On BDSM Advice that Does Not Work

(Or A Long Response to A Tweet by Simone Justice)

Trying to talk about the subject of BDSM advice includes the laughably bad, but also the zone of places that’s subject to more of a grey area. Sometimes you have the SEO spam femdom garbage where it’s content that’s little more than key words strung together (thank you Cara Sutra and your active effort to make the kink internet just a little more broken to make a buck), sometimes it’s wankery like Elise Sutton, telling people what they wish to be true to sell books. Sometimes, more rarely, it’s actively dangerous advice that could seriously hurt people like the rapey nonesense of Peter Masters “Control” book.

But then there’s the whole category of advice that is just not useful, being given out because it assumes a lack of distinction between professional dommes and non professional dommes. In most cases this advice is more tedious than will ever do immediate harm to anyone, but it’s still something to be flagged.

Stuff like this casual Saturday morning tweet from Simone Justice…

There’s a lot to unpack here.

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The Kink Role Decoder You Were Waiting For

yourfetishroleEver wondered what those titles and identifier tags meant? This list is here to set you straight when you are getting kinky. 😉

Primal Predator: He really likes rough sex. Somehow this impresses some people and is seen as more ‘intense’. 

babygirl: She’s somewhere between the ages of 35 and 45 and she has her shit together more than you ever will. Also she really likes colouring.

Domme: Identifies as female, is dominant. Gets way more solicitations to sub to strange men than she would like. Which is any number greater than zero. Also get solicitations from ostensibly dom men offering themselves if she promises not to tell on them.

Dominant: Is a dominant as noted, but if female constructions like “Domme” makes her teeth hurt.  She will mockingly pronounce it Dom-AE. As this is the gender neutral, she will also have to devote a lot of time to reminding people M/f is not the default kink setting.

kajira: Thinks belly dancing is a fetish activity. Has more slave “positions” memorized than her dom.

sub: Submissive identified. Is mysteriously defaulted to lower case as if “Dom” were a proper name. Despite the fact that the distaff side of this orientation basically does 90% of the organizing in kink, gets assumed to be less competent.

Switch: Allegedly either not real, or an inferior alloy of dom and sub that will fly apart at any moment. If female, gets creepy inbox messages from all orientations.

Masochist/Bottom: Likes to get their ass beat, is way tougher than you. Sick of being disrespected.

Sadist: Is 2 spooky 4 u. Alternatively is desperately trying to avoid the overly sentimental side of kink because the “gift of submission causes” mouth vomit.

Sadomasochist: Does not take themselves seriously, much less your weird role authority game that they didn’t consent to. Somehow avoids the bullshit “not real” lable that switches get.

Hedonist: Literally here to get laid and unapologetic about that fact to an admirable degree. Will try anything once.

Swinger: Grandpa and Grandma’s version of poly. Pays double the door price at their events if male identified.

Princess: Completely unreliable indication of gender or role orientation, but would appreciate a tiara.

Evolving/Exploring: Read the porn or had some mind blowing sex, now here to find if there’s some sort of pattern to their orgasms.

pet/pup/kitten: Thanks the lucky stars that fashion trends made kitty ears a cheapo year round fashion accessory at Forever 21, has bought accessories at a pet store. Walks on your lap when you are trying to work on the computer.

Sensualist: Abhors pain. Likes orgasms. Give them a plush throw and an ostrich plume and close the door.

Femdom Review: The Control Book by Peter Masters

controlOr, as an unofficial subtitle… A Manual on How to be That Guy.

This is a bad book. It gets a lot wrong, wastes a lot of the reader’s time doing it. I’m going to be charitable and suggest that Masters is expressing himself poorly and would never endorse violations of consent. However, based on how this is written, the advice contained within has no place in a contemporary BDSM scene. It’s a pity because there aren’t really much in the way of (focused) resources about the behaviours you can use to compliment and express power dynamics. It mistakes talking a lot for making an argument and has enough problematic suggestions that it has no place in any kink curriculum.

So if you want to read it, basically imagine you were going to do a comedy skit about the ponderous True Dom you may have had the misfortune to meet at a munch, and expect a combination of tedium and terrible advice.

[Before I go any further, it’s worth noting that everything I stand for is pretty much diametrically opposite to this guy’s approach in this book. I can’t actively claim that Peter Masters is a bad person with any confidence, so if you are the author rest assured that I’m the kind of TNG/18-35 tumblr born brat that’s probably ruining kink and my shit probably looks just as appalling to you. That being said you are wrong about things with this book. WRONG.]

Here’s the highlights of the yuck:

  • D/s is only 24/7 and that’s what makes it distinct from topping & bottoming.
  • There’s no such thing as a switch and no room for them.
  • The best way to approach and gain submission is to start ordering subs around at a party.
  • Negotiation? What negotiation?
  • Subs are slightly brain dead, but it’s hard(er) to control a sub who is a good communicator.
  • Safewords are a barrier to D/s & here’s how to ignore/avoid them.
  • Lots of unsubstantiated pop psych.
  • Gender archetype Warrior/Mother examples without much examination of where they might come from.

Need more critique? I’ve got more to say.

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14 Over Used Topics On BDSM Forums

Redundancy-A-564x376While BDSM forums often provide a great way to talk to other kinky people and get a reality check or a sympathetic ear to your kinky interests and queries, you know you have encountered these conversations before. Whether it’s fetlife, /r/BDSMcommunity, the bright young things on 4chan’s d board, an international non-english community, or some other hidden pocket of kinky folk, everyone’s participated in them at least once and many of these are not inherently terrible until you’ve discussed them for the fifth or sixth time.

  1. Why are all the sub men entitled perverts/the dom women money grubbing scammers? Also:There are no dominant women in my large metropolitan area who are not professionals. Where do the REAL femdom enthusiasts hang out and why do they seem to find that attitude repulsive?
  2. Please validate that my status as a submissive means that I should be mad at my dom for failing to bend over backwards and give me what I wanted because my inherently fragile submissive self will asplode if I don’t get a bedtime story/symbolic reassurance on demand/fetish activity whenever I want.
  3. My LDR & internet only partner just ghosted. I am incredibly torn up that I no longer have an emotionally intense skype relationship with someone so many timezones away they may actually be sleeping.
  4. Feminism is making it hard to live as a submissive woman. A movement largely built on respecting the free choice of one gender to live as the choose is clearly preventing me from expressing myself because it stops other women from being subjugated and ruins my natural order fantasies because I think that somehow people turning a blind eye to abusive relationships is the same thing as consensual kink. Also I met a judgy feminist once who said mean things about housewives.
  5. DAE think submissive men should automatically somehow compensate dominant women from interacting with them regardless of whether or not said woman is a sex worker or the kinks being explored are findom/service, because that’s just what all femdoms want?
  6. Are you actually… allowed to be in love in a D/s relationship? Like, am I less of a dominant for not holding my sub away from me with detached firmness? I’m a bad sub for wishing the dom I’ve fallen in love with would love me back?
  7. I am a submissive with knee problems. Does my inability to kneel mean that I am less of a sub, according to a rigidly defined framework with its origins in pornography?
  8. Long, multi-thread discussion about gross misconduct and consent violations that fail to mention anyone, even by pseudonym and rely on whisper judgement, still falling into the trap of allowing serious illegality to be dismissed as “scene drama” while clinging to the value of the court of public opinion.
  9. I just broke up with my first kinky partner and I can’t conceive of ever getting the sex I like again because this was so serendipitous. Do other kinky people exist or am I doomed to never know love like this again?
  10. How do I deal with the fact that I am in a serious relationship with a vanilla person who doesn’t have any interest in anything to do with my sexuality, without breaking up with them or receiving any sort of compromise on their part? They may not know I’m kinked.
  11. [Detail scant personal ad that’s been inappropriately posted against forum rules (and probably posted in an international group to boot) to demonstrate naivety and complete lack of reading comprehension, because spamming is attractive]
  12. Only the way I express my kinks is right. Let’s have a lengthy, tone deaf argument on why a particular choice of actions makes you a nutcase, insensitive to people who are not involved in your personal life in any way or a poseur who lacks a true kinky flair.
  13. On second thought, let’s have a tone deaf, completely non-kinky discussion on some unpleasant issue like fat shaming, gender, why any modern progressive movement is icky and excessive, or someone’s pet conservative cause, enhanced by the fact that some poor person with serious mental health impairments is weighted equally and debated with the same vigour as someone with a less loose grip on reality.
  14. My new explorations of kink are MAGICAL. I think I just came unicorns out my ears.

That’s my pet peeves, what are yours?

Hair Raising Yahoo BDSM Articles

Yahoo, you're scaring me...Yahoo is alarming me today.

So as part of my mandate for this blog, I want to try to provide people with somewhat sane kink resources. I’ve been feeling pretty chuffed, and sometimes a bit outclassed lately by all the great advice that’s out there. But then I decided, for the purpose of a post I was putting together to go back to the basics and do a google search or two for information. What, after all, would a complete novice, who wasn’t neck deep in blogs and online groups find?

I googled “being the best submissive” because that was what I was looking for for the post I was writing.

Apparently, as part of the “Lifestyles” web content mandate they have, Yahoo has random contributor written BDSM advice articles cheerfully packed in next to Recycling and Food & Wine. I suppose this is not surprising, as BDSM is hardly anything alarming. It’s presented as basic instructions, often with titles like BDSM 101. So, it’s sex and relationship discussions for normal healthy couples, right?

Let’s check out some of their advice…

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