Bafflingly enough, some people say they “don’t believe in” blocking or banning people. I don’t understand that even a little bit. Why on earth would any random person have a right to my time and attention?

My time belongs to me, not you. I am not a charity for poorly socialized assholes, and even if you’re not a jerk, I still don’t owe you shit. Not an argument (even I occasionally remember that being invited to an argument doesn’t mean I’m obligated to attend), not an explanation, not a slowly and painfully spoonfed lesson on why no dominant woman seems to want to give your sorry ass the time of day.

I do enjoy feeling helpful and I think it’s important to encourage submissive men who don’t act like complete assclowns, so it’s not that I’m not willing to deal with people at all. If I didn’t want to interact with anyone, I’d close comments on my blog. What I want, and what I have any absolutely inalienable right to, is to choose who can contact me. If we’re not going to have any sort of give and take, if we’re not going to have an interesting discussion, if you’re not going to ask interesting questions that would make good blog posts, or if I don’t even get to feel helpful because you’re a lost cause, then you don’t get any (more) of my time. And no, there’s not going to be a “debate” about who is a lost cause. The only person whose opinion matters there is me. Try to keep up with the tour 🙂

That’s also why I ban people from the comments here if I goddamn well feel like it. If you have something worthwhile to add, great. If you’re racist, misogynist, homophobic, transphobic, or whatever other variety of asshole, then you don’t get free storage on my site for your worthless drivel. If you’re just in completely the wrong place and are too stupid to know it (protip: don’t come to a female dom’s blog looking for a male dom. Sure, it could happen, but you could also, say, look for a male dom where male doms hang out) but not actively hateful then you get to leave maybe one or two comments before you get blocked. If you want to post what you want, when you want, get your own fucking blog. On my blog, you add something either pleasant or interesting or you fuck off.

If you get blocked, chill the fuck out. I often block people not because I’m angry at them but because I’d rather watch paint dry than talk with them ever again. I’ve seen people on twitter assume that the person who blocked them felt attacked, which is often not the case. Blocking doesn’t always mean “jesus fuck you’re an asshole,” it can also mean “that was boring. Let’s not do it again. Ever.” It might also mean “I saw how you behave online and I’m going to save us both some time by blocking you now.” Dude who cross posted the same desperate personal ad in a dozen groups, I’m looking at you. Just because we’ve never directly interacted doesn’t mean you can’t still convince me that you’re a total waste of my time.

If you don’t believe in blocking or banning people, then what you’re saying is that everyone has a right to your time and attention. My time has a value, it is not available to every random asshole who comes across my profile. If you don’t value your own time that’s a shame but it doesn’t mean I’m wrong to value mine. Go right ahead and think I’m a big mean poopyhead, I’ll be over here doing something I actually enjoy instead of wasting my time on people who have nothing to offer me.

I’ve heard over and over again how “women can get laid any time they want” and therefore can’t possibly know how men suffer when some uppity bitch won’t hand over the sex he clearly deserves for sending her a shitty form letter. If you’ve been paying attention, you won’t be at all surprised to hear how much that annoys me.

First of all, not all women can just snap their fingers and have a guy show up ready to fuck them. Second, even if you are the kind of (young, skinny, conventionally attractive) woman who can get laid whenever she wants, who says the sex is going to be any good?

Saying that women can get laid any time they want can technically be sort of true depending on how you define “woman.” To quote Cliff Pervocracy’s brilliantly sarcastic post The Beta Male:

The word “woman” refers exclusively to slender, outgoing, fashionable, conventionally beautiful heterosexual white women under 30 who aren’t too slutty. Other types of woman aren’t undesirable so much as nonexistent.

If that’s the definition of woman you’re working from when you say women can get laid any time they want, then you’re not saying anything remotely interesting. Yep, young, white, thin, conventionally attractive men and women do in fact have an easier time getting laid than people who’ve had the unbelievable gall to age or not be skinny. In related news, water is still wet and the sun still rises in the east.

On the other hand, if you actually mean literally all adult female humans when you say women can get laid any time you want, you’re an ignorant and deluded asshole. Fat women exist. Women over the age of 30 exist. Women with wrinkles and stretch marks exist. Women who don’t shave exist. Women who don’t dress in a way that turns you on exist. So do women who don’t wear makeup. Trans women exist too. How many of the men who whine and cry about how desperate they are for just one woman to give them a chaaaaaance are willing to even consider possibly thinking about fucking a woman who isn’t a goddamn supermodel? Guess you’re not actually that desperate to get your dick wet now are you. It’s like men are people who have standards or something.

Along with having standards, men also have all sorts of reasons not to be interested in casual sex. Sometimes those reasons are good (for example, not being comfortable getting naked with someone you barely know, not feeling safe going home with a stranger or bringing a stranger to your home, etc), sometimes they’re not so good (being afraid that the sort of dirty slut who would have sex with someone she just met (like, you know, you’re trying to) is going to give you an STI or turn out to be “crazy” (read: have emotions that are inconvenient for the guy being a dick to her)), but not all guys are into casual sex with literally any woman who offers. Yep, TV lied to you.

Also, sometimes a guy is totally into casual sex but just not into you. Guys get to have standards as detailed above (slender, outgoing, fashionable, conventionally beautiful, etc), but the idea that women can get laid any time they want presumes that women who have standards are just bitches who enjoy rejecting men. Yes, I have standards. No, I’m not sorry that I prefer to have sex with guys who have showered in the last 12 hours, dress like they give a shit what they look like, can string a coherent sentence together, and act even vaguely like they give a shit what I think of them. Sure, if I had no standards I could get some random poorly groomed asshole to put his dick in me any night of the week but honestly I’d rather slam my hand in a door.

Guys, you too can get laid any time you want if you lower your standards far enough. If you are willing to fuck literally anyone, someone will fuck you. It just won’t be anyone you would ever actually want to fuck.

So no, women as in all adult female humans cannot get laid any time they want and you’re a fucking asshole if you think the word woman means “slender, outgoing, fashionable, conventionally beautiful heterosexual white women under 30 who aren’t too slutty.”

But for the sake of argument, let’s pretend that all women actually can access hot and cold running dick whenever they want to (yes I’m being super heteronormative but let’s be honest: nobody who whines about how women can supposedly get laid whenever they like is thinking of anyone but straight cis people). Now we have another definition problem. The men who say that women can get laid any time they want are assuming the sex that they enjoy is also good for the woman they’re pounding away at while completely ignoring her clitoris. Guys, there is a difference between “sex” and “good sex.”

For cis men, sex can be like pizza in that even if it’s bad it’s still pretty good. For cis women, sex can easily be much less fulfilling and far more hassle than staying home and binge-watching House of Cards on Netflix. It’s not that we don’t like sex, it’s that bad sex is really fucking boring and lots of men are bad at it. Plus it’s pretty fucking hard to tell someone how to get you off when a) you’ve been socialized from birth never to talk about what you want or have needs that might possibly inconvenience anyone, b) are worried about hurting the guy’s feelings if you tell him that the almighty penis alone is not going to get it done, and c) are worried about being considered some sort of dirty slut who *gasp* masturbates for knowing what kind of touch gets you off.

I’m not any sort of expert in the science of desire and sexuality (for that you should read Emily Nagoski’s entire blog), but for a really quick overview just read her post about the dual control model of sexuality. Oh, and this one about orgasm differences. To quote that post:

Virtually all heterosexual men are reliably orgasmic from penile-vaginal intercourse, while only about a quarter to a third of women are. Another third of women are sometimes orgasmic from penetration, and the remaining third of women are never or almost never orgasmic from penile-vaginal penetration. These results have been replicated over and over, in the lab and by self-report.

Also:

Latency is the amount of time it takes from the start of stimulation to orgasm. For women, it’s somewhere between 5-25 minutes on average (masturbating), and for men it’s more like 4-7 minutes (intravaginal).

Tell me, do you think random guy from the bar/craigslist/okcupid/whatever is going to patiently bring me to the edge of orgasm before he sticks it in and or patiently bring me off after he’s already gotten his and quite possibly fallen asleep? Sure, maybe he will, but are the odds of that good enough to justify the hassle of leaving the house (I’m a hermit, okay, this is a serious hurdle to overcome) and finding someone who might get me off?

Personally, I’ve had good luck with online hookups actually giving a shit whether I’ve gotten off but I was also a picky motherfucker who spent days if not weeks looking out for an ad that actually made me want to reply. Online personals, even the most casual ones, were never an “I need to get laid tonight” solution, they were an “I would like to get laid in the not so distant future” solution. If I needed an orgasm that night and didn’t already have a friend with benefits coming over, I just jerked off. Look at that stats up there: I have terrible odds of getting off with some random. Admittedly I’m one of the lucky ones in that I can reliably orgasm with the right stimulation and it’s not that much of a hassle, for women with more elusive orgasms casual hookups are an even worse bet.

It is true that women have slightly better chances of having casual sex than men do because the vastly higher risk for women means that relatively few of us are even interested in casual sex. It is simply not true that any woman can have satisfying sex with a man she finds attractive any time she wants. Guys, you too can get laid any time you want (for free, even!) if you just lower your standards far enough and are willing to have bad sex with someone you’re not attracted to. Doesn’t that sound like fun?

Or, Stabbity thought of more stuff that new submissive guys might want to know.

One of the questions I see over and over is whether it’s okay to be inexperienced or whether any dom would ever give an inexperienced sub the time of day. I also sometimes see puzzling (to put it nicely) assumptions about more experienced subs.

First of all, there’s nothing wrong with whatever level of experience you have. If you have none, great. That’s how we all started out. If you have tons, great. You have something valuable to share.

For the inexperienced subs out there, it’s not a lack of experience that can put doms off so much as the way that lack of experience and lack of self-awareness often go together. If you’ve never done anything kinky before, doms worry that you’ll abruptly realize you’re not kinky after all and abandon them or assume that kink is all about making your boner happy and irritate the shit out of them and waste their time, or act shocked that women have desires of their own that might not turn you on or even *GASP* actively turn you off.

Fortunately, there are a bunch of things you can do about that. First of all, get some information about kink that doesn’t come from porn. Ideally you should go to a munch and talk to actual kinky people face to face, but if that’s not your thing then I highly recommend reading forums and/or blogs where you can hear from actual kinky people. Just keep in mind that there is a huge amount of bullshit on the internet. If anyone asks you for money, they’re a scammer. If someone sounds like they stepped out of your favourite porno, they’re a scammer. If someone goes on and on about how they were trained by a secret European house/a true old guard mistress/how they’ve been dominant since middle school, they’re lying to make themselves look important and you should take everything they say with a gigantic grain of salt.

Many kinky people are friendly to newbies who are trying to figure themselves out, if you ask politely about something in their profile or something they said in a forum post, you have a good chance of getting a helpful answer. Don’t take it personally if you don’t get a response even if you do everything right, all sorts of things that have nothing to do with you can prevent a person from answering even the best email. Sometimes people get swamped at work. Sometimes people go on vacation. Sometimes people have a bad break up and take a little time away from the scene. Sometimes people just forget stuff and then all of a sudden that message is two months old and they’re embarrassed about saying “Hi person who messaged me weeks and weeks ago, I’m kind of a fuckup and can’t keep track of my own email.” Er, not that that’s ever happened to me or anything.

Another piece of advice for men in general: read/watch/listen to media by women. Why? Because it’ll help you understand that we’re people with unique views of the world who don’t exist to entertain you. One of the most irritating things you can possibly do as a new sub is to act all shocked and horrified that a dominant woman might have her own ideas about how a scene or a relationship should go.

If casual play is something that appeals to you at all, kink organizations will sometimes have events specifically for newbies to try stuff out. In my city we’ll have a party for newbies about once a year with a whole bunch of booths staffed by volunteers (both tops and bottoms) who might let you give/receive a spanking, or a paddling, or a couple of licks from a whip (you probably won’t get to give that one). Even if casual play is your thing, keep in mind that trying something in the context of a stranger giving you a quick demo can be very different from having a full on scene with someone you personally like and want to play with. Basically, don’t write something off as Not Your Kink just because a demo didn’t do it for you.

For people with the cash to spare, seeing a pro can also be helpful. Sometimes you just want to know whether you even like getting flogged/caned/tied up and you don’t want to lead some poor woman on just to find out that you’re only a bottom in your fantasies. Now, pros can have very similar problems with total newbies as lifestyle doms – if you’ve never done this before you’re much more likely to get cold feet, and for a pro that’s an hour (or so) where they suddenly don’t make any money. Expect to pay some kind of deposit to make an appointment and accept that not all pros are interested in seeing someone with absolutely no references (it’ll say so on her website if that’s the case). Keep in mind that pros are often part of the scene – the pro you were a dick to might very well be best friends with the hot dom at the munch you have your eye on.

Don’t forget, being inexperienced can be an asset. Some doms have run into far too many guys who expect them to act just like their old mistress did and are sick of having to explain that no really, they’re different people who want different things. Sometimes it’s just easier to deal with someone who isn’t dragging around all that baggage. It can also be a huge amount of fun to introduce people to awesome stuff they’re been fantasizing about for ages and finally get to experience. And honestly, some people are just turned on by being someone’s first dom.

That all might sound really complicated but all you need to do is make a bit of an effort to figure your shit out and treat dominant women like we’re people.

For the experienced subs out there, it’s not that having experience means you’re used goods, it’s that your new dom is going to worry that you’ll expect her to be exactly like your old dom.

Some guys seem to assume that having some experience means they’re somehow pre-trained and less work for a new dom. That’s bullshit, to be blunt. There is no universal standard of training. I don’t fucking care that so and so trained you, I’m not her. The fact that you think that’s relevant only tells me you don’t understand that doms are unique individuals.

Think about it this way: if you date Amy and then Brianna, would you tell Brianna that you’re a good boyfriend because you know what Amy likes? No, that would be completely fucking ridiculous. Amy and Brianna are different people, making Amy happy doesn’t say anything about your ability to make Brianna happy.

There’s also a special case of this for guys who’ve spent a lot of time seeing pros: lifestylers can get worried that you’re going to expect them to act like a pro. That is, to break out all the fancy fetish gear every time and do what you like, not what they like and always be up for a scene if you want one. This is where you need the self-awareness to know what you actually want. If you enjoyed playing with a pro but you want a relationship too and/or a more pervasive d/s dynamic than you can realistically maintain with someone you see once a month, great! On the other hand, if you just want someone to top you for free and otherwise act like a pro, suck it up and keep paying the pro. Trust me, everyone will be happier that way. You don’t want to be the self-absorbed asshole that your former girlfriend warns all her friends to stay the hell away from.

To be clear, it’s absolutely okay to want the pro dom experience. Maybe you’re extremely busy, maybe you don’t have the emotional energy for a relationship, maybe you need to keep your kink sharply separated from the rest of your life. As long as you’re honest about it and don’t try to badger some poor woman into pro domming you for free, it’s totally cool to want what you want.

Another potential issue with a guy who’s played with other doms, pro or not, is it can be intimidating to play with someone who’s played with someone who is really good at it and wonder if you measure up. Especially if he’s played with someone who literally does it for a living, it can be really easy to start worrying about whether you’re actually any good at this or whether he’s wishing he was playing with someone who had better aim.

Being more experienced can be an asset. It’s no worse than having had previous vanilla relationships. Sure, there’s a risk you have more baggage than someone who’s never dated before, but at the same time that also tells me that at least one person thought you were worth dating. Net gain! Plus it’s really helpful if you can tell your dom that you love x, like y okay, and can’t take much z.

The same advice I gave inexperienced guys still applies: all you need to do is make a bit of an effort to figure your shit out and treat dominant women like we’re people.

No matter how much experience you have, if you have a bit of self-awareness and can build an emotional connection with someone, odds are good she won’t care how much experience you have. Keep in mind that different people like different things for reasons that have nothing to do with you, and don’t try to be someone you’re not.

After last week’s cranky post, let’s talk about things I like. I really like games that make me think. If you do too you should definitely play The Beginner’s Guide. It’s Davey Wreden’s second game, he also made The Stanley Parable (which was amazing and you should play it too).

I can’t say too much about the game without spoiling it, so I’m going to have to be a little vague here. What I enjoyed about the game was having to think about what was going on and try to figure out what it meant. I also love games like Torchlight and Torchlight II which are all about straightforward dungeon exploring and monster smiting, but sometimes I want something I can dig into a little more.

The Beginner’s Guide (and The Stanley Parable, for that matter), aren’t for everyone. They aren’t so much “games” as interactive experiences – there’s no score, no win condition, no lives or deaths. Some people get really into stuff like that and other people just aren’t interested. I personally like just about anything weird and/or morbid, so I really enjoy stuff that tries to expand the boundaries of what you can express with a game.

After you play The Beginner’s Guide, if you decide to, I highly recommend watching this talk Davey gave called Playing Stories. In the context of that talk, the game is a lot easier to understand. It’s also an interesting talk in general if you’re into making games or anything else to express yourself.

One of many, many things that I’m irrationally irritated by is personal ads all about how the poster is bored and wonders if anyone wants to hang out. If you can’t entertain yourself with AN ENTIRE FUCKING INTERNET there is absolutely nothing I can do to help you.

Now, I realize that “I’m bored” is probably just a semi-socially-acceptable version of “I’m lonely” or “I’m horny” but that in no way fixes the impression it gives, which is that the poster is such a lazy little shit that they can’t be bothered to entertain themselves and expect a stranger to do it for them. I’m not your fucking mommy, random internet person. I don’t give two shits that you’re bored. Unlike you I’m a grownup and can amuse myself with the enormous pile of books I want to read, games I want to play (my steam backlog is a mess), blog posts I want to write, personal projects I want to work on, things I want to learn, tumblr, twitter, and about a zillion delightfully weird little shows on youtube. If you can get on Fetlife to whine about how you’re bored, you have access to all the entertainment you could possibly want.

If for some reason you’re you’re set on interacting with people face to face (while I’m baffled by it, I hear extroversion is a thing), meetup.com is your friend. Or you can get off your ass and google “volunteer [your city]” or check the local classifieds. If you need to get out of the house there is a way to do that, you just have to show the tiniest bit of initiative.

I’m also – possibly irrationally – annoyed by shared profiles. If you and your partner are so codependent you can’t handle having separate identities on Fetlife, why on earth would I stand in the path of that particular trainwreck? The idea that people in a relationship stop being separate people creeps me the fuck out, and aside from making my skin want to crawl off my body and down the street, I don’t think I’d have much of anything to talk about with people who think it’s a good idea to assimilate themselves into some borg-like hivemind.

Not that that’s the only reason to have a shared profile. You could also be pathologically untrusting or completely justifiably untrusting! Sign up now for a good seat at the inevitable trainwreck! I honestly don’t care why you don’t trust your partner enough to let them have an individual profile, I just want to be outside the blast radius when things inevitably explode. Call me cold-hearted but I’ll be over here enjoying a nice glass of wine while you lose days of your life you will never get back to an entirely predictable and preventable crisis. And honestly, do you want to hang out with someone who thinks your life choices are badly thought out and guaranteed to make you unhappy? You do not, so let’s spare each other the hassle and stay away.

Another less direct pet peeve of mine is people (men. let’s be honest, it’s men) who answer personal ads that have a clear age range defined when they’re well outside of that range. Not so long ago I saw a personal ad from someone who was very clear about what she wanted and part of what she wanted was people in a clearly defined age range. So of course some creeper replies saying he’s a little outside her range and wondering whether she’s at all flexible on it. If he was only a year or two older than her upper bound that would be a reasonable question. But of course Mr Creeper is not a year or two older, he’s TEN FUCKING YEARS over her oldest desired age. That guy is literally old enough to be her father!

Daddy kink is a thing, being into older men is a thing, being totally bored of bratty little boys your own age is so very much a thing. All of that is totally cool if it’s the younger party explicitly inviting older potential partners to get in touch. When some random guy messages a woman who is young enough to be his daughter knowing perfectly well that she’s looking for men a minimum of ten years younger than he is, that’s creepy as shit. When the absolute best case scenario is that you’re too fucking lazy to actually read the ad and just replied to the perky young titties, it’s time to back the fuck away from the keyboard before you embarrass yourself even more than you already have.

While I’m at it, for fucks sake stop posting the same personal ad over and over again. Protip: if I only check the local personals group once in a while and see a fresh ad from you every single fucking time I do, you need to chill the fuck out. I actually don’t want you to be as desperately sad and lonely as you look, but if you insist on waving the “I’m desperate and lonely!” flag, that’s going to do you about as much good as waving the “I’m too lazy to entertain myself!” flag.

On the upside, it’s really easy to do better than these examples. Seriously, the tiniest bit of thought will put you head and shoulders above the sad bastards who think “Your purpose in life is to entertain me when I’m too fucking lazy to do it myself!” is attractive. Just spend five goddamn seconds thinking about how the people reading your ad might respond. What would you want to know about a potential partner? Put that in your ad! What do you think is cool or interesting or funny? Put that in your ad! What does your ideal night out look like? Put that in your ad! Would you vastly prefer an ideal night in? Put that in your ad! Are you a total fucking nerd who wants to spend hours talking about game design and narrative structure and games that push the boundaries of the medium like The Beginner’s Guide? Put that in your ad! Then email me, The Beginner’s Guide blew my mind and I want to nerd it up.

While I was writing this post it finally occurred to me that people probably write terrible personal ads because they’re scared of being vulnerable. It’s a lot easier to say “I’m bored” than “I’m lonely.” I understand the urge to protect yourself, but if you’re not willing to open up even a little bit, why even bother looking for someone? To connect with someone, you have to make yourself at least a tiny bit vulnerable. Without that, you might as well just stay home and not talk to anyone (which I’m a huge fan of, don’t get me wrong). You don’t get to offload all the vulnerability onto the other person, that’s both lazy and unfair. And unattractive, which is more than a little counterproductive if you’re trying to connect with someone.

Readers, what kind of terrible, self-defeating behaviour raises your hackles?