Thanks to Heather’s post This Is Not Okay, I discovered this bit of dickbaggery. Like Heather, I’m not happy with Loren’s defense of people’s supposed “right” to be offensive.

Technically, people do have the legal right to say horrible, disgusting things. What they do not have is the right to get paid to say hateful, loathsome things. No-one is attacking Chuck Knipp/Shirley Q. Liquor’s right to say blatantly racist things. We’re just saying it’s not okay to pay him to do so.

Aside from the Shirley Q. Liquor act, which is obviously indefensible, I think it’s worth talking about whether we have a right to do things that we know will offend some people, even if those people aren’t directly involved. Let’s not kid ourselves, all kinky activities are offensive to someone. Race play is extremely difficult for some (many? I’m trying to avoid generalizing too much because I’m not a person of colour) people of colour to watch. A punching scene with a male dominant and female submissive might be just as painful for a female survivor of domestic abuse to watch. Age play could be traumatic for incest survivors to watch. Even a simple needle scene could traumatize someone with a severe needle phobia.

Given that some people have extremely good reasons to object to certain kinds of play, how can we get our kinky needs met without being assholes? I think a huge part of that is about context and consent.

A scene is sort of a bubble – in that context, nothing that happens necessarily tells you anything about how the players treat people in their daily lives. A scene also doesn’t have much of anything to do with anyone outside of that particular scene. A woman enjoying a takedown scene has nothing to do with my horror at the idea of being abducted. That’s my discomfort to manage. Because it’s just a scene, I can remind myself that everyone involved consented. By walking into a play party, I’ve also consented to being exposed to things that might offend or upset me. If I want to be sure I won’t be upset, I stay home.

Another important part of the context of a play party is that organizing a play party doesn’t necessarily imply approval of the play that happens during the party. Most parties that I know of have fairly simple rules to do with liability, safety, and ease of cleanup. Within those rules, you can do pretty much whatever you want. The organizers may not love your scene, but if you’re not breaking any rules they’re very unlikely to stop you from having it. Paying a performer, on the other hand, implies approval of what they have to say. While you can avoid being exposed to play that upsets you by skipping a party or workshop, there’s no way to avoid the fact that you now know the people who run your local leather bar think blatant racism is fine and dandy.

People having scenes that they know are particularly likely to be difficult for others to watch do have a responsibility to at least try to be courteous. Edgeplay scenes, for example, don’t need to be done at the front edge of the play floor. Deliberately trying to shock people who are just trying to relax and catch up with their friends is pathetic and douchebaggy. Particularly loud scenes should probably be done either very early in the evening before most people show up (at least out here, practically no one shows up on time. Local parties tend to be pretty dead for the first hour or so) or toward the end of the night to give other people a chance to play without being rattled by constant screaming.

I do think people who want to have a loud or edgy scene have a right to get their kink on in the way that makes them happy. They even have a right to do those things at parties. Honestly, where else can you have a scene that involves a lot of screaming without having a thoroughly awkward conversation with the police? 

Even if I’m offended by certain kinds of play, I still think it’s better to get them out in the open. I may not enjoy watching  a particular scene, but someone who’s struggling to accept their desires might really be helped by seeing that other people enjoy the same kink. Just, you know, try not to be an asshole about it.

For the longest time, I thought my total lack of interest in complicated protocols meant I just wasn’t dominant. It seemed like everything I read online was all about slave positions, intricate routines for serving food or drink, eye contact restrictions, titles, and so on. The doms in the stories seemed to love all of that stuff, but absolutely none of it did anything for me.

Trying to learn slave positions just felt like work. It wasn’t hot, it wasn’t fun, it was just a chore. As for service, I don’t care if someone bows perfectly while they serve me tea, I just want to drink my tea. Eye contact restrictions would feel weird and awkward to me – I don’t know that I could train myself out of trying to make eye contact with people while I’m talking with them even if I wanted to. Being called by a title either irritates me (to me, a Mistress is what you call the woman a man cheats on his wife with) or makes me feel silly (I’m neither a Lady nor a Goddess, I’m a grubby little nerd).

Even worse, if I were to try to train someone to follow a particular protocol I know I would miss something sooner or later. Then my submissive would feel unnoticed and start wondering if I even care. I’d start feeling like a failure as a dominant, and from there it would just get worse and worse. No amount of beating myself up will ever make me into the kind of person who notices every last tiny detail.

When I compared myself to the (most likely fictional) dominants I read about, I just didn’t measure up. Of course, I was comparing my ‘behind the scenes’ to their ‘highlight reel’ (to paraphrase Steven Furtick (giving credit where it’s due for that quote does not constitute approval of any backwards ideas religious people often have about people who aren’t straight, monogamous, and cis-gendered)), but at the time I never thought of that. I just saw what I would want on a bad day (to shovel down my dinner and collapse on the couch), and compared that to a high-protocol dom on their best day (formal dinner party for a special occasion). Clearly a real dom could learn all those protocols effortlessly, so it must have been that I was just a top trying to kid myself.

For the people who care about it and take joy in it, protocol is great. Some people love striving for perfection, for them it’s a labour of love.  However, that doesn’t mean the rest of us should feel like we’re not even dominant just because we’re not a particular type of dominant. It’s okay to be a pragmatic dom. It’s okay to just want your tea left on the corner of your desk, it’s okay to just want a hug when you come home, it’s okay to eat your dinner snuggled up on the couch with your sub.

I rant about one-true wayism all the time, but that’s because it’s important. I hope that someone like me reads this post and stops doubting themselves. You do not have to care about protocol even a little bit to be a good dom.

In case you weren’t already aware, Fetlife has announced that to maintain their relationship with their credit card processor, they have to delete quite a bit of content. I hate that credit card companies get to police what we can talk about, but I can understand why the Fetlife team decided to keep the site running over fighting the good fight, losing the ability to take credit card payments, and not being able to process enough payments to keep the power on.

Because people are (rightfully) worried their pictures/writings/comments/etc will be deleted, they’ve been using the hell out of maymay’s exporter tool, which is really driving up his costs. He could use some help keeping that tool running if you’re inclined to donate.

First, the backstory. A leatherbar in Portland had the completely fucking ridiculous idea that it was okay to book a ‘comedian’ (read, asshole) who performs in blackface. I learned about this from Mollena, whose first post about it is here. She also has a follow up here.

For fuck’s sake people. It’s 2013! How can you not know blackface is not okay? Have you been living under a rock for the past 50 years? Even worse, how can a fucking leather bar think it’s okay to book a racist act? I can’t imagine they’d book an act where a straight comedian impersonates and viciously mocks gay men.

Even worse than just booking the act in the first place is the way they reacted when people said that shit is not cool. Defending a blatantly racist act as “comedy” adds insult to injury. Nothing, absolutely nothing, makes me angrier than telling me what I’m allowed to be angry about. Telling people to lighten up, to stop being so sensitive after you’ve wounded them is kicking them when they’re down. Grownups admit it when they fuck up. Insecure children blame the people they hurt for getting hurt.

Words do hurt. You can whine and cry about freedom of speech all you like, but freedom of speech was only meant to protect people from being imprisoned for criticizing their governments. It was not meant to shield dickbags from any and all natural consequences of their dickbaggery. I firmly believe that people should not face legal consequences for saying disgusting, hateful things as long as they stay firmly on the correct side of the line between harmless douchebaggery and harassment or threats, but they should absolutely be told that their behavior is not okay. They should absolutely be told they are not welcome to spread their hate, they should absolutely be shunned until they learn to act like decent human beings.

Part of acting like a decent human being is speaking up when you see something terribly wrong. People of colour have already said this is not okay, but it’s extremely important that white people speak up too. While I don’t have a picture up on my blog, considering the dismal percentage of people of colour in the scene you can safely assume that when I say I’m so pale the other nerds make fun of me, I am telling the truth. When only people of colour complain about something, it’s easier for racist asshats to dismiss them as oversensitive, or looking for something to be offended about. It’s harder to ignore it when white people speak up. Because I’m white, I have the very great privilege of being able to not take this shit personally. The only reason for me to complain about this is because I believe it’s unjust, and that standing idly by while people do horrible things is just as bad as doing them myself.

We of all people know what it’s like to be looked down on, to be treated as less than just for being who we are. We have to be better than this.

This weekend I was at an awesome workshop of Mollena’s called “Strong Slaves, Bodacious Bottoms”. In it, she talked about how not all slaves are meek and silent and never dare make eye contact with a dominant. She also told some very painful sounding stories about how she had been told she was a bad slave or was assumed not to be submissive at all because she couldn’t cram herself into the tiny box of “how slaves are supposed to act”.

Fuck that noise. Strong submissives/slaves/bottoms/pets/masochists are awesome. Here’s why.

For starters, I would feel condescended to if someone did the whole “delicate, trembling flower of submission” act because they were worried I’d be intimidated by the real them. I’m not saying I never feel insecure, but my ego is not so fragile that I need everyone to cower in front of me like I’m Godzilla or something. It’s sad when men can’t deal with strong women, and it’s just as sad when doms can’t deal with strong subs. It’s 20-fucking-13, we should be past making our insecurities other people’s problems.

But more importantly, submissive people who kick ass and take names are fucking hot. Leashed power just does it for me. The captured warrior-prince is my thing, the worthless worm not so much. Not to mention, I get to feel special when someone super awesome chooses me of all people to submit to. I get to feel like the queen of the world when someone submits to me and only me because they think I’m just that good. If someone submitted to me only because they thought they couldn’t do better, or because I was the first person to show an interest, I would feel awful. I don’t want to be the “good enough I guess” option, I want to be the “fuck yes!” option.

Some people think that the quieter and smaller and “better trained” a submissive is, the better their master looks. I disagree. How much more badass is the master who can handle a slave who takes shit from no one?

If there can be more than one kind of dominant, there can damned well be more than one kind of submissive. Why try to cram everyone into the same boring little box when we can have a thousand awesome flavours of submission?

This is going to be a downer of a post. If you’re already having a bad day, I recommend skipping it or reading it later. It really doesn’t have anything to do with kink either, unless you want to take this as further proof that doms are in fact human and vulnerable. It’s also kind of a self-indulgent list of all my favourite memories of my kitty.

My cat recently got sick. Then she got really sick, then we took her to the vet, then she got even worse and we had to put her to sleep. I’ve never lost anyone I was really close to before, so I’m taking this pretty hard. We had cats when I was a kid, but we lived out in the middle of nowhere and they were outdoor cats. When they got sick (if they did get sick and not eaten by a cougar or something), they just slunk away and we never saw them again.

Ginger, on the other hand, died in my arms when it was clear that she wasn’t going to get better. The only thing she hated more than strange people was strange places – I couldn’t put her through any more time in the hospital. I wish she could’ve died at home, but at the end she was in such bad shape that she didn’t appear to know where she was, and putting her through half an hour in the car would’ve just been cruel. She was briefly lucid enough to recognize me, though. The vet was amazed she responded to me at all, but when I started petting her, she purred her little heart out with the last of her strength. After a few minutes of that, she seemed to lose track of what was going on. We put her to sleep not long after that, but I think she was really already gone.

When she got really sick, all she wanted was to be near me. She could barely walk, but she dragged herself to me. She knew something was terribly wrong, she was scared and she wanted me to make it better, but there was nothing I could do to fix it.

I miss her all the time. Missing her isn’t the worst part, though. It feels almost like a tribute to her, a price I’m willing to pay if this is what it takes to really love a pet. The worst part is the self-doubt and might-have-beens. Should I have taken her to the vet earlier? Was I good enough to her in her final days? Did she know I loved her even when I was annoyed that she was always under foot? Should I have blown off work and stayed with her at the hospital until the vet threw me out?

Ginger absolutely hated strange places. The vet’s office was the worst place on earth as far as she was concerned. And the vet never did find out exactly what was wrong with her. Maybe keeping her home until she absolutely needed medication to make her comfortable was the kindest thing I could’ve done. Then again, if I had known how quickly it was going to go when she got really sick, I would’ve found a way to have her put to sleep at home. But on the other hand, having a stranger poke at her while she was still strong enough to fight back would’ve been miserable for everyone.

Even though she was terribly sick, she still managed to bite two of the staff at the hospital. When she was healthy, she growled at and hid from strangers, destroyed furniture and carpet like it was her mission in life to make sure we never got our damage desposit back, chewed up anything plastic we accidentally left out (the zipper pulls on my backpack look like someone tried to stab them to death with a thumbtack), and regularly tried to make me trip and break my neck on the way down the stairs in the morning. When she was feeling crafty, she would even leave her toys at the bottom of the stairs for us to trip on.

Coming down stairs in the morning and coming home from work are the hardest times of day for me. She was so happy to see me in the morning, even when she was grumpy that I hadn’t given her fresh water recently enough. It’s hard leaving the bedroom knowing she’ll never try to trip me down the stairs again. Coming home from work is hard because we used to meow at each other when I got home. I picked up the habit from my boyfriend – Ginger would meow at me, I’d meow back at her, and we’d have a little meowversation while I put my stuff away and got settled. Sometimes, once I sat down on the couch, she’d come stand with her front paws on my knee, then reach up and pat my face with one paw. Then I’d lean down and she’d sniff at my face and tickle me with her whiskers.

It took her weeks to warm up to me when I moved in with my boyfriend, but eventually she decided I was an acceptable source of pettings. When I was sitting on the floor in front of the coffee table my laptop lives on, she would just come stand on my lap, as if to say ‘It’s time to pet me, monkey. You weren’t doing anything important, were you?’. When I was lying on the couch reading she’d come stand on me too. For a very small cat, she could put a shocking amount of pressure right on my boobs. Sometimes she’d stand behind me on the couch, put her paws on my shoulder, and tickle me by sniffing at the back of my head and trying to chew on my hair. I guess the furry little weirdo liked the smell of my shampoo. She’d start licking me for no reason, too. I was always a little worried she was sizing up her food reserves in case some day the kibble stopped magically refilling itself.

The very first time I got a good look at her, I only saw her little face as she peeked around the corner. For a full grown cat, she was a tiny little beast. She got a look at me, then ran back upstairs and hid under the desk. Eventually she decided I probably wouldn’t eat her if she spent a little time in the same room as me, but trying to touch her was just not on. A while after that, she’d sniff at me suspiciously and let me pet her a little, but only if my boyfriend was around. When I had a relative staying with me for a little while, she told me that Ginger was much friendlier when I was around. I like to think I made her feel safe. She would hide behind my legs if there were strangers in the room, or if she could hear them outside. She was also my early-warning system for the maid service showing up – she liked to sit right on top of my feet in the morning, and when they parked in the driveway she’d start growling. It made her whole body vibrate just like a notification from a phone with the ringer turned off.

To hear me talk to her, you’d think her name was ‘terrible little beast’, ‘dammit cat, it’s like you want to get stepped on’ or catbeast. I’d ask her ‘Who’s a terrible little beast?’, she’d meow at me, and I’d say ‘That’s right cat, it’s you! Now how about you stop clawing up the couch?’

She absolutely loved laser pointers or any sort of bright light she could chase. My boyfriend tells me that when she was a kitten, she’d run after a laser pointer down the half flight of stairs to the door, back up those stairs, and then up the next flight to the landing, then back down over and over until she was panting. I’ve never seen a cat pant, but if any cat would run herself ragged trying to kill a laser pointer, it would be her. One day I came home to the most incredible racket, very much like a cat throwing herself at the wall. It turns out my boyfriend was using a cd to shine a light on the wall, and Ginger wanted to kill it so badly she was indeed throwing herself at it.

She also loved birds and bugs and basically anything flying around outside. She wouldn’t go outside, though, she just wanted to watch the birds very closely and chirp at them. We tried leaving the balcony door open for her, but she wanted nothing to do with it. She would sometimes poke her head around the corner when we came home and stare out at the terrifying land beyond the door, but as fascinated as she was by it, she flatly refused to go out there. When there was something interesting happening outside, sometimes she’d stand up on her hind legs to get a better view. She’d do that to bunt my hand if I was standing up too, it was the cutest thing.

I miss my kitty.

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.

Having a ‘dominant personality’, being prone to taking charge in social situations, or simply being bossy have absolutely NOTHING whatsoever to do with whether you’re dominant in the kinky sense. Those are examples of social dominance. Kinky dominance, on the other hand, involves the desire to be in charge (at least some of the time) of the person (or people) you have that agreement with. Enjoying telling your partner to make your coffee so you can stay in bed a little longer, for example, has no connection with enjoying being in charge at work.

For fuck’s sake people, social dominance and kinky dominance are different things. Social dominance is about as useful as as a person’s hairstyle for predicting whether that person is dominant in the kinky sense.

Some of the most socially dominant people I know of are submissive in their personal relationships. Most of the kink conferences I’ve been to were organized by submissive women. If wrangling volunteers, speakers, catering, venues (and whatever else I’ve forgotten) for an entire weekend conference isn’t socially dominant, I don’t know what is.

There are also plenty of shy or quiet people who have no interest in being the boss at work or around their friends, but who are still dominant in the kinky sense. Those people’s dominance counts just as much as that of the people who happen to be dominant in both the kinky and social senses.

Given the stereotypes of what a dominant and a submissive are supposed to be it’s not surprising that people would conflate social and kinky dominance, but it’s still incredibly fucking irritating. I’ve been told over and over that it’s surprising that I’m dominant because I’m so quiet. The people who’ve said that meant well, but you can only be told how surprising and unusual you are so many times before you start hearing ‘You’re doing dominance wrong’.

No, I’m not doing it wrong. We’re just different. We could just as easily say that people who try to boss around everyone in sight are trying too hard and should just accept that they’re really submissive. We could just as easily say that ‘real’ doms (not that there is such a thing, but that’s another rant) are secure enough in their dominance that they don’t need to make a big show of how very domly they are.

If there can be sensual doms, sadistic doms, strict doms, low protocol doms, playful doms, 24/7 doms, and just in the bedroom doms, there can damned well be quiet doms too.

So, Jetpack makes this nifty little review page for the last year. Mine is here. The rest of this post will probably make more sense if you take a quick look at it.

I’m especially amused by the top search terms people used to find my blog. If you find my blog by searching for ‘Fetlife’ you must be a very patient person, I don’t see my blog until the bottom of the third page of results. It takes dedication to page that far 🙂

But even better are the people who find my blog by searching for ‘forced feminization’. I must have a lot of terribly disappointed one time visitors who think they’re going to find some hot forced fem porn and end up at my rant about ‘forced’ feminization.

Now for some nerding out about statistics. About half way through 2012 my views started climbing, as you can see in the pretty graph I swiped from my Jetpack stats page. It turns out posting regularly really drives up your traffic 🙂 So far I haven’t missed a week, although a few posts have gone out late. Let’s see how long I can keep it up.

That ‘best ever’ view count you see below the monthly views graph is from when Paltego posted about adding a number of links to his blog roll, one of which was my blog. To those 387 views in perspective, my average per day is around 160. When I started this blog back in 2011, my average was down around 50.

Last summer I went through a bit of a dry spell and hardly posted anything, thus the very low view counts. In July (at least, I think it was July) I started posting weekly, and my views started climbing in short order. You would think everyone would just give up on a blogger who doesn’t blog, but when I started posting again you all seemed to come right back.

Why yes, I am the sort of terrible nerd who obsessively checks their blog stats. It’s fascinating to me which posts get all the views and comments, and which ones just don’t seem to invite a reaction. My personal favourite post last year was Just a Nerd, which got nowhere near as many comments as ‘Forced’ Feminization. Of course, one of those was controversial and one of them really wasn’t, which does make the comment counts make sense. People love a good internet argument 🙂

Speaking of comments, the people who comment here are just awesome. There was plenty of disagreement with my post about forced feminization, but everyone kept it civil and I never once had to worry about moderating the discussion.

Finally, I’m terribly proud that I got my first ever internet proposal not long ago on my post Housework, really?. Thanks Tom 🙂

Every so often some poor deluded twit starts a thread on fetlife asking how to tell if a woman is dominant if you meet her in anywhere but at a munch or play party. Not only is this ridiculous, but I think it’s a sign that the questioner isn’t ready to submit to anyone.

First off, the ridiculous part. For fuck’s sake, there is no cheat code for dating. Someone who appears socially dominant might actually like nothing more than to relax and let someone else take charge behind closed doors, and someone who is shy and quiet (Hi, I spend most of my time at large gatherings hiding in the corner) in public might be sizing you up to pounce on later. There is simply no way to tell if a person is sexually/personally (as opposed to socially dominant, which is a different thing, dammit) dominant without getting to know them.  In the process of getting to know someone, you kind of have to make yourself vulnerable. Not only is no one going to answer all of your questions without you answering theirs, but there’s no way to convince someone that you’re ‘just curious’ when you ask what they think about kink.

The reason I think asking about how you can tell someone is dominant without asking them means you’re not ready to submit to anyone is that relationships in general and submission in particular are all about making yourself vulnerable. Revealing your kinky interests to someone you’ve just started to get to know can certainly be scary, but it’s pretty low stakes compared to telling your partner of a couple years that you’re a big perv, or even worse, your spouse of many years. If you can’t handle that small amount of vulnerability when the stakes are so low, how on earth are you going to manage when the stakes are higher? Contrary to what these people seem to believe, once you find a partner it’s not all ‘happily ever after’. Even when you know your partner is open to at least some of your kinks, it can still be scary to go into detail or talk at all about more extreme interests.

My friend Andy talks about that problem more in his post about Trust issues with your partner. To quote a little from his post:

This is a simple risk/reward proposition for the husband. He has information he wants to share, questions he wants answered, a sense of belonging and camaraderie that he needs.  If we chart out the risks and the rewards:

TALK TO WIFE: High risk, low reward.
TALK ONLINE: Low risk, high reward.

Opening up doesn’t magically become easy and risk free just because you’ve found a partner. If anything it gets harder. Finding a partner whose kinks are at all compatible with yours isn’t easy. Nobody wants to risk scaring off a semi-accepting partner by revealing something too ‘out there’ or complaining about an issue that they can more or less ignore.

The problem is that not asking for what you need and not talking about problems are sure ways to kill a relationship. It’s scary and it puts you in a vulnerable position, but it has to be done if you don’t want your partner to get sick of you expecting them to read your mind. Unfortunately, if you can’t deal with making yourself vulnerable before you even have a capital R relationship, you’re never going to be able to deal with being in one.

Not only do relationships not work without vulnerability, but submission really doesn’t work without it. To quote Ferns’ adorable post ‘On Puppying‘:

Puppying is when they are so excited every time they are around me that their whole body vibrates with delight, they get under my feet, they bounce around me, every pore screams “OMFG YOU’RE HERE YOU’RE HERE, SOOOOOO EXCITED!!!” If they didn’t have control they would lick my face and then pee on the floor.

…

There are many reasons I like it, but a big one is that in order to puppy at me, he has to make himself vulnerable. He has to NOT do some sort of ‘super cool’, ‘in control’, “Hey, how *you* doin’” act. It is a display of honest and open exuberance without the filters of self protection and for that reason alone, it is special and powerful and lovely to me.

Submission without vulnerability is an oxymoron. If that’s what you want, stick with porn.