Saturday, June 21, 2008

Call for participation: Hyperfiction and Hypertextual Porn

Category labels: Community, Erotica and pornography, Fantasy, Fetish, Sex, Technology, Writing and blogging

A few weeks ago I was geeking out about “web stuff” to Eileen, who was sitting across the café table from me sipping her gigantic flat white coffee. I was talking to her about iterative development processes, and how that matches how I think. Small bits, loosely structured, eventually coalesce and create something very refined, piece by piece, polish by polish. Somehow, in between all the geeking out, she remarked on a really great idea.

“Why don’t you write hypertextual porn, then?” Of course, leave it to us to turn a conversation that geeky into a conversation about sex—but still. It’s a really great idea: leverage the power of today’s Web to explore the creative potential of story telling. I started to do some research on the matter when I got home that night. Turns out, this idea is hardly new.

Indeed, this idea even has a name: hyperfiction, or hypertextual fiction. Nevertheless, there aren’t any really good sites out there that have compelling, engaging hyperfiction content.

Why not? I think it’s because hypertextual media is, by its nature, social. It’s social in the same way sex is social. For it to be really engaging, well, you have to engage other people. You have to link to other people. You have to share, and share-alike. You have to be social.

I know this because I tried to start a web site about hypertextual erotic literature. Well, okay, hypertextual porn—or htporn for short (and for funny geek references which I sincerely hope some of you will get). It’s in my playground. However, for the reasons above, it’s become clear to me that the way to successfully create this kind of content is not to do so alone. Besides, I don’t have anywhere near the amount of required cycles (free time) to really get a project like this—one whose direction is still undetermined and whose purpose is still largely an experiment—off the ground by myself.

So, consider this my Call For Participation. I’ve set up an introduction to the theory of htporn and a handful of other stuff on the web site. I’ve also set up a mailing list website with a specific hyperfiction discussion list that I encourage you to join—just send an email introducing yourself and your interest in writing (or reading, or whatever) htporn.

I’m not-so-secretly hoping lots of people will express interest in this idea and put forth their ideas. Right now, this project is really just an infant. It needs a bit of TLC and attention from folks like me and you. It also needs a bit of guidance and (dare I say it) discipline so it can grow up big and strong, knowing what it is and what it’s doing. And, along the way, there are going to be questions we’ll need to answer for it.

Even though I’m hosting this project, I don’t want to be the sole driver. I just really want to see this happen. That’s why I’m asking for your participation. Won’t you please come play with us?

Comments (3)

Thursday, March 13, 2008

Stuff I use for sex

Category labels: BDSM safety, Beginner BDSM, Fetish, Pic Post, Sex, Sex toys

It’s Thursday and all and I’ve not posted for too long. Australia is keeping me busy, but I’ve had these photos in store for this blog ever since I was packing, and I figure there’s no better time than the present.

Toy Bag Picture 1

A while back, Mischief made a pact with Switch and Boy to bare their toybags to the world. I don’t remember exactly how he wrangled a promise for the same out of me, but he did. My excuse for the tardiness of this reveal is, well, look at all that shit! I didn’t even know I had that many sex toys.

In fact, not even all of the sex toys Eileen and I had were in this photo at the time of the shot, and some of the items in the shot were items we (regrettably) never got the opportunity to use (like the big eye-hook and ring wall mounts from Home Depot). Alas, with our move to Australia, we’ve had to slim our collection down even further into two categories.

  1. The bare essentials, which we have brought with us in our luggage.
  2. The really-want-to-haves that we’ll (probably) be shipping as cheaply as possible to our new home Down Under.

If you’re brave (and bored) enough to read through it, here’s a pseudo-itemized tour of all the items you see in these photos.

At the top left of the photo, right beneath my feet, you can see the TENS unit we own. We’ve not used this much due to lack of experience with such toys and because it was a relatively recent acquisition, but I’m looking forward to learning about more of what it can (safely) do.

Laying alongside the TENS unit are two wooden homemade spreader bars—cheap one-inch diameter dowels with eye-hooks drilled into them, all from the kinkiest store in the world, Home Depot—laying atop our small and growing collection of three whips. Only the two whips with the green coloring are ones we use for play; they’re both four-and-a-half-feet nylon singletails. In fact, the one on the left was my first, and a gift—and still a favorite (thanks, dad). The other one, an old nine foot bullwhip we got for $25(!) at one of the Leather Pride Night Flea Markets is mostly for making loud noises in parks.

Back at the left edge of the bed, you can see our pile of rope. Most of it is MFP from Rainbow Rope, but there’s are a fair number of hemp bundles mixed in. We’re somewhat new to hemp and so we’ve got bundles from just about everywhere: Twisted Monk, Venus Ropes, Rainbow Rope as mentioned earlier, and I think I’m missing another vendor, too (sorry!). At this point, hemp is hemp is hemp to me just because I don’t have enough experience with it to really feel the difference, so I mostly look at price when I shop. (Ask Dov your hemp questions, he’s very knowledgeable. So are Switch and Boy.)

That said, the hemp is clearly far superior to the MFP and other synthetics if rope bondage means something special to you. Also, the different diameters of some hemp over others makes that length more or less suitable for certain things. Most of our hemp is 8mm thick, but for wrist, ankle, and other body-part bondage, Eileen and I are finding that the 6mm or even the 4mm is much better. Of course, for genital bondage, we’re strongly considering even thinner lengths, like 2mm in diameter. Or, y’know, really coarse twine from Home Depot.

We’ve also got a roll of bondage wrap (larger, left) and one of bondage tape (shorter, next to the ball gag). I absolutely adore bondage tape, and I’m not too embarrassed to admit that it’s partly because of the aesthetic. Pretty boys and girls bound in bondage tape are shiny, and the whole industrial tape-gag damsel in distress look is smokin’ hot. The only thing missing from this pile is vet wrap, which is probably more useful than both bondage wrap or bondage tape (especially for turning your human pet’s hands into paws), but it’s also more expensive.

Of course, along with the ropes and the rest of the bondage equipment is the EMT safety shears. Ropes and bondage wraps or tapes without safety shears are one of those bad situations you should take care to avoid finding yourself in. And, of course, you should make absolutely sure the safety shears can cut through whatever it is you’re being bound or binding in. How do you do that? You cut a small piece of it once before you play (not necessarily every time). You do lose a little rope, but that’s a lot more palatable than losing your life.

A good tip when buying rope is to buy one longer strand than you need and cut it yourself. So if you’re intent on purchasing two 15-foot lengths of MFP, buy one 30-foot length and cut it in half yourself. That way you know your EMT safety shears work properly.

Between the rolls of bondage wrap and bondage tape we have a standard-issue ball gag, vibrator, and nylon quick-release wrist and ankle cuffs. The ball gag, unfortunately was too big for me when I bought it because I got it at The Leather Man, a shop in the Village for gay men. Apparently, anything and everything made for gay men is way too big for me. Instead, when I shop for bondage gear, the only restraints that won’t slide right off me are the one’s in small women’s sizes. Unbelievably, even the most heteronormative-focused novelty shops, the ones you’d think would carry all sorts of little bondage things for men to put their heroin-skinny girlfriends into, don’t often carry restraints small enough for me.

Anyway, at the very corner of the bed on the lower left of the photo above (and much more clearly visible in the photo below at the bottom right of the picture), are three toys laying atop the case for Eileen’s Njoy signature product, the Pure Wand, which is nestled within the tender pink folds of…ahem, its case.

Toy Bag Picture 2

To the right of these things are a number of synthetic sex toys. There’s the unmistakable, must-have Hitachi Magic Wand and beneath it is a see-through (”Ice”) Fleshlight. Beneath that is a cyberskin pussy, one of the items from my EdenFantasys sex toy reviews.

Moving on, to the right of these sex toys lie our small but growing collection of dildos and ass toys. There’s the funny-shaped Aneros Helix in white sitting to the right of the Fleshlight and beneath that is the black Nexus Titus, both prostate massagers. Two black butt plugs lie beyond a cylinder containing the Mistress silicone dildo by Vixen, and next to these are the two medical-grade blue plastic attachments for the Hitachi Magic Wand.

Moving back a bit, there’s also a collection of metal cuffs of various sizes and shapes, mostly silver. Eileen’s favorite fire-engine red handcuffs stand out, as does the silver asshook—another gift from the generous and talented Boy. Then, of course, there’s a long bunch of black leather and nylon straps, buckles, and collars of various sorts. There are also (some of) Eileen’s play knives there, including her poniard and curved hunting knife, and her butterfly knives (those are the scariest ones).

Finally, the last patch of the bed is covered by our medical supplies: needles, gloves, gauze pads. There are also the sex essentials: condoms, lube (such as Babeland’s excellent Babelube), our strap-on harness, a blindfold (a Mindfold branded one, as well as a few soft pieces of dark fabrics), locks to go with our loose lengths of chains, and a number of other odds and ends. Our (sadly, now broken) graphite evil stick is there with the blue and white handle, as well as the Master keysafe, used for storing emergency copies of really important keys like the one to our chastity belt I sometimes wear (not pictured).

And, of course, the boy in the photo is me, wearing my “Vivid”-style Eternity Collar, as usual. Eternity Collars are making a name for themselves as being extremely elegant. I’ve worn my collar shamelessly for months on end, including time spent in the office. My office-mates thought it was “kinda hardcore” at first, but said nothing of it afterwards.

Though unabashedly overpriced, the collar is a great fantasy object, not to mention useful for relatively safely attaching leads and ropes to a bottom’s neck. When Eileen started kinking real hard on a certain porn story involving metal collars and was spending quite a bit more time than usual lusting over the pictures at the Eternity Collars web site, I knew I’d buy us one.

I’m also wearing a small leather wristband—a purchase from the innovative Leather by Danny of gripcuff fame—with the words “Boy Toy” engraved on it. Perfectly fitting for this photo.

Phew!

Comments (17)

Wednesday, March 5, 2008

Fetish fashion is the same no matter where you go

Category labels: Beginner BDSM, Community, Fetish, Personal experience, Sex toys, Vanilla life

I’m in Sydney, Australia.

Without a doubt, the hardest thing about moving across the world for me has been the sudden lack of connectivity to the information I’m so used to getting on a regular basis. Nothing else really compares, because more than anything else the cost of that information is time—something (generally speaking) that we all have in equal amounts. Rich or poor, there’s still only twenty-four hours in the day.

So between learning the geography (and public transit systems) of a new city, getting a cell phone, looking for a place to live, setting up a bank account (and doing the dance of juggling one’s finances across two of Earth’s hemispheres while not bouncing any checks), going on job interviews, meeting freelance work deadlines, figuring out what the cost of living might be like, trying to understand people through their (sometimes unintelligible) Australian accents, and a whole lot more (like wasting four hours over three days on a health insurance claim [don't ask]), I’ve barely had enough time—much less an actually usable Internet connection—to do any information-consuming.

Slowly, that’s all getting sorted and the stress that makes all the differences I’m seeing between Sydney and New York City insufferable are making way for me to feel interested by them. Some things I’d have thought would be the same aren’t (like coffee, which is practically a whole different language here), and other things that I hoped would be different aren’t (yet).

Most striking is the (very painful) reminder that I’m not like almost anybody around me. Eileen’s just started classes, and we spent the better portion of a week exploring the campus. I’m meeting lots of students, but I am always reminded (typically rather explicitly) that I am not a student here, and thus not privileged with the same monetary discounts, opportunities for networking, or even casual social invitations for conversation (at least, not at first). It’s making me feel very segregated and lonely.

This past weekend was the climax of the Mardi Gras celebration in Sydney, and the famous parade. I watched the whole thing from the corner of Oxford and Riley streets, right up at the barricades, accompanied by Eileen and our gracious friends from the Blogosphere (and temporary Mardi Gras tour guides) Mistress 160 and Solipsist. It was a lot of fun in its own right, yet I couldn’t help myself from comparing the experience to the one’s I’ve had at the New York City Gay Pride Parades. They are, of course, incomparable in some respects, but not all of them.

For instance, one thing I noticed right at the start when people were beginning to crowd the streets was that at Sydney’s Mardi Gras, the spectators themselves were much, much more participatory in the celebrations. Costumes could be seen everywhere, on a huge chunk of the population, not just the marchers. In New York City, it’s typically only the people actually marching who do anything other than just show up to watch.

Another distinct difference was the abundant presence of alcohol. Beers and wines were so prevalent that by the end of the nearly two-hour parade the street was literally covered with so much trash (called “rubbish” here, by the way) that for a good half-block’s walk you had to be careful where you stepped. For the next few days, I occasionally walked by bits of broken glass. Maybe it’s just that you can’t really tell the difference in New York, but the aftermath of the Gay Pride Parade in New York City doesn’t look like a huge house party. That said, Sydney is surprisingly clean—especially for a city with an unnerving scarcity of public trash cans. Sorry, I mean rubbish bins.

All in all, Mardi Gras just can’t match the scale of the parade in New York. But then again, what can? After all, the entirety of Australia, whose geographic size rivals that of the United States, sustains a population equal merely to that of New York State.

The highlight of Mardi Gras, for me, was the single obvious leather group that marched. Predominantly male and bearing all the earmarks of what the New York City BDSM community would call “old guard leather,” they were sporting leather puppy boy outfits complete with paws and snouts, straight jackets, heavy metal shackles, and no shortage of exposed skin. By the point they marched by—well after halfway through—I had almost given up hope of seeing a kinky group march and advocate for BDSM, so vanilla (if very obviously GLBT-centric) was the rest of the parade and whole general atmosphere.

Shortly after that group marched by, I saw another much smaller group holding a banner that read Sexplorer08.com that had a few other hopeful signs: a woman in a shibari rope harness and a few others dressed in classic fetish outfits. To my surprise, the woman in the rope harness came right up to Mistress 160 and gave her a hug, which prompted quite a few questions from me because ever since I got here Eileen and I have been trying to find the kink scene in Sydney (as well as trying to find the time to search).

I’m really thankful for this blog because it’s given me so many lovely connections to kink communities on an International scope (Curvaceous Dee being another “AsiaPac” example).

One of the things I’ve been chomping at the bit (only figuratively, unfortunately) to see is how, if at all, kink is different across the planet. A lot about BDSM and sex in general is culturally influenced, and geography has a very heavy influence on culture. What sorts of differences, then, will I find in the kink communities here?

Browsing through the aisles of the fetish shops won’t reveal the answers to that because, low and behold, the accoutrements of kinky sex are evidently the same the world over. Not just similar, mind you, but identical, right down to the label. One shop in particular stands out as the clear premium BDSM shop in Sydney: Sax Fetish. Comparable to The Leather Man or Purple Passion in New York City, the only surprising thing about Sax Fetish is that they’re the only ones—something that speaks to Sydney’s smaller size.

This is also exemplary of the way smaller community sizes actually beget a more mixed crowd: wherein New York City you have specialty kink/fetish/leather/BDSM shops owned, operated, and marketed to distinct communities (like the gay community or the heterosexual community in the case of The Leather Man and Purple Passion), in Sydney every kink space is explicitly, pro-actively inviting members of all gender identities and sexual orientations to participate in a singular space. The same is true of the monthly fetish party, Hellfire Sydney, which (and I’m guessing because I’ve not attended it yet) seems reminiscent of BYTE. Specifically, both are monthly “fetish parties” with strict dress codes (the exact same dress codes, in fact), yet because Sydney only has this one monthly public fetish party, the proprietors make great efforts to be inclusive of everyone under the rainbow. These are statements that are mere afterthoughts in the New York City fetish scene, if they are even made at all.

On their web site, for example, Hellfire Sydney says:

[Hellfire Sydney] is a very mixed club. You’ll find varying proportions of people who identify as straight, bisexual, lesbian, gay, transgender, queer, intersex and some that defy even those labels. Which is just as well because we’re not too keen on labels anyway. Celebrating human sexuality in all its weird and wonderful diversity is what we’re all about, so as long as it doesn’t involve children, animals or the unwilling then hey, let’s party, whoever you are!

We’re also a club that celebrates physical diversity, with deliciously dirty deviants of all shapes and sizes dressed to thrill.

That may be so, but doesn’t it seem strangely at odds to you that a club which so adamantly touts its acceptance of the diversity of sexual expression has such a strict (and some would argue, boring) dress code? It does to me. But of course, as Richard has recently pointed out, the “fetish scene” is hardly representative of actually practicing sadomasochism, though there is some obvious overlap.

Perhaps it’s my New York conditioning, but I’m wary of any space that has strict dress codes because I believe it’s likely to be full of “stand-and-model S&M” and lacking for actual play. This is one of the clear differentiators between the “fetish fashion scene” and the “BDSM scene,” and I’m simply not interested in the former.

And so, I’m in Sydney. I’m still waiting to find out what I’ll find here.

Followups: Check out Mistress 160’s post about our night at Mardi Gras, too!

Comments (18)

Friday, December 28, 2007

Three easy steps to meeting and playing with people in BDSM clubs

Category labels: BDSM psychology, Beginner BDSM, Communication, Femdom, Fetish, Foot worship, Myths and misconceptions, Stupid dominants, Stupid submissives, Vanilla life

While filling the Conversio Virium calendar with other group’s events to publicize to the CV crowd, I came across a curious meeting topic that DomSubFriends (one of our local NYC BDSM groups) is going to be presenting on shortly. It is a presentation, taught by a dominant man and intended for other men regardless of their various potential orientations (or so one is led to believe from the description), about how to be more successful when trying to meet partners. It’s called “Why can’t I meet someone? (In the scene!)”.

I have to say that I’m glad this topic is being brought up at a local kink group. I also have to say that whenever it’s been brought up in the past, it’s been a miserable failure of a presentation with no insight and nary a good point being made by the presenter or the audience. But maybe this time will be different….

Of course, it is an oft-cited criticism of the BDSM scene that many men have: “It’s too hard to meet women!” Indeed, many men feel that their attempts at engaging members of the opposite sex are consistently unsuccessful. What many men fail to note, however, is that women decry the experience of trying to meet a partner just as much, usually with the similarly oft-cited complaint: “Why is every man who talks to me so obnoxious and weird?”

In my decidedly not-as-vast-as-other-people’s personal experience and observations, there are a few key guidelines that have proven themselves to be invaluable to me personally and have been present in every successful pre-play interaction I have witnessed—ever. Astonishingly, very few men actually seem to follow these three simple steps, which apply regardless of situation, circumstance, or participants involved:

  1. Vanilla rules apply. Just as certain common-sense rules of etiquette are followed in non-kink spaces, so too must they all be followed in kink spaces outside of a scene. If you’re not invited to be a part of someone’s scene, that means you’re not in a scene, clear? Being in a BDSM dungeon does not implicitly grant anyone the right to be rude to, to invade the personal space of, or otherwise behave poorly towards anyone else, no matter who you are or who they are. End of story.
  2. Make conversation. Nine times out of ten, if you ask someone to play with you before you even say hello, you’re going to get turned down. Think about it: do you walk up to random women in bars and ask them to have sex with you? No, you talk to them first, you flirt. Do that in a BDSM club, too. If there’s some chemistry in the conversation first, then the apple of your eye is much more likely to say yes when you broach the topic of playing together.
  3. Be generous. Give and you shall receive. If you get turned down, be gracious and accepting about it. There’s nothing more damaging to your search for a play partner than to be seen acting like a big baby that can’t handle rejection politely. On the other hand, if your offer to play is accepted, then do something you are both going to like when you play and make sure your play partner knows how much you’re liking it while you’re playing.

    If you’re topping, this means you top with enthusiasm tempered with lots of care. If you’re bottoming, this means you’re reacting to what she’s doing because, remember, she wants to be having an effect on you. I don’t think I know a single top who doesn’t like noise, or squirming, or something of the sort as long as it’s an authentic reaction and not a big phony act. Conversely, almost all of them really dislike playing with a stubbornly stoic, silent, expressionless bottom.

It’s unfortunate that when something isn’t working, many men simply try to do more of the same. If asking ten women to let him rub their feet didn’t work, he’ll just try asking another fifty, thinking one of them will eventually acquiesce. Sadly, this just doesn’t work. “Trying harder” without entertaining some kind of introspection is nearly guaranteed to fail every time.

The only cure for desperation is alternatives. If something’s not working for you, for goodness sake, give something else an honest try.

See also

Comments (12)

Sunday, December 16, 2007

Normal is anything but

Category labels: Bitter and jealous, Emotions, Fetish, Personal experience, Politics of sex, Sex, Vanilla life

What-if questions are the introvert’s Schrödinger’s cat. At once educational and unworkable, they can provide insight into your current mental state or process, whatever that may be. More interesting than simply performing the thought-experiment once is performing it several times, posing the question to yourself again after a significant amount of time has elapsed since the last time you thought about it.

The ever-prolific Richard Evans Lee has been posting questions for bloggers on his new site, FetishMeme.com and Dev picked one up that I found interesting. It reads:

If you could remove your kinky sexuality, become ‘vanilla,’ conventionally sexualized, would you? Would you rather have normal erotic needs than face the challenges and frustrations of being unlike the majority? Could being like most people be a sufficient repayment for knowing exactly what you need even though it is specialized and not easily realized? Would you rather be normal?

I commented on that post, saying something like, to me, it seems to be a matter of satisfaction. Put simply, when I am feeling satisfied with what I have, then I don’t feel like changing it because what I have is wonderful and makes me happy. However, in times of distress when I am not feeling fulfilled due to a lack of that Thing I Want, then yes, I would exchange my differences for normalcy in the hopes that such normalcy would elevate my chances of fulfillment simply thanks to the probability of that Thing I Want being more available, less stigmatized, or hopefully both.

Here’s the thing: we all want whatever it is we want. You can’t escape your own desires, no matter how “abnormal” (though I prefer to use the word atypical) they are, no matter how likely or how well you can fulfill them, how difficult that process will be specifically for you, or what other people might think of you for wanting it in the first place. You just can’t. More people than I’d like to imagine try to do just that every day, with universally similar and depressing results—failure, every time.

For many people with atypical desires, especially sexual ones, actually experiencing fulfillment is a pipe dream, and (sadly) they accept it as such. Thankfully, the human psyche is an amazingly resilient thing. These people may feel bad about themselves or their state of affairs, but they’ll ultimately be okay, and the vast majority of them will blend into the everyday populous as completely normal, fully-functional people that are (for all intents and purposes) just like you and me.

What’s even more depressing, in fact, is that personal fulfillment of any kind, not just sexual, is so often regarded as being a pipe dream that it is actually considered “normal” to long for it and not to have it. Millions of employees work endless 9–5’s in jobs they don’t like for decades (that’s longer than I’ve been alive!), most of them for less money than I used to make last year when I was 22, and that’s if they’re lucky. What is it about these people that makes them so able, no, willing, to do that? And what makes me so unable, if not unwilling, to follow suit?

I’m reminded often of an anecdote my father once told me when I was very little about elephants in the circus. He said that elephants are often kept in their tents with a single iron cuff closed around one of their ankles that is then chained to a stake driven into the ground. Soon after birth, a baby elephant will find itself with such a shackle and, being a baby (small and weak), will also find that it is unable to pull itself away from this stake or escape. As it grows older, it stops trying to escape from the shackle and before long it considers the restraint to be irremovable except by its handlers. However, as a much stronger grown elephant, it would have no problem whatsoever removing the stake from the ground and yet it never attempts to do this.

I have no idea if that anecdote about elephants in the circus is true or not, but I think that most people, who are imbued so strongly with other people’s values from birth, values that reinforce their own importance while simultaneously suppressing or dismissing questions about them, end up like the elephant in my father’s anecdote. Most people—parents, teachers, older children—thoughtlessly tell kids, “you can do anything you want” while in the same breath berating them for doing the most mundane, natural of things. “Stop crying! Sit still! Don’t play with that!”

Little wonder most people start to think of things in terms of “don’t”s and “can’t”s by the time they’ve reached elementary school. At which point, of course, it’s the same thing all over again. Then when they reach adulthood, it’s once again more of the same only this time it’s in the shiny, brand-new packaging of A Job. Most people’s single significant reprieve, if it can even be called that, is college. If you want to know why college is what most people call the time of their lives, it’s because it’s usually the only time they can remember when the hope of possibility ever permeated their environment in amounts big enough to make a difference.

If this is all sounding a little dramatic, then you’re actually getting the point: most people feel exactly that sort of overwhelming hopelessness in regards to their sexual satisfaction. Furthermore, the more “abnormal,” the more “perverse,” the more stigmatized and discriminated against your sexuality is, the more overwhelmed you are by just such a feeling of hopelessness.

I am very lucky. I have counted my blessings. I have acknowledged the good and caring people around me, though perhaps not enough. (Can anyone ever do that enough when the disparity between the “lucky” and the “unlucky” is so vast?) Despite all of that, even I feel overwhelmed too often by sadness born from a lack of fulfillment in my social and sexual life, not to mention my professional life, my education (or lack thereof—I am a middle- and high-school drop out), and my own private sense of self-worth and self-image.

So you ask me if I would rather be vanilla, rather be more like everyone else, as though being that would make me happier. Unfortunately, the question is moot: I’m not like everyone else, and as all the evidence to the contrary has made abundantly clear, simply wishing it and waiting will not make it so. But if I could change? Be something or someone I’m not?

Well, yeah, I’d turn vanilla. Sure, I’d turn into a guy who wants the straight-forward 9–5, the house, the wife, the two-point-four kids, the family pet, and could be happy with that. And even though most other people are saying they wouldn’t, that they’d never give up who they are or what they have, I bet if you asked them at the right moment, maybe tomorrow or next year, or maybe last year, I bet at one point or another, they’d say yes, too.

Yes. I’d do it. I’d be someone else.

Comments (8)

Friday, September 7, 2007

Sex is nice and porn is good for your society

Category labels: Community, Erotica and pornography, Fetish, Politics of sex, Sex

Due to personal reasons, I’ve decided to drop off the radar a little bit this past week. Instead of sex, I brought you Mario.

Tonight, however briefly, it’s back to the sex.

Lest you think this is merely a pulp post, let me make my point explicitly (pun intended).

No matter how hard some people want to stop sex, it just doesn’t work. Hypocrisy, oppression, and repression is always a losing play.

Sex crosses every boundary you can imagine.

You can’t stop the signal.

(Some links via Gloria Brame.)

Comments (4)

Wednesday, August 22, 2007

Kink on Tap 6: Sexual Teasing and Denial

Category labels: BDSM psychology, BDSM safety, BDSM techniques, Beginner BDSM, Chastity/Orgasm denial, D/s dynamics, Emotions, Femdom, Fetish, Kink on Tap, Personal experience, Sexual teasing and control

In lieu of the fast-approaching Floating World convention, rather than do a Kink on Tap roundtable as I’m (trying) to do regularly, I thought this time I’d share some of the fun around for those of you unlucky enough not to be able to attend. SaraEileen and I are doing several presentations at the event, one of which is all about chastity play, orgasm control, and sexual teasing and denial.

We got the chance to go through much of our old notes on the topic (we’ve done similar presentations elsewhere before), update a few things, add some bits here and there, and thought we’d share a large part of the presentation with you in podcast form. So, if you’re not going to be able to make Floating World, you’ll at least still get the majority of the experience of at least this one class of our’s.

I hope you enjoy the episode and, as usual, feel free to write me about it by emailing kinkontap+feedback@gmail.com.

Here are the list of resources and links I had compiled. By no means is this complete. And of course, Google is your friend.

  • Erotic sexual denial - Wikipedia

  • Chastity-UK - A British web site on the topic of chastity play that includes articles, user-submitted content, galleries, several very helpful FAQs geared to introducing and employing chastity in the context of relationships (of every sort), and more.

  • Lady-Jester - A site dedicated to contributions from wearers of the CB-2000, CB-3000, The Curve, and other male chastity devices and their female keyholders.

  • OrgasmDenial.com - A large web portal dedicated to orgasm denial, obviously, and filled mostly with submissive men and dominant women.

  • Chas’ Sweet Chastity - Dedicated to female chastity under male dominance and also to male-to-female transvestitism while incorporating male chastity devices. This web site is also home to the infamous (and fictional) “Chasti-Permalock Corporation,” a webiverse of chastity stories about devices implemented with nanotechnology.

  • Chastity Yahoo Group - A huge and always growing collection of individuals who discuss various topics related to chastity and teasing and denial.

  • Prostate Information and Milking

  • Altarboy’s Chastity Belt Web Site — has a section devoted to erotica, and a subsection within that devoted to female wearer/female keyholder stories, as discussed in the podcast.

  • Tantalism — this is an all inclusive community, though most participants discuss female denial.
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Tuesday, August 21, 2007

I want to be a pretty boy

Category labels: BDSM psychology, Bitter and jealous, D/s dynamics, Emotions, Femdom, Feminization and cross-dressing, Fetish, Myths and misconceptions, Personal history

I’ve never been a manly man. When I was younger, I watched quite a bit of television. I remember lots of the imagery I was presented with quite vividly. In almost every case, I wanted to be the girls. Growing up, I quickly learned that wanting to be more like the girls was a desire frowned upon by pretty much everybody else—not least of all, by the girls.

These days, the same things still come up in daily conversation as they did in years past. “I wish I could lose ten more pounds—I don’t feel pretty,” I hear women say all the time. In response, everyone simultaneously begins talking about the oppressive nature of our culture’s media campaigns. “Oh, come on. You don’t have to look like every model in the magazines. You’re smart, you’re kind; of course you’re hot,” they’ll say to her in an effort to comfort and sympathize.

Most of the time, I think women’s self-image issues are physically, though not emotionally, unfounded. All but one of my girlfriends were, to use the obvious example, heavier than the BMI charts would have them feel comfortable about. My femdom fantasies have always been tilted toward larger girls. Hula dancers were an ironic motif, but I attribute this mostly to the healthier, more attractive weight Hawaiian girls tend to carry. I’ll never understand the fetish for stick-figure girls. That can be sexy but I think women are sexier if they’re shapely.

Issues men may have with their body image, however, are almost never even recognized. If they are, they discuss how unmanly boys feel and offer ways to feel more manly. Nothing we see in our culture tells boys that it’s okay to want to feel pretty, to want to be treated in ways similar to the way we see people treating girls. If a boy, like me, wanted that, they call him a sissy and expect him to want to feel bad about it. I find this fact, an association often cited between cross-dressing and humiliation, nothing less than repulsive.

Furthermore, every time I’ve ever hinted at having body image issues of any kind at all, a very strange thing happens. Rather than address these issues, people turn to my girlfriend and give her a once-over. Then, they turn back to me. “How can you think of yourself as not attractive?” They ask, puzzled. “Your girlfriend is so hot.”

Granted, my girlfriend is hot. But what, pray tell, does that have to do with my own self-image? You’ve just told me that my own self-image should be measured by how hot my girlfriend is. Call me crazy, but my girlfriend’s attractiveness should not be the scale by which I measure my own.

Is that what you’d say to a fat girl, by the way? Oh, you’re totally sexy because your boyfriend is super skinny. What kind of logic is that? It’s not only completely missing the point, it doesn’t make her feel better. In fact, it often makes her feel worse. And that’s exactly what doing that does to me: it makes me feel worse.

Why is it a taboo to discuss men on the basis of their looks? Even in romance novels, where the gallant and obligatorily handsome man plays center stage, most descriptions about his looks center on his other attributes. His strong muscles. His virile penis. His healthy hair. It’s not about the way he looks, it’s about what he can offer in every other realm; wealth, health, or power. Even here, men’s sexual attractiveness is being judged on everything except their looks. This is crazy.

To top it off, even the pretty men, who were called the derogatory term “twinks” in gay slang for quite a while, are usually portrayed in as decidedly not delicate a manner as possible; sweating profusely, working out, doing some manly chore, or otherwise being rough and tumble. The message? Be ruggedly handsome, sure, but don’t be pretty.

By this culture’s dogma, being pretty is a woman’s job. Women are the ones who are “supposed to” do the attracting; men are supposed to be attracted. But this is insulting, and unfair. Wanting to feel pretty often goes hand-in-hand with wanting to be pursued. The emotions are the same: love me, I’m precious. But being pursued is the woman’s job, as if they are the only ones allowed to feel as though they are precious and worthy of loving attentions.

This whole fucked-up mess does a lot of things for men. It makes us get paid more at work. It makes it easier for us to attract people into old age (where, I’m sorry, looks are just not going to follow). It makes it harder to objectify us in ways we don’t want. And, unfortunately, it makes it a lot harder for us to talk about body image issues—especially if you’re like me and you don’t even want to have the traditional Vin-Diesel-the-body-builder look and instead want to look like the lithe, nubile, pretty young things you only see cast in the gender role of supreme femininity.

Well, I have a confession to make. I like dressing up as a girl because, in part, it makes me feel pretty. It does this because putting on frilly panties is the only time I feel the culture in which I live is telling me that I might actually get away with being pretty.

This confession, low and behold, is not uncommon. Men who want to feel pretty end up wanting to emulate women because we have no other choice. Why can men, secure in their masculinity, not also be pretty? Even the dictionary is stupendously unhelpful here. Defining “pretty” results in this definition from Princeton’s web dictionary:

pleasing by delicacy or grace; not imposing; “pretty girl”; “pretty song”; “pretty room”

(Emphasis added by yours truly.)

I have been called graceful. I have also been called delicate. I’ve been called pleasing a bunch more times than these other two things combined.

People I don’t know ask me if I dye my hair when they look at its color in the sun (I don’t). They ask me if I’ve ever played the piano when they notice the way my fingers curl around cups as I drink (I haven’t). They have remarked on how carefully I treat all my belongings, and how thoughtful I am when I am hosting a guest. But they have never called me pretty.

It may surprise some of you to hear this, but Eileen is actually the first person I have known that has called me pretty. She is fond of my ass and these days I might call it one of the prettiest parts of me, but it was not always this way.

One night many years ago, well before I even consciously thought about why I kept wanting to feel pretty, I was lounging with my then-girlfriend in the bedroom I shared with my brother. I remember only a single sentence from the conversation we had that night. It was this sentence that my girlfriend said to me that cued six years of body image issues centered around my butt: “I would like it if your ass was firmer.”

What did firmer mean, anyway? It meant that I should have more of a boy’s body. I didn’t have a muscular gluteus maximus; I didn’t have the body of a strong, rugged, self-respecting man. But you know what, I didn’t want that body, either. And that should’ve been okay.


Addendum: For those interested in a bit more academic self-education (the best kind, if you ask me), I would highly suggest reading the Wikipedia articles on sissyphobia and effeminacy, for a start.

A particular passage of interest is cited below, and serves as a wonderful example of the fact that cultural ideals change with time. My message in this post, if you are to take one from it that I did not actually intend when I started, would be to stay aware of this constantly changing cultural stereotype—in all cultures and in all situations—and to avoid letting cultural noncompliance result in prejudiced or oppressive actions of any kind.

Pre-Stonewall “closet” culture accepted homosexuality as effeminate behaviour, and thus emphasized camp, drag, and swish including an interest in fashion (Henry, 1955; West, 1977) and decorating (Fischer 1972; White 1980; Henry 1955, 304). Masculine gay men did exist but were marginalised (Warren 1972, 1974; Helmer 1963) and formed their own communities, such as leather and Western (Goldstein, 1975), and/or donned working class outfits (Fischer, 1972) such as sailor uniforms (Cory and LeRoy, 1963). (Levine, 1998, p.21-23, 56)

Post-Stonewall, “clone culture” became dominant and effeminacy is now marginalised. One indicator of this is a definite preference shown in personal ads for masculine-behaving men (Bailey et al 1997).

My personal experiences written above are likely the result of my interaction with New York City’s leather subculture, as that community is my primary social outlet (for now).

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Saturday, June 2, 2007

Is there a difference between fetish, kink, and sex?

Category labels: BDSM psychology, Fetish, Myths and misconceptions, Personal experience, Sex

With recent explorations into the realm of friends-who-also-have-sex realm, something that has come to my mind recently is what kind of distinctions I can draw between fetish, kink, and sex. There are actually so many things that make up what we usually call in one pathetically limiting word “sexuality” that this is actually a very difficult thing to piece apart. So much of fetish is sex after all, kink is fetish in a way, and sex can certainly be kinky. But again, not always. Where’s the line?

In my experience, this line varies so wildly that I’m not surprised it’s so difficult for people to draw distinctions between them. What are the distinctions though?

Contrary to what many people believe, my experience has been that fetish, BDSM (kink), and sex are each distinct realms, separate from one another. This is true in both a cultural sense—because the fetish scene doesn’t actually always mingle with the sex-positive scene doesn’t always run in the same circles as the BDSM crowd doesn’t always rub shoulders with the swingers, and so on and so forth—and a personal sense, because these three distinct parts of my sexuality developed in wholly distinct periods of my life.

While you will never get any argument from me that there are large sections of the three that overlap with each other, I maintain that these three things are different enough from each other to warrant observation and thought as distinct entities. I have been also been making bigger strides in cross-polinating with other groups, and the variations in etiquette and general tone is surprising (and refreshing!) to even me. (This is supposed to be impressive because I’m one of the younger, “Yes, I’ve seen it all types.” And I have actually seen quite a bit.)

Ultimately, the point is not that one’s sexuality must be thought of in terms of distinct components, but that it is very helpful in getting what you want when you know that what you want is a mix of different things you can put together in any damn way you please. This freedom to pick and chose what you like is absolutely essential to making a sexual experience rewarding, and it’s bafflingly undercommunicated for some strange reason.

The public BDSM (heterosexual) scene, for instance, seems to have some kind of taboo against sex. Sex is so frequently the after-thought in BDSM meetings, that recently TES-TiNG did a whole meeting asking the question, Where’d our sex go? In fact, the blurb for that meeting is so appropriate to this post, I’m going to quote it:

A little confused about where the ’sex’ went in ‘kinky sex’? Want to get it back in there? Heard rumors that people used to play and have sex — in public! Wonder why the “Scene” isn’t quite like that anymore? (Was it ever?) Confused about how sex & BDSM could be separated in the first place? Concerned with safeguarding the spaces we still have?

Surprising, right? Well, the taboo’s not against sex, of course, but it certainly drives the point home. Indeed, when I first began to get into the scene, I divorced sex so completely from BDSM that it actually surprised me when Eileen started playing with me sexually a couple years ago. Now, with (somewhat) non-kinky explorations of sex (which is almost a first for me), I wonder if there’s not new and ever more interesting possibilities to play with by mixing and matching elements of fetish, kink, and sex to my liking. Will I create something entirely new? Will that even matter? I’m just going to have a lot more fun!

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