O Thinking

Me, the Masochist AND Dominant ALSO Ego

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I recently filled out the University of Nova Scotia’s sex research survey, apparently trying to cross correlate personality  with self identified sexual orientation in BDSM.

So my identification is something that’s sometimes a bit awkward for me. I’m not “Undecided”. I know I’m a dominant. But even beyond the sensual/sensitive/strict variations, I also have other stuff in there.

I am, among many things, a masochist, and not just a pure sensation based masochist. I have of course encountered this often enough that I can’t claim to be a special snowflake. However I can observe how it effects and effected me and what this sort of experience demonstrates about how we construct the concept of sexual dominance but also submission.

Dominants, by common stereotype, are not supposed to be in a weak, subjugated position. We’re not supposed to be confused, incompetent or insecure. And not emotional either, though we can be rhapsodic about our “pet” a bit, or possessive. It’s hyper performance masculinity for the masses.

Occasionally dominants chirp up that they feel a little bit like they’re not allowed to be incompetent- Bitchy Jones and Dumb Domme both touch on it pretty well. A lot of pixel text passes through BDSM forums fighting the idea that dominants can’t fall in love (wah?!) and so forth. Everyone’s fighting the looming spector of the true dom.

Me, my masochism was a red herring that diverted me for quite some time. Of course we make room for so called ‘sensation bottoms’ but trying to explain that I enjoy more than physical sensations but I don’t actually submit really makes me feel like I’ve traipsed into that special zone of hell where you need to split hairs and refine terms so exactly you’re defining things on the molecular level.

Then again, you have to do that anyway when you define what kind of dominant you are. I’m nobody’s Mommy, Sissy Trainer or Goddess. I have to do that already. And yet…

I like, as an overarching thing, to have authority. It feels very good in the “me” place. The principle that someone or something is Mine really appeals to me. i’m a nasty little sadist who would love to hear you in that abject, broken down place. I just go a tingle from writing that last sentence, it’s such a big thing for me. And yet I like to caretake in a way that borders on acts of fussy service (of course I made your gruel into a happy face, prisoner!) and there is an aspect of me that really enjoys sexual victimization.

Yeah, yeah, all strong women secretly want to be raped and taken by an aggressive man, etc… etc… No. I don’t want to be owned. It’s not about submission. In practice, being on the receiving end does not take me to that good, cozy place that domination does.  As a victim, sure I’m physically aroused, the orgasms are good, I’m crying and pleading and so forth. But part of that is the ability to pull away from the victimizer. I’m actually pretty loathe to experiment because I don’t want actual vulnerability. Ew, gross. I pretty much have a rule that if you don’t sub to me, it isn’t going to happen. And don’t get me started on me and aftercare.

I’m a person who needs to be hugged and held after something intense, or I feel like a truck backed over me the next day. Constitutionally speaking, though my pain thresh hold  is high, I think I take strong emotions really hard. I’m even a little loopy after intense topping! But there is very few instances where I will trust someone to give me that real need.

So there’s that piece of awkward. Especially since there is a background tendency, that bastard “True” to think about subjugation on a rank scale. Like people still tell others how positive it is to “start as a submissive” as if being a dominant was something you worked up to. Or that you would be a more skilled dominant, which from a sensation experience might be correct, but honestly, from a *doing* perspective, if you’re actually into technical skill the sooner you can get started the better.

I’m a lot less open about the broad spectrum of my sexual desire because I feel like it creates more headaches than it sooths. Kink profiles mainly only make oblique references to it because I am made extremely uncomfortable by aggressive come-ons, much less the sort that people perceived as sub women get. I mean outright rape threats meant as come-ons will make me stabby.

So far my policy is simply that if you don’t sub to me, you don’t get to even consider negotiating with me. And I really don’t appreciate how often some random would be mentor has offered to help me “explore” this side. Granted the last guy went off on a rant about how I was rejecting him because he was black, so there’s other reasons why that sort of explicit come on creeps me out.

So I’m a dominant sadomasochist. If I own you, I own you. If I like and trust you, I can be a victim too, but don’t get too attached because the dom thing is going to bob back to the surface.

 

Vanilla-ish

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So if previously I lambasted vanilla as the destroyer of relationships, on the other hand I think ‘vanilla’ is a really imprecise term in relation to kink.

For one thing, it sets up a false dichotomy. Either you are Vanilla or you are Kinky and never the twain shall meet. Or worse, Vanilla bad, Kink good. Which is hardly fair to the legion of people with happy, healthy sex lives who don’t want kink.

So, when tomcat_S, of Fetlife asked:

I want to know if submissive men still have vanilla sex (intercourse).
Personally I think it is difficult to move back to vanilla once you are too deep in BDSM as submissive man.

I had a genuinely hard time answering that one because the line between vanilla sex and not vanilla sex is, to say the least, blurry. What, after all, does vanilla sex look like? Which, by extension moves into asking, what does normal, average sex look like? People are quick to talk about sex in only one position, usually missionary, or unenthusaistic sex with hang ups. Self described refugees of vanilla talk about cessation of sex entirely, or dismal, once a month encounters where they were made to feel less than worthy for their desires. But bed death is not vanilla. It’s sad, but kinky couples get bed death too. And often the so called vanilla refugees didn’t want merely a bit more in the way of blow jobs or fingering, or sex in the garage, not the bed, they wanted their particular sexual need explored enjoyed and respected.

Kinky also isn’t just everything on the extreme end of debauched. So is it spankings? Dirty talk? Whips? Well, not everyone is interested in any particular fetish even if they are kinky, so obviously as in the instance of my pre-Divorce relationship you can have a partner who really is giving and willing in most reasonable things.

For some people, their particular fetish is the only part of their sexuality worth doing. For others, it’s a buffet with all sorts of cool stuff and no main course, one day doing D/s, the next day gentle anal, then hot wax. And yet, even needing fetish 1/4 of the time or all the time, the “vanilla” seldom goes away. Most kinky people don’t take sucking and fucking and kissing and touching off the menu, unless they have a personal preference against those activities that transcends being kinky.

And people are still kinky and fuck in missionary. It’s my favourite position. I’d be very depressed if being kinky precluded it, much less didn’t let me integrate it into my sex life. And besides, plenty of people are also making kink and vanilla kinda blurry when they do it. Check out fetlife’s barrage of amateur porn. As much as people are sharing their ropes and corsets and post scene pics, a hell of a lot of the snapshots are basically indistinguishable from regular porn. And sometimes nerve endings are nerve endings- unless I brought fetish gear to bed with me, my kinky masturbation looks a hell of a lot like vanilla masturbation because an orgasm is an orgasm no matter how you arrive there.

Context matters. Half the stuff we seem to get up to is only kinky because of the framing. When is, after all, a blow job cock worship, when is it enjoying your property and when is it just a blow job? I can’t tell you where vanilla ends and begins, only that I’m not embarassed that sometimes I’m also vanilla-ish.

Freedom and Caution

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So I hosted my usual 18-35 munch (ohhhh, you’re that Pearl!) and it went swimmingly. And because I have the words “freshly broken up” stamped on my forehead, and because I am flirty and approachable, the tentative interest is starting to manifest.

Funny thing about that, at the moment I could be banging half the city of Montreal. Or having kinky BDSM with them, assuming consent in both cases. There’s a play party this weekend, and my dance card has been given a few longing looks from people who’d like to give it a punch. Or to be exact, would like me to give them a punch. And yet, I find myself up against the issue of being a theoretical slut.

Okay, my sexual history puts me firmly into the “slut” category, by even a fairly liberal culture’s standards. But, finding myself with the complete freedom to do as I want, something doesn’t quite feel like it would be a good idea. Some of it is the nature of my separation  being a bit over a month shook of a really long tenured relationship. Of course, reportedly the other side of the Divorce had a date lined up for that weekend with a “Lawyer” according to helpful friend gossip. But he’s always landed on his feet. I give him six months, tops, to a pretty good new girlfriend or a series of entertainments.

And there’s Strong, doing his quiet presence in the background. Not that he is a barrier to anything, but life, upon embarking on my Divorce got at once more simple and immensely more complicated. Suffice to say, temptation, and also the leftover sense that how the Divorce went down means that life should not be rushed. And one of the things I have to face up to is the fact that I’m a lot better at being flirty than I am at playing musical cocks (or vaginas).

And I don’t think I can have a zipless, body based fuck. Some of it is that I am hard to bring off, and so complicated sexually that I might as well stay home and masturbate. Some of it is that despite the reputation I produce I am shy.  As a combination, despite being  a female dominant  and thus treated like scarce joy, the urge to paint the town pink, much less red, is not there.

Some of it is being worried people will get too attached. some of it is worrying that you will deal with people throwing a hissy when I want things entirely on my terms- I’m going around telling a lot of people “I am flirting and touchy, but if I want to have sex with you I will explicitly say so in as many words.”

Weird, I don’t feel like being promiscuous with sex, or playing with as many people as possible, when I’ve had the most freedom ever. It’s going ot be interesting to see how the party goes down tonight.

I’m Doing This For Me, For You

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Subs often talk about how their D/s dynamic is posited on making them better people. The negatives in their life, from house cleaning to working on their mental health, become positives when it’s to serve, please or obey a dominant. It’s not something you usually get at a dom and yet, there’s something motivating about owning someone.

I did not expect to take the “gift of submission” seriously, until someone I really respected decided to submit for me. I won’t go into particulars about Strong…

But he does just that, he makes me feel stronger and more responsible. It’s a weird feeling, but something clicked- “Oh my god, I have to get my shit together.”

And I started working on a lot of stuff that needed fixing about myself. I think I carry a lot of shame about not meeting up to my own standards and with strong, it is easier to ignore the distractions because of the internal voice that counters them with “Fuck it, you have Strong, you don’t have time for this shit.”

It’s not a panacea, and my attitude to these things is pretty distrustful. I don’t think I’m an inherently trusting person at the best of times, and I tend to see strong emotions as particularly suspect. I can’t tell, of course, how much of that is familial habit and how much is a fair take away from experience. It’s always been natural for me to have both a primary emotion and a degree of detachment buffered by secondary emotions, so there’s the raw LovesLovesLoves! torrent ripping its way through my head, and there’s the analytic part of me, taking measurements like some sort of lakes and rivers worker taking water samples from a flood.

So there’s the compulsion to be a better person. I can’t say how long it will last or if it is healthy, but while I might have scoffed at the saccharine “Dom’s Responsibilities” , and still scoff at the facebook forward style lists that make it to the Kinky & Popular section of fetlife, I decided to go with it.

D/s also does weird things to your perspective, because it asks things of you that are otherwise not supposed to be part of your relationship repertoire. For example while caretaking is a great part of any relationship, you’re not supposed to think it terms of over riding other people in healthy vanilla. It’s also a funny sort of game, because if you can have a healthy relationship with someone they need a degree of self sufficiency and mental tidiness as a single person. Being completely dysfunctional, no matter how well intended, is going to scupper your D/s

I’ve got a friend who is a bit older than me, a sub, who I guess I’ll call him the Professor. Nice guy, very emotional in that sort of hedonistic pleasure seeking sort of way. He recently re-hooked up with his old flame, a woman from when he was younger. She discovered she was a dom and they’re attempting to launch a life now.

As a background, generally speaking Professor likes a particularly zany woman, the kind that seems, from his reporting, to be somewhere between manic pixie dream girl and hot mess. Lots of intense, passionate flings and one night stands. Anyhoo I generally assumed this was more of the same.

Now I’m, at my core, a judgmental and cynical bitch, but this is one of those cases where I looked at the actual instructions Blume was giving Professor, who is, himself, a bit of a hot mess. Basically she was having him do the shit that’s good for him.

Oh. Right. Quick reminder these people are still okay as separate individuals, but have found a way to connect. And she was over riding him and it was working out well. Judgmental bitch voice -Silenced!-

But for me, Strong has the weird effect of making me want to be more competent, capable and otherwise able. I feel like I suddenly have to develop a lot more focus on my life. It’s absurd, because he’s perfectly capable of surviving without me, but I feel like suddenly I am needed in a profound way and I must be better at things. All the things.

The Kink Scene Is Not A Magic World (And That’s Okay!)

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When you’re new to BDSM, you may have all sorts of hopes about meeting other kinky people. Especially if you’ve never really had a chance to do the things you like, it can be downright titillating to think about the sort of fun you’ll have a fetish party, or what sort of people you’ll find.

No, not these people.

BDSM societies are such a staple of pornography and erotica they’re a fetish in their own right. From the Chalet of O, to movies like Eyes Wide Shut, the idea that there’s a collective of attractive, wealthy and cultured people who share your turn ons holds a powerful draw.

Discreet, enlightened and racy. Sometimes on the cusp of legality. It can be daunting as well, especially if you are not sure what sort of mischief the scene-sters get up to.

Unfortunately, just as fiction gives us bucket-load ejaculations and  back pain free G cups, the scenes that exist are simply a collection of individuals. And being kinky doesn’t make a human inherently better. On top of that, as a sexy idea, it also causes even people within the scene to get a little ah… imaginative, and you get enduring folk myths like the importance of the Old Guard.

A digression: allegedly, at the end of the Second World War, among certain motorcycle clubs, dudes got up to gay leather S&M. The aesthetic is the kind found in illustrations by Tom of Finland. To this day, lots of people claim to be connected to this. In practice, the best they can claim is that they are inspired.

Actually, the member base is by and large more likely to share company with a sci-fi convention than society’s elite. which is not to say the elite can’t be kinky, just that there’s a lot of solidly middle class types because kink isn’t that expensive. And of course kink is not something only athletes and models get up to. You’re going to find every body type represented.

Another common assumption about the kink scene is that it’s more open minded. It is…to a point. You have to make space for people whose kinks are to shit on each, other or pretend to have incest and violent beating, alongside marrieds who just want to have an “old fashioned” relationship and trangendered people who like silk ties and feathers. On the other hand, everyone brings their own personal prejudices and everyone (even me!) would like to believe their way of doing kink is natural and everyone different is Doing It Wrong. Expect to snort your drink out your nose as people earnestly tell you that women are inherently submissive or that black people are naturally superior, and so forth. There will be the evo-psych brigade who try to justify themselves with fuzzy science, and twits who have relationships better suited to daytime television talk shows.

The accepting attitude of the scene also means that you have lots of marginalized people who were at the back of the line when the social skills were being handed out. After all, (almost) everyone feels creepy and awkward discussing their sexuality, so the people who are always creepy and awkward tend to slip through people’s regular radar.

And it’s a smaller group, which tends to discourage ostracizing people, even the ones who we should. This means Mr. Grabby hands, or the lady to whom honest fidelity happens to other people, and so on. The result is a world somewhere between high school and Jane Austen level “We must be nice to the neighbours, now let’s viciously gossip!” This is because it’s generally a closed loop and few people explicitly want to make a big stink, so there’s far too much reliance on whisper campaigns. Further more, the scene is just large enough, and also commercial enough, that getting someone blacklisted from everything is really, really hard.

Neither is anyone all that wise, I mean at least compared to the regular world. There’s plenty of mentor types and people who know of what they talk about, but one of the “secrets” of kink is that it’s not that hard to do kinky stuff if you take it to the places that most people do.

It’s kinda like regular sex. You want to know some basic safety rules before you go running around, but it’s also something you can generally figure out from there. The scene actually works in the opposite direction, if things are going properly, for giving you a frame of reference for questions like “I feel poopy after play what’s causing that?”

Still, it can be disillusioning. You come to be transported, and instead you meet nothing that takes you outside of your life, and discover that good advice, rather than holding you on the cusp of your limits, is things like “use lube”, “go slow” and “talk about it”.

The scene is not going to take you away to a land of hot, wealthy sophisticated people. Instead it is a testament to the possibility you can enjoy even if you’re not some sort of high society bon vivant.