The most interesting reason why I would have considered it, though, is because the thought of being a sex worker (and a sex worker is what a pro-domme is) feeds a fantasy of mine: sexual expression in exchange for money. The thought of having sex with or—even hotter—to be made to have sex with people I didn’t really know very well has long been an undeniably arousing thought. That fantasy is, to this day, one of the very few role play scenarios I can somewhat comfortably get invested in. I vividly remember the pounding of my own arousal the night Eileen came home with her half of the month’s rent in cash, pushed me onto the floor, tied me up, fucked me with a knife at my throat, and then threw the cash in my face.

Like most fantasies, the fantasy itself would probably be very different from the reality of the situation. Getting tied up in someone’s home who I didn’t know just so that I could make a few bucks is so ridiculously unsafe that I’ve purposefully avoided even getting near the possibility of doing it. Nevertheless, this sex-for-money fantasy is a rather frequent one for me, and in fact it’s pretty common among others, too. I think it’s so strongly rooted in the sexual psyches of so many people that it’s one of the most common reasons why I see bottom-ish and submissive-leaning women become sex workers, such as pro-dommes.

But that’s not what this post is about. (I could talk about inverted power dynamics of (many) pro-domme and client relationships for ages, but I won’t since there are lots of places where that’s discussed already.) This post is about the idea of the sex-for-money fantasy in general, what makes it hot for me, and some (geek-inspired) ideas I have about how to go about realizing it safely.

Perhaps it was Tristan Taormino who best explains why the sex-for-money fantasy is so hot. She recently wrote this in the Village Voice about the brothel-themed sex room at Dark Odyssey, affectionately known as “sex camp” among the attendees.

People don’t tire of the sex-for-money fantasy. Actually, there is no one fantasy, but multiple scenarios, dynamics, and roles possible within the brothel setting. I talked to a bunch of this year’s whores (who included men, women, transfolk, and cross-dressers) about what they got out of their experiences. Some said they like being a whore because it’s taboo, naughty, and transgressive; the fact that it’s illegal prevents them from pursuing it in real life. For others, being a sex worker is a longtime fantasy[…].

Playing this role can trigger other turn-ons, like having sex with strangers, no strings attached, and no pretense of romance.

[…]

A sex-worker fantasy can also fulfill a desire to be used for sex, objectified, forced, pimped out, or made to perform. Many of the whores had pimps who collected their money or made them work. There are so many power dynamics to play with. “I am turned on by the power exchange involved,” explained Ellie, a phone-sex operator in real life who’s never done sex work with physical contact. “To some extent, the worker is fully in control of the sexual encounter and can create seemingly arbitrary boundaries or limits without being expected to explain them to a partner. On the other hand, the worker is acting in service to the client, and is expected to please and satisfy them. The tension between the dominant and submissive roles in these sorts of exchanges is interesting to me.”

These excerpts showcase a couple of points. First, it confirms (yet again) that different people have the same sorts of fantasies due to a variety of different motivations. Second, when Tristan mentions that playing the role of a whore can trigger other turn-ons, she’s talking about how enacting one fantasy be a catalyst that often fulfills multiple impulses at the same time.

For me personally, ultimately the fantasy of sex for money boils down to expressions of control, just as most other fantasies do. Fantasizing about whoring is about my desire to be objectified, pimped out, and made to perform, to use Tristan’s words. Now, these aren’t things that I necessarily find directly pleasurable—theoretically I could be made to do something I didn’t really want to do—but it’s not always direct pleasure I’m after. Rather, it’s the derived pleasure I get by being controlled by my “pimp” that I find so hot, even and sometimes especially if that exertion of control is tormenting me.

While at times these desires manifest in a prostitution fantasy, at other times they fit nicely into slave, harem, or even prisoner fantasies. In some of the more extreme ones, I’m made to perform not merely for my livelihood, but for my very life. This can be very intense, but that’s because it’s this intensity of control that I lust for.

Of course, realizing such intensity in reality just isn’t practically safe. Moreover, if any of the life-or-death fantasies were to become real, they’d pretty much have to be one-offs for the obvious and very unsexy mortality issue; sometimes in my fantasies I’m killed, but that’s only sexy in the fantasy, not reality. In no way do I actually want to be in an unsafe life-threatening situation like that, and it’s a fact that there are enormous risks associated with thoughtlessly enacting these sorts of fantasies in real life.

This brings me back to the first part of the title of this post: barring one’s attendance at an event such as Dark Odyssey—which I am even more intent on attending after reading Tristan’s article about it than I already was—how can one go about experiencing the thrill, nervousness, and excitement of this fantasy in a way that isn’t insanely unsafe? As it turns out, some of the best advice I’ve found on this topic came from one of Dan Savage’s Savage Love articles, in which he writes to a bisexual man who has similar fantasies as I do. (No, it wasn’t me writing in!) Dan said:

[T]he only way to safely realize this fantasy […] is by sharing it with your most adventurous [Friend With Benefits] and enlisting his help. After you tell all, ask your FWB if he would be willing to facilitate the realization of this sexual fantasy. In other words, ask him to pimp your ass out. It would be his job to find and recruit a guy you don’t know, a guy who’s trustworthy and safe but just a little freaky, a guy that he knows you would find attractive. Then your FWB/pimp tells you what corner you need stand on what night and you wait there until your pre-screened, pre-selected john drives up and rolls down his window. Be his ho, be safe (the real pros all use condoms), get paid, and run home to your pimp and hand the money over to him. Everybody wins.

I think this is sound advice, but it could be better, which is where the second (nerdier) part of the title of this post comes into play. What Dan’s advice is missing is a certain measure of protection against selective forgery attacks.

What I mean is that if I were to follow Dan’s advice to the letter there’s no way for me to be assured that the john who drives up to me and rolls down his (or her; women aren’t always relegated to the prostitute’s role in my fantasies!) window is the same john that my partner had selected for me ahead of time. Although this may be perfectly acceptable for some people, while the excitement of the fantasy would certainly be heart-pumpingly, penis-hardeningly awesome, without this added level of assurance obsessively detailed people like me would still feel an unacceptable twinge of apprehension.

Therefore, after reading Dan’s advice, I came up with a way to ascertain that the john who might (theoretically…) roll down his window in front of my slutty ass standing on the street corner was, in fact, the pre-selected person while still maintaining the fantasy’s mirage of anonymity. Since I’m an utter nerd, the inspiration of the solution came from the TCP computer networking protocol.

Here’s how the revised scenario would play out. For the purposes of this example, I’ll call my john, well, John, and we’ll assume that Eileen is my pimp (because that would be hot).

1. After discussing this fantasy and building up the courage to actually follow through with it, Eileen would search for and pre-screen a john for me. She picks “John” and she tells me to go stand on a specific street corner at a specific date and time. She also tells me to expect a specific pick-up phrase, for instance, “Hey, pretty boy. How much for a fierce ride?” The phrase is specific enough so that it’s unlikely to be typical (but really, I have no idea what a typical line to pick up a prostitute would be). Finally, she also picks a specific amount of money that I should be whoring myself out for. (After all, she knows how much my ass is worth on the streets.)
2. I wait at the appointed place at the appointed time (possibly wearing the appointed slutty outfit) and when John rolls his window down, I listen for the pre-scripted phrase. This step is analogous to the TCP SYN packet that computers send to initiate a connection. It’s useful because at this point I’d know whether or not this john is really my John.
3. Assuming the phrase I hear is correct, even though I know who he is, he still doesn’t know if I’m his pre-selected ho for the night (though I suppose he could be given a picture ahead of time) so now he waits for me to respond with another, pre-scripted statement. Furthermore, this gives me the opportunity to bail if I needed to for whatever reason. If I decide not to bail, my pre-scripted response, maybe something like, “For you I could be $75. $50 if you only want my mouth,” is analogous to the SYN/ACK packet used to acknowledge a successful connection.
4. At this point, everything is set up and we’re both reasonably confident things are going as planned, so one last pre-scripted response (“I’ve got $150, so I want all your holes, and more than once. Get in.”) from him could be used to signal the end of the pick-up precautions and start the scene, which is analogous to the final ACK in the TCP connection establishment phase.

In computing, this is known as a three-way handshake. Its purpose is to initiate a connection between two parties, and because there is a round-trip before a connection is formally established, it’s resistant to spoofing. That’s exactly the protection which is needed in any fantasy involving sex with so-called “strangers,” so it seems to me as though something like this, which could be thought of as an extension on the concept of safe-words, is just what the doctorpimp ordered.

Then, hopefully, this mysterious stranger, who would appreciate me in all my sexy nerdy glory, would proceed to treat me like the slut I am, and we’d go to a cheap motel and fuck like bunnies.

I very recently did exactly this (although I was much nicer than I could have been) on a local young-persons-in-Sydney group’s mailing list. I remarked that I had done so, and due to popular demand and interest with regards to my remarks, am going to share a single edited excerpt of that thread here. In case anyone is local and cares to join the group, here is my original post.

The year is 2008. The place is Sydney, Australia. The topic is male bisexuality in the BDSM community. The population of the scene here…well, the population of the country is barely the size of the state I came from. These people are not “simple, country folk” by any stretch of the imagination, yet I can’t help but feel as though I’ve been transported to a kink scene from ten years ago:

Congratulations in advance to those of you who actually follow and read the linked references. Those of you who don’t will assume I am just rocking the boat. I am, of course (rocking the boat that is)—though I’m trying to do so while adding significant substance to the conversation.

On Aug 4, 2008, at 5:07 PM, Person A wrote:

In my brief time in the sydney bdsm scene, i’ve noticed girls are a lot more willing to play with other girls than guys are to play with other guys. why do yo think this is? Do you think bisexuality is more comon in girls in the vanila world too. Do girls who engage in bdsm play with other girls even consider themselves bisexual. looking forward to your comments

for the record I am 100% straight male.

So is my male dom top friend who is dating a boy. Though labels like “staight” or “bi” can be useful, they are ultimately meaningless. It’s actions, not words, that define people and who they are.

Person A then wrote:

I’d feel uncomfy playing with a guy, even if just tieing me up etc. how do other guys feel.

Lots of “straight” guys feel this way while encouraging girls to get it on with one another, and if you haven’t noticed most guys in the BDSM community you’re a part of are straight. Perhaps that’s why you’ve noticed that girls are a lot more willing to play with other girls than guys are to play with other guys. Huh. Imagine that.

See also this satire: http://bloodylaughter.com/2007/07/26/eureka/

On Aug 4, 2008, at 5:34 PM, Person B wrote:

that’s because girls are just the more attractive sex, is my guess.

Person B, we’re both lucky we don’t really know each other because it makes it a lot easier for me to tell you that you’re being an ass right now.

On Aug 4, 2008, at 7:54 PM, Person B tried to redeem his statements by qualifying them like this:

I meant that in the most objective way possible, which is not to say that I don’t find certain guys attractive and would even consider certain BDSM scenarios involving that person, but it happens very
very rarely for me and he’d have to be pretty fit. And I think most girls would agree with me that girls tend to be more attractive than guys in general. Is that true or have just been speaking to the the wrong girls?

You’re oozing the kind of heteronormativity that makes me dislike heteronormative spaces—like this list right now. Personal preferences are one thing, but trying to pass these off as “statements intended in the most objective way possible” belies your ignorance. Again, I say that heteronormative culture encourages exactly this kind of thinking.

See also:

http://maybemaimed.com/2007/08/21/i-want-to-be-a-pretty-boy/
http://maybemaimed.com/2007/12/12/the-rules-of-flirting-are-sexist-and-wrong/
http://bitchyjones.wordpress.com/2007/07/17/the-unfairest-of-them-all/

On Aug 4, 2008, at 6:02 PM, Person C wrote:

hi all, long time lurker first time poster. I consider myself a straight male as i can’t really see myself being with a male sexually without bondage being a huge part. It was something that i was very nervous about until my Mistress at the time introduced me to the concept of playing firstly with couples and then eventually she was happy (as was i) for me to play solely with makes. Fem Dom’s are still my preference however my desire to please outways if there are dangly bits or not. Now i’m “out” i hope to catch up with some of you soon

And then, right on cue, on Aug 4, 2008, at 6:33 PM, Person D wrote:

Here’s my theories.

Girl on girl is a bit more socially acceptable than guy on guy due to the fact with guys there is the implied image of things up the arse.

Yes, exactly. God forbid something goes the “wrong way” up a man’s butt. Of course, every straight guy knows women’s asses are a two way street.

This is precisely why the feared “image of things up the [guy's] arse” has become the femdom cumshot in porn, and it’s where this (insulting) notion of “forced bi”—which is pretty much exclusively a femdom/malesub dynamic—comes from. Now, I love getting fucked in my ass, but I love getting fucked on my penis, too. In other words, being the person who does the penetrating does not equate to having power, or masculinity. Perverting (and I use that word deliberately) anatomy to create falsehoods of power imbalance is nothing more complicated than plain stupid.

See also:
http://bloodylaughter.com/2007/07/11/fuck-him/
http://maybemaimed.com/2007/08/12/pegging-gets-mainstream-attention-and-kinky-porn-gets-rightfully-slapped-upside-its-head/

Portions removed at the author’s request.

You’ve hit the nail on the head, though you’re not tying it all together quite yet. This is the same masculine heteronormative sexuality that defines male sexuality based on dominance and power, only it’s now happening in reverse. Where the former circumstance is one in which a man is dominant and thus validates hegemonic masculinity, this circumstance is one in which a man is submissive to another even more masculine/dominant/powerful man and thus validates hegemonic masculinity. As far as genders studies students are concerned, this is just a situation where you have six of one thing and half dozen of the other.

In other words, men’s fantasies that are geared around being submissive to a “real man” merely enforce the hegemonic masculine stereotype. Now, that’s not bad (it’s quite sexy—I personally love the idea of submitting to a strong, dominant, het guy I find physically attractive) it’s just very, well, we’ve all been there and done that.

See also:
http://bitchyjones.wordpress.com/2008/07/18/submissive-men-and-the-humanity-gap/
http://maybemaimed.com/2007/12/18/how-an-outdated-view-of-masculinity-ignores-the-needs-of-all-men/

Anyway, for more insights on gender and male sexuality, see this 10 minute video:

http://maybemaimed.com/2007/12/06/transgender-basics/

Regards,
–
-maymay
Blog: http://maybemaimed.com
Volunteering: http://ConversioVirium.org/author/maymay

“Oh, but May, not everyone who is your age has the emotional maturity that you do to handle BDSM,” they’ll say, “You’re exceptional.” And then they’ll go on to tell me countless stories about how they saw some young people totally fuck up their lives by not “being ready” for BDSM play.

Of course, it’s kind of nice to be complimented on my emotional maturity, or my intelligence, or whatever it is they feel will drive their point home the strongest, but the truth of the matter is that it’s total bullshit. I am not that exceptional. Very few people are.

Here’s the lie: to be “ready” for BDSM, you need lots of life experience, commitment, maturity, and intelligence in droves. They say you will need these things so that you won’t freak out over what you’re getting into, so that you can spend the years it’ll take you to find the (increasingly less) underground culture that is the scene, and then enough intelligence to “get it” when you’re finally there.

Here’s the truth: BDSM is just like anything else and you’ll get out of it whatever you put into it. That means if you’re an idiot and you think being kinky is the next bi, you’re going to do stupid shit and you’re going to regret it. But you know what, that holds true if you’re 15 or if you’re 40 years old. Age has nothing to do with it.

It is true that 15 year olds have a lot less life experience than 40 year olds (duh). However, I think it’s just plain dumb to assume that because of this lack of life experience these younger people have less emotional maturity (or intelligence, or what-have-you) than older people. Just because you’re 40 doesn’t mean you’re more mature than me, it could mean you’ve just been acting really immature for 40 years. Come on, you all know the kinds of 40 year olds I’m talking about.

People often use my mere presence in the community as proof that you do need to be exceptional to be a 23 year old with a healthy BDSM lifestyle. “Where are all the other 23 year olds in several year long committed D/s relationships?” they ask. Indeed, I’ve asked that very same thing, too. Since there are so few of us, that must mean people like Eileen and I are exceptional. Right?

Well, maybe in some respects (we do write pretty cool blogs, after all), but what’s exceptional about my being heavily involved in the BDSM community isn’t how exceptional I am, it’s the fact that I’m involved despite the odds. In other words, the circumstances themselves are rather remarkable, but that does not mean that the cause of those remarkable circumstances is solely of my own doing.

Though I could easily take all the credit for being one of the few young people out and about in the scene, most of the credit belongs to the rest of the community that doesn’t see young people like me as capable members in equal standing. With consistent decrees that we need all that largely useless life experience to really be a part of the scene, how could young people ever hope to be engaged?

What’s even more bewildering to me is that this apparent necessity for life experience makes no sense. Not only is that kind of disrespectful (albeit in a good-natured sort of way), it’s also contradictory: more often than not, you’ll hear people tell newbies that they need to “unlearn” lots of cultural and social programming to feel comfortable with BDSM. Well, gosh, unless the unlearning itself is the goal of BDSM (which would make for a really really boring kink if you ask me), then doesn’t that put younger people in a far more advantageous position to be “ready for BDSM”?

The inaccurate representation that BDSM requires some kind of special life journey, different or unique from other, “less intense lifestyles” is really nothing more than the older generation’s self-consoling opinion. “It’s okay that it took me thirty years to come out to the community and start having kinky sex,” they tell themselves, “because I needed all that life experience to be able to handle it now.” On the other hand, for them, maybe that was really true. If I were born in the 60′s instead of the mid-80′s, I also might have needed quite a few more decades to get my head around the fact that masochistic or submissive urges are not sick.

That’s not what I needed as a young boy, though, because with information about sexuality finally freed from the stranglehold of large organizations (such as governments and religions), young people are way more capable of exploring their own sexuality safely than almost anyone gives them credit for. Most of us are also smarter than people give us credit for, and we’re also way more emotionally mature than they think.

As long as people like Miriam Grossman don’t get their way, this means younger people like me (and, hell, even younger people than me—damn, now I feel old) will be able to find our sexual comfort zones at much younger ages than the previous generations. And really, how can that be bad?

• Dig a Tech Girl
• Dig a Tech Guy

Firstly, let me just say that I might go to sleep tonight and have a wet dream.

Secondly, let me point out that only among techies do I often see the evidence of equal opportunity, even if cultural overtones are still in full force. Seriously, in what communities other than the realms of utter geekdom does a “Dig a Tech Girl” web site give rise to a “Dig a Tech Guy” web site in literally under a day?

For those wondering how I know these ideas were cemented within a day of each other, the answer is geeky (obviously)! I checked the whois records for the creation date of the domain names. :)

Perseus:~ maymay$ whois digatechgirl.com | grep Creation
   Creation Date: 29-oct-2007
Perseus:~ maymay$ whois digatechguy.com | grep Creation
   Creation Date: 30-oct-2007

Yes, my machine really is named “Perseus.” Yes, my username really is “maymay.”

• Hostility towards bisexual-identified people, most confusingly from gay- and lesbian-identified people.
• A lack of cohesion and inertia in the bisexual community, who often identify with some other community instead (gay, lesbian, kinky, poly, etc.).
• The harm that is caused by a simplistic understanding of communication, particularly when using language.

These topics are of obvious interest to me because they each affect my social spaces. One of the more startling findings of the poll is that there are apparently more than twice as many bisexual women as there are bisexual men. Or at least, of course, more than twice as many that feel comfortable identifying themselves as such in this poll.

The poll of 768 people, conducted last month, shows in its adjusted final tally that 15.4 percent of respondents are bisexual men and 33.5 percent are bisexual women.

In my personal experience this ratio is even more skewed, but I’m willing to give this finding some credence. To be brain-dead simplistic about the issue, one can say that women who identify as bisexual have an easier time of coming out about it because they just don’t face criticisms from as many fronts as men who identify as bisexual do. Specifically, bisexual women are stereotypically stigmatized only by lesbians, whereas bisexual men are stigmatized by both gay men and by straight men.

One of my strongest dissatisfactions with many of the gay men I’ve interacted with is their blindness towards gender fluidity and how that affects eroticism. This is perhaps one reason why I find myself having trouble finding these men sexy after they open their mouths. They seem so singularly focused on their own version of the masculine ideal that they ignore what I find to be important pieces of my femininity that are necessary to my own erotic fulfillment. The exceptions are the gay men who seem to enjoy femme-y boys, but even in these instances coming out as bisexual seemed to disqualify me to them.

“It’s sad to me that gays and lesbians have such a hard time standing by their bi brothers and sisters,” she said, “because we are really in this fight together, about having our love lives and families validated and respected, no matter what gender we love.”

On the flip side, I have intense trouble socializing with straight men. Consistently, the only straight men who I seem to be able to get along with are the ones who are either sensitive to issues of gender or sexuality (such as those already involved in a sexuality community) or those with whom I can talk technology. When my coworkers invited me out to bars, I declined because the conversation would not have been technology as it was (by necessity) in the office, and that would have quickly become uncomfortable.

In other words, sex is social. That’s a concept I want to explore in further depth later on, but for now suffice it to say that for people with a sex drive, an element of social interactions is sexuality, whether they realize it or not.

Another major issue this article touches upon is the fact that there are very few organized bisexual communities in comparison to other sexuality communities, and that the ones that do exist are fairly small. The most striking example of this was that at the last New York City LGBT Pride March, the bisexual contingent had a grand total of four (4!) people marching in it.

Even the BDSM contingent, who typically have one of the smallest groups in the parade (not including the “leather” sections, though I’m still confused as to why BDSM is contained within leather instead of the other way around), always have at least a dozen people or more marching with them. To be fair, I marched with the BDSM group instead of the bisexual group, and therein lies an example of the lack of visibility of the bisexual community.

I think that, by our nature, almost every one of us holds some other label equally important to us as the bisexual label. I am not just bisexual, I’m kinky, too. Most bisexual men I know are not just bisexual, they’re also polyamorous.

As a result of this multi-focal sexuality (“I like this and this…oh, and this too!”), it’s sometimes difficult for bisexual people to be taken seriously. The common argument is that we just haven’t “chosen” yet, but sooner or later, after enough experience and time, we’ll “settle down” into one of the all-or-nothing choices. (This is the same problem switches have in the BDSM scene: “you’re not really a switch, you’re either a top or a bottom and you just don’t know yet.”)

This point of view is no different from hetero-normative thinking, because it is founded on the principles of mutual exclusion. “You can’t be this and that.” Looking at sexuality this way treats such concepts as attraction as though they are finite resources, as if by being attracted to men you can not possibly have enough “spare attraction” to also be attracted to women, or that if you do then the attraction is lessened in direct proportion to how much attraction you have “spent” elsewhere.

I believe people think this way because they are confusing the things that do, in fact, have limited availability, such as time and physical energy, with things that do not, in fact, have any arbitrary limit. Am I the only person to whom confusing these sorts of things sounds absolutely insane?

Moreover, the idea that this insanity also holds true of language is equally absurd:

“There are plenty of lesbians in the gay community who occasionally sleep with men and still call themselves lesbians and vice versa. People need to start being honest in their daily lives about their actual behaviors rather than hiding behind convenient black-and-white labels that breed acceptance from their gay and lesbian peers who often condemn bisexuality.”

In other words, according to Nicole Kristal, who is quoted from the article above and who is a co-author of The Bisexual’s Guide to the Universe, you’re not a lesbian if you’re a woman who also sleeps with men. This is the equivalent of saying “you’re not a woman if you have a penis,” and we already know how ignorant confusing sex with gender identity is.

Ultimately, what this quote spotlights is the importance of understanding language as a tool for communication. The other day, a friend shared an awesome quote from Confucius with me that she read:

When words lose their meaning, people will lose their liberty.

She told me,

I read something today and thought of you immediately. Apparently, Confucius believed that correct usage of words was a prerequisite to working society. When words stopped being connected to specific meanings, he believed that it was a sign of the impending corruption and collapse of civilization. I like that way of looking at it, [but] I had never heard it put that way before.

It is for that reason why academics like Robert Heasley work so hard at providing a vocabulary with which to discuss things like masculinity, and why people like me work so hard at using such vocabularies to define distinctions between things. Doing so hones our understanding of the meanings of words, which fights rhetoric and propaganda in the process. In the war on sex currently being waged, language is the ultimate weapon.

“Don’t you want to sit with the other kids?” you hear my teacher asking me.

“No!” I say simply and with quite surprising vigor. It’s a very telling clip. I remember thinking, even at that young age, that I did not like most boys and that I did not want to be like them. I knew, instinctively if not cognitively, that the way I was being socialized was not a way I found comfortable. It wasn’t an accurate representation of who I wanted to be.

By the age of ten and in elementary school, I developed an awareness of sex and had already had my first crush. Unlike most boys who had crushes and who typically made fun of the girls they liked, I never said anything to my crush. I made no initiating move. I did not pursue her.

This “passive” behavior which seemed abnormal for a boy and felt isolating to me at the time was something that I came to learn was not uncommon at all in many men. These days I often meet other men who are just as perplexed about the expectation that men should pursue their romantic interests (why is that our job?) and envious of the so-called “feminine” role that is expected to (passively) attract them. Today, I have a far greater understanding of why this seems backwards to me and (surprise!) it doesn’t have anything to do with my biological sex (male) or my sexual orientation (bisexual) or role (submissive).

Like everything else on a person’s individual sexuality spectrum, an active or a passive flirting persona (for lack of better terms) is, in reality, entirely decoupled from one’s other sexual traits. In other words, the rules of flirting we learn as youths are sexist, and wrong.

The other night I tried really hard to come up with as many different ways of flirting as possible. I thought I might be able to get ten, but in the end I came up with only seven generic activities. The activities I came up with are as follows:

1. Compliment someone on something specific such as one’s jewelry or choice of attire.
2. Move into personal space with a touch, gesture, or other motion, such as by offering a massage or initiating snuggling.
3. Buy an ephemeral or otherwise insignificant gift such as flowers or a card.
4. Capitalize on a subtle opportunity to communicate positively such as remembering a birthday or other personally important date or time mark.
5. Present oneself with particularly physically alluring traits such as specific, perhaps revealing, styles of dress.
6. Behave in ways observed to produce positive feelings such as noticing personal specifics (often that others have not) such as what one’s likes and dislikes are.
7. Offer to perform some useful task, such as fixing a broken object (shelf, computer error (I’m really good at that fixing computer error thing)).

There are probably more, but I couldn’t think of them. Every item on this list except the fifth one (“Present oneself with particularly physically alluring traits”) is active, that is, it is an example of pursuit and not of attraction. As someone with a penis, it makes sense that these would be the things I think about when I think of flirting because those are the ones I was taught. It also explains why I am such a flirting retard because I strongly prefer to do the fifth one—which has a lot to do with why I enjoy being someone known for “playing heavily.”

I don’t want to pursue. It’s not because I’m lazy or because I’m unwilling to find partners. It’s because pursuing feels wrong, it’s not fun, it’s not how I want to flirt. Pursuing feels like fucking, it feels stereotypically male, saddled with stereotypically male expectations, expectations that I’m not willing to accept in a sexual relationship because carrying them out doesn’t satisfy me sexually. Pursuing feels like fucking, and attracting feels like getting fucked. When I have sex, I want to get fucked.

This is, unfortunately, a major problem for me when it comes to the realm of Meeting Other People. Put simply, I don’t feel comfortable being the stereotypical pursuer and no one (or too few people) out there feel comfortable pursuing men, because it doesn’t matter if a man is dominant or submissive; every man is the pursuer and every woman is pursued. This is a lose-lose situation for me because it means that to get people to become play partners I have to do the pursuing (lose) or else I don’t get play partners (lose).

Another noteworthy point to be made is that, at the moment, I am just as uncomfortable being the object of pursuit as the pursuer, in large part because I have no idea what to do in that situation, and that is equally frustrating. I was never socially taught that part of the game and unfortunately observation alone does not an effective teacher make. I sometimes don’t even notice that I’m being flirted with until after the fact, though I’m getting better with that first step—I can remember one notable example in a gay bar when I was bought a drink. As Rona says more eloquently than I could, much of this probably stems from Marxist-like issues; the clearly emotionally-damaged sentiment that the only possible reason I might be flirted with in the first place is to become the butt of a joke.

Anyway, this seems reminiscent if not identical to the situation that many submissive men find themselves in, if I could generalize a little bit. Put yet another way, it reminds me of the paradoxical conversation of every force or objectification fantasy negotiation. The least objectifying thing in the world you could possibly do is to ask to be objectified. Likewise, the least passively attracting thing you could do is actively pursue a potential partner.

Why does it have to be that way?

Eileen had a clever suggestion when I was talking with her about this the other night. She suggested I go look at books that try to teach women how to flirt and meet men. The logic here is that if I want to learn more about how to flirt and every single book on the subject for men is full of sexist advice for what it sees as the typical man, then I should find books for women full of sexist advice for what it sees as the typical woman far more appealing. There is still the challenge of balancing the fact that I am not a woman on top of the sexist advice, but having looked into the alternative, I am willing to give this a shot. (Does anyone have any good “flirting 101″ book recommendations?)

Of course, the problem with all this is the same as it’s always been: there are no good sexual role models for the kind of person I want to be. No famous “beta male” sex icon to use the insulting, hierarchical terminology. I guess I’ll just have to keep making this shit up as I go along.

I would like to make special mention of a segment of this video at a time-mark approximately ten minutes and thirty-one seconds from the start:

Gender roles do change over time and they change within cultures. In, sort of, Western American culture, the only emotion that we really give and allow men to have is either anger or a sort of stoic pride. If men cry we consider that feminine, but that’s not the way in all cultures. In some cultures men cry very openly and are expected to and it’s considered masculine behavior. So it’s clear that it’s not a genetic component of who a man is, and it’s not a biological component, but crying or anger can be seen as social aspects of who we are.

I realize I am preaching to the choir by posting this here on my blog. So instead I now urge you to show this to someone who does not have the same understanding of gender fluidity as you do. Please. For instance, I’ve sent this link to my mother.

See also:

• (En)gender: Helen Boyd’s Journal of Gender and Trans Issues
• The LGBT Community Center’s Gender Identity Project

Bitchy’s a self-described “dominant slut.” That is great (really); I’m all in favor of pulling stagnant gender binaries out of the penetrative experience of sexual power play. (Penetration being equated to power was first discussed when strap-ons made their debut in my corner of the blogosphere.) Bitchy basically made the oft-but-never-oft-enough-made argument that any sexual act is not inherently dominant or submissive, kind of like this:

it wasn’t being penetrated itself that was submissive. It was just that all femininity was equated with submission – that everything a woman did in sex had been made to look as if it was a priori submissive.

But there is no way that such simple basics – being the hole or the plug – are on their own submissive or dominant. It only has further meaning in context.

Then she talked a lot about how awesome getting fucked is, kind of like this:

You know what I fucking love? I fucking love to get fucked. […] I like fucking for the same reason I like hitting men, looking at bondage porn or eating steak and chips. I like pleasure.

So I suppose I’m a submissive slut, and I’m happy to say so. I like fucking, too. Catch is, (and I hate that I have to qualify it) even though I’m a guy, my dick just gets harder for the getting fucked part way more than the doing the fucking part. Kind of like Bitchy. In fact, except for all the dominant context, exactly like Bitchy.

Sometimes I have to wonder where men like me fit into the picture. Here’s a hint: It’s not here.

A guy who prefers to get fucked instead of preferring to do the fucking. Well, that’s hardly a mystery: “Must be (a) gay (bottom).” Or, “must be a sissy.” Or, “must not be an alpha (aka. best kind of) male.” I can’t even begin to imagine how I might defend myself against these things because that would imply that these things are bad to be (they’re not) or that they aren’t true (parts are, though they’re not universally true).

I’m not gay, I’m bisexual. I’m not a sissy, but I’m clearly not the hegemonic masculine man, either. I’m not what sociologists would describe as an “alpha” personality, but I can piss on the alphas with the best of them (and I’ve had to in the past). Often I feel that nobody bothers to look at this nuance. Robert Heasley, a gender theorist, began exploring some aspects of this in Chapter 5 of Thinking Straight as what he calls straight-queer men. While some of what he writes about strike very close to home for me, I am not straight because there’s that whole quibbling eroticism of homosexual encounters thing.

So I’ve never known what language to use while doing any soul-searching, or how to present myself so others know what to make of me sexually. I never felt like I had a place in either mainstream kink or femdom kink, so I keep trying to make something up.

I might naively say “I’m just me,” but I refuse to accept that I’m just that unique. I’m not that special (no matter what my father keeps trying to tell me). There are other men like me—and if you’re willing to put some money down on it, I’d bet there are lots of them. But, let’s get back to the having sex part.

I like fucking. I like it when I’m getting fucked on my penis. Yes, that’s perfectly possible. When I’m talking about getting fucked, I’m not necessarily talking about getting penetrated. A man with an erect penis can actually get fucked—fucking or getting fucked does not have a one-to-one relationship with one’s anatomical genitalia. That said, I don’t see why men who top shouldn’t be able to get it up the ass if they want to. Again, topping or bottoming does not have a one-to-one correlation with whether you are the “active” or “receptive” partner in a sexual encounter. So, it follows, that I also like getting fucked in my asshole.

Hell, if it weren’t for all the “must be gay (or a sissy)” crap which not-gay and not-sissy submissive guys (i.e., that’s me, in case you lost track) are pelted with all the time I might have even felt like I got the best deal of all: I have a plug and a hole to use while getting fucked. Actually, I have two holes if you count my mouth, and I do. It sounds like the perfect recipe for a foursome to me, and I bet you can figure out how I’d put the puzzle pieces together. (I always liked Tetris.)

Only, frustratingly, very few other people seem to be putting the puzzle pieces together the same way I am. This leads to some very upsetting experiences, like trying to jerk off to stuff that instead of turning you on increasingly makes you bitter. Yeah, I thought that was pretty fucked up, too, but I’m going to save that rant for another entry.

“Blue,” I said.

“What does it look like to you?” he pressed.

“Um. It looks blue,” I said.

“What if it looks green to somebody else?”

Hmm. Now here was an interesting thought I had not previously pondered. How would I describe what this blue crayon looks like to someone to whom this crayon looked green. I first thought that I could use the word “green” to describe “blue” but quickly realized that method of color-swapping would fall apart when I needed to explain what green looked like to me. (Would I call it blue? We’d be back in square one, only with the terms reversed—even if it “worked” to avoid a situation wherein I was handed a green crayon when I wanted a blue one, the colors would still look “reversed” to the other person.)

This elementary thought experiment is not just relevant to recess periods in schools. It’s something everyone grows up trying to figure out and is an example of the budding awareness in children that different people think about things in different ways.

The exposure to this thought started me thinking about how to use words to convey meaning. Eventually, after this question had been percolating on the back burner of my mind for literally years, I came to an ever-evolving (for lack of a better word, pun intended) conclusion that the only way to convey meaning perfectly and be assured that my meaning had been understood perfectly—that is, understood in exactly the way it was intended—was only possible through some kind of Vulcan-esque mind-meld telepathy communication mechanism that I’m probably never going to get the chance to experience in real life. That’s a pity, really, because the fact of the matter is that verbal communication is a pretty pathetic substitute for mind-melds.

The problem of trying to figure out whether or not someone really understood you is very hard to solve. In computing, guaranteed-delivery protocols like TCP have built-in methods for acknowledging the receipt and integrity of a message (TCP uses flow control algorithms and checksums for this). That is to say that when the sender transmits a message, it waits for an acknowledgment from the receiver that says it has been saved correctly. (Technically, this is still not guaranteed to be perfect but it is extremely reliable.)

However, human communications are not always so simply verified. There is no checksum I can calculate for my message, for instance. People do often use similar protocols to that which computers use for the purpose of acknowledging receipt of a message. Sharing a telephone number is a pretty good example: “My number is 555-5555. Did you get that?” “Yeah, you said 555-5555, right?” “Yes, that’s right.” “Great.” See how much back-and-forth there is? That’s all a (social) verification protocol.

However, the more abstract or emotional the payload of your message gets, the greater the uncertainty of successful verification becomes. Little wonder couples fight about “not being understood” over and over and over again. Communication isn’t just a matter of transmitting a message, it’s about receiving (and believing) an acknowledgment that states the message was understood as it was intended. That’s quite a tall order, especially when you consider how difficult it is to express your own emotions accurately in the first place. (It is for me, anyway.)

So what can you do to help mitigate this situation? I strive for precision. I say what I mean (transmission) using the most accurate words (payload) that are most likely to reproduce the originally intended meaning (checksum) in the listener (receiver). Yes; precision such as this is actually a learned skill.

But there’s still a problem here. What if the person I’m talking to thinks of green when I say blue? (Even this is not so abstract a question when you consider I am partially colorblind in reality.) Clearly, we have a miscommunication. That fact might not even make itself evident immediately, but it probably will at one point or another if we keep interacting.

More to the point, what if they think of binary gender ideals when I say I’m bisexual? (After all, that’s what my blog’s tagline labels me as—a submissive and bisexual man. More people read that tagline than have read this far into this particular entry.) Do I use another word, such as pansexual, to try and get readers thinking about gender fluidity and try to steer them away from making an assumption about gender that I think isn’t true?

I’ve chosen not to do that for this simple reason: when I say I’m bisexual, I’m not talking about gender fluidity, I’m talking about my own sexual orientation.

The claim that the word bisexual implies two binary genders isn’t one that is actually a part of the word’s literal definition (though it has become so engrained in today’s understanding of the word that you’ll find this assumption even in most dictionaries). People will tell me that “bi” means two and therefore bisexual means “one of two sexes” (like bicycle, literally “two wheels”) but this definition still assumes that the “bi” in bisexual is talking about two singular points—man and woman.

Instead, possibly because I never liked riding bicycles and while still a child I was diagnosed as bipolar (a medical condition that causes one’s emotional state to swing wildly between euphoria and depression), I have always understood the word bisexual to refer to the range between two points, and not just two points, and, even more to the point not just a range of gender identity but of sexual identity and gender role and a whole lot of other things, too.

Gender theorists such as the estimable Kate Bornstein talk a lot about the existence of many different axes of various qualities that, together, make up a person’s gender identity. However, at their fundamental level, these axes all have this in common: they are a range between two points. That’s what the “bi” in bisexual means to me.

That’s the only thing that makes any logical sense for the “bi” to refer to that doesn’t also have some kind of assumption concocted from cultural subtext. After all, sexuality is generally accepted even in the mainstream to refer to psychological, spiritual, physiological, social, and emotional makeup of an individual.

That’s why I don’t like the word pansexual, by the way. I don’t think it’s quite as precise.

That doesn’t mean it’s wrong to use the word pansexual to describe oneself or to use it for the purpose of raising awareness of issues relating to gender identity (in fact, I encourage raising awareness of gender identity issues in whatever way people want, as long as they’re nice to each other about it). It does mean, however, that using the term pansexual (like its near-synonyms polysexual and omnisexual and a slew of others) validate its use for a more ambiguous meaning. It makes the term obtuse. I don’t like that.

Overloading terminology in that way causes problems for people who wish to be precise in their use of English to maintain accurate communications.

It is not my fault that people are ignorant of gender fluidity, even though it is occasionally problematic for me that they are. However, I don’t see why I should have to dull my communication tools (the English language in this case) in order to accomodate their ignorance. Instead, would it not be more mutually beneficial to simply educate these people about the gradations of gender identity that exist? And would it not be more effective to do this by specifically discussing gender fluidity rather than overloading a perfectly acceptable term used to describe a perfectly legitimate sexual orientation (namely, pansexual) for this secondary purpose?

Is this love of precision too idealistic to work? In a casual sense, yeah, probably; I consistently have to define the words I use to remind people to take me with utter literal understanding, for the most part. (Even the word literal, by the way, has its etymological roots in scripture—in literature and writing.) But then again, I’ve found that this works exceedingly well once people learn that what I say is what I mean and what I mean is all that I’ve said.

It also makes people aware of just how much subtext they assume is present in their communications with other people after they start seeing how often and to what extent they have added it to conversations with me. Communicating with subtext is all fine and well (really), but it is dangerous to do so without intending to or without an awareness of what part of the message was subtext and what part was not.

Today, I believe two things. First, that precision in the use of language is fundamental to the communication of complex ideas, particularly abstract ones like sexuality and second, that the vagueness of language can be used to powerful, positive effect and is especially important in specifically social arenas that involve perceived risk such as, for instance, flirting. Proof is right here.

Perhaps this should be three separate posts, but whatever. In preparation for Floating World, Jefferson from over on One Life, Take Two has asked for some reader participation. The topics are absolutely fascinating so I couldn’t help but offer my input:

1) Do you blog about sex? Let me know your site, your reasons forblogging, and your experiences as a blogger.

My experiences blogging are somewhat unusual because I have been blogging since before it was called blogging. Back in 1995, I set up a web site for bipolar youth on which I kept a semi-regular running journal. I was 12 or so at the time. My life since then is a remarkably open book. I find that blogging is one of the key techniques I use to maintain self-awareness and self-observation. I do this about sex, but I also do this about friends and family life, social events, and my work life. Making things public just makes things more accessible. I’ve gotten correspondence from people and have friends I would not have had other wise. To date, I’ve never experienced a profoundly negative effect from public blogging.

I keep getting warned that one day this is going to bite me, and you know what, maybe it will. But I’ve already gained so much from my own openness that it seems like a silly thing to fear the potential backlash of the future. I am much stronger now anyway, more confident but also more of a success in other people’s eyes. It becomes very difficult, I believe, to point at someone and say “You’re bad because of this or that” when you are presented with all the other things they have done that you don’t have any problem with.

Those of you who only read this blog may not know about the other topics I write about elsewhere, and those people will probably not wander on over here to read about kink and BDSM. As a result, while I am just one voice, I am a voice for many things. It’s that kind of diversity that gives people their strength and which makes it hard to demonize any one aspect of a person’s life.

2) What are your experiences with male bisexuality? I’m interested in your personal experiences as well as those involving friends, lovers and/or communities. Anyone is welcome to reply; you needn’t be bisexual or identify as male to have an opinion or experience to relate.

I’m a bisexual guy. Bisexuality is hard: there is very little community identity because I don’t know of any bisexual guys (or girls?) who are *only* bisexual. Everyone is bi but also kinky or heavily involved in LGBT activism (from which I’ve noticed the B and the T get dropped very frequently), or something else such as polyamory. Indeed, I am guilty of this myself. It’s been to my own detriment, in fact, because while I strongly desire male-male experiences I have been focused elsewhere.

It doesn’t help that community norms typically marginalize male bisexuality, and it is infuriating that female bisexuality is actually expected to be par for the course. (First because, hey, I want some of that same-sex action, too, and secondly because don’t you think this is completely unfair to the women who aren’t interested in other women?) I often shy away from meeting gay men because all too often they dismiss my homosexual interests as merely a passing fad. Or sometimes the reverse case, where my heterosexual interests are inauthentic. To this I say that they have clearly not been reading their own “liberation” material.

Furthermore, the notion of claiming a bisexual identity because it is the cool thing to do, annoyingly dubbed “bi chic” and thankfully not nearly so big a social stigma anymore as it was in the mid-1990′s, casts nothing but more shadow over an already veiled identity. Conversely, there is the popular notion of “forced bi”, wherein self-declared straight men have irresistable fantasies about being forced into sexual encounters with other men. (Oh, and that’s another thing that pisses me off: guys who say they are bi for the sole purpose of getting women. But that’s a whole ‘nother rant.) When I was in high school and trying to understand what my body was telling me, I struggled for longer than I’d like to admit with the binary idea that I was either gay or straight, but that bisexuality was not an option.

What is it about such black-and-white simplicity that is so attractive to so many people? It’s easy, but it’s false. Once again, the diversity and fluidity of my gender identity is extremely important to me, and is something I think is actually a healthy thing for everybody to have an understanding about.

3) What are your experiences and interests on g spot and p spotstimulation? Do you enjoy them? Are you frustrated by an inability tolocate them, or to stimulate them?

Kind of dovetailing off the last item, one of the reasons why I am a little hard-up for male-male action is because I absolutely love receiving anal sex. This is primarily because the prostate stimulation is so intense for me. Maybe I’m just wired differently than most people (though I doubt it), but prostate stimulation is so incredibly spot-on (no pun intended), that I am convinced it’s one of the most perfect developments in the natural world.

I’ve never had any problem stimulating my prostate. I’ve been doing so as a regular part of masturbation since my very early adolescent years (about 11 or so). I started by first pressing my fingers into my perineum and gently rubbing across it. Eventually I began to anally penetrate myself with my fingers. Thank goodness for flexibility! When I masturbate this way, I feel like orgasm approaches much, much quicker than it would otherwise. It’s a wonderful addition to sexual play, one I enjoy a lot. I’ve since bought toys specifically for this purpose, such as the aneros helix. At times, it’s actually difficult for me to avoid ejaculating when sexual stimulation is supplemented with prostate stimulation. When I met my current partner, Eileen, we quickly took to strap-on sex in part for this reason.

However, another aspect to our prostate stimulation playtime actually stems from our orgasm control and chastity kinks. Prostate stimulation is a central part of many submissive men’s chastity regimes for reasons of perceived prostatic health. In addition, the incredible arousal I experience when my prostate is stimulated makes me super horny. Eileen calls it “stoking my fire” when she fingers me. It’s very effective for sexual teasing because many men, myself included, can’t ejaculate powerfully via prostate stimulation alone if they can even reach orgasm at all. The net result is that I get more horny, but can’t relieve my arousal. That, of course, is the point.