Oh really? What if I want to:
- give you a reverse Mohawk
- shave off only one of your eyebrows
- sell your car
- sell your house
- burn all of your clothes and dress you exclusively in bed-sheet togas
- donate your life savings to Pastor Bob’s totally legit ‘save the orphans’ fund
- keep you chained to the bed until noon when you have to be at work by 9 am
- forbid you to eat anything except carrots. Forever.
- tie you naked to a telephone pole in front of your workplace
- amputate one of your limbs
- castrate you
- tattoo ‘property of mistress whoever’ on your forehead in an ugly font with bad kerning
- suspend you by your left big toe, from a rickety suspension frame, over a concrete floor
- play pierce your eyeballs
- post your full legal name, home address and phone number on fetlife
- give your credit card number to scammers
- paddle and whip you every day
- never beat you at all
- regularly mummify you
- never use any bondage equipment at all
- insist that you use the title ‘Goddess Lady High Duchess Raven Wolf Silver Dark Mistress Domina Captain of the House of Dragons who Watch Over the Followers of the True Way, Protector of the Kinksters, Smiter of the Unbelievers, and Keeper of the Secret Teachings of the Ancient Masters of Kink’ in full every single time you address me, even if it’s just to ask if I want anything from the kitchen while you’re up
- …
When people say ‘I have no limits’ I hear ‘I have my head so far up my own ass that it never occurred to me you might *gasp* like things that don’t turn me on.’ In what insane parallel universe is being utterly oblivious to everyone around you attractive? I hate to burst your bubble, but it’s only in shitty porn that women have no desires of their own. Out here in the real world, women want things. Sometimes we even want things you don’t like. It’s almost like we exist independent of your sexual desires. Unless you know me extremely well, telling me you’ll do anything I want is just insulting. At least be honest and tell me it never occurred to you that I’m anything but a life-support system for a whip.
Saying ‘I’ll do anything you want’ tells me that you’re either too stupid or too ignorant to realize that people even do things that don’t turn you on. Go have a look at Fetlife’s fetish list, or this detailed BDSM checklist. Gee, did you by any chance see one or two things that you never ever want to do, EVER? Assuming that the entirety of kink is things that turn you on is a terrible lack of imagination.
Some people even have the gall to say that telling anyone their interests and limits is topping from the bottom. So not only am I not allowed to have wants of my own, but I have to guess what does it for you too? I’m going to need someone to remind who’s supposed to be in charge, because I’m getting terribly confused.
Knowing what a person likes and doesn’t like is useful. Providing me with that information lets me skip the stumbling around trying to figure out what you might like part and go straight to things we both like, or deliberately do things you don’t like, or experiment with things we’re curious about. I realize that kink is extremely context dependent, and what you love with one partner may fall completely flat with another, but it still can’t hurt to have more information. Even if you’re very new to kink and don’t have any experience, there must be something you’ve fantasized about.
I can’t be the only one who hears ‘I have no limits’ and instantly gets turned off. How do you deal with it when you hear that? Also, has anyone out there said the dreaded words ‘I’ll do anything you want’? If you did, what on earth did you mean by that?
When people say ‘I have no limits’ I hear ‘I have my head so far up my own ass that it never occurred to me you might *gasp* like things that don’t turn me on.’
DUDE get out of my head srsly.
I’ve made a similar rant to a number of guys on FetLife who claim to have no limits or that they’d “try anything once.”
And, y’know, it’s not even a matter of extremes like being forced to eat only carrots forever. There are little things. I was reading the FetLife profile of some little 18 year old sub the other day; this was one of those profiles that’s all about sexual things and you can kind of tell this kid has watched way too much BDSM porn but probably has little or no idea what an actual D/s relationship would look like. But anyway, his profile mentioned that he wanted to be “used” sexually – that he wanted a woman to do “whatever she wants” to him. And I kind of wanted to message him and go “You do realize that this theoretical woman might want different sexual things than you do, right? Are you still going to feel awesome about this arrangement when you’re two seconds away from coming and she tells you ‘not yet’? What about if she wants you to go down on her and after that she’s satisfied and goes to sleep without wanting your penis inside her?”
I didn’t write to this kid, because some days I can’t be bothered to try to fight the tide of stupidity. But I’d bet you $50 that scenarios like that didn’t even occur to him – that he was assuming this theoretical domme would just happen to want exactly what he did and ask for it in a forceful and sexy voice, and that’s what “doing whatever she wanted” would entail. Blergh.
It frustrates and infuriates me that so many guys are completely self-centred even while claiming they want to serve someone else.
“How do you deal with it when you hear that?”
For someone who has been around for a long time, I seem to actually have a lot of patience for silliness, which surprises me because I’m not a patient person. At all.
I am normally willing to assume ignorance and not stupidity.
If I think that they are simply misguided, I am pretty happy to talk to them about what that means. I actually do that a lot with silly emails that land in my inbox if I get the idea that the person is sincere and means well, but is genuinely clueless. Sometimes I find a really decent (nervous, scared, confused, clueless) person under the cloak of WTF.
I apparently have the patience of a saint. I shall wait over *there* for my sainthood…
Mind you, having said that, if I think they are fapping while typing, it’s a different story *stops waiting over there for the sainthood*
Ferns
the cloak of WTF.
Ferns, you do have the patience of a saint! *laughing*
I never seem to make it past the WTF.
I figure this has the same answer as all the other “wtf” out there: People be stupid, yo.
I tend to assume, though, that when people say, “I have no limits,” they assume you have limits, so their limits are safe by virtue of your limits being, well, limits, and they really do have limits they just don’t think they need to list them because who in their right mind would want [insert totally off-the-wall-or-illegal-thing here]?
What they fail to realize is that not everyone has the same limits, and in the new and shiny world of BDSM that they have peeked into, extreme forms of play/humiliation/pain/body modification/etc. don’t exist because they haven’t walked that far into that world yet. They’ve just scratched the surface and made the mistake of thinking that was all there was. Like when you look at a body of water, and think it isn’t very deep cause you can see the bottom, so you step in and SPLASH you’re up to your waist when you just expected a wet knee.
So I have some patience for them. And by some I mean I’ll correct them one time and the hell with them after that if they don’t learn.
It’s annoying. I had quite good luck answering it with “right now, I want you to stop and think about what you’re hoping for and looking to get out of this.” It led to a pretty illuminating talk actually: obviously he has limits, but also felt so overwhelmed by desire to please that he had difficulty even imagining saying “no.” Which of course is very sweet, but everything goes much smoother when people actually communicate.
Then again, we’re both new-ish to the D/s dynamic and still trying to define the point at which attentive and submissive cross into obsequious and annoying. Saying something as patently untrue as “I’ll do anything you want” definitely falls into the latter category.
“It’s almost like we exist independent of your sexual desires.”
Yes, and it’s surprising (and sad) how often this point needs to be made.
I can see where you’re coming from. Suppositions like this, I think, are the playing ground of all of the inexperienced – but also of the annoyingly self-centered and arrogantly ignorant. I can see why you would get angry, when they contact *you* and tell you that. But if it’s in their profile (PC!) and they’re 18. <3
You know, I sometimes even do that to my husband and I'm over 30. I want you to do whatever you want to me, I say. Of course I have the safety net of knowing him and him knowing me well, but still. Sometimes words are just there to emphasize the emotion. *I'd do anything for you!* Who ever means that?
But I do think that we as women (even if I'm on the other side of the spectrum, so to speak, because I like to submit sexually) are taught so early and so thoroughly how to please a man and how to think only about pleasing a man, that they just got used to it. When every woman they ever saw on telly or met was like "whatever you want, honey" or answered when asked that they "don't know what they want", can you really blame the men for thinking that they'd be up to *anything* you could want?
Wonderboy clamed he'd be up to anything I want, too. Turns out even dom men aren't up for everything. I wasn't suprised, but I think he was.
Many men I've met have felt that I was the price to win, because I can orgasm from physical punishment alone (or just because I'm pretty and obviously sexually adventurous… They didn't see it coming, did they?). So, when I told them what other things I need – domestic discipline, servicing – the things I fantasize about – incest scenarios I want to play out – that I want to be hurt in some ways but not in others… Suddenly they were angry at me. *You're sick! I wouldn't want to do that (EWW!).* And this coming from men who had just confessed being into crossdressing, spanking, deepthroating etc.
So why would they think that women have no needs and fantasies that they don't have? Because they don't want to hear them and they probably never have. Because they get scared. Because then they realize it's not just about them. That they need to fulfill someone elses's needs too. And it's hard and frustrating and scary, sometimes.
And that they can fail at it.
It’s a bit of a can’t win situation for the poor sap who just wants to be a submissive even if he has no idea what it’s all about. If he’s been to a pro, all he knows is how to top from the bottom. You tell the nice lady what you want, give her what she wants, da money, and then you get your script acted out. Rather unsatisfying, but as Paul Simon said, “I found some comfort there.”
Once a guy meets a woman who appears to be actually into dominating a man, it’s difficult to get into the role of being submissive. Men have a couple thousand years of dominating history in broad strokes. Women have been taking the submissive role all that time and have perfected topping from the bottom every day.
I want the woman to know what she wants and even to expect me to perform for her, to delight her and make her happy. If she comes from getting eaten out and rolls over to sleep, is that anything women haven’t ever experienced after giving their man a blow job? I am ready to do what she wants and I don’t want to dictate the terms or the scene. To offer her carte blanche though, is not to invite her to pierce my scrotum with knitting needles and fill my balls with hot wax. Some guys might like that, but I would expect extreme acts might need a little discussion beforehand. No one simply starts pissing into someone else’s mouth unless it has been well established that this sort of play, humiliation scene, or abuse is what the sub came to the relationship wanting.
The whole “slave” concept is bogus in this world. Slavery is over. Slaves have no rights. You can kill a slave for the slightest offense and owe no one an explanation. Slaves aren’t part of any negotiation or “power exchange”. They have no power and when you use one you are victimizing him. Nobody is really a slave. Slave contracts are unenforceable, the law does not recognize the concept of slavery. Still, on the Mistress Destiny FemDom Forum, contributors write of the wonderful day in the future when they will be able to sign their lives over to some woman who will do what she wants with them then lock them up naked in a hole in the ground where they can sexily languish in the dirt until she needs to use them again.
Men are confused. We do not know how to deal with women who want to be dominant, even though that’s what we want in the first place. Instead of cobbling together a relationship based upon mutual interests between a dominant woman and a submissive man, we look at porn, read ridiculous prose and jack off to improbable situations, like being made the permanent and only toilet in a sorority house.
Mercy, Mistress. Take pity on we fools who come to worship at your feet, and teach us to understand. You might just be rewarded with a good learner who is not about the hype but really wants to be open to your desires.
Is it really that hard to say “I like the idea of submission and want to try it out, but I’m not so sure how it works in real life?” Also, there’s an entire internet full of advice for guys who are new to submission and have no idea what they’re doing. To quote the entirely awesome Arisce Wanzer, “It’s also like, why would you claim you’re into this and not do some reading? Google will teach you anything they need to know. Ignorance is a choice these days.” She’s a transgender model who was talking about straight men who expect her to teach them all about what it means that she’s trans, but I think it applies just as well to male submission/female dominance. Dominant women want you to succeed, and we’ve written approximately a shit ton about how to make us happy. I feel for the guys who can’t google “what dominant women want” because they have no idea that there are words for this thing that they want, but for everyone else, just fucking google it already.
Of course you don’t just do whatever you feel like when some random says “anything you want, Mistress”. The point I was trying to make is that “anything you want” NEVER EVER EVER actually means anything at all, so for fuck’s sake talk about what’s on the table and what isn’t. I mean, what if I think submission means you do my dishes, give me head, then go home, and you think submission means I give you a light spanking, tie you up, have sex with you, and then you go home? Neither one of those things is a remotely unusual idea of submission, but if we don’t talk about what we want, both of us are guaranteed to leave the scene disappointed.
Uh, that’s the entire point of this post. I want people to know better than to say “anything you want” to someone they don’t know extremely well, so I explained why it’s stupid to expect me to read minds.
First of all, this made me laugh ‒ “in an ugly font with bad kerning”
Second, I prefer ‒ “What would you like me to do?” instead. It keeps things open without committing to anything. I’d be willing to do a lot of things I don’t enjoy in order to please my wife; thankfully for me, she actually cares about me (sucker), so she doesn’t make me do things like shave one eyebrow, or only eat carrots.
I like that. It sounds like a much better way to start a conversation than “I’ll do anything you want.”
The more I read your blog, the more I keep coming back to the same complaint.
YOU ARE TOO AWESOME!
I’m an avid cook who is planning on learning to make candy and chocolates this year. Would you be interested in receiving some goodies in the mail? I can’t promise you they will be pretty, but they should be tasty.
Haha! I know the sort. I find binding and blind-folding them then starting a chainsaw has a wonderful and immediate effect in proving the lie of such a statement 😀 Fortunately, I possess a tricked one we used to use in freak-shows.
…I kind of want a chainless chainsaw now. I heard someone did that in a fear play workshop in my city, but I’d gone to another workshop because I wasn’t super into fearplay. Of course, after hearing about it I was kicking myself for missing the show 🙂
PS If you don’t have a chainsaw, you can always lube up a generously sized marrow 😉