Naked Confusion

Internet BlackOut Day: January 18, 2012

2012-01-18T10:25:00.005-05:00

End Piracy, Not Liberty
Websites Joining the Strike
EFF Blog
Where Your Representatives Stand

"████ ██ ██-██ ██ ██████ ██

████ ██ ██ ████ ██ ████ ██ ██████ ██ ████ ██ ████ ██ ██████ ██"

Trash Talking Squirrels

2012-01-06T10:53:00.004-05:00

When I moved in with Septimus a couple of years ago, we negoitated division of tasks. I explained that I would be happy to do the dishes, the laundry, the shopping, and almost anything else that needed to get done. But I told him that the one thing I didn’t do was taking out the trash to the curb on trashday. Usually I’m dressed in my work clothes and getting dirty at 6 am isn’t my idea of fun. We do have a woman who comes in to do the floors and bathrooms- as Septimus fondly puts it “nothing kills a relationship faster than arguing over who cleans the toilets”.

For the most part, he’s done an admirable job at keeping that end of the bargain (and yes, he has done dishes and laundry too). But as to the trash- sometimes he’ll ask me for help if it’s a particularly heavy recycling week, and sometimes I just stick around and help him because it’ll get done faster (not to mention that I always get a really awesome kiss and snuggle before getting into the car to drive to work). Sometimes though, I let him sleep and just do it myself. Especially if he’s had a late night. Especially more if he’s sleeping soundly and peacefully (he really is adorable when he’s sleeping).

What does this have to do with D/s? Nothing really. Except that not everything in a relationship (even one BASED on D/s) is written in stone. And nothing except that sometimes, taking out the garbage once in a while, dressed in work clothes, and letting your boyfriend sleep, even though it’s “his job” is just one small thing I do to show him that I really do want to make his life easier.

A partnership isn’t always about clear divisions. One based on a power exchange relationship even more so. Lines get fuzzy, things have to get done, people have personalities, needs, desires and responsibilities. Not everything in a D/s relationship fits neatly into the box. Being flexible and having a relationship outside of that box is absolutely necessary. It never has to be an all or nothing proposition in D/s. As long as you have a connection to it, it’s existence can be subtle and therefore seamlessly merged into a relationship.

When I think about taking out the trash and how that fairly mundane chore, which I dislike doing enormously, is a metaphor for the give and take that can happen even when He Is The Dom, it makes me laugh. It’s the little things, those mundane tasks, those private jokes, and those small thoughts that we have about each other, that connect us so that when we do have to spend time living outside of that box, we remember that it’s always a place we can go back to.

This morning, while I got ready for work, and he took the trash to the curb, I got my own reminder that he also thinks of the small things and does silly things to make me smile. My windshield was obviously defaced by a deranged squirrel with an odd symmetry fetish. Good thing I love deranged squirrels who take out the trash for me, huh?

Do Not Run with Twitterers

2012-01-03T13:54:00.008-05:00

I REALLY (seriously really) wanted to write a nice upbeat New Years post about something fabulously insightful. Instead, I decided to get something off my chest that has been bugging me for a while.

I’ve long wanted to write a post about a few of the things that make me (as one good friend says) “BATSHIT CRAZY” about Twitter. I love Twitter generally, but there are a few things that I'm not so keen on, and in fact, will drive me away from it for days (or longer). In this case, I've been relatively absent from Twitter for the past couple of weeks because of a large amount of the following behaviors.

Twitter Peeve #1: Begging is Totally Non-Consensual

Look. I get it. People run into hard times. Medical emergencies, family emergencies, getting arrested for flashing a cop you thought was just a really cute girl...but setting up funds, tweeting about fundraisers and begging for money (especially for yourself) on twitter is, well...lame. I understand that giving to charity and things that are special to your life is cool, and I completely understand about needing help if stuck in a strange place without Yelp or a map, but coming on twitter and begging for money to help you in your “Run for Mr. Universe”, or to help you fund your next “Trip to Visit my Sick Grandmother” that just happens to coincide with, and in the same location as, say...Shibaricon isn’t fooling anyone. And in fact, it detracts from real, ACTUAL people who need legitimate help. I’d like to visit MY sick grandmother every year on Memorial Day weekend in Chicago, but it’s not realistic. I have to settle for visiting my crazy aunt in Providence at Valentine’s Day instead.

Twitter Peeve #2: Blocking and Cutting; or “Do Not Run with Twitters”

Threatening to “cull my twitter list” or “remove some of my followers”. If you want to remove people or followers, just do it. Warning people that the price for finding you entertaining or relevant is removal and/or blocking is rather like inviting them to confirm that you’re a jerk. Trust me, most people really don’t care one way or the other if you remove them or block them. Twitter especially has enough variety and action that it’s probably going to be months before anyone notices (if they ever do). But tweeting about doing it just makes people wonder why you’re so full of yourself that your PRONOUNCEMENT will be taken with anything other than a ho-hum, seeyalater, buh-bye.

And on the same note, asking people to tell you WHY you should continue following them before blocking them should they not provide an answer to your satisfaction. I look at those tweets and always wonder if my life would be better off without following you (or you following me) if that’s the way you really feel. Don’t follow me back. Block me. I’m ok with either. For the most part, I don’t even notice. For the other most part, did you ever stop and think that I might have LIKED what you posted but really had no desire to participate in your online conversations? Online voyeurism is part and parcel of living your life online. If you don’t like it don’t do it.

Twitter Peeve #3: Once (maybe Twice) is Enough; More is Always Too Much

Posting and reposting and reposting and posting some more your daily blog activity. People blog. I get it. Heck I do it myself. But posting multiple times about your latest blog post is not going to get people reading it any more than they already do. And really? Whining that people “aren’t showing you any love” on your blog? If you blog, do it for yourself and not because you want to be stroked by people telling you what a perfect absolutely marvelous person you are to have written such an insightful and well drafted post. If it IS those things, and you ARE an absolutely marvelous person, people will post blog comments. Stamping your foot (or the equivalent- blasting dozens of times on twitter) about it is more likely to get you dropped from my blog roll.

Twitter Peeve #4: Don’t Shit Where You Eat.

Whining about being paid for presenting at cons, classes, events or whatever. Bitching about how unfairly you were treated by organizers. For most people, we’ve never heard of you. Having Lee Harrington presenting holds about the same weight as having Joe Schmuckatelly presenting. While more experienced kinksters get to know the “superstar names” (a few who are actually a draw and can put butts into chairs) most people coming into these events for the first time don’t have a clue who most of the presenters are. And while you may make your living as a professional kinkster teaching other kinksters how to do things in the one twue way, and while you expect to be paid for your insight, please be aware that complaining about the lack of compensation on social media is a major faux pas and makes you look ungrateful that there are actually people who might want to hear you, but will now likely look at that event as “defective” because YOU’RE complaining about it. For most presenters, no matter how great they may be (and there are a ton of great ones out there); they’re still a very small fish in a very large pond.

Twitter Peeve #5 Sometimes There IS such a Thing as Too Much Information
(and What That Is Varies)

I can't truly be more specific with this one without calling out specific examples- which I'm not going to do. Suffice to say that I find few things more distasteful than totally disrespecting other people's boundaries or privacy. Thinly veiled references and passive aggressive tweets should come with a warning. And even more specifically- photographs of your cunt rash du jour should NEVER be tweeted without appropriately warning people that what you're about to tweet might be considered "TMI".

There's more, but I just can't think straight right now. But not to worry- I'm gonna break one of my own peeves even as I finish this post. I've dumped most of the worst offenders from my stream this week.

Sorry about that- But on the bright side- I'm sure it'll be a while before you even notice.

PS: This is solely my own opinion and not necessarily shared with "The Management" ie. Septimus- if you have a snit- talk to me, not to him.

Happy New Year

2012-01-01T17:37:00.004-05:00

Dee Dennis and I were talking a few weeks ago about how many shoes I actually owned. Frankly, I stopped counting because I was deathly afraid I was becoming one of those hoarder people and that someday, I'd be found buried beneath a mountain (Everest??) of shoes, boots, and sandals. For the few people who have been privileged to peek in my closet- they have no doubt I'm a shoe whore. For the rest of you- I'm beginning my year in pictures for 2012. Every day I'll be posting a picture of me wearing one pair of my shoes. I'm curious if I can do it, and frankly- I'm even more curious to know if I've reached over 365 pairs.

So, here's to my shoe whore life in pictures for 2012. Happy New Year!

2012 Shoe Whore of the Day Pix

Just Ducky

2011-11-04T08:58:00.005-04:00

Septimus and I were having dinner last night when the subject of consent came up again. It usually does after I’ve spent any amount of time perusing things online. I mentioned that I really didn’t want to get involved with a simple “yes means yes” or “no means no” kind of thing. He asked me why. I told him bluntly that relying SOLELY on a change in the attitude of the person who is intent on harming someone will always be a failure and that both of those phrases seemed to put the focus on forgetting that there were people in this world that, no matter what anyone said, will still harm you.

Then he told me a story.

There was a scorpion on the bank of a river. The scorpion wanted to cross the river, but because he WAS a scorpion and couldn’t swim, he couldn’t figure out how to do it. The scorpion waited for a while, looking for options, and finally a duck swam by on the river.

The scorpion called to the duck “hey duck! I need a lift to the other side of the river- can you help me out?” The duck, eyeing the scorpion warily said “are you fucking kidding me? you’re a SCORPION and will sting me!”.

The scorpion and the duck went back and forth, the scorpion asking for a lift and saying that he wouldn't sting the duck; and the duck saying that the scorpion was dangerous. Finally, the duck relented and said “ok..as long as you won’t sting me, hop on and I’ll give you a lift”.

About half way across the river, the scorpion stung the duck.

The duck said “ARE YOU STUPID?! Now we’re both going to drown! You SAID you wouldn’t sting me!

To which the scorpion replied “you KNEW I was a scorpion, right?”

If one is a duck, despite promises to the contrary, despite how things appear, and despite how you WANT things to be different, you still gotta remember that a scorpion will always sting you.

Photo courtesy of Good Weather for Ducks

How Google is Creepy

2011-10-28T09:45:00.001-04:00

For most people, we try to draw a fine line between having fun on the internet with our kink, and keeping that fun out of our employer’s, family’s, or civic organization’s hands. We don’t mind talking about the great beating we got (or gave) on Friday night, but we don’t really want our next potential employer, ex spouse, or custody-deciding judge to know about it.

Ever since I had a problem with someone on Fetlife, I’ve kept a watch on his profile. At first it was because he kept posting shit about me on his own pictures (so I couldn’t remove it). Then it turned into a sort of sociology experiment- could this asshat actually learn enough from the internet to get a decent profile together and draw in someone?

Thankfully, in almost a year of checking up on his profile, he still hasn’t figured it out. In fact, he’s garnered several groups specifically designed to call attention to his asshattery, dozens of blog posts about it (not just mine), and even had a fetish named for him. But when he started posting pictures of very young girls, I became concerned (yes, I DO actually report those kinds of pictures). Suffice to say that I’m not the only one keeping an eye on this douchenozzle.

When I tweeted about his latest exploits, one of my friends tweeted back that my behavior was bordering on “scary stalker territory”. That threw me for a little bit of a loop. Was I being stalkerish? In order to know that, I had to figure out why this guy’s antics fascinated me so much. And what my motivations were for keeping an eye on him.

And then I realized that it wasn’t so much about him, as it was about him being the poster boy for all of the other creepy, wanker, jackasses who find our online kink world and instead of using it to explore kink in a really cool way, they use it as a means to bring the rest of us into their fantasy. For the most part- unconsensually. From comments on pictures, to trolling groups, to posting stolen pictures as their own, to sending the same idiotic messages to hundreds (sometimes thousands) of people- without regard for the person receiving such messages. To them, the people on the internet aren’t “real”. He’s become the focal point for all of those douchenozzles that have found our way into our community spaces, our munches and our online world who just don’t fucking “get it”. Sadly- his example isn’t unique.

But back to my point- when watching this guys profile change almost daily, it became clear that he didn’t know very much about how the internet worked. He thought that his Fetlife profile was his own site, he thought that everyone was there for the same reason he was- namely to find someone to act as a conduit for living out his fantasy. But what was most interesting to me was that he posted several versions of his “story”, using real locations and names of the people involved. From there, it wasn’t difficult to actually FIND him.

He posted his email address on one thread. Googling that one turned up his real name, his OKCupid profile, and his blog. Googling his real name gave me his address, telephone number, his wife and children’s names, and even his birthdate and last four digits of his social security number. From there, it was easy to get a picture of his neighborhood, find out about his service record, his birthdate and his income. And I never touched any of the “other databases” that are easily accessed for small fees. Or for that matter, did I bother with Ancestry, county property records or any of the other hundreds of databases that are available for free.

It was scary how much I found out about this guy from a simple posting of an email address.

And it made me think about how easy it would be to ACTUALLY stalk someone. It also made it perfectly clear to me that even if we THINK we cover our own tracks, it’s nearly impossible to do so. For someone with time, a few dollars and motivation, it’s all too easy to find out too much information. It doesn’t take a genius and in fact- the tools available to do it are so easily found on Google that it probably wouldn’t even take my grandmother more than a few clicks to do it. There would be few things worse for many of us than to be outed in our online lives. It’s as easy for stalkers, ex spouses, judges, lawyers and employers to get this information as it is for me to do it.

So, I wonder- have you stalked yourself online lately?

Fifteen Minutes

2011-10-24T10:02:00.002-04:00

I had a quiet weekend at home this past weekend. I got some things done I’d been wanting to do, and I was able to relax. The stress of being part of “The Community” was beginning to bring me down.

I’d been undergoing a sort of metamorphosis over the past few months. From wanting to hang around kinky people doing kinky shit to simply wanting to stay more along the fringes- choosing things that mattered to me, not choosing them simply because they were there. I told Septimus a few weeks back, that I wasn’t having any “fun”. But what it really is is that I’m not having fun doing what I’ve been expected to do as part of “The Community”.

I’m not having fun at conventions. The reason I’m not having fun is that because for the most part- it’s the same people, same classes, same instructors over and over again. After you’ve attended a dozen or more of the same convention, shopped at the same vendors, seen the same classes and spent a long weekend spending too much money with too little return, it gets tiresome. After about 15 minutes in any class, I'm ready to head back to my hotel room, snuggle up in bed, and order room service.

I’m not having fun at classes for much of the same reasons. There aren’t enough interesting classes being taught by “no-name” people with unique points of view. The “money” is the Graydancers, Midoris and Lochais. But when you’ve seen them a dozen times, finding a fresh point of view becomes difficult. This isn’t a crack about whether those top echelons should teach at an event or not, but very often I find myself drawn to the classes by someone I haven’t seen before simply because I’m curious about what THEY have to show me. The big names are good for about 15 minutes, but beyond that, for me, it all starts to be the same.

I’m not having fun at munches for obvious reasons, I think. Too many of them are too large, too chaotic, and run too much like a place solely to meet a potential play partner. And too many of them have an element that is uncomfortable for me personally to be around. Too many with boundary issues and with a lack of social skills to match. Fifteen minutes into any munch, I've already explained several times that "no, I'm not A submissive...."and I’m ready to call it a day.

And I’m not having fun at parties. Most are too large for my liking, with few places to play or even to just sit and talk while waiting to play. Getting dressed up, planning a scene, and waiting several hours before finding out that we won’t be able to do it is aggravating. Watching large scenes as a performance is pretty standard nowadays and as hot as they sometimes can be, having someone else’s scene take over an entire room for a couple of hours just makes me wonder why I bothered to go in the first place.

I sit and think about all the weekends I spent at parties and conventions and classes and wondered if any of it made any bit of difference in my life. Did playing in public make my life better? Or did it just give people a false assumption about me? And I wonder if now, that I’ve formed several close relationships with people, most of which have become my own sort of "core friend group" is it really even necessary for me to dress up in fetish wear, worry about photographs being taken, or wonder which person at *this* party is gonna be the dude/tte who will be out of line and unaware of boundaries. I spent so much time floating from one event to another, one party to another, one fifteen minute scene to another, that nothing I was doing seemed more than a blip on my radar. Forgotten about within the time span of a plate of pancakes after the party. When you’re looking forward to sitting with friends AFTER the party at IHOP for pancakes, more than the party itself- something has to give.

I blame the internet for a lot of my apathy. Being part of The Community, it was too easy to get wrapped up in the various shitstorms, personality conflicts, opinions and wankerdoodles. I’d look at profiles of people posting on Fetlife and my first reaction many times was “what a shithead”. I was beginning to view Fetlife as just another place where horny guys came to view all the titty shots- without having to pay for them. And just another place where it started to draw the kinds of people who think that they’re watching some sort of freak show happening right on their computer screen- and the freaks are the girls who are obviously all whores- who would happily fall upon their cock like a woman with her first pair of Louboutins.

Other than to wish a friend a happy birthday, I’ve stayed off Fetlife for the past week or so. I’ve stayed out of groups, I haven’t read threads, I stopped looking at Lopresto’s profile, and I haven’t missed it. If I want to find my friends- I know that they’re seldom there as well. And I know that if something is pretty funny- they’ll let me know about it. I don’t have to be on Fetlife to keep in touch with my friends. Friends have my email address and phone number.

I realized that I don’t really miss knowing what a particular friend did at the party I didn’t go to. I don’t miss knowing which munch had problems, or which person caused the problem. I also don’t miss having to watch spider pictures appear on my wall from jackasses who think they’re pretty funny.

So what does all this mean? Damned if I really know. Right now I’m on a low point. I’ve removed the things that I don’t find fulfilling from my life. I’ve worked on making the few remaining things more important. I’m working on developing my closest friendships and sadly letting the others slide away to where they probably belonged in the first place. I’m working on things that make me happy, while removing the things that brought stress and anxiety to my life. I’ve decreased my online presence to the few places where I can actually have a conversation with my kinky pals about things other than kink, and I’ve recommitted myself to saying no to things that I’d ordinarily do just because they were there.

I figured out that being kinky was a lot of hard work but it was also a model that kept increasing my expectations about what being kinky was. I want to get back to where I was before. I liked it there and it was comfortable for me. Having a smaller view of the wide-kinky world, taking what worked for me and leaving the rest to others is just right for me.

I’m done with having my life lived in fifteen minute slices.

A Question of Good

2011-10-20T10:33:00.004-04:00

"So, Silver- tell me how I'm supposed to KNOW if my bottom is consenting or if they're just saying yes and tomorrow I'll be in big trouble?"

That was a question that was in my email this morning.

I took that to mean- “How can ‘Yes Means Yes’ when “non-confrontational” (read “submissive-type) personalities will say yes anyway and I'll be in huge trouble and accused of all sorts of heinous things by someone who wasn't truthful with me?”

The simple answer is don’t play with those types of people. Don’t play with people who can’t be an active participant in whatever you’re doing. Don’t play with people who can’t say no, as well as yes. But then things aren't ever as simple as that, are they?

You want a harder answer? Dominants love the whole idea of submissives NOT saying no to them. It’s really awesome to have a submissive that will do whatever he/she is told, without complaint, without question. Our erotica, our books, our “submissive training” all play into the idea that somehow submissives must always “go along with” whatever is dished out by dominants. However, in my experience, it's never so much about what a dominant expects from their bottom (mind you...we're talking real life here and not weekend fantasy bedroom play) as what a bottom expects that makes them a "good little submissive".

“Good” dominants know this isn’t always the truth and seldom really want a stepford sub. Most dominants I know want someone who knows him/herself enough to know how to simply say no when it’s something outside of a negotiation, outside of an agreed-upon contractual limit. “Good” dominants will listen to the concerns of their bottom and talk about a NO. “Good dominants” usually also insist that their submissives FILL IN THE BLANKS with the information that the top is missing to make an informed decision. Tops aren’t mindreaders. I don’t think that particular phrase is said often enough.

But what truly good dominants do is help their submissives learn how to actually disagree, say no, or question. You want to help the problem of “non-confrontational personalities” saying yes when they really mean no? Teach them how to say what they want. Game playing with yes and no can be sexy too. Teach your submissives that no is an acceptable answer. Teach them how to stand their ground, stick with it, and that not only is a NO expected from time to time, but insist upon it. "No, I said I will not fuck you" should be praised and rewarded the same as "Yes, I want you to fuck me".

The problem becomes when some self-styled dominants don’t care what their bottom says. They don’t listen anyway. And when the good dominants don’t want to hear no from time to time, it becomes difficult for submissives to figure out who's who.

Submissives want to please. It’s inherent in our nature to want to please their dominant. Most submissives think that to mean that they don’t have any power to say no. Our culture thrives on the erotica version of consent, which is to say that bottoms aren't asked, they're told. When they DO say no, they get told they’re “topping from the bottom” or that they aren’t “twue submissives”. As a dominant, you're gonna have to expect no's from time to time, or you're helping build the culture of "okay..whatever". Isn’t it better to hear an actual “No” from time to time than to wonder about semantics and underlying motives of a "yes"? If you knew that you were playing with someone who had no problem saying no, wouldn't it just be easier?

You wanna help this situation? Help your submissives understand that they are an ACTIVE participant in what happens to them. Make them say “yes” and “no” while doing anything. Make them verbally assent and verbally deny what they want. If you’re in a owner/owned relationship, make them understand that by learning how to say NO and YES is what you want them to learn. Make them understand that only by practicing YES and NO to each activity, will they truly learn how to keep safe from the people who never hear no anyway.

This isn’t the Chateau where submissives have no real choice in their own personal responsibility. For the most part, I’ve never actually heard of any D/s or M/s based relationship where the little “s” part isn’t given a voice.

I know this is hard for those of us that play with consensual non-consent, who are in D/s relationships, for those of us into fear, humiliation, and the thousands of other things we do to each other. But as dominants you must help your bottoms learn how to say no to you. The only hope they have of saying no to anyone is to learn how to say it to someone they trust.

After all, protecting your toys from harm IS a responsibility that one has when you choose to play with them. Help your toys learn that saying no isn't the end of the relationship, the end of the scene or the end of their submissiveness. It's a beginning to a path where both tops and bottoms can both take personal responsibility for themselves, while cockblocking those that will never hear no, no matter how loud it's said.

But if you want the best answer- here's what I got. Stop trying to figure out what the other side of the slash wants and just worry about what you do.

Extrapolate to Your Circumstances and Move On.

2011-10-13T13:30:00.004-04:00

I’ve found over time that I need to take lengthy Twitter “holidays”. I don’t read or tweet at all. Sometimes, it just becomes “too much” for me. There’s sometimes a mob mentality on Twitter, sometimes it’s too emo for the day, sometimes there’s subjects I’d rather not read, and sometimes trying to even flirt with your boyfriend gets people's panties in a twist. It all gets spewed out on a tweetstream. And sometimes people jump in, without knowing any of the backstory, and usually without even asking a simple question “what do you mean by that?”

One of the things I LOVE most about Twitter is that, simply by ASKING that question- I can learn damned near anything I’d ever want to. I can view differing opinions and question divergent life experiences. Every socio-politico-economic-religious viewpoint you’d want to know about is Right. There. On. Twitter. For the asking.

I’ve been on a Twitter holiday for the past week or so. During that time, I’ve rarely tweeted. I’m still a little pissed off that people think it’s okay to butt in on a conversation, assuming they know what the fuck people are talking about and getting offended that our conversations don't always stop to include their circumstances.

I’m beginning to wonder if people have forgotten that one behaves online in social media- well...sociably? Have people forgotten HOW to actually HAVE a conversation? Here's a hint: It's probably not a good idea to break into a conversation and accuse someone of being an insensitive asshole because their conversation didn't include your specific raison d'etre.

I have a special affinity for Twitter. I love popping in, having a small bite of conversation, and continuing along my day. As Septimus said once “it’s like having a water cooler conversation”. It’s especially useful for me because I don’t actually have a watercooler (or people) where I work. It breaks up my day, and I’ll admit- sometimes I get carried away with it. Especially when flirting with Septimus.

I have a pretty terrific “core group” of people that I tweet with and I seldom have problems there. There's another group of people I tweet with occasionally where I have to be prepared to explain things ad naseum before we can figure out that what we each said wasn't meant as a literal analysis. And then there's a third group of people- the ones that don't really know me who see an out-of-context tweet and get their panties in a bunch.

One of the things about Twitter that often makes it difficult for me is that third group. The other people who find their way into a conversation, midstream, without background, and THINK they know what you’re talking about. And only having a partial conversation showing on their tweetstream, they sometimes get it very wrong.

Just the other day, I was in kind of a bad mood. Septimus knows that when I get like that, I go to Twitter to get cheered up. He also knows that I “read more into” his tweets than he says. That’s part of the benefit of being in a relationship with someone. That shorthand that you learn to pick up over time. We’ve developed a twitter style between the two of us that (so I’ve been told) is quite cute to watch. But mostly, we started using twitter to flirt with each other and we’ve continued in that vein. If Klout had a “knowledgeable about someone” stat, we’d be at the top of each other’s list.

But as I said, I was in a bad mood and he knows what puts me in a better one. So he started tweeting tips about cocksucking. They were tips designed to make me smile. But more importantly, the were tips about how HE liked to have HIS cock sucked. Someone broke into the conversation, perhaps after only seeing one or two of his tweets, and got offended at Septimus’ “generalities”. Another person got bothered by the fact that he was tweeting about cocksucking as if MALES with PENISES were the only people who had their cocks sucked! [I’m not trying to start a gender war here, but seriously?] We’re in a heteronormative-cisgendered-monogamous relationship. Of COURSE he was tweeting about his penis! That’s the only one that interests ME! (and him, I daresay)

At first, when those tweets started showing up on my stream, I got pretty hot under the collar (hee hee). I had dozens of “fuck you PC police” tweets ready to go, when I figured I just needed a break. I sent a last tweet that said something along the lines of “great...now I can’t even use twitter to flirt with my fucking boyfriend without the goddamned kinky PC police getting their panties in a twist?” (or something along those lines). Then the DM’s started.

One really great tweep- ginger_snap, DM’d me with what has become my mantra for dealing with the nonsense that happens on Twitter: “extrapolate to your circumstances and move on”.

And, with those words- Twitter suddenly became clear.

People don’t “extrapolate to their circumstances”. See a tweet- especially a passive/aggressive one- and it must be directed at you, personally. See something on twitter and it must be directed to the world as a whole. Specifics become generalities and people forget that with only 140 characters, one just CAN’T cover every conceivable permutation of relationship, gender, sexuality, fluidity or experience. We tweet to our own experience and regarding our own circumstances, but social media has fostered a belief that people expect that our experience and circumstance is the SAME as theirs (or at least should include theirs).

And it very well may be- but only if they’re willing to extrapolate to their own circumstances. Don’t like how we tweet about cis-gendered cocksucking? Extrapolate to your own damned circumstance and move on. Don’t like what’s being said about polyamory? Extrapolate to your own damned circumstance and move on. Don’t like how someone’s relationship appears on twitter? Extrapolate to Your Circumstances and Move On.

With only 140 characters a tweet, the ONLY think that’s for certain is that not everything is germane to your circumstances. So extrapolate to your circumstances and move on.

ABC's of Kink and Abuse

2011-09-21T14:53:00.004-04:00

Some of the Things We Could Do, or Do Better
and the Elephant in the Room

Part One: Abuse and Consent
Part Two: Personal Responsibility and Community Obligation

First things first. We need to admit that we simply cannot make abuse and consent issues go away. As in the "vanilla world"- abuse and consent issues will always exist. There will always be people who hurt and get hurt. We can't change the minds of others. We can't FORCE people to behave correctly or how "we" think they should. But we can change how we talk about this issue and perhaps add a more realistic note to all of the fun, kinky, sexy stuff that we do.

It's never easy to figure out what to do in this situation. For many, it will simply be "do nothing". And if that's what they did, that'd be the lesser of all of the evils. Unfortunately, too often, people just don't "do nothing". Instead, they focus on telling others that they also shouldn't get involved, that they can't understand why anyone else would get involved, or even that the people who are involved are "drama queens" intent on destroying civilization as we know it. That may be an overstatement, but this thread outlines some of the more common reactions: Leadership Forum

If you want to "do nothing, then Do. Nothing. Don't speak out against those who are trying to find a way to deal with the issues; don't choose sides; and don't tell others that they only way to deal with this is to stay out of it. If you want to do nothing. Then do us all a favor and DO THAT.

But for the rest of us who don't want to sit idly by watching people get hurt because they actually BELIEVE all the malarky we spout about how bdsm and abuse shouldn't even be used in the same sentence together, here's some things that I think we could do better. We could incorporate these ideas into our own groups, munches, events, classroom materials and PERSONAL interactions with others.

It still won't make a difference to someone with a different agenda, but we're not talking to those kinds of people anyway. We just want to provide barriers to the ease in which they find their targets among our groups.

Talk more about personal responsibility, recognizing that underneath any relationship, D/s, M/s, playpartners or friendship, that each of us is ultimately responsible for ourselves. Don’t let people get into the mindframe that “whatever a dom says, is gospel” or that “submissives can’t ever say no and still be a submissive”. There is a time and place for learning about someone else, trusting someone else, and negotiating around yes and no, but the first hundred conversations you have with someone about kink, meeting kinky people or playing should not ever include “you must obey from the get go” or “you must be obeyed from the get go”. Trust is earned through repeated actions and we need to do everything we can to discourage the newbies to our scene from thinking that everyone who calls him/herself by any title is actually that or that they live by some ephemeral epitome of whatever they've got in their head about how someone else should act.

Within your groups of friends, your munch groups, your party groups, start a peer mentorship program. A REAL mentorship program...not a dom mentoring or training a young submissive, not grooming or trolling play partners. There ARE people who can make mentorship work and have no expectation of ever becoming anything more to the person than just a friend or sounding board. You know who they are. Every single group of people I’ve ever met has those people who sincerely and only want to help someone find their way without getting hurt. Encourage submissives to talk with other submissives- especially ones outside of their own peer group. Dominants need to be mentored in the same way. Many need to recognize that they are fully capable of being a dominant and still hearing and understanding the simple word “no”; or- if you're on the other side of the slash- that one's submissive "track record" isn't going to be tarnished by saying and STICKING to no, either.

Have a plan in place for when things do get fucked up and reported to you. This is the hardest one of all and the one that I think that people are the most afraid of. Ask the person harmed “what would they like to see happen?" Ask "how you can help”. And then do it. Have a list of support groups, rape counselors, trauma and abuse hotlines at the ready. Most of all, figure out if you’re willing to be the person others can come to for help and support, and if you’re not - then don’t put yourself into a position of perceived authority. If it turns out that there was in fact some sort of "malicious intent" by the person complaining, THAT also needs to be dealt with. Figure out how you would handle this situation if someone came to you. Figure out how you'd deal with it if it were between a "known person" in the community and an "unknown one". Figure out how you'd deal with it if it happened to a friend; a stranger; or someone you thought least likely to be on either side of this issue. If you are a group leader, make sure that people coming into your groups KNOW that this will be how these matters are dealt with.

If you're not going to "get involved in personal problems" then tell people that up front. Let them decide for themselves whether they truly have a "community" within your group, or if they should look elsewhere. Being open and sex positive doesn't necessarily mean being all-inclusive. We all have friends that we can rely upon for support- who have your back. Decide whether yours is strong enough to deal with these issues when they're happening to friends of friends, strangers or people who have stumbled across our subculture through reading material and Fetlife. Decide how you would deal with it.

Be willing to step up for someone. Sometimes all a person needs is a buffer to stop a very bad situation from ever happening. Step up to the plate and be willing to be that person. Competent caring members of YOUR community should be publicly available to advocate for people who have trouble speaking out. If something happens at a munch or party and a person is too intimidated to go to an organizer by themselves, they should know that they have someone who will go with them and make the case. The point isn’t actually whether they receive justice … the point is telling the story, over and over and over until the shift happens. After all if victims of child sexual abuse didn’t start to speak up 30 years ago, we still wouldn’t believe it happens much would we? ~KinkInMotion

Don’t lend your credibility or reputation lightly. Reputations and credibility are very difficult to keep when you continue inviting people to your events who are known to have issues with consent. Unfair as it is, if you keep inviting these sorts of people into your midst, or if you choose to ignore multiple reports about the same person and constantly side with them despite those reports because "you've never had issues with them personally"- then you are lending your reputation and credibility to them.

There ARE issues that we can incorporate into our pre-existing educational programs. Mostly it has a lot to do with teaching people that the kinky “community” is just a smaller subculture of the world’s population. Sometimes, they’ll be really wonderful and play by the rules and sometimes they’ll also be complete and utter jackasses. We also need to be clear that we don't really know who they are until after they've done a lot of damage; that we don't know most of the people we're "friends" with enough to either vouch for them or preach against them; and that we don't have things in place YET to deal with these issues.

There's a lot going on here and only a small portion is about consent alone. You can preach consent until you're blue in the face, but the real issue is in how we deal with what happens when someone doesn't give a flying fuck whether or not his or her partner gives it.

We need to have a fundamental attitude shift in that we've got to stop believing everything we say is heard and understood AND practiced by everyone. We need to make sure people understand that there's no way to know who is walking the walk and who is just talking the talk.

The Elephant in the Room

I presented on these issues recently. I made several mistakes - mostly that I really didn't know what to expect from the attendees. I'd had hundreds of messages about what was going on in my local community and thought I'd known what people needed to hear. My first mistake was that I didn't realize that I wasn't speaking to a group of people who knew me and that my brand of "pit bull humor" didn't go over well when speaking about such a serious topic. My second mistake was not realizing the extent of the "bad things" that people wanted to talk about.

I had a lot of information that I wanted to impart, but ended up getting through less than 1/10th of my material. While I think that education is a vital element in combating these issues- I also think that there's too much going on that people need to get out before a constructive program can be of value. Part of our community support would have to be making available an outlet for people to speak their minds. The only downside I can see- is that they'll also want answers to their questions that will be nearly impossible to give- given the wide variety of issues.

In general, I think the problem with consent/abuse classes in general can be laid out like this:

The people who attend such classes appear to be of two types: A) either don't have a problem with those things, and are coming simply to hear that they're "doing it right"; or, B) they're people who have had bad shit happen to them and they come so that they can talk about those problems. What the latter doesn't want to hear is that they may be "doing it wrong".

In other words, The people coming to these classes - well, this issue doesn't really "affect them" in any personal way. They're there because they feel helpless, may know someone who has been harmed and wonder how to help; and they even wonder if their names are coming out in a bad way or if they're "part of the problem" Generally, these people-they're there because they're interested in finding out what's going on- but they don't really have a personal stake in it. If people stopped talking about this issue tomorrow- it wouldn't change anything about how they conducted themselves.

The others- the people who have been harmed who attend, aren't looking to be told that they may have contributed to the circumstances that resulted in the abuse. I'm certainly not blaming THEM for the abuse, but they don't really want to recognize that there may have been some things that they could have done to avoid being put in the position to allow the abuse in the first place - I know I'm saying that badly, so I hope you get what I mean. To many of them saying "here are some of the things you can do to mitigate your risk" is coming off as "if you wear a slutty dress in a dark alley- of course you got raped". I look at it more as "there's a dark alley where bad things have happened in the past, you should walk down it carefully, perhaps with a friend, or avoid it altogether- even if the other way takes longer".

The general feeling I get is that many people who have been harmed in this way, would rather focus on changing the people who would harm them in that alley (in this case, the attitudes of those that they choose to play with), rather than focusing on changing their own views of that dark alley or of the people who may be lurking there intent on harming them. Realistically, that's never going to work on a large enough scale to make it helpful.

It all comes back to personal responsibility, mitigating risks, speaking realistically about what goes on in the “Scene”, and making sure people know that despite whatever happens- whatever steps they took, didn’t take, whatever we’ve taught or not taught- that if someone rapes or assaults them, that the only blame that can be placed is solely upon the rapist.

The ABC's of Kink and Abuse

2011-09-21T13:58:00.006-04:00

The ABC’s
Abuse, BDSM and Consent

Part 1: Abuse in BDSM

Personal responsibility and obligation is a difficult topic to write about. It differs for each of us. Trying to find a balance between each individual’s personal responsibility and the obligation we owe to each other within a community is like walking a tightrope- focus too much on personal responsibility and we risk “blaming the victim”; focus more on community obligation and we risk blaming the community for the actions of a few. We each have our comfort levels. We each have what we’re willing to believe. And we each know how much we want to pretend that all of the questions we ask will have answers.

Nevertheless, I believe that both personal responsibility and the community’s obligation towards others is the first line of defense in combating abusive behavior within the BDSM scene.

Personal Responsibility

This is the duty of care that you owe to yourself. It’s not an easy thing to remember, especially when playing with dominance and submission. But personal responsibility for one’s own actions and inactions can help alleviate your becoming a target for those looking for easy marks.

Personal Responsibility begins by Owning your Shit.- For everyone. I think that it has to be said that if you want to play in this pool, you have to wear your life preserver and take responsibility for yourself. There are sharks in this pool along with the dolphins.

So how does one begin this Personal Responsibility?

By not trusting someone just because they wear a label of “dominant” or they have all the right words. Instead-

“ take your time to get to know someone well so they can earn your trust instead of giving it away. It's about protecting yourself from potential harm.

Many people get sucked into words or promises they want to hear by a potential partner like dust into a vacuum cleaner. Women who are anxious to be in a relationship are vulnerable to men with all the right moves. They get caught up in the initial rush and don't wait to see if he follows through on what he says with actions...Men also get sucked in by women they're very attracted to who act sweet and agreeable until they get serious. Most people are on their best behavior when meeting someone they like. Then as time goes on, the person changes in ways we don't like.

This stuff is common, especially for people who dive in hot and heavy soon after meeting someone they like. That's why it's so important to filter your immediate impression of a new romantic attraction until they've earned your trust in many ways over a period of time.

We get ourselves in trouble by jumping into relationships too quickly. We trust before it's earned, and assume people are nice because nice things are said. Do I think most people are jerks? No! Far from that. I believe that one person's jerk can be another one's treasure if boundaries are set from the beginning and you take it slow. ~Dayelle Deanna Schwartz

Even in a vanilla context, the advice of “take it slow” and discussions of boundaries is often repeated. In the kink sense, “take it slow” means also that one is not in a race to complete your BDSM checklist. Learning about people takes time. Trusting them should take longer. Allowing them to push limits, order you around and skip formal negotiation can take a lifetime.

Realize that this is NOT a competition among people for the “biggest hematoma of the week” or that you’ve played with 200 people this year alone! Nobody cares and in fact, attitudes like that create a situation where you’re not thinking clearly about personal safety, much less about personal responsibility.

Some key areas which we need to keep personal responsibility in the forefront are:

* Know yourself, your boundaries, your expectations and your limits
* Defend those boundaries.
* Be polite but firm.
* Talk. Say no. Speakout about your experiences, good and bad.
* Do not perpetuate the problem. If you are complaining to your subbie girlfriends that Dom X just wont keep his hands off you, but at every munch you are showing him your new bra.. well.. pick one and stay there. You cant have it both ways.
* Be aware of your surroundings and surrounding event goers.
* Be aware of verbal and non verbal communication signals and red flags ~KinkInMotion

Recognize the places where you have may have some trouble spots and find ways to cope with them. Do you have problems coming back out of subspace when something is wrong? Do you have a safeword which is easily misconstrued? Do you have a problem actually saying “no”? By asking yourself what the “worst case scenario” would be, and finding a way to work around that scenario, personal responsibility begins and you become empowered to demand the exercise of your right to safety.

Easier said than done right? Not exactly.

Practice “Active Bottoming”- When playing with someone new, for the first few times, things should move slowly, you should be able to anticipate what’s going to happen, and you should learn how each other reacts, Smaller scenes, shorter duration, and ongoing feedback, are part of active bottoming. Recognize that it is not an“all or nothing”- that there is truth to the words “live to play another day”.

If you’re new to something, a relationship, a playpartner, a toy or an activity- get some help from someone you trust. Ask them to help you negotiate. Ask them to be your eyes and ears during the scene. You don’t HAVE to trust a virtual stranger the first time you meet them at a party to tie you up and beat you, without having a backup plan in place. Safecalls are one form of backup that everyone is familiar with. Why can’t we have “pool buddies” when doing pick up play at parties and dungeons?

If you do enter an altered state [for clarity- any state where someone is not thinking on their two feet, with their brains fully engaged.], and many of us do when bottoming, I’m going to offer two bits of advice.

First to the Tops- I’m going to suggest to you that when you have a bottom with whom you’re new to play, and that you don’t know very well- when that bottom reaches this place, that this is a good time to begin winding down the scene. If you’re in a party scene with a newer playmate, this isn’t a good time for either of you to change the tenor, intensity or parameters of a scene. In negotiations, tell your bottom that when she/he is no longer actively bottoming, that this is when you’ll just let them coast. If a bottom is unable to communicate with you- This is a sign that the bottom is no longer able to consent! Later on, when you’re doing aftercare, and your bottom says “wow I wish you hadn’t stopped” then that response is something you can add to your negotiation for next time.

Second, Bottoms- if you drop at the touch of a rope on you- even with new play partners, you need to have another person who can advocate for you.- one who has perhaps taken part in negotiations and who can be a “spotter”. Tops need to get over their big selves about people “interrupting a scene”. If you’re a bottom who drops quickly or deeply, either find someone who can be that spotter or you need to be acutely aware of how you choose your partners. If you have a top that won’t allow such a person, you may wish to question whether their toppiness is more important that your safety.

And finally, I have to mention safewords. As I’ve already said, safewords won’t work with abusers. But because they’re so strongly urged in consensual BDSM and is often the first clue that someone is going to ignore what you’re saying- get one that is going to work.

But also be aware that people think that safewords mean “stop EVERYTHING, right now! immediately and do not pass go”. A safeword is defined as a word that is unlikely to be said within a scene, and means for the immediate action to cease, not necessarily for the scene to end. This is the reason why they often don’t work properly. Safewords are fraught with difficulty because bottoms tend not to use them due to the fact that they don’t always want “everything” to stop, but also know that responsible tops tend to panic at them and stop any further interaction.

Bottoms who aren’t clear (when facing away for instance) or tops who can’t hear them in a loud dungeon create a disadvantage for both sides. Instead, try using a combination of plain language and body language.

Red, Yellow and Green (beige) are standard. It’s far easier to think about where you are on a color scale than to figure out if something is safeword worthy. If you’re going to use your own safewords, choose something that is unlikely to be said outside of the scene. Ouch, More, Stop, Please and Fuck aren’t good choices. Rigatoni, Elephants, Purple are better. I prefer to use “You’ve hit my tailbone, please stop, NOW” with a footraise so that he can see from behind me (where, frankly, a lot of the “action” is taking place).

And lastly, because I feel strongly about this, If you DO have a safeword that is ambiguous, it is YOUR responsibility to understand that you’re playing with a handicap and to make absolutely sure that your top knows that you’re playing with this handicap. This really is one of those areas where you really have to make a decision concerning personal responsibility.. It is a learning curve wherein practicing active bottoming will help both of you get through the scene more safely. If your top doesn’t hear, or misconstrues your safeword- You’re responsible for stopping the action if it is beyond what you’ve negotiated - by any means necessary.

Will any of this prevent abuse? Not for someone who has that on his/her agenda. But it will go a long way towards making you an unappealing target. And it will also help in vetting people for yourself. Those who won't understand your need for going slowly; those who disregard your safewords; those who insist on bowing, kneeling and submission immediately will always have problems with a show of strength on your part.

Community Obligation

The second part of taking away the predator/abuser’s playground is the obligation of the community. This is the area that seems to create the biggest problems within our community. As with any issue which needs addressing, people will range in reaction from “I’m staying out of it” to “let’s report the fucker to the police, immediately”..and everywhere in between. But if we, as event organizers, munch facilitators, presenters, party hosts and dungeon operators provide this playground for abusers because we are afraid to act or because we “don’t want to get involved in other’s problems”, then we are providing exactly the kind of playground in which predators and abusers thrive. (with a nod here to a very cool blog: SexGeek)

The community, has an obligation to make it perfectly clear that known offenders are not allowed to come to their events. I’m going to say that, given the absolute HELL that people are put through when reporting abuse within our community, that it’s unlikely someone is going to “cry wolf” as often as we think they might. Erring on the side of the accuser, rather than the accused is not only prudent, but may in fact act as a deterrent for others who might think that their safety lies within our community’s often-repeated standard of “he said/she said, not getting in the middle”.

The community has a collective obligation to respect others’ boundaries. Strictly and without question. This equates to making the rules, promulgating them, and enforcing them. Those truly clueless of our community mores will abide by the rules after being informed. Those who have their own agendas will repeatedly offend under the guise of “just being friendly” and will need to have those rules enforced time and time again. This also means that using a position of authority within groups and events to coerce anyone needs to be firmly and strictly dealt with.

We have an obligation to believe others who are speaking- nobody makes that decision lightly. Knowing all the shit they’re likely to get- it’s not unheard of to just keep quiet and disappear. We have an obligation to those who have been harmed to make sure that they are helped. And that they’re not doubly harmed by allowing their abusers easy access to our groups and events.

We have an obligation to speak out. If someone can’t do it for themselves, others must do it for them. Leadership isn’t just about running things your own way, it’s also about meeting the needs of those who look to leadership for support. My personal opinion is that if someone is unwilling to step up, speak out, or help those who look up to their position of perceived authority, then they shouldn’t be IN that position to begin with. This is not a case of “doing no harm by maintaining the status quo”.

We also have an obligation to protect our spaces, our munches and our events from predators, while at the same time realizing that all those “poor defenseless bottoms” don’t need OUR protection. Protection means that we assume someone is weak and they need stronger people to defend their interests. It creates a sense of dependence (on the “weak” person’s part) and righteous strength (on the “strong” person’s part) which in fact is suspiciously similar to the conditions that create and support abusive situations in the first place. (with another nod to SexGeek)

We have the obligation to provide the tools and resources to foster empowerment. We need to talk more openly about the truly “dark sides” of BDSM and abuse. We need to acknowledge it’s existence and stop behaving as if we have nothing to do with it if it doesn’t happen to us.

Every time someone is abused in our community, in a space we provided, using the mantras and empty vagaries we have all spouted as gospel, we are all to blame.

None of this will stop the most egregious offenders, but realistically speaking, not even the vanilla world can prevent abuse. The Kink Community certainly doesn't have any better answers than the populace at large. The most we can hope to do is make damned sure that we're speaking realistically to those finding us and making sure that when the shit happens, we're not so blind to the fact that it does exist within BDSM, that we're too afraid to help those who need it.

ABC's of Abuse and Kink

2011-09-21T11:16:00.004-04:00

The ABC’s
Abuse, BDSM and Consent

How many times have we heard the phrase “BDSM isn’t abuse”?

The answer in our own minds is usually “of course, BDSM isn’t abuse-to engage in BDSM, one needs to have consent”. And in a kinky utopia, that is absolutely the truth.

However, too many people coming into our circles tend to hear instead “there isn’t abuse in BDSM”. We’re doing a poor job of communicating that, like any other society, abuse most certainly does exist within a BDSM context. Well, we are not a kinky utopia, and because of our need for secrecy, our silence, and our fear, we provide an almost perfect playground for those whose aims are definitely NOT utopian, to hide within while providing them easy access to their victim.

Abuse comes in many forms and abusers come in many varieties. It’s often very difficult for people who play with things like rape fantasies, consensual non-consent, or even merely the thrill of “giving up control” to a mean sadist, to understand that BDSM isn’t immune to abuse simply because many of us believe that one cannot engage in BDSM without consent. We’re talking apples, and people are getting lemons.

Those who engage in BDSM are a cross-section of humanity. It stands to reason that, like all communities, we also have our share of “bad apples”. Knowing who they are isn’t easy. Knowing what to do with them once known is even harder. Helping those that they’ve harmed is the hardest of all.

This three part post will talk about abuse within the bdsm context (which isn’t much different than abuse without it), how to recognize abuse, the responsibilities and obligations that we all have to ourselves and one another, and most importantly- to offer suggestions on how we can as individuals and as a community, combat this hidden problem.

“There's a difference between blaming the community and not the attacker, and holding the community accountable for enabling the attacker to be there. That's what we’re talking about here. By accusing survivors of being dramatic, by community leaders not stepping up in any active way when multiple accounts of problems with one person come their way, by saying "if you didn't fight back you let it happen"...

Here's the thing, dear reader: if, as a community, we want to say to radfems, the government and the police that What It Is That We Do isn’t abusive (and we say it a lot), then we need to prove it by treating survivors with respect, listening to their voices, not creating a norm of slut shaming and victim-silencing, encouraging negotiation skills via workshops and demonstration, and holding predatory people accountable, from directly and firmly letting them know their behaviour is unacceptable, to publicly outing and banning them if it’s necessary.

Every time we DON'T hold people accountable, and every time someone says my article is proof that I obviously was an attention whore who was turned on by being forced to do things to men I didn't want to do, or that it’s my own fault for not knowing better, and that this sort of writing is a disservice to the kink community, we are proving the radfems, the government and the police right. We are saying, effectively, that BDSM can be abusive, and that we would rather put blinders on and shun those who speak out than address the issue.” ~ Kitty Styker: I wish I could safeword

What We’re Really Talking About

Throwing a lot of terms around will just confuse everyone. Let’s suffice to say that if you don’t understand what a top/bottom, submissive/dominant, or any other “bdsm term” is, go online and find a few dozen of the really good general dictionaries to use. For the purpose of this post, I’m going to use the following definitions in the most broadest terms possible:

Abuse- non-consensual actions by a person to control the thoughts, actions, or beliefs of someone else. Abuse comes in many forms- from sexual harassment (the “quid pro quo”), to outright and blatant disregard for someone else’s physical or emotional safety. The abuse cannot be stopped with a safeword and may include physical abuse, emotional abuse, sexual abuse and economic abuse. The last of which is often aimed more frequently at male bottoms. Abuse is an ongoing, non-consensual and/or coercive power dynamic between people. Abuse is hardly ever noticed by those outside of such a relationship, and in fact within the context of BDSM, it very often looks too much like two people having a “really good time”.

Predator - anyone who misuses their perceived or actual authority over another to facilitate abuse. Predators often choose their target on the basis of passivity, lack of assertiveness, naivete, low self-esteem, age, lack of education, or other areas of vulnerability - including fetishes. In our communities, this is often the “newbie”. Unsure, unaware, and perhaps not sexually or emotionally ready for playing in this world. Predators come in many shapes and sizes, across all genders and orientations. There is no way to tell who is a predator and who is not at a glance. Whispers and rumors are often ignored. That small voice in your head is likewise ignored. Predators look like everyone else. They’re charming, appear well-connected and always appear to know their shit. Often, they drift to positions of perceived authority on this basis.

Consent - is permission given for an activity, with all the facts known, and requires active and ongoing participation. One cannot give consent when unconscious or asleep. However, it is a mistake to confuse consent as simply “yes means yes” or “no means no”. Yesses and nos can be given verbally, non verbally, implied and anywhere inbetween. In BDSM in particular, where you have predisposition of bottoms to agree, simply hearing a “yes” doesn’t necessarily mean that consent has been given. Unless the person is informed, aware, and actively participating in the activity, then it’s a slippery slope for both sides. If you don’t feel as if you could say no, it is coerced participation and lacks consent. Without consent, BDSM is unethical at the least and criminal at the most.

Mistake - the old adage “shit happens” applies here. Genuine miscommunication, accidents, inattention, mistakes in judgment, aim, or reading body language all happen quite frequently within BDSM. Experts fuck up. Newbies fuck up. No one is immune to mistakes. We are only human. We all bring expectations and preconceptions into a scene. When they don’t work out, we find ourselves in the middle of a mistake. Mistakes are unintentional and don’t generally fall under the definition of abuse. Do abusers make mistakes? Quite frequently. But thinking that a mistake is abuse, dilutes the power of those who ARE being abused. I think that the true test of a mistake is in the behavior of the actor when called on it. Do they own their mistake? Do they feel even more awful that they made it? Do they try to make amends? Do they question themselves? Do they ask for help in fixing it or learning better? And most importantly, do they apologize without “butting”? Saying “I’m sorry that I hit you harder than you asked me to, I got carried away with the scene” is one thing. Saying “I’m sorry that I hit you, but you moved in the wrong direction and it was your fault” is another. Nobody intends to make a mistake, but when they happen (and they will), the intention to clean up your own mess, for me, differentiates a genuine mistake from abuse.

RACK v. SSC

RACK (Risk Aware Consensual Kink) and SSC (Safe, Sane, and Consensual) are short, marketing phrases that too many people believe offers some sort of magical protection against being harmed. Knowing these terms, saying that one is “risk aware”, and believing that those who also can spout these phrases ascribe to the same values, offers a false sense of security and begins a cycle of belief that there is no abuse in BDSM.

Nothing could be further from the truth. Both RACK and SSC are designed to give a voice to an easy to remember mantra of the utopian kink ideal. But neither RACK nor SSC will protect anyone from someone that doesn’t practice them.

Those who engage in BDSM aren't any better or worse than any other group of people who share a similar affinity. You have people who will play by the rules AND people who will pretend to play by the rules for their own agendas. There are sex offenders and predators finding our community daily. There are also vanilla people who just want a little kinky sex finding the scene. Don't believe that just because we have rules for conduct, we preach negotiation, communication, and responsibility that everyone you meet will follow through. Kinky people are PEOPLE...not every member of any "club" is like any other member. Don’t think that just because someone has a Fetlife profile, can copy and paste something that sounds half-way decent, and has followed along enough to integrate themselves into the scene that they can be expected to KNOW what the “community standards and mores” truly are- much less care if they follow them.

“Another woman, who came to the leather scene through Fetlife and other sites, says she
had no idea there was risk of injury when she first entered the scene.” ~Dallas Observer News

If there are people finding us that don’t have any idea that there is a risk of injury while flogging, caning, suspending or anything else, is it any wonder that people don’t realize that there are also others that might abuse them within the guise of BDSM?

Can We Recognize Abuse?

There have been thousands of books written on abuse and abusers in the vanilla world. Abuse within marriage, abuse of children, abuse of pets- those things happen, are written about, and studied by those with actual degrees in psychology. I’m not going to try to recreate the wheel, but I will say that it’s not easy to recognize abuse when it’s happening within the BDSM scene.

“...we’d negotiated a rope suspension scene, and I specifically told him “no sex”. After he suspended me, gagged me, and while I was in a very happy subspace, he opened my legs and started fucking me. When I realized what was happening, I was crying hysterically. I screamed through my gag, tried to undo the rope, and experienced real fear. He finished and whispered into my ear that if I said anything, I wouldn’t be believed because nobody was paying attention and it would be his word against mine...” ~ Author’s name withheld.

Recognizing abuse, even when it’s happening right under our noses, is a tricky thing within the BDSM context. We play with non-consent as a part of many scenes. Begging for something that you don’t really want to happen, roleplaying, rape play, interrogation play...all lend themselves to consensual non-consent. So how does one recognize abuse within all of that? And how does a casual onlooker know the difference between a “really hot scene” and actual abuse?

The truth is, we can’t. When abuse is happening right under our noses, in our parties and dungeons, we can’t tell the difference.

Simply put, BDSM turns to abuse when any of these things haven't been negotiated as part of a scene or relationship:

1. When it devalues you, your thoughts, your fears or your safety.
2. When your limits are ignored.
3. When a timeout cannot be called to discuss a problem.
4. When you are not heard when there is a problem.

It’s difficult for us to spot abuse because for every negative trait abusers exhibit, there is an equal call for such a trait to be evidenced in domination. Some of the more common ones and their analogous BDSM uses-

* Manipulation is at the basis of predicament play.

* Controlling behavior - control is desired by those seeking a D/s or power exchange relationship;

* Use of force- force is often found in most kinky sexual relationships and is most often used in rape play;

* Sadistic fantasies- I hardly think this one needs explanation!

* Cruelty within a scene is common, especially in humiliation scenes.

* Stereotypical gender roles are maintained as a norm especially by het-male-doms;

* Eagerness to Rush into a “dom/sub” relationship. Presses for exclusivity on your part, jealousy in the guise of “protection”

The unfortunate reality is that from the outside, there is little that any person engaging in BDSM would notice as out of the ordinary in another’s BDSM play or relationship.

Unless they’ve been told otherwise.

~Part 2- Obligations and Responsibility: Individual and Community Combined

Small Voices

2011-09-06T10:45:00.003-04:00

I’ve had a really rotten few weeks.

Since first deciding to speak my mind about issues happening in our “community” ranging from consent/boundary problems to rape, I’ve received tweets, emails, fetlife mail, dm’s and blog comments aplenty. Not all of them were, shall we say- nice?

But what surprised me more, and was more disappointing than anything, was the voices of those who are still missing in this discussion.

I don’t know what it was about some of the things I wrote, but it seemed to bring out the absolute worst in some people. The support I got privately, often wasn’t quite enough to make up for the shit I was getting. I was at the point of almost giving up on this whole fucking idea of taking a stand on any issue when I started talking to a few really good friends whose opinions and good sense I could rely upon for a clear head. Septimus, Dee Dennis, and Railen Panther. Without those three people, I don’t think that I’d be ready to continue speaking out.

I learned a lot these past few weeks. Since I first put out the call for people’s stories. I got nearly 140 messages from people. Some of them were so awful that there were days I couldn’t bear to open another email. Some of those stories were very hard to read, some emails were hostile, and not enough were supportive. Even, many times, from my friends.

But just as I’d about given up, thinking that my small voice couldn’t make a difference, couldn’t reach anyone, and therefore wouldn’t matter, in little more than a long weekend, several things happened that made all the difference in the world. I listened to what my three paragons of sensibility were telling me- I did have people who supported my efforts; that they wouldn’t consider abandoning me, or telling me to abandon my position when I was feeling discouraged; and that together, they had experiences in the things that I’d need to carry this thing forward. Septimus is able to cut through the bullshit and get to the heart of an issue; asking the right questions, and giving me a male tops’ perspective; Dee Dennis was able to help me see the larger issues involved; how to network; and most importantly- how to step back when I needed to regain my own perspective; and Railen- who last night almost brought me to tears when he and his Mistress told me that they understood what I was doing, that they wanted to help and that I was doing a “good thing”.

That, oddly enough, was the very first time anyone had told me that all the crap I’d been reading, hearing, and talking about the past few weeks, was worth it.

I’ve heard a lot in the past few weeks to make me think that part of the problem is that nobody gives a fuck about anyone else. They care about their own small circle of friends, but they don’t generally care all that much about some stranger 20, 200 or 2000 miles away from them. It’s “THEIR” issue. It doesn’t affect them, so why should they worry? And part of me asked that same question. Why should I even get involved in this issue? I have no personal stake in whether or not “someone else” gets their boundaries bent or whether or not someone else was raped. It won’t happen to ME, right? I can go on my merry fucking way, live my merry fucking life and not have to worry about someone else. I’m too smart to be “one of those people”.

Unless that someone else is a friend. Unless that someone else reached out to you for help.

Unless you’re someone who gives a shit about people.

Denial that there’s any problem, silence about it, shaming those that speak about their own experiences, and anger directed towards those who would shed light on such unpleasantness hiding within our “fantasy world” of bdsm, are some of the very behaviors that create the problems in the first place.

Abuse in BDSM exists. Predators in BDSM exists. Harm in BDSM exists. And mistakes in BDSM exist. To deny that those things happen as a he said/she said problem, because we've all read "all the books on how it's supposed to be done" or simply because we aspire to the epitomes of SSC or RACK or whatever behavior and to not talk about them openly and with compassion for those that have experienced those things, simply because “it wouldn’t happen to you”, is to make our “community” somehow more utopian than the vanilla world.

While we’re talking about all the fun, sexy, hot stuff that we do, we also have to remember that we don’t live in the books. We live in a world where abuse, predators, harm and mistakes happen, and we have to include that in our education, presentations, and discussions.

To think anything else, really is fantasy.

Running to Stand Still

2011-08-16T09:16:00.002-04:00

Sometimes lately I feel like I'm spending more time beating my head against that wall of people who either can't understand what I'm saying or who believe that there's no solution so we can ignore the problem. Maybe I can't explain things nearly as well as I'd like. Maybe it's just that I'm too close to this issue. Maybe it's a lot of things and I've begun to wonder if I should just go back to spending my time on things that make me happy.

I could be spending time doing anything else. I could be playing Pocket Frogs. I could be shopping for shoes. I could be working on that job interview, my Momentumcon presentations, my Bound in Boston classes. I could be snugging with Septimus, I could be doing a thousand things that I love to do.

I could sleep at night.

Instead, I’m spending time beating my head against a wall, screaming at the top of my lungs, trying to make people see that the issues I’m talking about aren’t the same things they are. I recognize that everyone has a story and that others may think that their discussions about fuzzy boundaries or scenes going haywire are important, but those aren't the kinds of things I'm talking about.

I’m not talking about people in a relationship. Who have been IN that relationship for a time. Who met someone nice, who got to know them and spent time forging that relationship.

I’m not talking about people who have decided that they will play by the “rules” to the best of their ability not only because they value their own reputations, but because they value those that they play with and around. They value the opportunities presented within BDSM for exploration and they're not willingly going to fuck that up for themselves or anyone else.

I’m not talking about people who are generally good, decent, people, who may fuck up upon occasion, who apologize, own their shit, learn from their mistakes and become better for doing it. They're not the problem, even WHEN they might fuck things up a bit. Quite often, these people feel more awful about what they did than the person they did it to.

I’m not talking about people who GET IT.

No. What I AM talking about is the attitude that all of those people I just mentioned seem to have about everyone else. That we’re all the same. Simply because we share a common word for What it is that We Do. I'm talking about all those people who think "kinky" means "honorable within that kink".

We educate with an eye towards people who want to be “like us”. We don’t ever think about how there are always some people who just want to “appear to be like us”. And when we're fooled by those people, the betrayal is so hurtful, we quickly just want to forget that it existed.

We tell people “how to meet other kinky people”. Holding munches in a "public place because it's safer". Without ever mentioning that just because they’re with kinky people, doesn’t mean that they’re not also Ted Bundy.

We hold discussions about personal responsibility, without ever holding discussions on what to do when you do everything right and it still goes very wrong. And I’m not talking about mistakes, I’m talking about deliberate and premeditated actions.

We talk about how yes means yes, without really expecting people to recognize that there are people who will always disregard everything that you say because they’re alleged “doms” and you’re not a “twue submissive” if you don’t agree. For a large part of any community already predisposed to “yes”, "yes means yes" is nearly as bad as “just say no”. And for the other large part of our community who dislikes hearing the word no said to them by a submissive anyway, is it any wonder why they only like to hear yes?

We talk about negotiation and communication without telling people that despite negotiations and despite whatever is communicated, there will be those that will not ever care.

We talk and educate about all the “good things”, seldom mentioning the bad in a realistic way. It’s very easy to tell someone that they should “report bad things” or to “leave an abusive relationship”. But unless people understand that bad things and abuse DO happen, even within a BDSM relationship, even with people you think you know, and even if you’ve negotiated and communicated, we're not preparing people to deal with this in the real world.

I'm curious though.

What we never seem to get around to is figuring out how to help the people who’ve actually listened to what we teach and talk about, and still end up being hurt. While we’re talking about consent or boundary issues, we forget that consent and boundary issues aren’t the cause of the problem- they’re often a result of people thinking they’re entering the Chateau, and finding out that they’re alone in a dark alley with no GPS.

I Must Be Missing Something

2011-08-14T10:13:00.003-04:00

"I'm shocked that anyone involved in bdsm would not explicitly follow their mantra of SSC"

I woke up this morning to another round of emails, fetlife threads and blog comments. Now that I’ve opened this can of worms and invited everyone in, I guess I really should be more prepared to deal with people that only get part of the problem. It’s easy to hear platitudes like “no means no” “consent counts” or “yes means yes” and think that this is the easy way to “deal with our shit”.

People like easy. It makes it feel like they’re “doing something” about the problem, without hurting feelings, making enemies, or putting too much of their valuable time into something that “would never happen to them, because they’re so careful”.

I’m really tired of platitudes and quaint marketing phrases.

We’ve got a ton of them in BDSM- Risk Aware Consensual Kink, Safe Sane and Consensual are two of them. But while we’re listening to those phrases, do we ever really think about what they mean?

Safe, Sane and Consensual has been around for decades. SSC was THE standard that bdsm ascribed to. We all strove to play safely, sanely and consensually. But then people figured out that there were a lot of things that we did that weren’t exactly always “safe” and even sometimes, things that we probably didn’t even consider “sane”. We changed SSC to Risk-Aware Consensual Kink because, although we sometimes did thing safely, they were inherently risky things. Putting a corkscrew in someone’s cock seems pretty insane to me. So RACK became the newest platitude.

But what SSC and RACK boil down to is that neither of those things protect you.

SSC and RACK protect the people you play with **only if you are someone who adheres to either of those principle**. If you don’t, the fact that your bottom adheres to them doesn’t mean diddly shit. You can’t rely on those principles to protect you. And you can’t rely on the hope that every single person you meet practices them.

We avoid definitions like the plague because words have different meanings to different people. If you’ve ever had a “submissive v. slave” discussion or a chat about shibari, collars, service, or protocol, you know what I’m talking about. If these words create such chaos and differing opinions, such that few people agree on a single definition, why do we think words like “consent” are able to actually PROTECT anyone?

What the heck am I missing?

Anatomy of a Destruction

2011-08-12T14:27:00.003-04:00

I keep hearing people say to me “if someone is raped/assaulted in BDSM, they should REPORT IT TO THE POLICE!!” The implication is that otherwise, it’s a he said/she said thing, not worthy of the “drama”. Since people really only seem to care about how things affect their own lives, I’m gonna give you something to think about- [Trigger Warning]

Here’s a pretty common scenario (at least up until a point, and no- this isn't taken from "real life", it's a story):

A young woman finds her way to our scene. She’s found out about the local munch through a thread on Fetlife. She’s shown up a few times, and someone that “everybody knows” is a “nice guy” and that nobody will say bad things about, starts a friendship with her. She “friends” people on Fetlife, many of whom are his “friends”. She joins groups and starts conversations and becomes part of the “community”. The woman and her “dom” both seem pretty decent, normal, and not “creepers”. After a few munches and a couple of classes, he’s been seen around long enough and has behaved “normally”. So someone invites him to their next party. He invites the young woman.

This girl, having read all she could about safety, bdsm, consent, and negotiation, feels comfortable that she’s with her “friends” at the party. She negotiates for a rope scene, with a little hand spanking. Nothing else is mentioned.

The “dom” she met at the munch, that everyone is “friends” with, ties up the girl, begins to spank her, and she drops into a nice mellow headspace. The dom then gags her and starts to wail on her ass with a paddle. The girl snaps out of the headspace and tries to make noises, tries to get someone’s attention, tries to stop the dom, but because she’s now gagged, she can’t. Nobody at the party looks twice at the really hot scene going on. After all, these are people they “know” and it doesn’t look any different from any other scene they’ve ever witnessed. The dom then goes on and fucks her and while doing so, tells her that if she screams or says anything, he’ll “make her pay”. Again, it’s a private party, with “friends”, and nothing seems out of the ordinary. He finishes, reminds the girl to keep quiet because “he’s the dom” and unties her. The girl is in tears, badly shaken, sick, disgusted and out of it. The “dom” tells everyone that he’s taking her home for a “little aftercare” (wink wink).

A few days later, the girl tells one of her scene “friends” that she was raped at the party. This friend, who was there, finds it hard to believe because the girl “looked like she was having a good time”. The girl reports what happened to the party host who disavows all knowledge of what went on because he “can’t believe the dom would do such a thing and he didn’t see anything because he was in another room”. The girl then goes to the leader of the munch, where she first met the dom and tells what happened. The leader is likewise incredulous that such a thing really happened and questions not only the girl’s memory of the event, but tells her that she shouldn’t say anything because it’ll “cause problems”. The “drama” continues until the girl is forced to remove her Fetife profile. But not before carefully copying everything she can find about not only the dom, but every single one of those people at the munch and the party who refused to help.

Although very reluctant to involve the authorities or admit what happened, she’s been through the ringer enough and tells about the rape.

With me so far? If you are, thank you.

The authorities ask the girl about the munches. About the party. And about everything she knows about the people. It’s difficult, because these people don’t always talk about themselves, but small details that people did talk about were helpful. She knows that one of the girls “works for a local florist”. And that the leader of the munch is named “Bill” and on his profile he had a picture of his dog. She remembers where the house party was held though. It was at an apartment in East Bumpkis. She’s not able to give ALL the details about everyone, but enough.

The authorities maybe decide that this girls story “rings true” enough to act on. They even have a picture of the guy that did it, thanks to Fetlife. And not only that, he was kind enough to write about what a great time he had with this girl at the party. The decide to prosecute and show up at the next munch with a few subpoenas for the “friend, the leader and the party host”.

Enough of the authorities. You all know where this one would likely go. Arrest, trial, names in the newspaper. This is what people wanted. This is what the woman should have done!

But what about the girl? The girl who was actually brave enough to put up with the crap from the legal system. That brave person we advised to "grow balls and report and leave us out the drama".

Well here’s the part about how quickly destruction could happen with a brave person:

You see, after she went through the ringer with the domly one, and with the police and trial, she’s discovered that she’s ANGRY at the way she was treated by those “friends”. She decides to get even for some of it. Because they refused to help, covered up the dom, and victimized her again through their actions and inactions, she’s decided that the only way to make sure that this doesn’t happen to anyone again, is to cause a little destruction and chaos.

She calls the place where the munch is held and tells the manager “you know that group that meets there on Mondays at 6?.....they’re freaks, practicing sadomasochism and they have child molesters and criminals involved in their group....if you don’t kick them out, I might just have to let the local prude-with-a-stick-up-their-ass group know what’s going on. The manager decides that his “family restaurant” doesn’t need that kind of shit and bans the group. And the next munch? She does the same thing. Again and again, until it’s really difficult to even find a munch location. No restaurant/bar owner is going to lose business to keep the munch group.

She calls the owner of the hotel where the next really cool convention is being held. She tells the manager “you know that group?......? And then calls the newspaper, the local PTA and a couple of churches and tells them there’s a “sex group doing things at that hotel on the 30th”. Pickets and news crews show up. The hotel tells the organizer that they’re not welcome back. Oh - and for good measure, she also found out about that adorable little girl who was having her bat mitzvah in the hotel at the same time and told her mother what was going on. The same mother that then bitched the hotel a blue streak and told “all her friends” what that “nasty hotel” did! The hotel decides to sue the group for “loss of revenues” because their contract specified that no advertising of the location was allowed, and yet the hotel’s name and address was so kindly posted on Fetlife and the event website.

She calls the owner of the apartment building where the party was held. She sends a picture taken from Fetlife, of the tenants having their party to the owner with a note that says “the people that live in Apt. 2B? They hold sex parties and let people under legal drinking age drink there. There also are needles, and what not... and wouldn’t it be a shame if the police found out” Since the landlord already had one complaint about noise, he evicts those nice party hosts for ruining the “quiet enjoyment” of the other tenants.

She remembers that “Bill” was complaining about his ex. She does a little digging and finds out Bill’s real name (the internet is so wonderful”) and also finds out that his wife was very grateful for all of the information on Bill’s Fetlife profile. Including all those pictures and the really neato list of fetishes including “daddy/daughter”. The judge was also really interested in those things when making his custody decision.

She then sends a copy of that nice “friend’s” picture, the friend that wouldn’t believe her because she seemed like she was having a good time- you know the one- with her sucking cock and getting fucked in the ass?- to her boss, the florist. And when the friend is fired for something a couple of days later, she doesn’t even know why.

She trolls the profiles and writings of every single person that refused to help her and told her to shut the fuck up. She figures that she was ignored, slutshamed and that people who were her “friends” and “leaders” had made it so much harder for her. If only they’d listened and helped....

These are only a few of the ways that someone who is pissed off enough, and victimized enough by “reporting” to the “leaders, organizers and friends” what happened, could do. It only takes one person to cause not only the destruction of the fallacy of safety and support, but one person to cause the destruction of so much more. If the only thing that will get you moving is a personal interest in this issue, I hope I've just given you a few reasons to take it personally.

It just takes one person to care enough to help someone, to believe someone, to advocate for someone.

Here's another really good post that you should read.

When Consent Doesn't Count Enough

2011-08-10T10:38:00.002-04:00

Everyone knows the newest BDSM “catch phrase” - Consent Counts? Sure you do. NCSF has done a whole fucking campaign on consent counting. It’s another bullshit phrase in a long line of “feel good” expressions from a really hip marketing department somewhere.

I’ll tell exactly why consent alone doesn’t count for anything.

I make no secret of the fact that I was hurt by someone in the scene a couple of years ago. It wasn't even IN a scene, which is another reason why consent counted for shit. It was unexpected and ended up causing a lot of trouble for me as well as a lot of pain.

When it first happened to me, people I’d told about it had some interesting reactions- they’d either “heard similar stories” or “had one of their own” about the same person; or they couldn’t believe that this person would do such a thing. They believed ME (I am after all fairly known myself and not known to be given to hysterics or lying). But they couldn’t believe that this person could DO such a thing. Fortunately, there were several witnesses around who saw that it could and did happen

Whenever this person’s name is mentioned to me in conversation (usually with someone telling me how “wonderful” this person is), I tell them what happened. I calmly lay out the facts of what happened, admit that the injury was unintentional (you see, even *I* have a hard time believing it happened) and stress the fact that above all, it was completely unconsensual. I also don’t gloss over the fact that this person has to this date not apologized to me for doing it nor has he ever bothered to check up after the fact to see how my injury is doing.

And yet, this person has continued to not only practice what he did to me on others, but has actually taught CLASSES on doing it. I’ve actually heard people extolling his virtues to me without knowing my story and then scurrying away with an incredulous look after they’ve heard it. They don’t know what to believe. They LIKE both of us.

For those that know me, and known to whom I’m referring, I’m sure you’re still saying to yourself “she must have it wrong” or “it was an accident” or even “yeah, I’ve heard worse”. For those that know me, you’ll also be able to verify that it’s difficult for me to even be in the same room with this person. We're cordial because we have to be. But there is little warmth on either side.

What’s even more amazing though is when I start talking to people about this and they tell me “yeah- this person did X to me” or “yeah-this person did Y to me”. Or even worse “yeah, this person has a bit of a problem with consent”.

Funny how I’d never heard ANY of those things until I started talking.

As far as I’m concerned, knowing that someone “has problems” with consent; or has had “several complaints”; or, as I’ve read recently- someone “who will probably drive her out of the scene too”; and NOT saying it to anyone, to their next potential victim, or to EVERYONE to whom you come in contact with about that person, makes you just as culpable for their crimes. If you KNOW someone is a problem, if you KNOW that someone has a reputation for doing things that people have complained about, if you KNOW that someone has suffered, been hurt, raped, or had their trust violated at their hands and say nothing, you’re just as fucking guilty when the shit hits the fan.

In my opinion, the only time consent counts, is when it’s INFORMED consent. And being informed requires the participation of every single person who has any information which may affect the consent.

INFORMED CONSENT counts. Everything else is just non-consensual ostriching by people who should fucking know better.

Of Baby Dommes and Realistic Expectations

2011-08-04T11:40:00.002-04:00

I read a profile on Fetlife with interest. This profile was of 21 year old, professional dominatrix. She’d made some posts that were almost illegible, and filled with text-speak. One was a thinly veiled attempt at something that appeared to be a shot at financial domination. The second was a call for people to do various sex acts on camera, for "personal use". Of course. Despite my mirth, I really did try not to question her motives for her financial domination attempt too far, while at the same time questioning her motives and business plan for her pornography empire. I also thought I was relatively mild, I did not get into a criticism of her profile and bit my tongue and said nothing about her obvious problems with language skills or punctuation.

Then I took a look at her profile more closely. It was was so badly written it was almost unintelligible, but it did contain enough information to get a pretty clear picture of just what this young woman thought being a dominatrix meant. At 21 years old, I'm skeptical of the amount of professionalism she could have attained. I didn't discount it, but I looked for something that would give me a clue that she was serious.

The first thing I noticed was that she admitted to being “impossible to please almost” and that she is “mean to alot of people” Combined with statements she’d made on her feed calling people perverts (duh..you’re on a Fet site?); how she was tired of the guys contacting her looking for sex when she really only likes women; about how easily she used threats, namecalling, (particularly liking the words cunt and fucktard) and bluff and bluster when posting; and about how she didn’t really LIKE men all that much, I got the idea that somehow this young woman was more than a little confused about domination. I won’t even get into the idea about how she thought it might be possible for people to actually “suck their mothers’ dicks”.

I wanted to tell her that in order to be a pro dominatrix, HATING men probably wasn't going to get her very far. In fact, she's be downright dangerous to submissives if she hated them. But I held my thoughts.

I continued reading her profile (albeit with great difficulty given the aforementioned text speak and lack of punctuation) and noticed that several more things:

She’s in debt.
She is aggravated by dumb/stupid/uneducated people.
She doesn’t have sex on her agenda.
She does “some types of things against others”
It’s about power, fun and entertainment.

Any of those statements alone, wouldn’t necessarily raise any red flags. In fact, all of them are perfectly normal, if a little clumsily expressed. But given her online “history” since she joined Fetlife about a week ago, they were creating a chilling picture of a spoiled, bitchy, misanthropist.

One of the things that bothered me so much about this girl’s profile and writing was that if a MAN had written these same things, he’d be nailed to the fucking wall, ostracized, and perhaps even emasculated by those responding, with efficient ease. But when a woman says the exact same things, she’s not treated the same way. Oh sure, many of the women will still call Bullshit when it’s warranted, but few men will do the same thing. It was curious.

I’ve known many doms over the years, and this woman exhibited almost all of the classic signs of being not a dom female, but being an abusive one. Couched in bdsm terms, on a bdsm site however- and I’m sure that there’s at least one person who wouldn’t bat an eyelash. In fact, I’m sure there’ll be a few men who can look past what this girl has said, and only see the opportunity she presents. Experienced submissives will run. Newer ones? My heart hopes so, but my head tells me otherwise.

But hating men, doing mean things, being impossible to please, offering nothing (not even the hope for sex), asking for money, trying to lure people into porn without full disclosure, and her capacity for quick ANGER make me worry about those that do take the opportunity.

I thought back to many of the female dom profiles that had been sent to me over the past few weeks since my own run-in with the clueless one. When Septimus asked me what in particular got under my skin about this “baby domme”, I truthfully didn’t know. Was it my own prejudices from the past? Was it my recent encounter with the Clueless one? Was I just sick and tired of the sheer douchenozzlery of some people? I'd joked about how I was happy that male doms weren't the only douchenozzles; that it was nice to see women lowering themselves to the plate. But the thought also makes me pretty ill.

I thought about that some more. I was distracted last night thinking about it. I thought about just what it was that bothered me so much about that profile. It was truthfully no worse than hundreds of others that I’d read. It occurred to me this morning as I was driving to work, listening to my book, when I’d heard a phrase concerning “pack behavior and the need to protect”.

I’ve met too many male submissives over the years that have been taken even worse advantage of than female ones. Some of these men, a few I am particularly close to, have been through the wringer with female dominants in more ways than I could probably even remember. And while women are usually pretty happy to share experiences, heartbreak, warnings and stories with other women, there’s few guys that I know that like to do the same. A male submissive is still a male first, with gender based stereotyping wired into them, cultural shame over being taken advantage of by a woman, and perhaps a personal bias against sharing too much of their own feelings.

If a woman gets taken advantage of by someone and talks about it, we tell her how horrible the guy was and that she deserved better. If I guy gets taken advantage of, he too often suffers in silence because telling anyone will bring only shame.

I then realized that this profile that bothered me so much, was very much about being the type of woman who engages in slut-shaming of male submissives, knowing that odds are, they’ll be able to get away with it.

She offered nothing of any value to any potential male submissives except the opportunity to have their wallets emptied by a woman who would make them do things so she could earn a living through them, while being taken care of completely, and that these men would find someone impossible to please; someone who really didn’t like them all that much; and someone who is learning manipulation and not dominance.

As usual too, my thoughts turned to a conversation I’d had just the other night with a male submissive. He’s getting married to his mistress soon, and after we’d discussed some of the plans and whatnot, we’d gotten into a conversation about the two things he thought made the difference in a D/s based relationship: communication and realistic expectations. I’d made the comment that communication is the more difficult because styles differ and people have all sorts of things wrapped in their heads that aren’t always so easy to express -as long as the lines of communication stay open- things got easier over time, and as for realistic expectations, that those had a way of changing once you’d gotten yourself into a situation. That it would be far better to have realistic expectations of changes.

And that, I realized, was the problem I’d had with the baby domme, my male submissive friends and their experiences, and the plethora of douchenozzlery found online.

I’m just expecting too much from some people. But it won't stop me from trying.

Google Plus Kink Minus Me

2011-07-22T13:24:00.001-04:00

I have a Google Plus account. You can find my profile there under Wendy Silver. Not SilverDreams as most people know me. That’s because of a little “name issue” that google hasn’t quite gotten the hang of yet. I say you can find my profile (what I left of it) there, but you won’t find “ME” there. I’ve given up on G plus for the foreseeable future.

I’ve spent a lot of time on social networks. I fought against joining Facebook because of the serious privacy concerns I had. But Septimus was able to help me figure things out enough to lock things down. However, when they added facial recognition, I removed my kinky profile from Facebook. I now use it solely to interract with our families and vanilla friends. It’s too bad, because my real friends were the ones on my kinky profile. They were the ones I had things in common with, and they were the ones I “socialized” with. Not my family or co-workers. I had a MySpace profile, also recently removed (I hope), I have a Twitter account and a Fetlife profile, so I’m not completely a “social network”newbie. I’ve been using them heavily for a few years. I’m just not convinced that GooglePlus is for me. Being kinky and all.

Google wants “real” people, with “real content” having “real conversations”. I’m not sure what a “name” has to do with that, but it’s their playground. I’m just a visitor and don’t get to make the rules. But this is only ONE of the reasons why I’ve dumped Gplus for now. I don’t agree with this policy. Neither does almost everyone else. Why is hiding a real name so important? If you have to ask that, then I can’t help you. There’s too many reasons why. But if you’d like to read about the kinds of people who might be harmed, READ THIS
I’m not a fan of a site that hides behind a corporate shield while making their users “prove” that they’re really the person they say they are. Their users are guilty until proven innocent in the name department. And finding out that someone with whom I’ve actually HAD a conversation with had suddenly disappeared overnight, along with their posts, is frankly NOT a way for me to waste a whole lot of time having those conversations over there. Instead of believing that people will find their service pretty cool and use it accordingly, the googlites have obviously decided that everyone will act like a douchenozzle and that the only way to prevent it is to require that the douchenozzles use real names. I’m not even going to get into the fact that nearly everyone I’ve seen so far isn’t using their legal name- but some sort of variation of it.

But what I see Google Plus as doing with the name thing is that they want “certain types” of people and conversations. Things that can be indexed on google without running into the religious right pointing fingers at google and telling the world they’re running a PORNOGRAPHIC site! THINK OF THE CHILDREN will be the next refrain, I’m sure. It always is. Once those darned little minors start finding GooglePlus, we’ll have to protect them. And I guess the way to do that is to require a “real name”.

But I’ve spent a few years building my reputation under my SilverDreams name. People read my opinions and talk to me, knowing that I AM the REAL SilverDreams. They’ve heard me speak, been in my classes, read my blog and talked with me as SilverDreams. Fuck Wendy Silver. I’m not her. I don’t know who she is yet.

But as I said the name game is only one of the reasons why I’m not convinced that Google Plus is the best thing since ice cream (it’s really hot here today, shoot me). The list is long, but here’s the salient points:

It’s difficult to find things. I tried to delete a photo and had to jump through so many hoops, I almost gave up. If I wasn’t motivated enough to keep trying, I’d still be wandering around the “help” section.

It’s difficult to wake up in the morning, find out that dozens of people that I don’t know have started conversations about things that I have absolutely NO fucking interest in and they’re all being regurgitated on my stream. AND that they’re now “sharing with me”. (isn’t THAT special) I know, I can mute the posts, block people, and change circles, but why is it so difficult for any social network to get the fact that I want to be social with people I KNOW, and not with people posting crap about their dogs and/or latest meals? If something’s important, I have a wide enough base of people I interact with they’ll fill me in, I’ve not a doubt. This whole “sharing thing” just cuz someone circles me is like having to listen to that guy on a bus sitting next to you, talk about his boring life as a Walmart greeter, his complaints about his girlfriend not wanting to have sex with him or his mother’s facial wart. Sure, I can get up and move, but my chair was perfectly comfy before he got there.

I know people are saying that the interface is “cleaner”. It may very well be, but what I don’t like is how things I read a week or more ago, keep SHOWING BACK UP on my damned stream EVERY SINGLE TIME another new person finds Violet Blue’s lollipop post. Hello? Yesterday’s news isn’t news and if I wanted to be in that conversation a week ago, I would have been. Having it constantly popping back up, is annoying.

And finally, one of the last reasons why it’s not for me is because I know, talk with, and love many of my friends under their “business names” or “alternate names”. People like PapayaPam, CineKink, ThatToyChick...all people I know and love on Twitter, who are prevented from having a profile under their “business name” Do I know their “real names”? Sometimes I do. I’ve actually MET around 90% of the people I follow on Twitter.

And every time I DO meet someone from my tweetstream, the usual thing they say to me is “I KNOW YOU! You’re SilverDreams! I love to talk with you on twitter!” (OK, so I also say something similar to them pretty frequently too).

For now, Googleplus won’t let me be who I am, converse with those I like, and doesn’t really want “certain conversations” happening. So I’m back on Twitter. Where having conversations takes some work, but where I can be me.

Funny, You Didn't ACT Like a Dominate Mistress

2011-07-02T16:28:00.005-04:00

I'm pissed. But since I find blogging rather cathartic, I'm writing this one just to get it the fuck out of me before I explode with the rage I feel.

I was at a picnic today. It was a picnic held by a munch group, in a vanilla park, but with kinky people in attendance. That's fine by me. I don't have to watch my reference points when talking to my friends at places like that. Don't scare the muggles, ya know?

Septimus hadn't attended. These were sort of "my friends" from where I used to come from, and besides- he had work to do. We sometimes do things separately- we're not joined at the hip. And sometimes I prefer to be around my friends without him. That's not a bad thing. We both have lives that interact, but at times not intersect with each other. It gives us something to talk about at dinner :)

Anyway, I arrived early to the picnic and started a conversation with a friend I hadn't seen in some time. There were only six of us there and the conversation turned to jobs, geekery, macs v. pcs, commutes, and various other innocuous and vanilla topics, when this woman looked over at me and asked if I wanted to go to a "tea" with her. Since you can be darned sure that most male doms that I know don't "do tea", I figured she was a female "dom".

I just smirked and said that I wasn't a femdom.

To which she replied "but you don't look like a submissive". I smiled down at the table, trying to hold the laughter in, and told that I was indeed a submissive. When this fact was backed up by my friend, she just looked at me, somewhat flabbergasted and said "you could have fooled me, you don't act like it".

WHAT. THE. FUCK?!!!

I tried to explain the difference of being submissive to JUST Septimus and not to anyone else, that everyone else got the regular old bitch me, but the nuances of that seemed to be beyond her understanding. But I'll have to admit, I was so freaking amused by this, that I started tweeting about this little exchange. It was too funny- I couldn't BE submissive because I didn't look or act like one? At a picnic? With vanillas? Seriously?

As they say...BWAHAHAHAHAHA!

But as if that wasn't bad enough, after I told her that yes, I was indeed my boyfriend's submissive, her next question put me over the edge. She, this person who didn't think I "looked or acted submissive" upon finding out that I was, asked me if I wanted to go anyway and "serve".

OY FUCKING VEY. I had to stop from beating my own head on the picnic table.

My sexism got in the way, I'll admit. If this was a guy talking to me like this, I'd have cut his balls off with a couple of choice phrases. But a woman?! Talking to another woman like that? My head was exploding. This "dom" who couldn't even be BOTHERED to get to know me, talk to me, or find out anything about me, made assumptions that were not only wrong, but insulting. If I'd assumed because she was a female that she was automatically a submissive, I'm sure she'd have been just as annoyed. I don't make those assumptions about people and I find it pretty distasteful that someone of her age, experience and time in the scene does it.

While struggling to find out what I was obviously missing in the department of exactly WHAT a submissive should look or act like, I couldn't figure out what the fuck bothered me so much by her words. So, I did what someone with lots of friends does when having a problem- I talked with a friend, who just so happens to be a femdom.

We spent a lot of time talking about preconceptions. Entitlement. Service. And a great deal many other things relating to female domination. We talked for a long time and we were having a great conversation about service and learning to accept service when I looked up at her and asked the question that was foremost in my mind (and not without some great deal of irony)

"Exactly WHAT is a submissive supposed to look and act like?"

We chewed over this for a while, other people got into the conversation, and then, because the question itself was so silly, we starting making up all sorts of shit. Submissives should always wear corsets, even in the middle of summer at a vanilla party; with high heels. Submissives should always wear dresses with no underwear; Submissives should kneel all the time, even when we're in the park, pinecones and rocks; and dozens more stupid ideas of what a "twue submissive" looks and acts like, when I mentioned that I knew the definitive answer:

Submissives should always wear pony tails because it makes a great handle for pulling.

What I didn't know when I said that, was that the aforementioned clueless female "dom" was standing behind me and had heard my words.

That's when she pulled my pony tail.

My reaction was not at all submissive, I'll admit that. What I DID was backhand her with my fist across her stomach. I hadn't been THAT angry in a couple of years. I, the little non-submissive-looking girl with the ponytail, wanted to beat the living shit out of someone. I screamed in very un-submissive-like words, stood up, slammed my chair shut, looked at another friend and said "if I don't leave right now, I'm gonna hurt someone". He did the only thing he could- he told me to take a walk.

I spent some time kicking my car tires and calming down. I didn't want to leave the party, but I'd be damned if I was gonna start a fight with some idiot who couldn't keep her fucking hands, or her judgment of me, to herself. I'm not really sure which irritates me more right now- that I'm apparently "fair game" to this person because I'm submissive, or that somehow I'd gotten myself in another situation where some "dom" thought that BEING submissive to anyone, makes you fair game for everyone.

On the ride home, my anger abated somewhat. I explained to Septimus what happened (who felt some guilt that he didn't come with me to begin with); and looked at him, not wanting to ask the question that really HAD bugged me all the way home.

Why is it that people seem to find it OK to touch me without invitation, consent, or apology?

And being the level headed guy he is, even when faced with my still pretty hot anger, he told me that the problem is not mine; that most people do NOT do this sort of thing; and that idiots will be idiots-no matter their title. It was not my fault that yet another "idiot dom" forgot about boundaries or courtesy....or how to apologize for not exercising either of them when they should.

The irony of my smacking this woman is not lost on me. After all, SHE was the one that told me that I didn't look or act submissive. She should really have remembered what I'd told her about the rest of the world getting the bitchy me.

GoodBye to Facebook

2011-06-09T13:26:00.003-04:00

Either I’m not explaining myself well enough, or I’m being paranoid. Probably a little of both.

Facebook has come out with this new feature called “facial recognition”. You can read about it here: Privacy Battle

Why does this concern me you say? Well here’s the thing. I have two facebook accounts (yeah, I know it’s technically not allowed). One for my kinky self and one for my vanilla self. I started the kinky one because I don’t want to enter contests, comment on walls or get invited to events that my mother (or any of my other relatives) would need to “sit me down and have a talk about” on my vanilla Facebook. I don’t want my aunt to know what kind of lube I use, or that I’ve entered contests to win a vibrator. I don’t need my sisters or my children knowing that nearly all of my “friends” are involved in the sex industry in some way. I don’t discuss my sexuality with my family. Period.

I had kinky pix on my kinky FB. I also have vanilla pix on my vanilla FB. Never the twain shall meet, ya know? My ‘nilla ones are of family get togethers, trips, parties and adorable pix of me and my granddaughter. My kinky one has pix of me in rope, with my crossdressing friends, and various other non-sexual pix. Nothing awful or that I’m ashamed about, but nothing that I want my mother to see either.

Facebook’s new facestalking software has some issues that make me nervous. For one thing, this specifically:

“On Tuesday, Facebook said in a blog post that it has been working to make it easier for users to tag photos of their friends and family members. To do this, it has been quietly rolling out facial recognition technology to a test group across the world's biggest social network since late last year. That means Facebook's system will be able to recognize the faces of its 500 million to 600 million users worldwide.

Facebook noted that in just a few weeks, its system will scan all photos posted to Facebook and will offer the names of the people who appear in the frame. All of Facebook's users are automatically added to the database. The facial recognition feature is automatically turned on. Users who don't want the service must manually opt out of it.”

The three statements taken together that convinced me it was time to leave are:

1. FB will be able to recognize the faces of it’s...users worldwide.
2. FB will scan all photos posted and offer the names of the people who appear in the frame.
3. All of Facebook’s users are automatically added to the database.

Number 2 is particularly troubling.

If, as FB says it plans to do, they scan ALL photos posted and offers the names of the people who appear in the frame, that’s reason enough for me to bolt. It means that regardless of whether or not the person on whose profile the picture appears is a friend or not, if it’s on FB, it’s open season for notifying people that I appear in a picture on someone’s profile. So, when this kicked in, the danger would be for the pictures of me appearing on my kinky FB profile, to be recognized and those pictures promulgated to those on my vanilla profile (and vice versa).

So that’s why I removed my profile. That’s why I’ll be judicious about reading and tearing apart Facebook’s motives in the future, and that’s why I’ll never allow my picture to be taken in a kinky setting ever again. I can’t trust that Facebook won’t cross-contaminate my life, despite my best efforts to keep them separately contained.

Your mileage may vary and your comfort level may be different. But I'm outta there.

6/10/11 Updated: Many people have been tweeting and emailing me about how to turn off this feature. Thanks for the assistance. Being owned by a geek daddy, he's usually got me covered with all this technology stuff. I did turn it off on my remaining profile. But when it came to my kink one, I had to weigh the consequences of trusting Facebook to keep my privacy intact against the damage it might do if they fucked it up. Since Facebook has proven in the past to not hold privacy concerns of their users in high regard, I made the only choice I could given my personal circumstances.

Cycling Through Kink

2011-06-07T11:26:00.003-04:00

Kink is one of those things that runs in cycles.

S&M was a huge (in fact it was darned near the only) thing when I was younger. Situational bottoming for sensation sluts. Spanking did not lead to fucking and getting your ass caned on a Saturday night didn’t mean that you even wanted to look at the person who did it on Sunday morning.

Then came people who wanted more. More relationship than just showing up at a party, finding a willing person and getting your ass caned. Tops wanted more than just to find a nice ass to beat and call it a night. S&M was nice...but people wanted a relationship. People realized that as nice as S&M play was, at the end of the night, we wanted to laugh with someone the next morning.

Power exchange relationships became the vogue. People wanted a master. Or they wanted to be a slave. Mind games, stretching yourself in service, submission of will all became the basis for most of the relationships that I saw. There were more than a few masters who couldn’t master themselves, nevermind anyone else. And those sorts of masters found slaves who knew little about consensual slavery, and thought it was a path to just get dirty nasty things done to them. Few knew what they were getting into, and many found that the power exchanges didn’t necessarily mean blow jobs on demand or bodice ripping romance novels lived in real time.

Rope was the next “big thing” to hit. Everyone did rope. Everyone had a method of tying, a preferred rope, a “twue way” of shibari. Rope became the play rather than a means to an end. This then became the rush to out suspension the suspensions. That's ok. Different ropes.

I think that kinksters have a gene that just causes us to seek out an ever changing path to something new. We never seem to be happy with having a few skills, working on those things that work for us, and letting the rest come into our own devious minds naturally. We’re constantly learning new things, even if some of those things don’t really appeal to us. We’re looking at those checklists as “to do” lists, rapidly pushing through each new activity for the rush that we get from conquering the “next thing”. Without really getting very good at any of them much of the time. Many kinksters are shying away from the D/s part of BDSM in favor of the rush of endorphins from the activities involved in BDSM. And that’s ok. Different strokes.

But I see the longing in their eyes. I read what they write on Fetlife. I listen when they talk. And I know that they’re not very much different from me when I was their age. And they’re not very much different from me as I am now. We all want our lives to be recognized by someone else. We all want to belong. And we all want to love and be loved.

I think that there is a trend that when you reach a certain point, you look back at what you’ve done and try to find something to go forward to. As much as some of my younger friends might not want to think about it, in 15 or 20 years, they’ll likely no longer look or feel the same way as they do now, and speaking from experience, they’ll likely no longer be able to DO the same things that they do now. As the check boxes are filled in one by one, there will come a time when the boxes are all full and they’ll feel like there’s nothing that they “haven’t done”. Trust me on this one. It creates a jaded outlook of kink, something I’m quite guilty of from time to time.

Believe me. I never in a million years, ever thought I’d look at kinky anything and say “ho hum”. But that’s what frequently happens.

But kink is cyclical. What’s new and trendy today, will no doubt turn to something new again. I said to Septimus not too long ago that I felt that many of our friends, who appeared to me to still be searching for “something” might end up finding what they’re looking for in the D/s part. Something that is playfully acted at by many, without understanding the freedom that comes in D/s relationship- or the responsibility that comes with them. Perhaps they’re not ready to “settle down” and explore the other two letters. Perhaps they just don’t see all that many D/s relationships in real life that are appealing to them. I do know that I find it very difficult personally to hear of a 20 year old master of anything. Or for that matter, a 20 year old slave. I have to wonder if they KNOW.

Perhaps I’m being too harsh. I mean, personally- when I was 20, I didn’t have a clue about what I wanted from life. Who I wanted to be, what I wanted my relationships to look like. All I thought about was getting all those dirty things done to me to get me off. But perhaps those 20 year olds are different now and do know exactly what they’re getting into. But when they're lacking experience in even plain old ordinary vanilla relationships, I always wonder if they do.

So when I read this quote this morning, I smiled. This was by a 38 year old woman who seems to me has reached the point where she’s interested in those other two letters.

"The longer I explore, the more I realize that what I seek is a Power Exchange Relationship.
This is a hard thing to say in a community where there seem to be more kinksters and weekend party-goers (not that there's anything wrong with either) than people with D/s labels. I feel different. I feel exposed when I say what I want.”

I wonder if what I told Septimus about my personal feelings regarding D/s will play out and we’ll start to see more people wondering just what’s up with all that folderol with the D/s part of BDSM. I’m starting to see the swing. I wonder if anyone else does?

No Liking Nose Licking

2011-05-31T10:48:00.003-04:00

I figured it was time I wrote about nose-licking.

If you’ve kept up on twitter or fetlife, you’ll find this “adorable” little thing that Septimus has started called “The Boston Fetish”. Most people find my reaction to his fetish amusing. Much in the same way that some people find pulling wings off butterflies amusing. Which is to say, it’s not so amusing to the butterfly.

Septimus searched long and hard for something that bugged the living shit out of me. He found that licking my nose squicks me more than anything else he’s ever done. It’s migrated to other tops who, having seen my reaction, have inflicted this catastrophe upon their own submissive’s noses. I just know my friends are looking at me with twitchy eyes wondering what the next squickfest will bring.

For those that may think “hey..it’s just a little playful licking your nose, what’s the big deal?” Let me assure you that if it was just a playful sort of “tongue touching the tip of my nose” kind of thing, I’d not be in this predicament. What it IS is a full on, frontal assault with his tongue slurping all over my nose, up my nostrils and drowning me in saliva. It feels like a St. Bernard with a chew toy. If a nose could be ravished, then you might start getting the idea.

It should be harmless, light and fun. Nobody gets hurt with a little nose licking, right?

I know why it squicks me.

I haven’t told Septimus why.

This is one of the things that I’ve never quite been able to understand in myself. How something can go from “I hate it” to “if you do this to me one more time, I’m not going to be able to control my reaction”. And not in a good way. This is not a generalized “icky” reaction, it’s a “you’d better hope I can control this, because if I can’t, you’re gonna lose a testicle” kind of one.

It’d be funny, except this is one of those things that we’ve never really talked about in great detail. He knows it squicks me, it’s a funny reaction on my part. It seems harmless. It's icky, but doesn't leave bruises or marks. It's fun and lighthearted and just enough silliness to make people laugh.

Until it’s not.

I’ve told him a lot about my past. I don’t talk a lot about it anymore. I try my hardest to avoid things that I know will trigger me, but we have talked about those things that I know are problems. And I have told him about the bathtub, the attempted drowning, why I never put my face underwater, and why I love the fear of breathplay. Facing those fears is one of the attractions of breathplay for me. I’ve only ever been able to do that kind of play with one other person. It takes a lot of trust on my part and a lot of skill on my partner’s part, to put down the past, avoid the triggers, while at the same time playing around with the very thing that IS the trigger. I don’t think he realizes just how difficult it is for me to have his hands around my throat. I know he likes my face when he does it. But I'm not sure he quite understands being THAT afraid of the person you love and trust.

The things that trigger me always cause unremitting fear, panic and the urge to run or hide. When I’m with someone I trust implicitly, like Septimus, I have someone there to help me deal with those feelings. Fear, panic, the adrenaline, the excitement of pushing over those things, while difficult, never makes me want to hurt him. I don’t often get my anger triggers pushed.

Until nose licking entered my life.

The thing about other kinds of play we’ve done, is that we’ve tried them out slowly, building a sort of tolerance over time. Finding the edges of each of our comfort zones. Sometimes fucking up, but always together on the other side. With nose-licking, it never started slowly. It went from zero to 100 in a matter of moments. While I’m sure that my reaction is funny to most people (and that after all is why Septimus does it), what underlies that reaction is anger.

When my nose is assaulted, it takes an enormous amount of energy to just Not. Kick. His. Butt. Sometimes I’m able to do that easier (alcohol helps), but sometimes...it gets away from me. And instead of panic, I just feel angry. I’m sure that my shrink would say that his is because the reason I was finally able to leave was based on my finally getting angry enough to fight back and that having my nose assaulted by the St. Bernard wet tongue just brings back that feeling of empowerment via anger to finally stop the crazy that was my life so long ago.

So the attraction of nose licking for Septimus is the squicking that it causes me. I know he likes it, so I often tease him with it (not to mention after two martinis I’ll even ask for it). I am a masochist. I do like playing with the edges. And I do like to generally please him. But while he’s attracted to this “harmless” piece of creative sadism, I have to keep my anger in check every time he does it. It’s not something he can help me do. I have to do it all by myself. My anger. My responsibility.

He teases me about hypnotizing me to “love it”, or that someday I’ll “want him to do it”. I’m sure that in the back of his mind he’s even got a hope that one day, I’ll be able to get off on it. And yes, to make him happy, and because he asks for it, I have and will continue to “offer up my nose” to him. The problem is that as he’s increasing the frequency and slurpiness of it, it’s getting harder and harder to control my urge to knock him on his ass.

I can’t offer him something in the way he wants it, when I know that giving it to him will create a seething anger in me, one that could likely be dangerous enough to really hurt him. I can't love something that I know could very well cause my anger to escape and blow up all over him. I can't get off on something that was the impetus for leaving. I know he wants me to love it. I know he wants me to give it to him willingly. But I can't.

No, in this case, my submission isn’t about willingly giving him what he wants, but which I loathe. It’s about NOT allowing harm to come to him by loathing what he loves.

I'll never love nose licking. I'll never love my face being wet. Just as I'll never love swimming or masks or gags or hoods. As long as he understands that when he uses those things on me because HE loves them, my submission comes in a form he may not expect or even recognize.

And that is, that I don't hurt him back.

It's Been My Privilege?

2011-05-11T10:35:00.004-04:00

I’ve had a weird thing popping up on my tweetstream and fetlife feed over the past few weeks. It’s been weird because the first thought I’ve had is “what the fuck happened to “your kink is not my kink?” Bah- that’s a euphemism for “you’re doing my kink wrong”.

The second thought I had was WHY are people talking to other kinksters about the privileges that monogamous people have? I’m tired of all the “privilege” posts. Seriously. As a white, mostly heterosexual, monogamous, woman, I’ll be the first to admit that I DO have various societal benefits from that orientation. Things I’ll never have to worry about PERSONALLY. I'm not getting into the whole "I have friends" thing.

But you know what? I didn’t get to make the rules. Even if I vote, lobby, talk, write, bitch and march, I still will never be the one to make the rules.

And you know what else? I don’t feel any overwhelming need to go outside of my own sexuality or gender. I’m cis-gendered and I’m pretty ok with that. I get that it's not an opportunity for everyone. I don’t generally think about privilege because I don’t have to (yeah, ironic huh?). And when I do, it’s not in the way you might think. And I don’t have nearly as many as one might think. And hardly any of them are because I’m monogamous.

But just because you might believe that my life is full of fucking privilege, simply because you might have DIFFERENT issues, let me disabuse you of that notion. My life is not full of privilege. It’s full of DIFFERENT privileges. And different problems. While you’re comparing monogamy to polyamory, lets be clear. What’s being compared is a polyamorous relationship to the media fueled middle american christian ideal of marriage. Because you're sure not comparing it to MY monogomous relationship.

I guess the thing that has me questioning whether bitching about my “monogamous privilege” my “cis-gender privilege”, my “heterosexual privilege” is an effective way to garner my support in an area where allies and friends are important is that I CAN’T DO A DAMNED THING ABOUT IT. If my gay friends had simply said “I’m going to trash you and your relationships because you’re not gay and therefore privileged” I’d have never stuck around long enough to even CARE.

And that leaves me with only one question- Just what the fuck am I supposed to DO with all these so called privileges? Return them? To whom? If your life is going to be better, easier or more privileged because I can return some of mine, please let me know where I can turn them in. Because until you tell me how to do that, bitching that I have privileges that others don’t enjoy is like saying I’m employed and in order for someone else to BE employed, I have to quit my job.

I just read a blog post and I have to wonder. If I’m so DAMNED privileged in my mono-hetero-whitebread-cis-female life, why is it that I’m forced by society to HIDE a huge part of it? I could go through every “privilege” listed on that blog and in almost every single one of them, they could be talking about me, my life, my relationship. But instead of talking about “poly” or “straight”, I could substitute “kinky” or “D/s” or “sadomasochism”. So much for my “privilege”. Monogamous? Big fucking deal.

I have hidden almost EVERY relationship I’ve ever had. I didn’t hide the people, just the context. You want privilege? Try explaining to your mother that you enjoy letting guys hit you. Or better yet- explain to your mother why you need your partner’s permission to do something, to go anywhere and do it in such a way that she won’t think you’re being abused by an asshole. Explain collars or power exchanges, authority exchange, sadomasochism, or bdsm to someone who won’t think that you need a time out in straighjacketed med land. Try explaining bruises to a doctor who won’t then call the police on your partner. Try living in my fucking life and telling me that I enjoy privileges simply because I’m monogamous. You want to talk creepy-take my children away-fire me and burn me at the stake kind of privilege? You’re looking at it.

Trying to get people to understand, much less accept, alternate sexuality in whatever form that takes, is beyond most of us in our immediate lives. We hide. We obfuscate. And we sometimes lie to those we love who just won’t understand. That’s not a privilege. That’s a damned shame. But making me feel like I’m somehow wearing a badge of privilege by telling me how many privileges I’m “supposed” to have doesn’t do a damned thing for furthering relationship parity. What it does do is make people pulling the privilege card as a way to complain that they don’t have the same privileges that I do seem rather like spoiled children who want whatever anyone else has, regardless if they know what it really is they want.

Except on the surface, I’m not privileged in nearly all of the 66 ways on that post. And maybe that’s the problem I’m having with these kinds of posts. Everyone’s relationship looks good “on the surface”.

But as we all should know, looks are deceiving.

Has It Been That Long Already?

2011-04-29T09:53:00.001-04:00

“Don’t cry because it’s over. Smile because it happened.” ~Theodor Seuss Geisel

Where to start the ending?

The last three months that I’ve been blogging for the Kink Academy haven’t always been easy. Many things that I hadn’t anticipated happening, seemed to creep up on me. There were a lot of great things, presenting at both the NELA Fetish Fair Fleamarket and Momentumcon; and some other, personal things that weren’t always so easy to deal with. It sometimes made it difficult to even want to think about writing, much less writing about kink.

One of the truths that I was reminded of while blogging for the Kink Academy is that in my life, kink takes time, effort and work. It’s not all fun and games. And it’s not always easy to shuffle commitments to make room for kink. But I also found that it was necessary for me to find the time. It’s such a large part of who I am, that blogging for the Kink Academy gave me time to explore kink, even when the world around me was at it’s most vanilla. It saved my sanity a few times when I thought I’d go crazy with all the shades of vanilla I’d had to deal with.

When I first applied for the job, I’d had great ideas and people that were willing to help me explore. The ideas stuck, but the people weren’t always available. That was okay though. I managed to learn even without having a partner in crime for a lot of things. Even if I had to use the dining room chair. It surprised me to learn that many of the things taught could be adapted and incorporated into areas of my life that had very little to do with kink. What was even more surprising to me was reading my fellow students’ blogs and realizing that we had a lot of things in common. And even if we’d watched the same video, the way that each of us used it was different.

Read more.....

e[lust]#25

2011-04-27T10:34:00.000-04:00

Photo courtesy of Sadie

Welcome to e[lust] - Your source for sexual intelligence and inspirations of lust from the smartest & sexiest bloggers! Whether you’re looking for hot steamy smut, thought-provoking opinions or expert information, you’re going to find it here. And in this edition you can read all about the best sexuality conference of the year (ever?), Momentum, in a one-time-only Editor's Choice anomaly: I couldn't choose just one, so I chose them all! Want to be included in e[lust] #26? Start with the rules and subscribe to the RSS feed for updates!

~ This Week’s Top Three Posts ~

Where We Are - It was only supposed to be about the fucking. I don't know how I convinced myself that it could be. I fretted before we began, about how I could ever possibly separate sex from emotion.

The Edible Slut - His hand made an audible crack as it connected with her ass, loud in the dim bedroom. Did he really sink his hand into her hair, turn her head to face him, and shout, “Stop being such a brat!”

Beyond Bisexual - I don’t identify as bisexual, because I am interested in so many more people than just two of the variety of sexes or genders out there. Except, that is a word that a lot of people understand.

~ Featured: Momentum Conference Posts (Lilly’s Picks) ~

An Extraordinary Gathering (and a Gathering of the Extraordinary)

Finally! A Real Momentum Post

Inspired by MomentumCon

#mcon Rehash

Momentum

Momentumcon, Part One

~ e[lust] Editress ~

To Be or Not To Be....Anonymous, That Is - If you’re out or decide to be out….you’re not just outing yourself. You’re outing them all. And did they give their consent? Probably not, I’d guess. And even if they did give their consent could they even have a clue what consequences there will be?

All blogs that have a submission in this edition must re-post this digest from tip-to-toe on their blogs within 7 days. Thank you, and enjoy!

Thoughts & Advice on Sex & Relationships

A Bump In The Road - A Swinger Party Goes Bad

Bridging the Gap (Between Swinging and BDSM)

con-sent

Eating Pussy

Jane Says: What Does Sex Feel Like For A Man?

Let's talk about food

Safe Word

S&M And Abuse

The Rules, Revisited

The Wet Patch

Who Cares About Your Open Relationship

Where There's Smoke...

Kink & Fetish

BDSM Advice: Nipple Clamps

bloodfucking

Communicating by touch

Consent [Violated]

Debasement

getting ready...

He mixed pleasure and pain, and my body responded to it all

Invitation

Stolen

Safety Scissors

Topping From the Bottom: An Ode

Wantonly Restrained

You Can Make It Feel So Real

Erotic Writing

3. Wrath

Cunt Licking

Definition of Inspiration

Linger

Miss Me?

My Sex Life: The Journey Continues, Part 2

Silk Memories

Sexy Dance-Ing

teacher sweaters and the cock that haunts me

The Casino

The miseducation of Ms. Mullins

Wow. Confession #558

When I come

WWWednesday

You Want This

Crying and Tying on My Pillow

2011-04-27T09:03:00.000-04:00

Rope.

I saved rope for my second-to-last assignment at the Kink Academy. I’d been quite leery of watching videos on a subject that has been something of a difficulty for me personally. One of the things about rope that people fail to ever tell you is that the rope geeks just make it look easy. Unless you’re a girl scout or sailor, tying knots can be difficult. I sometimes tease that I wear high heels simply because they don’t come with laces. I’ve tried to learn before. Several times in fact. But I’ve never gotten the hang of it. I’ve always given up after a few minutes. And I always feel like an idiot in front of other people when learning rope because everyone else seems to get it far easier than I did. I’ve always felt embarrassed that I just didn’t “get” it.

I watched several rope videos to get a feel for the wide variety of rope skills. I watched videos on connection, on suspension (I’m a Graydancer fangirl), on harnesses and corsets and more. Searching for just something that I thought I could actually do. I wanted something easy to learn, so although these were really awesome, I settled down watching the beginning rope videos. I was searching for something uncomplicated, something pretty, and something that wasn’t difficult. AND it had to be something I wouldn’t need a body for.

Read more....

WOW: We HAVE a Winner!

2011-04-13T15:36:00.003-04:00

I know it's been a while since I've done the wanker of the week. I've had loads of nominations, but I've been a bit...shall we say....saddened by the amount of them. It seems that they're starting to run together so much that it's hard to tell one douchenozzle from another.

Until today.

Today we have a guy who started a profile to complain about his "friend's" treatment on Fetlife. More specifically, his friend's being told to pretty much take a flying leap.

I can't even begin to describe the oddities found in the posts. Everything from threatening legal action for "slandering" (which, would be libel because it's written), this poor "black op" redneck's treatment for not getting a timely response to his emails hitting on an "under consideration" person listed on a profile to his rather unique take on the apparently "covert BDSM cells currently operating within our government". Oh, and not to mention that the girl in question was apparently not good looking enough to go through such a harsh treatment.

Poor little dear.

Did I mention that he's got a remarkable resemblance to a well known actor?

I really can't do this douchenozzle justice. You'll just have to take the leap, get some popcorn, and read it for yourself.

Congratulations to the Wanker of the Week! Here's your sign!

Momentum, Part One.

2011-04-11T11:52:00.007-04:00

Now that I’ve had a few days to unwind, catch up, and take care of my taxes, I thought I’d start talking about Momentum. What it meant to me. What I learned about myself. And what I took away from it.

There are bound to be many blog posts written about it. That is, after all, one of the best things about media. Letting others tell you about their experiences, with their own points of view and what resonated with them. I’ll do my best to retweet links as I find them, and if you’re interested in Momentumcon 2012, you might wish to join the forum
There is also a Fetlife group and you can always search the hashtag on twitter: #mcon.

My experience as both a presenter and attendee began even before I stepped my foot into the hotel. I spent many months researching what I was going to use in my own presentation. Talking to others about their experiences and learning about all of the other presenters. I read thousands of blog posts, articles, and stories from these people ranging from gender to sex work to kink to sexuality. I listened. I learned. And I had a world open up to me. One that I’d been content to sit on the sidelines and enjoy, but never thinking my voice mattered amongst the crowd. I didn’t have a degree in women’s studies or sexuality. I’m cis-gendered, heterosexual and therefore I didn’t have much in the way of experiencing anything else. I never thought overmuch about porn or sex workers. I denied I wrote a sex blog, instead calling it a relationship blog because I only sometimes wrote about sex. I was content to just experience my kinks, in the way I was comfortable with, and if I didn’t really understand anything else, I was ok with that.

Before Momentumcon.

A long time ago, when I first discovered my kinks, it wasn’t that great of an experience. I’d had a hard time learning. I’ve written a little about it before, and about how it took help to figure out that I wasn’t crazy. I struggled with mixed messages given to me by society and most especially television. I think this is one of the main reasons why I no longer watch TV. I dislike the fact that to be thought of as a strong woman, you cannot be a submissive one. Ever. Not even situationally. Not even (and maybe not especially) in a relationship.

But even all these years later, I realized that I still had a lot of shame left. Shame about being a masochist and “letting men hit me”. Shame about liking sex and porn and kink. Shame of being found out that who I was, didn’t fit in with what my mother and nearly every other non-kinky woman I might meet, thought about who I should be.

It should come as no surprise that one of the sessions I attended was Princess Kali’s. I have made no secret that I admire her greatly. I admire her vivaciousness. Her ability to understand people. Her unabashed kinkiness. But mostly I admire her because she’s a woman who knows what she wants and gets it and doesn't apologize for it. I admire her so much, then when I suffered panic just before teaching my very first class a couple of years ago, the only way I got through it was to roleplay Princess Kali. She still has better shoes though ::wink::

Her session was called Women Taking Power: D/s dynamic as Feminism.

Every woman has a right to choose what their experience of sexuality is, though many women struggle with fitting their desire to be submissive or dominant into their philosophy of feminism. This class will address the process that each woman goes through to claim their own power, regardless of which side of the D/s dynamic she prefers.

I went into the session expecting that I’d hear about how it’s “more acceptable” to be a dominant female than a submissive one. I’d been expecting to hear that feminists would count me out of the club simply because I wasn't one. I’d wondered if she could provide any insight on the dichotomy that I still sometimes feel from others which usually manifests as “you’re JUST a submissive”. The old “domleh dom” behavior I see all to frequently. As if being around submissives is a game to see who can get the little subbie to do XYZ the fastest”. Kinky people are sometimes the worst bigots to other kinky people. We eat our own pretty frequently too.

I listened to Kali talk about the waves of feminism and how they’ve been turned over time. From having the “same rights as men” to “being just like men”, to being an outcast because some of us choose to have the rights of men, but also choose to fulfill ourselves in a role which we find satisfying. As a submissive. I equate this to the “stay-at-home” mommy thing. It’s come so far around that making a choice for yourself, among all of the available life choices, to be a stay at home mommy, means that one is somehow betraying all other women.

If you don’t call bullshit here, I’ll do it for you.

Everyone “gets” the concept of a dominant female. That’s “good”. That’s “normal”. That’s “expected”. But being a submissive one...all too often I feel the weight of feminism and my mother on my back. By what right does anyone have to choose my path to happiness? Whether in the guise of feminism or not? Three phrases that stuck in my mind from Princess_Kali’s session are below:

Feminism is about expressing your own experience and going with that.

We don't have to choose one. We can be greedy sluts.

Even open minded people don't necessarily understand.

I like the way those phrases go together. They work for me in a way that lets me enjoy who I am, what I like and how I wish to live. And it gives me a power and a strength to understand that not everyone is going to “get it”. It may be my option to try to help them understand, but if they can’t see that I’m stronger as a woman BECAUSE I submit to Septimus, then fuck ‘em. (Sorry, I'm having a Popeye moment :)

And finally, the last soundbite that got to me, is something that Septimus has said time and time again, albeit in a different way:

When a strong person chooses to submit to you, you should pat yourself on the back.

Kali takes nothing for granted. Not her good fortune in doing what she loves nor the devotion of her submissives Learning that for me, knowing that a woman I admire so much, admires the other side of the slash, made me want to do her dishes. She’s a role model I can comfortably emulate, not just roleplay. And if she ever does this session again, anywhere, I suggest you find a way to attend.

Even if she is a dominant ::wink::

Kinky Crafting

2011-04-11T09:52:00.000-04:00

Some of the funniest things happen when a bunch of kinky people get together.

I enjoy lots of craft type things. I scrapbook, make jewelry, and paint. I’d wanted to learn how to knit and tweeted in the hope that I’d have at least one kinky friend on my tweetstream that could help me out. I don’t like to sew because I don’t have the patience or the ability to cut straight lines. Even with a ruler. A character defect that I can live with. Similar to getting lost even with a map.

I’d also tweeted about my intention to make a flogger based on the videos at the Kink Academy. I’m a little behind posting (although not watching) videos because I spent the last week decompressing from Momentumcon. I’d been trying to get my thoughts ordered enough to write a blog post or two about that, when I realized that I’d just wanted to do something creative that didn’t involve typing, writing, or the internet.

A sort of impromptu craft party grew out of those tweets. Toristorii put together (completely at the last minute) a Kinky Potluck and Craft night. It turned out so well that I’m hoping that she makes this a regular thing. This wasn’t a play party, this was just a bunch of friends bringing whatever craft they were working on, and a pot-luck item, and showing and talking about what they enjoyed. I like that. Seeing what my friends enjoy other than kink. One-dimensional relationship are not my thing and I like spending time with people doing ordinary things- but not having to watch our reference points when talking. The crafts ranged from a cane maker, knitters, pillow makers, a mixed media artist, a ropester who just wanted to whip the ends of her rope, and someone who was designing a collar design for his submissive. What piqued my interest was Subwonder who had made a joke about “blinging” her Hitachi and who was actually doing it.

Read more....

HNT: Momentumcon

2011-04-07T08:37:00.003-04:00

Last weekend at Momentum, I had lunch with three lovely ladies: @missystark, @the1miss_luna and @spunquee. Don't you wish you could have been a fly on the wall in THAT company?

You Might be Be a Douchenozzle If

2011-04-06T13:57:00.006-04:00

I'm often asked "how do you write a "good" online profile. As a twitter conversation this morning clued me in, "good" is subjective. What I find "good" and what you find "good" may in fact be far different things. I'm going for the middle ground. A profile and behavior pattern that don't make you the creepy douchenozzle guy (or girl). Once you're "the creepy guy", it's very difficult to jump back over that fence.

A well-written profile (which I'll talk about in another post) increases your chances of at least not getting written off as a douchenozzle right off the bat. A well-written profile, followed up by responsible online behavior, might in fact increase your chances immeasurably. I say that because I can't guarantee results. I can only tell you what I look for. And what my friends tell me they look for. Are there people who love those "other" kinds of profiles? Sure. But if you're fishing in a pond, why would you want to limit yourself to just a small portion?

I think that there's some general guidelines about writing a profile and behavior in general. Things that get attention and things that make people point and laugh. (and pass it around among their friends).

I thought to begin, a little fun. We've ALL seen these. We've all gotten messages from these. If you've got more ideas to add, please feel free. This is one time where I'll publish anonymous comments, so if you prefer, go ahead and give me your douchenozzle tips anonymously.

You Might Be a DOUCHENOZZLE If:

1) Your one and only picture (or the only pictures that you post) are of your penis. As much as I’m sure you’re proud of your little cock, it’s not exactly the first thing people want to see when they visit your profile. After all, chances are, that people will want to spend time with the rest of you more than just your dick.
**The only exception to #1, is if it’s a dressed up cockshot. I personally prefer faces, feathers and hats.

2) You comment on random people’s pictures with phrases like “you need to suck my cock”, “kneel to me bitch”, or “I’d really love to come* all over you”. I can’t stress this enough. If you don’t know that the person would welcome your critique of their picture using such language, and if you really feel the need to comment, make it something nice (RAWR, gorgeous, love it, or the like are all "nice") or keep your thoughts to yourself.
**If you spell the word “cum”, go directly to wankerville.

3) You don’t have a profile at all. It’s blank. You have no interests, no hobbies, and nothing about yourself- even what you enjoy or what you're looking for in a partner(s). If I’m going to get to know you, give me something to pique my interest. A blank profile shows me that you’re not interested in interacting with anyone. It says to me that you think “Why bother filling out a profile if all I’m gonna do is wank?

4) You send cut and paste messages to every woman until you run headlong into the spam filters. If that happens, realize two things: a) that the filters are there to stop you from being a wanker and b) if you continue to ignore it, you might end up on the wrong side of these groups:
Return to Sender or The Sad Solicitation Emails We Receive.

5) You brag about non-existent subs/slaves. Especially if you own more than a dozen. Or if they ALL suck cock like champions and you loan them out at the drop of a hat. Nobody believes you. Fantasy is nice, but only other wankers believe that you can actually hang a slave from the rafters for 24 hours, let them down, and expect them to cook dinner for you. Without poison.

6) You use imperatives when you speak to anyone. You WILL. You MUST.

7) You disparage others specifically to cause people to engage with you (aka trolling). You say awful things about race, gender, orientation, or size only to stir up a shitstorm in an online forum.

8) You post in a forum, what seems to be a good question, but then you blow it by outing your sockpuppet account.

9) You post in a forum, start getting good advice, and then delete your post because not everyone agrees with you or tells you what you want to hear. If you’re posting online, asking questions, take the good with the bad or STFU.

10) You treat people like the only reason they’re ON the internet is to give you wank fodder for your fantasies. And then get upset when they won’t play along. And then send them nasty messages for not playing. Take no as a no. That’s basic BDSM. And not getting a reply should be taken as a no.

11) You actually send a message to someone that says “I am wanking to your picture”.

12) You didn’t know what polyamorous was last week, but this week you’re an expert on it.

13) You have a “relationship” with everyone on your friends list. From “brother” to “master of”.

14) You use the term “mistress” in the classical sense. If you’re looking for a “mistress” on a BDSM site, I do not think you mean what you think you mean.

15) Poor spelling and grammar and overuse of the CAPS lock key. Everyone makes mistakes, but large numbers of them in one profile is a huge turn off.

And lastly,

16) If you use any of the following words or phrases:

“true” as in “I’m looking for a “true submissive”

“dominate” as in “I am a dominate with 20 years of experience

“no limits” as in "I’m looking for someone into chainsaws and kittens”

“my wife doesn’t care” as in “I’m just here to get laid”.

“I can’t send you a picture for security reasons” as in “my wife doesn’t care”

“I refuse to be part of the ‘The Scene’” as in “nobody knows me and if they do, they don’t like me”

No Rope Child Left Behind

2011-04-05T15:29:00.007-04:00

This is gonna be a post that might seem a little snarky. So be it. They’re my opinions based on attending several conferences as one of those “clueless people in the audience”. One who at one time wanted to learn rope. And one who was turned off it for reasons unrelated to this post. Or perhaps not. That's a question I'll have to ponder some more.

I’d wondered WHY more than 1/2 of the attendees at a recent event were newcomers. You’d normally say “HEY, THAT’S GREAT!”. But while the numbers of attendees are increasing, the amount of people coming back is appallingly low. If 1/2 of the attendees are newcomers, then lots of the people at the last event didn’t come back. [edited, my math skills may suck, but I noticed that many of the "usual faces" didn't come back this time]

I personally think (and yeah, your mileage may vary) that as instructors, we’re failing to meet the needs of our students. We offer the same classes that have been done time and time again, and we’re losing people in the process. Yes, some classes need to be offered, especially in light of the newcomer attendance. But there’s a definite lack of sparkle in the offerings. But that’s a different subject.

This post is about how I felt teaching, getting feedback, and ATTENDING rope events. Maybe it’ll help those of us who teach this skill with things that I look for, have had happened, and have noticed myself.

First, be aware that when getting feedback (and I’ve gotten my share as a presenter as well), see if someone else can read and filter it to you. If one or two are awful, having someone else there to put perspective on it is helpful. “Oh...two people were unhappy? Out of the 60 that attended?” “That’s not really all that bad ya know”

Realize that feedback is not JUST a reflection upon you, as a teacher, but also is a reflection of the student’s version of what’s going on. Not everyone learns the same. Some classes that sounded okay might not live up to the expectation of the student. Or the hotel may have been out of hot water that morning. I find it a good measure on feedback to ask “did this class match it’s description?”. If lots of those answers are in the negative, that’s a problem that needs attention. Pronto. And I mean before you teach or submit another class anywhere.

If people complain about the same sort of thing “not enough hands on”, realize that it might not have been “just” about your class in particular, but about the event overall. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve attended a “hands on” class, only to find out that the class was the Presenter’s hands on their Demo-bottom. If it’s a hands on class, then GIVE the people help in starting. Many are shy, unpartnered, and newbies. Rope is intimidating. Good teachers make it look easy which also intimidates. Be aware that the audience, invited to start tying, may just not know how to BEGIN to duplicate what they’re seeing.

Be specific with descriptions. What the audience REALLY needs to know. Inform them at the start that if they can’t tie a box tie, and one is required to do it, then this class will not meet their expectations. That way when you get a feedback form that says “instructor didn’t teach how to do the box tie”, you’ll know it was the attendee who didn’t pay attention to the description and not teacher that didn’t pay attention to the student’s needs. Don't be so concerned with inclusiveness that you're afraid to exclude people who will have difficulty simply because they overestimate their own skills. Don't let them set themselves up for failure from the get-go.

IF you’re going to teach three complicated ties in an hour, you’re gonna get some negative feedback. Especially in large classes. Especially when you’ve got a lot of new people. Especially when the only other classes in that time slot have nothing to do with rope or are for even “more advanced” students.

And in that vein, pay attention to what’s scheduled opposite your own class. That way when only a few dozen show up, you’ll realize your class was opposite a Graydancer or a Lqqkout and be grateful for the two dozen. They’re just as important (and I personally think more so because they obviously didn’t KNOW who Graydancer or Lqqkout was or they’d be there as well) as everyone else who paid money to attend an event.

Be aware that when doing floor work in a huge class, you’re gonna get negative feedback from the people who got to the class late and ended up in the back of the room. Find a way to work around that and you’ll make those people very happy.

GET A TEACHING ASSISTANT. Or two, three or four if needed in large classes. It makes a HUGE difference to someone learning rope to have someone who can help without slowing down the entire class. Or getting frustrated enough that they give up. Trust me on this one. Asking for help can be intimidating. Having TA's around, especially if they're paying attention and can see someone having difficulty, makes it a win/win all around.

DON’T use the class to show how YOU play with your demo bunny. Unless that’s the point of the class. Watching some scenes to do with pain, can and does squick some newbies. That’s why there’s classes and why there’s parties. For the new-to-rope couple looking for a little bedroom fun, seeing a demo bottom getting their nipples pinched and tears start can be unsettling. If you’re going to do that, warn the audience. Believe it or not, not every person who attends a rope event is into pain.

Basically, remember that people have paid money (sometimes quite a lot after transportation and hotel fees are added to the ticket price) to learn about rope. Help them do THAT and you’ll have people that enjoy coming back to an event. Don’t let that other 1/2 keep leaving.

Momentumcon 2011

2011-04-05T09:48:00.004-04:00

MOMENTUM 2011

To see the live-tweets of the conference- click here or search for #mcon.

Amazing would hardly begin to describe it.

When I first put my idea up for a session, I didn’t think about what I was doing. As in, I knew I had things to share about kink and social media, but I had no idea when I did it, I’d be in front of people talking at a convention that had the likes of Carol Queen, Doctor Ruthie, Tristan Taormino, Reid Mikahlo and Jennie Block speaking. To say that I was a wee bit intimidated by the idea would be somewhat of an understatement.

What the fuck was I doing? Thinking I could have anything important to say in THAT milieu? I was just a kinky girl, sometime relationship blogger, with fangirl tendencies towards sex positive people. When I talked with Septimus about my fears, he kind of just looked at me and said “you belong there too”. I still wasn’t sure. And, this was the first time I’d be speaking at a conference where Septimus wasn’t going to be with me. I felt like I wanted to heave.

Debaucheddiva finally convinced me when she assured me that smaller voices (and I daresay untried voices) are needed just as much as Jennie Block’s.

There were quite a few friends (Spunquee, Ten and B-Playful among them), quite a few bloggers that I’d been tweeting with for a long while, and many sex positive people that I’d met before who would be attending and speaking. Among those were some of my fangirl favorites: Megan Andelloux, Sarah Sloane, Shanna Katz and Princess Kali. I figured that I enjoyed talking with them enough in the past, that meeting a whole bunch of new people and doing the same thing wouldn’t be so scary.

I’d taken a look at the schedule and realized that there would be no possible way to attend every session that I’d wanted to. That’s how great it was. There were more sessions I wanted to go to than there were ones that I figured I could skip out of in favor of a nap. In all of the cons that I’ve attended, that has never happened.

I will write about specific sessions and what I learned from them at another time. Feminism and D/s, Podcasting, Marketing, CineKink and more. I’m still processing everything (and catching up on sleep). The sessions gave me more than enough blog fodder for dozens of posts. And have given me enough to think about to carry the excitement forward. To keep the momentum flowing as it were.

Those two days in DC, attending Momentum have changed the way I think about sexuality, sex positivity, gender, relationships, social media, and feminism. But what they did more, was change the way I think about myself. A wee bit intimidated? Sure. Who wouldn’t be? But talking to and learning from all those wonderful educators and attendees gave me something really important. An unintentional consequence of having an idea, putting it out there, and learning to follow through with it.

Confidence.

Relaxation and Rolling Pins

2011-03-31T09:20:00.000-04:00

For this week’s assignment at the Kink Academy, I thought I’d try something a little fun.

I have a toy bag that I’ve been putting together for many years. Whenever I’d show it to people, they usually smile, giggle, and sometimes even scoff. My toybag consists of 99% sensation toys. Not the sensation that is caused by whips, floggers and paddles. But the sensation caused by feathers, brushes and scratchy things.

In the two years that I’ve been with Septimus, we’ve never played with my box of evil implements (I use that name because of the aforementioned scoffing). He’d asked me a while back why we’d never done that. I told him that he’d never really given me an indication that he’d be interested. But I figured that THAT was time to change.

I searched for videos on Kink Academy specifically about sensation play. I wanted to try to incorporate that into trying to help Septimus relax after a couple of really frazzled days.

Read the rest...

Love Letters

2011-03-29T14:39:00.005-04:00

A couple of months ago, I decided to take a break blogging about Daddy and me with too much specificity. It was beginning to drag us both down. I was focusing on how hard things were. He was reading the posts with growing uneasiness. Sort of like a theater producer waiting for the next morning reviews. And like a lot of plays- sometimes they weren't so good.

As I've thought back over the past weeks I realized something important.

By focusing on what wasn't working as well as I'd have liked them to, I missed all of those things that were working out pretty damned good. By trying to work through things, understand things, figure things out, and by blogging about it all, I was missing all the things that didn't need work.

I missed that we still date each other. We go out to dinner at fairly frequent intervals and spend time together, flirting with each other (and usually the waitstaff). Away from the house. Away from phones (mostly) and work and family. Just us. We also seem to reconnect so well on those date nights, I wonder why I missed their value.

I missed the simple enjoyment of sleeping in a little later than normal, snuggling next to each other. With his arms around me and my head on his shoulder. I'd not realized that all those Saturday morning errands can indeed wait an hour or two. He's not expecting things to get done to a particular schedule. And the schnoodling is more important.

I missed the normal activity of eating dinner together. This is one he insists upon. I'd be perfectly happy with a bowl of cereal in front of the computer for dinner. But even without the boy with us, he insists that, if we're home together, we eat together. It's unusual for me. But it does give us a chance to talk and laugh and catch up on the day. Even if sometimes it's catching up over a pizza.

I missed that there's rarely a day that goes by when he doesn't pop in on the computer to say hello. We don't have a lot of time to chat during the day, but just knowing that we're "close by" with an open chat window, sometimes makes the difference when one of us is having a hard day.

I missed how he always smiles when he sees me. As if his brain tells him that there's someone there now who will take care of him for a little while. Some days, it's like a great big sigh of relief that I can feel from him, simply by touching his shoulders and bringing him a drink.

I missed how I feel when I'm finally home after I've had a hugely trying day. A long commute, or when I'm frazzled by all those twigs in my camel's back. He's not always able to remove a few of them, but just talking to him oftentimes lets me prioritize things a little better.

I missed how much we enjoyed just talking with each other. Making up silly stories, telling each other about our lives, whispering words that would make some people blush (or conversely make some really jealous). Using each others biggest sexual organ (the brain you pervs) in ways that I've certainly never experienced before. Learning to talk with each other is much more difficult than I'd imagined, but the reward has been infinitely worth every hard won moment. We sometimes can speak without words, knowing from time together what each of us may need at the moment.

I missed how careful, attentive, giving and playful he is when we play. I missed that by taking things slowly, we learned about each other. We learned to trust and we learned to understand each others needs.

I missed how he's attuned to my moods. He pays far more attention to them than I do. And as a result, he's usually (more often than not) correct about them. I really hate to admit that on the rare times he misreads me, he's not usually that far away. If it was horseshoes, he'd miss a ringer, but still get a point. Having someone who knows what you're feeling is a little unsettling. Especially if you want to be alone with your thoughts. But on the plus side, he's also ready with a martini.

I missed how he thanks me for everything. Even the things that I don't think are even noticeable. He thanks me for them all. And despite everything else, this is the one that oddly enough makes me feel like a heel.

You see, I know that I don't thank him often enough for the things he gives to me. His attention. His support. His cajoling and pushing. His love.

So, maybe I'll write a little bit more about that. How he deserves better, but still seems pretty satisfied with just me.

Give Me Strength, Not Crocs

2011-03-24T19:18:00.002-04:00

One of the best things that has happened to me in the past few years, is that I have met many wonderful women in the kink world. Women who are empowered in their kink, not ashamed of their submissiveness, independent, strong and self-assured. These women have given me a whole new outlook on what I wanted in my own life. They’ve made me think.

None of these women have made me think as much as Mollena Williams. As anyone who has read my blog, my tweets or who has attended any of my classes, I have praised Mollena’s wisdom, humor and humility many times. Her style is easy-going, informative, and always full of personal examples. As I looked around at the videos at the Kink Academy, I’d wondered why Mollena wasn’t in the lineup. She is, after all, in my opinion, one of the best voices for kinky women I’ve ever had the pleasure to meet. So I was especially glad when I saw her video posted.

Read more.....

More Dirty Talk

2011-03-16T19:54:00.001-04:00

Dirty talk has never been easy for me. I’ve written about it several times in the past, and constantly work on incorporating it in those sexy fun times. I’ve never gotten it quite right with any consistency. Sometimes I accidentally hit on the right tone and tenor, but most times I struggle with it. And because I struggle, I turned to the Kink Academy for some help.

Read more....

The Truth About Kinky Women

2011-03-16T11:46:00.003-04:00

Sometimes people just say the exact right thing. FAR better than I could have ever said it. Ordinarily, I'd be a bit jealous of someone who writes this well, who can put into words that which I usually struggle with. If I even bother. You see, many times when "those guys" post on Fetlife, I don't bother helping them. I used to. But not anymore. There are just too many wankers.

But in this case, I'll just repost a response to a thread on Fetlife by Septimus. Sadly, the thread was deleted by the original poster, but you can read Septimus' post on his own blog. As I read it (the first couple of dozen times) I smiled and thought to myself- I'm lucky to have such a wonderful guy in my life. He gets it.

The Truth About Kinky Women-
by Septimus
You want to meet a girl that you can explore your kinky side with. That's wonderful.

Let me ask you something:

* Do you go on match.com or OKcupid with a profile that says "I'm a guy. I'm looking for a girl. If you're a girl or know a girl, would you send her to me please?"
* Suppose you're into stamp collecting. Do you go into stamp-collecting forums and say "I'm a guy who thinks he may like stamp collecting, and I'm looking for a girl to fuck and teach me about stamp collecting."?
* Do you see a girl at Starbucks drinking coffee and say "Hey, I like coffee, too. Wanna fuck?"

Every time you post on here asking for people to "help you out," that's _exactly_ what you're doing.

You seem to think that just because a woman is into getting tied up, beaten, and fucked in the ass, she's somehow different from a "normal" woman. You seem to think that just because a woman likes to have sex, talk about sex, and sometimes be naked in front of people, she should want to do that with you. Without knowing anything at all about you except that you like women to get naked in front of you.

Submissives aren't submissive to everyone

You'll hear submissives say "I'm submissive, but I'm not _your_ submissive." No matter how many times you've read The Story of O, there is no chateau full of submissive women who are available on demand to anyone who wants to use them.

Kinky women are not whores

Some kinky women may like it when their partner calls them "whore," but they're not sex workers. They're not in the business of making sex of any sort available to all comers. (And contrary to popular belief, there is not a rule that actual sex workers have to accept whoever pays them.)

Kinky women are not easy

Some kinky women have multiple partners. Some women will do some sort of limited play with people they just met. As a rule most women will not get intimate with a guy they know nothing about. Kinky women are no different.

Kinky women are not objects

Sure, some women like being objectified, to be used as furniture, ashtrays, fuck toys, even toilets. But you know what? The women who like that _trust_ the people who do that to them, Do you know _why_ they trust them? Because they know them as people. They have connected as human beings before they connected as kinksters.

Kinky women have feelings

Do some kinky women want to be humiliated, degraded, hurt, and used? Absolutely. This may be hard to understand, but while they may want all those things, they want them in a supportive, trusting, and caring environment. You call my girlfriend a bitch, she'll kick you balls. I call her a bitch, and she melts in my arms. See the difference?

I love you Darling. I could SO melt right now :)

Kink Academy: Unexpected Benefits of Covert Topping

2011-03-08T10:32:00.001-05:00

As a brat, I’m quite familiar with unexpected consequences. Because I’m a brat, I deal with the consequences of my actions, even if I don’t see them coming, I love surprises, puzzles and conundrums. It’s also why predicament play is one of my favorite kinds of play. Lets face it- nothing is hotter than having a smart top. Except maybe having a smart bottom.

For my latest assignment at the Kink Academy, I wasn’t really looking for anything in particular. I just wanted to have some fun watching a few videos. Its not easy being a bottom to find things that I can incorporate into my play. At least without the participation of Septimus (ownership has it’s privileges). Or of one of my friends (being a guinea pig for a toppy bottom also has privileges). But when learning how to do things like flogging, caning, and serving, it’s difficult to apply them from my usual direction. I was a little lost about what I’d choose.

What I found was something unexpected. (Read More....)

Peep, Peep, Peep...Giggles

2011-02-27T10:47:00.002-05:00

When Daddy and I go to parties, like most people, we spend some time playing. The party we attended this weekend was no different. We’d caught up with some friends, joked around for a while, and then we’d had a fabulous caning scene. We’d used what I’d learned after the last party about communication during a scene, and it really helped both of us enjoy things much more.

But typically what happens, is that I wear Daddy out. I never thought much about being a heavy bottom, but when things get going, and especially when we’re both focused, I tire him out just as I’m getting that boost of energy for more. We’d talked about this phenomenon and as a result, I usually set up a second scene for myself. When I’m the one doing the topping.

My best friend Radagast22 is a heavy bottom. Because he’s involved in a LDR with a wonderful woman from Seattle, he’s often alone at parties. And since I know how it feels to be on the sidelines while everyone else is having fun, really needing to get flogged or caned, and going home frustrated, I usually plan my second scene with him. Because he’s my best friend, we have a somewhat different dynamic than is typically found in a dungeon. Our thing is that we like to make each other laugh. That is, until the day when I can make him cry. I’m working on that.

Read more....

Feathers in the Wind

2011-02-22T14:01:00.002-05:00

In the past couple of months, I’ve somehow stepped in a lot of shit. Without even knowing I was anywhere near the barnyard.

Septimus told me a story one time about gossip. And a feather pillow. You can read the gist of it here: Gossip

I’m seeing a hell of a lot of feathers being scattered my way. And I can’t for the life of me figure out how to put them back in the pillow.

In the past few months, I’ve had a sockpuppet account tease me with some not well-known, but not entirely hidden, information about an acquaintance of mine. I’ve had people contacting me about things that I “should” know about people I’ve never met. I’ve had people make serious accusations of wrongdoing, sometimes bordering on criminality. I’ve had messages regarding “what really happened” and read threads on Fetlife containing thinly (or sometimes not so thinly) veiled allegations of wrongdoing, wrongdomming, and blaming. And I think to myself only one thing: “what the fuck am I supposed to DO about it?”

When I respond to threads on Fetlife, I don’t do a shit ton of research into a profile. I look, but I generally try to take the questions asked at Face Value. Even if there is some backstory of which I’m unaware, I always figure that the question, and the answers it receives, might be of value to someone else. I don’t generally try to answer a question by second-guessing what’s been posted. And if there is more to the story that might affect my particular answer, I’d hope the person with the information would post openly. Or keep quiet and not send private messages. If it’s not important enough for everyone to know, it’s not important for only a few to know. And its certainly not important enough for me to be told privately. If it’s important, if it’s criminal, if it’s potentially dangerous, then keeping it to yourself or telling only a few people using hushed whispers and innuendo is not only unhelpful to anyone, it puts me in a rather precarious position of maybe knowing something about someone I don’t know which may or may not be true and about which I can’t do a damned thing.

I also have to believe that the people whispering TO me are also whispering ABOUT me. Whether they’ve “heard” something, or thought something, or made up something, I can only imagine. It wreaks havoc on my brain trying to figure out which one of my friends is going to start whispering about me.

And finally, what should I do when the next sockpuppet or covert account contacts me about YOU? (that’s a metaphorical you, not a specific one) Should I tell you? We’re friends after all. And as much as I may be friends with the person you’ve just tarred and feathered in my inbox, should I then keep those allegations from you? Being my friend and all?

Once that vicious circle has started, I can’t unhear what you’ve told me. But I do know that I’m tired of the whispers. Either own your words, put your name to them and stand behind them, or don’t tear open that featherpillow.

The goose that’s saved may someday be your own.

e[lust]23

2011-02-22T09:33:00.001-05:00

~ This Week’s Top Three Posts ~

Roadmaps of Consent - I fucking love consent. I love safewords. I can be much more cruel, and push much harder, if I trust my partner to tell me when I go too far.
Staying Safe - One cock, from one man, missing one condom, ultimately led to my brother’s death. And that sucks.
Flying the Friendly Skies - One button on her sweater was undone, there was a rip in her hose, scratches on her boots, and her hair was carelessly pinned back with stray wisps of hair escaping. There was a curious flavor of soiling about her, something a bit dirty and unkempt.

~ Featured Post (Lilly’s Pick) ~

Labels and my thoughts... - In the past year and a half I have gone from being someone that was lost, without identity that fit, rattling around inside myself to someone that has names for what they are.

~ e[lust] Editress: Dangerous Lilly

See also: Pleasurists #116 and #117 for all your sex toy review needs

All blogs that have a submission in this edition must re-post this digest from tip-to-toe on their blogs within 7 days. Re-posting the photo is optional and the use of the “read more…” tag is allowable after this point. Thank you, and enjoy!

Kink & Fetish

5 Kinky Toys from the Dollar Store

Alive in my Skin

Dacryphilia

Digitalized for Posterity

Eroti...ca

filthy...

He ripped a string of orgasms from me, and then ramped it up

Manual Dexterity

Nadia's Surprise

Orgasms, Spoons Rests, and Fishnets! (The Play Party)

Punishment, humiliation and bondage

Schoolgirl in Saturday Detention

Steeling The Show

Water torture

Erotic Writing

A Little Night Music

Afternoon darkness

Crisp White Linens

dancing with (& then kinkily fucking) the dj

In the Mirror

Lope

Morning Sex

My First Anal Sex

September 1935

Shutter

Schoolgirl Part 1

Teenage Bukkake

Transition

You're Gonna Keep My Soul

Thoughts & Advice on Sex & Relationships

A Doggie Kind of Love

Ashamed?! Are You Kidding Me?

Giggles, Groans and Panting

I Can Imagine How You Feel

Sex As Love

6 Moves Men Need to Be Sex Gods in the Bedroom

Terminology Fundamentalism

The COME HITHER QUIVER -or- How To Squirt

This Love

What I Want

Sex News, Interviews, Politics & Humor

Kink Network Announces the Opening of Their Adult Blog Host Kinky-Blogging.com

Porn, degradation, and Khan Tusion

Women With Two Vaginas

Kink, virginity and big-tittied whores

These Canes Ain't Made of Candy

2011-02-20T15:20:00.002-05:00

*

It is the epitome of stupidity to continually do the same thing over and over again, knowing the outcome will be the same, yet hoping for a different result. I’m guilty of this. And yet I keep beating myself up because the end result never changes. And boy, can I beat myself up.

I’ve been perving videos on the Kink Academy for some fun, kinky shit to try out. I’d watched the flogging video by Dov, some rope videos by Graydancer, and even a caning video by Princess Kali and I had planned to write my next post on any of those three things. I’ve been practicing my flogging and I’d wanted to try out any or all of those things on a friend or two and write about that. I will get to that eventually. But something came up and so I turned to the Kink Academy for help.

We went to another party. It was low-key and with people that are dear friends. It had been a while since we’d really played. So I was surprised that same kind of thing that always happens, happened again. With no clear idea of what Sir had planned, without some idea of where he was going, I followed along, hoping that this time, I’d “get it right”. I never really know which reaction will appear, and I never can be sure which one is going to be the one he’s looking for. When we hit on compatible expectations, that is- with him hitting the right buttons and me reacting in a way that he expects, things work out pretty good. But when there’s a disparity, they turn out pretty badly. I cannot, despite what anyone may think, control my reactions. They just…happen.

Read More at the Kink Academy....

Ashamed?! Are You Kidding Me?

2011-02-15T11:13:00.004-05:00

Something interesting came across my twitter stream. It was a tweet by Charlie Glickman who provided a link to a survey being conducted by a former student of his. It was a study being conducted on a Woman’s Experience of Porn.

I like helping people out. Especially when it comes to porn.I jumped at the chance to take the survey, but had gotten only to the first page when it asked me for me for my name. My real name as an electronic signature. I stopped. And I backed out of the survey.

I’ve met Charlie Glickman. I’ve read his blog, heard him speak, and consider him an authority on many issues dealing with sexuality. While I would answer any questions honestly and completely, and while I don’t have a problem using my “Screen Identity”, I was squicked by the fact that I would have had to attach my real identity to questions concerning porn. Especially on the internet. The uncontrollable, wild west of intolerance, good intentions and unintentional consequences. I could have used a made up name. But that seemed worse than not answering the questions at all.

That thought made me not more than a little bit ashamed. Time for a reality check.

I’m not even sure if why I felt like that. I have friends who make porn. I have friends who sell porn, who write about porn, who advocate for porn. I watch porn. I don’t have personal morality issues with porn. Whenever I think about porn, my thoughts are usually that I don’t think overmuch about it. I know if I like it. I know what makes me uncomfortable when I watch it. And I know what turns me on. My friends who are in the industry aren’t ashamed of it. Rather, they’re willing to answer any questions I might have. I don’t know exactly how I feel about it, but whatever it was, the thought of attaching my name to a survey about it made me uncomfortable.

Considering what I do myself on a Saturday night at a party, if a kinky woman is worried about attaching her name to an educational survey about porn, that’s really fucked up. And, then it occurred to me that THAT's EXACTLY what the anti-porn people are going for. They WANT to make me ashamed of watching and LIKING porn. They want me to feel ashamed. If they could make ME feel it, I could only imagine what someone without my own personal proclivities might feel.

So, I could feel ashamed, as the anti-porn zealots would prefer; or I could feel liberated and true to myself. I could ignore the survey and not feel anything at all. But how then could I ever hope to look some of my friends in the face again? Knowing that I, a kinky fucking pervert, let some unknown person convince me that liking porn is shameful. I would feel like a fucking hypocrite to look in the face of one of my very dearest and most wonderful friends.

So, Fuck it. I like porn, erotica and sexually explicit materials. It’s not illegal, immoral or shameful. I like it for the way it makes me feel, and I even like it when it makes me uncomfortable. I’m not ashamed for liking porn. If my name somehow gets linked to the fact that I like porn, is that the worst thing?

I think I’d be in very good company.

Now excuse me, I’m off to answer a survey.

If a Service Tree Falls in the Forest

2011-02-07T11:16:00.002-05:00

A thread on Fetlife got me thinking about service. So for my first assignment for the Kink Academy, I thought I’d try to find out a little bit more about what exactly is meant by the term “service” in a d/s context. Or rather, if my own thoughts about what it is, needed a little readjustment.

I was thinking about that thread when I starting poking around the videos at the Kink Academy to see if they could help me figure out what people meant when they talked about service. I wanted to see if I could figure out the difference between just doing “something”, and doing something as “service”. And of course, the Kink Academy didn’t let me down.

Read more....

Decisions, Decisions

2011-02-01T10:01:00.007-05:00

For the last few weeks, I've been raring to go. Basically wiggling all over the place in anticipation of my term as a Student Blogger at the Kink Academy to begin. And now that it has, I've got all sorts of decisions to make. But I've never undertaken such a task with as much pleasure and anticipation as this one (and I daresay from Daddy's comments thus far, neither has he).

Read more....

It’s all Fun and Games until Someone's Socks are Dirty

2011-01-19T16:25:00.003-05:00

I know I said that I was going to take a break from writing about my personal relationship for a while. And while I intend to do that, I can’t stop writing altogether. Especially when there’s so many things I still think about. Most of which are only peripherally related to what’s going on in my own life.

Do you ever wonder about those kinksters that live together full time? What happens when kinky people decide to live together? Perhaps you think it’s non-stop playtime? That by simply being in the same room, the same bed, makes things somehow easier? No more schedules, no more planning. It just happens, right?

I’ll confess that I kinda did.

As someone said to me, it’s really difficult to keep up the intensity when you live with someone, that you had when you were only seeing each other a few times a week. It’s easy to overlook things when you’re not living with them. Including the dirty socks.

But it’s also easy to get into a rut. Working long hours, commute times that stretch upwards of two hours on a good day, daily responsibilities of family, running a household, and just the sheer amount of work it takes to merge the details of two individual lives so that they somehow work together, very frequently it seems that kinky playtime ends up getting pushed to the side. And now, with party invitations at a premium due to our local space being shut down, I wonder if it’s as hard for other couples to figure out how to transition from getting home from work, getting homework done, eating dinner, putting the kids to bed and still have the inclination to get their kink on with a "scene". I wonder if I’m alone in just not knowing how to integrate kink with everything else going on in my life and that planning for kink just leaves me exhausted.

Just how DO kinky people get put spice back into things? What happens when kink feels.....vanilla?

I'm sure that there must be some hope on the Kink Academy site for kinksters who seem to have lost their kinky way after they’ve found each other. Kinksters who may have found that comfort and joy in their relationship sometimes leads to letting the kinky parts slip to the background. Knowing Princess Kali, I'm betting there is. I'm hoping that by becoming a Student Blogger for the Kink Academy, I'll be able to learn new skills which I can use to get over any apathy I have towards kink and figure out how to bring a new outlook to it. Perhaps some new skills, a new way of doing things, new scene ideas, or even something I haven't even thought of yet would go a long way towards helping me figure out how to bring more of what I crave into my relationship, while still keeping the parts that I dearly love (who doesn't love snuggling while watching a movie?). But more than that, I hope that by becoming a student and writing about using the site, that I can show others who might be a little lost in their own confusion about how to put some kinky spice back into their own long term dynamic.

Without the dirty socks, of course.

Time to Give it a Rest

2011-01-14T08:48:00.003-05:00

This is going to be my last post about my own relationship for a while. I'm sure I'll write about it again eventually. But for a while, I'm giving that part of this blog a rest.

I'd been wondering over the last few months whether or not writing about what was in my head was a good idea, especially when it concerned Daddy and me. And while I've hoped that by giving voice to my own confusion it would help me look at things differently (and maybe figure things out), I find that it's done more harm than good. I find myself looking through blog posts and wondering if I am, in fact, "doing it wrong". And, I daresay, after reading some of my posts, I'm almost positive that Daddy is asking himself the same question.

Unintended consequences aren't always fun.

I've relied on this blog as sort of a brain dump. Trying to clarify thoughts that occur to me from snippets of conversation, funny things that happen, my opinion of random events that somehow get meshed together, small events in a day filled with many of them, and the things that don't seem to be working as well as I think they should. I'm beginning to focus on how those things make me feel, while all too often forgetting that he might feel something different when reading them. In my selfishness when writing some of these posts, I'd forgotten that Daddy also reads them. And he reads them with a different point of view. He reads them not to see what's going on in my head, but rather how my poor words somehow try to explain how my head views him. It's fair, I suppose, but not altogether an accurate depiction. And rather than viewing them as random thoughts that I need to work through, I'm sorely afraid that he's viewing those thoughts as the only ones that matter.

I hope that he knows that stray thoughts, based on random bits of conversation, things he's said that have unleashed capricious thoughts in my brain, and even things that have occurred in my own past often hold little truth in how I feel as a whole. About him. About us.

It's difficult living with someone who is so attuned to my moods that I sometimes find it difficult to just let myself just feel sad. Certainly there are times when I can't hide it and inevitably it leads to me just wanting to wallow in my sadness for a bit. And with him wondering if he's done something to cause it. How do you explain to someone you love that feeling happy, without the permission to feel sad sometimes, makes the happiness less than noticeable? It wears on me, to constantly try to look chipper so that I don't have to answer the questions. The ones that I can't answer truthfully without having the focus go back on him? The questions about how I'm feeling, what's wrong, is there anything I can do?

So to wallow in those sad feelings, the uncertainty, the fears, the questions, I've always kept a journal. Never to be read by anyone but myself. I think I made a mistake by putting much of what I'd normally write there on this blog. And I think I made a mistake in letting Daddy read it. I'm not sure why I did it. I've never let anyone read my confusion before. But then, I've never met anyone like Daddy before either.

So for a while, I'm going back to keeping my thoughts to myself and my confusion on paper. Where I know that confusion doesn't mean anything except jumbled thoughts, and finding a way to organize the chaos is the only way to clarity. And if he wants to know what's going on in my head, he'll have to listen to my heart to hear my thoughts, question me about what's there, and not read what my damned fingers think.

The Irony of Window Pains

2011-01-13T11:48:00.004-05:00

A friend of ours lives in a place that has a metric-shit-ton of windows. It’s beautiful, has plenty of suspension points, and is quite an awesome place actually. But those windows require maintenance. And, being a person with mad skills, determination and a wry sense of humor, she’s decided to advertise for a window cleaning sub. Whether she’s successful or not, I’ll be interested to see. I’ve often thought about finding a sub of my own to carry my packages when shopping, help me try on clothing, and keep me company during pedicures (or even give them), so I’m giving this one a careful watching.

While Daddy and I were talking about her ad, he asked me if my windows were being cleaned enough. I looked at him with a wink (and a really awful feeling that he was gonna ask me to wash the windows in the house) and said “windows are a hard limit”. He smiled back and said “metaphorically speaking”.

He equated all those hundreds of window panes with all of the hundreds of things that make up a relationship. This window pane equates to attention, that one to affection, and the others to other things. Daddy wanted to know if my own panes were clean enough. And the unspoken corollary being if he helped me clean them sufficiently so that I didn’t need someone else to help me.

I hate questions like that. When he asks things like that, I always feel as if it’s really not the time to bring up those panes which might be a little speckled, or those ones that might have a layer of dust on them so thick that they’re hard to see through. Instead, I said, my panes are most always pretty clean. And they are.

But there are some panes that are hard to see through now and again. Unfortunately, they’re strategically placed about so that it makes it hard to see sometimes. But typically for me, I just look through others. I rarely notice them. Move on. Nothing to see here. Until he asks. But now, with his question, I wondered if I’d just gotten used to looking out panes that were slowly clouding over

The pane of Rope. That one makes me sad to think about. That’s one of those panes that I no longer look through. I brought that one upon myself though, and try as I might, I tire of mentioning it at all anymore. Trying to figure out rope from the top really skewed my view of rope as a whole. And blogging about it didn’t help matters. At. All. I wonder if that pane will ever become a little less dim at some point or if it’s just one that I have to get used to not being able to reach to clean. I suppose there is still a bright spot in that pane in that he’s not looking for someone else to help him. But it still makes me sad to think that something that once brought both of us so close, has become something that neither of us wants to talk about.

The pane of topping. I wonder if I really have an affinity for topping, or if I’m just learning to look through other panes because the ones I prefer are smudged. I’m ambivalent about it. And that’s hardly fair for a bottom. Not caring. Hurting them (even if they like it) because I’ve nothing better to do at the moment or that they’ve bugged me enough for it. Or worse yet, because I’m hurting and I need someone else to feel it.

And don’t think the irony of that statement doesn’t occur to me.

And the other pane. The one I’ve spoken to him about many times yet remains smudged. All the wishes in the world that that one would be clean enough to look through again can’t change it. And it's unfortunate that it's the sole pane that I can't clean myself. It's impossible to reach without help. I wonder about that. And I wonder why I miss looking out of that particular one so much. The loss of that one pane is too difficult to think about and so I've hidden it behind a curtain, and I’m not inclined to move the fabric to see what it looks like after all this time of inattention.

There was a lot of irony in the things we spoke about. And I sometimes find it hard to look at him, to try to make it better for him (or at least not make things worse), to be there for and with him, when there are those few strategically placed panes of glass that make it difficult to get the full view. The irony in his statement about why working until all hours helps him to focus his mind so that he doesn’t have to think about other things wasn’t lost on me. And I wonder if I’ll ever be able to make him understand.

Fortunately, there are no panes that are broken, and for that I’m grateful. The panes that are grimiest are the ones that I don’t look through so much anymore. And the ones that are the brightest are the ones that I try to clean so often I’m afraid of wearing the glass thin. If a mirror is a reflection of the soul, what then is a pane of glass but an echo of it’s contemplation?

Don’t try to make sense of that one. The thought makes me sad and that’s how I choose to feel right now. Sad for the pain I’ve lost. Sad for the panes that aren’t being cleaned. And sad that I couldn’t find a way to say this to him when he asked.

Should I Know Better?

2011-01-06T10:00:00.003-05:00

I read a post by Sarah Sloane this morning. It made me think about my own behavior with my own Wanker and whether or not my posting of the Wanker of the Week was indeed “bullying”. It's a very good post, with a point of view that frankly hadn't occurred to me before.

So I wondered, was I one of those people "who should know better"?

My Wanker was not one of those “newbies” to kink. He was an admitted master (small ‘M’, intentionally) who had, since 1967 owned more than one slave. His own behavior, even after the caretakers got involved in our own dispute, continues to this day and is directed not just towards myself, but towards many other people, mostly young women. He’s continued with his clueless and boorishness. If he isn’t a wanker, he’s certainly not putting forth an effort not to appear to be one. To me, he was someone, by his own admittance, “should know better”.

If he HAD been a newbie (and believe me, I get a LOT of those), I’d have done what I usually do. When I cruise Fet and see someone who “just doesn’t get it” , or I get “those messages”, I take a look at the profile. I see if the person doing it is new, rather young, or if there is any sort of attempt to at least want to be involved in kink and not just wanking. I usually take the time to explain privately the error of their ways; informing them that what they’ve said perhaps wasn’t the best way to attain their goals; provide references to local groups and people who could provide information and experience; and help them with their profiles. I’ve done this many, many times. In all of them, I’ve never put their names on any social media site as a “wanker to be”. I’ve tried never to embarrass them publicly, and I’ve done my best to be a voice in their own confusion. I’ve become friends with many of these “clueless newbies”; many of whom now are actively involved in our “community” (with apologies to AliceSinAerie).

But there is a huge difference to me with the behavior exhibited by the Wanker and that of the unsure, clueless, newly discovering kinkster. And that is that there is that the latter is indeed just ignorant of the mores and behaviors expected; the former just stupidly ignores them for his own douchenozzlery. I have an obligation, I think, to help those that I can, how I can, and where I can. I question whether I am under the same obligation to those that won’t be bothered to even try to be anything except a wanker. As a very good friends says all the time "you can't fix stupid".

You know the kind I’m talking about- the guys who comment on pictures saying things that imply non-consensual ownership or rights. The ones (and forgive me, but it’s always been in my experience men) who think that Fetlife is porn and that kinky girls are there solely for their own personal gratification. The ones that send the same messages to hundreds of girls, hoping that ONE is influenced by his apparent interest. The ones that subject me, and other women to being non-consensually involved in their fantasies. Simply because we have a profile on Fetlife, we’re somehow less than deserving of respect, courtesy, or even the basic kindness given to complete strangers when first meeting them. Simply by having a profile there, many of these guys believe we’re whores, ready to accept every vile and disgusting thing that they spout, and who get wet at the thought of serving such “masters”. The worst part is, that they usually prey on those that are themselves new. Who do I help by not calling attention to this behavior? The wanker? Or his prey? This is far different from thoughtlessness or inconsideration. This is behavior designed for one purpose alone: to make the people they do it to feel powerless.

So I thought about it. I read Sarah’s post again. and realized that the question is not if I’m a bully by posting the Wanker of the Week, but whether or not those wankers are bullying me, and everyone else that they do this to. If my posting the Wanker of the Week or bringing these jerks out into the open is bullying, then so be it. Calling attention to this behavior is not bullying. Especially when the bully has already thrown the first punch.

But my new question is why is it OK for those wankers to do this? Why does it become acceptable for THEM to do this, while I have to just put up with it? Why is their non-consensual asshattery on MY profile acceptable? And why shouldn’t they be called to task for their egregious behavior?

Are we at a point when well meaning people protect the bully, in the guise of “mastery” on a kink site, because the people calling attention to it should know better? Or is calling attention to the most egregious offenders as an example of what NOT to do, actually fighting against bullying?

I wish I knew better.

Closet Cleaning

2011-01-03T12:26:00.002-05:00

Welcome to 2011.

I refuse to get maudlin at the beginning of this year. I’m not going to start a list of what I accomplished (or didn’t) last year, nor am I going to bore anyone with a list of my own personal goals for this new one. Suffice to say that I had a ball and a half last year and I expect this one to be even better.

January 1 is full of promise, hope, anticipation and enthusiasm and closet cleaning.

I am a collector. Shoes, jewelry, books, tchotkes, and scrapbooking stuff. I had a couple of days and so I thought it would be a good time to get at least one of those things in order. I chose the hardest one- my scrap closet. This is not the first time I used a closet cleaning to re-evaluate what was going on in my life. When I first met Sir, I’d used my shoe collection to put the past away and look forward to the future. This time what I learned from cleaning my scrapbooking closet (which isn’t finished yet, despite three days worth of cleaning) is that more is not necessarily better. Sometimes more just gets messier faster.

What does this have to do with D/s you ask?

I downsized my scrap room for a closet when I moved in with Sir. I went from having an entire 24x20 room, to a corner of a bedroom, to a closet in just a little more than a year. Without throwing anything away. I stored things in boxes, cases and drawers, just trying to get it to “fit” in my new space. It was stored, but hardly functional. It takes too long to find anything when it’s in covered boxes and closed drawers. I’m more used to having my stuff where I can find it easily. Everything is put away neatly, but I can’t ever find anything specific. As Daddy jokes, I have more stuff than 1/2 the aisles at Michaels. And yet, every weekend, or trip to the internet, it’s hard not to bring more stuff into the house. I’ve forgotten so many of the things that I have, that I often buy the same thing three or four times. I’ve even attended conventions (yes, they have conventions for even this) and come home with boxes, bags, and piles of new things to just shove in the closet.

But as I was cleaning my closet this weekend, I realized that having “more” of anything wasn’t making me happier. In fact, it was making it infinitely harder to use or appreciate what I had.

I was looking for some ethereal “more” from Sir. More dominance, more D/s, more rules, protocols, more...something. I’d thought that things weren’t working out as I’d expected them. But when I looked at what I had, after taking everything out of the box (so to speak), I realized that more would just be messier.

Our dynamic seems to ebb and flow as our needs change. Sometimes we need “more” D/s, and sometimes things work better with less. We still HAVE the D/s, but it’s not at the same intensity all the time (and I’m not talking about just kinky play). But what I was viewing as “not enough”, in actuality was because a lot of those small rituals, rules, and protocols had been incorporated into our daily interactions with each other. Instead of my kneeling when I arrived at his house, he now stops and hugs me and welcomes me home. Instead of asking him how he’d like certain things, I just do it that way out of habit. Instead of making up a whole bunch of silly rules for me to follow or him to enforce, caring, courtesy, love, respect and affection are the reason to do things for each other. Instead of having protocols for our relationship, we had one where we could discuss it with each other.

Cleaning my scrap closet reminded me that I’d bought many of those things because I loved them. Putting them in closed boxes denied me the opportunity to even find them, much less use them. Buying more just to have more just made it harder to see what I had. Being with Daddy doesn’t need more “something”, just more of what we’ve already got.

More of anything in our relationship would be messier and wouldn’t necessarily make me happier. Having more is not the same as using more. We have much more in our relationship than I’d realized simply because having shoved things into neat little boxes, I’d forgotten what was in them. We do have rules, rituals, protocols and D/s. Having more just because I’d forgotten that those things work best when they’re a seamless part of a whole would just be like buying more scrapbooking stuff because I couldn’t find what I’d already had.

Sometimes, taking things out of the box and realizing the reason why I bought them in the first place, is reason enough to clean out that closet once in a while.

Between the Lines

2010-12-29T10:06:00.002-05:00

“I don’t know what you want”.

I’d wondered for some time whether or not this blog was doing more harm than good. I know that for people finding it, looking for just someone to say that they’re not alone in their own confusion, it is helpful.

I’m just not sure if it’s helping my own relationship.

Part of the problem is that I don’t always write about things that are happening (except peripherally) in my own life. Many times I write about things I’ve read, conversations I’ve had with people, or my own opinions of whatever I feel like writing about. It helps me to write so that I can put things in sort of an order. I know my posts aren’t always the easiest to read, as I tend to write in the way that I talk. Morphing from one thought to another, trying to find answers to questions I’m not even aware I’m asking.

Writing about how I see things, while helpful to me, is often hard for daddy. But just as he’d be upset with me if I let him win at scrabble, I think he’d be upset if I tried to couch my words in ways that would make my thoughts easier for him to hear. He knows why I write. He knows the “rest of the story” that I don’t write about. But I think that quite often, he reads between the lines, not realizing that I’m not writing there.

So I thought I’d write him this post so he could read between those lines, and know exactly what is written there.

I love you. Plain and simple. To me, you’re quite simply the best man I’ve ever had the privilege to know. You are not only the most kind, loving, funny, smart, and sexy man I’ve ever met, you’re also the best kisser I’ve ever known. Your smile drives me crazy. Your voice reminds me of a very strange color, found in a blue ocean (and for those few of you that understand why I’m saying that, you’ll understand it’s not just a metaphor). It is calming and wild at the same time. You have one of the strongest backs and widest shoulders I’ve ever seen. You have more strength in you than even I’d thought. You have a quiet stability, a predictability, and a firmness that is in wonderful contrast to your impishness and laughter. You are a wonderful lover, a caring boyfriend, and a tolerant daddy. You’ve made it possible for me to do things and become someone that I didn’t realize I’d even wanted. You make me laugh. And when I cry, it’s because you found a way to let me do that again without it hurting so much. You’ve been my sounding board, my conscience, the voice of reason, and my friend. You have a way to calm me when I’m flustered, and a way to make my entire being sing. You’ve always been there for me, whether you think so or not. And if sometimes things are harder than we’d like, at least neither of us are going through them alone anymore. I am there for you, as you’ve always been for me.

So when you read my posts, and go looking between the lines for things that you think I'm saying, please remember that the answer to your question from last night is there. You know exactly what it is that I want, and you haven't had any problems giving it to me yet.

I just want you.

Assumptions and Edicts

2010-12-28T13:44:00.001-05:00

A couple of things have struck me as we’ve began our negotiation- the first was that I found myself agreeing to things simply because they didn’t feel important enough to disagree with, or because he wanted them and they didn’t seem “too bad”.

The second was that when I realized what I was doing, I recognized that I was negotiating from a position of neediness, weakness, and general apathy about the state of things (and because I hate to see him pout). I realized I was doing the exact thing that I’ve warned so many others about in the past- I was negotiating from the bottom.

So back to square one.

I may be a “wholly owned subsidiary of Septimus”, but I’m still a person, with a personal life, needs, obligations, and personality. It may be kind of fun for him to think about having a cookie cutter Stepford girlfriend, but in reality, he’d be bored with that after a couple of days. It might be fun for us to play around with that “someday”, but not while we’re negotiating. Tacit agreement and passivity have no place when trying to figure this out.

I’m sure that most people, when you ask them about a power exchange relationship would say that “RULES” are the most important thing. Making them, obeying them, and enforcing them.

I think that the first question one asks themselves when entering into a power exchange relationship is: how much power am I willing to give and how much does he truly want to have? Now, and in the future? How will we know when it’s time to give more? And are there benchmarks that we can recognize within ourselves and about each other that will let us know that we’ve met the same goals?

It seems that before you can figure out the “rules”, you have to have a meeting of the minds about those areas where one is willing to give, and the other is willing to take.

One of the first things we’ve run across is the “assumption” problem.

One of the first things that I offered as an opening was “asking permission”. Since I’d gotten out of the habit of asking permission, mostly because it felt to me a lot of times that he’d rather just not have to make decisions, I thought that was one we could work on. I narrowed the areas that I was comfortable with giving him the power to make those decisions for me by removing work or family from the table. I offered to ask permission to attend events, go out with my friends, leave the house for shopping, etc., or even going to bed if that’s what he’d prefer.

As I said, it was an offer. A point of beginning.

I assumed that he would let me know which things he wanted to control. I assumed he knew my schedule, and I assumed that when he was otherwise occupied, that he didn’t want me just twiddling my thumbs. He assumed that what I’d offered was fait accompli. But we never talked about it (at least I don’t remember doing it).

The first time I left the house without asking permission, he got angry. When I got back, he didn’t hide his irritation, and then I got confused. We hadn’t talked about what I’d said, he just assumed that I was going to do it. I was upset that he’d taken my offer and made it a rule without telling me.

And that’s when I learned another important concept- don’t offer that which you’re not prepared to do immediately.

I don’t believe that he really wants to micromanage my life. We’re adults, and we know that each of us has obligations and responsibilities that don’t involve each other. But assuming that we know what each other wants, or is thinking, puts a lot of pressure on ourselves to be mindreaders when we both really suck at it. It’s easier to ask the question- given the above things, which do you want from me?

What I learned from this episode is that I won’t make any more proposals. And I won’t accept just any old rule just because he’s the dominant. For me, it has to make sense (even if it’s just because he prefers it that way); it has to be reasonable, the purpose has to be attainable, and it has to have a way to deviate from the application given unforeseen circumstances. Any rule based upon any power exchange needs to be accepted by the submissive or it’s not an exchange, it’s an edict.

Here’s some of what I’ll be asking myself before making any more overtures about exchanging any power:

Are there areas that I don’t wish to have him meddle in? Or is this an area where he even wants to control anything?

Is there a way that we can adapt a given circumstance that is likely to occur to meet both our needs?

Is this a model that is reasonable given our lives? Can the goal of the rule be met or am I doomed to failure because of contravening circumstances? Is it a rule that I might need help with in order to meet his need? Will it still allow me to meet mine?

I’m not assuming anything anymore. The way to figure out what we want in our relationship is to offer, talk and negotiate, make a counteroffer if it’s appropriate, and then for the final result to be accepted by both of us. Edicts are not exchanges, they’re unilateral decisions that should not be the starting point of a negotiation.

Next: Specific Rules/General Guidelines/Custom and Etiquette- Which are “real” rules?

NightB4Xmas

2010-12-22T09:21:00.004-05:00

My boss took me to lunch yesterday. I probably shouldn't drink wine at lunch, it does tend to make me a little silly. While the boss was driving back to work, I heard the song "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" on the radio. From there, it's too hard to figure out the phrases that came into my head, but Girlmouse, Graydancer and Septimus' nose fetish seemed to just work with the poem "Twas the Night Before Christmas".

So here's the tweets (cleaned up just a bit) that resulted from Christmas lunch with the boss and thinking of my tweepy friends at Christmas.

NightB4XMas

Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house, Not a creature was stirring, not even a @girlMouse.

The @BadBadGirlx was hung by the chimney with care, In hopes that SirX soon would be there.

The BKP were nestled all tied to their beds, While visions of orange road cones danced in their heads.

And @Silverdreams blinded by a ‘kerchief, and @Septimus1812 with his crop, Had just settled their brains for a long winter’s “nap”

When down in the dungeon there arose such a clatter, He sprang from the bed to see what the hell @kinkstergeek was up to now.

Away to the dungeon he flew like a flash, Broke out the safety shears and knocked over @toristorii who wearing her new ballet boots

The moon on @jaekinks breast was magnificent, like new-fallen snow, (but it did tend to distract him from the objects below)

When, what to my wondering eyes (once the kerchief was removed) should appear, but @b_playful with his tetruss (what a dear).

With a big old cane, so lively and quick, I knew in a moment it must fucking hurt like the dick(ens)

More rapid than a girl with a Hitachi his volunteers they came....

All the doms whistled, and shouted, and called them by name!

"Now @debaucheddiva! now, @Graydancer (I know, but I had to), now @SubWonder and @BrattyVixen!”

On, @ThatLauren! On, @MsNaughtyEm, on, @Bendyogagirl and on @Radagast22 too! (because you know, he's switchy like that)!

To the top of the tetruss! or tied to the wall!, Now slap away! spank away! crop away all!

As dry leaves that before the wild hurricane fly,When they meet with an obstacle, let them be mounted.....(to the sky) [hey, it worked]

So down to the dungeon the coursers they flew, With their ass full of marks, and @Septimus1812 too.

And then, in a twinkling, I heard on the roof, The laughing and giggling and each domly hoof....er footstomp.

As I drew in my head, and was turning around, Down the chimney @Septimus1812 tried to suspend @spunquee upsidedown (who wisely redded on that one)

The doms were dressed all in their domly best, from their heads to their feets

While their clothes were all tarnished with ashes and soot (which is when they collectively decided chimney suspension was BAD)

(Note) not that anyone would notice if the doms' domly clothes were covered in ashes and soot....black clothes? hello?

So instead, a bundle of Toys they had flung on the back of their subs (who in my story would throw them down the chimney) but anyway...

And they looked like peddlers, just opening their packs, (until the subs saw things and stupidly asked 'what THIS used for')

But the doms' eyes-how they twinkled! their ass dimples how merry! (yes, it's a known fact ALL doms have ass dimples- check the books)

They thought their ass cheeks were (smelled) like roses, while looking to pop some nose fetish cherries

Their droll little mouths were drawn up like they were mean sadistic bastards or so...
And they noticed that someone's ass was as white as the snow

The ends of the hemp they held tight in their teeth, and encircled the victim just like a wreath.

The girl had a broad smile on her face but with a butterfly or two in her belly,
And the rest of the bottoms just laughed, and said lets get the jelly (toys, you pervs)!

When @Septimus1812, his right jolly old self, laughed when he saw them, in spite of himself! (it was a evil, jolly laugh)

A wink of his eye and a twist of his head, soon gave the rest permission that the victim would dread.

He spoke not a word, but went straight to his work, And cut off the stockings, then turned with a jerk.(obvious joke omitted here)

And laying his finger aside of his nose, (nose fetish...helllo?) And giving a nod, up the chimney the girl rose!

He sprang to the dungeon, to his team gave a whistle, And away they all flew to see what had happened to their victim

But I heard him exclaim, ‘before he put the kerchief back on and was out of sight,

"Happy FUCKING Christmas to all, and to all it was a good-fucking night!

Wanker of the Week: Nominees for December 12, 2010

2010-12-09T08:44:00.002-05:00

WOW! It’s been a busy week for wankers everywhere! I’m not sure if it’s because of the holidays approaching, or if it’s because I’ve shed a light on a problem experienced by far too many people who are just itching for a little payback, but my inboxes were FULL of nominations for Wanker of the Week! Thanks everyone for sending the wankers my way (wait! did I really just say that?)

First, I wanted to update about MY Wanker. As you may know, I commented on a few pictures, called him out on his douchenozzlery, and generally made myself a pest. I didn’t *overtly* say anything *too* terrible, but I did call attention to his “golden rod” (which is now a fetish on Fetlife). He got angry, then he started calling other people names, then he sent my boyfriend a threatening message:

"YOUR SLAVE IS A REAL SLUT . SHE WILL LEARN THE HARD WAY SHE SHOULD NOT TALK TO TOPS THE WAY SHE DOES. SHE IS LUCKY SHE IS THERE AND NOT IN CHICAGO."

Septimus asked me what I thought. My first inclination was to ignore it. But we figured, if someone makes a threat, the least we can do is let Fetlife know. WTF? Dude? What did you THINK was gonna happen when you sent those kinds of messages and never apologized to either of us for doing it?

I’ve narrowed down the Wanker of the Week nominees down to three. Based on the messages I’ve received from their nominators and a review of their profiles. One is from Facebook (which makes it a little harder because of the “friend” thing), and two are from Fetlife (which would be much better IMO if it HAD the “friend” thing). I’m not saying who nominated these guys, because as I’ve found out, “master-baiting” wankers results in a lot of unpleasantness.

I’ve also started seeing a trend in exactly WHO is doing the wanking. It’s far too early to post those results with such a small sampling, but a few things stand out.

A) The wankers generally are over the age of 40 and,
B) They either have no profile picture, stolen pictures, or the obligatory cockshot, and,
C) They have serious issues with spelling, grammar, and punctuation.

But enough about generalizations. Here’s the first nominees for Wanker of the Week, December 12, 2010:

First is bengal15
The nominator stated that his first message to her was "call me if you want to try black cok. there is a cok pic provided on the profile.”

How charming!

And indeed, there IS a cok (sic) pick (or is that a sick cock pic?) on the profile! After looking at his profile, it’s apparent that he really LOVES pictures, going so far as to comment several times about what “we should do” or some such nonsense. Do guys really believe that this shit works?

Next up is Ahmad Alanizy (it’s a Facebook profile and closed, so sorry I won’t bother linking)

But the nominator sent me a copy of her FIRST contact with this guy (shortly after she friended him BTW)

Nominator: Judging by the timestamps on them I'm guessing he friended me at 5:36 pm. LOL

Ahmad ALanizy
10 November at 05:37
hi
do like be friends

Ahmad ALanizy
10 November at 05:42
(no subject)
can i fuck you

Ahmad ALanizy
10 November at 05:48
(no subject)
please show me your pussy

Ahmad ALanizy
10 November at 08:55
fuck you

Apparently, this wanker, not receiving a timely response to his absolutely charming overtures, resorted to the last bastion of wankerdoodles everywhere: insults.

This one was funny because I’m guessing that the wanker thought that everyone else was like him and LIVED on the internet, just waiting with “baited” (sic) breath for one of these guys to show up and give us a reason for owning a Hitachi.

Lastly, there is FrankAlbergo

Frank came onto my radar through a message sent to me asking me to look at a post he’d done on Fetlife: Ladys

This post basically blamed the victim for the behavior of the wanker. Enough said with this one. I can’t even find it in me to make a joke about this. But if this is what the wankers are thinking- that just because kinky girls are on the internet, that we’re somehow “asking” for it, then I’ll certainly have no problem calling them to task for this and practicing up on my CBT.

So that’s it tweeps. Send me your Vote for this weeks WOW winner. Tweet to me using the hashtag #wanker and I’ll tally the votes which will end on Sunday, December 12, 2010 at midnight, Boston time (that’s something different for you left coast folks).

And please, send me your Wanker nominees. My sample size right now matches their peens.

Fetlife Wanker of the Week

2010-12-05T11:16:00.009-05:00

Fetlife. Both the best thing that ever happened to the kink world, and the worst.

It's the best, because it gives kinksters a place to talk about kinky shit, learn about kinky shit, and perv all manner of kinky shit, without tweaking your mother by seeing it on your Facebook. There, you can learn about needles, rope, and flogging, as well as relationships, Doctor Who, and cooking.

But it's also one of the worst, simply BECAUSE it's the best. Because so many kinky people perv Fetlife, that's where the wankers come to get their wank fodder. No more Alt or Bondage or Collar Me. Fetlife is WHERE IT'S HAPPENING, BABY!

As Fetlife makes more inroads into mainstream-ish news, advertising, and online searching for kink, the more wankers find to jizz themselves silly about over there. I'm sure there's Wank Boards everywhere extolling the virtues of the ease of perving the kinky women (and sometimes men) on Fetlife. Put up a cockshot and you're half way there to getting one of "them thare kinky gurhls to show up at your trailer to cook, clean, and get nekked!" (no offense to trailers)

I've received my fair share of wanky wannabes in the past few months. Usually they're not much more than a minor annoyance. What I usually get is that they've sent me a note saying that they're actually in FACT "wanking to my picture". Thanks for the heads up wankerdoodle, but I don't really need to know that. Leave me in my ignorant bliss okay?

But yesterday, I received a one line message from a wanker that just hit me the wrong way. The message was (and I have not changed a word or a capital letter):

"i think it's time for you to be my slave and suck my dick !"

The reason it hit me so wrong, is because this wanker is "A Master" who is looking for a submissive slave (no kidding?) And my profile clearly states that I am owned, collared and living with Septimus. In fact, you don't even HAVE to read my profile. It's right there, at the top. "Owned and Collared". You don't have to be a genius to figure out what that means, especially if one is a "Master".

I showed Daddy this message (I sometimes think that he's a little jealous that he never receives wank-y emails from women) and was writing my harsh reply to this little prick (and I mean that with NO irony) when he said, "let it go for now".

So I waited. Then I tweeted. What happened on twitter can only be described as the BEST thing about social media I've found. My friends (even if I've only met some of them ON twitter) have my back. What happened with the crossover from Twitter to Fetlife was best described by Polloraro as "a roasting". A dick roast.

After a while, the Wanker of the Week ("WOW") idea was born. So on Sunday afternoons (hopefully), I'll be awarding the WOW award to one who truly deserves it. One who disregards profiles, sends wank messages, or one who just truly "doesn't get it". I'll choose the first one (my prerogative) and then I'll cross post nominees on Twitter for the voting for subsequent ones. If you've got a nomination for WOW, you can email the profile to me, and tell me why this person is deserving of such a high Wanker honor, or you can tweet using the hashtag "#Wanker" (update 12/8/10- #WOW is getting confused with World of Warcraft). Lets see if we can't shed some light on the wankers and put them back into their own pants.

(A note about unintended consequences): I'm sure that there will be wankers who will actually TRY to win the award by acting like douches on purpose. I will not be posting the names on Fetlife so as not to encourage it, but if this gets out, Wankers of the World will likely wank themselves into a coma trying to win. Ah well. If they want to notify the world of their douchenozzlery, far be it from me to discourage them from outing their own wankery.

First Winner of the WOW is (lopresto) From a "master" whose use of the English language is lacking almost every basic skill, including the fact that he uses capitalization to tell others what he "twuely wants", to the fact that he has a really little peen (that he calls his "golden rod" ROFL!!!) that seems stuck in a bad 70's porn movie, to the obvious lack of reading anything other than Mad Magazine and also because he sent me that wonderful little tidbit telling me what time it was, lopresto is this weeks Wanker of the Week. Congratulations you little douchenozzle!

And here's the award:

Courtesy of Creative Commons: D Sharon Pruitit.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/pinksherbet/3382448853/

Ghosts of Christmas Future

2010-12-03T09:54:00.004-05:00

Daddy and I have started something new.

We’re beginning a period of readjustment, rebuilding and renegotiating our D/s relationship. By that I mean that we got comfortable letting things slide. We sort of let the D/s part of relationship get away from us. It’s been pretty wonderful most of the time, but neither of us is happy. It’s easier, but it’s not as satisfying.

When we first started our relationship, we talked a lot about what we each needed out of it. What we wanted from a partner, what we had missed in our previous relationships that we needed out of this one. We spent a lot of time learning about each other. Our habits, our desires, our pasts, our fears and our lives. And I think, that after almost two years together, we’d fallen back into some of the same traps that had caused problems in our previous relationships. We’d forgotten that a D/s relationship, like any other kind, needs work to make it happen. You have to want to have it. It doesn’t magically appear and it doesn’t happen just because you enjoy kinky sex.

I’d been pretty unhappy with the way that the D/s parts of our relationship always seemed to be secondary to everything else. Too often I felt lost, unwanted and unsubmissive. The change didn’t happen overnight. It slipped insidiously in every time I had to wear my big girl panties for longer and longer periods of time. In other words, the more in charge of me I became, the less I wanted someone else to be. I was getting used to doing and saying what I wanted. Without any clear goals or expectations, I again got back into my selfish bottom space. I’d questioned whether I wanted to even be his submissive and I definitely questioned whether asking for his collar had been a mistake.

It snuck up on me. At first I rationalized that because Daddy needed me to take care of myself for a while, it would eventually get back to normal. When I realized that it might be a long while, I put away the submissive. He’d needed his girlfriend (and I AM a damned fine one). When it became longer, it was too easy to justify that because everything other than our D/s relationship was going pretty good, that I didn’t really need that anymore. It snuck up on me so gradually that I really couldn’t have told anyone what was wrong. It just didn’t feel right.

I think that our playing with rope the other night solidified things in my head. When I’d said “this sucks”, it let loose something more than just the frustration with the rope I was feeling at the moment. It unleashed all those months of wanting. Without the D/s part, our relationship may not suck, but it’s not as special or satisfying either. I finally had to face the reality that I was unhappy with the way things were going. It had come to a choice: either I had to figure out a way to let Daddy know so we could decide together where to go from here; or I had to do what everyone says you should do when you’re not getting what you need from the other person- leave.

The latter wasn’t a realistic option (I do, after all, love Daddy). I knew that somehow, if only I had the balls to tell him what was going on, that we’d figure out a way. When I’d told him (via this blog- yeah, I’m a bit of a coward when it comes to unpleasant conversations) I was surprised when he’d admitted that he’d been feeling the same thing.

But strangely it also made me feel better. Because that’s when I knew that if we were both feeling the lack of that part of the relationship, that we could each recognize that we needed it back, then we’d both have incentive to do the work to integrate it back into our lives.

So, we’re back to the drawing board. We’re re-negotiating how we’re going to integrate the D/s parts of our relationship into the rest of our lives. For the first time since I met Daddy, I have to really think about what I want from him. Not from just any old theoretical D/s relationship with a 'someone', but what I want from him. How I want to feel when I’m with him, what I expect from him, and, because we do live together, how to juggle everything.

I told him that it was unfortunate that it would probably end up looking like a M/s contract. But I’m beginning to think that that wouldn’t be so bad after all. I think that part of the reason we let this get away from us to begin with is exactly because we hadn’t thought about how living together would change things in that D/s part, and we hadn't really set any parameters. It was a "I'm the dom, you're the sub" relationship. We'd made the cardinal mistake: we didn't clearly define our roles with each other and what they meant to each of us. And maybe it’s time that we think about how we want to frame that part of things, so that we can see far earlier when things start to go astray. It’s easier to get things back on track when they’ve only veered a little. We let them veer too far, and now we’ve got some work to do.

R-examining, renegotiating, and rebuilding. Looks like I got my Christmas wish a few weeks early. So, after the beginning of the year, I'll be starting a series of posts about how we negotiate a D/s relationship for a long term, 24/7, being in love situation.

I'm curious to see what happens.

A Grown Up Christmas

2010-12-01T08:53:00.001-05:00

All I want for Christmas is.....

In thinking about Christmas this year, I again have a holy hell of case of bah humbugs. Try as I might, I just can’t get into the whole rigamarole. Decorating, baking, looking at the lights, listening to carols, sipping hot chocolate (not a fan of eggnog) with a blanket snuggled up with someone special in front of a fire. All those things that used to make me happy, comfy and cozy going into the crap weather days of January now make me too sad to even put forth the effort. I did try some baking last weekend. And I did put out a few seasonal decorations, but much of my spirit is just flat. I’m not sure if it’s because we’ve mixed religions along with the closet, but I just don’t feel it. It’s ok. There’s always next year, right?

Things are going ok. Personally things are a little difficult. Leftover issues with the ex, problems with one of the kids, car problems and trying to get motivated to find a new job are all weighing heavily right now. And while things with Daddy and me are also going pretty ok, they’re a lot harder than I thought they’d be. I thought that moving in with Daddy would move us further in a D/s relationship. But the exact opposite has happened. While the boyfriend/girlfriend part of us is going wonderfully, the D/s part of us has lagged so far behind that I’m not quite sure if it even exists anymore.

Or is it just that I’ve settled into my role that I don’t feel like it IS a D/s relationship anymore?

I think that part of what many of us search for when looking for a D/s relationship IS a compatible person to share it with. Things that I sometimes feel I don’t have enough of, he has in abundance. Patience, humor, intelligence. There are also some things that I have more than enough of to share with him: Exuberance, impulsiveness, organization, and my shoe fashion sense. And lastly, there are things we each bring to the relationship that may not look exactly the same, but work off each other nicely- creativity, responsibility, attention, and affection. We bring a lot to the relationship with each other. And because we have a relationship outside of the D/s, we have something to fall back on when the D/s is lagging behind.

I know myself. I know that having that outside relationship with Daddy is the most important thing. But it doesn’t stop me from missing the other stuff. And I don’t want to give up the really good things we’ve got together either.

Perhaps this is why I’m bah humbugging? We’ve settled into a comfortable place. We still have date nights. We still talk ALL the time. We still snuggle and schnoodle, laugh and try to make each other laugh. We eat together, do vanilla things together, and we still fall asleep in each other’s arms. He is attentive and charming and damned sexy. We do all those things that many women would give their favorite pair of shoes for. So I wonder why I’m not happy? Is it that I’m just TOO greedy?

I’ll admit that I miss the part of us that only saw each other a few times a week. The anticipation, the frustration, and the joy of finally being together at the end of the week. I should have known that living together would remove some of that. It’s really hard to anticipate the hottness of that first five minutes together, when I get home and start dinner and laundry.

In looking over my prior posts, I’d wondered if by moving in with Daddy I’d end up feeling like a maid, a cook or an errand girl. I worried that something would change that would make things feel more like just two people living in the same house, or that I’d no longer be seen as a cherished possession, but rather a fixture that nobody notices much unless it’s needed. And while I don’t exactly feel like that (I kind of like cooking and cleaning and shopping), I’m not sure that I still feel like I’m his little girl either. There’s something missing.

So what I’d like for Christmas is to get back what’s missing. I want to put the D/s back into the relationship. I want the scales rebalanced and still keep the other parts of us that work great. I want us to work as hard at keeping the D/s in our relationship as hard as we work at keeping the other stuff working great. I want to bring back the structure, the exploration, the edge, the ritual and the protocol that we’d begun and somehow lost. It seems too much like we’re a kinky couple who discovered that vanilla is pretty good, not to mention much EASIER.

I guess I want to be his little girl again. Even Christmas isn't the same when you're a grown up.

Gone, And Almost Forgotten

2010-11-29T16:12:00.002-05:00

“You’re not here with me”.

We were at a party at a friend’s house. That’s how parties are going to be for a while in Boston. Back to hanging with friends. In one way it’s good for me. I usually am much more relaxed at smaller spaces. Less people, less noise, less worries. But in another way, it’s also much more difficult to find something else to do when I’m not really in the mood to begin with. Or should I say, when I’m IN a mood to begin with?

We’d found ourselves plunked between two other rope “scenes”. They were both trying out a new kind of chest harness. Something that they’d learned earlier. Daddy asked me if I’d wanted to try it. He had a hopeful look on his face and rope in his hand. I’d just gotten done telling a friend that I hadn’t really had rope on me since Shibaricon and wasn’t holding out much hope for this being “the scene” for us to start playing with it again. I was hopeful that we’d start using it again. That we’d start together again with it. Hope. The dirtiest four-letter word of all sometimes.

I’d been asking Daddy off and on for a couple of months about playing with rope. But after getting shut down so many times, I’d figured that I’d just fucking blew it with all the bitching I did. Instead of getting my point across about HOW I loved rope when it’s used in certain ways, it came off as how I didn’t like rope when it was used in certain other ways. I got tired of saying that we were lost when it came to rope. Instead, I just laughed it off and told my friends that we just didn’t have time to play with it anymore. But that it was okay. We did other things.

I’m sure that one or two of them couldn’t have felt any sorrier for me. I know I’ve been feeling pretty sorry for myself.

He started to tie the rope around my chest. I leaned back into him, I brought my hand up and touched his face. I smiled at him, I whispered to him, I touched his leg. I leaned forward, trying to catch his attention. Trying desperately to let him know that I wanted his rope. I wanted us to play again. I wanted it to be like it used to be. The connection. The attention. I wanted just something to go right with it.

And got nothing back. I became the diningroom chair. And as diningroom chairs are wont to do, I became useful for a purpose, but not the one which I’d intended. It was like the entire last couple of years of rope was just gone. We'd forgotten how to do something that used to be so simple for us as connecting with rope.

After he’d tied me, we adjusted a few things, moved some rope that was slipping, and got it done. I looked around and focused on Daddy. He was looking at the ropework being done by others. He was paying attention to the rope.

And I lost it. I was too disappointed to speak. I was too upset to talk. And I just wanted out of the damned rope. I’d gone from hopeful, to trying to get him to remember, to just giving up on all of it. And who says rope isn’t amazing?

He’d looked at me and said that I wasn’t here with him. I knew what he was saying, but when I’m that upset, I tend to mouth off. I said that he’d just tied me, where else would I be? His face was different. He was upset. He was trying to figure out what the hell had happened. And he kept asking me about what I was feeling.

Until I finally thought, I’ve already given up on the rope. He might as well know it. And because I was hurt, I said the words that I vowed that I’d never say to him.

“This sucks”.

I blurted out everything: How I felt like the chair. How he was tying the rope, not the girl. How it used to be different.

He said that I needed to cut him some slack. It had been a while since he’d tied. I know it has. I’m there.

To try to salvage something, I asked him to tie ME. I didn’t care how the rope looked, how pretty it was, how the knots went. All I cared about was HIM tying ME. Both of us, using the rope to relearn how to do something that we’d forgotten how to do. Using the strings to pull each other into our personal space. To use the rope to start to mend us.

I smiled when he grabbed me. I wanted it to be a hot, sexy scene, but instead, I was too happy that he’d actually remembered how to do this, that my laughter got the better of me. And as usual, things devolved into another bout with those unintended consequences. During which all I could think of was one thing:

If you want me there with you, use ROPE!

Silly, daddy.

Revenge as a Kink

2010-11-18T10:34:00.004-05:00

"Revenge is often like biting a dog because the dog bit you"
-Austin O'Malley

As anyone who lives in the Boston area now knows, Haven, our local place for all things kinky, is closed. Ostensibly due to someone who felt that shutting it down was fair revenge for not being allowed into an event there. I don’t know what the facts are. There’s a lot of heresay and rumor mongering.

Some people think that the kinky community doesn’t need to know who this person is. Some others (like me) think that the identity of this person should be made known. There’s speculation aplenty, but no facts that I’ve been able to ferret out. I suppose one could go and view the official complaint, but that would likely either be anonymous or reveal this person’s real name. I’m not into outing anyone, outside of this community.

But I think that this person’s identity should be made known to the area kinksters for a simple reason. If this person put his own petty revenge over the welfare of an entire kink community, he’s dangerous to everyone. And everyone should be given the choice of whether or not to associate with him.

I don’t want to seek revenge against this person. I have no wish to make this situation worse. I’m not sharpening my pitchfork, planning on calling his employer, or even blogging about how horrible this person is. I simply want to know who this is so that I don’t unintentionally show up at a place where he was prevented from attending. If he did it once, he’ll do it again. And I don’t want to be put in the same position as the proprietor of Haven. Balancing protecting my guests or my fellow party attendees, against letting an unsuitable person even HEAR about a party for fear that he might decide to take revenge.

It’s all well and good to say that it doesn’t matter if you know who it is, but you can’t build a community by protecting people who try to destroy it. The fight isn’t against the person, it’s against the idea that ONE person can ruin a good thing, simply by being pissed off. THAT is a dangerous attitude that affects everyone. I’m not asking for the information in order to take my own revenge. I’m asking so that I can AVOID having to put myself or my friends in a position of wondering if he’s been banned from the next thing and therefore itching to take some more revenge. The next thing being any event that I’m attending.

IF this person is not made known to the community, and he shows up at the next event, say the Bound in Boston, or a NEDS class, makes some friends with people, gets invited to a party, and then for some reason isn’t invited back (and from what I understand this is what happened to cause his sour grapes to begin with), would you, as an event organizer or party host WANT to go through what Arsine is going through now? How would your attendees and guests like it that they’ve been subjected to possible “issues” if any “officials” decided to act on a complaint that this guy makes? If he’s done it once, he’ll do it again.

I think it’s far better to know who this person is so that the kinky community can avoid him, hide our activities from him, and prevent him from even learning about where these things are happening from now on. We don’t have as much to worry about from the authorities as we do from this person. The authorities act within the scope of their duties. I really don’t think that they care what we’re doing. But if a complaint is made, they’re required to act. We need to avoid those people who will make those complaints. And the only way to do that, is to know who put his own vengefulness over the entire community.

Historically speaking, this sort of thing happens. There’s a list of “used to be” party places as long as my arm. Someone gets pissed because they’re not invited, or they’re banned, or they’re made fun of, and the next thing that happens is that the place is somehow put on the radar of those officials who have to act. The ultimate answer is of course, is to have a legitimate place, with legitimate operating privileges, and with the authorities only acting as if it’s just another business. But that’s a dream that takes a hell of a lot of money in this town. And a hell of a lot of goodwill from society that just doesn’t exist. Yet.

In the meantime, we’ve taken a step backwards. Back to closed lists, small parties, covert places, and private homes. It’ll make things harder, and at least for a while, people will look at those they don’t know and wonder if “this is the guy” that ruined it. Until we forget again. Until someone steps up again and opens another Haven. And until someone decides again that revenge is the ultimate kink.

Get Off My Lawn!

2010-11-15T10:59:00.003-05:00

The Rocky Horror Picture Show.

I remember when I first saw it. I was 17 years old. In Hudson, NH. At a midnight showing that I had to promise my mother months of indentured servitude in order to attend. I traded months of Saturday mornings cleaning the basement and garage to go. It was worth it. The movie, filled with inside jokes, transvestites, and Susan Sarandon in those shoes for a 17 year old was sexy and damned transgressive. I’m still not sure how I ever convinced my mother to let me see it. I suppose I should be grateful that the internet, for all intents and purposes, didn’t exist when I was 17.

We’d gone to The Rocky Horror Picture Show with Coyotetoo and SubWonder. RHPS itself was just as I’d remembered, even if there were some “new” memes, the print had seen better days and obviously attended by many people who no longer thought of RHPS as being quite as transgressive as it used to be. After all these years, it’s become campy rather than edgy. But we’d had a ball, threw some rice, danced the Time Warp, and sang the songs (you kids really have to remember to sing!). But Daddy noticed something which, after I thought about, seemed a lot of what we’re used to dealing with. He’d noticed that nearly everyone in the theater hadn’t even been born when we’d seen the show for the first time.

Talk about feeling old.

I don’t know how Daddy feels, but this reminds me of the same thing that I feel all the time when we’re at parties with our friends, many of whom are under the age of 30. I like feeling all that young puppy energy around me, and I’ve developed close friendships with (and a crush or two on) some of these “youngsters”. We try very hard not to be the “creepy old people” at these parties and the fact that we do have many friends in that age group tells me that in that at least, we’ve succeeded. We don’t tout our “experience”. We just enjoy the experience. Being around young people is a joy for me. But it also makes me remember that many of these people weren’t even born when I first started experimenting with bdsm. Which also, coincidentally enough, was around 17. Chicken and egg much?

But just as with all those young people at RHPS, who are now experiencing the colors, themes and fun seeing something that is nearly 35 years old (OMFG!), and who are now adding their own memes and putting their own take on this time honored cult movie; the kids that we’re around at parties and events are also adding their own take to the practice of bdsm. For me, both are fun to watch, and both are fun to experience. And just as I enjoyed watching RHPS with all of those new things adding to my experience of it, I also enjoy my younger friends adding to my experience with bdsm.

I may never do some of the things that they do, but then again, they’ll never get to see RHPS and experience that same transgressive feeling that I did either.

And instead of feeling old, I’m feeling pretty good. I’m happy that RHPS is still being shown, albeit with a much different take than I’d had in 1982, and that my young friends have the opportunities to explore their kink in ways that hadn’t existed in 1982.

No. I’m not old. I’m envious.

But I also remember that someday, these young kids will also be in the same position. They’ll have years of experiences and somebody ELSE will change their RHPS to suit themselves. And they'll be the ones saying "you kids get off my lawn!!"

The little sadist in me is snickering. It’ll be fun to watch. :)

Don't Take Me Down on Your Way Out

2010-11-12T08:48:00.007-05:00

A confluence of things have caused me to think about something that should be a no-brainer.

Consent and Privacy.

In the past few weeks, a blogger, coming out about her kink in a newspaper article; a letter; and a few newspaper articles about my local scene (while being fairly complementary towards kink) but in reality may have caused a great deal of damage to it (time will tell), have come across my computer screen. The result of these items, as well as a few other things, has made me really nervous. Really nervous.

My version of my kink differs from other people’s versions of their kinks. I think we all chuckle at the phrase “your kink is not my kink but it’s ok” (YKINMYBIOK), but that is the crux of what I’m nervous about.

My family, my children, my mother, my employers and my non-kinky friends haven’t consented to even hear about my kinky activities, much less deal with the potential fall-out from their family, their mothers, their employers and their friends, should my kinks ever be exposed to the light of day, (not to mention the fact that many people still consider kink to mean that one is incapable of raising children, holding a security clearance, or even that one is mentally ill), they haven’t consented to the fallout. I try to keep my private life private from those who, for whatever reason, could make things harder for me or on them. I value my privacy, but I also enjoy sharing my kinks with those who share my outlook.

But what I don’t appreciate is the perennial arguments over about how “being out” about one’s kink is “better” for “everyone”.

What’s gotten my panties in a bunch recently is that there is a faction of local kinksters, most of whom have no children, no ex spouses, and I’m going to go out on a limb and venture to say something that sounds awful when I type it: no long term connections to employers or people outside of the kink community, who have "decided" among themselves, that being "out" is the only acceptable thing for kinksters. It’s easy to “come out” about your kink to people who are kinky or people you don’t know (vis a vis a newspaper article), especially when you have nothing to lose. Or even the fear that you will. I know what I have to lose.

But putting aside family and employment reasons, the main reason that these things coming across my computer screen have worried me, is that I haven’t consented to being outed by proxy by people who should understand that no matter what they might think, there ARE people who are their friends, who cannot or haven't consented to the risk to lose.

Let me make this perfectly clear. I have NO wish to be the poster child, test case, or a spokesperson for the kinky community outside of the kink community. I haven’t consented to my public play to be an outreach, a learning experience, or a goddamn lesson in the Constitution. That I’m into rope, but not into watersports is something that kinky people “get”. What they don’t “get” is that I’m into protecting my kinky life, while they’re into being open and vocal about theirs. They’re also forgetting, that just as people who engage in watersports know that they don’t subject others to their kinks non-consensually, that there are many others that don't share their idea of an out and proud nirvana for kinksters.

What makes me nervous is that people don’t stop and think about how coming out, being out, or looking down on those of us that aren’t, makes many kinksters shy away from those events where they’d otherwise love to be. They don't think that by forcing me to choose "out" or "stay at home", that they're forcing THEIR kink non-consensually onto me. What they don’t think about is the nervousness experienced by non-out-kinksters every time our local playspace is mentioned in the newspaper, or even the fact that their friends are now “out” and could be connected by those with rudimentary computer skills.

I do understand that the reverse is also true: that by being private and in, I'm forcing my kink onto these out kinksters. But the dividing line is mitigation of damage. Being out may allow non-kinksters to get the idea that kink isn't "bad" in the long term, but it really doesn't help other kinksters who may have to suffer the damages of educating the mass public. The question I'd put to these people is this: is the damage which may be suffered by people you call friend, who have trusted you as a kindred kinkster, who allow you to share in their experience worth the "education" of the purient or perennially intolerant public of the intricacies of our world?

I’m not saying that I don’t admire and live vicariously through many of my friends who are out. I congratulate them on having something that I’ll likely never experience in my own life. I’m happy that they’ve found more tolerance and acceptance in their own lives than I could ever hope to expect from mine. Believe me, after 45 years, I’m about as out as I’m ever likely to be. I teach and attend classes, I play in “public” and I use my own first name. Most of my kinky friends know my real last name, where I live, what I do for a living, and even my children and grandchild’s names. I’ve trusted them to recognize that we might have a different comfort level of outness, but it’s a trust that’s shared and was not given lightly. My friends are those who know all of these things about me, watch me getting my ass beat at a party, and never question my need to remain private. If I haven’t come out yet, you can be sure that there’s a damned good reason for it. Real or perceived, it makes no difference.

What I’m saying is that there is a disconnect. From what I’m getting it is that “real” kinksters are “out” and everyone else might as well just stay out of the scene. We’re not wanted, we’re a detriment, and the fact that we’re not out creates unnecessary “hardships” for those who are. And the corollary is that it is somehow they're doing it "for my own good". They have to be private when they’d rather be shouting their kink from the rooftops and shoving it down the throats of every mother and employer. I get that they might feel that I’m creating a hidden class, and I get that they might feel that us “innies” are just creating an atmosphere where remaining hidden perpetuates the idea to non-kinksters that kink is immoral or bad. Or to put it more succinctly: if EVERY kinkster was out, then there’d be understanding, tolerance, and we’d be such a force to be reckoned with that politicians and religiousians couldn’t stand against us.

I call bullshit.

So yet again, I’m forced to sit on the sidelines of the “public” scene for a while. Perhaps a long while. I’m not comfortable with my “friends” forcing me to choose sides. The “Scene” or stay home. I’m saddened that I feel like I have to do it to protect my privacy. And I’m damned pissed off that I’m considered not “freaky” enough to be kinky simply by virtue of not sharing the same kink of “out vs in”.

So be it. To my friends, thank you for respecting my wishes, thank you for understanding my need for privacy, thank you for trusting me with your lives as I’ve trusted you with mine, and thank you for truly understanding that the concept of consent doesn’t just apply to what I do to you, it also applies to what you do to me.

But most of all, to those friends or fellow kinksters who are, or may be on your way out, please remember consent of ALL those people around you (kinky people included) when you’re doing it. That way, you won’t take me down on your way out.

Talk Normal To Me

2010-11-08T09:28:00.005-05:00

Creative Commons: Hammad Masoumi-Flickr

It’s been a while since I’ve written about my experiment on learning to talk dirty. In the interim, I’ve spent a lot of time listening to porn, watching how others talk, practicing phrases and conversations in my head, and trying things out on daddy. And yes, I did ask what he meant. It’s just that his answer wasn’t any more helpful than anything else.

This was a real struggle for me. Not because I don’t know how to talk dirty, but because everything I tried sounded either really silly (“manmeat”) or sounded like my normal voice when talking with daddy.

I get off on Daddy’s voice. His growls and purrs. His “good girl” and his “little slut”. I get off on the colors and tones in his speaking voice, and I really get off when he speaks Spanish to me. I don’t care if he calls me a portable refrigerator, if it’s in Spanish, it has a very marked reaction on my body. (Although I’m onto the “la nariz” thing). But even that, I can’t help myself. I willingly give up my nariz to him. His voice alone, sets off reactions that I can’t control. It’s not even the words (and I certainly can’t understand Spanish), it’s just his voice.

It never occurred to me that daddy might also get off on my voice, speaking normally, saying things that I usually say. It never crossed my mind that talking normally would work when he gave me his directive to “talk dirty to me”. I was looking for a complicated answer to a simple problem. I heard what he wanted, but thought that it couldn’t possibly be that easy.

Communication is a big catchword in bdsm. Communication about how you feel, what you want, what you don’t want, rules, protocols, consent, and negotiation. We use that word “communication” as if “oh, that explains everything” and as if it’s the easiest thing in the world. "Communication" as it relates to bdsm has become a generic catch-all term for speaking to someone about all those things that we need to discuss to keep our asses out of jail. But if you think about it, communication is much more than talking or listening. It’s also about style, body language, and intent.

I’ve always believed that I was pretty good at listening, and I’ve always thought that I was even better at understanding what I’d heard. But learning to communicate is more than just talking, listening and understanding. Learning to communicate with each other takes time, patience, and practice. Mistakes are bound to be made. Mistakes in understanding what someone else is thinking. Mistakes in applying what you think you heard. And mistakes in saying what you mean. A classic example of a miscommunication is when a ropetop says “lets play with rope” and you hear “play” and “rope”. Without knowing the intent behind the words, without knowing each other’s styles, and without knowing that Monday nights are practice nights, it’s too easy to only hear what you think you hear, and get really disappointed when your play and his play seem to be very different things.

Time together, speaking to each other, listening to your partner's body language and learning all those neat little buttons to push, and the ones never to push, is the real key to communication in bdsm. Expressing ideas is not enough when there are no set-in-stone definitions, when there are no dictionaries or board of directors to set the parameters. The biggest thing about learning to communicate is that you have to learn that the other person is listening with more than their head. They’re also listening with their emotions, their own experiences, and their own ideas of what they’ve heard you say.

I don’t know exactly when I figured out the right combination of tone and words to give daddy what he was looking for. I think it was when I’d finally given up trying to figure it out and said to myself “if he wants me to talk, I’ll just talk and then he’ll see I can’t do this”. I had no idea what I was saying, I just opened my mouth and repeated a conversation we’d had a few days earlier. It was nothing really overtly "dirty". It was just a phrase that I'd used before in another context. But I was struggling, so I figured what the hell.

And the reaction was astounding.

Since then, I’ve expanded somewhat. I still listen when we’re talking normally and put things in my brain for the “next time”. They still sound silly to me sometimes, but I’ve also learned that it’s not really the words that he’s hearing. He’s hearing my intent and my emotions. Even if I’m saying things that aren’t inherently dirty, they appear that way because I intend them to be. The same way that calling me a portable refrigerator in Spanish works on me.

This weekend I’d asked him if he thought I’d finally got this “talking dirty” thing down, because I still felt like I was repeating myself and that very often I was just talking normally.

He smiled and said, "babydoll....just talk normally to me then".

Job done.

Happy HNT: Flowers for Daddy

2010-11-04T10:26:00.003-04:00

Flowers for Daddy. Happy HNT!

Service and Submission

2010-10-29T13:36:00.011-04:00

I believe both sides of the / serve the other, granted in very different ways.

That was a quote by Sir_Russel that I read on Fetlife the other day in this thread : What is Service?. It struck a chord with me.

I’m not a service submissive. I don’t fool myself into thinking this, and I don’t believe that anyone with whom I’ve ever had a relationship with would put service in the top 10 of things that they’d say about me. It’s ok. Different strokes.

I believe in service IN submission, not service AS submission. And by that I mean, that there’s things I do for Daddy that I do which may be viewed to outsiders as “service”, but to me, they’re things I do because he’s my Daddy. I know there’s people who believe differently than I do. I’m not saying one is better or more valid than the other; I’m saying that I know what works for me.

An invitation to a High D/s Protocol event got me thinking about service. At first, I was more than a little irritated with the tone of the invitation. Even though Daddy reminded me that like any event, the person holding it was going for a particular vibe, a particular theme. And that I shouldn’t be offended by it. Some events, like some forms of submission are just not my cup of tea.

The more I thought about that event, the more riled up I got. (and to tell the truth, some few threads I'd been reading on Fetlife may have contributed to my riling). I just couldn’t figure out why. Which just made things worse. Why was I having a pissing contest with myself about an event that wasn’t mandatory? Why was I so annoyed? Was I even annoyed about the event itself? I could just say no and be done with it. Daddy’s wish to attend a “Chateau night” notwithstanding. Daddy also said that I needed to think about it because it obviously unleashed something in my brain.

I consider this a collision of bad timing in receiving that email combined with reading some really ridiculous threads on Fetlife.

After really thinking what got on my nerves so much about it, I realized that I care how others see submission. I care about generalities being promulgated about it, I care that others have fantasy-filled heads about “what submission should look like”. I care because very often, the words I hear directed towards me are "you're too bratty", "you're not a submissive" or worse, that Daddy isn't "a dominant". I've had my fair share of people questioning our public play style. My submission is mine. It doesn't look like anyone else's and because of that, it matters to me that people understand that my cup of tea may be different from theirs. Not better. Just different.

And I care that there are people out there that might feel being a submissive is only about service to dominants. Sometimes not even the one that owns you. I care that between the books and the chatboards, submission often looks like neediness, emotional instability, or sadly, even, just plain sad. Too many times do I see people asking questions about whether or not their relationship should look like something else, or they’re having problems with a particular kind of submission (pain, service, poly, whatever) that doesn’t work for them. Why do submissives think that just because someone else does something else, that their submission must be the same way? It makes me angry to see those questions simply because to ask them, the person hasn’t realized that the only thing that matters is how they live their own submission. As Daddy says: “your body is mine, your self is yours”.

It’s possible that because I had a disastrous entry into the scene myself, the result is that I've spent a lot of energy talking to submissives coming into the scene to stress that they need to have a good head on their shoulders and understand that despite what Sir Lord God Domly Dom believes, they don't owe him a damned thing. Other than reciprocal courtesy. RECIPROCAL courtesy. Unless and until you've negotiated otherwise, a dominant person is exactly equal in power to a submissive one. No more, no less. And in my opinion, a dominant anyone should never define your submission. To use a phrase that Daddy hates: it is what it is. Define your submission, and then find someone who shares the same definition. Bearing in mind of course that changes also happen. Deal with it.

It makes me a little angry that so much of the “book submission” has snuck its way into how people view submission as a whole. I’m also a little angry with submissives who think that they have to BE like other submissives, that they’re in competition with each other for “submissive of the year” or who can’t or won’t be true to their own particular type of submission.

My grandmother told me to never try to be something I’m not. It’s hard enough trying to be something you are.

I submit to one and only one person- sometimes not even willingly. I do it from a place of love, understanding, trust, and because I like to see him smile. It’s not easy for me being submissive most of the time. I’ve developed some very selfish habits over the past several years of being responsible for myself. The difference is, for the most part, Daddy is either willing to overlook those things, or they’re not behaviors that he cares to amend. In other words, some of the things that I do, he enjoys me doing them. Trust me. If he didn’t like them, he’d tell me.

And I like to believe that one of the things he’s always found in me that he didn’t want to change was my overall personality. I’m a strong, sassy, independent, intelligent, audacious, sharp-witted woman and a freaking powerhouse of energy, anger, and aggression when I have to be. I don’t need to submit to him or anyone. I choose to submit to him, because it feels right. For me. And the fact that he finds it a little bit hot for such a woman to submit to him doesn't hurt. Male ego and all I suppose (wink).

Do I serve Daddy? Sure. Does he serve me? Absolutely. I view submission as a very selfish act. I’d like to think it could be altruistic, but in reality I’m selfish. I do things for him to make him smile, and so that he’ll be more inclined and happier to do things for me that will make me smile. We service each other. He provides for my needs (and usually plenty of my wants), and I provide for his. It works for us not because I am a service submissive, but because I’m HIS submissive.

It doesn’t change my idea about the party. I’m still not going. I’d be horrible at living the rules of any dominant I’m not in love with, even for a short fantasy-filled event. Besides, I wouldn’t dream of ruining the fantasy for anyone. I'm sure it will be a lovely event for those so inclined. And I'm sure Daddy would really like to go. So I'm really sorry that in this case, my definition doesn't quite match.

All I dream of is that when the fantasy is over, that the reality of submission is remembered. It’s not easy, it can’t be found in books or chatboards, and it really can’t be done unless you’re honest with yourself about how much and what kind of service you’re willing to provide, and how much you expect from the other side of the Slash.

Photo Courtesy of Digiyesica.

e[lust] Edition #21

2010-10-27T14:33:00.002-04:00

Photo courtesy of Evocative Abyss

Welcome to e[lust] - Your source for sexual intelligence and inspirations of lust from the smartest & sexiest bloggers! Whether you’re looking for hot steamy smut, thought-provoking opinions or expert information, you’re going to find it here. Want to be included in e[lust] #22? Start with the rules, check out the schedule and subscribe to the RSS feed for updates!

Important e[lust] update: e[lust] will be going on hiatus for the holidays. The editions for November and December would both occur around the holidays and I know I'll be short on both submissions and judges as well as personal time. e[lust] #22 will return in January, with ample advance warning, so please make sure you're subscribed for updates!

~ Featured Post (Lilly’s Pick) ~

D/s Without the D/s? - This is one of those situations in a real time D/s relationship where much of the “fun” aspects of the D/s needs to be stuffed in the closet for a bit. And for us, it’s not a great time to be either a masochist or a sadist. We can deal with that.

~ e[lust] Editress ~

Yes, Jelly Sex Toys Can be Dangerous - Even if a jelly rubber toy says “phthalate-free”, it still can contain toxic chemicals that can cause skin reactions in some people. These toys are still non-porous and can harbor dirt and bacteria because they cannot be sanitized.

~ This Week’s Top Three Posts ~

Unfortunately, this edition has no Top Three picks as I didn't have enough volunteer judges. If you'd like to volunteer to help, visit this page to find out more info and ensure that the Top Three picks continue.

See also: Pleasurists #101 and #100 for all your sex toy review needs.

Sex News, Interviews, Politics & Humor

All Painted Up...

A Modest Proposal: Should Ginger & Cooper Fuck?

Happy Sexual Freedom Day

How Do You Explain

Life in spanking after 30: part 2

Erotic Writing

blindfold

Fantasy: Movie Night

Feeling Helpless

Gabrielle, Guest Star

Happy Anniversary...

History Lesson

I Still Don't Know How You Taste

Monday Morning 2am

Metallic Seduction

Need

New Erotic Story For The Holidays - Tinsel Temptation

Putting the car into park

The Ordeal (Part Four)

The Sweetest Violation

The Young Mom

The Moment

The Soccer Mom

Timeless in a Window's Light

Kink & Fetish

A space to hate and rage and be angry (photo story)

Beyond the Bedroom

Does liking Helmut Newton equal a fetish?

Happy Halloween: Light Me Up

I am all pins and needles

Kink and Fibromyalgia

Ownership and Monogamy

Punishing the servants

Pi

Switching It Up

The Cage

The Sacred Swinger Holiday: Halloween!

the most amazing night with HIM

The Pedicure

The Right Question

Wax on, wax off!

Thoughts & Advice on Sex & Relationships

All Roads Lead to Acceptance... I hope!

Crisis Averted

Dear boyfriend, I love you. And your cock.

Having Great Goddamned Expectations

If You Google it, I will Answer #9

I Don't Know If I've Ever Been Really Loved By a Hand That's Touched Me

How to Massage Man’s G-spot

My Coming Out Story

National Coming Out Day

Recovering From Anorexia

Role Reversal

Sadie's Condom PSA

Seduction and D/s

2010-10-25T10:18:00.006-04:00

Seduction - To beguile or lure someone away from duty, accepted principles, or proper conduct. To lead astray; To entice or induce someone to engage in a sexual relationship; To win over or attract someone.

To lure, beguile and entice.

Read any book, blog or website offering advice on how to maintain a happy sexual relationship, and that word will show up eventually. From dressing in plastic wrap and meeting your man at the door to the right perfumes and lingerie to wear to the various methods of crossing your legs while wearing a skirt, much has been made in the way of how to accomplish seduction.

Seduction involves an element of uncertainty. It involves mental gymnastics, innuendo, whispers, touches and looks that are meant to make your toes tingle, unleash butterflies in your stomach, and leave your good sense behind. It is to be swept up in a longing and need that results in passion. It involves enticing someone into something that they might not even know they want, until faced with the choice of not having it at all. It’s temptation, it’s heart-thumping excitement; it’s a careful dance, it’s fear, it’s fire and it’s darned sexy. It is an art learned from the earliest age when a young girl first learns the power of the hair swoop over her shoulder and downward face, upward glance, or when a young man first learns the power behind looking into a girl’s eyes and speaking softly about what those eyes do to him. It’s power as an aphrodisiac. Power in yourself, your sexuality and in someone’s desire for you.

For me, seduction starts with words, with a smile, with a soft voice whispered in my ear (preferably in Spanish) and a touch on my bare shoulder. It does not start with him calling me his bitch, pushing me to my knees and telling me to suck his cock. As nice as that is sometimes.

During one of my thinks, shortly after Daddy had to jump out of bed to meet the boy somewhere, it occurred to me yesterday that one of the things that I miss in a D/s relationship is the element of seduction. When getting a blow job is a sure bet simply by pushing me to my knees and unzipping his pants, I began to wonder if seduction is even possible in a D/s relationship. Does negotiating around boundaries about what you won’t do remove the element of uncertainty that is necessary for seduction? Where is the motivation to lure, beguile and entice if you’ve already talked your way around nearly everything, or if there's little that you won't already do in the way of things typically thought of as needing seduction? If you know you’re gonna get a blow job whenever you’d like one simply because you own your girl, is there really any reason to seduce her?

And if you know that he can just push your face onto his cock and get that blow job, or worse yet, let you suck his cock because you ASKED to do it, is there really any motivation to try a seduction?

To me, seduction in a D/s relationship ranks right up there with a whole list of really silly things that seem to be fun to play around with, but which I have no real idea how they work in real life D/s. Begging. Talking Dirty. Seduction. The more I try to figure out how those things are applicable to a relationship where I beg because he asks for it (not necessarily because I want it); where I talk dirty as a matter of course, where seduction is a power that I try to have over the one who has the power, the more I wonder if I just need a whole new dictionary.

I also began to wonder if I’d lost something by negotiating, talking, discussing, and planning the parameters of my D/s relationship. Have I lost the uncertainty of what he’s going to want from me and the spontaneity of being taken over by my excitement in his enticement? Where exactly IS the lure? Especially when there’s very little in the way of “proper conduct” that I won’t voluntarily engage in? And especially when I know that there’s little chance of him turning me down for that blow job. For more than a few minutes anyway.

How do YOU put seduction into your D/s? I’m not talking romance- flowers and candlelight. I’m talking purely seducing your partner as a testament to your own power? Or shouldn’t good little submissives want to keep some of their seductive powers intact?

When you’re in a D/s relationship, talk about the conduct of that relationship in such a great detail, and do some pretty awful things with each other on a regular basis, is there really any room for the power of a seduction?

Photo Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/futurowoman/4454665220/

Do You Really Want to Burn Bridges?

2010-10-21T10:10:00.006-04:00

http://www.flickr.com/photos/vfowler/9736864/

FAIR WARNING: THIS IS A RANT POST:

January 12, 2009 was the day I was desperately trying to find a way to talk to this adorable guy I’d met a few days before. It was the day I decided that I wasn’t going to wait for him to figure out I was attracted to him by sending coyly worded messages through Fetlife. It was the day I knew I had to find some way to open a dialogue with him in order to get into his pants. It was the day I asked that infamous question which at first seemed so innocuous- “what’s twitter?”

In the almost 2 years since then, I’ve logged 14,161 (as of this moment) tweets, have followed many interesting people, and have eventually met nearly 2/3 of them. I’ve also carried on a major flirtation with that adorable guy who I now call Daddy. Twitter has been my lifeline during times I’ve been alone; my source for information and the tweeps have made me smile, laugh, learn and think. Ask a question on twitter regarding any topic and somebody has an answer.

But after watching my tweetstream yesterday become populated with comments about why some found it ridiculous or offensive that many tweeps were wearing purple in support of Spirit Day, I’d signed off for the day. I’d had enough. I was so disgusted with some of the tweets that I didn’t even want to log back in this morning. It saddened me that some people could be offended that badly, simply by people wearing purple and tweeting about it. I wondered if I should just give up supporting anything and go back to talking with my friends and flirting with Daddy.

I’d wondered why some people were offended by the idea of Spirit Day. I mean, we have Veteran’s Day in which we honor our service members (even if you don’t agree with the wars in which they’ve fought). We have Mother’s Day in which we honor our mothers. And we have Independence Day in which we honor beer and fireworks. (ok, so I’m kidding). Why get your panties all in a bunch about honoring the memory of those kids who reached the end of endurance? Why is remembering them by wearing purple and perhaps opening a dialogue with someone about why you're doing it so awful that you'd have to snark at people for it?

So to all those naysayers and bitchy tweeps who got offended by Spirit Day, all I can say is that I obviously didn’t do it to support you. You don’t need “my” support. I’m happy for you. I’m glad that you realize that you’ve got everything in your own life under control. You’ve got all the “rights” you’ll ever need and you’ll never get offended in a group of people who may question even your right to live. Not everyone is so lucky though. My support of Spirit Day wasn’t for you. It was for all those others that aren’t as lucky as you.

But before you get all whiny about whether or not allies are really allies, whether wearing purple is a good or bad thing, or whether or not it’s a bandwagon and silly, I’d ask you to remember a few things.

I don’t *have* to support anything. I’m a cis-gendered, heterosexual woman. I can live my life perfectly well within existing laws and societal mores with very little problem. I can ignore GLBTQ everything if I wish to. Disdain my support, in whatever form that it takes, and there’s little reason for me to fight to have you accept it.

But don’t ever make a mistake and think that I have no stake in the problems experienced by the GLBTQ community. I’m not supporting you if you don’t want my support. I’m supporting the people in my life that mean everything to me. Those people for whom my support matters a great deal. My sister. My friends Jon and Gerry.

And most especially for my granddaughter. You see, without my “support”, she’s liable to grow up to think exactly the same way that my parents and grandparents do about “fags”.

I’m a bridge between what was, and what could be.

So ask yourself, do you really want to burn this particular bridge?

Tweeps Support Spirit Day 10/20/10

2010-10-19T08:26:00.010-04:00

yep, I wore purple

October 20, 2010 is Wear Purple Day. I'll be wearing purple, will you? If you do, send me a picture or a link to your own blog and I'll repost it here.

Here's some of my twitter friends who have graciously given permission for their purple tweeple pics to be reposted:

girlMouse is wearing purple!

and so is coyotetoo

And ReneesAccount and lambie

And Septimus1812 made an effort
with the purple ink

A special friend and something of a mentor to me:
ButchtasticKyle

And another tweep: Radagast22 with
a BKP souvenier.

Wear Purple Online and Offline on Wednesday, October 20 to remember LGBT Youth

Americans Urged to Show Support for LGBT Youth on Spirit Day

October 18, 2010, New York, NY –October 18, 2010, New York, NY – The Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) today joined millions of community members and allies to support lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) youth by participating in Spirit Day and remembering those teens who have taken their own lives as a result of bullying.

Spirit Day, created by teenager Brittany McMillan earlier this month, now counts millions of Americans committed on Facebook to wearing the color purple on Wednesday, October 20, 2010.

In addition to wearing the color purple, GLAAD is also asking Americans to turn their Facebook and Twitter photos purple until Wednesday and to share messages of support for LGBT youth. For more information on the free application and suggested messages, please visit http://www.glaad.org/SpiritDay.

"I will be wearing purple on Spirit Day," said GLAAD President Jarrett Barrios. "The tragic suicides of our youth have started an important dialogue among Americans about the dangers of bullying, and now is the time to show our children that millions of Americans accept and value them regardless of their sexual orientation or gender identity."

Purple symbolizes 'spirit' on the rainbow flag, a symbol for LGBT Pride that was created by Gilbert Baker in 1978. The goal of Spirit Day is to show LGBT youth who are victims of anti-LGBT bullying and harassment that there is a vast community of people who support them. As the event’s Facebook page says: "This event is not a seminar nor is it a rally. There is NO meeting place. All you have to do is wear purple."

Last week after receiving thousands of concerned e-mails from constituents, GLAAD worked with Facebook to develop a solution to address violent and hateful anti-LGBT comments posted to a Spirit Day Facebook event page. That page now has over one million people confirmed to participate.

For more information please visit these events on Facebook: "R.I.P. ;; In memory of the recent suicides due to gay abuse, wear purple" and Spirit Day, A GLOBAL Day of remembering.

LGBT youth in need of immediate help should contact The Trevor Project 's 24/7 Lifeline at 866-4-U-TREVOR (866-488-7386) or The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK (8255).

Also check out Dan Savage's It Gets Better video project on Youtube.

D/s Without the D/s? Impossible Changes Made Possible

2010-10-18T14:05:00.004-04:00

One Sided Coins

It’s easy to write about the fun things that happen to me, the classes I’ve attended, the people I meet, and even discussions about, and my opinion of, bdsm theory. It’s far more difficult to write about those things that I don’t even want to think about.

In some respects, I suppose being in a D/s relationship makes it easier to find our way through problems that arise by virtue of the fact that because I’m owned, he has the right to my thoughts. Not to direct them, but to hear them. We’re good at negotiating (Moxie notwithstanding), and we’re pretty good at talking. I’m getting better anyway. He's always been better at that than I.

But those very thoughts which he demands to hear, are also sometimes things that I don’t want to give voice to. My uncertainties, my fears, my feelings. I don’t always want to share them with anyone, much less someone who may be hurt because I have them. It’s one of the reasons why I write my blog. So I can just regurgitate whatever floats across my brain, hopefully giving it some clarity and context so that I can look at it. And move on. Unfortunately, Daddy reads my blog. Not because he's my Daddy. But because he knows that I write how I feel.

I’ve always believed that keeping certain thoughts to myself would be better in the long run. I eventually get over myself, and usually find that many of the things that I think, aren’t reality. That’s one of the things about D/s that isn’t easy. When you’re with someone who expects you to fill in the status blanks of your brain, just how do you escape from having to THINK?

A recent conversation with Daddy concerning something that I had mulling around in my brain for a couple of months is just an example. It was something that was difficult to put into words, and I wanted to fully think about it and be able to express my feelings with some sort of clarity (although I will say that I mucked it up pretty badly anyway). Also it’s something that hadn’t really been bothering me enough to worry about, but recently it’s gotten to the point where I knew I was going to have to say something. Daddy is too tuned into my moods to be able to keep anything from him for very long.

Circumstances in life lately have created a situation where it’s not really a great idea for Daddy to hurt me, or for me to ask to be hurt. Vanilla events of life together have significantly impacted our ability to “get our kink on”. And we’ve talked about this sort of thing before. I’ve said to him before “hurt me because you love me, not because you’re angry with someone else”. And he knows himself well enough to know the difference. Neither of us would get what we need unless it was for each of us.

We’ve managed to keep up with some events, but more often than not, one or the other of us just doesn’t have it in us to go. He’s not in such a great headspace with everything he’s got on his plate and although I can be bratty sometimes, I also know when not to be. This is one of those situations in a real time D/s relationship where much of the “fun” aspects of the D/s needs to be stuffed in the closet for a bit. And for us, it’s not a great time to be either a masochist or a sadist. We can deal with that. We love each other more than enough to want to get through any rough patches that come along. And this another of the realities of D/s that people seldom talk about. Things change. In all relationships, things change. It’s how you handle those changes that is the test of your relationship. D/s or not.

But one of the consequences to putting one part of your life together over another for too long is that submissives tend to flounder. Lacking a clear focus, lacking direction and lacking specific dominance, what do submissives have to hold onto? We’re only half of a dynamic. We can’t create dominance to suit ourselves, anymore than a dom can create a submissive when there isn’t one already lurking. What do submissives DO when THEY have to take the lead role? And how does that change a relationship when the dominant is ready to regain control?

I’ve talked before about how hard it was for me to drop out of my “everyday” self when I drove to Daddy’s house when we were dating and get into my submissive self. It’s difficult for people to switch headspaces from one to the other. And the longer I wear my bossy, opinionated, and toppy self around Daddy, the harder it is for me to remember what it feels like to be his submissive. And I like being that. A Lot. I’m not all that thrilled with wearing my everyday self all the time. It’s draining on me. But even I know that sometimes Daddy needs to take care of himself more. I can help him, but the balance between submissive and everyday is difficult for me to see sometimes. It’s difficult to see the submissive through the forest of life.

I’ve noticed something about myself in the past couple of months. I still like taking care of him, and we still spend a lot of time together, we still have fun together, we still love each other, and I feel closer to him than I’ve ever been by virtue of living through this difficult time together. But as he’s had more and more things piling up on him, the less and less submissive I feel. I’m sure he’s noticed. It’s not something that you can hide for very long. But I’m also sure that he knows a one-sided coin has little value. I try to create activities that I can do for him, I try to continue things the way they’ve always been. I feel lost and confused sometimes. Looking to him for just an order, his hand on my throat, his hand in my hair...just something to show me that he still remembers that I’m his submissive, and not only his girlfriend. I forgot that changes happen. And I forgot that sometimes they’re not always for the worse. I’ve spent a couple of months learning about myself and finding new ways to explore my masochism from a different angle. It’s been interesting and fun, and I’m still there when Daddy needs me to be. It’s given me a new appreciation for how hard tops work. But still. I’ll be happy when my own life with Daddy gets back to more of a balanced place.

After spending time thinking this weekend after our talks, I’ll admit that what I’ve been most worried about is that after spending a lot of time being toppy (but not, however topping Daddy), being my everyday self, living a mostly vanilla life for a few months, leaving my submissive self only glimpses outside of the everyday, that he’d forget it existed. Or that I’d forget. Right now, the D/s is like an undercurrent in our relationship. But we've spent a lot of time building a relationship that includes D/s. Not a D/s relationship that doesn’t include everything else. I know that whatever happens, we’ll find a way to work through any changes. Together. It might take some time for him to be ready, and it might take some time for me to drop back into my place when he is, but he’s more than worth waiting for.

And that’s the truth about D/s. When things change, when circumstances change, and when life gets in the way of kink, if you’re still comfortable in your entire relationship together, if you can still talk, and if you are still committed to each other, the changes are more of a possibility of better things to come. The last time this kind of change happened in our life, I realized that I couldn't be a part-time party submissive. Perhaps this time, the changes signal that I'm ready to include more, not less, in our relationship.

Talking About the Taboo: It's Not Just Moxie

2010-10-14T14:56:00.005-04:00

The last week or so has been a bit of a whirlwind for me. I attended a caning class held by NEDS on Friday, and on Sunday, Daddy and I attended a wonderful conference being hosted by HiOhMegan at her wonderful Center for Sexual Pleasure and Health.

There were many great speakers and dozens of advocacy groups in attendance. The topic of the conference was Talking About the Taboo. And because the subjects were important, and the speakers were all people I’d have love to have seen, it was DAMNED difficult to choose which sessions to attend. Since I’m as much a sucker for a beautiful woman as the next girl, for the first session we choose to see Logan Levkoff.

Logan is a study in contrasts. She looks more like any other suburban soccer mom. But she’s a smart lady, who spoke honestly about how she has dealt with media in discussing a “Taboo” subject that is important, but one that tends to freak more people out than not. And that is, how to speak to children about sexuality. She showed us how real life “news” interviews work, and talked to us about how she advocates effectively against the biased and skewed opinions of some television hosts and opponents. She showed how body language, attitude, and being really prepared can make a difference so that one doesn’t come off like a freak, but instead presents as an effective educator of sexuality. She also mentioned that it didn’t hurt that she looks like a suburban soccer mom. Not that someone with purple hair and facial piercings and tattoos can’t BE a soccer mom, but when you’re dealing with people whose goal is obfuscate the real issues, it’s better to at least LOOK like you’re on their team.

She described the rudeness sometimes found even from those who have requested her to speak to a subject. She also talked about how she handles the hate email and messages she gets after an appearance. (Hint: she says to respond to it in a forum that you control)

And she touched on what the arguments about sexuality almost always hide. Almost always, when dealing with the subject of sexuality and children, one topic usually wends its way into the conversation. Sometimes so subtly that it’s missed. And that subject is generally the “gay problem”. What people seem to be afraid of more than anything else is that by teaching children that it’s OK to be gay their children will BE gay. Somehow that thought scares people from wanting to be honest with children. And in light of recent events, this attitude seems like a pretty sure-fire way to cause more and more of the same vitriol that has contributed to the horrific suicides and self-harm that of many young people.

All in all, Logan was a fabulous speaker. She is charming, well-prepared and one smart lady. I think I'll add another to my growing list of women I respect and admire and will definitely want to hear again and again.

For the second session, Daddy and I split up. He went to Audacia Ray's talk on media tactics, while I went to see Charlie Glickman's talk on Sex Positivity and Sexual Authenticity. Charlie was also funny, if not exactly as adorable as Logan was. What I took away from his talk were many new ideas concerning my own relationship to sex, communication, and more importantly that it's perfectly ok for me to develop new relationships to both of those things as I change. That's always difficult I think. Learning that I'm actually going to change at points in my life and that things I didn't like before, I might actually enjoy sometime in the future. Of course, this might mean I'll have to try the damned MOXIE again. I'm just not sure if I'm brave enough for that particular perversion at the moment.

After the discussions, I put some bids on items that the CSPH was auctioning off. We managed to take home an Njoy butt plug, some toys for Daddy, and a NELA package.

And, of course, we had the infamous Moxie tasting with Debaucheddiva and Princess Kali. Two friends that are not going to kill me, but also two whose taste in beverages leaves me wondering if I should take InsomniasBitch's offer up on the Cel-Ray next time.

It was a great day at the CSPH. Megan Andelloux is a wonderful host, and I'm looking forward to visiting her facility again, and attending the Third Annual Conference.

PS: If you're interested, check out this twitter hashtag for some quotes from the conference.

PPS: Maymay also did a Kink On Tap from the conference, so if you want to see for yourself, check it out here: Kink On Tap

And PPPS: Here's the infamous video of the Moxie tasting. Thanks to Debaucheddiva and Princess Kali for being such good sports (even if I do NOW question their taste buds)

Unintended Consequences of Social Media

2010-10-12T08:33:00.002-04:00

A bit of an odd thing happened on twitter last night. It’s a great reminder about those unintended consequences of social media.

A group of us Boston kinksters started a band of tweeters called the BKP. We use that group to notify people in the area, or those planning a trip to the area, of public tweetups. We usually hold them in public venues, mostly because it’s sort of like a munch for kinky tweeps. We’re friends, so we often get together privately as well. And of course, because we love a good time, we often induct people into the BKP at those private parties. But generally, the BKP was founded to promote and advertise tweetups.

Last night, there was some unintended consequences with one of the BKP’ers planning a tweetup for poutine. It morphed into a private party, and people who didn’t realize it, started inviting themselves. It also left my DM box full of messages from people asking for details about the tweetup because they wanted to attend.

I want to apologize to those people who asked me for details. I didn't know anything about it and although I started the group on Fetlife, I'm not the hall monitor. BKP'ers can set up tweetups or parties as they like. If they're public events, I'd hope they'd post them for the world to see. If not, I'd also like to think that they'd be kept a little more on the QT.

Parties around here are usually private events, with guest lists set by the hosts. Mostly due to them being in their homes and space requirements. Those of us having parties don't want unknown people just showing up, and chancing things turning into a frat-party. And one of the unwritten rules (which maybe SHOULD be written, but I've no idea where to do it) is that you don't talk openly about which party you're attending. Taken out of the kink world, how would you feel if your friends were holding a party and you weren't invited? Within the kink world, it's no different. That's because we're people. With feelings. And nobody likes to be left out of the fun.

Myself? I was extremely hurt that some people that I consider very good friends, including one that I consider a BEST friend, started tweeting about an event that was ostensibly a BKP event, but to which I wasn't invited. It hurts to think that I'm disposable in their lives.

I'll get over it. We're friends after all. And friends move on and move forward and learn their lessons and take their lumps.

But it would have been a whole lot easier to go on believing that it was just a group of people getting together for something, than it would be to think that I was kicked out of the BKP simply because I don't tweet on weekends.

Think before you talk. Social Media has a larger audience than you'd ever think. And even if people aren't talking, they're certainly listening.