I can’t stand the word ‘domme’. It’s both stupid and pointless. The sad thing is, I understand why other women would want a feminine word for a dominant person. ‘Dom’ is really just a simple abbreviation of the word ‘dominant’, but it’s often taken to mean ‘male dominant’. Because men are the default dominant people, of course. We can’t have anyone implying that women are just as ‘really’ or ‘truly’ dominant as men are, we have to have a special word to set them apart, to remind everyone that they aren’t real doms, they’re just ‘dommes’. Someone might take a woman on the internet seriously if they weren’t forewarned that she identifies as a woman, and we just can’t have that.

Given the masculine connotations of the word dom, I understand why women would want their own word, a way to say ‘no, I’m not just a pale imitation of a real dom, I am my own kind of dominant’. I just hate the way it sets us apart. Why can’t we say male dom and female dom? Honestly, it’s not that many more keystrokes. Granted, some people are too lazy to type ‘you’ instead of ‘u’, but those people are stupid and it’s just as well that they make it obvious.

Also, the word ‘domme’ is especially pointless because it’s pronounced just like ‘dom’. If you seriously think ‘domme’ is pronounced ‘dommay’, I’m honestly surprised you’re clever enough to have gotten to my blog in the first place. At least ‘domina’ sounds different, even if it’s just as pointless as ‘domme’.

Honorifics irritate me just as much, but that’s a separate issue, and roo-roo already covered it on his blog.

A companion post to Real Dommes Don’t Have Sex.

Just like women never actually want sex, men absolutely always do. They never have headaches, bad days, just want to cuddle, or ever, *ever* have a lower sex drive than any woman on the planet. It’s pretty clear how this belief is cruel to men: any guy who ever turns down sex when a woman offers it worries that he’s less of a man, and faces mockery from anyone who finds out what a terrible crime he committed against his gender (‘You mean you turned down pussy when I haven’t gotten laid in weeks? Traitor!’). And of course it reduces men to the level of hormone-crazed animals, unable to control their ravenous lusts.

Now, suppose you’re the woman in that scenario – you’re tried to get laid, and it didn’t work. Suppose that you’re more or less conventionally attractive, that in fact you’ve been complimented on your body. If you’re not some hideous troll-creature, then why would a man pass up an opportunity to have sex with you? The reason he couldn’t stand to fuck you must be something else, something much worse than a mere lack of physical attraction. Your personality must be so unspeakably awful that even in the presence of nice tits and a sincere enthusiasm for cock he still can’t muster any interest in sex (not that I’m bitter). Physical flaws could possibly be fixed (or at least hidden), but what are you supposed to do about a personality defect so horrible that your very presence is a mood-killer?

On the other hand, the guy could just not be into you. That’s why the myth that men absolutely always want sex from anything vaguely woman shaped is a filthy goddamned lie.

The Art of Rope Bottoming: Delano

This link is awesome because it points out the fact that bottoming actually does take skill. The vast majority of classes offered address only topping skills, which makes it look like bottoming is just a matter of lying there and taking it. Bottoms are *not* objects! It’s not easy to point out that your top is wrapping during a scene. It’s not easy to speak up when a scene just isn’t working for you. It’s not easy to make sure you give yourself the necessary care to make sure you don’t throw up/faint/get a terrible headache. All of those things really are skills and they matter.

BDSM’s Dirty Secret – The Real Risk of Kinky Sex

This is a subject near and dear to my heart. My favourite thing about kink is the intimacy of revealing the least socially acceptable parts of myself to another person and having them like it. I’ve said over and over that hitting someone and having them thank me for it never gets old. No fancy toy or technically flawless suspension can match that.

I can’t stand ‘forced’ feminization. Here are the big three reasons why:

1) It assumes that wearing panties is inherently humiliating. Being a woman, I generally wear panties – they’re a convenient way of keeping the seam of my pants from abrading my junk, and they don’t give me the unbelievable wedgies that boyshorts do (seriously, how do guys deal with wearing boxers?). It should surprise no-one that I’m just the slightest bit offended by the idea that the clothes I wear every day are humiliating. People have tried to argue that it’s not that the panties themselves are humiliating, but the fact that men aren’t supposed to do girly things like wear panties. Is the idea that *being* a woman is so awful that merely playacting it for the space of a scene is humiliating for a man seriously supposed to be *less* offensive? Seriously? Just fuck off.

2) It assumes that submission and femininity are the same thing. No they are not. Equating submission with femininity is what stupid people do because they can’t deal with the idea of a big strong man submitting to a wimpy little woman. Because the natural order of the universe is that men dominate and women submit, remember? Even in a subculture defined by its flouting of cultural norms (hitting people is bad, power differentials are bad, calling people names is bad, etc, etc), it’s vitally important that we continue to act out the exact same gender dynamics we see in the vanilla world. Why? Shut up, it just is. What, you don’t see the point of escaping one box just to climb into another one and lock it behind you?

3) It’s not forced. There’s a reason I insist on putting quotes around the forced part of ‘forced’ feminization. If your partner is actually forcing you to do things you don’t enjoy on any level that’s not kink, that’s abuse. I think it gets called ‘forced’ feminization because male cross-dressers have an understandably hard time coming to terms with their desire to cross-dress. I sympathize, but I am in no way interested in taking the blame. Same with ‘forced’ bi – if you want to suck some cock, great! I’m still not going to be the awful nasty woman who made you do that horrible dirty thing that you totally didn’t want to do and absolutely have not fantasized about for years.

Also, communication is kind of a big thing for me. Honesty is kind of a big part of communication. If you can’t be honest about what you want (no Mistress, I’d hate to wear your panties, it would be humiliating and I wouldn’t enjoy it at all, but it would make me feel really submissive), we just can’t communicate well enough to play together. It may be hot to be ‘forced’ to do things, but it’s absolutely not hot to accidentally harm someone because you couldn’t communicate clearly about what you both actually wanted.

To be clear, I’m not ranting about men who just enjoy cross-dressing, and work it into their scenes because it’s fun. I’m also not talking about men who enjoy playing with gender, and who might happen to use a scene as a safe space to do so. Because of my attraction to masculinity, those things don’t necessarily do it for me, but that doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with them or that there are no women are turned on by gender-play. Acting like wearing women’s clothing or acting like a woman is inherently humiliating, on the other hand, is hugely offensive.

If you use fetlife, you need to read this post: http://maybemaimed.com/2011/08/08/backdoor-access-to-your-fetlife-profile-remained-open-permanently/. Knowing as little as I do about web application security, I didn’t realize fetlife’s security was nearly as bad as it is. Poor security isn’t nearly as sexy as shiny new features, but I think it’s far more important given that there’s currently no legal protection against discrimination on the basis of being kinky.

If you’d like to help pressure fetlife to fix their security here’s a handy link, conveniently lifted from maymay’s post: Write to privacy@fetlife.com and complain. Just click it, edit as you see fit, and hit send. I highly recommend reading maymay’s post, but if you just want to do something quick and easy to help, go with the link 🙂

Women don’t enjoy sex. Really, not a single one of us. We just don’t like it.

I’ll wait for a minute now while the people who know me well clean their drinks off their monitors.

 

 

All done? Good. Sorry about that, I owe you a drink 🙂

Like I was saying, there’s a stupid idea out there that women don’t like sex (also that all men want sex all of the time, but that’s another rant). It would be nice if the kink community was beyond that, but clearly we’re not. Take for example, the idea that real dominant women never allow anyone to penetrate them, because clearly being penetrated is a submissive act, and of course, women don’t like sex.

If women don’t like sex, then the only reason to have sex is to please a man. If you’re a dominant woman then that reason goes out the window, leaving all the “true” doms with almost no motivation to ever allow a lowly submissive man to use his cock to make her feel good. God forbid one of us should ever give a blowjob, we’d be forced to hand in our dom cards immediately.

There is one reason a good, sex-hating female dom would grudgingly tolerate sexual relations with the delicious submissive man who makes incredibly hot little sounds when she bites him: to reward him for doing the dishes. Because if she wants her man to make himself useful, clearly she has to trade sex for it. No, I’m not sure how that’s better than directly exchanging sex for money and then hiring a maid either.

There are two big reasons reasons I hate the idea that sexual activities should be doled out in small amounts only as a reward for service.

1) If the only reason your partner pulls his weight around the house is because he won’t get any otherwise, your relationship has bigger problems than kink can solve. If you try to sell your girlfriend/wife on complicated kinky activities by saying it’ll make you a better partner, she’s liable to wonder “What’s in it for me that I shouldn’t already be getting from my partner?“

2) I like control. If my partner can ‘purchase’ sex at any time by completing a certain number of chores, that takes control away from me. Tom Allen has another especially good post about this particular issue (okay, I’m kind of a Tom Allen fangirl): Time and Punishment: Some dynamics of male chastity in marriage.

To state issue 2 another way: what happens if I want to have sex before he’s finished re-tiling the bathroom? Should I go without because it’s somehow un-domly to give him a treat for no reason? If upholding an arbitrary rule is more important than meeting my needs, then I’m not in control.

I’m also not in control if I can’t enjoy whichever sex acts I want to because some of them are somehow inherently submissive. If you think about that for just a few seconds, it’s obviously complete crap. To use blowjobs as an example, being in control of what sensation your partner feels and how long it lasts is, um, being in control. I’m really not sure how to make than any clearer. Also, I *love* reactions. Giving head gets fantastic reactions, which makes it fun for me even though my genitals aren’t directly being stimulated. Cocks are simply fun to play with – I can’t explain why, I just really like playing with them.

Of course, a giving blowjob can just as easily be a submissive act when it’s done with the intent of pleasing the blow-ee. Intent is far more important than the action being taken.

So where do we get the ridiculous idea that an act can be submissive regardless of the intent behind it? From the idea that dominance is masculine and submission is feminine. If women are submissive by default, then dominant women have to compensate by being extra shouty and domineering if they want to be seen as dominant. If men are expected never to show weakness, then dominant women can’t ever need a hug and still be in charge. If dominance is masculine and being penetrated is feminine, then dominant women somehow magically lose their dominance when they get penetrated. If a dominant woman insists on having penetrative sex, then she has to at least be on top.

Fuck that noise. The position I have sex in most often is missionary. Why? Because that’s the easiest way for me to get off. Because it’s hot to feel my partner’s muscles work to give me pleasure (so very, very hot). Because it’s comfortable. Because it’s easier to bite my partner’s shoulders that way. Because putting his head next to mine means I get to hear every little noise he makes.

Because I like it, and my pleasure is more important than upholding some stupid stereotype.

My friend weezie wrote me a guest post, yay! This is purely weezie’s opinion, but I thoroughly agree with it. Weezie is more d/s focused than I am, but it’s still frustrating to me that femdom is so often depicted as being all about dicks and the things you are or aren’t doing to them. I like dicks as much as the next person (probably more), but there is actually more to kink. At least, I want to believe there’s more to kink than that.

******************

Is it just me, or does the typical FemDom presence on the planet seem shallow and cheap?

You’d be hard pressed to find a single collection of images, interviews, articles, or books that doesn’t make the cock (artifical or otherwise) the central star of the story. When did everything become about dicks and not about d/s? I’ll agree that kink is indeed about sexual energy, but that doesn’t mean that everything has to be focused on wangs. And yes, chastity devices still count as focusing on wangs. Quite heavily in fact.

I think we can all agree that FemDom porn is particularly terrible. I’d say the majority of it actually depicts topping-from-the-bottom, and that makes porn particularly easy to pick on. But it’s not just porn that’s suffering from this. It seems the obsession with sex is infecting people and personalities too. Conversations always seem to revolve around bedroom activities. When any sort of submissive activities are brought up (say, washing the car) it’s always referenced in terms of sexual punishment/reward that would follow from such an activity. Why? WHY?!

Maybe it’s just me. I’m into personal connections. Personal meaning within kink. Adoration, submission, and finding pleasure in that. Sex is nice too, but I get all mushy inside when I see people loving each other. Want to see my favorite pornographic image of all time? Shield thine eyes, it’s pretty HARD CORE:

http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lmx0owRZuk1qa0fqho1_500.jpg

(Thanks to Dishevelled Domina’s tumblr feed – which is all about cocks ironically enough)

Bam. That image conveys more meaning, more comfort, and more submission than a visceral image of a pain-slut getting wax dripped on his cock and “hating” it.

I think the argument goes something like this: If a submissive is willing to take a dozen lashings, or engage in CBT, or even go into an orgasm-denial full-time-relationship, that “proves” the submissive loves his partner and is willing to devote his body and life to her.

News flash: HE PROBABLY LIKES THOSE THINGS. See that stiff cock in all of those circumstances?? Do Dominants really truly believe it’s all about them and not about his dick? Does he cuddle? Does he nuzzle their neck without prompting? Does he respect and devote time to you when sex isn’t on the table? Can he hold an intelligent conversation???

Sigh. Maybe I’m just a bit frustrated. I do know it’s incredibly hard to find anyone that even understands what I’m talking about here, never mind agree or be able to discuss it. Maybe I just need a new word – “FemDom” seems broken.

There’s a very clear dress and behavior code for dominant women and I hate it so much that I made the tagline of my blog ‘And I’ll play wearing fuzzy slippers if I damned well want to!’

If you’ve ever watched any female dominant porn, looked at a prodom’s website, or generally not lived under a rock for the past few years, you know the dress code consists of:

high spiky heels
skin tight clothing
a corset
a scowl (very important)

No matter how often people tell me they think knee-high black leather boots with 4 inch spike heels look great and turn them on, I simply don’t feel very toppy when my feet hurt and my footing is uncertain. You try throwing a flogger when you’re worried about falling over on your ass and tell me how confident you feel.

The dress code for dominant women has nothing to do with what actually makes those women feel toppy, and everything to do with porn producers trying to appeal to straight men. This image of female domination actively turns women away from the idea of kink because so very few women can actually relate to it.

The behavior code is even worse. Not only am I expected to dress up in uncomfortable clothing I don’t necessarily like, but I can’t even appear to have fun dominating someone. In most porn (at least, most porn that I’ve seen), the dom treats the sub with utter disdain, referring to him as a pathetic little worm who isn’t worthy of fucking her. It appears to be a trial for the dom to even be in the same room as the sub.

How is that hot? And why on earth would I bother playing with someone if I didn’t think he was worthy of me? Again, this presentation of submissive men as worthless and disgusting turns women away from kink. It took me years to figure out that I was dominant because I couldn’t make a connection between myself and these women who didn’t even appear to like the people they were dominating.

Until I started reading forums frequented by actual dominant women with lives and hobbies and real affection for their partners, I never realized that it was possible to be a dominant woman who actually liked her partner, and dressed in what she felt comfortable in, and didn’t spend all day barking orders at everyone around her.

As ranty as this post is, it’s actually meant to be a message of hope for all the women out there nurturing a secret interest in kink. You can do this too. You can do it your way – you don’t have to look a certain way, dress a certain way, act a certain way to be allowed to play. Kink is not just for people who are taller than you, thinner than you, more conventionally attractive than you.

You don’t have to play any particular way either. Your kink still counts if you don’t want to beat people bloody. Your kink still counts if sometimes you like to beat people bloody and sometimes you like to be more gentle. Your kink still counts if you like to laugh while you play. Your kink still counts if you like to make your partner laugh while you play. Your kink still counts if you like doing things that your partner likes too.

Kink is for everyone, dammit!

Fantasies are great. They’re hot and fun and what drew many of us into kink in the first place. But they’re not reality. Clinging to a fantasy in the face of real life evidence to the contrary requires ignoring that evidence. Lack of evidence makes it just a little bit difficult to figure out what’s going wrong, let alone how to fix it. Kink is kind of a high-risk sport, and to do it reasonably safely you need all the information you can get.

One of the many things that irritate me is how common it seems to be for people in the scene to mix up fantasy and reality. We’ve all seen otherwise reasonable people assume the scene works just like their fantasies, alienate everyone they come in to contact with, and end up bitter about how hard it is to find a partner or even make friends in the scene.

There are an abundance of fantasies I see over and over in the scene that cause people to hurt themselves, hurt each other, and generally poison the greater kink community. I’m going to do my part to debunk them in the faint, faint hope that someone who needs to will read this and stop being such an asshat.

To start, one of the fantasies I most hate being taken for reality is the idea that ‘my gender is naturally superior and absolutely all members of it are meant to be dominant, no exceptions! Your gender is obviously naturally submissive, no exceptions!’. As something to think about while you get yourself off, that one can be a lot of fun. I certainly don’t mind spending a little while in a world where all men are just my physical type and they universally crave being tied up and slapped around. As a worldview, it leaves a few things to be desired. In particular, any resemblance to reality.

People can, and often do, argue that in general men are more likely to take charge, more likely to be listened to, than women and that makes them superior. Those people are stupid. Anyone who’s bright enough to be allowed outside without adult supervision would attribute that to the fact that despite the great strides feminism has made, women are still trained from birth to deny their own wants and needs to keep the peace.

In case it needs to be said, I like men quite a lot. I find female supremacists just as ridiculous as male supremacists, but I take them less personally because they don’t directly tell me that my knowledge about my own dominance and sadism doesn’t count because I have boobs.

Given that this fantasy is so ridiculous no reasonable person would take it for reality, why does anyone cling to it? My theory is that it’s insecurity. People who are basically okay with being kinky have no reason to justify their desires with some bullshit about the contents of their underwear meaning they have a divine right to be in charge. On the other hand, people who aren’t comfortable with their kinks have a vested interested in both justifying their particular kink, and in browbeating other people into going along with their fantasy so they won’t be faced with any inconvenient examples of people doing things differently and enjoying it. That might cause them to wonder if they’re really doing it the right way after all, and that’s just too scary to deal with.

Now, you might think that a dominant man and a submissive woman who both believe that men are naturally superior/dominant and women are naturally inferior/submissive would do just fine in a relationship together. Maybe they would. As long as the woman is never better than the man at anything. As long as the man never needs a break from being in charge of everything absolutely all of the time. As long as the words ‘submissive’ and ‘dominant’ mean *exactly* the same thing to each of them. As long as they even think to talk about what exactly submission and domination mean to each of them when it’s so much easier not to question their assumptions.

And that’s assuming that both of them know themselves well enough to know that they really do want a d/s relationship, not just to role-play for a few hours now and then (role-playing now and then is just as valid a choice as having a full time d/s relationship, but that’s another rant entirely).

Once anything happens to challenge your assumptions, you have a choice to either reconsider your assumptions, or clap your hands over your ears and shout ‘La la la I can’t hear you!’ until the thing that challenged you goes away. If you’re not mature enough to do the former, you have no business engaging in any risky activities, be they kink or mountain biking.

Edited to add: Dishevelled Domina has an excellent post on a similar topic that you should read too.

Edited again to add: Ferns has also written a really interesting post on the same general subject. This one includes the first explanation I’ve read of why someone would want a female-led relationship that actually makes sense to me.

The promised rant about S/stupid P/people W/who W/write L/like T/this.

To be clear, I’m perfectly fine with any way people want to communicate with each other *in private*. If capitalizing pronouns only when referring to dominant people is a satisfying way to make your submissive mindful of exactly how he or she writes, go nuts! But when you smear your private protocols all over a public forum, I think it’s fair for people to complain.

There are three main reasons why S/slashy speak and capitalization only of dominant people’s names bother me so much.

1. It’s difficult to read. S/slashy speak is especially bad, but capitalization abuse also ruins the flow of a sentence. Blogs, forums, and chat rooms are written mediums. If you want people to read what you’ve written, you have a responsibility to write clearly and concisely. If you insist on using txt speak (u instead of you, r instead of are, and so on) when you have a qwerty keyboard at your disposal, or ramble on and on, you have no right to complain about not being taken seriously.

Seriously, what did the English language ever do to you? There’s no need to torture it like that. I’m perfectly willing to give a pass to people who aren’t native English speakers or who just have trouble spelling (I know a few perfectly clever people who simply can’t spell very well no matter how hard they try), but if your English is otherwise fine I have to assume you’re more interested in showing off how high protocol you are than in communicating.

2. It puts all all dominant identified people above all submissive identified people, which I’m really uncomfortable with. Dominant people as a group are absolutely not better, more worthy of respect, than submissive people as a group. Outside of silly capitalization rules, pronouns in English are only capitalized when referring to God. Equating dominant people to a supreme being like that is ridiculous.

Personally, I capitalize people’s names the way that they do – I look at the usernames attached to their blog posts or their twitter feeds. If someone were to point out that I spelled or capitalized their name wrong, obviously I’d correct it. I don’t get to decide how someone else’s name should be capitalized just because I declared myself dominant, and no one else gets to decide how my name should be capitalized just because they declared themselves high protocol.

3. It drags me into someone else’s scene without my consent. If capitalizing your dominant’s name and lower casing yours turns your crank, great! Just don’t drag me into it. The same way it’s inappropriate to call someone Mistress or Master when they’re not your mistress or master, it’s also inappropriate to capitalize/lowercase someone’s name and/or pronouns when they innocently wandered into a forum and tried to have a discussion. Protocol may be very important to you, but that doesn’t give you the right to apply your personal protocol willy nilly to everyone who crosses your path. Also, no matter how mcch you want to believe in a uniform protocol that all real, true, kinksters follow, there is NO universal protocol beyond basic politeness – don’t touch without permission, say please and thank you, etc. Believing otherwise is a clear inability to tell the difference between fantasy and reality, which is a huge pet peeve of mine.