O Non-Fiction

Rants, scene write ups, reviews, basically everything that isn’t erotica.

Me and My Webcam

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Something…something…performative space… something… self objectification?

So I have been livestreaming daily life activities. Mundane stuff like me doing the dishes or yack-yack-yacking to people about safe anal sex.  Despite my reticence to put up static images, I actually enjoy interacting in this way.

It’s not precisely exhibitionism  because even though I’m under a barrage of sexual attention, it’s stimulating the upstairs not the downstairs, if you get my drift. It’s also rather interesting because I feel like I’m nudging up against the thorny issue of asking for attention.

I want positive attention. I mean, seriously, I wouldn’t be blogging and writing and talking to people if I didn’t adore hearing “Pearl, you’re the coooo0ooolest!” This isn’t even just a gender thing. Sure what I do is gendered, but guys who get attention deal with odd stuff too. But asking for attention has a certain degree of… I don’t know, social hazard?

Celebrity, even wimpy 10 person celebrity, is fun. I get a similar degree of fun being the person who organizes munches. As a nerd, I tend to be the GM in rpgs, or I admit a certain perverse desire to play characters that are different. Not different as in Mary Sue-esque “Oh my family was murdered!!!”  but characters with a reason to interact with people. Often i try to create underpowered character or other people’s villains.

Thing about getting attention is that it’s kinda like the double standard around beauty. You’re not supposed to put exceptional effort to get there because it’s supposed to be an anointed blessing from the gods. On the other hand it is supposed to be a good thing to be attractive, but being able to say “actually I’m kinda hot!” is a social faux pas.

You’re allowed to acknowledge your own cleverness. People polled generally see themselves as being slightly more intelligent than average, regardless of where they land on an IQ spectrum, as well as being a bit nicer than average. But if you say you’re more attractive than average… ouch! Prepare for a world of hurt. People are just as quick to assign people 4/10, would not bang scores as the are to croon at people calling themselves unattractive that they’re the contrary.

My hotness, incidentally seems to be one part context and one part related to the vagaries of how bloated I am and what my adult acne is doing. I can effect it in small part by what I wear and the application of makeup combined with the removal of eyebrows, but other than that…

Mostly I’m trading on nubile-ness, ultra pale skin and personality. Camming seems to have a positive effect on my perception of my looks even if I’m deeply distrusting about the actual nature of what people are perceiving. When I had an OKcupid account I got filed in the top 25%, but I still can’t trust it- I was generally considered “not hot” in other circles.

But give me a room to work and I start feeling more attractive. So there’s a definite push-pull going on there. There’s also a control issue. Which I will try to expand on.

Helen Mirren, of all people, talked about it pretty well

“I’m still trying to wriggle out from under that label. […] Being a sexual object is mortifying and irritating, yet it’s giving you power–an awful power that you’ve done nothing to deserve, a powerless power. I think some young women fall in love with that power, and it’s really objectifying.”

What she’s talking about is how when you put yourself out there to be desired, you’re simultaneously suffused with the ability to draw people in, but it encourages possessiveness on the part of the beholder. I don’t just mean the guys who project submission fantasies onto me, it’s that the attention other people give you is never really in your control.

My approach to camming generally comes with the caveats that I want to be able to limit it. It’s exhibitionism without vulnerability. But even beyond the persistent guy asking me to look at his penis… (and there’s always one without a fetish context) there’s the issue of always watching the crowd as much as they watch you.  As soon as you make yourself visible you need to be more conscious. On the other hand… I over thinka and…

FAbQ: Should You “Train” With Someone?

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Getting practical experience is a challenge.

One of the confusing things about kinky sex, is that the term “train” is used without much explanation  When we talk about someone in a D/s relationship, especially in an erotic context, “training” is often put under extreme focus- And in stories and porn, the dominant will often train someone to submit, or train someone to serve. Teacher/student or Trainer/animal are really popular role dynamics

Logically, if you’re new, it may feel like the next step is to find a dominant to show you the ropes. And if you got introduced to this, you may decide that being “trained” by a dominant is a good idea. On the flip side, as a dominant, you may be ultra nervous if you’re starting out, or feel like you don’t deserve to be a dom until you have experience.

So, should you offer yourself up to a dominant on an apprenticeship basis?

No, not really. This isn’t to say that mentors and educational resources like work shops are a bad idea, but the first thing a noob runs out and does should not be to find a dom. Experienced people can teach you all sorts of positive things, but looking for a person specifically to train you as a sub to either learn to be a submissive or learn to dominate is not a good idea because it will be hard to find someone to take you on, and it will severely limit you when you learn.

The problem with “training” is that in practice, people experience D/s as part of their general relationships. Of course this might sound like a perfect idea- I mean if you’re vanilla (not kinked) and a virgin you would want to get a boyfriend or a girlfriend, right? Of course it’s a good idea to find people that you connect with to experiment with! But when you’re new to kink, waiting until someone takes you on to start learning is like trying to experiment with sex without knowing anything about birth control, which orifices to use, etc….

1) It’s not safe for you. In practice, kink is usually pretty safe, at least on the same level that vanilla sex is pretty safe. You usually won’t get badly physically hurt if you mess up- at least if you don’t go into the complicated or painful stuff. However there is no central regulating board of kink. Any damn fool can call themselves a dominant. They can claim any number of years of experience and make any grand claim of skill they like. If you learn about what you like and find reasonable first, it is easier for you to know when you should be rolling your eyes at pompus Lady DoomWhip or Master DemonShovel.

Besides, ,ot only could you pick up all sorts of stupid or abusive ideas (eg, a submissive always obeys all dominants), but you may have a problem giving informed consent. That is to say that you will be able to consent to trying something with a clear understanding of what it is and what its effects might be.

2) There aren’t that many promiscuous people looking to “train” out of the goodness of their hearts. As I said, for many people, D/s is a love or sex thing. A lot of people, myself included, are happy to talk about kink, but we are not so happy to give our favours out freely. It can be highly personal to connect with someone and a purely training relationship presupposes lots of single/poly doms who just live to indulge random people’s kinks.

Besides, if you’re happily married, this leaves you rather high and dry if you can only get initiated through dropping monogamy. Because most kink is happening between normal couples, not in the stricture of apprenticeships.

3) There is no such thing as universal training. People are delightfully different. There are many ways to do BDSM, and all of the correct. Generally when a dominant does train someone it is to serve in the manner that that person finds pleasing.

For example some people really like anticipatory service, that is, someone who will figure out what the dom needs without being told, while other people only want obedience based service. Some people are really into fussy protocol, while others don’t care if you walk ten paces behind (or whatever) as long as rope, or feet (or whatever) are involved. Playing with people is a good chance to experiment, but even individual subs respond well depending on what happens.

4) Not everyone is a switch. This is particularly important to the concept of becoming a dom through learning. There is a concept that you will get a better intrinsic attitude to submissive psychology and limits if you actually try it. In practice… there isn’t one set way to approach it, and more to the point, if you’re lacking submissive tendencies in some way  you won’t get much to extrapolate from. A serious masochist, for example, trying to apply that to a “sensual” submissive won’t get very far, and if all you feel is bored, frustrated and uncomfortable that’s going to give you funny ideas what subs like.

So it’s not wrong to look for mentors and people to experiment with, but you shouldn’t muddle D/s training with learning.

What Would Fantasies of Female Dominance Look Like Without Sexism?

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 This isn’t a post about abolishing sexism, it’s about female dominance and power in an imbalanced world.

nudepaintingmanUnfortunately, the sexes are not treated equally in society at large. I’m not really prepared to debate this fact in some sort of “choice to be powerless” or “so what if you don’t have power, you have boobs and tears!” thing, and this isn’t time to be all “Activate FEMINIST RAGE!”

I mean that the relationship we have with sex/gender (I’m using the two together) really colours the shit out of our kinks.  I’m speaking in terms of the norms here, of course. I’m sure you know some exceptions. But look: Female subs do not heavily fetishize cross dressing, male dominants are assumed to want to fuck their subs six ways to Sunday, and when people try ineptly to justify maledom they generally grab at concepts like primal, where as gender flip keeps trying to tell me I’m a wise Mommy.

Thing is, it muddies things in that doing things a particular way becomes inherently subby, at least as porn would have you believe. Whether it is getting fucked up the ass of wearing panties, or more extreme as to refer to the underpinnings of the relationship dynamic… It’s  feels like a niche.

Take a dude doing housework as a male sub staple. Actually, dudes do housework, even doms. Not as much, on average, as women of all orientations. But if men want to eat and not fester in their own filth, adults usually have some life coping skills, at least as far as trashbag or can opener operation. But I cannot move for guys writing to me to offer to clean my house. Female subs clean house, often in a way that’s just as service oriented as male subs, but they don’t offer it up front as a mating signal. Because housekeeping is something chicks get delegated with.

And the stupid femdom uniform or the fact that we use the term “femdom” or “Domme” to delineate. There’s definately a “Mistress” outfit that people expect. In practice male doms have the utilikilt leatherdaddy look, but put on some spike heels and shoot from below and -ping! Femdom. Or uncomfortable goth slut. The uniform muddies the conversation about femdom, because what you wear is often treated as important as what you do.

And there’s all the vocabulary. FLR (Female Led Reationship), I’m looking at you. As if you had to make a special category to get away from the default. Because the current standards are “traditional” (male dominant) and “equal” (egalitarian), there has to be a special term for being a dom in a TPE dynamic that coincidentally is also female dominated.

And then there’s female supremacy. The premise of it is that if women were in charge, either it would be paradise or castrating harpies. Curiously, I can think of few explicitly male-dom world ideas that are not rape happy weirdness. It’s less popular, as a kink, and nobody who gets hot and bothered about the idea thinks that men being in charge is better.

Because they already are occupying most of the top spots. So I find myself in the awkward place of telling people to stop calling me perfect. But I live in the world I do and it’s going to colour all our behaviour.

One of the great unkillable D/s narratives is the dom-as-leader. Honestly, as long as you don’t take it seriously, it is hot. On the other hand, since so few women get to be leaders, at least compared with men, it seriously colours the fantasy. And it is to the point that an expression of being your own person, as a woman, codes as being dominant. It’s like we can’t completely escape hierarchy thinking.

I think one of the reasons why male subs get so much crap is because they are assumed, if they are beneath a woman, to be beneath everyone. Like some sort untouchable caste, in a highly hierarchical pecking order (and D/s is often about getting off on abuses and strengths in extreme power disparity) subs of both genders get shamed in the fashion that is typically used to batter their gender.

And the stakes are pretty crappy for a dude. While women are coaxed into infantile passivity, and made to be concerned with sexual purity… men at the bottom get all sorts of fetishes that are related to how men have been historically pushed down and about stripping them of male privilege and treating them like women- they are pussified (and I use that term deliberately), cuckolded, denied sex and put through forced bi. And yet the comparative approach to bisexuality in sub women is generally about sister slaves, and putting on a show, and lesbian female dominants. fucking women is presumed to be something that everyone wants to do.

All that aside, when we construct BDSM fantasy societies, there’s plenty of egalitarian examples. Whether the concept is a secret world within our world or a whole planet of kinky people though, again you get the perennial bi women. It’s to the point that the hard ass second in command to a head femdom is a kink cliche.

So where does that leave you when you are femdom fantasy building? Technically it’s a fantasy so you can do anything you damn well please. If you want a lady with a harem of bisexual slave boys who doesn’t even understand the concept of gender, much less descrimination, you can knock yourself out. But like how the genres of fantasy and sci-fi are lamentably tainted by the cultures that birthed them, and keep serving up patriarchy in the far future and magic-far-away-land, femdom’s presumed tropes are well attached baggage.

I did it in my own work. Catamite, despite being scifi, is set in a very patriarchal world. It’s actually much worse than anything I personally have ever dealt with, being neo-Victorian. Annette, as a character, has an unusual amount of liberty for her imaginary geography.  This is not really a spoiler, but this is intentional in a place where the world the characters are living in is actually one of several planets, and the place they are in is very much a weird cultural backwater. I wanted a society with vast inequality, I did not want an amazon fantasy land and apparently this is what I defaulted to.

I wonder if my interest in that means that I still am constructing power in relation to men and unfairly excluding women from the picture? Catamite doesn’t pass the Bechdel test, though in part because it is a story about heterosexual relationships. In theory it wouldn’t pass in the opposite direction- I don’t think there’s a single male-on-male conversation where women aren’t the focus in Catamite either.

On the other hand it means that my domly-dom character is still subordinate. There’a a bit of me that wonders if I’ve created something straight out of the Office skit about not being the one truly in charge even in the infinite realm of possibility.

Dwight: I am gonna be your new boss. [laughs] It’s my greatest dream come true. Welcome to the Hotel Hell. Check in time is now. Check out time is never.
Jim: Does my room have cable?
Dwight: No. And the sheets are made of fire.
Jim: Can I change rooms?
Dwight: Sorry, we’re all booked up. Hell convention in town.
Jim: Can I have a late checkout?
Dwight: I’ll have to talk to the manager.
Jim: You’re not the manager even in your own fantasy?
Dwight: I’m the owner. The co-owner. With Satan!
Jim: Okay, just so I understand it, in your wildest fantasy you are in Hell and you are co-running a bed and breakfast with the devil?

So is it some sort of sexism on my part that the setting I threw together to provide a great range of power imbalance is extremely male dominated as a side effect? Probably. I was also interested in writing about how Annette navigated the space she was in, and how power is very fluid and unreliable, yet I still did a retread of the patriarchy.

Be that as it may, if you fetishize power imbalance, even if you disapprove of them in practice (like a person with a rape fantasy), the bullshit around gender is also fantastic source material.  I don’t necessarily think I conveyed it properly, but Adam/Phillip’s behaviour is supposed to have been guided by his own relationship to the masculine expectations of his culture.

And yet, fetishes seem to by and large follow cultural trappings. I understand that cultures without much ethnic diversity with inequality don’t really get up to as much of the weird ass “interracial” stuff the US spews out. If, perchance, we stopped having weird inequalities based on your perceived chromosomes, would this eliminate thing like cross dressing being used as a punishment?

So what would dominance be if there wasn’t some sort of significant gender imbalance?

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I have no idea where this lovely homage to a classical painting came from, but if you know the artist please tell me.

My sex toys, months later.

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(Gmail is eating some of my responses to your email, so I’m throwing an FYI up on a post about sex toys, that if you didn’t get a reply, blame google)

It’s pink. Violently pink. I’m looking at a neat little row of anal plugs in small sizes, with about the colour tones I would expect out of a Barbie accessory. As you might guess, about a week ago Pinkcherry.ca delivered for me after a few little hiccups, once my fault and once inexplicable (but probably my fault). And by the way, they refunded my money *instantly* when the package failed to deliver in the first mail attempt.

Of course I tried them out!

The Tantus silk large isn’t actually that big, but it’s big enough. I have a personal preference for non-phallic, or rather non-realistic dildos. I don’t want to go shoving jaunty rubber dolphins or artful roses into my cunt, but especially for a strapon I’m particularly inclined towards things that aren’t obviously a vein-y male cock.

The ideal toy for me is smooth (not the soft rubber) silicone, thick-ish, with a flared base and a slightly pointed head.  Basically cock shaped without being an actual cock.

Some of this is actually because replicas do the uncanny valley thing for me. By this I mean that they are just real looking enough to be unsettling without having the arresting om-nom-nom of a real man’s penis. Between my legs, I’ve never wanted to do the gender fuck think or do futanari- I might call it my cock but it’s just a tool.

This actually hard in the sizing I want. There’s a certain size range where suddenly the manufacturers decided you want veins and circumcision scars and vestigial balls. Unfortunately for me I’m in that awkward zone. I don’t like monster sized, but something in the realm of human possibility is more my cup of tea.

But my relationship with toys still involves a hell of a lot of blushing. Like, as I mentioned, fisting someone else is practically humdrum but anything involving me is something I don’t talk about. Because… butts! In me, and stuffs!

In practice, everything does what it’s supposed to. The slightly bulbous head of the Tantus large is a little awkward unless I’m really, really turned on (and then vaginas are pretty elastic). Personally, for anything penetrative I’m a fan of the masturbate and nudge method of getting the equipment to open up. A slight taper at the head gets the process started.

Which is about as bleakly clinical as you can get about describing it, and I suppose I can do better.

My fingers always gravitate to my clit, a tiny nub that never leaves its hood, so sensitive that even a little bit of direct stimulation causes me to buck and shove the offending party away. Not because I don’t want to surrender, because if I persist, with fingers or vibes, it petulantly shuts down.

So the hood, and the modest pink inner lips are the real target of my attention. Words like pouting, fat labia apply, with the thicket of hair shaved from my mons but still covering the outer labia.

The clitoris, of course, according to medical knowledge earned from people fucking with ultrasounds, is a curious butterflied structure of which the protruding nub is just the iceberg tip of the more complicated system. Arousal is something I feel, as a warm tingle from cunt-crest to the inside of my thighs.  As I get more turned on, the coil climbs my spine and down to my knees, infusing my entire body with sensitivity. My breasts swell, though aside from the very tips, my nipples stay rose pink.

I really like being fucked while I bring myself off. My clit brings me orgasms I doubt I’ll ever get from a partner, and it’s a fickle little bitch that needs to be petted in just the right way. But when lust is stokes up what was uncomfortable suddenly feels like a delightful idea.  That’s when very rapid, very hard penetration suddenly goes from “meh, ow” to “omygodyes”.

It’s a good tip for anal beginners too, and my trick for getting up other people’s asses. No mater how much you stimulate the orifice, it generally won’t open up until the person is nicely aroused.

Hint- to get into a dude ass, start with a handjob.

Pinkcherry.com

It’s Mental (D/s Triggers)

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I’m really bad at a lot of stuff. I don’t even touch single tails or floggers anymore, I feel like it’s such a lost cause. My ropework looks like a cat’s been in the yarn. I have an aim that hurts me as much as it hurts the victim.

But I think the biggest learning curve for me, has got to be the psychology behind D/s. From initially having a sadism style like a rabid cat being pelted out of a catapult and having to tone it down in my initiation and learn sub does not necessarily means masochist (oh, that wasn’t okay? Ooops…) to being rather baffled by sub behaviour, it’s one of those things where I’ve been learning by doing.

I never get more reminded that we’re animals than by seeing how god damn weird the effect of this stuff is. Porn just doesn’t do it justice. In example, I got asked if I do “the voice”. I had to do a double take, but that’s actually a real thing subs and doms do.

And it’s not just one voice, it’s several. The first time I heard a sub putting on the small voice I thought he was making fun of me. Basically imagine an adult man suddenly having his normal speaking voice turn into a soft coo. Like, the least threatening baby-voice ever.

And there’s the dom voice. I am demonstrably comfortable being a hell on (w)heels angry dom, but that’s not it. Being that pissed sounding is an emotional bludgeoning tool.  The dom ‘voice’ It’s a sort of eyeflashing, looming, controlling cajoling that’s just as much a singsong as the small voice. And above all, it’s smiling.

And there’s the triggers. A million and one bloody buttons. At first I generally rejected them as tedious- you can only listen to a guy tell you about how the sight of a knee sock pinching into a fat thigh makes him feel weak for so long before you get the urge to never wear knee socks again. I guess, lacking the ability, I never understood what feeling submissive really meant until I saw it in action.

But it’s really, really good to feel someone doing that for you. To watch them slide down into the ‘less than’ head state. To hear all the little groans and see how they change how they hold their head. For me, the triggers are probably someone’s vulnerability and finding the little hooks that you can pull that spread them wide open so you can see inside their mind.

I asked on reddit what people’s dominant or submissive triggers were. The trend seems to be tone of voice, or certain special phrases, or being recognized and appreciated.  Strangely for all the  dudes outside the scene who talk my ear off about panties or ponytails, this is not a common occurrence in conversation with people inside the scene.

In day to day life, I do wonder how actually vulnerable people are. My friend Kay goes into a sort of boneless state like you rebooted a computer and you’re watching all the jaunty loading screens… if he’s hugged by a dominant woman. When he drops it’s like a ton of bricks, and you better be prepared to put him somewhere safe. Another friend, Mr.Sub, doesn’t really show unless you pay very, very close attention. But when dropped he reports that he basically loses the ability to resist.

Is this the same as the much vaunted “sub space”? That’s usually communicated to me as coming from more masochistic areas. Like a meditative thing that creeps up on people during a beating.

I bottom- I’m familiar with getting pain drunk. It’s a weightlessness, but it’s nothing like the way I see people curl in on themselves in a way that drops all their defences. And it’s nothing like the wildness that seeds in me when I have a victim. So what, I wonder, is the pleasureable head state people are getting?

Unfortunately people are still trying to come up with relationships between D/s and personality and we’re a long, long way away from being able to stick masochists in MRI machines. But some day I’d love to know what exactly is going on when I watch a man’s face change, and his eyes shutter as his lips pull into a vulnerable startle and the veil of ownership has enveloped him.

 

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.

I’m A Domestic Dominant

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domestic dominant

If it is really mine, I want to  care for it. If he is my property, he is, like a pet or another thing I like, just as much there to nurture as to please me.

And I really, really like looking after people in a domestic and care taking sense. This can be a bit awkward, since the other traditional group into this is the people into Domestic Servitude.

I’m just as likely to be found browsing the domestic servitude forum on Fetlife as the corners explicitly put aside for doms. Not because I want someone else to force me into cleaning though…

It’s more of a natural inclination to be a fussy husswife, and that’s the place where people go to be husswives and fuss. I already keep a pinterest account with more time on the ‘housekeeping’ boards than I have any business spending. I’m really rather fond of small domestic touches and I’m the sort of person who buys myself fresh flowers. Despite being more personally inclined to chase a career over a husband, and being rather less than talented at organization or being tidy, there’s a part of me that’s a wee bit Hestia worshipping. I’m the sort of person who wastes money on table cloths and doesn’t like it if she has mismatched cutlery. Moving out into my own place after what I generally think of as my Divorce has been an exercise in highly pleasurable budget nest building.

You’d think that I’d simply get myself an exacting domestic submissive and have things the  way I’d like. I actually get offers periodically, and some of them have a good enough head on their shoulders that they’re not time wasting flakes.

And yet, when it comes to the D/s stuff,  I’m way happier being the one doing the feeding and looking after. Don’t get my wrong, being cared for with small acts makes me feel loved. I do not want to be taken for granted and treated like an ambulatory Teasmade But looking after someone feeds into the control aspect that gets my ladybits feeling all buzzy and warm, as well as the loose chest feelings that being romantic inspires.

It is to the extent that for me, a breakfast in bed tray is as much a fetish accessory as a whip or a corset and it is more of an expression of my identity as a dominant than either of the other options. It’s the ability to look after that’s important to me even beyond the whole D/s thing. I like it.

It also opens me up to lop sided relationships. I wish, at this point, that I had a link on fetlife to the thread, but it was discussing something particular about female dominants and a tendency of ending up being someone’s Jesus Girlfriend or at the very least getting a lot of relationships where you were doing all the looking after because it gave you control. This is not surprising, as women are generally trained to get authority through becoming some sort of mother.

The flip side is that “me do it!” can prevent you from opening up more than you should. It’s something I’m working on right now. I want my future relationships to be healthy and I made a rule or myself that I was going to pay attention to the back and forth of how I and partners interacted.

For a lot of people, caretaking is an “act of service”. But for me, the caretaking also goes into the vulnerability aspect and outright into the person being physically sick and enjoying being able to help them. As far as fetishes go, it’s so normal as to not really have anyone notice it unless you point it out. Think about the plot trope in a thousand romances where the handsome hero is nursed back to health. On the other hand perhaps it is not so ideal to spring “damn, you’re hot” one someone after you just finished mopping up their puke and tucked their wan and trembling self into bed. In case you’re wondering he started wondering if I poisoned him. Oops.

Fair warning, I may talk about domestic stuff on here.