“Just do whatever the dominant wants” is a bad way to (exclusively) define femdom

The Two Femdoms in red text, over a woman contemplating her reflection. "An Egalitarian Approach To Fetishized Power" is written below.

(Brace yourself, I am being very verbose.)

I think, as a community, we haven’t fully grappled with the fact that the roles of dominant and submissive are not always perfect puzzle pieces/mirrors of each other. When they do so, it’s typically either luck (two people are inherently compatible) or work (they arrived there via some sort of compromise). I also believe we keep trying to come up with a way of doing this that sidesteps the work *as equals* and gets hung up on the inherent properties of the roles we hope to embody.

Much effort has been put into grappling with what is or isn’t valid in kink, with some advice being bedrock to safety, like the importance of consent. Other approaches are not so helpful or actively harmful.

In the niche that is femdom (and a space like this), a lot of default advice is to lower emphasis on fetishes/things done and put more emphasis on submissive compliance. This works to a point, but it tends to be kind of assuming a collective dynamic on all of us (that dominants get to inherently define the meaning of both roles) when the practical reality benefits from the presumption of equality. 

The approach that submission is whatever the dominant says it is… Is incomplete. And yet a lot of people seem to take this for granted in lifestyle femdom discussions.

Of course, in lifestyle femdom, there’s practical reasons this approach has tenure, in so much that we tend to be the flashpoint between gender expectations and one of the primary tensions in D/s. Women (and femmes) of any orientation deal with one sided objectification that can be incredibly dehumanizing while asking extensive labor from us largely to benefit someone with more socio-economic power. None of this is news. 

And yet, the devaluation of what subs might use as framing *also* has problems. For example, it gets weaponized via whorephobia- eg the casual speculation a professional building a scene within the specifications of a client must actually be some sort of crypto-sub, secretly doing service. At the same time, this pushback makes it hard to have a conversation outside of kink roles, because there can be an overcorrection to invalidate what one doesn’t personally enjoy as “not true femdom”, rather than engaging with it as a complicated topic.  

See pegging, which is a highly polarizing kink loaded with social symbolism and a very different relationship to the sensory part, depending on the individual and their anatomy. It can be simultaneously genderqueer, transgressive and incredibly patriarchal. The strap-on is at once the phallic tool by which you cannot dismantle master’s house, and a form of liberation. All of kink is like that with every tiny facet going to have an asterisk and the note “it depends/YMMV“.

The same follows with what I describe as the “two femdoms needing to coexist problem”, but this extends behind our particular niche. 

The reality is what may make a submissive feel submissive (or turned on) doesn’t always match what makes a dominant feel dominant. If both orientations are starting as equals, neither is more valuable. That doesn’t mean a given person is required to perform the whims of another, but my whimsical fantasy nonsense as a dominant is not inherently more valid than a sub’s whimsical fantasy nonsense.

I believe, by extension, telling subs they aren’t truly submitting unless they do exclusively my personal fantasy nonesense is not going to get the results we hope it does, and it’s still objectifying the fuck out of me.

Instead, what we do need to acknowledge is that all dominants exist under imposed expectations, regardless of the gender of our partners, and that we often feel these assumptions overstep.  

However, while this is particularly noted in hetero femdom, it’s also noted in other queer kink of any gender combo (with an associated top shortage). What tends to be ignored is that it exists in M/f as well. It’s just in the latter case the way we weight gender mean that there is a paradox, both that male dominants are more catered to, but also where they might not enjoy something that breaks stereotypes about automatic power, they are given less freedom to complain. I think I have it worse than the average male dominant, but the conversation needs to include that even he is under some peculiar rules. Even if you don’t want to listen to men very much, as dominants, you are still getting their warmed over norms. 

And, at the same time we conflate gendered issues with BDSM niche specific issues- for example femdoms and femsubs spend a lot of time lecturing men to be less harassing. This exasperating reality of sexism we share, unfortunately, tends to be attributed not to a certain percentage of the population being encouraged to be abusive fuckwits, but each group respectively asking “why are subs/doms such trash?!” In my opinion the self sorting into niches is broadly helpful in many aspects (not the least of which is that mainline BDSM is hostile to female dominants), but there’s a certain dark comedy there too in the lost solidarity.

So, looping back to my title, the two versions of every D/s role are as follows:

  1. The self perception and needs of a person.
  2. The things that are projected onto us. 

Thus, as a dominant there’s both the stuff that falls into the cluster of femdom gaze (itself not universal but more likely to be closer to the mark) and stuff about someone who is ostensibly me but more about a sub gaze. However the inverse follows that subs have stuff for/about them and also stuff for people ostensibly into them.

In femdom, the stuff for us is so embarrassingly underserviced that “where is porn for me?” tends to border on opening the metaphorical drawer and finding IOU. But if you look at M/f, you can see a much more robust amount of niche pandering that assumes different priorities by D/s orientation. And, it requires emphasis that say, erotica made for femsubs is not erotica for m-dominants. People of group A might incidentally like stuff for group B and vice versa, of course, or be excluded from everything, by personal wiring. 

And thus, waving one’s hand at the stuff that caters to the presumed needs of sub men as invalid also oversimplifies. At the same time, these don’t exist in a vacuum, so a buck-stops-with-the-dominant approach still opens up all sorts of second guessing about authenticity. For example, the idea of a “Mistress” is neither a pure creation of subs and their fantasies nor dominants in their self expression. And additional tension exists that there’s a vertical loop as well, since subs and dominants find meaning within their respective identity as well. 

The problem, as I see it, is not trying to extract the wishes of subs entirely from the idea of authenticity, it’s to extract out where the relationship is unequal in who is imposing what on whom. To do otherwise ignores the role external input has on what we want.

I think the “just do what the dominant wants or GTFO” isn’t the worst defense mechanism in the context of the over weighting of the fantasies of men and subs, but I think it doesn’t solve the underlying issue. I just also think I prefer to ask my submissive identified partners, regardless of gender, to do the work to get as close to equality as possible as I feel the self abrogation approach is just asking me to be lucky enough to get a partner who coincidentally never has any conflict between my needs and theirs.

Lifestyle Only Femdom Blues

I wish I could say I am a dominant without people assuming I am a pro (or a man), but I would also like that not to be at the expense of anyone else. To be a lifestyle only domme is, for the most part, invisibility, but the conversation on the problem is poisoned by whorephobia.

In this regards, even my writing on the topic, over the last 10 years, hasn’t always been ok. Acknowledging this issue, nonetheless: for our culture at large, the general handling of my desires is to treat it like something that will make others happy or at the very least, to focus on how it will make me feel as far as how others react to me. Dominance, in women and femmes, is not allowed to just *be*.

Even in lifestyle only land, our forums are dogged by the single minded demand: where are the dommes and how do we get them? To these men, I am not a thing that might want him, to be bargained with as an equal or a suitor, I am more akin to the rib they hope to rip from themselves into the form of a helpmeet. My existence and authenticity is defined by my ability to complete someone else. 

Yes, the roots of this is heterofatalist nonsense, the same pressures demanding compulsory monogamy of vanillas. And yet, notably, my status as a thing that is presumed to meet desires doesn’t have the Domme version of warning me I’ll be a crazy cat lady spinster if I don’t settle. Likewise, no boyfriend, husband or fiancé will deter them the way that vanilla and Dom men alike imagine I could be claimed. A Domme, in her being wanted, is presumed to be there to satisfy. Hell, a Domme, existing, is presumed to be what is wanted. I’m not! I swear, I’m terrible.

This also is belayed in how Dommes are taught, formally and informally, to be.

Through workshop and book alike, femdom is packaged as a vocation or a toolkit that will empower you, not through discovery of your own pleasure, but the same old bad girl wins at hustle culture fantasy. Education is almost always gendered. Male dominants, for all their limited wardrobes, are treated as stepping into an aspect of masculinity, but for me, there’s a template and faking it until I make it.

It’s not all bad- the new topping and bottoming book are a bastion of gender neutrality and deserve their place in the canon. And yet, step out of the very performed-identity focused domme specific classes and into the BDSM scene at large, and prepare for just about everything to be built to assume you are a man topping women. And, get ready to deal with a steady train of people sure you are a less than, and if you dominate men that you are a threat and they are repulsive.

I decided, in the end, weird rapey ropetop dudes and femdom’s closer embrace to queerness and it’s transgression were enough to make me pick a side… But, as a Domme, I am (largely) not interested in being skilled, or having presence. I want a “persona” like I want another hole in my head. I don’t think nobody should want these things, but none of this is to the benefit of my orgasms and dorky power fantasies. Even as a least bad culture fit, the real me is very much an afterthought in femdom.

Don’t get me wrong, I am happy to have a sub and know my way enough around what I am doing to do so safely. And I am lucky that there’s plenty of humans extant to which a domme can complement rather than complete. Likewise, I don’t have a strong opinion on “pyjamas vs corsets”, I like both of them, but I like them from a position of being certified trash who doesn’t want to be compelled to wear either. I am writing this in an ugly beige t-shirt dress that I threw on because my stamina fell out the moment my work day ended. This isn’t a mark of my authenticity, it means I have given up on life for the next 3 to 6 hours. 

Someone might find that hot, but I don’t care and I don’t want to care.

That part is the problem. It’s where the gaze is turned, all the damn time, unrelenting. On me, never from me. And yet, despite having the worst temperament, flabbergastingly people keep kindly trying to nudge me to hang out a shingle. Some extremely well meaning people in the field have even encouraged me as if I lacked confidence. Me, the don’t wanna be touched, don’t wanna be vulnerable train wreck, was told I could definitely make it work, because my dominance could push through pretty much anything. No, being a pro is a hard, people focused job. I am a pervert, not an entrepreneur.

I don’t want to be paid to dominate, I want to be pandered to by creative professionals who want to take my money to sell me my fantasies, usually via prose and illustration. Just like the femsubs and dudes of any orientation. They enjoy an ocean of porn. Seriously, in the case of the femsubs, they are so omnipresent that in any given romance novel the odds some lady’s do me sub fantasies are getting tickled is about 50/50.

Instead, I am told for money purposes I don’t exist. I am as elusive a market to care about, as I am to the dudes who seek me to complete them. And boy howdy is that an incredibly alienating place to be.

The No-Needs True Sub Is A Nonsense Concept

If you spend any length of time in the femdom side of the internet, you are going to encounter some version of this idea:

“Femdom is about female power. If you were truly submissive, all those other things you want would be less important than whatever a dominant you submitted to wanted.”

(Paraphrased from a squintillion posts, tweets and nudges)

They mean well, unfortunately. Femdom-as-a-culture is currently over-saturated with things that cater to the fantasies of male subs more so than female doms. To be a domme is to be perennially assumed that your primary interest is performing in a way that meets the needs of subs. An additional pressure is applied that not only is your authenticity measured by how well you meet another person’s fantasy, it is idealized that you just happen to do so by being who you are. A push/pull forms around you, where you being powerful is fetishized, but that power is put on very tight rails.

For a dominant, being told you are all powerful while being confined to a rigid script can feel like a cruel joke. As such, the last 10+ years have been one long push back, against the ubiquitous uniform, against the idea you can’t do certain sex acts, against dehumanizing stereotypes that you are (only) a selfish monster or selfless mommy. Likewise, the matter of courtship became a debate on methods – with a fixation on changing (male) sub behaviour. We endlessly hashed over developing magic bullet first messages and dating profiles; on service resumes to trade labour for kink; on the entitlement of all dommes to expect some nominal payment; and how best to broach having a kink with your wife/girlfriend so she would either do it or agree to give you a hall pass. And, every step of the way, matters were made much harder because however you changed stuff around, somebody fetishized it.

Gentlefemdom and the idea of the domme in fuzzy slippers started to fight the idea that there was one rigid, dungeon bound way to kink, and looped back into absolutes and people wanking about how much hotter the domme next door was. The service resume trend led to the people into service being treated as the true femdom, and a bunch of people who thought it was a trade being bewildered now the service focused dominant wasn’t reciprocating. That’s not even opening the can of worms that is gray-area sexwork and findom! Not all changes were bad, of course, for example the discouragement of people randomly subbing at any dominant they met willy-nilly is a huge relief. However, through every new solution, once nuance vanished, so did

So Why Not Encourage Subs To Be Completely Selfless?

The problem, however, is that an effort to make the needs of sub dudes less overwhelming has come with the nuance-free version that deals with it by chucking his needs out the window. At the extreme end, back in the day when a wife said no or he feared her reaction to broaching the subject, we used to tell men in vanilla relationships to embark on “stealth submission”. This pretty quickly got called out for being dubious consent, particularly where the party being submitted to already said femdom made her wildly uncomfortable. However, I will go one step further and say that it’s a dumb idea because it doesn’t even meet the human need of the sub to be wanted for who they are. 

The current advice, that as a (male) sub you should just front load all the whims and needs of the dominant, doesn’t solve this problem, either. You end up with one of the following:

  1. The sub in question didn’t have much more than a service/obedience fetish, to the extent that if their partner decided anything from a vanilla to an M/f dynamic was what they wanted they would be gung ho. Any quick look around at people who identify as subs and dominants would show this population is a tiny minority, and to be honest even they tend to have some pretty significant caveats.
  1. The dominant just happens to luck into meeting the sub’s other needs because she wants to. But a conversation about *why* they might want to gets ignored, including that some dominants are motivated by understanding the desires of their subs and meeting them while others are not. One cookie-cutter domme template has been imposed over another, but we are still stuck with a very rigid default for everyone.
  1. The sub creates a one sided dynamic for themselves that is not sustainable. Everything carries on for a while, until the weight of not getting what they want causes things to fall apart anyway. Then nobody is happy, and the dominant can’t trust the sub to know their limits.

Ultimately, the idealization of the “no needs” sub is an effort to side step the inherent equality any kink dynamic should be built on. It’s either still fap (shoving anything an ostensible dominant could do on a pedestal while the sub gets the thrill of self abrogation) or a bargaining tool to avoid rejection. In the very best case it’s a temporary pause to try to undo the damage that being too pushy or to help a person ease into kink when they are uncomfortable with parts of it.

While I am all for not being excessively pushy, and I recognize that your average ostensibly vanilla partner may be alarmed if you front load the more uh… dark and complicated kink activities one might get up to, I suggest that inversely, the thrill of “femdom is whatever she says it is” is overwriting “femdom is whatever we make it to be”.

Who Am I to Tell People They Are Doing It Wrong?

I caveat I am speaking about general approach, not your personal relationship. There is a whole rainbow of ways people might construct a functional dynamic. If a given couple likes to make the needs of the dominant their primary focus, cool. Where it becomes a problem is when that fetish is imposed as a one size fits all solution or held up as a purer/better way to do kink. My criticism is in the assumptions it requires as general advice and the problem is when completely back burner-ing your needs is presented as a universal solution and starting place, not when it is your personal fetish.

When I say power exchange needs to come from a place of equality, I mean that. You cannot exchange power until you both have it. You can pursue your equality in an intersectional fashion, building in a foundation that is as once robust and elastic as it navigates the many aspects of our identities However, if your starting premise is “because I am a sub, all my needs are less important than the whims of the dominant” you need to add another layer before that: “My needs have the same inherent worth as those of a person who happens to be dominant”. This can still flow to “I feel fulfilled when I prioritize the needs of someone I perceive as dominant to me, more so than any other activity.” But if you start from devaluing what you want, you are over valuing the other party before you have agreed to a mutual hiearchy.

Finally, one of the reasons why I find this particular piece of advice needs countering is the fact that it keeps being imposed at dommes without acknowledging that it’s just as fetishistic as the guy with the elaborate fantasy of being transformed into a coat rack, whether I need a coat rack or not. While the intent is trying to come from a good place, the reality is a lot more like announcing you know what we need – a blank canvas, so perfectly smooth and unresistant. And yet… it remains a wild overcorrection, both unsustainable for most people, and just as dehumanizing to dominants as treating us like fetish dispensers.

Gravity and Kitchens

I love you very much, painfully so, with the yearning of spending too much time apart. We are that couple, together, in public, but just as much with no eyes on us but each other. 

Red filter overlaying a fancy kitchen with white text "FEMDOM DESIRE | Yearning in Motion| Gravity & Kitchens | Mundane architecture and high end, self-thrusting sextoys"

I cannot recall the music, writing this now, but I remember, in late February, dancing in the kitchen with you, guarding for the slight slip of my black cotton tights on the faux wood linoleum as we shimmy-twist. Alongside the peril of losing my footing, it’s distracting how beautiful you look in motion, in a blue blazer over a light blue button down. Your body tapers sharply from your shoulders, shimmying. I’m wearing the green vintage dress you bought me for Christmas. When we pull apart and I twirl, the skirt bells out, all picturesque.

We have returned from a Pike Place Market french restaurant, where I stole half of one of your crab cakes, and you took, at my urging, half my salmon filet. I think I got the better trade, though there was nothing wrong with my fish. 

There was a window to the restaurant kitchen marked by a pile of citrus fruits, aiming to put themselves into the dining area to make things feel more casual, or maybe make the most of the space. Once upon a time, in the 70s, this was a jazz spot, but its so crowded I wonder where they used to put the musicians. Still, it’s well prepared fresh fish, bread with a $5 up charge and pleasant crab cakes. And noise, lots of it, more crush and clatter than intimacy. The hints of old music, there, are drowned out in the excess of the conversation of others. I am content, holding back my urge to nitpick this nice gift, but nevertheless we do not favour them with the opportunity to sell us dessert. You serve me icecream instead, later, after we have danced. Looking after me is just what you do.

When I arrived for the weekend, I took the train in. It’s always comfortable, but too crowded that particular night to fight the line in the dining car, so you met me with food. It’s been a bad eating week for me again, a fact that I am not proud of, but being home in my space is driving me a bit nuts when I try to cook.  

I daydream about kitchens that are not shoved into main areas. I am well sick of exposed, designed for people who don’t cook counters that push atrocious storage and a strict inability to let anything be, lest it become noxious clutter. I keep optimizing, all the endless expenses to try to make the space livable. Hooks for this and that, shelves expanding outwards and upwards. Ultimately no compensation can fix a cramped, poorly laid out space with too many things in it. And there’s no walls in spaces, anymore, a victim of the open plan trend. Sharing these spaces is even more frustrating, because there’s twice as much room to let the dishes or the mess get away from you.

If, perhaps, I lived flung out from my work by another 30 minutes, I might have my own solo shoebox, on my comfortable middle class salary. It pays more, on this coast, but rents jack up to eat one’s earnings. But, even paying more, the kitchen would still be in my bedroom, or at best, still in my living room. On the west coast, new construction is the norm. I think they are so cheap, regardless of the actual cost, they would leave the doors off bathrooms, if they could justify it.

Case in point: Tech job or not,  your kitchen, the one I danced in, is “open plan” as well. This pivot and swirl smooth space I slide about in is an island of no texture in the otherwise stucco and wall to wall carpet, an alley of linoleum fenced between appliance and an island counter. For this visit, you draped the island in a rich quilt, handmade in a medley of turquoise and blue, serving as tablecloth to display a bouquet of flowers. Pink and purple and green, stems capped by pale, fat roses that remind me of babygirl birthday cakes. Just for me, to be pretty to look at for the weekend.

We’re in the approximate orbit or Valentine’s day, so we brought each other gifts to unwrap, too. Yours were piled up on the kitchen island when I got there, mine hand wrapped in sticker covered tissue paper and tied with real satin ribbon. You gave me a cape-capped coat dress with a flash red lining;  a box of fancy tea; costume brooches; and spangle-sparkly tuxedo bodysuit that tugs at your fetishes to lift the collective sense of power over you, even as the glitter roughness of the fabric repels your touch. I gave you a high end, self thrusting sextoy by lovense.

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The Martyrdom of Satanatrix

Disclaimer:
This was written without being able to consult or personally verify the stories of the three people most affected, but where possible I aimed for a harm reduction approach. I do not link to any source that contributes to the the outing two sex workers, and put my focus primarily on Satanatrix not to diminish the agency of the two others involved, but because she has been most vocal about her personal philosophies.
I caution readers that my interpretation and recounting of the situation will, necessarily, be imperfect. However, my motive for writing this is because nobody else I can find has.  Indeed, for all the attention given, nowhere else but the sexworker and sexwork aligned femdom community has taken the part of Satanatrix and Empress Ming. I must tip my hat to the podcast, What Women Want for being the only other effort, outside of the immediate community of the victims, to try to combat the barrage of nonsense from mainstream media coverage, and as he has an own voice interview with Satanatrix, you should definitely take the time to listen.
The Martyrdom of Satanatrix: A story of Faith, Art & Old fashioned Religious Persecution

Once upon a time, in 2020, three people, Satanatrix, AKA Lady Vi; Empress Ming; and the priest of the parish decided that St. Peter and Paul’s Catholic church in New Orleans was a good place to do some spiritually themed femdom. Two years later, after the filming of an ill-fated fetish-flick-cum-ritual resulted in the arrest of the three participants, the trial part of the fiasco has finally ended. It did so in the most American way possible, a plea bargain that knocked what might have been a pair of felonies (institutional vandalism & obscenity) to a misdemeanor version of the former. And yet, lest you think that’s a slap on the wrist, it carries a fine of $8K, to be paid in 6 months; two years suspended sentence (with intrusive supervision); and a vigorous NDA that stops not only release of any video or pictures from the event, but the two Dominatrices even talking about it to the media in any capacity. Further, the church had all details of the trial sealed. 

The church was very upset by this incident, going as far as ritually burning the altar. The priest was obviously fired, and awaits his own trial, having had a falling out with the two dommes. Thus, the details of the defense now seem split between “I thought we could do it because he said it was ok” versus “that woman, she tempted me”. As it was ever so, where sexuality and social censure intersect.

And it was, in the lingering aftermath, a terrible ordeal for the three involved, particularly the relatively blameless women. Likely the fallout from that first arrest did the most damage. Even without a conviction, including if they had somehow fought it out to a not-guilty verdict, most of the worst consequences fell into place the moment they were placed in custody, head shots taken in loosely striped jail clothes, and thence released to the world. Long before any guilt was legally established, the arrest resulted in the immediate outing of both Satanatrix and her colleague via their real names. 

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Various Kinds of Desire Together, In August

In theory this was a last longer visit before I return to work. The two body problem kicks back into gear, as my office job cannot be imported over the border, WFH or not. I am a Canadian, and though Silver is more portable in his skill set, Vancouver consistently swings below competitive in tech salaries. We make do, but for now we cram the time together before I must return from portable disability to fixed labour law compliant behaviour.

It feels like visiting another life. He emphasizes “Home”, wanting me to feel that way, and makes every pain to make it that comfortable, but my practical roots are still paying $1000 to share a two bedroom with a friend, and my brain still parks myself there at my legal address. Home isn’t where my heart is, but where my childhood teddy bear, resting on my pillow, and my mess and the clutter I am still struggling to grapple.

With him, I think we have started to escape the honeymoon extra effort period. Even as he continues to dote on me, this feels sustainable.  We have passed the first year or so where everyone is on their extra best behaviour. But, with the matter of the extreme step of moving to make this permanent, my life is an Elizabeth Barret Browning sonnet:

If I leave all for thee, wilt thou exchange

And be all to me? Shall I never miss

Home-talk and blessing and the common kiss

That comes to each in turn, nor count it strange,

When I look up, to drop on a new range

Of walls and floors … another home than this?

Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Sonnets from the Portuguese 35

I think I could be happy in this quiet domesticity. Working on writing projects on my computer. A farmer’s market in the morning, doing our laundry in that continuous cycle of always being more to do daily, and making us meatballs from scratch for dinner. He puts up with my criticisms of his bachelor kitchen patiently. It’s not the franks’n’beans and no paper towels squalour we stereotype men with. It’s the not having to answer to anyone but yourself- so there’s a kitchenaid mixer, but the grater has a crack in the plastic frame, and things I take for granted aren’t there. And yet… Sure he has less cake pans, but he owns more pots than me, in fact in many ways more things on hand than I do. Deviance in our kitchens is more personal preference than otherwise. Though my tools tend to get junked when they break, I am still getting my shit together after what amounts to 5 moves in 10 years.

The steady progress here says that in another while, there will be a move there, too. All the things I established in Vancouver, my nest, will need to be upended, those possessions that transformed money into comfort and convenience winnowed for duplicates and storage. I am a person who wants roots who has lived relatively rootlessly. I wonder now, if my nest making was foolish and I should have expected to be shaken loose from each new home in the speed I did.

There’s a bit of care there, on my part, sensitive to feeling less than in the totality of the measure of our lives. Though I apply therapy to my insecurity like an ointment, the thought is ever there with a deep penetration. Reader, if you came here to see an ice and leather goddess regiment worms under her boot, or see a woman drift guilt free on a tide of consensual exploitation, alas it’s been ten years of disappointing you and counting. here, we have naught but the neurotic and horny, a fiercely distrustful and scruffy mélange that leads me to only half facetiously say I’m certified femdom trash. 

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Femdom & The Whole Rest of the Boy

Femdom and the whole rest of the boy, in text displayed over a male nude

Heterosexual femdom is weird. It’s not colouring between the cis straight lines, but it’s going to get you even more side eye if you call yourself queer than a bisexual woman with a boyfriend does. I tend to settle on the lukewarm “queer adjacent” to avoid some traumatized wee LGBTQ+ getting verbally abusive at me because they aren’t comfortable with spectrums, only binaries. Nevertheless, because our understanding of “normal” heterosexuality has certain gendered power expectations built into it, if you lean F/m, you are going to travel to where your behaviour relative to your gender expectations are not in alignment. That’s even if both of you are the most cisgender folks on the planet. This disconnect is a frustrating, orphaned space. These days, how we perceive the progressive and “safe”  is a kind of hierarchical tightness that doesn’t know what to do with things that don’t fit into what is mainstream, but also don’t have a perfectly overlapping experience. No wonder we had to carve out our own “femdom” niche! For its many cultural faults, there is a reason why we are our own distinct identity, and I often feel like the aesthetics of gay men are the only other place you are allowed to consider male bodies as more than a vaguely threatening symbol of potency.

Past readers know I have definitely talked about the transgressive nature of submissive masculinity and put my face to singing their praises. I even spill rather more pixels to the topic than I sometimes wish I did, but telling submissive men not to be terrible and stopping submissive men from making self destructive mistakes are such default parts of our niche that they almost happen automatically. But hey, let’s talk about some good stuff, shall we? If the fashion is currently to help trans people figure things out by leaning to gender euphoria instead of defining themselves by dysphoria, I will spotlight our happiness.

Submissive men offer the opportunity to flip the subject/object nature of typical straight relationships

Sexual perfomance expectations for women are like that old metaphor of the swan, gliding serenely on the surface and paddling like mad underneath. An infinite amount of work, primping and positioning goes into performing femme for fucking, but then there’s a demand for aloofness that borders on disassociative. You become the prize he is then expected to pursue, the elegantly prepared feast to be devoured. Though I don’t doubt submissive women have their own canny inversions, if you are anywhere femme of centre, femdom has the best possible route to flipping that on its head without switching to a same gender partner. Not by default, mind you, as transgressively centring him, his looks and his beauty are hardly the default of mainstream BDSM porn. Nonetheless, big titty anime mommies and needy idiot fanboys or not, there’s a reason gentle femdom tends to be a land of painful yearning. And when you talk to dommes, outside of marketing copy; the people who don’t like submissive men; and the naive morons who think an actual personality like cat piss is a symbol of power, there is a visceral, all quenching immersion in him. He is there for us

So, even if you have a complex asexual thing going on where it’s the sadomasochism not the aesthetics that matters to you, it also flips how we can interact with the bodies of eachother. One of the most depressing parts of the male default identity is how they are taught to relate to their bodies: penis, penis and yet more penis. Dudes learn this pretty early: Don’t touch anything else, not your nipples, not your lips and for gods sake, not your ass or the puckered hole between your cheeks. It’s no wonder so much straight porn treats its male actors like a life support system for an erection! For a shocking number of men, they live in an inversion of the previous century. Sex positive feminism taught women to look at their vulvas in mirrors, touch themselves down there, and see their genitals as something other than a dirty shame. But for men, almost a century from when your metaphorical (and my literal) granny squatted over a mirror, guys are worrying if proper hygiene makes them gaaaaay.

So, if straight men are putting their prostates off limits out of shame, forget nibbling the inside of his wrist, fingers, sensitive pulse points, etc! By now, our collective sex lore says these are all things that you have to teach men to explore on women. It’s expected it’s not intuitive to him, but agreed on as required, much how millennial dudes and younger now all osmotically learn cunnilingus is the new chivalry. Him though? No dude needs that! Just be hot and grudgingly consenting, ladies!  

Of course that’s nonsense. Human bodies are so much more like each other than not. While the individual always varies, the layouts of most things anatomical are lazy, even putting nipples on every dude, and folding a structure that is shockingly analogous to a penis into the groins of cis women. Nerves are nerves, and we are not so sexually varied that a man lacks the physical capacity to enjoy all those erotic sensory things, from finger sucking to a hand pressed to the throat.

Whether you are hurting him or just exploring him, femdom unshackles you from his dick.

So don’t get me wrong, the end argument is not just to lock up all the penises. I agree that men vastly over state how much cock cages and chastity are a universal benefit to women. Men are not actually ruled by their libidos like it was a life sustaining drive akin to hunger or breathing. But what we don’t talk about in so-called chastity is how much it breaks everyone of wham-bam-thank-you-ma’am, including giving him permission not to receive it. The whole rest of the boy is on the table.

And whether your kink is inadequacy or display, you also get to really look at him. Just as my body is socially considered to be open to public commentary too much, men blunder around uncomplemented even by their loved ones. Stick that guy in the s type role and you center a female gaze that may or may not be pleased, but at least it’s pretty much universally there. Ditto the tentative exploration of lingerie for men, both to humiliate as emasculation via consensually weaponized dysphoria, and my personal preference, to decorate and emphasize. Though dommes grumble that our more shallow needs stay uncatered to, if you are here to oggle a pretty man, whatever your tastes, the options have only been getting better, gradually and grudgingly, over time.

I mentioned GentleFemdom, and while it’s drifted past interest for me into a fandom sausage fest, you have guys pressing in the other direction for a different idea they might be pursued and desired. And while the stock characters might not be my cup of tea, again, the manga influence heavy illustrated boys are most likely to be treated with dialogue that assumes he’s cute.

And likewise, just as his appearance becomes worthy of opinion, physical sadomasochism also needs a bigger canvas. Sure, you can hurt a cock and balls. I do, and enjoy it, but it’s a touch monomaniacal if that’s all you ever do. While you could glide through vanilla on kissing, hugs and touching his dick with bits of you, sadism means you need to get intimate with the sensory possabilities of everything. To stay in the sweet spot of permanent harm free, extended ouchies means more square inches than whatever is between his legs. 

Male masturbation toys enjoy more use in femdom

BDSM in general favours a more hands off approach. Be it a flogger, a dildo on a pole, or a bog standard magic wand to give someone a forced orgams, we like our gear. It’s a sexually permissive society that’s has less emphasis, even in femsub land, that you should insist that a vibrator is competition to a man hoping a woman will have an orgasm.

There’s no weird hang ups about it being a cop out to use your belt, not your hand, on the pert behind of whom you are topping. Toys *on* tops are still a bridge too far in most content, and people can normalize for play, regardless of whatever gender combo is featured. However, male subs are the vanguard gradually dragging everyone to admit you can put a vibe on him as much as her. Through our purchasing needs, the plethora of strokers, milkers, butt plugs in various bulbous shapes from the Aneros to the usual blunt christmas tree style stopper are ever so gradually being dragged out of the “gay men only” silo they are stuck in. 

Toxic masculinity ruins everything. While I can buy vibrators at Sephora, and female intended sex toys are now aggressively marketed assuming I am the primary consumer, male recreational appliances have a ways to go. And it’s generally part and parcel of femdom subculture for me to be able to talk about using something on Silver without people acting like it’s weird. 

I’m enjoying it. One of the most common things I get asked to review, these days, has been the burgeoning male market, and it’s clear it’s a whole new ball game (snrk), with established manufacturers and new brands popping up every day. Between the new toys, and old toys getting more availability, the increasing presence of lingerie and more space to put his body in one’s metaphorical cross hairs, everyone’s sex lives will be better for it. Now to convince more dominants that they can use butt plugs or be masochists. 😛

I Am an Expert In Being In Love

To tell the story of Pearl, it’s a bit more than just saying I am a dominant sadomasochist.

At this point it’s probably clear that the whole femdom thing is indelibly stamped into the core function of my sexuality, enough that I have been talking about it a LOT lately, or at least my place on the asexual spectrum. But, part of who I am is influenced by something a bit adjacent to demisexuality, and that has been further effected by the fact that I fall in love easily. I don’t use the word “love” lightly, like I pop off crushes on lots of people. I mean the sort of heart soaring heavy nonsense. Getting there, for me, is incredibly easy.

After many years of having this part of my makeup, I also have determined not everyone falls that hard. Insights into the spectrum of human possible really does involve a lot of guessing, like discovering some people are ear rumblers or cilantro tasters. But, much like the latter case, if people don’t have the capacity themselves, they may suspect you are somehow exaggerating. Which, I suppose is just the part of the human condition that finds it comforting to suggest one is making things up, or that the severity will reduce with the right mindset, like comforting a child with a scraped knee.

For me, sex hormones and falling in love share an entwined history. In addition to my kinks, which grew from day 1, ever since puberty hit, so did the BigFeel capacity. The hardest part is there’s not a lot of support for it. Generally, if you talk about intense feelings of yearning for another human, everyone treats it like an obsessive thing you are choosing to do. Instead, as I experience it, it’s an involuntary WHOMP of an attachment. It’s the closest brush I can get to vanilla, in so much that there’s a tiny window my sexuality will be present without a mountain of kink between me and them.

It’s like those various brain integrated glands got the instructions to lay down the pre-framework, long before I dropped my first egg, and decided to say: “Hello, Miss Pearl (aged 12)! In addition to a single orgasm this year, and some now functionally vestigial parts that will ripen up over the next half decade, your already awkward ability to bond onto others will be amped up to 11. The only saving grace is that you will be completely frustrated in realizing these wants most of the time, thus safe from a lot of dumb follow up behaviour.

This nonsense was probably made worse by the fact that there’s a cultural assumption that pushes eros into any male/female relationship. When I was younger, I preferred the company of boys for reasons of shared nerdy interests. I liked the company of girls before that- I am lucky I never internalized the sexism of assuming girls were inherently no fun. However, I followed my interests, and the kinds of games that could be played, which meant little in the way of female companionship. As a result, at the best of times, when I was way too young for it, adults were already imposing dating expectations onto my male friendships. But, inversely, even in these erotypical scripts, I had no tools to help me navigate having an Olympic level firework display going on in the brain of a child and young adult. Indeed, most people generally denied it could be happening to me, and further romanticized it as an experience we would be lucky to have once in a lifetime.

(There’s an additional hypothesis one might have about my capacities: there is actually a deeper form of Eros I have yet to experience. If everything to this point was a “crush”, I will end up in a psyche ward when it happens, because this is already pretty all consuming.)

For the lack of support I grew up with, I blame abstinence only education, which depends very much on the idea of rare, monogamous and consistent attachments and no alternatives. It’s much easier to enforce a compulsory, marriage focused heterosexuality when you believe in abstract concepts like a single shot of “True Love” to save you purity for. And yet, when I dug further, past pop culture, much as most research on love is almost laughably primitive. Like sex, people have thought about it a bunch and made more art than a million humans could consume in one lifetime. And yet, the psychology is still in the classification stage. Limerance, the term for the intense attachment and search for connection, was a word only coined in 1979. University labs pair college students in research to see if sharing prolonged eye contact and facts about the self correlate to an increased chance of a relationship forming.

So, you have a paradox. Love, in the broad sense, is a big label. It’s been contemplated forever, and generally serious classifications start with mentioning it’s broken down into sub types to distinguish sexual passion (Eros) from friendship (Philia) or a bond with a family member (Storge), and so forth. Unfortunately, this also hints that a lot of the thinking about it hasn’t really advanced, like we were still using the Aristotelian concept of the atom to try to do physics.

Setting off to navigate the conversations around the asexual spectrum, by the way, is a further challenge of everyone having a different perception of love. All humans don’t have the same capacities or experience, but this is never discussed. So, the other half of the expectation around my experience is that it is on the one hand very rare, but on the other, universally possible. Much is said about “True Love” in art, but while you can find out the wavelength of the colour orange, try to measure dopamine and so forth in new parents, or calculate the age of the galaxy relative to its neighbours, love just seems to be. People expect it to happen, to the point that aromantic folk have to make it clear they are a distinct identity, including having to emphasize that it’s not the same as asexuality. (Though the whole Ace thing clearly has a bit of an umbrella label effect, due to the path of collective discovery).

I can’t know if you, the reader, experiences love like I do.

Moving away from the people who don’t love, or love as much, but further from the Greeks, trying to explain what is going on might be further clarified philosophical observation about love from the late 1820s, of something called Crystallization. That’s the process your entire brain gets melted and leaks out your ears, and in the process, elevates the object of your fixation. In my case, barring rare moments, I am about as attracted to the act of non-kinked sex with another human about as much as humans typically find upholstery, garden ponds, or fruit bowls erotic. If Love wanders in, then these parts actually work.

Moving through the timeline of people writing about love, in the second half of the last century you will find neologisms like limerence. The experience of the early stages, for me, is something I only semi facetiously call a “temporary manic episode”. The first burst of falling in love brings euphoria, dropped sleep needs, and a magnetic inspiration that slams whatever poor bastard I have bonded onto into a muse. It also has a regrettable history of encouraging me to be a pest, though at least my gender flipped pigtail pulling could be tempered by maturity.

But just as nature abhors a vacuum, I am not permitted to walk without attachment. A cozy monogamous(ish) relationship that meets my emotional and sexual needs is the only thing that turns it off. Elsewise, I don’t have it in me to be the bed hopping, casual sex loving slut I wished to be. I was born to burn for desire for one person at at time. More frustratingly, though this limerence allows a brief ability to have a more vanilla sex, trapped in a relationship without kink, my romantic attachment fizzles.

What dignity I have today, in love, is hard won.

I am not the hot mess I once was. I mean, I hope so, as I think I’m in the “middle aged” territory of womanhood now, pre-menopausal, but definitely not young. And yet, the insensity has never wavered. All that coudl happen is I got good at controlling my behaviour. That’s no thanks to pop culture, which excuses the theoretical actions of women in love only a little bit less than the carte blanche it gives a guy with the same thing. Fiction isn’t even really sure that dying for your passion is a bad thing, even if Romeo and Juliet has an aspect that’s a cautionary tale. Cathy might crash her immune system yearning in the moors in her nighty, but we are meant to see her passion for Heathcliff at least understandable and inevitable. Of course, luckily for me, love largely just gave me an opportunity to act like an embarrassing git. My teenage years are, lest you think otherwise, a cringe factory that I survive remembering only through accepting my own sincerity at the time.

Middle school (Junior High for Americans) passed in an unfortunate series of stupidities, to be met with an excess of eagerness in High School. While the adults assumed I was on drugs based on my general behaviour (lol, nope), and shook their heads at my sexual precocity, over 50% of the time such passions were unrequited. That is for the best, and it was only through this experience that a modicum of a clue and a shred of pattern recognition started to assert itself. I lived in an area where all the small town nonsense of the early 2000s was in full swing. It was the era of Purity Rings and second virginity, and I was a baby pervert who wanted to do BDSM. I had the internet, and bonded awkwardly on similarly aged folks there too.

I learned the triggers tended to be creating the fiction I craved together. Not every person, but outside of my first times, where mere positive attention seemed enough to turn me into a giddy idiot, it was a common denominator. I’m super lucky, by the way, that Silver’s sexuality is more primarily mapped on making “story” too. Unfortunately, I also learned a pattern that for most people I fell for, they would play out such creativity with me during a crush on me, and than put that away like some sort of courtship only thing.

Nonetheless, I eventually learned to handle it. It doesn’t force me to pursue a single goal, rather while I can’t temper the intensity, I can find appropriate outlets. It also doesn’t completely suspend my judgement. As an older teenager, I was already able to tell if something wasn’t going to work if we tried a relationship. Gradually I managed to shunt all that enthusiasm and energy away from the people and into writing projects and so forth.

Kink mismatches, and other hazards of love

This does give me a little perspective on the situation of the tale as old as time: the kinky person married (or as good as married for their socio-economic status) to someone mismatched in libido or what they want to do in their sex life.

I am generally on the side of telling people in monogamous, but kink free or dead bedroom relationships not to cheat. Divorce and seperations are economically and emotionally hard, but at least they are legally possible. However, I am a little more sympathetic in how a kinked person stumbles into a union with a vanilla person. Not only is their precious little information about kink, to help one make that self discovery, but circumstances like mine show how one might have a brief window where things could work without kink. Nonetheless, my self knowledge means I have to front load any courtship with what I am into.

Nonetheless, I have had variable luck. In the first place, one of the harder lessons in being kinky is that just because they technically have your fetish doesn’t mean you share it compatibility. Nowhere is this illustrated than among balloon fetishists, where popping/not popping is a deep schism. but even in BDSM and further sub divided into femdom, you can come from two wildly different places. It’s been the end of more than one relationship for me, and painful, at that.

I cannot, however, have much spite for the incompatibility. I did have one party claim to be more kinky than they were, but the delusion there seemed to be wishful thinking. Nonetheless, when things are kink-functioning, I am a very sexual person. That’s an irony for me, lacking all the typical attractions, but unable to sustain the head-load of romantic attachments if we aren’t regularly doing some sort of intercourse. I worry , these days, as menopause is about a decade or two at most away, if my libido will sputter out, changing the picture entirely. But, past evidence shows that even when brain meds tanked things, there was some sort of connection still there.

Silver linings

I think, however, there is one blessing. I have, more often than not, found adult me’s passions reciprocated. Even in my youth, I turned down one budding relationship because I knew were wouldn’t be kink compatible, but the poor person, at least, matched me for the gooey-glue of our wants. And I suspect I owe that to the fact that I love openly and well.

Silver, for example, says he likes the surety and openness of my feelings. I was many months ahead of him for the “I love you”. For him, it was a much more cautious conclusion. But I cannot help feeling that my quick heart probably helped me signal to solidify the relationship that makes me very happy. And, I also noticed, though my looks are often remarked on, I have never been courted because of them. My personality, my creativity and so forth have always been someone’s motive- even as I find my aesthetics are a bonus. That too, I think is related to my loving openess.

I think it is easier to fall for the “personality” of a person when they unspool themselves like I do. I might love immensely, deeply, but it does seem I have been loved deeply, a lot, as well.

Water, Hay Fever, Cum, Bodies and Breath Play

Allergies boil my head, but his body is an aesthetic dream. My twitter feed’s a minutiae of trying to clear my head of goo, unerotic except to that one person with a histamine fetish (I mean there must be?).

Silver has the gift of most smaller men, proportion easy, then honed with dedication at a gym. He refused to admit he is muscular, calling it into question because his shoulders and arms don’t stay swollen like frozen hams when they are not flexed. He was also incredulous when I pointed out we should probably size up in condoms, because I had to fight to get the standard size down his dick at the last inch.

Even now, the Magnums, with their bold branding, actually the middle not the extreme, from the drug store’s offerings, create a sort of self conscious cringe. Neither he, nor I find much pleasure in harping on imaginary inadequacy. We never developed a taste for the male sub standard of claiming your partner doesn’t do it for you and attaches a certain self defeating aura to the dominant. No knock to your own kinks, but if I am going to own someone I want to think they aren’t a sexual imposition.

I began the weekend by offering him the chance to come, right then, or be denied on my terms as per usual. He picked the latter, of course, for fun in teasing. My god, he’s pretty and I’m horny. My botched IUD install and its correction is wearing off and I get wet easy. But, it’s not his tight little body I adore, by itself. Aesthetically, yes, it’s nice, but subtract my love and the possibility of control and certain tensions and I would have an immunity.

I skim the sex scenes in novels, not repulsed, but bored, often preferring “fade to black”. The intensity *to* bed can do it for me. And yet, now, with him, even writing this, the texture of his flesh when I squeeze it is an alluring sense memory.

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Confessions of a Sadistic Femdom

sadistic femdom sex graph

All my pain games with my partners, my denial, teasing and so forth are pursuing a very particular outcome. Because it turns me on and makes me feel deeply connected to my so called victim. It is not a script- the means and confirmation of the goal is subjective; psychologically intimate; and physically impossible to clone beyond that creative moment, together. For me, my sadism is an intersection with my empathy with their suffering, and that sense of lost of will and control I perceive from them.

My biggest challenge in partners is that I need them to be aroused by what I am doing. I cannot do pain just as a power trip, no matter the consent offered. The desire can be after, or in a complex way, but broader experience has taught me that there is a scope of sensation and framing here I need to have echoed back.

As a submissive, Silver answers with joy to being called a “slutty little masochist”. I could not have it any other way, but if I thought about anything in sincere terms of being blessed, his welcome and obvious lust at my sadistic femdom cravings would go high up on that list. Torment him and I am riding a buzz. And, hilariously, we always end with being surprised to be getting a thank you from each other after. Each thinks the acts of the other are a gift.

Hurting Silver, last night

The rubber band snaps and he gives a yelp that is closer to a sob. Silver is in latex, transparent gloves and corseted leggings. We have explored with the potential of the tens unit I got him for his birthday last year, and of rope. A Lithuanian supplied, Soviet army surplus rubber gas mask gives him an oddly cute look, the old fashioned metal circles of the goggles amplifying the size of his pretty eyes. It was a a Christmas gift for him this year and I am very pleased with it.

When I want, I can put my hand over the air flow, instant easy breath play. The shape is snouted, adding an unexpected stubby cuteness. For fun I put him on all fours and reach forward to put my finger over the air intake while I slide his cock down my throat. It’s intense for me, and I feel him brush against my teeth, playing the game, no air for you, no air for me. When he is settled in place, it’s a rare moment where he doesn’t essentially freeze up in obedient attention, his cock begins to pump in and out in my throat. Yes. Fuck me. No concern for himself and being proper, mindless thrusting into that still unfamiliar wetness with the threatening edges of the possible sharp bites I could give.

I am in black latex, cat suit, neck to toes. The sweat pools at my hip level, mingling with the wetness of my arousal. I feel squeezed but not restrained, after a struggle to get it settled just so. I under lubricate my latex, I don’t like slime on my skin. And, even if it hurts a bit I like that rubber grip tugging where it touches.

The rubber bands for his cock and balls started for my hair to help it stick out the ports of my own latex hood. That garment is now discarded, and when the tens unit got its tour, after brief session wrenching his traps, I went after his cock. The pads weren’t interested in sticking- it didn’t like his skin very much in general, but I m a clumsy improviser, the drunken boxer of kinky sex. Elastics made the pads into proper contacts for the prickles of the electricity, to tease his erection.

Only a tease, though.

It was an interesting sensation, but even on high it didn’t hurt him significantly. I needed him to suffer, this wouldn’t do! When it forced the big muscles on his back to shudder and twitch that was, at least a delight as far as the look of disquiet and pressure on his face and the aesthetic forced flexing. So, this toy was put aside for other games.

And yet in my check a single black rubber band was left on the mid length of his cock. There are the thin kind, designed to be invisible in my dark hair, not thread or cloth wrapped. It looked like it was meant to be there, with all the latex.

I played at bondage, earlier, capping the tops of his opera length gloves in a way that let me pull his arms behind his back. I put him in a web, with that grey rope, to admire the warm swell of skin. Now he’s free of ties, except for that thin black line. I go to take it off, and then playfully pull and let it snap back.

It hurts. Its sharp, even against the mid length of him. SNAP. Again and again, alternating targets and sides. I move it about, finding misery in the thin band just below the head. And of course his balls. SNAP.

Those are even worse. Some cosmic jester decided, in protection of the species that cocks were made to take a beating, dumb things that they are, for all the hold nerve rich promise of an orgasm. But, break your balls, and all bets are off. SNAP.

I can’t do serious harm with a cheap elastic. After four or five pulls it is starting to permanently stretch out, losing bite. I smile, drawn in by his whimpers. He does not like this. Like virtually everyone I have played with, Silver prefers thud over sting. Masochists are descriptive connoisseurs, communicating their feelings in a million ways. I think that’s how they know they need to seduce us, if we can’t feel what they feel secondhand, what are we dominants to do?

I fetch two more elastics and make free with him. I am being intentionally nasty, putting on the bully voice. It’s a bit meta, acknowledging the ridiculousness of all this. If a cat could speak while it made a game of the mouse, this is how I imagine it would sound. Predatory violence, not reactive, joyful not terrified.

Its already a mind fuck to grapple that he can barely stand a rubber band or two popping him in the balls. Little pinpoint, plum bruises make stars where I have snapped. And I keep asking, “oh, what’s wrong, does it hurt?”

Edge play now.

I keep asking him if he thinks he wants to stop. Every so often he needs a break and then says he can continue. His erection hasn’t left us, maybe because of the beautiful trap of his latex fetish and my clear enjoyment. If he went soft I would stop. I wonder if he knows that. I know he can take more, its abrupt and awful, but not like being burned or similar past human sensibility ways to make a point.

Overthinking the thoughtless part

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