And why do I have this much trouble? Because the concept of eroticization itself has become a site of immense anguish. Every time something “swings my thoughts in that direction,” I hurt. And deeply. Read my archives and you’ll no doubt see I’ve become darker, more bitter, more jaded, meaner, more ugly. I’m scarred and scared and broken and horribly disfigured. And I’ve said all of this before.

To continue under the sabotaging influence of the epistemic abuse present in the euphemistically named “sex-positive” bubble in which I (try to) live, I’ve begun to tell pieces of my own story. I’ve dug up my own past experiences to use as inspiration because reading the experiences of others reliably sends me into a tailspin of outrage and jealousy and resentment.

What I’m trying to do in all of this is to get you—and everyone you know—to ask one simple question: “How did this happen to maymay?” If I’m really lucky, you’ll also ask the two obvious followups: “Is it happening to other people?” (the answer is yes, by the way) and “How can we make it better?” I’ve been staring at several drafts and struggling to make them coherent in order to lead my readers (and parts of myself) along that quest.

But in the meantime, Delving into Deviance published a post that I’ve been waiting to read from a self-identified dominant woman for a long, long time. Best of all, I could get to its end because it was mercifully free of the sexual triggers that so often make me “step aaawwaaayyyy from the computer!”

Her post is all old, but important news:

[P]ublic adoration (and objectification) of a male submissive is rare. As I’ve come to realize the fucked up state of femdom, I’ve concurrently become aware of the fucked up state of male submission – namely, it’s devaluation. While female dominants are made out to be some scarce resource, male submissives are depicted as a dime a dozen – common, and, even more disturbingly, weak and worthless.

[…]

What is it that makes dominant women uncomfortable with femdom? There are a lot of things. One of the biggest is the sexist attitude that is rampant in the BDSM community. It often seems like women have to remain ice queens, untarnished by actually having penile-vaginal intercourse with their male subs. However, if they want to they can become more male, and thus, more dominant by strapping on and becoming – duh duh duh – The Penetrator. This isn’t to say that there’s anything wrong with strapping on (I’m a fan myself), but a sex act does not a Dominant (or a submissive) make and we can’t just superimpose the male-female dichotomy onto Dominant-submissive and expect that to make anyone happy.

It’s not just female dominants who are getting a raw deal and are having to battle through a mire of expectations in order to engage in the kink they thought they loved. Male submissives find themselves in a community with very few potential partners. Of the potential partners, many will be professional dominatrices, and many (even non-pros) will expect their submission straight out of the gate because of a hidden assumption that if you’re a submissive man you must be willing to submit to just anyone. In defense of these Doms, the moment a woman signs up for any BDSM website she will get an influx of messages from men offering just that – men who want to be her “slave” who have never even had a conversation with her. However, after wading through these fantasists, a dominant woman will eventually find a man who fits her bill because she is valued, and thus, many men will be willing to try to do so.

Submissive men, however, have a much harder time. Because there is this perception of a ratio like 1:20 and because many submissive men either perpetuate the femdom icequeen-bitch ideal that no woman can or perhaps should live up to on a day-to-day basis, male submissives become devalued.

Some have suggested that female pro-dommes also devalue male submission (my boyfriend for one). I don’t think that pro-Dommes cause this problem, but I think that oftentimes they don’t help. Pro-Dommes meet a need. They are the supply to a demand. However, they contribute to the perpetuation of a picture of female domination that just doesn’t reflect real life. But they’re not the root of that problem. As a parallel, just because vanilla men have sex workers and porn doesn’t mean that they don’t know that they can’t expect the same look and sex acts from their girlfriends and wives. However, imagine a world in which vanilla men didn’t meet any women until they began encountering sex workers and porn. This could lead to a much more confusing dynamic for both those vanilla men and the non-professional women they might encounter.

(Emphasis mine.)

It’s not only extremely validating to me to read these words from someone else, it’s also extremely important to me that these words were written by a self-identified dominant woman. An unpopular truth is the fact that it is because of the fucked up attitudes Delving into Deviance describes (and that Thomas Millar described more academically) that it almost doesn’t matter how long I, maymay, a submissive man have been saying this—and publicly—for almost half a decade now. People just won’t listen or will derail me (sometimes with their own de-contextualized categorical privilege arguments; “but you have male privilege!”) nearly as much as they’re going to listen to a dominantly-identified individual.

That’s the same fucked up bullshit happening elsewhere. The feminist movement needs feminist men not because women are in fact weak, but because men have a privilege women do not. Black people need White allies. Similarly, submissive people need dominants to speak the fuck up with—not for, with—us.

On a personal note, it’s worth calling my own writing out as vicious and angry because when it comes to the niche of the BDSM community and its interactions, I am an angry, bitter, broken man. I wish I were some kind of Gandhi or Martin Luther King, filled with nothing but love for all oppressors. But I’m just not that perfect. I’m sorry. I’m really, really filled with sorrow about that. But that’s who I am now—hateful and doing my damnedest to direct that hate where it belongs, rather than where it doesn’t.

Some in the BDSM community think I’m a monster, a troll, or a troublemaker. Well, they made me. So ask yourselves, dear BDSM community: How did this happen to maymay? Because for as long as you don’t, there’s going to be a whole lot more “trouble” to come. I’ll see to that myself.

“Good girl.”

I don’t think there’s anything that captures my mixed feelings about submission like that phrase. There’s so much in there.

Until very recently, it was one of my least favorite things to hear. So condescending. Patronizing. Paternalistic.

[…]

[W]hat feminist wants to be a Good Girl? After all, every feminist knows that Well-Behaved Women Seldom Make History. And then there’s the whole madonna-whore complex thing, which will certainly be a subject of its own post at some point.

[…]

So that’s why I don’t like “good girl.” Or rather, why I don’t want to like “good girl.” Because, honestly? I fucking love it. It makes my pussy wet and my heart sing. The first time a dominant partner called me a “good girl,” I felt like I had just taken a shot of morphine. And I wanted more.

[…]

[T]he very fact that I like it so much[…]is a little, well, humiliating. And that just adds an extra frission of erotic stimulation and emotional intensity. As maymay said once, ”I don’t want to be tortured, but I want it.” Obviously, being called a “good girl” is not exactly torture, but I think maymay perfectly captures that paradox of being submissive for me—of wanting the things I don’t want. I want them both in spite of and because of the fact that I don’t want them.

There is, indeed, so much in there. Others’s comments are good, too. I left a comment, which turned into two comments, both of which are relevant enough to this space that I’m cross-posting the ensuing exchange:

Huh. Interesting.

For what it’s worth, being a “good boy” has been one of my favorite things to hear for as long as I can remember. Reading your uncomfortableness towards the phrase makes me inclined to attribute our differing feelings about it to our gendered experiences in the world. (For another example, see also The Sexism of Sex and Smarts.)

When you say:

Oh, and of course, there’s the fact that it’s “good girl.” I know it’s pretty commonplace to refer to grown women as girls, and I do it all the time. But there’s no denying that it adds to the patronizing tone.

I’m reminded of the examples many dictionaries cite to explain the meaning of the word “pretty”: pretty song, pretty room, pretty girl. These are (sexist) sexual standards. They hurt me—and many others, too.

Also, Leah:

I like the powerlessness of the experience. […] Sometimes it embarrasses me to ask for a thing, but I do so out of desire — because I want. Although I am not the one in control, I nevertheless consider myself an equal partner, fully complicit in the sex.

In my (not so) humble opinion, extricating control from power is what claiming sexually submissive agency is about. We are not often taught, as bottoms in the BDSM Scene, how to do this and I think that’s because most of the BDSM community at large has an unacceptably poor understanding of the systemics of power itself, sexual and otherwise. It seems to me that your desire for the experience of powerlessness feels at odds with your claim of “complicity” precisely because you wish to abdicate your control of the sexual situation in order to serve the fantasy of “not being in control.”

That’s totally cool (and fun), but by your own admission of being “an equal partner,” that’s not really what’s happening. Put another way, the liminal space of “wanting what we don’t want” problematizes dichotomized notions of control to a degree that threatens much of the powerful/powerlessness fantasies intrinsic to most BDSM discourse. The BDSM community, writ large, enjoys either/or thinking to an astonishingly damaging degree—not to mention how disgustingly sexist they are.

Let’s develop a deeper understanding so more of us can approach these issues using both/and thinking, instead.

FeministSub briefly responded asking for clarifications:

This comment will take me a while to work through. :) But thank you! I did stop and think while I was writing this about whether or not male subs enjoy “good boy.” It actually made me think about how much of the language of domination and submission is at least subtly gendered.

Do you mind explaining what you mean by this?

Put another way, the liminal space of “wanting what we don’t want” problematizes dichotomized notions of control to a degree that threatens much of the powerful/powerlessness fantasies intrinsic to most BDSM discourse.

Since she asked, I went ahead and risked explaining without sugarcoating:

I did stop and think while I was writing this about whether or not male subs enjoy “good boy.” It actually made me think about how much of the language of domination and submission is at least subtly gendered.

Subtly? :) It’s quite overt. “Sissy,” “bitch,” “slut,” etc., all usually treat femininity as intrinsically submissive.

And it’s not just gendered. Sexually dominant and submissive lingo frequently puts underprivileged (oppressed) populaces in the submissive role while putting privileged populaces in the dominant one. See, for example, “little girl/boy,” which highlights both size and age—youth are arguably the most consistently disadvantaged populace on the planet—or “who’s your daddy,” for the reciprocal perspective. In other words, if “power is an aphrodisiac,” then oppression is a sexual performance enhancing drug.

In my experience, most BDSM’ers like to avoid thinking about this potentially uncomfortable truth because they either think it might ruin their fun or that they’re not complicit in the damage this can cause. But turning a blind eye to this is as idiotic as saying talking about sex (e.g., negotiating) “ruins” the fun of playing or it’s narcissistic to the point of being inhumane. Yes, some BDSM’ers say that and are those things, too, and they’re usually idiots or privileged shits.

Do you mind explaining what you mean by this?

Put another way, the liminal space of “wanting what we don’t want” problematizes dichotomized notions of control to a degree that threatens much of the powerful/powerlessness fantasies intrinsic to most BDSM discourse.

Oh, all I mean is that most BDSM’ers enjoy treating “What It Is That We Do” as a dichotomy of power wherein bottoms/submissives have none (they are powerless) and tops/dominants have all of it (they are powerful), as if it’s all some kind of zero-sum, either/or game. The way the community talks about this (i.e., its discourse) typically fails to acknowledge or delegitimizes situations in which bottoms have power and tops do not (regardless of whether or not they also have “control”).

For instance, “service top” is a vague pejorative in the BDSM community precisely because it threatens the “powerfulness” of a top. Conversely, “do-me bottom” is similar because it threatens the “powerlessness” of a bottom. I think this is why expressing desire in the form of “wanting what I don’t want” is complicated; it problematizes my own fantasy of absolute powerlessness and my top’s absolute powerfulness, which can feel threatening to many ignorant or simple-minded BDSM’ers.

Since so much of the way the BDSM community and, in fairness, contemporary overarching society, couples submission with femininity and femininity with powerlessness, it should come as no surprise that most BDSM’ers are profoundly sexist and, worse, often willfully ignorant of that. Sadly, the petulant self-righteousness with which many of them go about espousing their “lifestyle” can easily obscure a greater understanding of both the problems with and benefits of “The Scene.” They certainly obscured them from me for a long, long time.

I hope that wasn’t too brash a comment for your blog. I think your post was really good.

As is always the case, the best places to see idiocy and inhumane narcissism of the kind I described is to go to the places where idiots and privileged shits talk amongst themselves. The Internet is amazing for this because few people have the technological know-how to shield their internal discourse from prying eyes—not to mention that such shielding is often antithetical to the point of telecommunication in the first place. In this sense, FetLife offers ideal grounds for privileged-shit-spotting, and David Futrelle’s blog Man Boobz consistently offers awesome roundups and priceless quotes from inside the pro-sexism MRA forums.

When I moved to San Francisco, I was told the city would take me in, that I would be welcome here, that I could fall and the city would catch me. San Francisco: sanctuary for the sexually open. San Francisco: home for wayward queers. San Francisco: Fog City.

In one sense, San Francisco is a fitting place to make my residence. When I walk its hills I (literally) can’t foresee what I’ll encounter at a peak; a street fight, an emergency vehicle, or a gorgeous vista all seem equally likely. When it is foggy, this sense of uncertainty is even more pronounced. But in another sense, San Francisco has been predictably cruel.

A growing solicitude over my prolonged mental isolation keeps me up at night; I hug myself under the covers to remind myself of the sensation. There seems to be an ever-expanding cerebral distance between myself and others, like a great chasm carved with the simple force of circumstance and material. Did the Earth scream in pain when the Grand Canyon was cut into its crust like a wound on its flesh?

The other day I wrote about why BDSM and self-harm can not, using any empirical analysis, be considered similar and the responses I got felt like water cutting through rock; predictable and inevitable and overwhelming and elementarily antithetical to that which they engaged. They are good comments, or would be if attached to a post about coping with a cruel world as a person into BDSM—so, perhaps, a post like this one.

Last Sunday, I spoke with Dr. Staci Newmahr on Kink On Tap about her ethnography of a public SM community. What’s not in the show recording is the exceptionally personal 4 hour conversation Staci and I had after show close. I felt a little like we had (consensually) turned the tables and I was answering, instead of asking, questions. At one point, someone in the chat room asked me how often I play.

“I don’t think I’ve played seriously, in public, for years—in private, for probably about a year. Maybe about a little bit more, at this point,” I answered. Play is—in no metaphorical sense—an expression of intimacy, and my feelings of isolation are as much a result of my difficulty in finding safe, understanding play partners as they are a result of my cerebral dissonance with the BDSM community at large. But it’s worse than that because the BDSM community is, ostensibly, the pool from which a person into BDSM (such as me) can most easily engage play partners. This is a vicious cycle, a catch 22 in which this dissonance—whether on intellectual grounds or, equally likely, a failure to engage with what Staci described as my “sophisticated” gender—precludes playing with others in “the community” as a likely outcome for me.

“What would you do after you’ve given up on having the sex life you want?” I once asked. For many people—and on a personal level, notably submissive men with “sophisticated” gender identities—this is not a hypothetical question. And I am obscenely privileged for having the resources needed to merely identify this reality.

In conversing with Staci, I continued, “playing was cathartic for many people. You know, you discuss in the book people who you interview who talk about playing as something that is very calming and sort of a release of stress and…can be very nice. […Play] was the only tool for emotional self-regulation I had for a very long time, and [now] I’ve sort of had to deal with not having that for a very long time.”

From the moment I can remember claiming my own autonomy (in second grade, actually), my life has been a struggle to hold onto that right for self-determination. It too often seems everything in the world is stacked against me in this: the education system is a corrupted racist prison pipeline; prisons themselves are slave camps for warmongers; the farcical “Land of the Free” is more aptly termed the Land of the Fearful. As I grew, I saw how insidious the enemy is, how it seeps into the tiniest crevices even within myself, if not rushing into places where it once could find no footing.

And they say my generation is apathetic. Well, I won’t believe it. I say we are overwhelmed, for we are the first generation who hear others’ suffering in their own words.

Do you hear them? The billions of voices, all crying out in anguish, every day, again, and again, and again? I can’t stop hearing them. You may say this is all just “a…bit of history repeating,” but I say that doesn’t stop “your hips from swinging.” After all, suicide and revolution are just two sides of the same coin.

Sometime last year, I got a surprise and much-needed affirmation from two out-of-State friends. At the time, I wrote about it privately but didn’t have the guts to publish what I wrote:

It had already been several days since I’d eaten comfortably. Every time I tried, I would get this hideous, nauseous feeling deep in the pit of my stomach. It felt as though the food was toxic. Or maybe I was. But that didn’t stop me from trying.

Dinner, that night, was no different. I had arrived ten minutes late, apologized, and ordered mushroom soup. I tried making small talk while the soup cooled in front of me. It didn’t work.

“Why don’t you tell us what’s bothering you?” [She] asked.

“You can’t dodge it forever,” [the other] added.

I deflected, again, with a joke.

[…]

“You don’t want to hear me rant,” I offered. But neither [of them] wanted to let it go. They no doubt saw how hurt I felt.

Yet another potential friend whom I knew for too short a time, the opportunities with whom were stolen by distance. And by New York, to boot. And by that group. That xenophobic group.

So I told them after all. I told them of the struggle to work on Kink On Tap, on KinkForAll. How important those projects are to me, and to others. And I told them why. I told them about spaces, and how I had none. Have none. Still. How I’d given up having spaces.

[…]

I don’t get to have a space made for me, but maybe I’ll be able to make a space for someone else. So I have to.

[…]

I was crying now, as I explained why I cared so much. The anger gave way to the sadness as the story turned from facts to feelings. “They don’t HAVE to care as much,” I said between tears, “because they HAVE a space, with each other, in their own insular group. So they don’t have to care as hard as I do, and I get that. I get that they have 9-5′s, that they’re not always working on making this culture better every waking moment. But I am, because I have to, because I don’t have a space like that, and I don’t even want one for me anymore. All I want now is help. Somebody to help me make a place where someone like me 8 years ago could go and wouldn’t suffer the way I did back then. Because I REMEMBER the pain, I REMEMBER what it felt like to be so alone, and so I can’t not care this hard, this much, even if they can.”

[…]

They were both done with their meals. I hardly touched mine. I didn’t feel hungry. I had spoken all through dinner, and apologized for monopolizing the conversation, and for being a downer. They said it was all right, that they wanted to have dinner with me. They asked if they could take care of me tonight. I hesitantly agreed.

[…]

With no sign that I had overstayed my welcome and in such soothing company, I walked with them to their hotel room. They gave me a spare key on the elevator, “just in case.” Indoors, eventually, awkwardly, the conversation drifted towards play. They told me they’d wanted to play, if I was interested. I was, and I was scared to—it had been so very long—and I said as much. They offered me cuddles, to start, and I graciously accepted.

We talked about mostly inconsequential things some more on the bed, slowly removing bits of one another’s clothing as we got more comfortable. I was surprised at my level of comfort with them. Soon we were playing, and kissing. [One] held my arms behind my back and touched her lips to my neck. [The other] squeezed my nipples and nibbled at my chest and raked her knife across my body.

“It feels so good to touch and be touched,” I said, remarking on the plain catharsis. It was void of romance or deep love, but it was just as necessary and just as healing and for which I was just as grateful.

The night was magical in that when the darkness of the evening finally enveloped us on the bed, there was nothing else in the world. No billions of others in anguish. No spaces needed to be made or unmade. Just us. For the first night in a long time, I rested in peace.

I desperately needed that; it is so healthy and I, like so many others, get it so rarely. Sexuality communities talk a good game about acceptance but they don’t do it so well in the face of this enemy, for it is far more deeply rooted even here than they are aware. And because they are not aware, because they are often willfully unaware, they are, themselves, oppressive.

And for me, since many of my own personal wounds were themselves created by the sexuality communities’ ignorance, every time I write or speak about this issue—and, yes, every time I so much as try to flirt, far less actually have sex or play with someone—I am picking at scabs. On multiple levels, I live in a mad world:

All around me are familiar faces
Worn out places, worn out faces
Bright and early for the daily races
Going nowhere, going nowhere

Their tears are filling up their glasses
No expression, no expression
Hide my head I wanna drown my sorrow
No tomorrow, no tomorrow

And I find it kind of funny, I find it kind of sad
The dreams in which I'm dying are the best I've ever had
I find it hard to tell you, I find it hard to take
When people run in circles it's a very, very
Mad world, mad world

Children waiting for the day they feel good
Happy birthday, happy birthday
And I feel the way that every child should
Sit and listen, sit and listen

Went to school and I was very nervous
No one knew me, no one knew me
Hello teacher tell me, what's my lesson?
Look right through me, look right through me

And I find it kind of funny, I find it kind of sad
The dreams in which I'm dying are the best I've ever had
I find it hard to tell you, I find it hard to take
When people run in circles its a very, very
Mad world, mad world, enlarging your world
Mad world

I understand that BDSM play can be—and, for some, is—an internal process, an emotional “self-medication.” I don’t think playing from that place, or drinking from that place, or doing whatever the fuck it is that you do from that place is wrong if it keeps you alive. Because, as far as I’m concerned, as long as you aren’t imposing your will on others or violating others’ physical and emotional boundaries, you get to do whatever you need to do to stay alive.

This is a cruel world. The BDSM community is no less cruel—not to me, and not to thousands upon thousands of others. So stop saying you are. Stop it. Please stop, because you’re hurting me, and I didn’t consent to this.

Perhaps predictably, this very topic was raised in a question posed to the “BDSM 101″ panel that I participated in at last weekend’s Western Regional LGBTQIA Conference at UC Berkeley. On the panel was Sloane Soleil, a self-identified switch who notably enjoys heavy masochism. In her introduction, she disclosed that she had a history of cutting, prompting an anonymous question from the audience.¹

Unfortunately, to respect panelists in the closet, no recording devices of any kind were allowed, so I can’t remember the question in its own words (nor can I perfectly remember anyone else’s words). The gist, though, was something like this, paraphrased: “As someone who has a history with cutting, do you ever feel uneasy about seeking to satisfy your masochism in BDSM play or worry that what you’re doing is self-harming again?” That question was possibly the best one we received and I felt disgruntled by how little time we were given to discuss the topic.

As all great questions do, this one betrays an understandable ignorance coupled with eager curiosity. Sloane answered first, since the question was directly addressed to her, and she asserted the oft-repeated notion that she had no trouble reconciling her history of cutting with her interest in engaging in BDSM as a bottom because in the former case she was working through personal mental issues while in the latter she was simply seeking pleasurable experiences.² Other panelists jumped in after her, most of whom were simply reiterating Sloane’s assertions in their own words. Dean, a fellow panelist, made the point that one’s mindset while self-harming is typically self-destructive to the body (and thus unhealthy), while one’s mindset in doing BDSM is not (and thus not unhealthy).

These answers may be valid for the individuals giving them, but they are murky at best. Dean’s point in particular borders on incomprehensible because masochism is by definition a desire to engage in activity that is violent to one’s own flesh.

The issue with both the question and the answers others were giving was the failure to acknowledge the necessarily collaborative nature of BDSM play. This was a point I made on the panel, although perhaps not as clearly as I could have. “A top requires a bottom, and a bottom needs a top to play with,” I said. Another panelist, Lola Sunshine, immediately took issue with my statement by offering the facile and contrarian assertion that “you can totally do BDSM on your own.” She then offered numerous examples of things she thinks is “BDSM on your own” such as self-suspension.

Once again, however, a core distinction was being repeatedly and ignorantly obscured. While I agree that a panel such as this was, to quote fellow panelist Maggie Mayhem, “a sharing of deliberately different experiences with ideas side by side,” it clearly does no “good” and potentially can do a significant amount of “bad” for a representative of the BDSM community to actively obfuscate important facets of BDSM, a topic they are presented as being not merely knowledgeable about, but expertly so. My objection to Lola’s disagreement was not an attempt to win a debate, as Maggie implies, but to illuminate where and how the question’s premise was flawed, and nowhere is such an attempt more pertinent than an expressly academic conference about sexuality.

If and only if “BDSM play” is understood specifically and exclusively as the experience of physical sensations does the question and the aforementioned panelists’s answers make sense. However, every experienced BDSM’er worth their weight in salt understands and should be able to articulate on an academic panel that BDSM can not be wholly understood as physical sensation alone—something Dean almost accomplished. As the panel facilitator was giving Lola the last word, I interjected, “It’s the same as the difference between (conventional) sex and masturbation.” I felt deflated because I was worried I was not understood.

To understand why self-harm has nothing to do with BDSM, there are two separate issues that need to be treated separately. The most obvious one, and the only one I felt was even recognized by others on the panel, is whether or not self-harm or BDSM is unhealthy. That’s an important question, but ultimately a distraction. The other issue, the one I was trying to bring to light, is far, far simpler yet goes even further in destroying the silly idea that BDSM is somehow an expression of self-harm.

To posit BDSM as self-harm (or, “self-abuse”), a position often advanced by anti-SM folk who like to capitalize on the fact that many BDSM’ers (including me, I’ll say publicly possibly for the first time) have a history of self-harm, is as ludicrous as saying masturbation is rape, not because masturbation is either negative or positive but because masturbation is necessarily a lone act and rape is not. Both BDSM and rape—regardless of any moral entanglements—necessarily involve multiple people. Self-harm, on the other hand, is by definition solitary.

Recall, for example, the process of negotiation and its importance to a successful BDSM scene. Even the very word “negotiation” underscores the involvement of more than one person. When viewed in its full capacity, BDSM play is an interactive social process in which players come to an agreement regarding their physical and emotional boundaries.

If you have some personal interest in BDSM, you may be able to find more examples from your own experiences. How many times have you “gone through the motions” during pickup play and ended the scene feeling unfulfilled? How many times have you tried flogging your own back, or spanking your own ass, and found the experience rather unmoving? If you’re anything like me, you probably felt like someone out of a Monty Python movie. Further, if such self-play is done in a public setting, most likely a club, then even lone acts become necessarily collaborative. How many times have you heard of tops and bottoms “enjoying the energy of spectators” in a dungeon?

Even where self-harm features in pop culture depictions of BDSM (such as in the movie Secretary), the two acts are markedly distinct.³ While it’s certainly the case that one can do bondage on one’s own, as Lola said, only the misguided argue that “having orgasms on one’s own” is the same as “having sex”; while the physical results may be similar in both circumstances, these are clearly different behaviors, possessing different motivations, and are approached in many different ways. Likewise, no matter the similarities BDSM acts and bodily harm may appear to have to uninvolved onlookers, it is obvious that they are different.

While we can (and many do) argue ’til the cows come home over whether or not self-harm is unhealthy, and we can likewise argue over BDSM, we would have to be ignorant or insane to argue that the two are similar.

1. Audience members were given the opportunity to write questions anonymously on pieces of paper that were then collected and read to the panelists.
2. Again, I’m paraphrasing from memory, so my apologies for any misrepresentation.
3. In Secretary, Maggie Gyllenhaal’s character is fantasizing about James Spader’s character and tries spanking her own ass, but is disappointed by the result.

if we can accept that the porn that naturally appeals to submissive men is images of men being submissive, couldn’t the porn that naturally appeals to sexual women be of women being sexual? An image doesn’t need to be from the perspective of its intended audience to be “hot,” it can also be from the perspective of that audience’s object of desire and that can make it “hot.”

This comment got me thinking. Even after I responded to Kay in the comment thread, I kept thinking about it. I thought about it so much that I did some Google searching and some blog surfing trying to see if anyone else had ever had the sorts of thoughts I was suddenly having, but I couldn’t find anything relevant.

So, in light of the absence of something to link to, I want to share some of what’s in my head.

On Porn’s “Right Stuff”

Let’s begin with a question: what determines one’s satisfaction with some specific pornographic content?

When I think about why I enjoy some porn and not some other porn, a few obvious things jump out at me. Everyone I’ve asked who’s willing to answer the question also seems able to identify particulars of porn they like that contributes to their enjoyment. They may be physically attracted to the models in visual works, they may enjoy the character development in an erotic story, or they may find the depicted circumstance an exciting prospect to one day explore themselves. Often, one’s distaste for or affinity with a single pornographic image, story, or other artifact is most adequately explained by a combination of these and other factors.

Although details vary between individuals, one observation seems universal: everyone likes some porn, and dislikes some other porn. No one seems to like all porn, though many people certainly have less discriminating tastes than others. At the same time, no one seems to dislike all porn, either.¹

Some data on people’s enjoyment of porn is easy to find, although most of it is necessarily self-reported and anecdotal.² Take the headline poster from the original set of 12 Lady Porn Day flyers, as an example. I described this image as “A skinny white woman wearing nothing but a white fur-lined coat with big blonde hair and big glasses baring it all in a public venue.”

Personally, I find the woman attractive, both aesthetically and sexually. I think she’s beautiful (even though I think she’s dangerously close to hitting the unattractively too-skinny point for my tastes) and I think she’s rockin’ obvious sex appeal. To put it crudely, yes, I’d do her. However, I’m not particularly drawn to the image in general and I’m especially disinterested as a pornography consumer; there is little beyond the aforementioned aesthetic and sexual attraction that holds my interest.

Some might argue that aesthetic and sexual attraction of this sort is what defines “good porn.” The traditional pornographer’s formula seems to be:

1. find conventionally pretty people who fit contemporary standards of human physical aesthetics (e.g., “skinny white women”),
2. place them in sexually suggestive or overtly sexual situations (e.g., “baring it all in a public venue”), and
3. voila: good porn!

The assertion Rabbit, Lady Porn Day’s host, made that images like this one are “things I find hot” may at first suggest this formula is fool-proof. But if this were such an open-and-shut case, why did the same image get the following response from Beka?

You know, even as a lady who enjoys the other ladies, I… don’t really find those images all that arousing. I mean, obviously, it’s a matter of personal preference[…].

The image got an even more severe response from Remittance Girl:³

if I wanted lesbian porn, I’d go find it. The bottom line is, what makes people think women only get turned on by, primarily, other women’s bodies? I want porn that shows males […] I want pictures of hetero men, naked, aroused. Period.

Rabbit, Beka, Remittance Girl, and I each had differing responses to the image. If all it took for porn to be considered “good” were conventionally attractive models in sexual situations, all of us should have found this image “hot.” That (obviously incorrect) formulation divorces the viewer from judging the quality of the porn, yet we intuitively understand that pornography is theatrical; it is not only intended to be viewed, it is interpreted by the viewer, as all classes of art are. Therefore, we must consider the viewer’s perception in determining the quality of any given pornographic artifact. Nowhere is the phrase “beauty is in the eye of the beholder” more applicable than in the study of art—or porn.

If we just factored in the sexual orientation of the viewer, then the only classes of people who we’d expect not to find that picture hot are (exclusively) gay men and (exclusively) straight women. However, plenty of (admittedly anecdotal) evidence suggests that there are many straight women who are aroused by sexualized imagery of women and would agree such images of other women are “hot.”⁴ Clearly, what makes good porn “good” and bad porn “bad” is a complex topic.

Perhaps an understanding of the issues at hand can not be achieved through expositions of a purely sexual nature, but rather through a semiotic study of the viewing of the material. Otherwise, it should have been easier to find porn that is universally liked (or disliked). In other words, for you to understand why a person likes some porn but not some other porn, you must first understand the significance they place on the porn itself.

Sexual gazing: Objectifying to Embodying

In sexuality theories, discourses on gaze mingle with cinematic theory (i.e., media studies, specifically feminist film theory), which is where the notion of the male gaze first appeared. Put simply, a gaze identifies a viewer, or a gazer. When a woman’s curves linger on-screen, as they so often do in cinema, or when a picture of, say, a “skinny white woman…baring it all” is shown, as it so often is in pornography, the viewer is commonly—and often rightly—assumed to be a heterosexual male.⁵

However, this conceptualization of gaze is limiting. Knowing who the gazer is tells us very little about how they are gazing. Part of understanding a person’s pornographic tastes relies on understanding whether their gaze is objectifying or embodying. An objectifying gaze is one in which the gazer—the consumer of the pornographic artifact—imagines themselves as observing the model in a pornographic image, while an embodying gaze is one in which they imagine themselves as being the model.

The gazing behavior a consumer of pornography exhibits can be conceived of as a gaze orientation, similar to a sexual orientation. In 1948, the Kinsey scale⁶ graded sexual behavior along an ordered series of points from exclusively heterosexual (0) to exclusively homosexual (6). The grades numbered 1 through 5 represented the various degrees of bisexual behavior:

Imagine a similar scale as Kinsey’s, except instead of sexual orientation, we’re charting gaze orientation. We can call it the gaze scale.

On one end of the scale, just like sexual orientation, we place hetero-gazing (or, using more cinematic and less sexological terminology, subject-identifying) behavior (0) and on the other we place homo-gazing (or, object-identifying) behavior (6), with bi-gazing behavior in between. As the etymological prefixes imply, hetero-gazing/subject-identifying behavior indicates a preference for the viewed object to be different from the gazer, while homo-gazing/object-identifying behavior indicates a preference for the viewed object to be the same (or at least similar in respect to sociosexual makeup) as the gazer.⁷

As a framework for discussing the subjective satisfaction someone may experience from consuming porn, adding this sociosexual concept to the way we think neatly explains differing reactions to pornographic artifacts that can’t be articulated any other way. Since a person’s gaze orientation is a distinct facet of their sociosexual makeup, any given homosexual, bisexual, heterosexual, or asexual person can be any given degree of homo-gazing, bi-gazing, hetero-gazing, or non-gazing (a-gazing?).

For example, some straight women may enjoy stereotypical mainstream porn because they “identify with”⁸ the woman “getting fucked.” Or, given an image with a traditional “male gaze” such as the one above, some (heterosexual) women may enjoy it because they have conformed to hegemonic cultural ideals in which the female form is inherently sexualized; they have become their own sexual object. In each case, these can be described as homo-gazing women.

In much the same way, this formulation explains my significant affinity for pornography focusing on male-submissive objects. Male Submission Art is an intentionally homo-gazing project because I’m featuring submissive masculinity and I identify as a submissive man myself—arguably a highly narcissistic behavior. In other words, the experience of strong homo-gazing/object-identifying behavior while consuming porn can be described as the experience of desiring to be desired—an experience no less “natural” for men than women, despite the insistence of simplistic, gender essentialist analyses.

Meanwhile, the traditional “male gaze” in straight porn presumes the (male) consumer is both heterosexual and hetero-gazing. What else explains the pernicious idea that men “identify with” the male actors when their most prominent identifying feature—their face—is so often cinematically decapitated? What else explains that even these (exclusively) heterosexual men rarely, if ever, take issue with the proliferation of purposefully visible giant cocks? Showing the cock owner’s face challenges the suspension of disbelief necessary for straight, hetero-gazing men to identify with the well endowed subject, reducing the efficacy of the porn’s theatrics.

Sexism’s Influence on Gaze

Using the framework provided by gaze orientation, I can also articulate the intense discomfort of feeling as though I need to “change the genders around in my head” when I look at most porn, same as many (heterosexual, hetero-gazing) women do. Such gaze dysphoria is more evident upon examinations of asymmetric power. For example, in her analysis of the 1980′s TV show Cagney & Lacey, Danae Clark succinctly describes sexism’s influence:

Dominant theories of spectatorship maintain that traditional (male-governed) texts are founded on a subject/object dichotomy that places a male subject in control of the ‘gaze’ and positions the woman as object of his look. Since the woman becomes the passive raw material for the active gaze and visual pleasure of the male, the female viewer’s possibilities for identification become extremely limited; she must choose between adopting the voyeuristic (sadistic) position of the male subject or the masochistic position of the female object.

Clark recognizes the quagmire that power differentials along gendered lines (i.e., sexism) places on “the female viewer’s possibilities of identification,” implying that neither the position of the male subject nor that of the female object is desirable for female viewers. However, she seems constrained by theoretically coupling active and sadistic behaviors with maleness; the “voyeuristic (sadistic) position” is desired by some women. To escape this constraint, we can be aided by Dr. Staci Newmahr’s insights on BDSM play⁹ in her recently published book, Playing on the Edge: Sadomasochism, Risk, and Intimacy.¹⁰

It is impossible to understand [archetypes of topping and bottoming] outside gender; they are themselves gender stereotypes. Beyond performances of powerful and powerless circumstances, they are active representations of being powerful and powerless, or of victimizing and being victimized. Topping and bottoming are both active processes undertaken to and as engagement in performances of victimization and power differentials. This is not to claim that these performances are therefore anti-feminist or otherwise philosophically objectionable[…]. There is, as SM researchers and practitioners have long insisted, an important distinction between victimization and consensual engagement in performances of victimization. Nonetheless, while the latter precludes the former, it is the existence and cultural coding of victimization that gives these performances meaning. In this sense, we can explore these performances within their gendered contexts, yet move away from the categories of “woman” and “man” as the salient hermeneutic constructs.

The existence of BDSM players who identify as dominant women or submissive men has long problematized socially conservative feminist discourse precisely because it challenges the hermeneutic constructs on which conservative social ideology depends. Similarly, the existence of homo-gazing/object-identifying women challenges the “male gaze’s” corollary. Flipping Clark’s statement on its head, if the “female gaze” can be understood as a subject/object dichotomy that places a female subject in control of the ‘gaze’ and positions the man as object of her look, then this female viewer is implicitly cast as hetero-gazing/subject-identifying. A (masochistic) woman whose satisfaction is derived from empathizing with other female objects suffers the reciprocal quagmire as the one Clark described.

This suggests that the efforts of various counter-culture pornographers, notably many creating “porn for women,” employ the same flawed dialectic as mainstream pornographers producing “male gaze” iconography. Rejecting this false dichotomy—adopting a both/and mindset—offers both emotional comfort (in validating common gaze-dysphoric experiences) and a sexologically and psychoanalytically sound explanation for, as an example, why some women find Filament Magazine sexy while others don’t. Notions of erotic satisfaction derived from consuming pornography are obviously best explored as a composite of the pornographic artifact itself and the experience of its consumption, but the atomic sociosexual parts engaged in such an experience have not yet been fully enumerated.

Just as Newmahr suggests we “explore [BDSM] performances within their gendered contexts, yet move away from the categories of ‘woman’ and ‘man’ as the salient hermeneutic constructs,” I suggest moving away from the categories of “male” and “female” when exploring the experience of porn consumption. Put another way, if you’ve ever longed for terminology that explains the difference between looking at porn and thinking “I want to fuck that girl” or thinking “I want to be that girl,” perhaps expressing the latter in terms of a gaze attraction, rather than a sexual attraction or a gender identity, will be useful.

When it comes to the consumption and creation of pornographic artifacts (viewing imagery, writing erotica, etc.), but notably not when it comes to patronizing and providing erotic labor (soliciting a prostitute, doing escort work, etc.), I posit that gaze orientation is the most significant, or at least unconsidered, hermeneutic characteristic relating to one’s satisfaction with pornography.

1. The only people who do seem to “dislike all porn” are, of course, absexuals—folks who find pornography abhorrent. These people are typically polemicistic anti-porn crusaders for whom any and all “porn” is ideologically incompatible with “erotica,” a category containing depictions many of them do claim to “like.” For the purposes of this discussion, I treat “porn” and “erotica” as synonymous since my intent is to explore any (sexualized) satisfaction acquired through any media, regardless of how the consumer categorizes said media or maintains any philosophical objections to it.
2. Also, as I am most assuredly a foreigner in academic lands, I don’t have as much insight into formal research results as others might. I am, after all, a middle school drop-out, albeit one interested in reading academically rigorous studies on porn. Links in comments welcomed!
3. Remittance girl elaborated in a follow-up post, which also has an interesting comment thread.
4. These anecdotes seem further supported by numerous studies in which women view porn and are observed for physiological and psychological responses. See, for instance, Sexual arousal in women: A comparison of cognitive and physiological responses by continuous measurement and Sexual arousal in women: The development of a measurement device for vaginal blood volume. Unfortunately, it’s difficult to gauge these studies’ precise relevance to this discussion in part because the particular pornography used is not publicly available (and as a starving activist, I haven’t the resources to purchase the studies’ full text or other materials). What is notable, however, is the prevalent cognitive dissonance among women studied.
5. I don’t have any numbers, but private correspondence with publishers of material explicitly designed around a “female gaze” informs me that there are literally near-zero female photographers who exclusively photograph male models. Don’t believe me? Read Where Are The Women Who Photograph Men?
6. True to his reportedly narcissistic form, the Kinsey scale is named after Alfred Kinsey.
7. I use “sociosexual” here and elsewhere in this post to refer to the sum of a person’s social and sexual constitution, not in the formal psychological sense as a behavioral orientation measuring a desire to engage in sexual acts independent from feelings of love.
8. It is noteworthy that psychoanalytic discourses on gaze describe the concept as observing the observation of the self, as in by literally watching oneself in a mirror. Psychoanalytic theory formalizes notions of imagination by passage through a “mirror stage” of psychological development, that is, when a child is able to recognize that their own image in a mirror is their own image. Such an understanding of the self is necessary to form a distinction between “I” and “you” and is therefore a prerequisite for developing at least a homo-gazing orientation, as the viewer of a pornographic image actively seeks to empathize with or project their identity onto the (objectified) model. (A hetero-gazing orientation may not rely on a prior “mirror stage” since in this case the viewer conceptualizes the sexual image as a mere extension of their own eyesight.) This also means that a gaze orientation is not necessarily inborn, as other usages of the “orientation model” may imply.
9. Since BDSM play explicitly references both relationships of asymmetric power and theatrical ritual, it is an outstandingly useful lens for this analysis.
10. See Playing on the Edge, p. 114, paragraph 2.

(As an aside, it’s a great BDSM podcast, but sadly Axe blatantly sold out his integrity and, despite my helping him cut his podcast costs in half, he chose to stay sponsored by EdenFantasys for “a new microphone,” which is a severe blow to the respect I would otherwise accord him. I donated to his podcast before he was sponsored by them. I’ll never donate to a podcast sponsored by EF. And I’ll probably never donate to Axe again, either.)

Anyway, there were two main topics we talked about on his podcast. He edited the discussion down to two sections. One topic was KinkForAll, which he then released. The other was about Male Submission Art, which he never released. But I did ask for and he did give me the audio. And fuck it, I’ve been sitting on this for over a year and it’s probably time to talk more about Male Submission Art.

So here you go: a slightly-edited but mostly uncut recording of me talking about Male Submission Art.

Maymay has this blog post that’s been sticking with me recently called “How not to fuck up a D/s relationship.” In it, he correctly points out that successful relationships are not a monolithic mass but are actually made up of multiple layers (like onions or, perhaps, parfaits), each building upon the last.

There’s this concept of layers, or more technically a stack, that is fundamental to the construction of many things in our world today. The basic idea is that one layer builds upon the things it receives from the layer beneath it and provides things to build upon to the layer above it. In this way, a robust and reliable system can be developed—and maintained—by segmenting different pieces of the system.

I think that a D/s relationship could benefit from a construction similar to this. It’s the way I think about my relationship with Eileen. I am at once her friend, her lover, her boyfriend, and her slave. Indeed, I am her slave because I am her boyfriend, and I am her boyfriend because I am her lover, and I am her lover because I am her friend.

I was reminded of this because, for the past two weeks or so, there’s been a kind of dissonance between Belle and I that’s taken the wind out of the sail for the sexual part of our relationship. […But o]nce the issue with the lower stack was resolved, the issue with the higher one was, too.

Now, Thumper’s blog is perhaps the only “sex blog” actually about the sex its author has that I don’t outright dislike for that fact. I hate most sex blogs, and even the ones that aren’t total bullshit (either because they are fiction or because they’re just flat-out terrible) give me pause since reading about someone else’s sex life while you have none of which to speak feels kind of like banging your forehead into a concrete wall over and over again. (Which, if it’s not obvious to you, is not my kink thankyouverymuch.) But I keep coming back to read Thumper’s blog because his ability to share his experiences with such sanguine simplicity while using marvelously empathic language leaves me feeling like I’m living vicariously through him.

And, for the record, there’s simply no other sex blogger whose sex life I want more than Thumper’s. Except possibly Tom’s. Sure, Thumper’s innately emotional phraseology can sometimes trigger downright rantings from me, but if you want to read about the sex life I wish I had, just read Thumper’s blog.

Anyway, beyond the fact that Thumper’s post was really life-affirming (literally) to read, it sparked a few comments that develop the D/s relationship layers (or stacks) idea further in a very valuable way. Mykey very keenly noted:

I might add though that the layers feed back to each other. I’m a better sub because [my partner Sandy and I] are in love. But I fall more in love when I see my submission is appreciate and valued. That is, a higher stack feeds back and strengthens the lower one as well.

Absolutely. And in the case of a sexual relationship, abso-fucking-lutely. This is true, techies like me will note, of many other systems whose architecture makes fundamental use of the layers concept. The Internet’s TCP/IP stack (which provides loads of sexual inspiration, if you’re looking), has an entire process for sending messages up and down its neighboring layers. So, too, must human relationships.

Perhaps the most obvious example of this is a relationship that begins when two lovers’ eyes meet across a crowded room, suddenly feeling lustful for one another. (Doubly true if this is a sex party.) These weren’t “friends first” situations, which means the initial spark for the relationship happened, in this parlance, on a higher stack, the lover layer. So the sex can beget friendship and, like a tree, the relationship grows both roots heading downwards and branches heading skyward.

In Thumper’s case, as he puts it:

I think in Belle’s mind my chastity has stopped being just a game we play. It’s been elevated over time to be a fairly significant commitment I’ve made to her. A sign of my devotion. A permanent part of our relationship. And for some reason, I played right into that by equating my chastity to her [far "lesser"] commitment. So, I guess, what this boiled down to was a conversation about our commitments to each other and how we need to keep them. And a tacit implication that I will probably be chastised for the rest of my life.

[…]

Before, I had developed a kind of begrudged resignation toward the device and had more or less lost my interest in being sexual with or even touching Belle. Last night, though, I was all over her and fell asleep clutching her body, my hands up under bedclothes. Her hand was down around the device and she stroked my balls as she fell asleep and I just about melted. On the way into work this morning, I sensed the tube on my body and the stirring of the cock inside and a warm, excited fluttering was in my chest.

In other words, as Mykey observes, Belle considers chastity to be a foundation layer now. And that not only makes sense, it’s an absolutely critical thing for anyone—straight or not, vanilla or not—to appreciate.

We’re so often told sex, or fetishes, destroys relationships. But for many people, it’s one of the strongest ways to maintain and even strengthen one healthily.

That’s why I continue to receive numerous personal, private, correspondence from people of all genders, backgrounds, ages, and concerns who are uncomfortable about speaking non-anonymously. These folks have already made a leap of faith merely by emailing me (emails are not anonymous), yet what they have to say is so vital, is so important, and I believe is so prevalent that not sharing these “private conversations” publicly routinely pains me. I frequently ask for permission to publish these exchanges (even though I consider anything that comes to my inbox fair game for public blogging) out of respect for the concerns of others, regardless of my personal inclination towards radical transparency.

This stockpile of personal correspondence, the things these “garden-variety,” “normal,” even “vanilla” people tell me about themselves and their lives in one-on-one conversation that they would not feel comfortable sharing more publicly is evidence of the reality that “the moral majority” is simply a misnomer. They are, in fact, merely one very vocal minority. And, what’s more, so am I—I am a different vocal minority.

Since it will always be easier to destroy, to shame, to hate, than it will be to create, to empower, and to love, my challenge is to prove to the silent majority how necessary their voices and their actions really are. Until some perceived heretic such as myself can stand up to the monster of cultural shaming, to challenge the tyranny of “common sense,” and to expose the enraging and despicable lies activist academics peddle as fact, the silent majority will remain silenced by the vocal minorities fighting to maintain the cultural, religious, and economic status-quo.

On that note, here’s one such (slightly edited) exchange that I think is eye-opening with regards to its under-reported, and perhaps unacknowledged, prevalence. Like many others, this person prefers to remain anonymous because their “views have the potential to piss just about every camp off.” (That’s rarely been on my list of reasons why not to do something, but I respect the sentiment.)

So without further ado, here’s the closest thing to a guest post I’ve published on this blog:

Maymay,

I can finally sit down and write you an email on some of the thoughts I’ve had while reading your posts. Let’s start with the Submissive Man in 2007:

I wanted to write about why many submissive men are just as responsible for debasing their own sexuality as the many pro- (and so obviously not-so-pro-)dommes who take delight in squashing them down while lifting them of that burdensome weight in their wallets. (“Thank you for stealing my money, Mistress, would you like another dollar?”)

There seems to be this strange notion in femdom that women are superior to men. As a fantasy, I can kink on that notion for perhaps a two minute stretch at a time (perhaps longer with a visual like something by Sardax) before I discard it at as silly (for me). I’m not a loser. I’m not a worm. I’m not a piggy. I’m not worthless. I’m not a maid. I’m not a handyman. And I’m not a wallet. These notions of male submission don’t resonate with me at all. In fact, I think my submission to a woman has a special meaning because I’m awesome; the type of submission I do when I’m submissive is not necessarily “better,” but it is different, and it is under-represented.

There are tons of internet femdoms urging me to prove how worthless I am to please them; why not femdoms urging me to prove how awesome I am to please them?

I certainly don’t want to step on other people’s fantasies, yet there comes a problem when certain fantasies can’t be distinguished from reality, and when certain fantasies marginalize others (like mine). Sexual dominance really isn’t necessarily the same thing as status superiority; just because I often want women to have the former, it doesn’t mean I believe them to hold the latter.

Like you, the other thing I have trouble relating to is paying money for “financial domination”, “tribute”, or “sessions,” at least not in typical contexts. As a student of seduction for many years, I want people to do stuff with me because they are enthusiastic about it. I want people to want me. If someone doesn’t want me enough to do something with me without any exchange of money, then they don’t want them as much as I would want them to want me.

I originally figured out some of the problems with males attempting to exchange money for female sexuality from the seduction community, in posts like these.

By the cultural default, paying money implies that I am inadequate in intrinsic desirability, and that I must “sweeten the deal” financially to make up for this inadequacy. I do not accept that framing of the situation at all! If I’m not desirable enough for someone to want to be sexual with me without me having to include extrinsic incentives outside their enjoyment of the activity, then we are really not a good fit.

An important lesson I’ve learned is that a lot of the status that people give me depends on how much status I act like I have. Similarly, people seem to treat me as more desirable when I act like I’m desirable, and when I act in a way that shows that I believe that they will find me desirable.

Yet if I offer someone money for a sexual experience, I am acting as if I believe that I’m less desirable to her than she is to me; my belief in my lower desirability will then serve as evidence to her that she should also believe that I have lower desirability. By the same logic, I understand your ambivalence about pro-dommes asking you to session with them. If I received such a suggestion, I would be offended inside, because it would imply that she saw me as less desirable than I saw her, and that she considered it acceptable to rub that perception in my face and have me be thankful for a chance for an asymmetrical interaction with her. Thanks, but no thanks.

I would argue that pro-dommes (and non-pro) are also being short-changed by these exchange metaphors in their own dating lives. They (and men who approach them as potential lovers) are used to accepting a metaphor which devalues the man’s desirability. I’m currently seeing a pro-domme. She asked me out after we got talking…but I wonder what would have happened if instead I had followed one of the standard submissive scripts and asked to be her slave, pay her tribute, worship her, or session with her. There is a good chance I would have destroyed my desirability for her, and we wouldn’t now be enjoying experiences that she charges other men hundreds of dollars for in “sessions.”

Since I want people to want me, I go to great lengths to make myself attractive to people I’m seeing. Getting ready can take me several hours, and even more if I’m going out as a girl. As a student of
seduction, I enjoy using my knowledge of sexuality and psychology to create mutually-enjoyable situations. Sometimes, I view the images and interactions I create as a form of power, and sometimes I view them as a form of service; these views are not mutually-exclusive. With people I go out with, part of my effort to create an attractive image and enjoyable interaction involves avoiding and ruthlessly shutting down interpersonal dynamics that undermine my desirability or value as a person; this could be construed as a service.

Since I believe that a lot of stereotypical male submission dynamics and scripts will undermine my desirability and value in even a dommes’ eyes (including, but not limited to, forms of financial exchange), I am forced to reject them in order to maintain a mutually pleasing and sustainable interaction. For me, the best way to “serve” (to the extent that the notion of service resonates with me) is to reject the stereotypical, self-undermining notions of service that are associated with the devaluing of submissive male sexuality. I serve the relationship, and I serve the other person through my service to the relationship, even if this service involves me rejecting tempting cultural scripts, rejecting certain dynamics or tests from the other person that I judge as harmful to the long-term health of the relationship, not necessarily giving them everything they want when they want it, asserting myself, presenting strong opinions, being challenging, or saying “no” or “not yet.”

I’m really grateful for all the personal correspondence I’ve gotten and I hope it continues. I also hope that more such correspondence—in whatever form it takes—encourages people to open themselves up a bit more than they otherwise would. Although this exchange was about a topic germane to BDSM and, therefore, this blog, I’ve had similar exchanges with self-described “normal people” who held “unpopular,” “under-culture,” or just plain “perverted” views.

And you might be surprised to learn how many of them came from doctrinal socially conservative or religious backgrounds.

You guys are the silent majority. I’m a bullhorn, a loud voice, maybe a lighthouse doing my best to shine light onto an otherwise dark and rocky shore of a corrosive and repressive hegemony. But I’m not the meat of the matter, you are. What will it take for more of you to speak up and speak out?

Well, fuck that. I’m a person, too. And I still have sex, though not as much as some of my critics seem to think that I do. (Actually, that’s their fault, too, considering the enormous amount of time I spent managing attacks against me.) I hope someone’s getting off on it, because I’m not.

And speaking of not getting off, that’s one way I enjoy sex even without “having sex.” Just lucky, I guess. ;)

Anywho, I’ve been catching up with some of my favorite sex bloggers—y’know, the ones that write about what sex means to them, instead of who they fucked last weekend—and I came across Push me, please by Thumper. In it, he writes:

I tried to explain that there’s a desire within me to go far beyond my comfort zone if for no other reason than she’s asked me to do so. I pointed her to Maymay’s post related to this (is there anything he’s not written about?) and also sent her a couple of Sarah Jameson’s emails that, I think, touch indirectly on it.

Sarah Jameson, for those who don’t know, writes the Male Chastity Blog. She’s a “normal” woman, not unlike Belle, with a husband who likes abnormal things, not unlike me. She writes with confidence and, while I don’t always agree with her, find that she’s right far more often than not (at least IMO). Besides the blog, she also sends out a multi-part email newsletter on the subject of…wait for it…male chastity. […] I recommend it, especially for those just starting out.

First, yay, a relatively new and sensible addition to the orgasm denial/delay/control/what-have-you blogosphere. That is sorely needed. Second, yes, I’m sure there are many topics I’ve not yet written about but I’m working on fixing that. ;)

So, quoting Sarah Jameson, Thumper continues:

…in part 11 of her series, she asks, “Just how long can a man wait?” Her initial response sends an electric shiver down my spine:

Well, the truth is…your man doesn’t have to orgasm ever. As in NEVER.

But then she gives what I think is the best advice I’ve read on the subject:

Over time I’ve come round to the way of thinking that you should keep your man in orgasm denial for at least 50% longer than he asks for and thinks he can stand.

Why?

Because in the early days, while you’re still working out the ground rules, he’ll be basing his own estimation on insufficient knowledge. To HIM, fresh into male chastity, even a week seems like an eternity.

So if he thinks a month, make it six weeks; if he thinks six months, make it nine months; and if he thinks a year…woe betide him.

I think this is a really interesting excerpt because it shows an awareness of the importance of unpredictability, of keeping the orgasm control “game” novel and interesting. Now, Sarah Jameson seems to veer off in the direction of denial period length, which is not unreasonable but is, in my opinion, possibly misleading.

Although it certainly can be an exercise in control to keep a partner orgasm-less for 50% longer than they asked for, that in itself doesn’t reliably provide pleasure. If your measure of “fun” is “longer,” then by all means, go 50% longer. But you could just as easily go 70% longer or, hell, 100% longer, and in my experience, the “pleasure” would be equally unreliable. When you can change the variable and you don’t get a “better” result, then you know you’re missing the core issue.

Moreover, since “pleasure” is different for different people, achieving it doesn’t always boil down to lengths of time, or any other particular activity. Case in point, I spent a lot of time locked up and forbidden to masturbate during my relationship with Eileen, but things are different with Emma. I feel pretty differently about these experiences, but I can’t really say I enjoyed one situation more than the other.

So all of this had me thinking, is there any reliable, measurable way to induce whatever “maximum pleasure” means for me? Although I’m not certain, I did find a hint in this Class Day Lecture given at Stanford University by Robert Sapolsky, a world-renowned primatologist. In it, he discusses the neurobiology behind the feelings of pleasure as associated with reward and anticipation. (Watch the video or read my text transcript, below.)

How we go about reward: now this brings in a little bit of neurobiology, the involvement of a neurotransmitter (a brain chemical messenger) called dopamine. Dopamine is all about reward. You do not want your brain to run out of dopamine, or else you’ll become clinically depressed.

Cocaine works on the dopamine system. All sorts of euphoriants work on dopamine. Dopamine is about reward. At least, that’s what people used to think. And they used to think it would work as follows.

You take a monkey and you’ve trained it in some task. You give it a signal, a light goes on in its room, and that means, ‘Okay, this task is about to begin.’ And the monkey’s learned that if it now does this task, whatever the work is, it will then get a reward after some delay. And what everybody assumed was what dopamine was about was that, once you got that reward, dopamine levels went up. Dopamine was about pleasure, reward, the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, all that sort of thing.

Turns out that’s not what dopamine is about. It looks like this instead.

You’ve got this monkey trained to do this task and the signal comes on saying, ‘Okay, we’re starting one of these sessions again,’ and then the dopamine goes up. What is this about? This is not pleasure of getting the reward. This is, ‘I know how this one works, this is great, I’m all on top of this. I know exactly what to do. Piece of cake, I got this under control. I’m on this one.’ It is not about reward, it’s about the anticipation of reward. And in fact, if you block that dopamine rise from occurring, you don’t get the work.

It’s not only about the anticipation of reward, it’s about the goal-directed behavior it is able to fuel.

Very subtle additional piece of this. A wonderful study some years ago where you take this scenario: okay, the individual, the monkey, does the work and, after the delay, gets the reward 100% of the time. Now, instead, in this setting, it gets the reward only 50% of the time. What happens now when that signal comes on, what [the dopamine levels] looks like is this: you switch over to 50% and the dopamine levels explode through the roof there.

What have you just done? You’ve introduced the word “maybe” into your equation, and that is reinforcing like nothing on Earth. That signal comes on, and that monkey is sitting there saying, ‘Piece of cake, I’m on top of this, but I’m such a screwup, and I’m not gonna get it–oh, but today, I’m gonna be on it–but it’s not gonna work out….’ And you just have him teetering there on this fulcrum, and that is pushing dopamine out like there’s no tomorrow.

Just to show that, now instead of the 50% reward rate, give the monkey either a 25% or 75% reward rate. Totally opposite things: this one is bad news, this one’s good news. What’s the one thing they have in common? Both reduce the unpredictability, both lower the dopamine surge to the same extent.

Take a monkey and there’s nothing more addictive out there than the notion that there’s a reward lurking out there and it’s a maybe. And what some of our best social engineers, many of them making a good living in Las Vegas, learn how to do is how to turn what seems like a 50% reality of reward to make it that salient when it’s one tenth of a hundred percent of a chance of reward; how to make one get that dopamine surge and get that goal directed behavior out of there.

So, it turns out that brain chemistry works exactly the same way in [humans]. In us, dopamine is about the anticipation of reward, uncertainty boosts it up further, it drives the work needed for the reward. What’s unique about us, what’s the difference is, the lag time between the work and the reward—how long we can hold on driven by that dopamine surge to pump out that work in order to get the reward.

And we all know this scenario: where you interview really, really well for your preschool, and as a result you get into a good school and a good high school, and you study hard and you get a good GPA and get into a good grad school, get a good job, and eventually you get into the nursing home of your choice. What we’ve got here is this astonishing human capacity to hold on. And, what we have that is completely unprecedented is the ability, in some ideological and some theological systems, to hold on even after you are gone—and a world in which you have a reward that comes in an afterlife. A world in which you are willing to put up with the most egregious of versions of pain in the name of holding on, holding on. A world in which unto the generations after you and the sins upon your children.

There’s nothing like that out there in any other species.

So, beyond the absolutely fascinating sociopolitical implications of this insight into human neurobiology, watching this video some months ago was a light-bulb moment for me. I finally understood the neurochemistry behind one of the most core elements of my sexuality, my fetish for orgasm control. And this knowledge is such good power.

I immediately shared my insight with Emma: dopamine levels are maximized when a “reward” (which is probably a “treat” in our parlance) is acquired exactly 50% of the times when it was expected. This means that, in an ideal world, for every orgasm I’m granted (every time I “do the work for the reward,” whatever the work is in our particular orgasm control game-du-jour), let me actually have that orgasm 50% of the time, in as unpredictable a fashion as possible.

So Sarah’s 50% figure is actually really astute. However, scientifically speaking, the variable is wrong. It’s not about how long one goes without orgasm that (in itself) determines the neurochemical levels of enjoyment one gets from the experience. Instead, it’s more about how reliably a sense of anticipation can be triggered and extended, while maximizing uncertainty of whether or not this time the “reward” (or “treat” or orgasm) is actually forthcoming.

That’s why, with Emma, there’s no longer such a thing as “days when I will orgasm.” Instead, there are only “no” days and “maybe” days. And I gotta say, I really like it this way.

Salt and pepper to taste. Yield: infinity. Serve with loving, desperate need and enjoy. ;)

This interesting image via SlaveBoy.Tumblr.com.

One of the things that has seriously bugged me for a very long time is how lots of people think about submissiveness, particularly but not necessarily as it relates to male sexuality. It bugs me because for all the lip service paid to respecting submission, very little about the way it’s discussed actually seems to be respectful of submissive desires.

I, unlike many submissive young men in their teens, surrounded myself with the culture and ritual of dominant/submissive relationships through the very fortunate circumstances in which I found myself. Yet, despite my incredible access to such resources, it was indescribably difficult (not to mention painful) for me to get to a point where I felt like I can enjoy my sexual submission as a valid part of my masculinity.

Why was it so hard for to me feel validated in my submission? Why does it continue to be a struggle for many people, as the overwhelming response to my subversive writings at MaleSubmissionArt.com show? This question, at once both simple and unspeakably intricate, is what I want to address in this post.

Imagine for a moment you’re a young guy (or a guy of any age, really) trying to understand your sexual desires. You know you want a relationship with (in the name of simplicity) a woman who will “take charge in the bedroom,” but you don’t really know what that looks like. You come across porn and sex blogs and, like a second (or third, or fourth) erotic awakening, all sorts of fantasy imagery involving either getting butt-fucked or not being allowed to orgasm, or both of those, starts bubbling in your brain, since—let’s face it—that’s most of the erotic material out there for such guys. You finally get a girlfriend and, remarkably, she’s good, giving and game, so you get butt-fucked and she doesn’t let you come. “Wonderful,” you’re likely to think, “now I’ve been submissive.”

If you’re lucky, maybe it was really wonderful. More power to you. But what if it’s not? Moreover, and I suspect this is most common, what if that wonderfulness is just the tip of the iceberg? What if the new experience was amazing and novel but you want more? What is that “more” that you want? More butt-fucking? More bondage? More sexual service? More orgasm denial? What are you yearning for, really?

This, sadly, is where many of us get stuck. I’ve read countless words from hundreds if not thousands of men, all of whom seem to be trying to answer these very questions. I’m one of these men, trying to figure out what the fuck all this desiring is, trying to make it “more” and “better” as though I’m following some kind of primal programming. I want to be more passionate. More intimate. More connected. More devoted. More focused. More meaningful. More submissive.

Obviously, this is a very big topic, and I often feel overwhelmed just thinking about how submission relates to my life, influences my relationships, or shapes my desires. As I often struggle with articulating these thoughts, I figured that even if I don’t get it quite right, it’s worth sharing some of where I’ve gotten to because I no longer enjoy sex despite being a submissive man. I finally enjoy sex because I am—and want to be—a sexually submissive man.

Hopefully, I’ll clarify the imprecise language we currently have available to explore gendered power and submissive masculinity in particular, and I’ll address how such feeble language may cause egregious ambiguity in communication as well as misconceptions about fundamental desires that hamper our understanding of consensual sexual submission.

Hot or not? Submission isn’t arousal.

This submission stuff is hard, and I’m not the only one who’s struggled, or is struggling, with it. One reason it’s so goddamn hard is because the way I so often see it conceptualized feels polluted by imprecision, absolutism, and sexism.

Most of the time, I ignore a great deal of the polluted chatter because it comes from people I don’t hold in high regard to begin with. Recently, however, some of the men who blog that I respect a lot have hit some of the same notes while singing submissive masculinity’s tunes as the people I ignore, and that is something I cannot ignore.

More specifically, Thumper, whose blog I read almost religiously, inspired a debate between MyKey and myself. In a comment on one of Thumper’s posts, MyKey said:

The denial after [lots of orgasms] is much harder and much sweeter for it, and the submission deeper and more fun. Of course during those periods [after orgasm] its hard to be as submissive[…].

Although I’ve read this opinion expressed in about a bazillion different ways, it’s a sentiment I’ve never felt completely comfortable with. Indeed, the more I dissect my own submissiveness and explore what submission means to me, the more upset I get by its prevalence. I get even more upset when bloggers perpetuate this, because they are currently the most influential source of education about submissive masculinity.

But before I get too far into what I find so upsetting about the way this is framed, let’s make one thing clear: what I’m about to say has nothing to do with espousing a submissive ideology, a One True Way® for being a “real submissive.” It’s irrational to, for instance, call a self-identified switch “a submissive” when that person is feeling submissive by sole virtue of their feelings; they are no more or less “a submissive” than they say they are, despite how desirous of submissive feelings they are at any given time. Insofar as identity politics are involved, they stop at the point of acknowledging that your identity is a part in your personal experience of the world.

This post, however, is not about your experience of the world. It’s about finding a way to convey your experience in a manner that is reconcilable with the different experiences of others. This is important because, lacking this ability, all conversation about submission starts with “for me,” repeats the caveat, and then ends with “Your Mileage May Vary.” To date, every way I’ve heard anyone talk about submission breaks down when someone else introduces their own, differing, experience, and I’m afraid those conversations are no longer useful for me.

Anyway, the short debate between MyKey and I ultimately lead to a post in which Thumper put forth the following equation:

Denial + arousal = submission.

In the comments—worth reading despite veering into predictably unhelpful tangents at points—Thumper later amended this to read Denial + arousal = submissive energy. That’s better, thanks in part to the focus on “energy” (I think more precisely termed desire) over the intrinsic nature of the outcome. Nevertheless, I want to challenge both statements because I think the premise underlying them is simply not true.

Both statements feed into a dangerous, wide-spread stereotype: the cock-centric notion that if you control a man’s penis, you control the man. Is that true? Of course it’s not. These activities could certainly be an expression of dominance or submission and they might trigger dominant or submissive feelings in oneself or one’s partner(s), but Thumper, MyKey and I already seem to agree that the acts are not, themselves, the root cause of submission or dominance.

To wit, and to Thumper’s credit, one of his next sentences is the following:

That’s not saying I’m in no way submissive when my sexual appetite has been totally sated. I think I would be accepting of domination even then. [And later, in the comments:] I wasn’t trying to suggest it’s just that simple […] but they are strongly related.

Indeed, I can think of no realm less suited to the beautiful simplicity of mathematics than human desire, so it’s obvious that Thumper’s equation is an oversimplification. Since we can all see that things are not “just that simple,” I presume that what Thumper, MyKey, and other submissive men perpetuating this simplistic formulation are trying to get at is that they feel submissive more acutely when the fact of their orgasm denial is at the fore of their thoughts. Thumper says he feels his “sub mojo” lessen after he has come. MyKey calls this sensation “sub drop” and, since I disagree with the premise of their statements, questions whether I’m “wired differently”.

At least in this regard, however, I am not wired differently. I do understand the sudden, often startling change in desires post-orgasm. During relationships with keyholders, the degree with which my interest in, say, getting my penis locked away waned after having an orgasm was (and still is) totally remarkable to me. Nevertheless, similar to the experiences of others, when my keyholder wanted me locked, I got locked. Why? Because that’s hot! It wasn’t quite as hot right then, but it was super-hot shortly thereafter, when I was once again unable to masturbate freely.

This simple after-the-fact observation points to a crucial distinction I fear is missing from the conversation about submission: just because an activity is less pleasant at some moments than it is during others doesn’t mean I won’t do or enjoy those activities. Moreover, the drive to perform those activities independent of one’s immediate motivations is a distinct, separate pleasure, from the pleasure one gets from desiring the activity directly.

I think Tom Allen illustrated this in the sexiest way ever in his erotic story, Ahead of Time. Portions of this story are so apropos to this discussion that I just have to quote it:

“And I want you to come really hard for me. I want you to remember this for a long time.”

“Oooh,” I moaned aloud.

“That’s why I’m going to make you eat my pussy right after you come.”

I gasped. It was like an electric shock to my groin. I’ve long had this fantasy, but could never bring myself to do it. The idea of being forced to clean her, to lick my still-hot come from her, to hear her demanding that I make her clean, to make her come with my tongue… I’ve only mentioned to her a handful of times over the years, but I’ve never been able to ask for this, let alone to try it. She was right, there’s something about the first ten or fifteen minutes after coming that puts all that desire right out of my head. I was excited, but at the same time a bit fearful. I knew that I wouldn’t want to do it afterward…and so did she.

She sensed my hesitation. “I know the idea turns you on,” she said.

Thinking fast, I said “But, I, um, thought that you were satisfied. You told me that you had come enough for tonight.”

“Oh, you’re not going to do it for my pleasure,” she said, “at least, not for my sexual pleasure. You’re going to do it because in a few days, you’re going to think about it, and you’re going to remember this evening as the hottest thing we’ve ever done.”

[…]

I was still partially dazed as she inched her knees alongside my body. When she finally rested her legs over my arms and braced her other hand against the headboard, though, things…changed somehow. Her pussy, which just minutes ago was a beautiful, warm cave, suddenly now seemed like a hairy tube of flesh that was filled with something that I didn’t want. Ugh, how could I ever have asked for this? I pursed my lips, but it was too late—I felt the drips onto my cheeks and chin. Seconds later, her slick lips were pressed tightly against my mouth, and I could hear her encouraging me to clean her, to keep sucking and licking until everything was gone.

(Emphasis mine.)

What Tom’s story and our many similar experiences show us is that not even the men who purport to quantify submission based on sexual arousal or orgasm denial actually do that. Although our awareness of submissive feelings may be intensified by specific, often fetishistic triggers (e.g., being horny and prevented from coming), those two concepts are not causally related.

For men like Thumper and I, who clearly dig orgasm denial pretty hard, it makes sense that this desire is a core aspect of how we want to fuck. But we do ourselves and our readers a terrible disservice by perpetuating the idea that our fetish is the cause of our submissive desire rather than a manifestation of it. Submission does not come about through someone else’s control—that is mere restriction in the best case, and abuse in the worst case—it comes about through our active desire to submit. Consensual submission is not about how someone else controls me, it’s about the opportunities I create for myself to be vulnerable to that person.

When I hear people discussing submission as though it is the result of the thing they want instead of discussing submission itself as the thing they want, it’s like listening to people talk while putting the emphasis on the wrong syllable. Such an awkward conceptualization of submission is not merely incorrect, it’s very dangerous because it restricts any submissive desire into a necessarily coercive paradigm.

In this instance, with teasing and denial as the addends, it constructs mens’ submission as totally dependent on the myth of male lust (the idea that men are controlled by their penises because they are men). It states that submissive energy is itself induced by a woman (or, more generally, “keyholder”) by accessing that man’s sexual potency in a strictly prescribed, time-release fashion, like a pill.

This is the same misconception that says blowjobs are inherently submissive, or that pain is inherently bad, or even that blogging about sex is inherently submissive (srsly)! Sadly, these ideas are the prevailing view of what “submission” is, and I think they totally miss the point about the validity of submission itself as a core motivation.

Framing submission as a second-class thing, a byproduct of some other, first-class particle, is incorrect. Submission is it’s own distinct facet of sexual desire.

Reductionist Submission Is Dangerous To Your Sex Life

There’s absolutely nothing wrong about getting off on stereotypes. While the reasons for why many submissive men, including myself, fetishize orgasm denial are debatable, that obvious fact does not make orgasm denial a component of submission. Akin to the way desiring anal sex does not make someone gay, abstaining from orgasm does not make someone a submissive. Abstaining longer doesn’t make them “more submissive.”

Sexual “teasing” is really pleasurable and fun for many people, regardless of their interest in submission. For a huge population, that kind of sex is all about improving their orgasms, whether “vanilla” or not; I’ve read of self-identified dominant men who enjoy the practice, too. For other people, like certain religious sects, some portions of asexual populations, and anorgasmic women, living (or trying to live) an orgasm-less existence isn’t even kinky. On the flip side, there are certainly some submissive men who simply aren’t into orgasm denial at all.

In other words, even though sex acts obviously influence one’s mental or physical state at any given moment, conceptually coupling a sexual activity to what an activity means is going to cut you off from the pleasure of diverse sexual experience. Teasing and denial (the “denial+arousal” part of Thumper’s equation) are not ingredients for submission, they’re just toys I play with because I, like many others, enjoy expressing submission with them some of the time. Sometimes we enjoy it more than other times, but sometimes we express that same submission in completely unrelated ways.

Regardless of your personal experience, I’d urge you to avoid linking any sex act to any intention, even “for you,” even if it’s your fetish. The stereotypical view of orgasm denial as requisite for or even directly “enhancing” submission, even for those of us who fetishize it, simply doesn’t account for our own diverse expressions of submission. To assert that it does is fundamentally miscommunicative. It’d be like saying getting flogged is submission and that the harder you get flogged the more submissive you are, and although people often make the “harder=submissivier” false assertion as well, that doesn’t make it sensible, that makes it dangerous!

That definition of submission, coercive at best and abusive at worst, invalidates submission itself as a potential motivation for healthy sex by undermining a submissive person’s power to choose exactly what they do or do not want—a power that’s required to make healthy sexual choices for one’s self, even “as a submissive.” It tricks us into believing all the false dichotomies embedded in hegemonic culture that tell us BDSM is obscene, and that to be submissive is to necessarily be unassertive, passive, self-effacing, receptive, or acquiescent. These are not ambiguous, wishy-washy obstacles to people’s health. For many people, particularly men who are deeply immersed in heteronormative culture, these are real factors that contribute to sexual anxiety and a horrible depreciation of self-image.

Defining the degree of one’s sexual submission as the summation of a period of orgasm denial and current sexual arousal is not only reductionist, I believe it’s actively damaging. The equation perpetuates the myth of male lust and disavows the validity of submission as a sexual self-expression that can be actively chosen, rather than induced coercively.

In the post that spawned all this theorizing, Thumper wrote:

I had cruised all through my adolescence with no inkling I was what I was (though I can see some signs that were there all along).

Like Thumper, I was certainly submissive before I had a dominant partner in my life. So while this rant may sound like meaningless semantics to some, it’s crucial that we amplify these distinctions and move the prevailing understanding of submissive masculinity away from the limiting, misrepresentative, and downright sexist bullshit so often spewed by exploitative pro-dommes and the likes of Elise Sutton (no link because I hate what she says; Google it instead actually, Gloria Brame’s essay on Elise Sutton is totally worth reading). That’s precisely the kind of bullshit that kept “what we are” hidden from men like Thumper and I for so long.

As an adamantly submissive man myself, I’m sure my personal experience is going to be different from, say, a switch’s orgasm denial experience. And that’s the point: submission is not about creating a ruleset of Things To Do To Be Submissive for anyone, yourself least of all. Very simply, it’s about sexual self-expression in order to be happy and healthy.

So please, all of us who blog about such things, stop insisting that keeping a man from his orgasms somehow turns him more submissive. You’re just fooling yourselves, your readers, and arguably worst of all, your lovers.