My real post this week is intended to be a bit of a public service. It’ll be published a few minutes after this one, and is a list of stupid things men do in messages that make me block them. I keep going back and forth about whether it’s worth writing messages to individual idiots to try to educate them. That post is a bit of a compromise, I can send all the sad bastards who send me terrible messages a link without wasting my time trying to convince each one of them I’m a person. If anyone else wants to send fuckups a link to that post in lieu of wasting your own time, feel free! Comment here or message me (contact info is on my contact page) if you’d like me to add any more categories of failure to that page. I haven’t closed comments on it yet but I won’t be at all surprised if I have to.

My other announcement is a reminder that I gleefully accept guest posts. Fuck off spammers, not you. I mean actual human people who have something to say and either don’t have their own blog or just feel like that particular post is a better fit for my blog than for yours. You can be as anonymous (or not) as you like.

Today I have a special treat for you, a guest post from a reader! Clem brings us the tale of how she discovered her own dominance and found a way to keep warm in the icy Montreal winter 🙂

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Memoirs from an icy hot winter in Montreal

I like Stabbity, she’s a fresh voice in a tamed niche, so you can imagine that I was in awe when on a rainy Montreal morning, she accepted to lend me a spot on her blog to speak about a «particular» encounter I had last winter…

I was born a shy and polite little daddy’s girl in France and if you came upon me in the street or at a restaurant, you probably wouldn’t even notice me. I’m introverted, I’m that shy girl in the back of the class, the girl that prefers looking down rather than looking people in the eyes, but it is true what they say: «Introvert can be Dominant», I am the living, breathing proof of it!

So let me just open up, get comfortable and talk about that hot icy winter I had when I first arrived in Montreal from France!

Now folks back home used to tell me all sorts of things about Quebec, it was icy, it was cold, windy, it was like hell, just a lot colder, a lot lot colder!

As the lumberjacks that first arrived here in America centuries ago, I just had to find a way to heat things up, and Man! Did I Find It!

Nathan, Nathan, Nathan … The man who uncovered the dark dominant side of my personality, I have to admit I was a little shaken up at first but like Stabbity says: It’s okay to be different and when I find myself slapping Nathan all the while getting my rocks off , I tend to forget about my inhibitions!

How it all started…

I met Nathan last winter in Montreal, while ice skating at the Atrium Le 1000. It was cold, a lot colder than I had anticipated when I left Paris for my little trip to Canada just a week before. I was a student at the time and wanted to study abroad, as far away from France, and mostly from my parents, as I could. I applied for a three-month scholarship in Quebec and was quickly accepted to study at McGill University, within the department of Psychology. I left Paris without a trace of guilt and embraced the adventure with open arms. I feared the cold in Canada but came to realize that my time could be icy hot if I really wanted it to. Nathan became my adventure, one of self-exploration. With Nathan, I found out how free and strong I really was.

Nathan was a very handsome guy. We started chatting and skating the day we met and then went for some mulled wine together and tongues became looser quickly. I liked him but quickly noticed he was not going forward with anything. He was just being exceptionally friendly, sending me all the signals but did nothing more. He let me boil like this for about three dates and when finally, I couldn’t help myself and kissed him. I nearly slapped him for not taking the initiative and, in my frustration, I ordered him to pick me up and take me to a room in the hotel across the street from the place where we were. He liked my command and did as I told him.

Icy Hot Discovery

I got such a surge of power from this, like never before. Of course I had orgasms before Nathan and knew that the female orgasm itself wasn’t just physical, it was emotional, psychological and for the first time, I came to understand what the most complete kind of orgasm was!

I thought of myself in a position of complete control over this man I had not slept with before and wanted him. I wanted him to obey me and to make him give me pleasure. And he did. This was the unexpected part of it. He let me do what my imagination had quickly built around the whole situation and MORE. Nathan encouraged me to dominate him. He encouraged me to slap him and push him down on me. He let me pull his hair with passion and show him who is in charge and I glowed. It felt…amazing. Like my real personality had just come out for the very first time. I made him lick my entire body, kiss my feet and walk his tongue up on me from the tip of my toe, to the knee, slowly rising towards the inner thigh and near my vagina. He was burning with fever and lust and I held him back. I put his belt around his neck and walked him like a puppy in bed where I made him satisfy me. I was the Dominatrix.

Days went by…

I called on Nathan almost every evening. I made him take my fancies and he did. He enjoyed it. I loved it. In his presence, I became the queen, the ruler, the everything. All had to be done as I said or he would be punished. I would not hurt him badly, of course, unless he disobeyed me. He tried a few times, but I used that belt which was always at hand and… Strangely, I liked it. I slapped him over his adorable bottom with some considerable strength and he shouted out loud, but immediately rectified his attitude, obeying me. This made me feel so hot that I could probably have melted Canadian ice with my wet pussy. His bottom was red and my face was smiling with satisfaction. He had a massive erection, so I am very sure he enjoyed his “slave” position. He was in the right place, between my legs, licking me and lifting me to heaven. Because that is what heaven feels like: a man between my thighs, doing what I am telling him to do. You know it and I know it.

Sexual satisfaction has never been the same since Nathan. He brought forward who I really am and as a Psychology professional, I completely understand this better than anyone else. I enjoy Female Domination Relationships and always indulge myself into giving myself what I need. A hard penis is not enough. I need someone who does what he is told and likes it, someone who knows where their right place is and who can give me the pleasure I want, when I want it and how I want. And my taste is not simple at all. Boys have to work for it.

Not so long ago I mentioned that I think asking for tribute up front to weed out timewasters is ironically a waste of time. Let’s go into excruciating detail about that like the nerd I am 🙂

Sadly, it’s very common for submissive guys to be contacted by scammers and end up scared of being burned. If you ask for money right away, you make guys afraid that’s all you want from them.

It also makes you look kind of dumb, to be blunt. If you know something is likely to scare off good people who just don’t want to get scammed out of their savings and only work for people who think that because they’re paying you they’re entitled to get the kind of scene they want and you do it anyway, that doesn’t exactly make you look good. Also, if you’re having so much trouble with no-shows, you should be spending less time asking for money and more time thinking about your vetting process. If nothing else, you can at least ask potential submissives to meet you somewhere you wanted to go anyway to make it less of a hassle if they don’t show.

As a little bit of an aside, guys, this is one of the reasons it’s so common for women to ask potential subs to meet them at a munch or other kink event. If she’s going to be there anyway, she still gets to have a good time with her friends if you don’t show, which beats the hell out of feeling like a chump and wasting time making a special trip out somewhere to meet some jackass who stood her up.

And finally, the meat of the problem I have with asking for tribute when you’re not explicitly interacting with people as a pro-dom who is looking to make a living: it blurs the lines between pro and non-pro in a way that’s only going to end with everyone unhappy. Part of the service you pay for when you pay a pro is that when you turn up she is ready to play, ready to play in a way you like, dressed up in fetish gear and happy to see you. When you visit your dominant girlfriend, well maybe she’ll be in the mood to play, or maybe she had a shitty day at work or got some bad news and just wants to cuddle and watch tv. Maybe she’ll break out the fetish gear or maybe she’ll play in her jammies. Maybe she’s into acting out that one fantasy you’ve had forever, or maybe she wants to get out her favourite toy, that one you really hate.

Now, I’m not a pro, so let’s not pretend I have any real expertise here, but it seems reasonable that someone who makes a living dominating people has a vested interest in repeat business. To be fair, I’m pretty interested in my play partners having a good enough time with me to ever come back once I’ve decided to play with them for the first time, but I think it’s a lot easier to tell people you don’t feel like doing x if you don’t have to calculate how much income you could lose by saying that. From what I understand that’s much more of an issue for newbie pros who are still building up a roster of clients and therefore have to worry more about paying the bills than about doing only sessions that work for them personally, but still, I think paying for a session changes things.

Now, there’s certainly an argument to be made that doms put a lot of energy into their scenes and deserve to get something back but there’s a really simple solution there that doesn’t involve confusing people about whether or not you’re a pro: don’t play with douchebags.

And if you’re having that bad of a time getting stood up, take a break, then start being more judgemental 😉 In my experience the majority of jerks do a very bad job of hiding the fact that they think you’re a walking kink dispenser. When I end up pissed off at someone for wasting my time, it’s usually because I gave him a chance when I knew perfectly well it was a terrible idea. Sometimes even I want to believe that people who’ve disappointed me can learn.

Timewasters suck, but I really believe tribute only weeds out people who want to be valued for who they are.

A little while ago there was a really interesting discussion in that one Fetlife group I like about married submissive men who are looking for kinky play. I basically wrote a blog post in the comments and figured hey, maybe this would be useful to people who aren’t already friends with me on Fetlife. I’ve already talked a bit about married subs and about how to introduce your partner to femdom (mostly as a counterpoint to Elise Sutton’s terrible advice), so some of this may be familar if you’ve been reading for a while.

My biggest piece of advice for guys who don’t know how to tell their wives that they’re kinky is to absolutely not use any BDSM jargon whatsoever. None! Don’t do it! Two things go wrong when you do that: you bring to mind every terrible stereotype about kink in general and about dominant women in particular, which is just going to freak out a vanilla person, and you assume they know what you want when you haven’t actually given them any useful information whatsoever.

Just because you’ve been interested in kink for years and know being dominant isn’t actually about dressing up in uncomfortable fetish gear and acting like a total bitch doesn’t mean that isn’t exactly what your partner will immediately think of if you use the words “fetish,” “kink,” “bdsm,” “domination,” etc, etc. It would be great if everyone listened to everything their partner brings up with a perfectly open mind, but let’s be realistic here. By using BDSM jargon, you’re going to make your partner worry that you don’t love her the way she is and you want her to become a completely different person just to get you off. No, I’m not kidding. If you know of any positive depictions of dominant women, submissive men, or loving and affectionate female dom/male sub relationships in mainstream media, I would sincerely love to hear about it.

It is really, really common to hear that women new to domination, even ones who are interested for their own reasons, are afraid they aren’t mean enough to be real doms or that they’ll never find a submissive partner because they’re too nice. Do not make your partner worry that you want her to be someone else, you’ve got to stress that you want to do this stuff with her because you love her, not some ice-queen fantasy.

Another reason you shouldn’t use jargon when you talk to your partner is that it’s a complete waste of time. Telling a vanilla woman you want her to dominate you gives her nothing to work with. That term means nothing to her. Actually, telling anyone, even the kinkiest kinkster ever to kink, that you want them to dominate you is totally unhelpful. “Dominate me” could mean anything from ‘tie me down and cane me until there are welts all over my ass’ to ‘give me a list of tasks and then stroke my hair and tell me I’m a good boy when I finish them.’ If you want someone to do something for you, you’ve got to give her specifics. Being vague is just setting her up to fail, wtf is she supposed to do to make you happy if you won’t tell her what you want?

When you tell her what you want, my advice is to start small (really, really small), and ask for simple concrete things in plain language. Stuff like ‘I love it when you tell me what you want in bed’ or ‘You’ve had a long week, let’s do whatever you want tonight’ is something your partner can work with.

And don’t forget to praise the hell out of any tiny step she takes toward dominance. Nothing infuriates me like hearing from women who are trying to make their partners happy only to hear that nothing they do is good enough. If you absolutely have to get your ideal kinky fantasy acted out exactly the way you imagined it, dump your poor girlfriend so she can find someone who actually likes her and see a pro already.

Oh, and probably my second biggest piece of advice is to really, seriously think about the possibility that your wife’s ideal kinky relationship looks nothing like your ideal kinky relationship. I can’t remember where I found it now, but there was this thread I read a while ago with submissive guys who had started doing kinky stuff their wives actually liked and presented it like this amazing revelation. Like “Guys, guess what! If you do stuff your wife likes…. she’ll actually like kink! Who could have ever forseen this shocking turn of events!”

You may be all about the vacuum bed and the stiletto heels and the leather, where she may just want you to do what she says when she says it. Do you want to get your kink on just the way you imagined it or do you want to get some of what makes you happy and actually make your partner happy too?

Another interesting question that post brought up is what to do if you’ve tried to get your partner interested in kink and it’s just not working for her.

First, absolutely do not nag her about it. No means no, jerkface. If she’s not interested, do not keep bringing it up, that’s a dick move. It’s not giving up, it’s respecting her fucking choices as if she’s a person or something.

Second, think long and hard about whether you would rather have kink in your life or be married to her, and keep in mind that your interest in kink will definitely not just go away because you wish it would. There’s no right answer there, it’s down to you and what you need. For me, the answer would probably be different depending on whether she tried kink and couldn’t get into it or if she refused to even entertain the idea. Personally, I’d think twice about staying married to someone who wouldn’t even give it a shot and see if they hate it, but I’m kind of a hardass about stuff like that.

The original poster also asked if anyone in the group would help out a submissive guy’s vanilla wife if she wanted to learn more about kink or maybe even try it. I would definitely do that, I think it would be an interesting conversation and I like helping people. It’s really not a shortcut considering you’ve got to get your partner interested in kink before introducing her to some weirdo on the internet, but if she is interested there’s contact info on my about page and I promise I’m a lot more patient with curious vanilla people than with random jerks who send me shitty one line messages.

And finally, I kinda lied when I said my biggest piece of advice was not to use jargon. My real biggest piece of advice is to make sure you’re pulling your fucking weight in your relationship before you ask your partner to do even more for you. Seriously, read Why aren’t male doms into service?, read the two Captain Awkward columns I linked in that post where she answers letters from women who are desperately unhappy that their male partners won’t act like fucking grownups and clean a goddamn house what are you five what the fuck is wrong with you, read the Unfuck Your Habitat post about how the idea that men don’t see mess is complete and utter bullshit, and read the epic metafilter thread on emotional labour.

Once you’ve read all that, make really goddamn sure you’re not just heaping yet another chore on your poor partner’s shoulders when you ask her to try kink for you. If she’s already doing the vast majority of cooking, cleaning, and managing everyone’s feelings (is it her job to cheer you up when you have a shitty day at work? if you have kids, is it her job to cheer them up when they have a shitty day at school? is it her job to keep track of your relatives’ birthdays and find and wrap and deliver gifts to them?) then she’s just going to see doing weird stuff in the bedroom for you as yet another chore.

You like your partner, right? Don’t give her another chore, ask her if she wants to try something that could be fun.

I’ve seen an awful lot of hate for financial doms on the internets and you know, I’m starting to wonder if it’s actually about the money at all.

First of all, when I say “financial doms” I’m talking about people who are completely open and honest about wanting money. People who pretend to want a kinky boyfriend and then start asking for money are scammers, and I already wrote about avoiding them.

To be fair, there is a bit of grey area with financial doms who are just complete assholes about it. I’m not sure how much I care that you’re “just catering to a fetish plenty of men have” I think it’s a dick move to write openly about how you think submissive men are worthless and only good for opening their wallets without making it really clear that’s a fantasy roleplay. It’s also scary easy to financial domination to devolve into financial abuse, but then again that’s true of any power exchange relationship. I’m not sure a bad financial dom is fundamentally that much worse than the bad dom who says if you were a real submissive you would _____.

Depending on where you get your information about dominant women, it can be sickeningly easy to get the impression that doms don’t actually like submissive men, they just like the cash they can extract from them. No doubt that’s a terrible feeling, but guys, how bad am I supposed to feel for someone who can’t be bothered to google “healthy bdsm relationship“? There is not exactly a shortage of dominant women out here yelling about how we just want to be treated like people.

All that said, I have some serious doubts that the assumption that women who ask for tribute are money grubbing whores or contemptible opportunists is about the money they’re asking for at all. A big part of it is about men feeling entitled to women’s time/effort/emotional labour and being absolutely incensed that everything they want isn’t immediately offered to them on a silver platter. I mean, have you seen all the chatter on the internet lately about how/whether to bother a woman who is wearing headphones? Some manbabies just cannot handle the idea that any woman, anywhere, is for any reason not available to them, and they flip their shit like the little brats they are.

When someone isn’t available to you, whether that’s because she’s sending incredibly fucking obvious signals that she wants to be left alone or because she insists on a kink that doesn’t work for you, isn’t the simplest and easiest response to shrug and move on? Guys, if a women isn’t compatible with you that doesn’t mean she’s wrong, it just means that you’re incompatible. The world will keep spinning, I promise. Would you all get so up in arms about a woman who wanted her submissive boyfriend to actually make himself useful, not just show up for play and then bugger off while she cleans all the toys and puts them away?

Wait, bad example, I’ve already seen that the answer is yes. Women who want anything in return are the worst, amirite?

Speaking of women being the worst, you actually don’t have the right to contact any dom you want. If someone says directly on their profile that they only want to hear from certain kinds of people (“no men” is the most common condition I’ve seen) you leave her the fuck alone if you don’t fit the criteria. She doesn’t belong to you, her time doesn’t belong to you, she did not agree to waste her time on every jackass out there just because she’s committed the crime of being a woman on the internet.

I just don’t get this massive indignance about women daring to tell men that they have to pay up if they want attention. If someone is totally incompatible with you, isn’t it better to learn that before you get attached? That’s why (well half of why) I’m so blunt about my hard limits on my profile – I think the kindest thing I can do for people potentially interested in me is to get all the potential dealbreakers out in the open so they don’t get any terrible surprises later on. Of course, the other half of why I’m so blunt is that I just don’t want to hear from people who want stuff I don’t have to give and like to feel justified in blocking them for not reading my profile 🙂

While I personally think asking for tribute for the purposes of weeding out fakes and time-wasters is poorly thought out, not going to work, and likely to scare off guys who are worried you’re a scammer, I can’t be bothered to freak out about it either. I mean, I’m willing to blog about why I think it’s a waste of time, but as long as you’re not actively harming people I can only get so excited.

And again, if someone is so bad at vetting potential partners (play or otherwise) that she’s resorted to asking for money upfront, isn’t that something you’d want to know upfront? Can we all just chill the fuck out about people doing the honorable thing and being upfront about not being compatible with you?

That’s a (heavily paraphrased) quote from entirely too many threads I’ve seen, not a personal question. I know why people don’t like me, I’m a jerk 🙂 And yes, that does make it pretty ironic that I of all people am giving out advice on how to be more likable, but at least I’m a jerk on purpose.

It’s far, far too common to see people post like total assholes online and then act surprised that nobody likes them. People (mostly men, let’s be honest, but I’ve seen women do it too), can you please think about what the common denominator there could possibly be for like five goddamn seconds? If everyone “just doesn’t understand” and “totally missed the point” of your post/reply/comment/whatever, consider the possibility you did a shitty job of explaining yourself, or that the description that you thought was neutral was really, really not, or that you have profoundly misunderstood something.

Now, there is an argument to be made that people refusing to read the goddamn docs (or stickies, in the case of Fetlife groups) is simply a fact of life and that people should be nicer to the massive number of newbies who all ask the same questions over and over again. However, while groups specifically for newbies are valuable, it is simply not necessary that every group (Fetlife, random forum, or otherwise), cater to newbies who can’t be bothered to do their own research. You may have gathered that I’m not super interested in people who want their answers spoon fed to them 🙂 Google is your friend, people.

Yes, it’s not possible to search inside Fetlife groups yet, but that’s what the stickies are for. If absolutely none of the stickies interest you, maybe that group is just not for you. Think about it for a second – somebody chose to make those particular threads into stickies for a reason. If you totally disagree with the mods’ decisions about what threads are interesting or valuable enough to be stickies, then you know that group isn’t for you. Whether you can search for your answers or have to actually read (or at least skim) a bunch of stickies, there’s simply no excuse for not even trying to find anything out on your own. Laziness is unattractive no matter which side of the slash you’re on.

Just doing the tiniest bit of research can seriously endear you to a group. If you take nothing else away from this post, take this: the smallest effort to meet people halfway will make them want to like you.

So let’s assume you’ve done a little reading and have a question that hasn’t been answered recently or at least a variation on a common question. Now you need to think about how to phrase that question. Yes, the way you ask a question matters. It should not be news that there’s a difference between “That’s a stupid idea, we should do x instead” and “I’m worried about y, I think we should do x because …” Basically, if you can get along with people at work, you can get along with people online. Sure, anywhere you’re discussing kink online is very likely to be a lot less formal than your job, but the basic lessons of not flipping your shit if somebody says something you don’t like still apply. Forums like Fetlife are not a free for all where you can check your social skills at the door just because they’re focused on kink.

If you do need pointers on basic social skills, try realsocialskills.org. They have a tag especially for social skills they didn’t teach us. If that site doesn’t work for you, there are tons more out there, just google “learn social skills.” I bring this up because some not everybody gets to just easily pick up social skills when they’re a kid. It’s not my area of expertise or the focus of this blog, but I wanted to share those resources so that any readers who are honestly not sure what keeps going wrong when they try to participate in a discussion online at least have a shot at find something helpful there.

That said, I think most people who get themselves into trouble online screw up not because they honestly don’t know how to have a civil conversation but because they showed up with the false assumption that a site being focused on kink somehow magically means that anything goes and there’s no wrong way to talk to people and everyone magically accepts any kind of behaviour because… I don’t even know. Your Kink Is Not My Kink But Your Kink Is OK doesn’t mean you get to be rude to people with no consequences.

It also doesn’t mean people are obligated to be nice to you if they honestly answer your question and you freak out because you don’t like their answers. For shit’s sake guys, if people give you advice, either take it or admit this is the wrong place for you and leave! Why would you hang around with people who you think are stupid and wrong about everything, anyway?

If you get answers you don’t like, there are two things you should do and one thing you should do before you ask a question. The one thing is to remember that if you ask a question, you might get answers you don’t like. If you can’t stand to have people disagree with you, don’t fucking ask the question. Make a cup of tea, play some video games, and don’t waste everyone’s time by asking a question you don’t actually want answered.

The two things you should do after you ask a question and get answers you don’t like are to think back to the point I made above about common denominators and to walk away from the computer and chill the fuck out. If it feels like everyone misunderstood you, the common denominator is you. Accept that you didn’t explain yourself well and stop blaming other people for not magically figuring out what you really meant.

A lot of the threads I’ve seen go completely off the rails went that way because the OP freaked out when people disagreed with them and kept arguing that everyone who disagreed was wrong, stupid, and ignorant. If they had just closed the damned browser tab and come back the next day, they could have (well maybe) had a productive discussion about how to phrase what they actually meant, but because they had to keep posting in the heat of the moment the thread devolved into personal attacks and got closed by the mods.

I’ve talked a lot about phrasing things such that you don’t look like a total douchebag. If you’re new to kink and don’t know the right words yet, how do you figure them out? Lurk! For the love of god, lurk! Reading is good for you!

Not only that, but why would you just randomly post in a random group without reading any of it to see if you even want to talk with those people? They could be total jerks! They could have ideas about d/s that are totally at odds with yours! They could be all about the newbie questions when you want to have a more nuanced discussion! They could be all about the nuanced discussions when you just want a simple newbie question answered!

But seriously, not looking like an asshole online is mostly about understanding the culture of the place you’re posting in and making a token effort to blend with it. For example, in the Submissive men and women who love them group on Fetlife, describing yourself as an “alpha” will end in practically everyone telling you that the vast majority of submissive men are not sniveling doormats in their daily lives either, you’re not a special snowflake, and that no one is impressed by how “alpha” you think you are (protip: if you were actually that socially dominant, you wouldn’t have to tell me all about it). If you lurk for a bit, you’ll learn that about the group and realize you should phrase your question in a way that doesn’t use that word.

If you’re going to act like a jerk, at least do it on purpose 🙂

I’ve said this before, but you know, it bears repeating: people, particularly women, notice when you can’t be bothered to talk to anyone you don’t want to fuck and we hate it. That’s not the only reason you should talk to people who aren’t hot dominant women or who *gasp* are dominant women but don’t particularly turn you on, though.

First of all, people have friends. If you’re not a dick, they might introduce you to said friends. I don’t know why this doesn’t occur to more people – do you think everyone you see at a munch or play party is secretly a robot who goes straight home afterward and plugs themselves into their charging station? To be fair, it is normal to assume that the scene consists only of the people you see at events, but think about it for a second. Not everyone makes it to every single event. People have other stuff going on in their lives, they have scheduling conflicts, they catch colds, they go on vacation, they just don’t like large groups of people, and sometimes even when everything lines up just right they still don’t feel like leaving the house that night (if so you might be me :).

If you’re nice to the people who did make it out, they’ll be a lot more likely to introduce you to their friends who didn’t make it out. If you’re lucky, you’ll meet someone who actively enjoys introducing people who might get along. Pro-tip: sometimes the person who actively enjoys introducing people is a submissive guy. One more reason you should talk to people who aren’t hot dominant women.

Second of all, you can make friends with people you don’t want to fuck. I wish that was too obvious to bother saying, but apparently it’s not. Some of the people you meet in the scene will have absolutely nothing in common with you besides kink, but some people you meet literally everywhere else will also have nothing in common with you. You’re certainly not required to make friends with other kinksters, but what can it hurt to try? Just because kink is the thing that brings you together doesn’t mean you can’t possibly run into anyone you have more in common with. Nobody has just one hobby and kink is no exception. The kink scene does seem to be pretty nerd heavy though, so if you can’t stand to hear about the latest sci-fi movie you may need to meet a bunch of people before you find a non-nerd.

It can only do you good to have friends who are into the same stuff you are and will help you stand up to your inner demons when they tell you you’re a freak. I have this theory that part of the reason it’s so sadly common for submissive guys to be down on themselves is that they isolate themselves and don’t have anyone around to tell them “No dude, you’re a good guy, your brain is just being a jerk right now.” It’s also helpful to have someone who can

You can also learn things from people who aren’t hot dominant women. Shockingly enough, other people know things and it’s possible to absorb information that comes from someone you don’t want to bang. You can even, horror of horrors, learn stuff from dominant men (but feel free to skip the douchebags). It’s not unusual for kinky people to be excited to show off their toys and talk about how to use them safely, even with people they aren’t necessarily interested in playing with. There are also plenty of people in the scene who enjoy nerding out about kink theory – why particular kinks work for us, why some kinks are so common, what kind of d/s works for us or totally doesn’t work for us, and you can learn a lot by talking with them.

Even if you’re not interested in making friends or learning from anyone and only want to find a sexual partner, you should still talk with people you don’t want to fuck. Not only because you can cast a much wider net, so to speak, if you act like the kind of person anyone would ever introduce their friends to, but because only talking to people you want to fuck simply does not work.

Seriously, we can fucking smell it on you when you think a conversation is a total waste of time if it doesn’t lead to you getting your dick wet. If you’re going to act like that, you might as well just go home and jerk off. It’ll be about as productive a way to meet people, with the added bonus of not giving people the completely accurate impression that you suck.

Also, if you only talk to people you want to fuck, you might as well wear a sign that says “I don’t care about you as a person.” It should not be any sort of surprise that acting like that convinces people they should never get naked with you. Even if they do like casual sex, they’re not real likely to want it with someone who is almost certainly a selfish sack of shit in bed. Why would anyone bother to fuck some dumb jerk who is only going to do what feels good for him and make no effort to get you off?

Finally, if you go around only talking to the hottest women at the munch/party/whatever, what you’re telling every woman after the first one is that she is not your first choice but she’ll do. Sexxxxy.

Guys, for the love of god stop going to munches, talking only to women you want to fuck, and then acting surprised that no one seems to like you. This is social skills 101, if you act like a jerk people will *gasp* think you’re a jerk. Have you never talked to anyone who was only interested in what you could do for them and dropped you like a hot rock when they got what they wanted? Did you like that person? So do you see the moral of the story here?

You get people to like you by showing an interest in them, it’s not that fucking complicated.

Thank you whoever found my blog by searching for “how do i know if i’m masochistic or just submissive?” that’s a really good question 🙂

It’s really easy to mix these up and depending on how you define “masochistic” there’s a lot of gray area. I personally like Carolyn’s definition, which is that masochistic just means that you can use pain to get where you want to go. It doesn’t mean you enjoy the sensation of pain, just that you have reasons for wanting to experience it. Some people really enjoy the endorphin rush from a good beating, some people love the way pain gets them out of their heads and into their bodies, some people like to see how much they can take and push their own limits, some people need pain to trigger an emotional catharsis etc, etc. It’s not unlike the reason I run, actually 🙂 Sometimes it’s actually fun to go for a run, and sometimes I hate it a whole lot. But even when I just want it to be over already, it still helps me relax, I still feel a sense of accomplishment when I’m done, and it still helps me sleep. Oh and it feels great when I stop.

Basically masochism is about physical sensations, even if you’re using those sensations to create an emotional response in yourself.

Submission, on the other hand, is about handing over control/authority/power to someone else. Some people feel warm and fuzzy and loved when someone else cares enough about them to make decisions for them, some people get turned on by being told what to do, some people express love and affection by giving decision-making power to their partner and doing nice things for them, some people just like having a leader in their relationships, etc, etc.

I would say that submission is about how you run your personal relationships, and not necessarily romantic ones. Aromantic people who are into d/s exist, after all, and so do people who just happen to not have a romantic relationship with their dom/sub/insert preferred title here. I say ‘personal relationships’ here because submission most certainly does not mean that you’re a doormat for everyone to walk on, it means that you like to let your partner(s) run the show.

The confusing part is how common it is for submissive people to also be masochistic and how common it is for masochistic play to appear submissive.

Because so much of the porn we watch and stories we read (both fictional and non), focus on doms doing things, often painful things, to submissive people, it’s really easy to get the idea that submission is fundamentally about having those things done to you. For the same reason, it’s really easy to get the idea that if you want those things done to you, you must be submissive.

Another thing that muddies the waters is that it’s not exactly unusual for submissive people who don’t like pain to take it to make their partners happy. This can look a lot like masochism, and you know, there’s a pretty solid argument to be made that “I love the look on my dom’s face when she whips me” isn’t so different from “I love the endorphin rush I get from a good needle scene”, but I personally see taking pain to please a dom as more submissive than masochistic.

So given all that gray area, how do you figure out whether you’re masochistic or submissive? That’s a tough question, but I have a couple of ideas. First of all, try some stuff. It could be that you only like particular kinds of pain, or only enjoy submitting to people you know really well. The more stuff you try, the more chances you have to figure out what works for you and what doesn’t. Oh, and to be clear, when I say that, I absolutely do not mean that you should pressure yourself to try stuff you’re sure you’ll hate or that freak you out. I’m strictly talking about mentally translating “meh” to “why not?”

I also have a couple of thought experiments:

Imagine having a scene where the person who inflicts pain on you does it because you like it and they want you to be happy. There are no surprises in this scene, no “Oh do you hate that toy? I’m going to hit you with it more”, everything happens exactly how you like it and they only use your favourite toys. Would that scene be fun for you or would you feel like something was missing?

Here’s another scene to imagine: suppose your dom takes a whole scene to do just stuff they like. Say, tickling for example (if you hate being tickled, imagine they’re using a whartenberg wheel or something else that’s not especially painful but can be annoying if you don’t like it). Something that you feel kind of “meh” about, but that they really love. Imagine the whole time your dom is having a blast and they really enjoy the way you react even though you would never ask for a tickling scene for the sake of having a tickling scene. Would that scene be fun for you or would you feel like something was missing?

Readers, how did you or your partners figure out whether you/they were submissive or masochistic?

In case you had better things to do all week than check my blog for updates every single day, I did another spite week of posts that have nothing to do with my kink. In order, they are:

Spite week returns!
Spite week: cocktails!
Spite week: homesick for Azeroth
Spite week: sacred moon time my pasty white ass
Spite week: weird spooky fiction
Spite week: the message podcast

Enjoy, and remember that I, like all dominant women, am a human fucking being who has interests that have nothing to do with my kink.

My husband recommended The Message podcast to me and now I’m recommending it to you 🙂 It’s more of an audio miniseries than a regular podcast, which I actually quite like because there’s a defined story that ends. It’s pretty short, you can burn through the whole thing in an evening if you need to know what happens next.

The Message is a sort of sci-fi thriller about a message received from outer space. That kills people who listen to it too much. Enjoy!