A new Dom asked me for advice

Posted on April 15, 2014 by jaime

Why I wrote this

A woman I know has found a new Dom, who hasn’t had any bdsm experience. He’s finding it hard to find the half-way point between martial arts levels of discipline and being too light. He asked me to give him some counsel, and I wrote him this.

1 Know how happy and amazed you should be

The trust and love of a submissive woman is pretty much the best thing in the world. You’re incredibly lucky and privileged to be well on the road to having it. At the same time, for your sake and hers, it’s important that she feels privileged to have such a strict but loving dom.

Now, she’s going to give you some rights over her that most women would be shocked to grant to a man. Her body becomes yours, to enjoy as you will. And you have the right to discipline her. The sensations that come from giving that kind of – sometimes painful – guidance and correction when she misbehaves, can be very intense.

2 You have duties

But you can’t ever forget what she’s giving you those rights for. She expects and wants certain things from you, including safety, a feeling of being loved and cared for, pleasure, and having enough leeway to be frilly and silly, and she needs fun and mischief. You want to enjoy her submission, and that’s only going to work in the longer term if she’s a happy girl.

So, she may surrender all her power to you, but there’s still a quid pro quo. You could spend an hour in which she sucks your cock, while you teach her how you like that done, and use the crop across her arse if she’s not enthusiastic enough. Theoretically you could keep that going for an evening, with a noticeable drop-off in enthusiasm but probably without too much complaint. Two evenings in a row, and you’re going to have a sulky girl who’s less fun to be around.

I’m not sure at what point she’d slam her door, with you on the outside of that door, but that point would come.

The point is that for all you’re in charge, and she’s surrendered to you, if you don’t meet her needs then eventually things won’t work so well.

3 Discipline and a submissive girl

That brings us to discipline. It’s an important thing between a dom and his submissive. It’s one of the most important ways in which the dom sets limits for her, and establishes that those boundaries can’t be crossed without consequences. She will be happier with limits, and happy that you care enough to monitor whether she stays within them. Sometimes she won’t be very happy at all, while the punishment is proceeding. But your goal should be to make sure she can be happy shortly afterwards.

If she can be cheeky to you, within half an hour of getting the cane, then you’ve done well.

Why do you want her to be able to be cheeky to you? It’s because of what makes a submissive woman most satisfactory to be with. You don’t want her to be perfect, and you don’t want her so afraid that she’s always watching out that she never annoys you. The balance you want is a girl who knows that you’re in charge, but isn’t afraid of you.

She should be afraid of doing things that you have warned her will bring her a severe punishment, but she should know that that comes from your care for her: and she should be afraid only of the specified severe punishment, and not afraid of you. She should be clearly told in advance what things will lead to severe punishment. That means she should always be able to avoid it, with just a bit of care.

So respecting you, loving you while accepting that she does as she’s told: those things require you to give her some discipline, but you also need to show her a lot of love.

Most of the time, a hand spanking over your knee will give her the guidance she needs. You keep spanking till you can hear that she’s not laughing any more, and it’s got through to her. But she’ll probably be playful and a bit cheeky again before the red has faded.

That’s okay. If she’s cheeky, then spank her some more – for the fun of it – and she’ll find a way of making that the start of an amusing and sexy evening.

4 The balance

So it’s right to set clear rules and consequences, and it’s right that in some cases punishment should be harsh enough to make her remember and fear getting that consequence again. But most of the time you and your new submissive are dancing together. In that dance you’re in control, overall, but she should be able to be herself too, to please and amuse you. And she should be having fun.

So don’t be too harsh. Don’t let her get away with things too much, either; a good hard hand spanking over your knee will never do her any harm.

Above all, you don’t want to tame her too far, let alone break her will. Her little rebellions are part of your dance, and you’ll come to enjoy having to put down the occasional insurrection. With a smile on your lips and a song in your heart.

Finally, I hear that you’ve bought your first riding crop. Good, and I hope it sees a lot of use. But that little that tassel on the end of the crop? Most of the time, that’s the part of the crop you use. You can apply it to her most intimate places. You only use the shaft of the crop when you want to teach one of those harsh lessons I mentioned.

Be careful, be loving, and always keep your sense of humour. Good luck!

Who the hell am I to say this?

I wrote that advice, above, because Lican has met a man. He’s not experienced in bdsm, but she thinks he’s a natural dom. But she’s worried because he reads things on the net, and he sometimes thinks he’s going to get absolute obedience from her and he’s going to base his disciplinary regime on stories he reads that are based on internet play and not reallity.

She told him about me, and he asked me to write something for him. I’ve posted it here because I hope it might be useful to someone else, and because I’d be keen to hear comments.

The thing is, I’m not feeling like the man who knows everything at the moment. I know some things, but my heart is currently ripped to shit because the woman I love left me, and that’s still the most important fact in my life. (Bless Lican, but I don’t mean Lican.) No-one feels clever alone, with their heart ripped open. Still, the things I’ve written here are things I do know, for what that’s worth.

Bondage in the Ice Age: BSDM 20,000 BCE!

Posted on March 31, 2014 by jaime

About twenty-two thousand years ago a tribe of humans crunched across white grass in a frozen landscape that’s now called Russia. Somewhere near the Don river valley they left behind two little sculptures. That’s how we know that these people, whoever they were, passed that way. It’s also how we know something surprising about their sexual imagination.

Kostenski Venus figurine, with her wrists bound: 20,000 BCE

These two sculptures, each one about the size of your hand, are of women. Like other Paleolithic “Venus figures”, the women are naked, or nearly naked, with exaggerated sexual features: their breasts hang hugely, like great sacks of grain, and their bellies swell, pregnant and vastly fat, like a ship’s sails.

What’s unusual about them is that one of the two women is shown with her wrists cuffed and tied, while the other woman is shown wearing a sort of harness that both restricts her movements and emphasises her breasts. That’s all they are depicted as wearing, although these images were created in the middle of an Ice Age. These two little sculptures seem to be the oldest known bondage erotica.

That tribe moved on, their destination and fate unknown. Since their day humans have done and built a lot of things, but some things don’t change. For one thing, it can’t be said that Russia’s improved much.

For another, it’s still true that whenever a new medium appears, from carving rocks to 3D imaging, one of the first things people will do is use it to make sexual images and tell sexual stories. And shortly after the first nudes are produced, someone else will come along and use the new medium for more specific sexual desires.

So the cultural history of what people now mostly call “bdsm” began about 21,000 years ago.

Constanze Mozart: Mozart wrote to her, promising her a "thorough spanking on her dear little, kissable arse", when he got home. Di he deliver? The look in her eye says yes.

Constanze Mozart: Mozart wrote to her, promising her a “thorough spanking on your dear little, kissable arse”, when he got home. Did he deliver? The look in her eye says yes.

People who are interested in bdsm have built up a quite impressive pile of art-works and artefacts. There are bdsm references in Mozart’s operas, Christopher Marlowe’s plays, and Mapplethorpe’s photos, just to skim the Ms for a second.

As a Mortimer, I’m quite proud of my sculpture, “Caning Bench No 1, with Comfort Saddle and Hooks for attaching Cuffs”. If some archeologist finds it 21,000 years from now, I hope he or she puts it to good use.

But it’s odd that we – we people who do bdsm – have failed to celebrate our novelists, and our poets and painters and composers, and so on.

I’ll be doing to some of that celebration over the coming months.

Why three out of four young women don’t masturbate

Posted on February 25, 2014 by jaime

There’s a survey coming out soon. A huge random sample of Australians – about 20,000 people – have been asked quite detailed questions about their sexual behaviour and attitudes. It’s the most comprehensive survey of its kind in the world, and it’s impeccable in both its sampling and its survey technique.

Two of the questions were about bdsm, but the data for those questions is still being analysed. I do know that there’s been a slight increase in the number of people who say they’ve taken part in bdsm activity in the last year, and a larger increase in the number of people who taken part in role-playing games like teacher/naughty schoolgirl, which typically involve a bit of mild bondage and spanking.

What really interests me is that for the first time they’ve asked whether people usually take a dominant-top role or a submissive-bottom role, or if they just switch without a favourite. That was my idea. I’m interested in what proportion of doms and subs there are, for both men and women. I’ve heard a ton of guessing and theorising about this, but I’d like to know what the real figures are.

The previous survey found that there was no difference in health, success and childhood experiences between people who do bdsm and people who don’t. We’re all fine, thanks. But it’s possible that, say, submissives are slightly less healthy than average, while dominants are slightly healthier than average, and that’s how we came out as average in the last survey.

Is it true that there are more submissives than dominants? Are dominants or submissives more healthy and successful in everyday life, or is there no difference? Well, we’ll know in a few months, and you’ll probably be able to read it here first, in this shonky blog that no-one reads.

Young women, fucking and masturbation

For now I’m puzzling over a different result, which is that although about 76% of young women aged 16 to 20 have had sex, only about 27% of them have ever masturbated. Three times as many young women have had sex than have ever wanked.

That seems incredible to me, but it’s consistent with other surveys – in fact it’s a slight increase on the similar survey ten years earlier – so it’s bound to be true.

But it’s only the young women aged 16 to 20 who don’t masturbate much. By the time they’re over 30 most women do masturbate, and the numbers go up as women get older. Women over 30 are never quite as busy wanking as the men their age, but they’re wanking two or three times as much as their younger selves.

So – given that masturbation is pleasant, harmless, and sometimes the only thing you can do if you want to get any sleep – why on earth is it that most young women don’t masturbate, even though they’re having sex?

You could argue that it’s because girls are taught that masturbation is shameful, and so they don’t do it, or they do masturbate but they pretend that they don’t. I don’t think that’s likely to be the explanation. Remember that three out of four of them have had sex, and they had no trouble telling that to a researcher. If they’re not wanking because of conservative rules about sex, those rules should also be stopping them from having sex. So that’s not what’s happening.

My theory is this. Both men’s and women’s sexual responses are partly hard-wired, sure, but a lot of it in both sexes is learned.

Male sexual response is easier to learn. Cocks and their sexual responses are blatantly visible. Young men know when they have an erection, and to some extent there’s a feedback cycle based on that knowledge. “My cock is stiff.” –> “I am turned on.” –> “Whoa! My cock just get harder.” –> “I must be really turned on.” And so on.

Female sexual response is less obvious, and it’s more difficult for young women to know when they’re aroused.

There are experiments that found that women who are in fact having measurable physiological responses (vaginal wetness, skin tension, etc) in response to sexual images will deny being aroused. I don’t think they’re lying, or shy, or that they disapprove of the sexual images and their response. It’s that the physiological changes in women are less visible, and it’s easier to be unaware of them even while experiencing them.

So young women can be aroused without knowing it. So there’s less of a “trigger” to relieve the arousal through masturbation.

The other thing is that in our culture we spend more time and money showing images of what a sexually inviting, fuckable woman looks like, naked or not wearing much. We don’t show naked young men, aroused or sexually receptive, nearly as often. In our culture it’s easy to learn what a sexy woman looks like, and learn your own response to that, and somewhat harder to learn what a sexy man looks like, and find out what appeals to you about them.

By “sexy man” I’m talking about the kind of image, with penises and shadows, and strength or surrender, that makes (some) women say “unff”. I mean images that are actually hot, as opposed to “nice” like George Clooney’s charmingly crinkly eyes.

So a lot of advertising, for example, looks like a light version of the porn aimed at straight men or lesbians. (There are differences between porn made for het men and porn made for lesbians, but also a fair amount of overlap.) But not many advertising images of men look much like gay porn.

This may be one reason why there are far more women, especially young women, who respond sexually to both men and women, than there are men who respond sexually to other men. Both sexes are taught to desire women.

That means, in the case of young women, that the erotic images they see have less connection with the person they’re most likely to have their first sexual experiences with, who in most cases is going to be a young man.

So young men find it easier to know when they’re horny, and they are given a menu of things to like about women’s bodies and about sex. Young women don’t have so much information, from their own bodies, or about sex with young men in it.

So young women learn the things that really, personally, get them hot through their own experience, and not so much from the culture. So young women have sex first, and start masturbating later, while young men are already wanking before they’ve had any sexual experience with another person.

So that’s my theory. It boils down to: sexual power comes from knowledge. Which is one more way of saying: knowledge is power.

If lesbians can’t have sex in the toilets, what is the point?! 1

Posted on February 23, 2014 by jaime

I was talking to another woman at that party I mentioned. She was the sort of cute lesbian that that they put on television, with an expensive short blonde razor-cut and skinniness worn as a fashion statement.

I’ve forgotten how the subject came up – Veuve Clicquot probably had something to do with it, since there was a lot of it about – but she was telling me about being thrown out of a lesbian nightclub for having sex with some girl she’d just met, in the toilet cubicles. She finished by shouting out the title of this very post, waving one charm-braceletted arm in the air.

She was taking the piss out of herself, but she meant it, too.

I mostly agree with anything a pretty woman says under those circumstances. And some stories about things that women I know – bi girls rather than lesbians, mostly – have got up to in lesbian nightclubs would suggest that the club managers don’t usually get all fussy about fucking in the toilet cubicles.

Maybe the pair who got thrown out were just loud.

Three out of four young women don’t masturbate

Posted on February 22, 2014 by jaime

I can only drop in on this blog briefly today.

I was at a party last night, where I talked to a woman who’s just led one of the world’s largest surveys on sexual behaviour and attitudes. The results are still being analysed, including the results on some questions about bdsm that I really want to know the answers to. (I had some input into the questions, so of course I’m interested.)

I’m not giving any other information at this stage because the findings haven’t been published yet. The first official release of this data has to be in … well, it shouldn’t be in this dodgy blog.

But of the findings that are available so far, the one that struck me was that only about 27% of women in the 16 to 20 age bracket have ever masturbated.

But about three quarters of them have had sex.

About three times as many young women have had sex as have ever wanked.

Probation Officer #95D: Standing while kneeling

Posted on October 10, 2013 by jaime

Sa’afia wasn’t just a dolly who’d do whatever she’s told. She was a submissive woman. She did things that she liked, that turned her on.

She stood up for herself, even when she knelt. Or bent over to be spanked or fucked, knowing that she wouldn’t choose which happened. But that was something she wanted. I provided it for her.

When it’s moving right, bdsm connects the people involved with incredible intensity and intimacy.

It’s a sententious thing to say, but bdsm is the opposite of violence.

Probation Officer #95C: Samoan nipples?

Posted on October 9, 2013 by jaime

It’s always nice to talk about nipples, isn’t it? For example, the German word for “nipple” isn’t really “Brustwart”, or “breast wart”: it’s “Nippel”. Now, here’s the thing about Sa’afia’s nipples. They’d be purple-black and flat when she was resting, but when I kissed and squeezed them and they woke up, they’d perk up, all erect and yearning to be kissed and bitten. And they’d turn from purple-black to purple-pink.

I loved making that happen. Now, she wouldn’t have had nipples like that if she wasn’t Samoan, or didn’t have Polynesian ancestry. But were they Samoan nipples? Nah, they were just Sa’afia’s.

Her mouth was wide and her lips sweetly full. And there were freckles, for heaven’s sake, on her forehead and cheeks and nose, under the brown. She owed those things to her Polynesian ancestry too, and I thought they were wonderful.

I liked things about her that were Samoan culturally, though not genetic. Her body was slightly shiny when she was naked because she rubbed herself with cocoanut oil. When I licked her she smelled of cunt and cocoanut.

I liked the tapa cloth on her wall, depicting her parents’ village. I liked the little carved canoe with sea-shell eyes, on her bedside table. Even the care she took not to make her mother have to admit she was having sex appealed to me. For no reason except that it was different. Those things were hers because she was Samoan, too. But I liked them because I liked her. Not the other way around.

Sa’afia’s other fear was that I was with her only because I really wanted Ana, and I couldn’t have Ana. That I was fucking her because she resembled her cousin. That was the nerve I’d touched when I’d asked her about Ana’s father.

Probation Officer 95B: Sa’afia didn’t actually punch me

Posted on October 8, 2013 by jaime

When I said Sa’afia hit me, I was trying to make two points. Both of which were true. The first was that Sa’afia was hurt when I asked her a question about Ana, while we two were in the middle of doing something very intense and sexually powerful. I’d re-awoken her worry that I was with her for reasons that weren’t about her.

I’d got her to suspend disbelief on one of her worries, which was that I might be interested in her because she was Samoan. There were white boys who went after Samoan girls, because they thought they were easy, or they had a fetish-y thing for them, or whatever. She wanted always to be certain that I liked and desired the individual she was: Sa’afia.

She was right to give me the benefit of the doubt on that one. I do and think lots of dodgy things, but I’ve never found that I get turned on, or turned off, a woman because of her race. Once we were lovers, then I liked the brown of her skin and the shape of her nose, slightly broad and slightly snub, and I loved the firmness of her flesh and the strength of her body. I loved a lot of things, some of which were Samoan things.

Actually, there was something I really liked about her nipples, but I’ll save that for tomorrow.

Probation Officer #95A: “You’re with me!”

Posted on October 7, 2013 by jaime

[The project is done and the cheque’s in the ether. I hope. So I can get back to the Probation Officer story. In the last episode, we got as far as this:]

Sa’afia froze. Immobility is not affectionate. Then she hit my shoulder, hard, with her fist. She said, “you’re with me. Can’t you forget about fucking Ana for a fucking second?”

Update: This is a true story. So far I’ve only changed details to make sure my client Ana and her cousin Sa’afia can’t be identified, even by someone who managed to work out where it was that I worked as a probation officer. It’d be pretty hard to identify Svitlana, too.

But in that post, the one I quoted above, I’ve told a lie. I think it’s the first genuinely and gratuitously untrue thing I’ve said. I was trying to improve the story: Conflict! And look, she’s not just submissive; she’s feisty! Hey! But the truth is that Sa’afia never hit me and she would never have wanted to. Even if she was angry.

Neither Sa’afia nor I knew much about dominance or submission, really, though I’d had more experience than her. She knew what she wanted, and I knew enough to be able to guess roughly what she wanted and provide her with it. She could be a wonderful version of herself in that place I’d provided. She’d been incredibly happy, when her ass burned from the rod and she knelt to suck my cock. She’d wanted to know what that was like, and she’d known she’d like it. She also knew that I would treasure her, when she served me, and she wanted to feel treasured.

In that place and in that mood she couldn’t feel anger. She could only be angry if I behaved so badly that I shocked her out of submission and back to normal time, to everyday life.

So no, she didn’t hit me.

Probation Officer #67: Frank sex talk for men

Posted on August 27, 2013 by jaime

I said, “No, I haven’t fucked Ana. Why do you ask? I didn’t know it was an option.”

Jock stared at me, furious. I glared back at him. He made a gesture, dropping the flat of his palm towards the desk as if he was pushing a kitten’s head down. “Yeah, all right, all right. You think you’re funny, but that was a bit funny. No, It’s not an option. If you’d said ‘yes’, you’d already be fired. How’s she going?”

“She’s back at school. She’s got a job. She hasn’t been arrested in months.”

“Yeah. She’s got you as her defence lawyer. It’s okay: the cops don’t like you for it, but they’ll never like someone like you anyway. That’s all right. It’s your style.”

I said, “There’s more to life than likability.”

“That’s true, but I thought you were too weak to know it. Anyway, there are people here who didn’t think I should put a pretty girl on your caseload.”

“Oh? Can I ask why?”

“Nothing personal. Just you’re a young man, and young men do tend to think with their dicks. I’m sure I shouldn’t say so, any more. But you wanna argue that it’s not true?”

“Not particularly.”

“Thought not. Well, look out for Ana. She definitely wants to fuck you. And someone half clever, like you, could easily come up with reasons why she should maybe succeed. For her sake, for her good. You thought of any?”

“Umm, I could tell myself it could be good for her self-esteem. A more intimate relationship would help us to work more closely on her education and employment ambitions. I’d be able to give better protection from cops and such. It would do no harm, and we’re already friends. I’ve thought that kind of thing.”

“Yeah, I’ve seen her in those little shorts too.”