Category Archives: random bdsm observations

Roads less travelled: anal hook

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Not all the roads I haven’t travelled are roads I’ve considered and rejected. Some roads I just haven’t got around to. For example, I’ve never got around to using an anal hook. 

She has as many choices as she needs.

She has as many choices as she needs.

Anal hooks are interesting because they’ve become part of bdsm, and yet no-one had heard of them until just a few years ago. I suspect they were only invented recently.

People like me – the civilians of bdsm, not the professionals who run dungeons and make films, and such – have got along without them just fine for the last few millennia. 

But there’s something about their ruthlessness and impersonality that appeals to me. A submissive who is keeping her back arched and her ass presented (I’m going to use female gender for this; if your interest is male submissives, then mutatis mutandis) because I’ve put an anal hook in her knows that her ass is going to stay exactly where I want it until I choose otherwise. She knows that her comfort is not an issue, only her enforced good posture.

The symbolism of the anal hook is hard, unrelenting and merciless. And at the same time, she knows that she’s been put in that position because her ass is considered very pleasing indeed. 

So I expect that a submissive held in that way will be uncomfortable, and happy, and wet.  So I’ll probably get one, one day.

Roads less travelled: sharps

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I had a brief relationship with a woman who wanted me to cut her.

She’d been away from bdsm for a while when she met me. When she discovered I was a dom – we found out about the other’s interest in bdsm after we’d been to bed – she liked serving, and she liked being back under discipline. But she told me that her mistress, when she’d had one, used to cut the skin on her back, very finely, with a very sharp blade. Now she was submitting again, she wanted me to cut her.  

I did consider it. You try to give lovers what they want, and doms have no excuse for being any different. But I thought it was unsafe, unwise, unsexy, and symbolically kind of creepy. I don’t like permanent damage. There’s something about knife play that feels hostile to the body. I like the body. So the idea of taking a blade to her skin just creeped me out. That didn’t leave much room for negotiation. 

I’m not condemning knife play, not then and not now. And she’s a smart and responsible woman, not remotely self-destructive. I’m only saying that it absolutely wasn’t for me. I would not cut her. 

So I refused. We continued as dom and submissive for a little longer, but only three weeks later we had an argument about something else, and she handed back the key to my apartment and asked for hers back. I think my refusal to even try knife play was a key issue.

Anyway, knife play. Sharps. Cutting. I’m just not going to do it. 

Roads less travelled: bzzzzzt

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I’ve never been interested in electricity in a bdsm context.

It doesn’t seem personal enough. Left to myself, and finding myself with a clitoris, nipples and other sensitive body parts to play with, I want to do very low-tech, body-to-body things. A bite and a kiss, a smack, a twist, a squeeze followed by a harder squeeze; a harder smack. And so on.

But getting out the violet wand seems about as sexy as getting out the vacuum cleaner.

I suppose I’ll buy or borrow the gear, some time, because some submissive … Well, if they’ve been good, I’m susceptible to begging. But so far it’s never been something I’ve been drawn to. 

Submissives

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I’m still working on the end of the chapter. So here’s another pic. I kind of like this catalogue of submissives, because of the drawings. Without them it’d just be one of those would-be worldly “the nine types of submissive/doms” posts.

I find those “catalogue” posts a bit distasteful, really, as well as meaningless, because people don’t fit onto categories that easily. Turning complicated and interesting stuff into boring stereotypes, and then mocking the stereotypes, seems a profoundly stupid thing to do. And it’s emotionally wrong, because I don’t see any reason to diss submissives. Or even dominants, for that matter. 

But this gets by because it’s cute. I’m completely pervious to cute. Does anyone know who drew it? 

Bdsm and vanilla consent #4

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 Sometimes, you might happen to be the first person to encourage a lover to try mild bondage, say, or mild pain, or a slave game where they give the orders, or they have to do as they’re told. You don’t think you’re putting them at any real risk. 

No-one is likely to come to any harm having their wrists tied to a bed, or from finding out that their lover likes to be tied up. Same with spanking or being spanked. Don’t dive straight into the deep end, and you’ll be fine. Get your asses into the shallow end, and start paddling. (Yeah, ha ha.)

But there is a risk for newcomers to bdsm, even mild bdsm. It’s not about welts; it’s about self-knowledge. Someone who finds out that he or she likes to inflict pain or to suffer it, or to bind their lover or be tied up, or to command or be commanded, or any combination, may not welcome that self-discovery.

There’s a sort of standing bdsm joke about the woman who’s always thought of herself as a feminist, but finds that she really likes being spanked.

There’s another one, which – unfairly – usually gets a more sympathetic hearing. That’s the man who thinks of himself as a decent guy, sympathetic to feminism and absolutely horrified by domestic violence. But he discovers that he not only enjoys spanking that woman; he really wants to take his belt to her ass each time she gags while she’s sucking his cock. With her hands tied behind her back. Um, so long as he does it nicely.

And it’s hard enough for women who discover submissive desires, and men who find out that they’re doms. (And yes, of course consensual bdsm is compatible with feminism, but that’s not our argument, just now.) Women who find that their desires are mostly dominant and men who discover their sexual submissiveness can have an even harder road to travel before they get to self-acceptance. 

We’ve been asking why consent is such a big issue in bdsm, compared to the vanilla world, so that bdsm consent has to be explicit, it has to be informed, and it should be prior consent, given before the lust gets into the driver’s seat?

Another possible answer is that people learn things about themselves when they first discover the desire to do things that generally labelled as bdsm. They may not always welcome that self-learning, or be able to handle what they find.

That old command, “Know thyself”, can be fucking dangerous advice. 

What does it mean, “oh please sir not the cane i’m a good girl really”? 2

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Umberto Eco wrote – I think it was in “Travels in Hyper-reality” – that there are some things that people can’t say in a post-modern world. His example was that you can’t just say, “I love you”, because those words have been spoken so often, for example by actors in daytime soaps and characters in true romance novels, that it just sounds insincere or else naive when someone says it in real life.

Eco said a young man wanting to declare himself to his loved one would have to take into account all the other times those words have been said or typed, and express his emotion while at the same time acknowledging that the words have become a cliché.

Brady & Chloe, from "Days of Our Lives". Oh god, how they could love

Brady & Chloe, from “Days of Our Lives”. Oh god, how they could love

So instead of saying, “I love you”, he should say, “Well, as Lohengrin once said to Elsa, in the words in which Brady opened his heart to Chloe in “Days of our Lives”, as Paul McCartney’s songs so frequently declare, I love you.”

And so, Eco argues, the young woman will still receive the emotional message, but be charmed and impressed at the way her young man has managed to surround his emotional confession with quotation marks and irony, deftly avoiding cliché.

Eco was one of the least wanky of the post-modernists, but that still left him a lot of room to be wanky in.*

Eco’s claim about the impossibility of saying “I love you” would be fatuous even if it were true.

But the problem of fatuity doesn’t really arise because, first and foremost, it’s complete bullshit.

The words “I love you” are still available to be spoken with sincerity and emotional force, regardless of all the other ways they might be spoken. Anyone who really has trouble saying those words because someone used the same words in a bad soap opera is as nuts as those Christians who think their marriages will become meaningless if gays and lesbians are allowed to marry. 

The school skirt she bought mail order. But finding a desk that looked school-y, ay about the right height: that took serious shopping

The school skirt she bought mail order. But finding a desk that looked school-y, at about the right height: that took serious shopping

So take that phrase, “oh please sir, not the cane; i’m a good girl really”. Let’s say it’s spoken by a woman in her thirties who has bought herself a saucy pleated skirt and a white blouse, and she’s about to bend over a school desk.

She’s just waiting for the command of her dom, or master. Anyway, her lover, who is standing just behind her, flexing a cane.

When she begs not to be caned, she may or may not be being sincere.

If getting the cane is part of her life, then the chances are that even if she doesn’t enjoy the cane strokes at the instant they land, she likes being a submissive woman whose discipline and control includes the cane, and she especially likes being a submissive woman who’s just been caned. Once the immediate pain dies away to warmth, and she’s being comforted in her dom or master’s arms, having just been caned can be a happy, loving, sexy feeling.

Still, she might genuinely be afraid of the caning just before it begins. She knows that begging not to be caned won’t work, except possibly to get extra strokes, but perhaps it’s sincere. 

But when she says she’s a good girl really, what in the world do those words mean? Not in the fantasy they’re playing with, but (ahem) really? 

* What did I mean, Eco “was”? Well, post-modernism is dead, and a lot of the key pomo writers are dead too, but Eco is still alive. Still, like a lot of people who were once liable to refer to something like massacres in Syria as “discourse”, and to talk about living in “post-modernity”, he doesn’t talk in pomo cliches any more.

Watching a former post-modernist get reminded of something they once said about Lacan, say, is rather like watching a dog-owner walking away from their dog’s turds on a neighbour’s lawn, pretending they never knew about it and it’s got nothing to do with them.

What does it mean, “oh please sir not the cane i’m a good girl really”?

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In the fantasy scenario, the girl forgot her gym shoes for the third day running; she called a woman teacher a rude name, she did something. She did it deliberately or unconsciously to attract the attention of the older, but still fit and sympathetic, teacher whose name she whispers to her pillow when it – the pillow – is clasped tight between her thighs.

And now she’s alone with him in his office, about to bend over his desk, lift her pleated skirt, and wonder if she’ll have to lower her panties as well. She hopes not, but when she fantasises about this moment, she always hears the command to take down her panties. When she dares, in her dreams she is told to undress, and she bares herself completely for the man she desires so badly.

She has bent over, and she waits. She listens for information about the man behind her. She hears the faint rattle that tells her he has selected the cane and not the strap, and in a kind of panic she pulls her skirt higher for him.

She hears his slight cough when she lifts her skirt so high, as he takes in the delicate bones of her lower spine, the delicacy of her waist, and her desire to please him. The knowledge that she has moved him with her obedience and her body overtakes her with a rush of emotion and passion. She cries out, “Oh sir, please not the cane. i’m a good girl really.” 

Whatever ‘really’ means.

But in reality, that line is likely to be spoken by a woman in her 20s or her 50s or anywhere between, who left school and tremulous virginity long ago. She speaks the sentence knowingly, mocking it while also acknowledging the power of the scenario in which it’s embedded. 

Safe words and safe people

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There’s discussion going on about safe words. It started in Salon and has spilled across various people’s blogs. 

Most of the safe word issue seems fairly simple, because safe words don’t go away just because a dom says so. All the stuff about not having safe words is just rhetoric.

I’ve used that rhetoric myself, sometimes. “I’m going to punish you/I’m going to use you, and you don’t have a safe word. I just took it off you. You have no rights at all. I decide where we go and when we stop. Not you.”

And then we proceed, and I hope it feels hotter for letting her feel we’re trapezing without a net.

But there’s always a safe word, no matter what you say. “Red” is still a safeword, no matter what. “Ok that’s it. Stop right now and undo me, or I’m calling the cops”, and all variations on that, are safewords.  Any dom who carries on past that point is a rapist, an attacker, or both.

I think I’ve been safeworded maybe twice in my entire bdsm career. A dom should be watching the submissive’s reactions closely, which is part of the pleasure anyway, and bring the submissive out to territory where she feels out of control, and she’s excited or comfortably lost in subspace. When I got safeworded, both times it was because I judged the submissive’s reactions wrong. It wasn’t a huge issue, and we resumed after words and cuddles and it was clear that she wanted to go on, so long as we avoided certain areas. But I’d certainly fucked up. 

Submissive women have told me about experiences with doms who think they have to prove their true domminess by pushing the submissive past the point they can stand. They feel they’ve lost a struggle of wills if they don’t get her to safeword. That seems to me to be more like sports than sex. Sports are boring.  

Of course you’re safe: I’m wearing a white coat, aren’t I?

A woman once told me she was having root canal work done, and at a really bad moment she screamed out, “Rumpelstiltskin”.

The dentist just said, “oh, you’re one of those girls, are you?” Then he carried on.

Apparently dentists get safe-worded quite a lot. Words to stop pain don’t always work outside bdsm.