The Pacific Northwest is pretty and reliably temperate most months of the year. My life is taken on some comfortable aspects and some aspects of disquieting idleness, sitting in the sort of lucky it feels like impolite bragging to share.
I got married last month and elopement at a courthouse dressed and simple white broderie anglaise, quick vows and paperwork with two witnesses. I did so because I love him and this is the most reliable shot we have at together, forever. That’s staring down the gauntlet of more paperwork and a long exile from my homeland. But I can be very confident in my belief Silver is worth it. He’s worth is because he is wonderful, inspiring, makes me happy and is confidently happy to do the complex kinky things we both crave.
My writing brain hasn’t been with me for the last little while. Nonetheless, the desire and my sexuality maintains. It’s a relationship where, at a distance, we’d call thrice a day and have the energetic enthusiasm to edge him silly each time. Together, we share a bed every night in an apartment that feels much too nice and I plan a little gathering in the fall, with family, to celebrate my marriage.
I make tentative steps outside the home, to a femdom munch in Seattle, monthly, run sharper and smart than mine ever were. If you are in town you should go, and can easily find details on fetlife. I already met one reader, which is fun. Though those pesky health issues linger, I do my best to stay involved where my stamina lets me.
The kink remains foremost. We prioritized that from day 1. He is as randy as a man half his age and it fits what I want. It’s simply there, often light, a hand reach to his throat away. Likewise, I find him beautiful. He’s a Midwestern, blue eyed, built more spare in frame with a gymnast’s propensity to bending, under a relentless maintained layer of shoulder to ankle muscle. This is balanced at equilibrium that he neither wants to return to actual utility for his white collar life, nor allow into neck stiffening thickness.
My own body is softer, a little wonky, but the urges are still there under the flesh. I want and I remain hungry for this. I miss the energy I used to have, to do things as much as I used to, but I peck away where I can. I’m learning to crochet, and maintaining the health I do have by using the gifts of where I live to try to push myself to exercise as regularly as I can manage. It’s paid some dividends.
If you imagine our household s something of elaborate protocol, him constantly demeaned, you would be wrong. It is with respect my hand takes his throat. That he affectionately comes where I am curled on the couch in a nest of blankets and kisses the tops of my feet. Our vows did not reflect the ownership of my Property, true, but they carried in them the seed and scaffold under which we do what we do.
I think I have the best anyone could want or aspire to.
Most people tend to conceive of labels as tidy little jars, even if much work has gone in the other direction to point out that there’s spectrums. Enbies, bi people, even switches are no exception, with more people than not approaching this self description with an asterisk. Very few people who don’t slot into a binary actually exist in a balanced average or a half and half.
More mercilessly, these middle spaces are more often than not messy. By this I mean disclosure to others of nuance makes it difficult to refute your hermetically sealed jar without sharing things people have deemed rude, or worse some ninnyhammer will mistake the information for an invitation and shriek you are “involving them in your sexuality”.
Enbies get assigned to be a third gender that must perform androgyny and release hewing to either pole of the existing binary. Switches are talked about like watered down dominants in a three step social hierarchy. And bi people, bless, are not only all tangled up in the assumption of being a swinging door, but also an uber slut who could never be content with monogamy.
And asexuality, well…
The paradox of asexuality is a community stereotyped as something either prude or pure (sex repulsed, traumatized through to bored by the sexuality of others) and the reality is more complicated, but falls particularly strongly into somewhere you face a social penalty if you give more detail. It is also a community that in actuality is often deeply horny.
These days, as dangerous as being gay is in most of the planet, in progressive spaces if you say you are a lesbian/gay/bi people will at least get the gist, shrug and move on. They may muddle trans-ness with sexuality more than they should, but but they also may just go a little trans medical and just nidnod and congratulate you that you got your binary sorted out. (Pour one out for the gay trans people tho). But there’s this tension between the constant human spew of sexuality and the human discomfort with that.
And the asexual spectrum kind of requires you to understand how varied sexuality outside of the surface detail. It holds your head under the surface and forces people to confront that arousal and attraction aren’t universally coupled. That there’s nothing, even fucking, that’s inherently sexual or inherently not sexual.
Every bit of queerness blows up some sacred cow like that beached whale some small town explosively detonated onto themselves. Asexuality removes the tidy little veil that lets us ignore whether a given human is horny or not by sincerely believing it isn’t possible. Like early 2000s highschoolers in hysterics that a lesbian in a change room might be into them, take things off the rails and for many folks all certainty is abolished. Men aren’t men, women aren’t women and bare breasts aren’t more platonically sexual than a shapeless wool sweater. The logic of asexuality being properly understood allows that if people are able to be out of a category they are also allowed to be in.
And you still have a person screaming into the void because the norms they used to feel cozy are gone
You can take the scathing approach and tell them they are awash in sexuality – the art, the assumptions, the background radiation of existing in community. But then, all they seem to do is get more stressed. The argument helps for the already convinced to articulate why other people’s disgust isn’t automatically their problem. But the paradox of a collective bent to erotophobia in a species that averages so horny this actually interferes with our ability to reproduce is more than a cosmic joke.
Julia Serrano observed in her book Sexed Up that occupying a marginalized identity meant a higher risk of being sexualized. What she also provided was a more nuanced definition of what that means, not just the presence of potential sexuality, but imposed assumptions on how that sexuality works.
If gender critical numpkins read predation into trans women, they are paradoxically acting from the same place by imply trans men are essentially losing the traits they associate with sexuality. In both cases top surgery to add or remove breasts are an objection to losing a power relationship where they can define what breasts mean for the person who has them. The security of that power is lost to them.
In the same way, to be on the asexual spectrum and be accepted is to remove the ability of others to assume or define your sexuality. The casting of asexuals as exclusively tragic trauma woobies or blushing loveshy naïfs is a projection as strong as the assumption bisexual people, (particularly women) are here to fuck anything with a pulse.
And, when confronted with the practice of the asexual spectrum in action, which in addition to the sex repulsed or disinterested contains the biggest bunch of perverts in the world, the reaction is to leap to assuming any awareness of the habits and practices of others is to experience violence. And you can’t do anything about it because the sexualization is coming from them, not you.
What asexuals deal with is part of queerphobia
I am old enough to recall how 2008 was about people pushing for marriage equality against folks fixated on wildly over stating the risk of rectal prolapse. The same stands for things like BDSM, that in collectively acknowledging that stuff that humans have fixated on forever could be sexual, suddenly it becomes that it must be sexual. From thence comes the fantasy of harm, and the assumption that awareness must be a performance of not for their benefit, at their expense.
This is how bisexual cis women end up being the second highest group to experience violence amongst queer identities. (Trans women are the highest, and we can assume bisexual trans women must have it even worse) To have sexuality becomes to be sexualized, and from there to be assumed to be up to trickery and malice. Bisexual women are cast as temptresses, objectified by men and treated as traitors by those exclusively lesbian. Everyone invalidates their choices as performed for someone else’s entertainment, and a higher rate of assault follows.
Make no mistake, compulsory sexuality can be violence, but compulsory repression as much so. Part of the harm I experienced was that there was absolutely no space to be my sexuality to the point that I had to figure it out by assuming I was doing regular sex poorly. For many, many years of feeling alienated from what I was told. At the expense of real pain and heartache. Like a lesbian raised in a culture that doesn’t realize it’s even possible, allowing space for my desires to be normal rather than vanilla or celibacy is important for my comfortable and safe existence.
But to this day, education about BDSM is suppressed. Although I was sexually active from the age of 14, a perfectly normal statistic for a Canadian, access to the idea of an asexual spectrum just wasn’t available to anyone really, yet at the time. And today, it’s a footnote in the rare places that permit queer education without much detail.
Going into any detail is back to that comment I made earlier about escaping your hermetically sealed jar causing people to act like you propositioned them personally.
This blog post, for example, would be treated like something that needed to be as mature content flagged. It is expected to be handled the same way as a picture of me having some sort of complex penetration with some other person or object. Nothing about it is particularly interested in arousing anyone, least of all myself.
But the fact that I fuck is a taboo, that my sexuality is different doubly so. Talking about how it is different as circumspectly as a person expressing the gender they are attracted to is still treated as twice as lewd.
Thus, talking about kink or BDSM isn’t tolerated to openly do in the mainstream. Not only do a bunch of folks still believe you can catch paraphilia memetically the way they think rapid onset gender dysphoria is a thing so they want to lock down any mention of BDSM, but pretty much even the kinky folk twist the concept of consent into knots that the least whisper of it is the same as pegging on a park bench.
While I like porn and want it to exist, the only real places I am permitted to be seen is incredibly marginalized barely able to escape censorship porn that definitely is trying to communicate sexuality OR fictional depictions that have all those flaws (unhealthy, trivial and covered with three layers of context obfuscation). This means that even grown ups like myself are out here causing chaos. We don’t even know what we can potentially be, so we waste years feeling shamefully broken, having dysfunctional vanilla marriage, and/or having painful and soul destroying sex that was simply unnecessary. If we are lucky we eventually figure that out. Many of us don’t.
Censorship as a byproduct of our nonconsensual sexualization causes real harm.
Thus, while the repulsed and disinterested, demi and the rarely/sporadically attracted get a grudging pass (demi with a bunch of bewildered other people going “but I thought attraction worked for everyone like that?!”… Nobody is ready for the entirety of asexuality the way that historically getting recognized as trans came at the expense of permitting being married to the gender people now acknowledged as being. Much as it turns out there are a lot of bi, gay and lesbian trans people who previously had to choose between their source of attraction and/or love and living as their gender, there’s a lot of asexual folks like myself who can’t live with authenticity because the larger society we live in doesn’t respect us as possible or moral. It’s not ok.
Note bene: someone, if I am lucky enough to get read at all, is getting real stroppy about queer to queer inter identity comparison. Yes, it’s not precisely the same, but it’s same enough we all have the common label. And part of this label is that we compliment each other in our overlap.
Asexuality permitted to be the whole of what it might be, and celebrated for it requires people to back the fuck off. Everyone would benefit. We would have a whole new toolkit facilitating coexistence and live and let live. There would be no downsides.
One of the biggest requests I get is to recommend content that’s not about dommes, but created for us. I have no idea what korea is putting in the water, but there’s a huge amount of Manwha, a korean equivalent term to Manga, with clear femdom themes. Although fan translations abound, I prefer to share the official commercial releases so that folks can vote with their dollars and encourage more content like this to be produced.
These four femdom comics are also just a tiny sampling of what I’ve been reading and tracking so far, chosen because they are also completed. That means there’s no risk that they will spontaneously undermine or worse eliminate the domme from the story (looking at you, Castlevania). However, these are adventure/romances, and none of these stories should be taken as anything other than fantasy. As long term readers may have noticed, my fantasies run the gamut from cozy femdom to downright nasty, and readers who need to stay exclusively on the gentle side should pay attention to the content notes.
The story a Domme’s self discovery and the people who obsessed with her. This comic is the one that turned me on to the sheer options out there. This is not, however, a story about flawless and wholesome relationships, but also about navigating giving up on bad stereotypes around kink… or not.
Why I like this: While the protagonist, Doona, isn’t a role model, it’s rare to see a comic that is more interested in the domme gaze and her experience than the feelings of the sub. Lush art and flawed characters grow from what looks like a much more intended to be throw away story about bossy, trashy roommate.
CN: Noncon and unsafe practices ahoy, this is a soap opera with a flawed protagonist and one of the epilogues is just dark and miserable.
After reclaiming the throne in a bloody coup, newly crowned Calliope is quick to flex her powers to recall her childhood sweetheart Ezekiel to be her royal consort. Once a young orphan in a monastery, now a noble Paladin in a neighboring land, his faith is more than willing to hand him over to curry favour. Though tied by promises in the past, many years have gone by and the brutal King has no time for excuses.
Why I like this: While often bashed by comic fans for the titular king’s cruelty, and hamstrung by being filed as romance rather than going all out in the porn, the reality is this tells a bog standard “tyrant wants to claim me” tale. And, it’s definitely catering to my desire to leer at vulnerable men.
The Emperor has died, leaving his grieving widow as dowager-regent until their son comes of age. Only, as this former ruler is reborn into the body of a member of her now sizeable harem, he is forced to confront that the meek and supposedly submissive consort he knew in life was nothing like the illusion he had of her. Intrigue ensues, as she asserts her power and he must decide if he can put aside his pride and come to support the real her in the face of challenges and perils to his son’s claim on the throne.
Why I like this: Kinky sex serves as a metacommentary on how gender roles suppress female sexual fulfillment, including exploration of dominance. I think it could have leaned a little harder into the harem part, but it does hammer home that you don’t need to end in a perfect matriarchy to arrive at healthy female dominance.
CN: Noncon, and for folks uncomfortable with switching, some scenes of the female main character not having the upper hand.
A prince of a captive nation, offered as a slave concubine. An ice hearted, brutal tyrant who treats men like disposable candy. A deep thread of intense vulnerability within that woman, waiting to be discovered. Also, werewolves.
Why I like this: It’s full out train to crazy town, but unabashedly happy to gaze flip and suggest men can be objectified.
