“Being kinky is not a substitute for being interesting.” I came across that brilliant tumblr post the other day and it perfectly sums up what I mean when I ask kinky people, particularly submissive men, what they have to offer a potential partner. As an aside, I understand and agree with complaints that insisting submissive guys exchange service for domination implies that they aren’t desirable in and off themselves, which is totally wrong and more than a little douchey, but that’s a separate blog post.

In this post, I want to talk about how little being kinky means in terms of making people want to spend time with you. Everybody who likes to hang out with boring people, raise your hand. Oh, nobody? There’s a shock. What about self-centered people, who likes hanging out with them? Or people who are obsessed with one topic and won’t talk about anything else? Huh, I think I’m seeing a trend here. Now, what do you suppose happens if you’re both boring and kinky? That’s right, you’re still boring. Okay, what about being self-centered and kinky? Still self-centered. Or obsessed with one topic to the point you don’t notice or care that the person you’re talking with would rather gnaw off a limb than spend another minute with you? Sadly, for no few people that is being kinky.

That’s why I ask what people have to offer when they talk about how hard it is to find a partner. It’s simply not enough to just be kinky. You and about a million other people have a foot fetish or a latex fetish or a medical fetish, that doesn’t make you special. There are so many more interesting things about you, so I don’t understand why people harp on this one thing that is frankly not that interesting. I mean, sooner or later, no matter how kinky you are, you need to do some laundry and make dinner. If you aren’t worth hanging out with while we do that, why on earth would I give a shit what kinks you like?

If you want friends, or play partners, or a casual relationship, or a long-term relationship, you have to have something to offer. Not free labour, not money, not an extraordinary level of physical attractiveness, but the pleasure of your company.

So many times I see people act like they think being kinky really is a substitute for being interesting, and it makes me sad. More precisely, acting surprised that being kinky isn’t a substitute for being interesting makes me sad for humanity. It is simply not that hard to be interesting. Just talk about something you care about. When people do that, they’re pretty reliably interesting. Not everyone will have the same interests but at least they’ll know there’s a person in there, not just a black hole of need.

If you can’t even manage that, then I have to assume that either you’re so ashamed of your kink that you treat it like a dirty little secret that can never touch any other part of your life, or that you are so monumentally self-centered that it never occurred to you that other kinky people are in fact people, not malfunctioning kink vending machines. Do either of those sound like the impression you want to give when you’re looking for friends or a partner?

Fortunately, it’s pretty easy to start presenting a new image if that’s not what you want people to think. Just start acting like a human fucking being with interests and hopes and favourite movies and hobbies. Seriously, it’s not that hard. Everybody is interested in something. Even if all you do is go to work and come home so tired all you can stand to do is sit down on the couch and watch tv, you can still talk about your favourite shows. Or even shows you wanted to like but really disappointed you. Or shows that haven’t come out yet that you’re looking forward to. Just please for the love of god talk to people about literally anything other than what they can do to get you off.

I know I rag on submissive guys a lot, but this applies just as much to doms. If you meet a dom and she expects you to treat her like god’s gift to men just because she’s willing to put on some latex and swing a riding crop, don’t waste time on her. Really and truly, you deserve someone who will relate to you like you’re a human being. If she expects to be worshipped just for showing up, don’t waste time on her. If she expects money for spending time with you and isn’t totally up front about being a pro, run from that fucking scammer. If she expects total devotion from the instant she meets you just because she calls herself dominant, she’s kind of an asshole. Simply being kinky does not mean a dom is a good person, it does not mean they’re right for you, it does not mean they can meet your needs.

No matter how you identify, you have the right to hold out for a partner who you actually like, who has good qualities and an interest in you beyond your ability to get them off. I promise you a shitty relationship is not better than no relationship at all.

I keep thinking about that last point from the writing I was mocking in my post Dumbinants behaving badly: 4. Understand the M/s D/s is most definitely NOT about how you [the submissive] dictate how you want everything. If a dom looking for a submissive wrote about how their submissive will “do things my way or  I’ll uncollar them and find someone who will”, nobody would bat an eye. We take it as given that doms have the right to insist on getting their needs met in a relationship, but somehow it’s the end of the world when subs do the exact same thing? Funny, I thought subs were people and had the exact same human rights as doms. Why the fuck shouldn’t they leave a relationship that doesn’t meet their needs?

The idea that people stop having rights because of how they like to get their kink on is just ridiculous. We would never say that latex fetishists are allowed to make demands but leather fetishists aren’t, so why do we act like it’s remotely reasonable to expect s-types to passively accept whatever a dom chooses to give them? Sure, submission in a relationship involves giving your chosen dominant a certain (negotiated!) amount of authority, but that’s very very different from how a reasonable person with any self-preservation instincts should be expected to act toward people they aren’t in a relationship with. I say should because only total assholes would expect expect submissive people to indiscriminately submit to everyone around them.

And don’t we also say that s-types need to be extremely careful about getting to know their partners before they submit, and that they need to advocate for themselves because they can’t count on anyone else doing it for them? Again, what exactly is unfair about submissive people bluntly stating their needs up front? As a big fan of the “scare them off as soon as possible” school of dating, I think the kindest thing you can do for potential partners is tell them about all of your potential dealbreakers as soon as possible (keeping your own safety in mind, of course. Trans women, for example, have no obligation whatsoever to disclose that potential dealbreaker at the potential cost of their own lives). If you’re the kind of pathetic overgrown child dom who can’t deal with s-types who expect to be treated like people, wouldn’t you want to know sooner rather than later that someone is completely and utterly incompatible with you?

Of course, that does assume that said overgrown children can handle basic logic, which is probably giving them too much credit. What they really seem to want is for no submissive ever to feel able to reject them. To be clear, that’s unbelievably pathetic. Nobody enjoys rejection, but if you can’t handle things not going exactly the way you want them to, maybe rethink this whole “dominant” thing. If you want to be a dom, you have a responsibility to keep your shit together when things you don’t enjoy happen, whether that’s a scene going off the rails, your submissive having a shitty day and wrecking your plans, or having a shitty day yourself and wrecking your own plans. If you can’t handle so much as a goddamn Fetlife writing from an s-type saying that they’ll leave a relationship that doesn’t work for them, then I think you have some work to do before you get any ideas about running someone else’s life.

It’s probably not going to surprise anyone that I have a theory about why some doms get so freaked out about submissive people acting like they have basic human rights. I think it’s closely related to the assumption that submission is inherently feminine. Doesn’t the dom who can’t deal with subs having standards sound just like the straight guy who can’t deal with women having standards?

In both cases, I think the solution is the same. GROW UP. I say that not because I have any illusions that the people who need to grow up will do so, but because I think that some people who might otherwise take their cues from sad bastards like that might be able to see reason. If you can’t inspire someone to submit to you on your own, all the whining and crying about how submissives who demand doms who meet their needs are great big poopy heads is just going to make you look more pathetic. Real grownups can deal with people they’re attracted to not being compatible with them. It sucks, but the answer is never ever ever that no one should be allowed to reject you.

Submission is only meaningful if your submissive could tell you to fuck off but chooses not to. If they can’t choose, it’s slavery. We all know that for-real slavery is not okay, right?

Doms, we have two choices. We can admit that submissive people are human beings with the exact same rights we have, or we can admit that we are such sad fucks that we would never get any play if we couldn’t convince s-types they don’t have a choice. Not much of a choice, is it.

Some days I just have no idea what to write. Fortunately, some helpful person got to my blog by searching for “How to Fetlife“, and inspiration struck. I have a couple of posts about how to make friends on Fetlife, but not a general guide to finding your way around.

First of all, you need to be aware that Fetlife is not necessarily a safe place to put identifying pictures. Cpl. Jim Brown thought Fetlife was a safe place to put up some pictures and look how that turned out for him. For most people, Fetlife is probably safe enough, but please note the wording there. There is simply no place online that is perfectly safe for everyone to put their photos. As an aside, this is why digital literacy is so important – if you’re going to put a photo up online, you need to be aware that because of how websites and computers work, there is absolutely no way to prevent people from being able to save it and do whatever they want with it. That’s not to say that you will instantly get outed if you put up a face pic, but please think about what would happen to you if you were to get outed and which risks you’re comfortable taking. Fetlife’s content is hidden behind a login, but all it takes to create a login is an email address and maybe a minute of your time.

Contrary to my post about how to make friends on Fetlife, if you just want to have a look around, figure out if there are any munches in your area, and maybe participate in some discussions, you don’t have to worry about filling in your profile right away. If you want to join/post in any groups that are only for certain people (for example, the Submissive men and women who love them group allows anyone to join, but only submissive men and dominant women to post), I recommend filling in whatever combination of gender/role/etc that proves you’re in the demographic the group is meant for so you don’t get kicked out, but aside from that you don’t need to fill in the “About Me” section of your profile or add pictures until you’re ready to start talking to people privately (not necessarily to date, if you want to find people to go to munches with they will probably also be interested in who you are).

There are a number of ways to find events in your city. The simplest, if you chose a city when you set up your profile (and didn’t choose Antarctica as people often do when they don’t want to reveal their real location), is just to click on the Events link at the very top of the page. This will show you a handy list of events in your city, with tabs to see events your friends have RSVPed to and all events. That last one isn’t necessarily super useful beyond curiosity about what’s going on in the world – just now it’s showing me events in Los Angeles, São Paulo, and a bunch of private events that are likely to be nowhere near me.

You can also find events in your city by searching for your city. In the search results you can either choose the ‘Events’ tab to see a list of events that are probably going on in your city or the ‘Locations’ tab to pick your particular location from a list of possible matches.  I say the Events tab shows you events that are probably happening in your city because if you search for ‘Victoria’, for example, you may see events in Victoria, BC, Victoria, Texas, Victoria, Australia and events on Victoria Street and events with ‘Victoria’ anywhere in the description (for example, events on Victoria Day long weekend). It takes a little more clicking, but if you’re getting unhelpful results from the Events tab, pick your location from the Locations tab (if your city name is common there will be a list of places to choose from), then scroll down to upcoming events.

Just like finding events, there are also lots of ways to find groups. If you’re looking for local groups, you can search for your location (or view your profile and click on it there) and scroll down to “Potentially related groups” – just like with events, you’ll likely see groups for other cities with the same name so read the “About” section for that group carefully before joining. It’s not unusual to see people just put the city name in the name of their group without a qualifier like a State/Province or Country, which leads to many confused Australians joining the Victoria BDSM group.

You can also search for your city name and choose the ‘Groups’ tab in the search results to find local groups. Most groups meant for a particular city/state/region will have that region in the group name so they’re usually easy to find.

If you’re new to kink in general or Fetlife in particular, I highly recommend the Novices & Newbies group. If you happen to be a submissive man or a dominant woman, I also recommend the Submissive men and women who love them group (otherwise known as that group I link to all the time because they have interesting discussions that inspire a lot of my posts). Fetlife also has a handy link to a list of the most popular groups beside the Group search box under the Groups link at the top of the page. The most popular groups are generally the most active just because they have more people, so if you want a quick answer to a question or access to many many useful stickies (I’ll explain what a sticky is shortly), have a look at popular groups list.

You can also find groups by searching for particular interests directly or by finding a related fetish and clicking on that. If you have trouble finding what you’re looking for, try rewording your search terms or changing the spacing around. For whatever reason “knife play” with a space returns zero results while “knifeplay” without a space returns two groups and 24 fetishes, so don’t feel like you must be the only freak on the planet who likes _____ if you have trouble finding groups for people who are into the same thing.

When you join a group, it gets added to the “Groups you joined” list under the “Groups” link so that you can easily find it again. You’ll see discussions you’ve participated in or chosen to follow (by clicking the ‘follow discussion’ link at the bottom of the post that started the thread) to the right under “Discussions Following”.

Now that you’ve found some groups, let’s talk about finding your way around within them. The first thing you’ll see when you click on a group, whether you’ve joined it or not, is the discussions tab. This is, shockingly enough, a list of the discussions/threads going on in that group. By default discussions are ordered by the most recent comment, but you can also use the “order by: newest discussions” link at the top of the page (just under the group title and the “About & Rules”, “Discussions” and “Members” tabs if you’d rather see the newest discussions first.

No matter how you chose to sort the discussions, at the top you will always see the “stickies”. They have a little red badge beside them that says “STICKY” on it and they’re separate from the other discussions, so they’re easy to find. These are threads that the group leaders thought were important and/or useful enough that they should always be easy to find no matter how old they get and how many new threads have been started since those threads were created. If you want to post a question in a group, for fucks sake read the stickies first. You don’t have to read every last word of every last one of them, but if you don’t want people to call you out for being too lazy to read the stickies and asking a question that not only has been asked about a zillion times before but has also been answered in great detail in the stickies, at least skim the fucking stickies! The group leaders made those discussions sticky for a reason, the least you can do is glance at them before asking your question.

Another thing you should do before starting a discussion is read the rules of the group you joined. It’s sad that it has to be said, but it’s also extremely common for people to start discussions that are painfully obviously against the rules. For example, the Submissive men and women who love them group does not allow personal ads. Since it’s an international group, having personal ads that could only possibly apply to a tiny fraction of the members is obviously a complete waste of everyone’s time. But that doesn’t seem to stop people from posting personal ads and getting shit from longtime members who are sick of people not bothering to read the rules. Everybody makes mistakes, and if you apologize graciously and do better next time people will generally be decent human beings about it, but you can very very easily avoid looking like an idiot if you just pay attention and do a little reading.

Speaking of not looking like a jerk, it’s also a very good idea to skim over the last couple pages of discussions before you start your own discussion. This will give you a feel for how that particular group behaves and what questions have already been asked and don’t need to be rehashed right away. You might also discover that this group just isn’t for you. There are tons of groups on Fetlife, don’t feel you need to stay in any particular one if it’s not working for you.

Yet another way you can find things on Fetlife is by what’s referred to as “stalking” or “Fetlife stalking” people. If you find a particularly interesting original post or reply, you may want to click on that user’s name to go to their profile, then scroll down to “Latest activity”. This will show you what they’re been up to on Fetlife, whether that’s “loving” or posting writings, pictures, or videos, or starting or commenting on discussions. They might have other interesting things to say in discussions you haven’t read yet or groups you haven’t joined. You can also find interesting groups by looking at people’s profiles – you’ll see a list of groups they lead and groups they’re a member of on the left of their profile.

And finally, the Kinky & Popular link at the top of the page shows you a list of pictures, videos, and writings that are especially popular. Sometimes they’re good, sometime they’re terrible, but if you’re like me you’ll at least get an angry blog post out of it 🙂

I know this is super long already, but please let me know if I missed anything. Readers, what do you wish you’d known when you first joined Fetlife?

Or, whenever I’m not sure what to write, there’s always something on Fetlife to get pissed off about.

For background, some sad little douchebag posted a writing giving terrible, slut-shaming, generally woman hating “advice” to women who are looking for a Master/Dom/Daddy. To quickly (and snarkily) summarize his points, the gist of the writing was that women aren’t paranoid enough about their hygiene already and should probably hate themselves more, women who post pictures of their bodies online are dirty sluts who can’t be taken seriously, women should be virginal little angels in public and only do dirty naughty things with one man, at all, EVAR, and that women shouldn’t hang on to the ridiculous notion that they have the right to get their needs met in a relationship or leave that relationship.

Now, if this writing had been titled “Soooo you want to be my slave/sub/babygirl”, I would have less of a problem with. It would still be some slut-shaming douchebaggery, but I’d be able to say “Wow, buddy. You are going to be single for a long, long time” and shrug it off. This universal requirements bullshit, however, is complete and utter bullshit, and I’m personally embarrassed to be even vaguely associated with an asshole like this. S-types, please please remember that you do not have to settle for this kind of douchecanoe. Unless public self-humiliation by being seen with a jackass like this is your kink, in which case…. party on?

On to the takedown!

1. How do you present yourself physically?

Do you actually care about how you look and or smell? […]

Dude, did no one ever read you Everyone Poops when you were little? I don’t know how you made it to adulthood without figuring this out, but newsflash: sometimes human bodies smell. Also, in case you’ve been living under a rock for the past 50 years, there’s an entire industry based on the idea that vaginas are fundamentally disgusting and smelly and need to be scoured clean and perfumed so that men can stand to be within ten metres of the owner of said terrible orifice. Women are already told every fucking day that our bodies aren’t good enough the way they are, we don’t need to hear it again from some little shit who can’t deal with the fact that women sweat, fart, and occasionally have unsexy bodily functions.

How I would fix this:

1. I have an extraordinarily sensitive nose and prefer to play with people who are freshly showered. Please let me know if you didn’t have time to shower before coming to the play party, I’d be happy to take a raincheck/negotiate a scene somewhere with a shower available.

There is a tiny part of this that Sir Douchebag didn’t get wrong. I do prefer people who put some care into their appearance and I’m sure many others do too. But by putting care into your appearance I don’t mean hating the fact that you are a mammal and trying to make yourself into a sterile sex doll. I’m talking about things like wearing clean clothing, having showered that morning, and having at least had some gum after eating strong smelling food.

2. How do you present yourself online?

If your pictures are all of your pussy, ass, tits or various scenes of sexual intercourse, how do you expect a Master, Dom or Daddy to take you seriously when you say you want a committed relationship? You are putting it all out there for all to see, comment on and think they can have […]

Someone should certainly be worrying about how they present themselves online, but it’s not the s-types, you slut-shaming assclown. What you’re saying here is that you don’t respect women who do things that harm no one but that you *gasp* don’t like. Now, I hate dick pic avatars as much as anyone else, but this writing, particularly that last line, is some pretty fucking blatant misogyny.

How I would fix this (leaving aside the obvious hatred of women, which is going to take far more than some rewording to fix):

2. I would really love to have a relationship where we appear to be a perfectly normal, well dressed couple and nobody but us knows how freaky we get behind closed doors. That contrast really does it for me.

There is actually a good point in that section of the original writing, but it’s buried at the very end and seems to be much less important to the author than making sure those dirty sluts know they’re worthless. It is actually true that how you present yourself online will affect how much interest you get from potential partners, particularly online. This is an extremely common issue in the Submissive men and women who love them group, where nicer people than I am have patiently explained over and over again that if your entire profile and posting history (protip: we can all see that at the bottom of your profile) is all about how life is terrible and you’re never going to find a dom and why won’t those stuck up bitches give me a chance, people are not super likely to think “Hey, this guy sounds like he would be a lot of fun!”

3. How do you act in public?

Are you bottoming and fucking anyone with a flogger and shows you a bit of attention?

Again with the slut shaming. I’m really starting to wonder if this guy has anything to say that’s not about hating women. Preferring to play in private and only with your partner is fine, shaming people for doing things differently is not. Does this sound exactly like vanilla guys who are threatened by sexually experienced women because they’re afraid they won’t measure up to anyone else? For contrast, a dom who was secure about his skills would be perfectly happy about having a very experienced submissive because people are going to think “Wow, she’s played with tons of great tops and she chose him. He must be something special!” not “Gee, it’s really terrible that he can impress someone who’s been in the scene for more than ten minutes.”

How I would fix this:

3. I prefer to play privately only with my partner. If you really enjoy casually playing in public with different people, I’m not likely to be right for you.

One of many things this guy doesn’t seem to understand is that it’s very common to want to try everything when you first get into the scene. We call it play because this is supposed to be fun! If casual play isn’t your thing that’s fine, but enjoying some casual play doesn’t mean you can’t commit to one person any more than having casual sex means you can’t commit to one person. Which this asshole undoubtedly believes, but that doesn’t mean you should.

4. Understand the M/s D/s is most definitely NOT about how you dictate how you want everything.

In the past few years I have seen a growing trend of “submissives/slaves” that are looking for a Master or Dom and all I see and hear is. “He or She will do the things I want the way I want or I will remove the collar and find someone who will”. […]

Actually, it’s really fucking important to know what you want out of a d/s relationship. There are as many relationships styles as there are people in them, how on earth are you supposed to figure out whether or not your preferred style is compatible with someone who doesn’t know what they want? Oh right, you’re frightened by grown up women and would feel safer with a living doll with no opinions of her own. Buy a RealDoll already, we’ll all be happier that way.

How I would fix this:

4. Don’t come to me with your ideal relationship completely scripted out and expect me to follow that script. A power exchange relationship is something we build together, not a fantasy that I act out for you.

Now, that’s not really what the original writing said, but it’s the most positive thing I could come up with that kind of relates to what DoucheyDom actually said. This guy seems really up in arms about the idea that s-types get to have needs and insist on getting those needs met. Again and again I see poorly hidden insecurity in this writing. It’s scary when women have experience, it’s scary when women do things that don’t turn me on, it’s scary when women say that not just anybody is good enough for them, it’s scary when women like things I don’t like. The problem here isn’t that s-types are a bunch of smelly, demanding sluts, it’s that this sad little shit is no way ready for a grown up relationship. Dude, go back to middle school. It’s much more your speed.

One of my many, many pet peeves is people who call themselves “true” or “real” doms/subs/masters/slaves/whatevers. This bugs me for a bunch of reasons, but for me the worst one is the way some people use it as a weapon.

Sadly, it’s not uncommon to hear “well, a true sub would …” or “I guess you’re not a true dom” from someone who thinks you should do things their way. If you’ve been in the scene for a while, you’re pretty likely to recognize and brush off that kind of douchebaggery, but if you’re new and worried that you’re not a good sub/dom/slave/master/whatever (which is a completely normal thing to worry about!) then you may, through no fault of your own, be easier to manipulate.

As an aside, that’s why I spend so much time yelling about how you shouldn’t blindly believe or respect just anybody, including me. That’s not to say you shouldn’t be polite, but you absolutely do not have to tell people how wise and amazing they are when you think they’re full of shit. People are wrong about stuff all the time, advice that works for other people may be terrible for you, and the only person who gets to decide what’s right for you is you.

But back at my original rant, not only is it a dick move to try to make people feel like they’re not good enough, but there’s no such thing as a true [kinky label of your choice]. There is no accreditation board that gives out “true” certificates, there’s no official test you have to pass to be a “true” whatever. There are people who spend less time playing than you do, and people who care less than you do about having the best fetish gear or the coolest toys, and people who prefer less structure and/or ritual in their d/s than you do, but none of that makes someone’s kink not count. It just makes them not right for you. You’re going to run into a lot of people who aren’t right for you. If they’re not hurting anyone there’s no need to give them shit about it.

And finally, to quote Margaret Thatcher: “Power is like being a lady… if you have to tell people you are, you aren’t.” Same with being a [kinky label of your choice]. If you have to go around telling people how very domly/submissive and true and real you are, you aren’t. If you were, it would come through in your actions.

If you see people calling themselves “real” or “true” or telling you that you aren’t, ask yourself if they have something to gain from making you feel like you’re wrong.

So Ferret wrote an excellent post called You Don’t Know Me, And That’s Okay (also available on Ferret’s blog if you don’t do Fetlife) about how it’s not fair to expect women to magically you know that you are safe to meet alone in a secluded place even if you know that you would never hurt or pressure a woman. That seems pretty logical, right? I mean, it’s not like rapists and assholes walk around with convenient signs on their backs, so women kind of have to be cautious with everyone we haven’t gotten to know well.

So of course some whiny little shit shows up in the comments to cry about how terrible it is when women insist on not just meeting in public, but meeting at a munch. I guess it’s only okay for women to have boundaries when those boundaries don’t inconvenience men. God fucking forbid some guy doesn’t get his dick wet because he’s not comfortable going to a munch.

It is true that if you’re only willing to meet potential partners/play partners at a munch you will rule out some people who might otherwise be excellent partners. It’s true that not everyone can take the risk of being outed, not everyone can physically get to a munch, and not everyone even fucking likes going to munches. Not wanting to go to a munch for any reason is absolutely valid. Whining about people only being interested in meeting you at a munch, on the other hand, is just fucking pathetic.

Guys, if a lady will only meet you at a munch, she’s not fucking forcing you to do shit. She’s simply stating her boundaries. If those boundaries don’t work for you, guess what? You don’t have to go! I promise you will live if you don’t get to fuck her.

Honestly, you should be happy you found out she wasn’t compatible with you before you two even met. How much would it suck to, say, have a job with a morality clause, start falling for someone and then find out that kink is a huge part of her social life that she refuses to give up and there’s no way you can be together and keep your job? Or what if kink is something private for you and you just don’t like going to kink events? Do you really want to have a relationship where she feels like a dirty little secret and you feel pressured to do something that feels wrong to you? That sounds miserable for everyone.

Now, if the woman who was only interested in meeting men at a munch complained that she was having a terrible time finding a boyfriend, then it would be perfectly reasonable to suggest that maybe there are great guys out there who can’t go to munches for whatever reason. But unless a woman’s boundary isn’t working for her and she asks for advice, you really have no business saying a goddamn thing about how she runs her life.

Maybe she only meets people at munches for her own safety, maybe she’s had a lot of no-shows and wants to at least have fun with her friends if her date doesn’t show up, maybe she really wants to see how her friends react to someone before she gets serious about him, maybe she’s extremely busy and the night of the munch is the only night she can meet anyone, maybe kink events are really important to her and she wants to date someone who will go to munches and parties with her. It doesn’t fucking matter what her reason is, what matters is that you treat her like a human being who has the right to make her own decisions. If you can’t do that, you deserve to stay single.

And for the record, having a boundary isn’t entitlement, like Mr Hard-done-by who inspired this post was whining. Entitlement is what allows you to even think that someone should change their boundaries for your convenience.

For those who have somehow avoided the news coverage, on August 9th 2014 a white cop, Officer Darren Wilson murdered Michael Brown, an unarmed black 18 year old. Since Michael’s murder there has been increasing unrest in Ferguson, which I blame on law enforcement’s mishandling of both the crime and the protests. Wikipedia (not the most credible source, I know) has a timeline full of more credible links. There is also abundant coverage at The Guardian, NBC News,CBC, and VICE, just to link a few.

The latest insult to the personhood of black people came when the grand jury failed to indict Darren Wilson, who we should remember murdered an unarmed 18 year old. If that shouldn’t automatically go to a trial, I don’t know what should.

Depending on which news coverage you’ve seen, you may have been told all sorts of ridiculous bullshit about Michael Brown’s murder. This masterpost addresses many of the lies told about Michael Brown and Darren Wilson.

The lie that makes me the most angry is that Michael Brown’s murder was not about race. Michael was walking to his grandmother’s house with a friend. Eric Frein, on the other hand, was captured alive with only minor injuries after killing a cop and leading police on a 48 day manhunt. Using only those two sentences, I’m sure you can guess who was black and who was white. There is not a chance in hell a black cop killer would have lived a second longer than it took the officers hunting him to get a clear shot.

If you would like to do something to help, the Ferguson Defense Fund, St Louis Area Foodbank, and Ferguson Library could all use your donations. There are also many non-financial things you can do as a white person – I’m assuming that most of my audience is white, given how white the kink community is.

Given that this is a kink blog and I’m white, some of you may be wondering why I’m ranting about cops murdering black people. It’s my duty as a decent human being to use the platform I have to speak out against injustice. I think we also have a duty as kinky people to understand how power can be hideously misused and to make sure we use ours responsibly.

Jess Mahler, an excellent author and blogger was kind enough to offer me this guest post on the subject of abusers and the lies our culture tells us about them. Thanks Jess!

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The stories we tell ourselves matter. So often I hear people say “It’s just fiction!” Conveniently forgetting that we use stories as teaching tools in school because they work. But I’m not going to beat that horse today. Instead, I want to talk about one specific story. The story of the abuser.

The abuser is a mean, selfish, angry man. He is a control freak who uses manipulation, coercion, and threats of (or actual) violence to keep the people he claims to love under his thumb. He is a horrible, evil person who may also be insane, but also may be redeemed by the power of love.

This is the story our culture tells about abusers. We have been seen it in movies, read it in books, talked over, around and under it, but we almost never look at it straight in the face and talk about it. It is this story which underlies all out discussions about abuse, our attempts to address abuse in the scene, and our ideas about what an abuser looks like.

This story is a lie. Abusers are rarely any of these things. Many abusers are like this young man, thinking they are helping the person they abuse. Some don’t know how to have a healthy relationship and believe thanks to many romcoms, romance books and porn, that they way they  are behaving is healthy. Others may know that their behavior is wrong, but not know what is right or where to go to get help. Some may be dealing with mental or physical illness, lashing out from pain or inability to do anything else. And some are, in fact, the angry selfish prick of our popular narrative. Perhaps the most dangerous lie is that all abusers are men.

If we are ever going to deal with abuse in the scene, we need to change how we think about abusers. We need to stop thinking of monsters, and start thinking of people. We must be willing to look past a charismatic personality, to not dismiss the possibility that someone we like might be an abuser. And most importantly we need to be willing to look at ourselves.

The scene generally promotes an awareness of our behavior and its consequences in the dungeon. We encourage each other to know the risks of our chosen activities, to keep communication going within a scene in case problems develop, to honestly assess our mental state and ability to play safely, and to regularly check ourselves for the possibility that we may make a mistake. We need to start taking that same self-awareness to other parts of our interactions and relationships. To build healthy communication outside of scenes so we can recognize and deal with problems as they develop. To actively seek out and learn healthy relationship techniques, the way we learn new bondage techniques. To stop and assess our words, actions, and ask ourselves “Is this the way to build a healthy relationship?”

We need to understand that each of us can be an abuser, because only then will it be possible for the people who abusers to say, “I’m fucking up, I’m hurting people, I love, and I need help learning to stop.” For as long as saying, “I am an abuser,” is the same as saying, “I am a monster,” we will never be able to build the structures to effectively address abuse within the scene. (And for the rare abuser who is the selfish, angry, control freak of popular culture? We can’t help them, we can’t change them, we can only remove them to protect ourselves and others.)

Before I wrap up, I want to make one important distinction. Abusers are not rapists. Studies have shown that contrary to our popular view of the drunk college boy who got carried away, the majority of rapes are committed by serial rapists who deliberately plan out their attacks–yes, that includes so-called “date rape.” Rape and abuse may overlap, but they are not two sides of the same coin.

The reposting continues! This rant about how Elise Sutton is a) wrong about everything, and b) almost certainly a submissive man running a scam, was originally published in early 2013, and the comments on the original post are worth reading if only for this gem posted by perversecowgirl:

Let me just be perfectly clear here: in an Elise Sutton-y situation where I’m a “goddess” and my partner is inferior to me, I’m not going to prance around in a fucking leather thong and stiletto boots. Outfits like that are uncomfortable and restrict my movement; I have no reason to want to wear them. Certainly not to titillate my partner; why would I have any desire to please some inferior male that way? Might as well dress up pretty for the family dog.

That’s just such a great skewering of the idea that women are somehow both superior to men and exist to turn them on.

I also have a followup post, How to introduce  your partner to femdom, for people who would like something a little more helpful than a long list of don’ts.

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Or, how many things can Elise Sutton get wrong in a single article? There’s a lot of bad advice out there for submissive men, but I think Elise Sutton’s is especially bad.

In the very first paragraph of her article How To Introduce Your Wife or Girlfriend To The Female Domination Lifestyle she says:

All women are superior to men and all women are a potential Dominatrix.

The idea that any gender is magically superior is so stupid it’s just boring, so let’s move on to the other horribly offensive part of this sentence. The idea that all women are potential dominatrixes is bad and wrong on so many levels. First of all, it’s hugely insulting to submissive women, switches, kinksters who aren’t interested in power exchange, and vanilla women to act like their preferences and identities don’t count. I think that submissive men are the hottest thing since humans discovered fire, but that doesn’t mean I can’t respect other people’s desires for dominant/switchy/kinky but not into power exchange/vanilla men.

Not only is saying that all women can be dominant insulting, it’s just wrong. Not all women can be or have any interest in being dominant. Given that, it’s just cruel to give the submissive men that article is aimed at false hope. Even if the wife or girlfriend they hope to introduce to femdom actually turns out to be interested in it, there’s no guarantee that her interests will be compatible with his. What if she ends up really enjoying giving orders, but what makes him feel like a good submissive is knowing what she needs before she has to give an order? What if she gets into verbal humiliation and cuckolding, but all he wants is some bondage and a spanking now and then?

This is a little bit of an aside, but for fuck’s sake people, not everyone has to be kinky. Enjoying missionary position sex with the lights out doesn’t mean you’re unadventurous or unevolved or boring or whatever. It just means you enjoy missionary position sex with the lights out.

Therefore, if you are a submissive male who is married or in a serious relationship with a woman, you need to search no further for your Dominatrix. She is right in front of you. The challenge for you is to draw out her dominant nature with your submissive nature. This is not always easy, as most women have been programmed from the time they were born that they are to be in subjection to men.

The first part is just.. ugh, but the last part isn’t completely awful. It does take some time for women in particular to get used to the idea that being dominant doesn’t make them unlovable harridans.

However, if you seduce her dominant nature and draw it out of her, once it starts to come to the forefront then you can introduce her to some D&S and B&D activities. So how do you seduce your wife’s dominant nature with your submissive nature?

You begin by treating her like a Queen. You begin by serving her as if she was already the dominant woman of your dreams. Be humble and submissive around her. Don’t argue with her, don’t yell at her, and don’t give her any back talk. Your purpose in your relationship is to serve her. What she says goes, so be quick to agree with her.

Not every woman has a dominant nature! But moving on, don’t you think it would freak a woman out of her husband suddenly started acting ‘humble and submissive’ around her? Also, who’s to say your version of ‘humble and submissive’ has anything to do with what the woman who’s being submitted at actually wants? ‘Submissive’ is not the word I’d use for someone who does what makes him happy without asking me if that’s what I want. ‘Self-absorbed’ is what I’d call that. Agreeing with everything I say isn’t actually helpful either. If I come up with a plan, I really want to know if it’s a terrible plan. Just being submissive doesn’t mean a person’s input isn’t valuable.

Another thing that you can do to seduce your wife’s dominant nature is you can offer to give her foot and body massages.

Not everyone likes massages! Not everyone likes having their feet touched! It’s almost like there’s no dominant female hivemind.

Go and kneel next to her, take off her shoes, and rub her tired feet. As she relaxes in pleasure, work your massage up her legs and massage and lightly scratch her legs.

That’s awfully specific. Also, scratch my legs and I’ll slap you. I have extremely dry skin, and scratching it actually makes the itching worse. While we’re at it, a shoulder or neck massage would do me a lot more good than a foot massage since I spend my work day sitting down in front of a computer.

Eventually, you might take more liberty as you rub her feet. You might start to kiss and lick her feet. I wouldn’t do this the first time, but if she responds positively to the massages, then keep adding to them. You might work your kissing and licking from her feet, up her legs, and then to her crotch.

Not everyone likes having their feet kissed or licked! For that matter, not everyone likes having a massage suddenly turn into sexytimes. And that’s assuming the woman even likes oral sex, which not everyone does!

Kiss her body all over and make love to her with your mouth and tongue. Do not ever penetrate her with your penis, unless she requests it.

What if she doesn’t request it? Given the lack of communication this article assumes, I don’t think it’s at all unreasonable to wonder what happens if this woman never feels comfortable requesting a particular sex act. Thanks to all of our culture’s myths about men and sex, she might even assume her partner doesn’t want to penetrate her and feel hurt and rejected.

Eventually, you might want to buy a vibrator or a dildo and you can please her with it.

Not everyone likes vibrators! Some women, like me, really really like bio cocks.

The goal is to get both you and her in the habit of viewing sex as being for the woman’s pleasure. It will be for the man’s pleasure only if the woman says so.

That’s a perfectly good goal if both partners get a chance to consent to it, but it’s kind of weird to just spring it on someone. She might be really turned on by her partner’s reactions, in which case sex that’s all about the man doing things to her could be boring and unsatisfying.

Whenever she give you permission to enter her or whenever she is giving you pleasure, always ask her permission before you climax. She will again probably be amazed that you are even asking, but eventually she will come to really like the idea that she controls your orgasms.

You’re not the boss of me, Elise! *stamps foot and pouts* I will not like orgasm control just because you say I should! Orgasm control also doesn’t work without fucking talking about it like grown ups. How is this woman supposed to know it’s okay to say no? How is she supposed to know how to handle it if her husband/boyfriend/partner gets frustrated? How is she supposed to know how much denial he can take before he needs an orgasm? I guess she’s just supposed to be psychic. Funny, I thought psychic-powers levels of anticipatory service were a submissive thing, not a dominant thing.

Still another way to seduce your wife’s dominant nature is to buy her little gifts, bring her flowers, and write poetry for her. Take her out to dinner or shopping. Perhaps you could even cook dinner for her and serve her dinner like a waiter. Another thing you can do is to prepare her a bubble bath, undress her, bathe her, then take her to the bedroom and orally service her.

Not everyone likes gifts, flowers, or poetry written for them! And again with the oral service. It’s almost like this whole article has more to do with what turns submissive men on than what might actually make their partners happy.

You could buy her a leather skirt or a pair of leather pants and compliment her on how sexy she looks in leather and how submissive seeing her in leather makes you feel.

Really? Dressing her up like a dolly is supposed to make her feel dominant? Also, I missed the part where the man explains what submission is, how he feels, and why she would want him to feel extra submissive.

Whenever she asks you why you are treating her so good or acting so submissive around her, tell her it’s because you love her and because you have come to realize that women are superior beings, and as such they should be treated like Queens.

Yeah, being told that my partner has suddenly decided women are superior beings wouldn’t make me want to head for the hills. That’s not creepy at all.

When do you bring up D&S and B&D? When she starts to respond positively to your submission and she starts to ask you more about Female Domination.

Not ‘if’ she starts to respond positively to your submission, but ‘when’, huh? It’s awfully convenient how absolutely all women can be molded to fit their male partners’ fetishes.

From this point on, slowly introduce her to D&S and B&D. Buy her some fetish clothes, and maybe a leather paddle or a whip.

Not everyone likes fetish wear! Not everyone likes impact toys! Not everyone who likes impact toys like whips or paddles in particular. Learning to use a whip takes some work, deciding for her that she’s going to take up a time-consuming hobby is kind of a dick move.

 Not every woman will react the same and not every woman will grow at the same pace. However, I believe that if you are persistent and consistent than your wife will eventually overcome her inhibitions and she will allow her dominant nature to freely flow out of her.

Oh for fuck’s sake. Damn straight not every woman will react the same way. Some of us aren’t dominant! What you call persistence that could convince a woman it’s safe to try to overcome her inhibitions, I call relentless nagging that a woman eventually gives in to so she can have five minutes of peace.

Then she will totally seize the reigns of your relationship and she will fulfill her potential as the dominant woman that she was meant to be. Good Luck.

Take your ideas about what women are meant to be and fuck off. Female domination is more than just another way for women to fail to measure up.

Here’s another blast from the past, this time from July 2012. Sadly, the link to Lily LLoyd’s blog is broken, but I like the think the post basically makes sense without it.

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LilyLloyd wrote this amazing post about how “The whole born dominant bullshit is… well, bullshit”. It’s fantastic and you should read it right now. And it gets better! A Feminist Sub left this brilliant comment:

Really interesting post! I do have to say that I have a problem with the old Leather idea of bottoming as a step on the way to topping, because I think it conveys an idea that topping/domming is more valuable than bottoming/submitting. Like subs are simply people who couldn’t cut it as doms.

I don’t *think* that was the intended message with that tradition, but I do think that it’s contributed to domism in contemporary BDSM culture – I think the “standards” for calling oneself a dom are much higher than for calling oneself a sub. To be a sub, you just need submissive desires – to be a dom, you need credentials. Hence all the ranting about how there are no “real doms.” And I think that’s another reason that it seems like there are so many more doms than subs.

That blew my mind. It makes so much sense, but somehow I just never saw it before. Of course we don’t see submission as valuable in its own right if we treat it like it’s just a stage you go through before you reach the real goal of becoming dominant.

Why don’t we ever suggest that submissive/bottom type people try topping? We tell tops all the time that you should bottom before you top. It’s certainly true that there are lots of things you can learn by bottoming, but there are also plenty of things you can learn from topping. I can tell someone I really do want to hear about what my bottom wants until I’m blue in the face, but if they try topping it might click for them that’s it really is helpful to get some feedback.

Then again, it would totally destroy the dominant mystique if any lowly submissive could pick up a flogger and try it out for themselves. Anyone can bottom after all, it’s only the chosen few who can top. And if you actually believe that, there’s a Nigerian Prince who would like to speak with you, you poor stupid fuck.

Assuming that just anyone can bottom but topping is special is pretty much the dictionary definition ofdomism. With how passionately I hate the idea that I’m somehow more worthy because I decided to call myself dominant, I’m amazed and kind of disturbed that I never saw it before. I should know better, but I just didn’t see until A Feminist Sub pointed it out. This is how ingrained domism is in BDSM culture, and this is why I rail so hard against it when I see it.