At this point, it shouldn’t be any sort of surprise that the kink scene has a serious problem with abuse. Sometimes I really understand why maymay is so enraged by the clusterfuck that is the organized scene that he wants to burn it down.

As fucked up as the scene is, though, I don’t think there’s much point in burning it down. People are always going to want to gather together with other people who share their interests, they’re always going to end up organizing those gatherings once they get big enough, and they’re always going to have to deal with a certain amount of politics and asshattery. I believe if every kink organization shut its doors today, all that would happen is tomorrow people would start building new organizations and run into much the same problems the old ones already have.

What I would like to see is new organizations started and existing ones infiltrated and taken over by people who have a vision of a scene that’s safe for everyone and a plan to work toward it. What I’m curious about is what that ideal kink scene would look like.

For starters, my ideal scene would not be solely white, middle-class, and able-bodied. As a white woman I have no business issuing pronouncements about how make people of colour feel welcome, but I can certainly say that it’s ridiculous to assume that only white people are kinky. The middle-class bias of the scene is at least theoretically easier to fix – we need events that are free or barterable, events at different times of day so that people who don’t work 9-5 Monday – Friday can come, and classes that are relevant to people who can’t drop $100 dollars on a flogger. Oh, and while we’re talking about an ideal world, free or very cheap childcare and help with transportation would be great too. My city has pretty decent public transportation, but if you live in the wrong place you’re going to have a hell of a time getting to any events. Finally, the ideal scene would not have every bloody event up a flight of stairs! I know it’s tough to find venues that will accept kinky people at all, but either we care about our events being accessible or we don’t.

Also, my ideal scene would welcome everyone equally, not greet young, attractive, submissive women with open claws and submissive men with utter disdain. Instead of this bullshit about how doms and subs are ‘supposed’ to act, everyone would treat each other strictly as equals outside of any power dynamics they’ve specifically negotiated. Anyone who so much as implied that doms are due any special deference or that submissive people should know their place would be laughed out of the room.

Along with that, any art used to decorate kinky events would not focus on submissive women! In a perfect world, we’d be able to handle the bizarre and apparently terrifying idea that there are straight women in the scene who might enjoy looking at pictures of men.

Speaking of kinky events, in my ideal scene women would feel just as comfortable coming to a party in basic black as men do. Fuck the idea that women owe the scene (and the world) a sexy display for daring to take up space. There wouldn’t be any pressure to play in public, either. People who’ve never played at a party would be taken just a seriously as people who play in public every chance they get.

And finally, the big one. The ideal scene would be free of systemic abuse. I know that a certain number of assholes are always going to find their way into the scene, but an ideal scene would root them out quickly and actually support their victims. This, I’m sad to say, is the hardest one for me to envision. Between the idea that the scene is the only place to meet other kinky people, our natural attachment to social status and fear of rocking the boat, and our whole society’s massively fucked up ideas about abuse, a scene that doesn’t tolerate abuse is tough to even imagine.

But to take a stab at it, I think a safe scene would take everyone’s stories seriously. Even if it’s uncomfortable, even if the accused is a friend, we would listen when someone says that they didn’t feel good about what happened. We would have official anti-harassment policies to take away the excuse that ‘I didn’t know’ and to show people that abuse is taken seriously. We would strictly enforce respect for social consent at absolutely all of our events, no matter how casual. By social consent I mean that it should not be necessary to tell a person “No” more than once, whether that no is “No, I don’t want to do a take-down scene with you” or “No, I don’t want to sit beside you.”

Once we hear about anyone’s boundaries being disrespected, we would fucking well act on it. No, I’m not saying we should go on a witch hunt every time we hear about a scene not going perfectly, but when we do hear about something, we react appropriately. If that’s just a jerk who had to be told no twice before he respected it, we have a talk with him about how he can push people’s boundaries or he can continue to be welcome in the scene, but not both. If that’s a case of rape or assault, we ban the abuser until they turn themselves in to the police, do their time, confess fully to everything they’ve done wrong, and show a thorough understanding of why it was wrong. Even then, we would only tolerate the presence of a thoroughly reformed abuser if their victim/s were completely comfortable with them being back in the scene.

While I do think it’s important for people who fuck up to be able to redeem themselves, that redemption can never be more important than the people who have been hurt. We should never let geek social fallacies be more important than the well being of people in the scene, either. Even if someone hasn’t actually touched anyone inappropriately or pressured them to play, we really do need to exclude people for being assholes. Like Naamah said in a comment:

Why the FUCK should I feel safe in a group that allows people like that to remain?!

Whether it’s sexism, racism, ableism, or just general douchebaggery, by letting assholes roam freely we’re telling people that they should not feel safe here. Fuck that noise.

What about you, readers? What would your ideal scene look like?

Recently I’ve read some interesting posts about how topping from the bottom isn’t necessarily a bad thing and how the idea that it is can go horribly wrong. Those posts reminded me of another post I read ages ago about how the phrase “topping from the bottom” doesn’t really mean anything.

So that we’re all on the same page, “topping from the bottom” can be used to mean anything from “my submissive deliberately breaks rules to manipulate me into punishing him” to “my submissive asked me to hit him somewhere else because that spot was getting sore”. It generally implies that the bottom is somehow overstepping his bounds and trying to make the top behave a certain way.

I’ve been pretty attached to that term because I thought (wrongly, as it turns out), that people were generally using it in the “submissive trying to manipulate the dominant” sense, not the “how dare a lowly submissive request anything” sense. In the manipulative or pushy sense, it describes a problem I’ve run into myself and that I think a lot of straight dominant women have run into thanks to the way male entitlement can screw up otherwise fun power dynamics.

However, as important as I believe it is to talk about how power dynamics outside of your relationships affect the power dynamics inside of your relationships, I don’t think “topping from the bottom” is the way to do that. Just like the terms “submissive” or “slave” are so subjective that it’s useless to say you’re looking for a “submissive” without defining what exactly you man, saying someone is “topping from the bottom” hardly tells me anything about what’s actually going wrong.

Even in the most narrowly defined “we have a punishment dynamic and my sub deliberately misbehaves so I’ll feel obligated to punish him” sense of topping from the bottom, there are still so many different things that could actually be wrong. Maybe the sub thought that misbehaving a little was a playful way to ask for a scene and didn’t know the top disliked it. Maybe the sub felt neglected and thought that misbehaving was the only way to get their top’s attention. Maybe the sub was afraid that their top would be bored by perfect obedience and leave them. Like Ferns says in her post, labeling a problem “topping from the bottom” doesn’t help you solve it. To do that, you need to talk about why you’re unhappy with a specific behavior and figure out why the sub is doing it.

Aside from the issue of whatever behavior you call “topping from the bottom” being a symptom, not a root cause, it’s become so broadly defined that it’s kind of useless. The idea that it’s topping from the bottom for a submissive to make a request is just ridiculous. I want to know what my submissive wants! Maybe I’ll give it to him and maybe I won’t, but I can’t make that decision if he withholds information because he’s afraid that I’ll get mad and say he’s topping from the bottom.

By calling anything and everything “topping from the bottom”, we’re setting submissives up to be unhappy and unfulfilled, if not outright harmed. Dominant types are not mind-readers, we can’t fulfill our submissives’ needs unless they tell us what those needs are. Even in the best case scenario, telling submissive people that they can’t express preferences or make requests means that their doms have to flail around hoping they’ll stumble over what their submissives need to be happy. In the worst case, it sets submissive people up to tolerate abuse because they’re afraid that standing up for their own needs in any way means they’re bad subs.

As much as I’d like the phrase “topping from the bottom” to mean something, it just doesn’t. It’s time to let it die.

Any time I see someone ask for advice on finding a dom (generally in the Submissive men and women who love them group on Fetlife, so I’ll freely admit my results are probably skewed), they always get told to go to a munch, that there’s no reason not to go to one, that it’s the only way to meet people, that they’ll surely die alone if they don’t go hang out with a bunch of strangers who they may have nothing whatsoever in common with aside from an interest in kink.

All of that is bullshit, and it’s incredibly fucking boring. By all means mention that munches can be a good way to meet people, talk about how friendly the community can be to newbies, but once you’ve done that for the love of god let it go. When you start beating people over the head with what you think they should do, you’re both being a douchebag and wasting everyone’s time. Repeating yourself when you’ve already stated your case just means I have to scroll down farther to see if anyone else has something interesting to say.

Perhaps ironically, I actually do think going to a munch at least once is generally a good idea. Which is exactly what you would expect someone who enjoys munches would say, so you’ll have to decide for yourself whether my bias makes my advice useful to you or not. The big reason I recommend trying a munch out once or twice is that the worst case scenario for most people (I’ll expand on that later in this post) is spending an evening feeling awkward and not having very much fun, and the best case scenario is really seeing that kinky people are actually pretty normal, not feeling like you’re the only one who has these weird interests, making some close friends, or maybe even meeting a partner. For me, the potential reward far outweighs the risk. For other people, that may not be the case.

Considering how much of kink is entirely subjective (quick, define what makes a scene “heavy”), you would think we’d have a better grasp of the idea that people may experience the same event in vastly different ways. My enjoyment of nerdy, theoretical discussions about kink has nothing to do with whether J. Random Submissive feels comfortable talking about his kinks with anyone besides his partner. For J. Random, going to a munch may be a complete waste of his time. He’s not at all likely to have a good time if he doesn’t want to talk about kink with strangers, and he’s not terribly likely to meet his ideal partner there since she’s going to be uncomfortable with munches for the exact same reasons he is. If you wouldn’t decide for someone else how much pain he can take, why the fuck would you decide for him how much he will or won’t enjoy going to a munch?

The idea that there’s no valid reason not to go to a munch is especially frustrating. If you work with children or vulnerable adults, or in politics or any particularly visible position, or have a morality clause in your employment contract, or are dependent on people who don’t approve of kink, you have an extremely good reason not to risk going to an event. If you have a disability, going to a munch may take more energy than you have to spare, be so much hassle that it’s just not worth it to go, or physically impossible to get to (credit where it’s due, that idea is from Namaah’s comment on Tomio’s post about how not everyone wants to be out as kinky). If you work the wrong shift, it may just be impossible to go to a munch (and for fuck’s sake don’t say “Oh, just switch shifts with someone.” People ask questions when you do that, and I don’t know about you, but I’m a shitty liar). If you live in a small town, you might be hours away from the nearest munch. If you just really dislike hanging out with large groups of strangers that’s a good enough reason not to go, dammit!

Lots of people talk about munches like they’re the only way to meet people, which is stupid and wrong. There’s only an entire industry based around online personals, which you would think would be a difficult fact to miss. It’s possible that a few people meet each other that way, not to mention all the people who meet in entirely vanilla contexts and happily discover that they’re both kinky. While I wouldn’t necessarily recommend hoping that your date turns out to be kinky as your sole partner-finding strategy, I can’t deny that it does happen.

Aside from personals, sites like Fetlife have some pretty good forums. I actually get most of my nerdy-kink-discussion needs met on forums and kink blogs, since for me munches mostly involve catching up with friends. There’s no good reason to act like munches are the one true way to make friends or meet people or have interesting discussions about kink.

There are plenty of good things about  munches if you’re the kind of person who enjoys them, but can we please stop fucking badgering people to go if they don’t want to?

To quote from a post on Beyond The Valley of the Femdoms:

Something that gets lost a lot in conversation about female dominance is how we feel. There’s a lot of talk about “using subs for our pleasure,” but our pleasure is rarely talked about. No one talks about what it feels like. The model of pleasure in female dominance is centered in male fantasy. We’re so often actors and objects in submissive male fantasy, rather than subjects of our own.

Sad but true. We hear so much about what men want, what turns them on, what they wish dominant women would do, what we don’t do enough of, but so very little about what actually does it for us. To be fair, when I’m reading porn I’m generally pretty focused on the bottom, but the dom’s reactions to him are a big part of the story.

And part of it, of course, is not enjoying feeling vulnerable. Talking directly about what I want is scary. What if people think I’m weird or creepy or boring and pathetic? It’s still important, though. If we ever want the scene to be more welcoming to potential doms (like potential slayers but pervier), we need to talk about what they get out of the whole kink deal.

So, let’s talk about sadism. It’s easier for me to describe since I have so much more experience with sadism than I do with dominance, and I haven’t gotten to play for a while and oh god I want to hurt someone who wants to suffer for me.

It’s kind of physical hunger. The longer I go without getting to hurt anyone, the more I think about it. Not unlike obsessing about food when you skipped breakfast and lunch is still hours away. I get restless, and I feel something like an itch in my teeth that can only be soothed by sinking them into someone. Yes, I read far too many vampire books as a kid 🙂

There are a lot of reasons I enjoy sadism: reactions, power, trust. I absolutely love the noises people make when they’re in pain. My very favourite place to bite someone is the place where the neck meets the shoulder because it puts my ear where I can hear even the tiniest whimper or catch in their breath. I love the way people squirm and struggle when they’re hurting too.

Aside from the obvious hotness of whimpering and struggling, it’s a rush to have the power to hurt someone. To break such a fundamental taboo and be thanked for it afterwards never gets old. It’s not nice, and not easy to explain to people who don’t feel it, but having that kind of power over someone is as satisfying as it is dangerous. Inflicting pain is just such a visceral way to show who’s in charge and who isn’t.

Finally, someone letting me hurt them is the most incredible display of trust. It would be so easy to go to far, or make a mistake and really damage someone, but they trust me to take care of them even as I hurt them. To me, it’s one of the most intimate things I can do.

Or, yet another followup on the subject of submission and masculinity.

This post will make much more sense if you’ve read my last two posts, where I talked about how we tend to conflate submission and femininity and the horrible consequences that has, particularly for submissive men. You might also want to have a look at this post by Rachelcq, this one by Peroxide, as well as Bitchy Jones’s and maymay’s entire blogs, as they’re already said everything I’m going to.

Now that we’re more or less on the same page about all the shit that submissive men go through outside of the scene, let’s talk about what happens when they get into the scene.

The BDSM scene likes to promote itself as a utopia where everyone is welcomed with open arms. That’s a nice idea, but how young, female, and attractive you are makes a lot of difference in your reception in the scene. Whether you’ll like the (quite possibly predatory) attention is a separate issue, but in the kink scene some people are more equal than others.

Submissive men are definitely some of the ‘less equal’. They post in a group on Fetlife or another forum, or come to a munch or a workshop or a party, and discover that the welcoming committee they were told to expect has no interest in them. Whether you’re a top or a bottom, if you have tits everyone in the scene wants to be your new best friend. If you’re a male top, you can impress people with how hard you play or how intricate your rope work is or how strict of a master you are. But if you’re a male sub, you’ll slam right into everyone’s discomfort with men who don’t fit neatly into the man box. Rather than deal with their own issues around gender, it’s not at all unusual for people to either avoid dealing with male subs or to subconsciously push them away.

That’s bad enough, but male subs are also considered a dime a dozen. Like I’ve said before, I don’t believe for a second that there are that many more submissive men than there are women who could enjoy dominance if it didn’t have such a horrible image problem, but that doesn’t stop people from saying that there are tens or hundreds of submissive men for every dominant woman, or make it easier for any particular submissive man to find a partner. Hear enough stories about how hard it is to find a woman who actually likes submissive men, especially when those stories line up with everything you’ve ever been taught about what a man should be and how you’ve failed, and of course you’re going to believe you’re destined to die alone.

Then, like TomCatoNineLives commented on my last post:

…

The point is that these ideas, rotten as they are, aren’t out of accord with the lived experiences of many, if not most, sub guys. And one of the worst parts is that they’re self-perpetuating, because when you can’t believe that someone would be attracted to you, if and when it that does happen, you’ll easily find ways to screw it up. (Not reciprocating for fear that I’d look stupid; getting jealous, possessive, needy, or suspicious; or having a fatalistic “it won’t last so I won’t get too attached” attitude are all things I’ve done in the past in those circumstances.) When that does happen, it only becomes further confirmation of how undesirable you are.

Tell someone enough times that they’re worthless, that they could be replaced by any hundred other people, and of course they’ll start to believe it. Then it comes true, thanks to self-loathing being such an incredible turn off (at least to anyone who isn’t a predator). And blatant scammers  like “fidoucheiary dommes” (to use FelixSulla’s term) being the only ones to show an interest in male subs can’t be helping matters.

Another horrible consequence of the idea that there is such a surplus of submissive men is the “submission olympics”, the need to prove that you are the most submissivest of them all if you ever want to find a real live dom of your very own. Given the issues I’ve already talked about with submission and masculinity, this seems to result in this awful race to the bottom with men competing to display the most self-loathing possible and do everything they can to turn off women who actually like submissive men. When that inevitably fails to attract a partner, it’s just more proof that being a submissive man proves you’re unlovable.

To quote from my own reply to TomCatoNineLives’ comment above:

I hate to say it, but one of the things I really like about how my boyfriend doesn’t identify as submissive but acts submissive toward me is that he hasn’t been chewed up and spit out by the scene.

As much as I love submissive men, the idea of being wanted just because I’m the first real live dom to pay attention to them does nothing for me. Desperation and self-loathing are also huge turns offs, as understandable as it is that submissive men would end up that way. I just want someone who likes me, not someone I have to convince that they’re a worthwhile human being. Sad to say, it was easier for me to find that outside of the scene than within it.

God only knows how much more damage I’ll do by saying that, but there’s no use lying about it. The kink scene can damage submissive men so badly that not even dominant women find them attractive. It’s not fair, it’s not their fault, but it happens. And without a magic wand to wave to get people to let go of  everything they’ve ever learned about gender roles, I have no fucking idea how to fix it.

Since I talked about the way we conflate submission and femininity last week, let’s talk about some more of the consequences of that idiocy this week.

If submission is fundamentally feminine, then acting more feminine is both a way to make a person more submissive and a way to display how submissive you are. I think this is one of the reasons the whole sissy thing is so common. If the only way you know of to be submissive is to be feminine, of course you’re going to assume you need to be more feminine. Just ignore the details of what I actually want, as a straight woman attracted to masculinity. Not that I’m bitter about the stupid gender roles that convince submissive men that they should dress and act in the way most likely to turn me off.

Of course, there’s more going on there, like the idea that fetishes can come from fears. What’s scarier than not being manly enough? In some ways sissification is just another form of small penis humiliation or cuckolding, an eroticized fear. It’s probably not a coincidence that those three kinks so often go together.

Speaking of cuckolding, one of the things that makes that such a common trope in the female dom, male sub world is the idea that a submissive man isn’t a real man, therefore a dominant woman needs a “real” man to sexually satisfy her. Humiliation and an intense demonstration of how powerless he is for the sub, a good fuck for the dom, what’s not to love? Lots.

For starters, I’m hugely offended by the idea that all women are sexually submissive at heart and can only be satisfied by being dominated in bed. Also thoroughly offensive is the idea that submissive men are too weak and girly to provide a woman with a good hard fuck. Newsflash: being submissive doesn’t mean your muscles magically atrophy. What is so goddamn complicated about the idea that giving it to your woman in whatever position she likes until she’s good and done with you is a submissive act? If you’re doing it exclusively on your dom’s say so, it’s not a dominant act. I’d rant more about the idea that any act is fundamentally dominant or submissive, but that’s a separate post.

Back at the issues with submission being equated with femininity, it seems like a common part of being submissive is the desire to be desired, as in these quotes:

Axe: “Maybe that’s why I respond so strongly to being objectified as a sex-object. Something wanted and desired so badly that she can’t help but just fucking take me. “

Peroxide: “One of the big draws of D/s for me is that I see Dominance as an expression of desire, hand over all the control to my partner and she still wants me, wants my body, that’s incredibly hot.”

(To give credit where it’s due, I swiped those quotes from D‘s awesome post about how desire works in her relationship, which I highly recommend reading.)

It makes total sense that submissive people of any gender would want to be desirable. As I understand it, to be submissive is to want to be pleasing to your partner. It’s a lovely idea, but it gets all twisted and rotten where an interest in power exchange meets our culture’s deeply fucked up ideas about gender and desire.

If women are the only ones who can ever be desired, then to be desirable you  have to be feminine. Given the lack of any examples of male desirability, it makes sense to assume that the only way you’ll ever get to hear about how hot you are, how delicious you look, is to make yourself feminine. It’s just heartbreaking to me to think that so many submissive men believe the only way they can be seen as beautiful is to force themselves to be something they’re not. It’s especially sad given that for me, masculine submission is the hottest thing there is.

Thanks to our fucked up ideas about gender, submissive men get to think they’re not real men, that they’re unfuckable, unlovable, pathetic, and good for nothing but being humiliated about their lack of manhood while their partners fuck other people. Gee, I can’t imagine why submissive men would have so much trouble accepting the fact that they’re submissive.

One of  my many, many pet peeves with the kink scene is the conflation of submission and femininity. Aside from my own irritation with it, it probably causes most of the trouble submissive men have accepting themselves, and with coming out as submissive to their partners.

So what the fuck is with assuming that submission and femininity are linked? Well, as much as we like to tell ourselves that the scene is the special magical place where we can be ourselves without worrying about what society tells us we should be, any subculture is still a product of the host culture it grew in. And the host culture, in this case, has some seriously fucked up ideas about what it means to be a man or a woman and how the twain must never ever meet.

There’s this idea that to be a woman is to be delicate and pretty and submissive, and to be a man is to be rugged and strong and dominant. If you grow up in a culture like this, it’s hard to avoid absorbing the idea that submission is fundamentally feminine and domination is fundamentally masculine. I’m not saying it isn’t stupid and wrong to assume those things are inextricably linked, just that it’s a reality of the culture we live in.

As long as everyone stays in their boxes nobody has to think about how stupid those rigid little boxes are, but when people do anything the least bit similar to something in the ‘wrong’ box, everyone freaks out. Given the way we worship masculinity and revile femininity, it’s considered sort of understandable, if not precisely approved of, for women to try to be like men but if a man tries to be the least bit feminine, well clearly that’s the end of the fucking world.

And that’s where submissive men get thrown into so much trouble. If submission is fundamentally feminine, but these men are submissive, then instead of questioning the validity of these stupid gender roles we assume that they’re not real men. Even worse, submissive men assume they’re not real men, that being submissive means they’ve failed at being a man and now have to give up all of their masculine traits, not just the ones that aren’t working for them. I see question after question on fetlife from men who don’t understand how they can be submissive and not want to be feminized or called a worthless worm.

Speaking of which, I believe that’s where the worthless worm thing comes from. If a man can’t be a “real” man (that is, dominant), he must be somehow subhuman, good for nothing, worthless. How can we keep everything rolling along the way it always has and keep from having to think any uncomfortable thoughts if we don’t slap down anyone who dares step outside their box?

Male domination and female submission don’t involve anyone trying to step outside of the cramped little boxes society’s gender roles create. Female domination and especially male submission completely trash those boxes, which is terribly uncomfortable for people who want to believe that there’s just one way to be a man and they’re doing it right, that it was worth it to cut off all those pieces of themselves so they could fit in the man box.

Given the fear of not being manly enough and the way we devalue everything even slightly “feminine”, of course submissive men worry that no one will ever love them. And of course people who aren’t already critical of stupid gender roles believe what they’re been told all their lives about what it means to be a man.  As hideously unfair as it is to assume that submissive men are broken, it’s kind of a tall order to ask someone to instantly throw out everything they’ve ever believed about what a man is supposed to be. I’m not saying it’s fair, but everyone needs a little time to adjust when they get a shock like that.

Anyway, the point of all this rambling is that it’s fucking stupid to assume that submission and masculinity are incompatible. Come on, people. What’s more masculine than showing off how much pain you can take? Or more gentlemanly than devoting yourself to making your partner happy? Or more courageous than opening up completely to someone?

For me, submissiveness and masculinity are two great tastes that taste great together. If you don’t want to mix masculinity and submission that’s absolutely fine, but if you think they can’t mix, you can go fuck yourself.

Moderation note: there will be no whining in the comments about how masculinity is practically a dirty word these days and how can I possibly think femininity is devalued when everything is so easy for women lately. Problem comments will be edited or deleted.

A companion piece to ‘How NOT to introduce your partner to femdom‘.

If Elise Sutton has it all wrong, how should you introduce your partner to femdom? I certainly don’t have all the answers, but I can hardly do worse then ‘Elise’.

For starters, where Elise says “all women are a potential Dominatrix”, what you really need to do is accept the exact opposite. All women are most certainly not potential doms. You can cling to the fantasy that you can mold your wife/girlfriend/significant other into whatever you like, or you can actually communicate with this person you claim to care about, but you simply cannot have both. This is the point where I expect to lose most of the men who want to know how to introduce their partners to femdom – unlike Elise, I’m not going to tell you comforting lies.

It’s possible your wife will love domination once you introduce her to it. It’s also possible that she will never develop an interest in power exchange, or that she’ll love power exchange but only from the submissive side, or that she’ll hate the whole idea and think you’re a freak for asking for it. There’s no way I or anyone else could possibly know whether your wife will ever develop an interest in domination without knowing her personally. If anyone tells you otherwise, I recommend asking yourself what they have to gain by telling you what you want to hear.

To rag on Elise some more, when she says:

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.

No! You start by talking to your wife like she’s a fucking person! I don’t mean to downplay how scary it is to tell the woman you love something about yourself that might disgust her, but if you take Elise’s advice all you’re going to do is make your wife wonder what you’ve done to feel guilty about.

This is going to sound kind of backwards, but I recommend telling strangers on the internet first. The reason I recommend that is because being more comfortable with your kinks will make it easier to tell someone else about them without the conversation sounding like you’re telling her you have cancer (credit to Dan Savage for that analogy). That is, the way you talk about your kink will affect how your partner reacts. If you act like it’s this terrible disgusting character flaw, she’s more likely to be freaked out by it. If you act like it’s a fun thing you’d like to try, she’s less likely to be freaked out.

Talking with other kinky people is a good way to get comfortable with your kink, and strangers on the internet are the least terrifying people to talk with. If they think you’re a terrible disgusting freak (not that they will, but it’s natural to worry about it), it’s not as if it’s going to affect your life in any way. Just make up a new nickname and try again.

To be fair, I should point out that if your wife finds out you told people on the internet you were kinky before you told her, her feelings are likely to be hurt. However, unless she has an especially close-minded and rigid worldview, she’ll understand that it’s easier to tell your secrets to a stranger than to someone who’s opinion means more to you than anyone else’s. I don’t have any really good advice for that situation beyond playing up the whole ‘of course I was scared to tell you, your opinion of me is more important than anyone else’s, and I’d be absolutely devastated if you thought I was a freak.”

Even if you don’t actually post on any forums, you should really do some reading, particularly of what actual dominant women have to say. There is approximately a shit ton of information out there about how to treat a dominant woman, and you should take it into account whether or not your partner turns out to be dominant. In particular, just about every ‘how to approach dominant women’ guide out there talks about how actual domination is not solely about your dick. If you want your wife to service top you, it’s absolutely okay to ask for that! Honestly, that’s probably a less scary thing to ask for than something as vague as “I want you to dominate me”. However, if you tell her you want her to be in control, then ask her to act out a scene to your exact specifications, she’s bound to be a little confused about what you meant by “I want you to take charge.”

To quote Dev’s comment on maymay’s post “Finally! Something that speaks to dominant women” they said

Not every woman is going to enjoy being dominant anyway. We have our own sexualities too. But for a woman who might, or could, or does enjoy being dominant, it has to be based on what’s in it for her. Otherwise she’s just doing you a favor, which is fine, but then at least don’t make her lie about it, please.

Asking your partner to do you a favour is absolutely fine, but asking her to pretend she’s in charge when your dick is really the one running the show is kind of a dick move, pun intended.

Assuming you really do want her to take control, you’re going to need to explain what’s in it for her. If the two of you happen to be comfortable talking to another person about something so personal and you can afford a session with a prodom, having one show her exactly what she can get out of domination can be an especially compelling way to explain it.

As Mistress Matisse says in her post Playing with Couples:

This week I did one of my favorite things: I showed a woman how to top her husband.

…

There is always a moment in the session when something falls into place in the woman’s mind and she gets it. You can see it in her face: Ohhhh… I’m the mistress. I get what I want. You have to please me.

Of course, most people can’t afford to drop upwards of $200 an hour on a hobby, not to mention the stigma around seeing a sex worker, so this clearly is only going to work for a minority of people. Still, I think there’s something in getting personalized help from someone who already enjoys domination. If you’re both able to and interested in joining the local scene, there’s probably someone out there who’d love to teach your wife how much fun domination can be. There are a lot of kinky people out there who enjoy feeling like Mistress Know-it-all, font of knowledge and savior of newbies 🙂 Honestly, I’m one of them. Plus we all remember what it was like to be new and uncertain, and want to help out people who remind us of ourselves when we first discovered kink.

But before you get into personal demonstrations, you’ve got to get over the hurdle of discussing kink at all. This may seem a little disingenuous, but I’d avoid using terms like domination, submission, BDSM unless you know your partner is especially open-minded. On top of having negative connotations for a lot of people, those words are so vague they’re pretty much useless when you’re talking with someone new to this whole thing. If you tell someone who’s hardly even heard of kink that you want her to dominate you, she’s not likely to understand what it is you actually want her to do. If you tell her you love it when she tells you exactly what she wants in bed, that’s going to make a lot more sense.

And for the love of god, start with baby steps. No one is going to be comfortable spending a whole weekend ordering you around and using you like her personal fucktoy when you’ve only just introduced her to kink. If you ask for that, you’re just setting her up to fail. Start with mixing a little dominance into sex sometimes, and if she likes it, go from there.

Finally, ask about her fantasies too. Surely you didn’t think you were the only one with sexual needs, did you?

Not so long ago Amy of Lipstick & Ligature wrote a post called “Some random musings on being a woman, being dominant, and being human” where she made a really interesting point:

1. We’re great about talking about how rough submissive men have it and while that’s true I wish there was more said about the fears of dominant women. I’m afraid I won’t be good enough, or harsh enough or tender enough. I’m worried I’ll be too greedy or not forward enough. I don’t want to hurt you but I do.

I have to admit I do find it a lot easier to talk about how rough submissive men have it than about the things I personally struggle with. Feeling vulnerable is not exactly my favourite thing ever, and vulnerability doesn’t always mesh well with my usual writing process of getting angry about something and ranting until I feel better. But dominant women’s struggles are important, and I feel like a hypocrite for saying dominant women should be allowed to be vulnerable while acting like it’s not okay to be vulnerable on my blog, so I’m going to try to even things up a bit.

One thing I really struggled with before the ridiculously adorable boyfriend gave me a whole lot of practice was accepting service. On the surface that sounds really silly. I mean, how hard can it possibly be to let someone do nice things for you?

Pretty hard, as it turns out. Particularly for women, given all the cultural programming we get around being nice, sweet, and helpful, not lazy, bossy, and demanding. There’s also the way our culture vilifies women who don’t “do their part” as high-maintenance, or users, or generally not good enough. Have you ever noticed that basically every example of a woman who lets other people do more work than she does is either evil or royalty? Evil can be a fun fantasy, but I’d like to get through my day without feeling like a huge jerk and I highly doubt I’m going to be crowned queen of anything any time soon. It’s actually profoundly uncomfortable to just sit still and let someone bring you a cup of tea if you’re busy worrying about whether he only refused help to be polite and secretly thinks you’re a huge bitch for not insisting on pitching in and oh god you’re a terrible girlfriend and he’s going to leave you for someone who’s not too lazy to make her own damn tea.

It’s also easy to feel like you’re just using someone if you don’t fundamentally get what service submissives enjoy about serving. On an intellectual level I understand that it feels good to do something nice for someone you’re close to, but I just don’t understand the kind of relentless, freakish niceness the boyfriend shows me. Seriously, it’s just weird 🙂

In some ways identifying as dominant may make the insecurity even worse, since “real” doms are supposed to be perfectly sure of themselves at all times and good at everything. If you can’t even accept service and feel comfortable, how can you even call yourself a dom? God forbid we have feelings and insecurities like real people.

So, given all the good reasons women have to be uncomfortable accepting service, and the total lack of non-villainous examples to follow, how the hell do you get comfortable letting someone serve you?

I’m not saying I’m perfect at it, but what helped me get a whole lot better was practice,  starting small, and positive reinforcement. Anything is going to feel a little weird the first time you do it, but once you do it a few times the weirdness starts wearing off. In my case the boyfriend has made me so many cups of tea that it actually feels pretty normal to let him do it.

Starting small is also really important. No-one’s going to feel perfectly comfortable letting her boy spend hours helping her move when she’s not even used to him making her a simple weeknight dinner. Something like a cup of tea or being asked if you’d like anything from the kitchen while he’s up is a lot easier to get used to.

Finally, positive reinforcement is probably the single most helpful thing you can do to for someone who wants to learn to accept service. You don’t necessarily have to say the words “I really love serving you”, but you need to show that serving makes you happy.If I’m certain that someone enjoys making themselves useful, it’s a lot easier for me to accept that it’s just the way they show affection, not me using them.

Showing a little disappointment if she turns down service can give her an excuse to accept, but use this one sparingly unless for some reason you want her to associate offers of service with feeling like a jerk no matter what she does. I mention this one only because it worked on me. As it happens, I can totally be steered if you make even a token effort to be clever about it. Using the ridiculously adorable boyfriend as an example again, early in our relationship he successfully guilted me into letting him do nice things for me. I had a nasty cold, and normally I hate letting people see me when I’m sick but the boyfriend sounded so sad that he couldn’t do anything for me that I gave in and let him bring me some chicken soup and apple juice. It helped that I felt like death and really, really wanted that apple juice, but still. This was when I lived a 15 minute drive away from him and he rode his bike everywhere, so it took some work to convince me to let him help. When he got to my place and made me some soup he was just so happy to help me feel a little better that I couldn’t feel like a jerk for letting him bike across town.

After nearly three years of practice, I feel pretty good about accepting at least some service. But it took a lot of practice, so don’t feel bad or like you’re not cut out to be a dom if you’re not instantly perfect at letting people serve you. It’s perfectly normal to feel weird and like you might be a bit of a jerk at first.

Moderation note: after what happened last time, I want to be entirely clear that this is a post about how women struggle with accepting service. Derailing comments about how men struggle too and men are obviously more important and why aren’t we talking about men?! will be deleted.

Every time I hear stupid shit about how women are only stimulated by the emotional, not the visual, I want to set things on fire. Like I said in my last post on the subject, it’s not some mysterious inability to get turned on by pictures that prevents women from enjoying porn, it’s the fact that most mainstream straight porn sucks. The first porn I ever found that did anything for me was gay porn.

Speaking of gay porn, one of my favourite pictures is called “Room with a View” by Benoit Prévot. I don’t  have permission to use it here, but you can find it in the Tom of Finland Foundation erotic art gallery (scroll down, it’s near the bottom of the page).  Why do I like this one so much?

For starters, it’s a picture of an attractive (to me, anyway) man who’s partially undressed. What’s not to like about that? I actually really like pictures that leave something to the imagination. Sometimes it’s more fun to think about what you’re missing than to see everything. I also have a thing for well-dressed men, and the man in the picture was wearing quite a nice outfit before he started taking it off. Even better, the picture shows what I like most about a well-dressed man – upending the power differential his clothing implies. Ten minutes earlier, he was probably the picture of masculine power. Now he’s a wreck, so overcome by lust he couldn’t even wait to get completely undressed.

Which is the other thing I really, really like about this picture. Not only does it show someone desperately turned on, but it shows someone helpless in the face of his lust. From the way he’s hiding beside his window, you can guess he’s doing something  he’s not supposed to. He knows he shouldn’t, but he just can’t help himself. There’s nothing not hot about that. And of course it gives me a starting point for all kinds of fun blackmail fantasies. What? Who doesn’t enjoy a little blackmail now and then?

It’s certainly problematic that most of the porn I like doesn’t even have women in it, let alone women like me, but you can’t deny that gay men get how to make men sexy in a way that straight male porn producers just don’t. Straight guys, if you’re going to feel threatened by gay men, feel threatened because they’re better at turning straight women on than you are.