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?

30 days of kink: Days 3, 4 & 5 Okay, how did you get started in the kink stuff?

Once again I’m doing 30 days of kink in a multi-day jam together.

Day 3: How did you discover you were kinky?

The question here is not as much how I discovered kink as much as that learned I was part of a sexual minority of any kind, or what the words for my kinks was.

Initially, this was just my sexuality (or proto sexuality) and because of the relative weirdness of my family background I didn’t think vanilla was the default or that it was abnormal to want to playfully tie someone up or like stories where people lost their clothing or were held captive. BDSM was just part of sex-ed, which is to say the basic vocabulary and safety advice. None of my early exploration with other partners indicated that people were by default, vanilla, just that everyone has stuff they will and will not do and that isn’t always what you’d like.

Co,ing to terms with the fact that ‘femdom’ was the word that best described me was a more lengthy process.

Day 4: Any early experiences that, in retrospect, hint at your kinks?

Pre-school me had an imaginary friend who was always getting beaten up and having his clothing stolen. I was as much enamoured with Disney’s Sleeping Beauty for the scenes with the chained up/captive prince and I was happy to read books on the middle ages with their inevitable explanation of the dungeon/ransoming system or play games involving Trolls who wanted to capture people. I was obsessed with a comic series called Elf Quest probably because of a wicked witch style character called Winnowill.

I’ve talked about this before, but suffice to say, it was pretty easy to pick out that I was excessively fixated on certain dynamics.

Day 5: What was your first kinky sexual experience?  If you haven’t had one yet, talk about what you hope to have happen.

Tie up and capture games with other children escalated, as puberty rolled through, into light kink with highschool boyfriends and enthusiastic cyber roleplay with stranger on the internet, probably also pretending to be 18 at the same time as me. This is not to say that I was running round owning slaves from day one, but that kink was just always there.

30 days of kink: Day 1 & 2 – Who are you anyway and what do you like?

Because the 30 days of kink meme was created for tumblr I’m going to do my 30 days with several days to a post.

Day 1: Dom, sub, switch?  What parts of BDSM interest you?  Give us an interesting in-depth definition of what that means to you. Basically define your kinky self for us.

I am a dominant sadomasochist. I am interested in power exchange relationships, and a general miscellaneous range of impact play, con-non-con, bondage, and so on. I consider myself a broken switch, in that I am into a full range of physical and rough play, but the psychological aspects of submission provide no fulfillment or attraction to me.

I think BDSM is a catch all term for a collection of commonly clustered kinks that focus on power imbalances, vulnerability and sensations that would often be considered unpleasant or painful and worth avoiding. How a particular person expresses these is going to vary wildly. As a dom (for me I don’t like ‘domme’), I am more interested in obedience and control than receiving acts of service in the stereotypical domestic fashion.

For example, I will get off on the idea of forcing a guy to edge himself repeatedly and beg me to come, but I will be less enthusiastic about him cleaning my floor.

Day 2: List your kinks.

Gosh, that might be long because I find I can get into many things if they are presented properly, and my 30 days of kink would just have to be devoted to listing anything I tangentially enjoy. Some of the stuff I like includes: Bondage, acts of sadism and masochism, puppeting someone’s body (eg. mind control), male foot gear, slenderness and gauntness (as in unhealthily underweight too), people being sick, states of extreme vulnerability, cold, captivity, hurt-comfort, uniforms, well dressed men, playing sexy spy/diplomat games, insertions, body compression and/or corseting, appearance modifications, dollification, giving a guy head… I think there’s a separate writing project based on doing a porn story for each of my kinks.

It gets more complicated when I try to consider things in terms of sexy ideas (tropes I find fun), things I masturbate to and sensation play that doesn’t come up in fantasy. For example I get sexually aroused from being on the receiving end or dishing out acts of sadism, but my private point of orgasm tends to focus on the intense vulnerability of non-con sex. Thus I don’t typically *think* of beating my partners during private masturbation time, but I’ll get wet doing it or watching a well done flogging scene in a movie and so on. And I’ve never enjoyed spanking porn (in large part because of the framing), but I like the act itself. Meanwhile some things are sexy ideas if I read them in stories and play out with other people- for example I like starting from a position of intense vulnerability and manipulating things to my own ends in games.

Which I think is a pretty important point about sexuality and uh… there lacks a word for it, but one’s emotional orientation and sense of what is romantic. With Wildcard, pre-bedroom foreplay is often either fighty (not in the yelling over housework kind but in the teasing playfighting tension) or in pursuit of his vulnerability, erotic interest and submission. In actual sex, there’s either the range of whap-whack-bind, or there’s particular ways I like to touch and be touched.

Meanwhile, when I’m writing porn… uh erotica, for me its fairly important to try to capture that visceral aspect similar to what I get before orgasm, as a sort of oomph, and the build up. I also tend to get side tracked into enjoying the emotional attitudes that underpin things, and for me, the sexy because it’s not sexy real mental tangents and contrasts people get.

30 Days of Kink: Me Too!

There’s a blog meme running around right now, which is essentially a big list of writing prompts called “30 days of kink”. It seems to originate over at Queerkink, but Rayne of Insatiable Desire has the complete list right here.

So, why the heck not? I’ll give it a shot!

Day 1: Dom, sub, switch?  What parts of BDSM interest you?  Give us an interesting in-depth definition of what that means to you. Basically define your kinky self for us.

Day 2: List your kinks.

Day 3: How did you discover you were kinky?

Day 4: Any early experiences that, in retrospect, hint at your kinks?

Day 5: What was your first kinky sexual experience?  If you haven’t had one yet, talk about what you hope to have happen.

Day 6: Describe your weirdest/most interesting sexual fantasy.

Day 7: What’s your favorite toy?

Day 8: Post a kinky image you find erotic.

Day 9: Post a kink related song or music video you enjoy.

Day 10: What are your hard limits?

Day 11: What are your views on the ethics of kink?

Day 12: Tell us about a humorous BDSM/kink experience you’ve had.  If you haven’t had one, talk about aspects of kink/BDSM you find funny.

Day 13: Explain as best you can what the appeal of kink/BDSM is to you?  Why are you drawn to what you’re drawn to?

Day 14: How would you say real life BDSM/kink varies from fantasy BDSM/kink?  If you haven’t experienced real life BDSM/kink how do you think it might differ?

Day 15: Post a BDSM/kink activity you’re curious about and would like to try.

Day 16: What are the most difficult aspects of having a sexuality that involves kink or BDSM for you personally?

Day 17: What misconception about kinky people would you most like to clear up?

Day 18: Any kinky/BDSM pet peeves?  If so, what are they?

Day 19: Any unexpected ways kink has improved your life?  If so, what are they?

Day 20:  Talk about something within kink/bdsm that you’re curious about/don’t understand.

Day 21: Favorite BDSM related book (fiction or non-fiction)

Day 22: What do you think is important in keeping a BDSM relationship healthy?  How does it differ from a vanilla relationship?

Day 23: Since you first developed an interest in kink, have your interests/perspectives changed?  How so?

Day 24: What qualities do you look for in a partner?

Day 25: How open are you about your kinks?

Day 26: What’s your opinion on online BDSM play?

Day 27: Do your non-kink interests ever find their way into your kinky activities? If so, how?

Day 28: How do you dress for kink/BDSM play?  What significance does your attire have to you?

Day 29: Do you have a BDSM title (e.g. mistress, master, slut, pig, whore, princess, goddess, ma’am, sir)?  What is your opinion of the use of titles in general?

Day 30: Whatever BDSM/kink related thing you want to write about.

A General Introduction To Rape Fantasies

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He felt utterly helpless. Her hands went where they wanted, along his side, across his thigh, to his hip. She let one linger on his throat, index finger and thumb pinching, scary as she slid just the tips of two fingers past his lips, penetrating him and showing him he didn’t even have the choice to bite.

When her hand stroked over his groin, he murmured a vulnerable protest. “No…”

So yeah, about rape fantasies, both having them and playing them out…

It’s “Adult Sex Education Month” and blogger Gracie, of Sex Kitten.net, suggested that I tackle the often controversial topic of rape fantasies and the people that have them. Fair’s fair, while I’m not a professional sex educator, this thing is my shtick. My story, Catamite, for example, is fairly intense non-con and my personal life certainly swings in that direction.

If you aren’t living under a rock, you’ve probably heard the term “rape fantasy“. In brief, that’s arousal from imagining a sexual scenario that is coerced or conducted without consent of the victim. That could mean anything from fantasies of violent and entirely otherwise unpleasant sex, through to the token resistance school of sex popularly attributed to romance novels, where one participant protests at first but then begins to enjoy it.

Needless to say, despite being very, very common, rape fantasies are a very sensitive topic, because they often shade into things that squick people or carry big, well deserved trigger warnings. They also end up being a source of argument when it comes to talking about sexual desire and what people really want in bed.  Rape is considered, by most people, to be one of the most vile things you can do to a human, but some people have a certain degree of confusion on what is and isn’t okay (and some very weird gender theories) based on the sheer common to the point of banality rate that people have consent violation fantasies, both as victim and perpetrator. The result is a whole bunch of other terms and euphemisms to talk about it- ravishment and consensual non-consent being popular ways to distance the product of one’s sexual imagination from real sexual assault.

That being said, a sexual assault is simply not the same thing as a rape fantasy, and making the distinction is only worth token acknowledgement. I’m going to flat out say that nobody wants to actually be sexually assaulted no matter how elaborate and violent their fantasies are- now there might be a few self harming weirdoes out there who will talk about how they want it to be real, but it’s not a statistically significant amount. And speaking about someone who’s both experienced sexual assault and done this sort of thing as play, there is an overwhelming world of difference of how you feel around the real thing and a comfortable expression of sexuality with your partner. Kind of like stick fighting in a LARP and actually getting into a war are different concepts. Now that we’ve got that out of the way, more on how people experience them after the jump…

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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.

When Kink Limits Change & More Caretaking Challenges

I encountered a really tough problem recently on reddit:

My sub’s ingratitude is destroying our relationship. I took him under my wing. When I met him, he was another college drop-out with no body to speak of. Thanks to my guidance, he now has a good job, goes to gym regularly and looks his best.

Now life’s going well, suddenly I’m too controlling? He wants to challenge my rules? Rules we both agreed on BTW.

He was always shy about his fantasies. I kept at him until he opened up. He didn’t know how to apply them. As usual, I took over. I taught him how to service me. I tied him up and played with him until he was a quivering pile of ecstasy. I taught him all about the prostate and gave him the best orgasms possible. And he loved every minute.

So how does he repay me? He starts safe-wording nearly every time we play. He suddenly wants to renegotiate scenes. He says he doesn’t like some of the stuff we do. He says used to go along with it because he was scared of disappointing me. That’s crap. He loved it – he wouldn’t get off if he didn’t.

Why is he testing me like this? And how do I remind this boy exactly which of us is in charge?

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“Why won’t he submit the way he used to?”

Ouch, that’s one sad femdom! This one resonated with me, because it’s close to a bunch of problems I had to tackle. I don’t think the problem is precisely ingratitude, but nevertheless, it’s a nasty situation to find yourself in as a dom.

Reddit mostly attacked her attitude as not taking her sub’s limits seriously enough, but it’s really hard to deal with someone whose kink limits evolve within a relationship or someone who is not consistently on board with what you want. It’s also very frustrating as a dominant, to have the urge for control stifled by someone being more interested in their fetishes and the parameters they want them expressed under, than in supporting your sense of control, while trying to balance that with your own need to meet and respect whatever limits a person asks for.

And it can be hard when you a have an expectation to push through and reach someone and do the hard work of making judgement calls for both of you, and then sometimes they need you to do that and sometimes they don’t. However…

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