on “the receiving end”. I know what I do feels like, in a wide capacity of what I get up to, and this is part of how I know my preferences. Also he appears greatly excited by the cartoon drawing of my ass.

Try encouraging Male Dom/female sub. Or are you one of those snotrags who tries to convey Male led D/s as domestic violence.

Why would a blog oriented around femdom focus on that? It would be like a baking blog talking about raw foods. Certainly I consider M/f a wider part of the community and you appear to be projecting some fairly serious psychological issues here. Did some social justice warrior femdom hurt your feelings some time back? It’s the second time he started whining about “Domestic Violence”. It also hints that he doesn’t read the blog and didn’t read my response last time.

As for [Your friend, who you topped with, with no identifying information, don’t worry, this creep is toothless]. The piece of shit isn’t a sick piece of shit with a name and “personality” like that? Consensual or not, the cunt is a sick piece of shit and I’D LOVE to give the whore a fucking good hiding.

Let me get this straight, you are bellowing incoherent profanity, advocating my rape and murder and implying you want to non-consensually beat women and somehow we’re the “sick” ones? Back to me now!

Why don’t sick shits like you ever get raped and murdered? Shouldn’t be a crime if it ever did to the likes of you filth.

Well, because there is such a thing like the rule of law. But more to the point you are clearly madder than a hatter and your humour value is rapidly diminishing as you go straight to advocating the death of your fellow humans. Which, you might be surprised, is actually illegal in most civilized corners of the world.

Does that club (or any other one you attend) cater to Male Dom/ female sub? Or are you just too scared and sexist to see or even acknowledge it. There’s plenty of outlets for it, both on the web and in real life, so F UCK YOU, YOU USELESS PIECE OF SHIT.

Yes, the club was a mixed gender party. People like yourself are not invited, and by this I mean obviously insane blithering morons. Also we see that the meat of his argument is repeated here, that he thinks my preference for femdom invalidates his for maledom. I’m pretty sure when he types out this screeds he feels deeply threatened and frightened that I will personally beat him.

But- Take That! I have been told that maledom exists! Evidently there are brave freedom fighterdoing errrmmm… just what I do but with more breast bondage/hitting and less cbt? Jeeze, Jeremy, I would have never figured that out without you!

Current evidence from other femdoms who’ve dealt with his screeching tirades, primarily through twitter but also in blog comments such as at Divorce Darling, is that his IP puts him somewhere in the UK, possibly Manchester. I’m pretty sure the language choices confirm that- he’s got that particular sort of mad British thing going on.

Obviously Jeremy Smith sounds like a pseudonym, but it’s largely irrelevant whether or not it is. He has one reason to exist and that’s to spray virtual spittle at female dominants, usually with cries of how unattractive they are (without having seen them) and the vaguely through to blantently misogynistic language of someone who is more desperately trying to hurt someone through any means possible and is trying everything to hope something sticks. According to Jeremy I am ugly, stupid and… he wishes I were a femsub.

One can infer from very much drive by comment/email behaviour that he’s not actually interested in conversing regarding his pet cause of messaging all the femdoms to shit in their inboxes. Often, in other people hate messages, he considers it a checkmate to ask if we’ve ever done this stuff as the victim, which is just confusing. Obviously the fact that there’s a guy so lost in his own madness that he thinks I need to have rape and murder wished on me (which from context he’s probably also wanking about) it’s kinda disturbing, but his ability to generate fear is hampered from his lack of specificity.

This one’s for you, Jeremy- take it way, Clever Pie!

Deranged Emails (Jeremy)

Usually I only get spam through the contact form for this blog. However, I must be doing something right- look at the crazy person who just sent me some fanmail!

Your hypocricy

Alas, spelling is the first thing to go when the neurons start to fry.

Being a jerk and sexism are discouraged. You right stories about arrogant, pervert SEXIST scum, you have tabs highlighting male suffering and feminism and you say sexism is discouraged. How would you define sexism if not through your sick, hypocritical garbage?Submitting not for you?

Come again? Yeah, I don’t really get any emotional fulfillment from subverting myself that way. I’m a masochist but a terrible sub. What’s that got to do with sexism?

In other words, your just a typical worthless reject fuckbag wind and piss who is about as useful as a cunt on a nun.

Because the only value of a woman’s genitals is their utility as a source of sexual enjoyment to others? Okay…

Pity YOUR junk isn’t locked up, although I suspect nature gave you the best chastity device when it gave you your face. Just be glad when nature gave you a face like a dogs backside, it gave you the substance that comes out of one for a brain.

Well then, clearly this guy doesn’t like porn stories and me being supportive to a friend who is sad his $600 chastity device broke. Apparently the only purpose women have, to him, is submission or sexual gratification. I’m pretty sure he enjoys neither in real life, but hope spring eternal on his part, I guess. Also, is he trying to neg me?

No tolerance of Male led D/s at all, or are you one of those feminist pigs who try to portryay Male led, M/f/ D/s reationships as DV? That’s domestic violence in case you’re too stupid to know.

So this person really, really doesn’t like femdoms, or maybe they don’t like people who aren’t switches. Or they simply can’t understand the difference between a sexual preference. Typically speaking “feminism” is like a dog whistle for a particular brand of fighty idiot who rapidly turns vile and violent, usually in a way that makes feminism inherently self justifying.

Sadly, the guy who calls himself “Jeremy” doesn’t limit himself to just me. Alas, femdoms across the interwebs are finding his bags of flaming shit in their in boxes, apparently mostly via twitter. Thus discovered by Goddess Olivia and last year, Girls Rule, Subs Drool.

Same modus operandi- screeches of “It’s not FAIR!” with a string of incoherent insults. Same email address with a generic name. Guess the group home lets them have access to computers to keep them integrated into society?

Conversation Openers That Will Not Help You Talk To Dominant Women

disgustedoldlady1) It’s so fantastic that you don’t charge money to dominate, not like those stoopid fake pros/findoms/etc… I recognize that the presence of a large number of sex workers can be jarring through to be depressing if you aren’t into paying. I get it’s intended to be a compliment, but it comes across as kinda weird- especially coming from a male dom who’s just trying to make conversation or if it ventures into bashing pro-doms. I’ve never disliked pros as a category just because I’m not one.

2) Wow! So young to be a dominant! That’s so unusual! Ditto. This is a context thing- mentioning there’s not a lot of younger dominants in your area isn’t going to get my dander up. commenting about how it’s such a strange sight that a young woman calls herself a dom is liable to get frosty ignores.

3) You know, if you want to sub, I promise not to tell anyone… No. Ick. Die in a fire. Trust me, when I get beat proper, I’m comfortable enough with my masochism to talk about my bruises with everyone. You know who doesn’t get to hit me or tie me up though? Creepy people who want to dominate me.

4)  wat do u like? I’m a snob. Sorry, I won’t attack you over typos or grammar mistakes, but there has to be a certain degree of coherence or me to maintain a conversation and/or attraction and language skills are a crucial part of the mating dance it takes to stimulate me. On another note, an opener asking me my fetishes seldom goes down well with any woman. That’s a conversation that’ll come up later if you’re worth it, don’t worry.

Femme Domme Society: Who the fuck is William?

Of course the crazy comments continue about how I’m a disgruntled former user- (they finally got off the butts and deleted my account after ranting for several days that that I was baaanned). A great deal of speculation and names I’ve never heard of are piled up: Lexi? William? And a theory is presented that I’ve been attacking the site as a prolonged project or that I might be (gasp!) Maymay.

It’s not clear if this is based on an attempt to create a slanderous narrative or if I’ve dug out more information about another one of their business deals gone sour.  I’m actually happy to have them share the details on that one (they promised voicemails), so I’m sort of wondering if this means that a real hapless William is now getting some hysterical threats in his inbox as well.

It’s like they’ve never heard of investigative reporting and can’t understand that the only ax I had to grind was disagreeing with their methodology. I do personally feel that sinking to the level of the opponent and say, interfering with various pro-doms businesses are wrong (please don’t book 1000 fake appointments or something) but calling female supremacists on their bullshit is perfectly fine.

One of the accusations they kept throwing at me was “why don’t you do your own thing then, huh?!” Which I kind of am. Of course I’m not a BDSM expert by a long shot, but neither are they and I don’t sell myself as one. If you’re that interested in my attempts to try to educate people about surviving kink you probably want to check out things like my FAbQ or the BDSM advice posts in general.

I imagine if there is any organized effort to regroup, my pseudonym is now due to be dragged through the mud. I imagine this is the acceptable consequence, although I almost wish they’d find one of my real faults to harp on.  I’m also not sure how to take threatening-non-threats from people using multiple user names under the same IP. I will imagine since poor MISTRESS VENGEANCE has blocked me on twitter that she’d prefer it if I left her alone and I intend to respect that.

I’m not sure about the other people freaking out- most of them are the same two people- Countess/MistressCandy69 and another slightly more articulate entity that keeps swapping genders (again with my case that there isn’t exactly a women’s world) and since the accusation leveled against FDS already claim that they love fake identities… I’m also getting a lot of random spam to the tune of “You’re a MAN!” I’m not really sure how this is supposed to be insulting- I gather they don’t understand the concept of a non-professional dominant but it’s not really helping them seem rational.

I have a few theories here- one is that I’m getting abuse from site owners trying to manage things (the wild “William!” stuff hints in that direction) and the other theory is that some hapless prodoms who use the site have also been sucked into it and are trying to deal with the crushing cognitive dissonance that they’ve been pulled into a con. Possibly a little of column A and a little of column B, but I expect a libel laden tirade or two to be flung up about how I’m really a man, a few criminal accusations tossed my way, etc…

Thus far my take away remains that the tragedy here is that frauds like this thrive in darkness. Everyone doesn’t want to get doxed, everyone’s using at least one fake name, and it’s a sad, sordid little party of human frailty.

Late to the party? There’s still sad, sad cake left over here:

Femmedomme Society: Digging Deeper (Part 4)

Well, it looks like FSD finally came around to spew their complaints into the comments section! In this particular context they seem to be under the impression I’m a person banned from the website with an axe to grind.

I’d intended to end with just the “University”, but Pagan Boy, of Pagan House, has delivered by digging out some documents related to just who is behind Femmedomme Society. As you might have guessed, it’s a man. What you might not have guessed is that it’s a man with a series of embarrassing court cases and a lousy reputation for ripping off business associates. So we don’t just have a shitty, misleading adult website out of dozens, of other pieces of crap just like it, we have a crook to boot. Lovely!

Now regarding the rather lengthy rap sheet: While it’s always a good idea to be skeptical, extracts from Colorado criminal reports and angry screams about scams do not really back up the claim that this is an effort to bring about a New FemmeDomme World Order.

But let’s take a look at the evidence Pagan Boy dug out for me:

Right now the company listed on the bottom on the webpage is FDS Partners Ltd. However, if you look for where the domain name is registered you get a completely different company, registered in the UK (Society 31 Limited)- it’s located in a London office building, with the name “Kevin Lorimer” as the director- and the only name. Now that company was apparently dissolved in 2010, but the individual is quite traceable. I’m normally not big on doxing people, but this is publicly available information.

We can easily follow him to Colorado, (while the “Retreat” the website makes a big deal out of is apparently located in Phoenix). There, of course, we get access to more of the sordid scandal that is this scheme. It appears that Mr. Lorimer is the boss of the operation, working in concert with his wife and at least one other female associate, the pair of them also under standard prodom aliases. They’re all connected to a series of accusations around the following companies:

“Goliath Productions; FEMDOMFACTOR; Income Solutions; Online Success Center and FDS Partners LTD”

Ripoffreport.com documents a complaint, giving Pagan Boy some extra backup as well as helping us lead further down the rabbit hole.

“With respect to his websites, Kevin Lorimer creates false profiles to boost his membership numbers.  He uses online stock photos for these profiles and for his website pages to entice members.  He also has old photos of retreats that no longer exist.  He does this to gain paid memberships.  His business is registered overseas so that he doesn’t have to pay income taxes.  He also uses variations of his name to register for utilities, etc. in order to avoid being located. “

Thankfully Pagan Boy was kind enough to dig out some information to help with the claim about Mr. Lorimer’s legal troubles. A cease and desist, for example, for selling securities through “Income Solutions”.  Or let’s look at his time in the Colorado courts, for example, right here.

I’d like to believe that the ranting ladies in my comments section are just upset that they’ve been taken in. One was even nice enough to link back from her website with how she’s rightly trounced me, although I would also mention she is perfectly welcome to claiming all the victories she wants- I don’t see this as a competition.

The take away here is that if something sounds like it’s too good to be true, it probably is. It also leads to speculation of whether people are actually getting what they paid for (perhaps MISTRESS VENGEANCE would care to provide her insider information?) . It’s also unfortunate- as long as sex work continues to exist in the shadow of quasi-legality and doesn’t have better protections, this plus the general ignorance about BDSM gives Mr. Lorimer a place to ply his trade. At the very least he’s implied to be a pimp and these cases remain recent enough that FDS has a lot to answer for.

For me, this isn’t even about revenge, it’s just being honest about the festering infection that makes life so much harder for sexworker and lifestyle person alike. These people are not even proper professionals, but usually scammers who promise that they will take on submissives but demand that the sub prove themselves with membership. Case in point, this poor gentleman from FDS:

Hello Miss Pearl,
Thanks for the answer. I have read what you say about the site, it is very interesting. My account won’t be renewed either… I had actually joined as a paying member after the third letter from someone… who hasn’t answer back since I joined… ha ha!
Anyway… as I said before, I would love the chance to know you… and I do make a good friend…
[Name Redacted]

Poor guy.

Curious how we got here?

 

Femdomme Society University Tell All (Part 3)

This weekend, I looked into the website “Femdomme Society” to find out just precisely was their operating motives. According to their marketing copy, they offer themselves as a femdom community for doms and subs seeking to build a better world. In practice they are a “ladies get in free” style dating site that tries to get you to run cam shows while charging male members a monthly fee.

But, as part of their mission they offer a “University”, as a BDSM101. Sounds great, right? Just to make their audience feel extra special, there’s a doms only section of supposed secrets for helping them discover their feet. And as talked about here and here already, it’s bullshit, and harmful bullshit at that. But, since you stuck with me so far… onwards!

We wander into a list of suggested punishments and reminders that it is your responsibility to set up elaborate, enforced rules for the sub, and a blatant grab to get you to buy one of their supposedly highly effective “purge boxes”.  As usual the distinction between punishment and funishment is left ambiguous, with the idea that doms always have a duty to punish.

Of course a website like that wouldn’t be complete without pushing feminization and chastity play down everyone’s throats. Neither of these are bad, but one of the problems with contemporary femdom’s image is that these fetishes are treated like must haves or everyone.

With the latter, as usual, wrapped in reassurances that the cunnilingus will be worth it, and the former making no effort to deal with the fact that we just read several pages emphasizing how being more feminine would get to the heart of male submissive desires- so there’s an inherent disconnect that me wearing panties makes me powerful and him wearing panties makes him powerless. There’s a brief stop on watersports and other things like that, with the inaccurate statement that urine is “sterile”, which is a gross exaggeration that pee is less likely to make you sick than our taboos about bodily waste.

But, Femdomme society is also ready to speculate about why the femdom stereotype shtick is important:

Remember Men create the majority of FemDom stories, pictures and images to express how powerful Women are in their eyes and how weak they feel in a Woman’s presence. These images represent what men are really feeling inside. The poet and the song writer use words and the artist uses visual images to express their inner feelings. So when a Woman displays that “image” by donning a fetish outfit, or saying a term, or using Her voice in a certain manner, She touches the male submissive nature and triggers his feelings and desires, thus he becomes weak and helpless. Then the Woman can interact with the man with all barriers and defense mechanisms down. Now She is free to interact with the man in a more meaningful way. Now true intimacy and bonding can take place between the Woman and the man because She now can see Herself as he does.

See, the problem here is that we’re back to man-pleasing in the name of dominance. Now I don’t doubt it’s nice to make each other happy, but this just isn’t something that gets inflicted on maledoms. Which is why no matter how many corsets you lace yourself into, you’re not going to bring about a world revolution by making people desire your body, and you will be doing it at expense of your own sexuality, supplanting it with the desire-to-be-desired.

We’ve reached the end of the “Uniersity” so now they take the time to speak directly as website owners. Someone in the comments already compared this to Scientology, but the comparison to a cult really stands out when they explain the website rankings. Just joining gets you to “dame”. Finish reading their bogus educational pages and you can call yourself…”Madame”. If you agree to an interview with them to go on their website, you get promoted to “Baroness”. The title are of course meaningless, but create an artificial ranking system that of course goes back to making you sound like you wandered out of an exploitation flick.

But I suppose you were wondering where all this was going… The grand finale:

Once you achieve the rank of Baroness you will qualify for our affiliate program. What is it? It is a way for you to share in the profits of the Society. How does it work? First all Women on the site have a free membership, providing them full access, but men do not, they must upgrade to either a monthly membership of $28 or to a life time member of a single payment of $125 to gain full access, otherwise they have limited access as a silver member. Please keep in mind the cost of operating the Society, retreat and website is hefty. But we operate on a profit sharing basis, because the purpose of the Society is not to generate revenue, but rather to ensure that anyone who wishes to explore this life style has a safe place to do it. OK back to profit sharing. Once you are a Baroness you will qualify for our Affiliate Program, by setting up your affiliate application you will get your own admin section that allows you to keep track of any submissive that upgrade and enter your ID number as their sponsoring Domme. You will earn $14.95 for each monthly member! Every month that he continues with his membership, so it is always good to follow up with them and keep them active. To put this in perspective, if you have 50 guys who have upgraded to a Gold , monthly membership and they entered your ID number when first upgraded then you will earn. $747 each month. If a submissive upgrades to a Platinum, life time membership, you will get a one time payment of $50. The best way to have the website work for you, is to visit your myaccount section. On the right hand side you will see banners, These banner are specifically coded to your profile. Copy and paste the code in the white box, and place it on other websites, facebook, myspace or your blog and that banner will appear there. Anytime someone clicks on the banner, we track them, and if they upgrade to paying they earn you money.

Look, I have nothing against needing money, but this is practically next door to a pyramid scheme. It’s essentially telling you that you should be actively recruiting men and encouraging them to spend money… for what? To build a female led world based on being conventionally feminine to trick men into dressing in a conventionally feminine fashion?

Instead we have a scheme that encourages female members to recruit male members for money, offering and unhealthy, male pleasing idea of femdom to line the pockets of the “Baronesses”, or more to the point, the website owners.

Femdomme Society University Tell All (Part 2)

Following along without the back story? Femdomme Society is a website promising that, in their member base of 57302 active users, it’ll help connect F/m leaning people. They also allow F/f oriented femsubs in signup, but of course none of the material is oriented towards them. Catch up with earlier posts here and here.

Out of sheer mean spirited bloody mindedness, I will continue to review their “secrets” of female dominance. At this point, it’s clear professor Sutton is not the only person teaching at Femdom University. We move from Sophomores being indoctrinated to the website’s practical suggestions in establishing dominance in your relationship.

According to them, you can spot submissiveness waiting to come out by such things as…

2. Sneaks glances at Your body, and quickly turns away when caught looking;
3. Shows a deeper interest in Your hair, make up, and clothes;

And

8. Loves to give oral sex, and strives to be sensual and gentle during love making.

Of course for people like me who get bupkiss out of mouth-on-vulva, no allowances are made. Because only rude, brutal men want firm hard sex. But never fear, the website is selling the idea that all guys have a submissive waiting to come out if only women used their sexual power. Or, in their own words:

 There are many ways to create the “desire to submit”. Quite often men have not touched upon their submissive side due to fear. They find it safer to keep up a “macho” front, thus protecting themselves from any teasing or hazing from their male friends. In order to coax the submissive side out of them, give them a safe place to let their guard down, which is the reason for going slowly. Later, once You are inside his head, You can begin to break him down. [My bolding]

Of course when it comes to coaxing their submissiveness out, their solution to this is that all men are entranced by high heels and lingerie, with a very poor attempt to make the distinction between being sexually desired and having a reliable source of power. To be honest, high heel fetishes seem pretty variable and lingerie taste ranges from nothing or no interest to the highly specific- you never can tell if they guy is going to be gaga over boyshorts or fail to remember the colour of your bra despite wrestling with the clasp for ten minutes the last time you had sex.

But, according to them the best ways to grow dominance in your relationship include dressing sexy but a very particular kind of sexy, fondling him while he’s naked and asking him about female family members, especially his mother (carefully and elaborately detailed script included) and then taking him shopping and… making him carry your purchase of PANTIES! Oooooo, daring!

Why would I spend time with a man so horrified of femaleness that carrying a bag of lingerie takes coaxing?

Yeah, the much vaunted Femdom Society secrets involve taking the poor bastard to the mall with sexual bribery. But of course don’t you dare want a big cock inside you- remember consummating your lust spoils dominance. Instead:

Flirt , arouse, but never let the relationship progress to sexual interaction. This is the time when You are establishing how much effort this man must spend in expectation of being with You.

So it’s okay according to them to rub your feet against a man’s groin, but of course you understand that your urge to dominate is not being y’know, so fucking wet and lust filled you want to slam him into walls and rape him. But remember girls, all that sexy lingerie doesn’t have to appeal to you either- when you have him hooked you may drop the act and wear whatever you like. But until he submits, keep your self locked up in a sexy thong.

Apparently, once aroused, the male victim of this scheme will gradually come to associate serving you in small, menial things (not because he wants to, but because you give him a hand job every time you want coffee). The pay of course is that you get the poor bastard to list things he doesn’t want to do and then…

[…]there will be a point where Your pet appears to be more submissive than ever before. It is at this point that You begin to use the “would never do” list. At his most submissive moment, tell him how it would please you if he did a certain thing he said he would never do.

Note that this was not discussed in the context of soft limits, but rather as part of the sales packaged the with significant enough manipulation that your victim of choice will do everything you say. At this point I am reminded nothing so much as the sad, amateurishly written PUA (pick up artist) guides on seducing the female, that flatters the shit out of the reader while completely dehumanizing the opposite sex as a means to an end. I am also struck by the same aura of vulnerability. All this “power” is built on making yourself into a sexual object and running an elaborate deception just to get to a place also reached by adult negotiation.

We’ll pick up again in the next post to look at the rest of Junior and Senior and uncover the financial scam at their heart.