One of many highlights of Westcoast Bound 2014 was the opportunity to personally thank Andrea Zanin for her amazing blog post the problem with polynormativity. I don’t currently identify as polyamorous, but I did dabble in it for a little while and got pretty badly burned. Andrea Zanin’s post (and interview with Cunning Minx on Polyamory Weekly) were really helpful to me. Finally, someone was saying that the way I was treated was not okay, that even if someone is ‘just a secondary’ they have the right to be treated like a human being.

One particularly interesting thing about that post is that it took over 200 comments before a secondary partner spoke up in favour of the polynormative model of a primary couple having a girlfriend or boyfriend on the side. Over 200 comments! Unfortunately I can’t link directly to that comment, but if you search the post for “Jennifer Storm – April 3, 2013 at 7:01 pm” you’ll find it. Plenty of butthurt couples showed up to talk about what a big meany Andrea Zanin was for saying they should treat their secondaries like people, not toys who can be thrown out when they become inconvenient, but suspiciously few secondaries defended that model. That alone seems like a pretty strong sign something is badly wrong.

Franklin Veaux wrote an excellent post called A Proposed Secondary’s Bill of Rights, and Aggie wrote another great post called Non-primary partners tell: How to treat us well.

On the one hand it’s great to see people saying “Hey, non-primary partners are in fact people and actually do have feelings”, but on the other hand, to heavily rephrase a point Andrea Zanin already made in her post (which you read already, right? It’s awesome, go read it): what the fuck is wrong with us when we have to tell people to treat their non-primary partners with basic goddamn decency? Seriously, what kind of asshole has to be told that “protecting the couple” is not a good enough reason to treat a secondary partner like they’re disposable?

While not all kinky people are polyamorous (although there does seem to be quite a bit of overlap), there are plenty of us who play with people besides our partners and it’s worth thinking about how we treat those people. Not having sex with a play partner doesn’t mean it’s not still an intimate relationship, not so different from a secondary partner.

And if Andrea Zanin’s post makes you feel extremely defensive, then I hate to break it to you, but you just might be an asshole.

Cuckolding, at least the way it’s usually presented, is one of those kinks that has just never made sense to me. Which is sad, because if it were just tweaked a little it could be super hot.

When I use the word cuckolding, I’m specifically talking about the fantasy of a cruel dominant woman cheating on her pathetic submissive husband with a Real Man (often a black man, because racism is totally not a huge turn off) who she submits to. In a word, ugh.

For starters, the racism that’s so often a part of that fantasy is just gross. Black guys are people, they don’t exist just to somehow degrade your wife by having sex with her. I know, I know, you can’t help what you’re turned on by, but you can goddamn well help how you talk about it and how you treat actual people outside of your fantasies.

The part I take the most personally is the idea that all women are really submissive at heart and can only be truly sexually fulfilled by being dominated. Fuck that noise. Just because you’re too stupid to grasp the concept of sexually dominant women doesn’t mean they don’t exist. They just don’t hang around with you because you’re an asshole.

And finally, the idea that a submissive man can’t satisfy a woman is incredibly insulting. You may have eroticized being bad in bed, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to date a guy who can’t be bothered to get me off. It’s not even that hard, you just have to be able to follow simple directions! There’s no reason – besides being more interested in his fantasy of how he should treat a dominant woman than in actually satisfying the dominant woman he’s with – that a submissive guy wouldn’t be able to sexually satisfy a woman.

So, given all those huge glaring problems with the usual cuckolding fantasy, how do we make it hot?

First, ditch the racism. Sort that shit out on your own time, don’t ask someone to be a prop in your fantasy.

Second, ditch the dominant guy. That part just makes no sense whatsoever – being a dominant woman, submissive guys are my definition of hotness. Why on earth would I want to fuck someone who is inherently less attractive to me than the lovely submissive man who presumably wants me (the whole cuckolding thing kind of falls apart if all the ‘cuckold’ just doesn’t care who the woman has sex with)?

Not that dominant men can’t be perfectly lovely people, but I’m sure they’d much rather have sex with someone who actually wants them, so leave the poor guys alone.

And finally, ditch the idea that submissive men can’t satisfy a woman. If you can’t get a woman off, the problem is between your ears, not between your legs.

Now that we’ve gotten rid of the gross parts of the fantasy, we’re left with the delicious melty core of heightened power dynamics, helplessness, and unfairness. Showing your partner that you get to have sex with whoever you like and he doesn’t? Hot. Tying him up and making him watch, desperately turned on and with no way to do anything about it? Hot. Having as many orgasms as you want while your partner isn’t even allowed to masturbate? Hot. For emotional sadists it’s probably hot to humiliate their partner by ‘cheating’ on him, but I’m not an emotional sadist so I could be completely wrong there.

Cuckolding is never going to be everyone’s kink, but think how much easier it would be to get dominant women to try it if you didn’t ask them to be racist, submissive, and to tolerate you being a bad lover.

I like to think most people have a handle on the idea that you’re still a real kinky person if all you like is a gentle spanking now and then, but we still seem to have a lot of trouble with the idea of casual d/s. I’m as guilty of it as anyone else, I’ve done my share of ragging on people for having ‘velcro collars’ (for those who haven’t heard the term, it’s basically the kink version of serial monogamy, but probably with more of an implication that the person with the ‘velcro collar’ will take it off shortly and move on to the next top/dom/master), and privately shaking my head at people who talk excitedly about their new Master when they’ve known the guy for maybe a week.

But then one day I read a short post on tumblr (at least, I think it was tumblr. If this sounds familiar let me know in the comments) asking what was so bad about casual d/s and you know, I didn’t have a good answer. If casual relationships are okay and casual play is okay, then exactly what is so bad about casual d/s?

For me a collar means a serious long term commitment but doesn’t mean someone else can’t enjoy giving or taking a collar for a week, a weekend, or just a few hours. If everyone involved understands that it’s temporary, what’s the harm? If I did have a collared submissive, someone else’s temporary collar wouldn’t harm that relationship any more than gay marriage harms heterosexual marriage. The worst case scenario there is a bit of confusion when I’m talking with someone and run into mismatched ideas about what a d/s relationship means, and let’s be honest, practically none of the words we use in kink have precise definitions. If they did, negotiation would be so much simpler.

D/s certainly lends itself to strong feelings, and plenty of people have fallen in love with the dynamic and mistaken that for falling in love with the other person in the dynamic, but sex does the same thing for many people and plenty of us have casual sex and keep it casual with no problems. If casual sex or casual d/s doesn’t work for you that’s absolutely fine, but don’t go pretending it doesn’t work for anyone.

Now, I’m not saying nobody ever jumps into a relationship without thinking it through, or replaces partner after partner with the next shiny new thing, but unless you’re really, really sure that’s what someone is doing, can we just give people a break? If you’ve never had a short term relationship (or even a crush) that you felt very strongly about, go ahead and throw the first stone – right after I finish calling you a liar.

First, a definition: by a no-safeword scene or playing without a safeword I mean a scene or situation where the participants have agreed that the bottom will not have a safeword to stop the scene and will have to rely on the top knowing when they have really and truly had enough. This is very different from another kind of technically safewordless scene where the participants agree to use plain English, making special code words that really mean no unnecessary.

Lots of people, myself included, are really attracted to the idea of doing a no-safeword scene. I would never want to physically or emotionally damage someone, but having it be my choice when to stop would make me feel more powerful. My understanding of the s-type’s end (please comment and correct me if I’m wrong) is that giving up their safeword makes them feel even less in control in a way they enjoy, and that masochists who want to push their limits sometimes give up their safewords to see if they can go past their self-imposed boundaries.

Playing without a safeword certainly isn’t for everyone, but it can be awesome for the people it does work for. What I’m curious about, though, is whether it’s even possible to really play without a safeword. Using myself as an example, I’m not sure there is any amount of prior negotiation that would make me feel comfortable keeping a scene going while my bottom yelled ‘RED RED I NEED TO STOP RIGHT NOW’, or ‘STOP OR I’LL CALL THE POLICE’, or ‘THIS RELATIONSHIP IS OVER.’ It’s certainly possible that I might slowly and carefully work my way up to understanding that ‘RED OH FUCK IT HURTS’ doesn’t mean ‘stop right now or you’ll be paying for a lot of therapy’, but I can’t see that happening for ‘THIS RELATIONSHIP IS OVER.’ This may mean I’d be an extremely frustrating person to try to do a no-safeword scene with.

However, I don’t think it’s an unusual problem that a top would be more concerned about their ongoing relationship with their bottom than with continuing a scene the bottom might not want anymore. If that’s true, then I think it’s worth talking about how a no-safeword scene can make safewords harder to access but acting as if there really is no safeword is just an act. The same way I think it’s important to remember that a partner can leave you at any time no matter what kind of slave contract they’ve signed, I think it’s important to be realistic about the potential for even the most carefully negotiated no-safeword scene to be ended early by the equivalent of a safeword. Kidding yourself about that is just going to make you unhappy.

Readers, have any of you done no-safeword scenes? If you haven’t, would you? If you have, how did they work out?

I’m going to be talking about violent misogyny in this post, if you’re having a bad day you probably want to skip this one. Continue Reading →

One of my (many) pet peeves is people who think there is some sort of female dominant hive mind. Now, I’m sure they don’t literally believe we are the Borg, but I’ve seen far too many people asking what dominant women like as if we’re a monolith.

Asking “do dominant women like x?” makes no more sense than asking “do brunettes like x?” or “do 31 year olds like x?” If you wouldn’t expect brunettes or 31 year olds to like the same things, why would you expect dominant women to? Sure, being dominant means I  have a little more in common with another dominant woman than I do with any other random brunette, but it’s still quite a small part of my life. Like everyone else I have a job, a social life (well, when work isn’t trying to eat my entire life), and hobbies that have nothing to do with how I like to get off. I have more in common with fellow gamers, programmers, or introverts than I do with any given female dom.

If you think ‘do dominant women like x?” is a  meaningful question, either you think I am nothing more than my interest in kink, or you think dominant women are interchangeable drones in a Borg-like collective. Shockingly enough, I don’t like being reduced to my kinks or stripped of my individuality. As little as dominant women have in common, there is one thing we tend to agree on: we hate not being treated like people.

What I really don’t understand is why it matters what random dominant women you’re not in a relationship with want. If there’s a particular woman you get along with and would like to know better, treat her like a goddamn person and ask her what she wants. If there’s not, what good is knowing what a bunch of other women like when you do meet the right dom for you? ‘But 8 out 10 doms like it!’ is going to sway absolutely no one if she isn’t interested in whichever kink you’re trying to convince her to try. Even if 8 out of 10 doms really do like x, being able to do that isn’t going to convince someone you’re right for her.

My guess is that the men who ask if dominant women like x just want to be reassured that one day they’ll find a partner who shares their kinks. That’s a totally reasonable thing to want, but come on guys, you can ask for that without treating me like a faceless drone. And honestly, phrasing that request as “does any else like x?” is just irritating. It’s the internet, there is literally always someone else who likes x. Asking that question on a forum just makes you look like you’re too stupid or lazy to google it.

It’s also possible these guys want to know what dominant women like so they can be good subs. Unfortunately, treating us like we’re interchangeable is a terrible way to be a good sub, as well as being incredibly disrespectful. If you can’t treat us like people, no amount of back massages or pedicures are going to convince us to give you the time of day.

If you insist on treating us like a hive mind, don’t be surprised if that hive is mysteriously united in their total lack of interest in you.

It’s annoying enough when non-kinky people try to pretend power dynamics don’t exist (sticking your fingers in your ears and hollering ‘I don’t see colour’ does not stop Black people from getting arrested/beaten up/murdered, and acting like it will just makes you look like an idiot), but it’s so much more aggravating when kinky people, who are supposedly all about power dynamics try to pretend there is no difference between an older, male, famous photographer and a very young, female, unknown model.

For those who don’t do Fetlife, the gist of that link is that a 19 female model arranged a photo shoot with a very well known fetish photographer (who of course she can’t name publicly thanks to Fetlife’s terms of service and (I’m assuming) a rational interest in avoiding being accused of trying to stir up drama), who then flipped his shit when she tried to bring a friend to keep an eye on her.

The really irritating part for me is that Mr Big Shot photographer and a number of the commentors on that writing all acted like the photographer was at just as much risk as the model and therefore it was completely unreasonable for her to have a spotter but not him (she decided to bring a spotter at the last minute and he didn’t have time to arrange one of his own). Honestly, it’s like they’ve spent their entire lives in a cave on Mars.

First of all, we live in a misogynistic society. This should not be any sort of news if you have ever read a book, watched a tv show, browsed the internet, or gone outside. Thanks to the misogyny we’re all steeped in it would be terrifyingly easy for even an unknown male photographer to dismiss a female model’s claims of inappropriate behaviour by saying it was a misunderstanding, she’s just overreacting/too sensitive/not cut out to be a model/unprofessional/has some mysterious grudge. On the other hand, if he were to accuse her or her spotter of stealing his equipment, he would most likely be believed without question.

We also live in a rape culture. If a male photographer sexually assaulted a female model, many people would fall all over themselves to blame her for her own assault. She certainly wouldn’t be able to go to the police if she were the kind of dirty slut who would would let a stranger tie her up and take pictures of her. If she doesn’t bring three bodyguards, perform an in-depth background check, and interview every model who has ever worked with that photographer, it must be her own fault if he decides to assault her. But if she wants to bring a friend she’s overreacting and as good as taking out full page ads accusing the photographer of being a rapist.

We’re also bad at dealing with the idea that people are not simply all good, or all bad. A brilliant photographer who creates beautiful art can also be an asshole who ignores his model’s boundaries any time he thinks he can get away with it. An activist trying to hold governments accountable for their actions can commit sexual assault. Once someone has done something good, we don’t want to believe they’ve also done anything awful. We don’t want to believe we were such bad judges of character, we don’t want to stop enjoying their art, we don’t want our view of the world to be upended, so we just quietly sweep it under the rug when someone we think is good does something terrible.

Finally, let’s not pretend age doesn’t matter. We all spend our whole childhoods being told to listen to people who are older than we are, but we’re supposed to magically throw all that conditioning off when we hit 19/21/whatever the age of majority is in your country? No, that’s not how people work. It’s hard to tell an authority figure to back the fuck up. That’s exactly why so many predators go after people who are much younger than they are – people their own age won’t take their shit.

So with all those power dynamics in play, where the fuck do you get off saying that both photographer and model are at equal risk? We of all people should understand that power dynamics do exist, that they do put some people at much greater risk than others, and that we need to pay attention to them if we’re going to treat people fairly. Come on everyone, this isn’t fucking rocket science.

Every time I see a submissive man describe himself as an “alpha male” I think “ugh, not another one.” Judging by the comments I see on Fetlife, I’m far from the only one who thinks that. For the benefit of the many men who innocently use that term without understanding why it irritates some people so much, here’s why it bugs me.

1. It’s extremely vague. If you mean your job involves managing people, say that. If you mean that you’re headstrong and independent, say that. If you mean that you’re a “tough guy” who hates asking for help, say that! Making people try to guess what the hell you’re talking about is just irritating.

2. It’s insulting. Going out of your way to to  point out how very “alpha” you are says that you think most submissive men are losers/doormats/weak and you want to distance yourself from that. Shockingly enough, people who actually like submissive men or who are submissive men themselves get cranky when someone implies that they’re not “real men.” Guys, I swear it’s possible to talk about how great you are without insulting anyone else.

3. It’s often a sign of insecurity. Seriously, you might as well just carry a sign that says “I’m not comfortable being a submissive man”. Secure people say “I’m submissive and I’m awesome.” Insecure people say “I’m submissive but I’m not a loser, I swear. I have my own home and a job and everything! Wait, where are you going?” Now there’s nothing wrong with feeling insecure, and thanks to our fucked up culture it’s extremely common for submissive guys to have a hard time reconciling submission and masculinity, but if you’re trying to impress people by going on and on about what an “alpha male” you are, you’re shooting yourself in the foot.

4. It’s ignorant. If you think being “alpha” and submissive makes you a special snowflake, you’re not only not special, but you’re also not terribly bright. It is simply not that hard to find resources for submissive men who aren’t particularly feminine. Use google, read the goddamn stickies, lurk in Fetlife or other groups for a little while before you post. If you pay any attention at all, you will notice that there are plenty of submissive men out there who are “tough guys”/have high powered jobs/don’t immediately fall to the floor when a dominant woman looks their way.

So now that you know better, do better, okay?

Or, things I really fucking hate being called.

There are two main reasons I so passionately hate being called by anything but my name. One, it proves you haven’t been paying attention, and two, it’s creepy and gross to act like we have a d/s dynamic when we don’t.

I understand the fear of making a bad impression by not being respectful enough, but come on guys. It is not that hard to figure out what title a woman might want you to use, if any. All you need to do is read her goddamn profile. If you can’t be bothered to do that, then why the fuck are you messaging her in the first place? When people call me Goddess or Mistress, I know they have no interest in me as a person because there is nothing in my profile that makes me sound like I have any interest whatsoever in high protocol or grandiose titles. The only reason I can think of that someone would call me Goddess is because that title turns him on and he really doesn’t give a shit what I think of it.

If English isn’t your first language or you’re not great at picking up social cues, it’s always fine to ask people what they like to be called. If someone reacts badly to that, they’re the jerk, not you.

However, you are the jerk if you whine and cry about how I haven’t put detailed instructions for contacting me on my profile. If you want strict rules right off the bat to the point where you don’t have to think for yourself, you should be grateful that it was so easy to figure out that I’m not the right dom for you. I do not owe you the opportunity to trick me into thinking we’re at all compatible when clearly we are not.

What I really don’t understand is what people get out of using titles with people they don’t have a d/s relationship with. Not only is it tremendously creepy to decide for me that we’re in the type of relationship where you call me by a title, but I just don’t understand what’s so great about calling some random woman Mistress. Without some sort of personal relationship behind it, all you’re really doing is slotting some woman you don’t know into a role in a fantasy you’ve already created. If that’s all you care about, buy a blowup doll and leave me out of it. I am a  person, not a prop and you can goddamn well ask for my consent before you start a scene with me.

Calling me Mistress or Lady or Goddess or whatever when we haven’t sat down and negotiated titles is no more appropriate than it would be for me to start ordering people around because they’re submissive. It may be less rude, but it’s certainly not cool. Even I did like being called Goddess, that wouldn’t mean I was your Goddess.

Finally, and this only applies to a couple of titles in particular, I hate it when people presume to use a title that belongs to someone else. That is, there is a particular thing my boyfriend calls me and that title belongs to him and him alone. When other people use it I just want to slap their hands and tell them “No! Drop it, that’s not yours!” Hey, I didn’t say it was rational 🙂 It’s less of a risk than my two main reasons, but I can’t be the only one who doesn’t like anyone else using an endearment that I’ve decided belongs to my partner.

Now if only there was some way to make the people who need to read this actually do so.

If you haven’t already backed it, I highly recommend the Smut Peddler 2014 : LADYPORN CONQUERS EARTH kickstarter. In the words of the creator, “Smut Peddler is the world’s sexiest anthology of woman-centric comic book smut.” I have the 2012 edition and it’s super hot. Comic book porn, you know you want it 🙂

Also, I’d like to point something out about this particular kickstarter:

See that pledge total? That’s right, OVER 5 TIMES the original goal has already been pledged, and when I took the screen shot the kickstarter still had 13 days to go! Tell me again how women aren’t visual, motherfucker. Tell me how there’s no market for woman friendly porn. Tell me how women just don’t like that sort of thing. And when you’re done, tell me what colour the sky is on your planet because we are clearly not on the same one.