Maybe Maimed but Never Harmed

Saturday, May 31, 2008

Article published in Kink-E magazine: Learning the Ropes

Category labels: BDSM psychology, BDSM safety, Beginner BDSM, Communication, Community, Femdom, Male sexuality, Myths and misconceptions, Personal experience, Personal history, Writing and blogging

I’ve been somewhat silent on this blog for a little while and some of you probably already know why. For those that don’t, my professional life has been all a twitter with all sorts of tasks related to my first (non-BDSM or sexuality-focused) book publication. That’s quite exciting, but it also means I’ve pretty much taken on another part time job in addition to my full-time one.

A while back before any of this began I submitted an article to a small local kink magazine here in Sydney called Kink-E Magazine. Apparently it’s been accepted and published and I never even knew about it. You’d think I’d get an email or something of the sort (if not an author copy), but I’ve not heard a word from the publishers. The only reason I found out the article was published was because I met a nice fellow at a dinner party of sorts who recognized my name and said he’d found this blog through the magazine.

Another very annoying thing is that apparently the magazine decided to print my article—which includes a picture of my back—on top of a large picture of a submissive, bound woman and some other random picture I’ve never seen before. I’m not claiming I should have had artistic input for the layout, but doesn’t it seem more than a little disingenuous to print an article about a submissive boy with a huge picture of a submissive girl behind the text of the article itself? This might be a great time for another one of my rants about the state of acceptance for submissive male sexuality but in deference to my exhaustion, I’ll let it slide without another word this time.

$Scanned image of \"Learning the Ropes\" article text$ (Click to enlarge.)

Sigh…. Either way, I’m glad to see that the article is in print, and that it’s providing this blog and the great blogs I link to some additional exposure. Since the magazine’s website has seemingly gone from a partially free online publication to a closed “we won’t show you our content unless you pay us” model, I’m going to repost the entirety of my article here for your viewing pleasure.

This article was a part of my efforts to encourage educational events focused on BDSM and alternative sexuality (beyond queer or homosexual issues) in the Sydney area. See also My First Two Months in the Sydney BDSM Scene.

I still remember [my partner] Eileen’s face the first time she talked to me about hitting me with a single tail whip. “It makes a completely different noise when it hits skin,” she said, brimming with excitement. I gave her a knowing grin. When the two of us began playing together regularly she was the new-blood and I was the one with the reputation.

Her enthusiasm and eagerness to learn more and to try new things was enthralling, attractive, seductive. Sometimes she would tell me that her fingers itched, that they wanted to hurt me. I wanted nothing more than to give her unfettered access to me to do just that.

I think ‘access’ is a sexy word. It’s seductive in implication, explicitly slippery on the tongue, and just sounds raw. Even its meaning is primal: a means of approaching or entering a place, or person. Part of what I found so enthralling about playing with Eileen was how much her newness to the kind of play we were doing was teaching me things, too. Contrary to the popular stereotypes, I didn’t actually have much hands-on experience at the time.

For a lot of people, the answer to the question “When did you know you were into this BDSM stuff?” is very similar. It goes something like, “I’ve known as far back as I can remember.” I’m no exception.

I was four years old when I started making requests of my father to tie me up. At that young age, I wasn’t really questioning why I was asking this of him, I just knew that it was something I felt like I really wanted to have happen, something that would relax me. As a boy, I liked crawling into small spaces like the one under my bed or in my closet. At night I would wrap myself up in a cocoon of my sheets to relax, enjoying the compression and tightness of the fabric on my body.

When I was nine my family got a computer connected to the Internet for the first time. By the time I turned ten I had several hundred bookmarks of BDSM resources saved on the computer. I started reading each one voraciously. Thousands of words a piece, all about sexual dominance and submission, straight-out sex, sexuality, sadism, masochism, and erotica of course.

At first, most people look aghast when they learn this about me. In what world would exposing a ten year old child to endless information about BDSM sex be a positive experience? Indeed, I believe there are myriad dangers in doing so, arguably more so with today’s Internet than the one of thirteen years ago.

To be certain, that kind of access to information is Pandora’s Box. Looking in hindsight at my own experiences, as I’m sure Pandora must have done, I can now see both the good and the bad. The bad: misinformation, and deceitful, predatory, or just plain misguided people. The good: information in abundance, and a community of like-minded people.

For more than eight years I lurked in cyberspace, reading other people’s experiences. I spent a lot of my time filtering out what I thought was fanciful fiction from what seemed like an accurate representation of events and fact. I learned safety basics such as risky parts of the body to strike (kidneys, the tailbone, the neck, etc.), which led me to pursue other interests in anatomy.

Finally, together with my first kinky girlfriend, the two of us braved the real world together. We went to our very first BDSM-oriented meeting at The Eulenspiegel Society. It was a lecture-plus-demo-style presentation on flogging by the well-known Boymeat and his partner at the time, Luna.

“Not everyone plays this way,” I remember Boymeat saying with ernest while locking his gaze straight at my girlfriend and I, who—dressed in our casual cottons and Birkenstock sandals—stood out like a pair of sore thumbs in the crowd of some thirty-odd much older people wearing leathers, vests, and other black accoutrement. “Because we know one another,” Boymeat continued the caveats to his demo, “Luna and I play very roughly together.”

Little did he know at the time, but he didn’t need his caveats. When he began the demo and his flogger literally shoved Luna into the wall she was standing near, I was endlessly intrigued. Here, now, I could finally see with my own eyes everything that I’d been reading about for nearly a decade.

I realized that I could once and for all put to rest dozens of questions that I’d had about flogging and begin to answer dozens more. Watching, I remembered descriptions about flogging I’d read online and started cataloguing some as plausible and others as fantasy, distinctions I could not be confident of just twenty minutes prior. The experience of attending that presentation was invaluable, and for years following that attending similar presentations proved very rewarding for a lot of different reasons.

On a very personal level, spending time with other people who had similar desires as I did helped to legitimize my own thoughts and fantasies. It also showed me just how social an activity education really is. The vast majority of learning happens in the presence of either peers or teachers (or sometimes someone who is both). This is even more apparent in a community like ours that is heavily focused on physical, social experiences, either with a single partner or with a group.

Education, like sex and play, is a social activity—and learning can be very sexy. This makes face-to-face education even more valuable because, in addition to being the single most effective measure against accidents, abuse, and other negative consequences of ignorance, it can also provide opportunities to make friends and to network with others. At that first TES meeting I attended, I met Virgil, now former Vice-President of Columbia University of New York City’s BDSM discussion group called Conversio Virium, where a few years later I first met Eileen at a single tail demo I participated in.

Comments (2)

Wednesday, February 6, 2008

One night, I fell in love

Category labels: BDSM psychology, D/s dynamics, Emotions, Faceslapping, Femdom, Knife play, Male sexuality, Personal experience, Personal history, Relationship

Back on May 3^rd, 2005, a bit after 4 AM in the morning, I came home from an evening out at one of TES’s “College Night” parties at New York City’s local BDSM club, Paddles. A little over a month earlier, I had first met Eileen at Conversio Virium, but it had been significantly less than a month since we really began getting to know one another. This night, this College Night party, was the first time we played in public. It’s the first time I’d ever felt the beginnings of submission towards another person.

This night was one of the nights when I fell in love with her. Below, a protected entry from my personal journal is republished in full. With the end of my time in New York City fast approaching, I feel like the beginning deserves another look.

In chronological order:

Saying hello to more people than I can remember. Giving out hugs.

Pledging, hazing. Eating “live goldfish,” immitating a duck (badly), playing Simon Says, and ass paddling.

Electric touches everywhere, different on the scalp, on the body, on the genitals. (The ones on the genitals made me squirm to get away—never thought that’d happen when hands and my genitals were involved.) Also laughter, much of it.

Knives on steroids, the sound of sizzling, the feel of them burning my skin, forceful like lightning.

Caged by the electrified metal, trapped and cornered and struggling.

Cowering, hands bound behind my back, slapped and scared and being held, rocked, and petted.

He looks like a slave boy. Also a title, but not entirely transferrable from the titles given to a top.

Face slapping, breath play. Being broken, defeated, knocked off my feet by the power of her hits; no weapon, no threats, because none was needed—I was her’s.

Is this submission? Cavernous, dark, frightening, paralyzing and blurred, treasured.

Flinching at the gentle caresses, clutching her arms like they were a tether back up and out of the darkness.

A straight-edge blade and a curved blade both at my neck, held by two different people. Cornered in a booth almost kissing one of them, the other pushing my chin up with her knife, forcing the kiss.

Grilled chicken, pancakes, and stories at a diner. No coffee for me, though—this was a group outing.

In addition to all of the above, some reminders from an IM conversation for more things to write about:

The main difference between every single other time I’ve been in pain and these times was that every other time, my body extended itself towards the pain, again and again and again. Not just willingly—lustfully. But that didn’t happen with this.

And this time you weren’t smiling anymore.

I also remember looking into your eyes when you were suffocating me, actually. But, strange, I don’t remember your eyes.

Comments (3)

Thursday, January 10, 2008

Why Orgasm Logger? Well, why not?

Category labels: BDSM in the media, BDSM psychology, BDSM techniques, Chastity/Orgasm denial, Communication, D/s dynamics, Humor, Myths and misconceptions, Orgasm Logger, Personal history, Politics of sex, Sex, Sexual teasing and control, Technology

This is majorly cool: Viviane linked Orgasm Logger in her Links for January 4^th, 2008 post and it’s since been picked up by Boinkology, and a few higher-profile bloggers are beginning to display Orgasm Logger counters on their sites, too, like Tom Paine. A few months ago, a search for “Orgasm Logger” revealed only a handful of hits but now Google shows over 1,300 results, which is quite a bit for a project I put a single night’s effort into months ago primarily for my own, personal use.

I’ve also been seeing discussions about Orgasm Logger surface on message boards and other blogs every so often. It’s a lot of fun to read through the discussions people are having and to see what they’re saying about it. Here are some telling examples.

This woman, on an Informed Consent discussion thread, says:

Having orgasms isn’t a competitive activity, it’s just something that happens, or doesn’t and it certainly shouldn’t be used as a measure of anything. In my opinion.

I have to say I agree with her regarding her view on the usefulness of orgasms as a competitive measure, but I disagree that it shouldn’t be used as a measure of something. Measure of what is the question. Well, I think that’s up to the person doing the measuring.

I never think of orgasms as competitive, just a lot of fun. They’re fun to have, and they’re fun for some of us not to have, and the fact that some of us are having more than others is also a lot of fun for some of us. I don’t think there’s anything in this world that turns me on more reliably and so thoroughly as watching my lover have a screaming-good orgasm. For me, when she has ten or twenty, or maybe even a hundred and I haven’t had one, that’s an even sexier thought. I like the disparity in the numbers, but I don’t feel competitive about it.

Naturally, kinky people into chastity play and orgasm control see the value of this tool really quickly. Later in the same thread, another woman writes:

I think the ‘logging’ idea would be a nice little extra feature for those who do chastity play.

And then another guy echoes her sentiment:

I can imagine it might be of use if a man were in a sort of chastity arrangement without a device i.e. based on trust, and monitored by a domme at a remote location.

Curvaceous Dee is (fittingly) ahead of the curve by already having experienced first-hand the intent of Orgasm Logger:

It was a great relief to finally come again. The very useful Orgasm Logger has confirmed to me over the past few months what I’d suspected for a while—that I like to get off every couple of days. Doesn’t matter too much whether it’s self-pleasure or pleasure with partners (both have their moments), but, almost like clockwork, every two days on average will see me gushing, groaning, and generally feeling great. Which explains why I’m always running out of ‘bedroom towels’….

Indeed, as she points out, keeping track of stuff let’s you know more about that stuff.

Here’s another blogger’s comment, one I really love:

I clicked, and found out this guy had his last [orgasm] 3.58 days ago, and this is a feed from an actual Orgasm Logger site! What an add-on to one’s blog! The ultimate in advance orgasm management strategy systems!

The ultimate in advanced orgasm management strategy systems? I think this blogger coined a new acronym: OMSS! Naturally, I can think of dozens of improvements to Orgasm Logger so I’m not going to be calling this thing “the ultimate” any time soon.

Of course, Lux of Boinkology said it best:

We’re both fascinated and confused by this application

In fact, that’s been the most common reaction, and it’s really interesting to me. Long before I created Orgasm Logger, I’d just been naturally keeping a tally on my orgasms. It seems to me like most everyone does this, if only not as mindfully as I do. Of course, what made me mindful about keeping track of my orgasms in the first place was my near-fetish for orgasm control, in a sexually submissive headspace.

I got really serious about keeping track of my orgasms about two years or so before I created Orgasm Logger. At first, I simply wrote down when my last one was, so I’d always know. Then I wanted to be able to easily share that piece of information with Eileen, so she’d be able to know whenever it interested her. To make that happen, I started recording my orgasms as events on my personal calendar, publishing those events as an iCalendar to a local WebDAV server I run for the two of us here at home, and then subscribed her iCal to the calendar feed I was publishing.

It worked flawlessly. Now I had a real database of all my recorded orgasms with embedded date and time, location, and participant information! It was pretty much all I needed. But it wasn’t perfect.

It didn’t do the things I was most interested in, which was tell me at-a-glance how long it had been since my last orgasm, the most personally interesting datum. I had to do that calculation every time I wanted to know. What’s today’s date? When was the date of my last orgasm? What’s the difference between then and now?

Obviously, computers are the answer to computational problems, so I started thinking about how I could get the computer to do everything I wanted. In the process, it occurred to me that lots of people heavily into orgasm control are always talking about “how long it’s been” or “what their last one was like.”

Hell, people who aren’t even kinky are talking about their orgasms left and right, up and down, inside and out, this ways and that ways! Moreover, the entire political debate over contraception, abortion, teen pregnancies, abstinence-only sex education, and a host of other issues, are all centered around exactly this topic: orgasms!

None of this would even be happening if it weren’t for orgasms, but I’ve yet to hear someone acknowledge that simple fact. It’s as though, if you were an alien, you’d think orgasms were what made the world go ’round, but nobody was allowed to talk about them directly.

Which brings me to my point. Orgasms are really important for a lot of people. What’s interesting, then, is why it’s so puzzling to so many people that I’ve made a tool to help people keep track of them. After all, throughout history, the one thing people have continued to do with nearly no change in behavior at all is come up with ways to keep track of the stuff that’s important to them.

No value judgement, no assumptions, just an awareness of what’s important to people and the benefits that can be garnered from using increasingly sophisticated tools to broaden that awareness. That’s what Orgasm Logger is about, for me. That’s what I think everything should be about, on a philosophical level.

No one would have looked at me askance if I wrote improvements to banking software, because money is very important to a lot of people. That’s why it’s tracked so rigorously. That’s why it’s used as a competitive measure of status, of wealth, and of many other things, even though a lot of us think that it shouldn’t be.

Why, then, do orgasms seem so out of place? Maybe the answer to that question is also the answer to a lot of other things that we as a country, a culture, and a species, are struggling with. Maybe understanding value, understanding why the things that are important to us are important, things that are currently so deeply ingrained in the cultural tropes of our society that we don’t even realize we can question, will help us in ways we can’t even imagine today.

That’s what I’m puzzling over.

Update: News of the existence of Orgasm Logger is still spreading, and it’s still getting the typical, puzzled and, in some cases, even hostile reactions I can pretty much expect from the mainstream world-at-large. Latest sighting was at a site called Dear Sugar.

Comments (9)

Monday, January 7, 2008

Because Submissive is an Orientation

Category labels: BDSM psychology, Beginner BDSM, D/s dynamics, Male sexuality, Myths and misconceptions, Personal history, Sex

Why are kinky people kinky? If you’re kinky, can you tell me why you are that way? Ask a kinky person this and I bet the most likely answer you’re going to get is “I don’t know; I just am.” Interestingly, ask a gay person why they’re gay, and you’ll get the same answer. Conclusion? It’s not rocket science. Kinky is an orientation, too.

But let’s delve a little deeper, noting for the moment that we will try to avoid the natural chicken-and-egg debate that always erupts from such digging.

We know there are lots of kinds of kinky, but they don’t. I know that a sexual orientation has lots of facets, different pieces that together form the make up of someone’s sexuality, the combined physical, psychological, social, emotional, and spiritual makeup of an individual. But again, they don’t.

Sexual orientation itself is a word most often thought of as a definition for someone’s desire for a particular sex, as in a physical anatomical construct, even though the word sexual, as implied earlier is often understood as a combination of so many more things than simply physical sex.

So, today, I propose that submissive is an orientation—a facet of desired sexual expression—of psychological power, just as straight is an orientation of sex.

It’s not a radical thought. It’s been talked about before. It’s very straightforward, and I’m sure even without a thorough explanation of what I mean most of you already know what I’m talking about. You know what I’m talking about, I’m willing to bet, because you feel it, too. Some of you are dominant—a valid orientation, as top reciprocates bottom, as gay reciprocates gay, and straight reciprocates straight—and some of you are switches.

Yet, somehow, I think the reciprocal ideas and validity that a sexual orientation that defines a desire for a particular sex and/or gender has done for ideas like “gay,” and “straight,” have not done the same thing for “submissive” or “dominant” because these “power orientations” (for want of a better phrase) haven’t been recognized as valid pieces of sexual componentry, only of sexual expression. In other words, being submissive is recognized as a valid expression of sexual desire (and even that’s pushing it, I know), but it’s still not recognized as a valid component of one’s sexual psyche.

This is wrong.

Being submissive is who I am sexually. I can not imagine being any other way. Furthermore, I have always been submissive sexually. The very first sexualized memory I have is one of a fantasy that involves orgasm control, and ever since then and probably from well before, control and power have been inexorably linked to my expressions of sexual fulfillment. In other words, for me sexual arousal is tied to feeling submissive; I rarely, if ever, feel turned on unless I also feel submissive (in one of myriad ways).

On this very blog, before I could articulate such concepts (which, somewhat amazingly, was only last year), I see vestiges of my submissive self thinking about this very thing, wondering “Is there such a thing as regular sex?” Regular sex, I defined at the time, was sex without a dominant or submissive power dynamic, sex devoid of the expressions of power imbalance that, to me (I am learning), are intrinsic to the very core of my sex drive. Without this power imbalance, and specifically without the power imbalance shifted so that I am a submissive participant, the sex is not sexy for me.

This makes sense. There are, obviously, no surprises here, and I came to the same conclusion in March of 2007 as I did today. It makes sense that I would get off being the submissive partner because I’m obviously submissive, doesn’t it? What’s the big revelation?

The revelation comes from the observation that this fact, this obvious and self-evident expression of who I am and how I want to fuck is not given a status anywhere near that even of the still-oppressed gay and lesbian identities are given. Homosexuality is regarded by mostly everyone, including its vocal opponents, as a part of who someone is. It’s recognized and understood to be intrinsic to a person’s sexual understanding. Can the same be said for those of us who seek submission and/or dominance?

Are you sure? I’ve heard people ask, “Is kinky the new gay?” Maybe this is why they’re asking.

In this day and age when same-sex civil union is a hot-button issue, and we as a species are still seemingly so far away from any kind of reconciliation with one another’s basic anatomical differences (including skin color, for pete’s sake!), any attempts to challenge this perceived as threatening to our insular social order are literally eviscerated from the community as though they were cancers. This is somewhat more understandable when you change your perspective and notice the similarities between that behavior and the behavior of our own cells that attack tumors in exactly the same way. But at least we, as a species, are getting better.

As Robert Wright reminds us, cooperation eventually trumps competition. At one point in history each Greek city-state thought villagers from other Greek-city states were subhuman, but eventually all Greeks agreed that all other Greeks were human—it was just the Persians that were subhuman. With our networked world today, by and large, we no longer see geographical boundaries as the ones that divide us and instead of where we live we’ve come to focus on how we live.

The fact of the matter is that I don’t want to live like certain other men. More topically, I don’t want to have sex like them. I’m often asked why I feel that way, which is a bewildering question to me. “Why don’t I want to have sex like that?” I repeat, dumbfounded, nine times out of ten. “Because it’s not sexy for me!”

“Why not?” the issue is pressed.

“Well, why do you think that’s sexy for you?” I insist.

“I don’t know. I just do.”

“Exactly.” Because submissive is an orientation.

Comments (28)

Thursday, December 20, 2007

The Sexism of Sex and Smarts

Category labels: Male sexuality, Masculinity, Myths and misconceptions, Personal history, Politics of sex, Sexism

Sex and smarts have always been at odds with each other culturally for some reason I haven’t been able to identify yet. Everyone is aware of this fact and yet, despite my many inquiries into the subject, no one I’ve talked to seems to fully understand this odd relationship. That makes me feel at once smart and stupid, which makes me feel at once sexy and unattractive. And that is, in fact, quite a strange relationship, wouldn’t you say?

There is a double standard in this. Smart people are considered sexy, desirable, and clearly wanted for their smarts. At the same time, smart people are the ones most often considered to be the least sexy for all other reasons. When we are younger, the smart people are the nerds and dorks who are bookworms, loners, and considered “losers,” and are most certainly part of the populous that is most unfuckable.

After all, schooling and education has never been thought to be about intelligence but rather preparation for the great, holy, more-important goal of becoming a productive member of society. Well, it certainly does a good job of trying to make you conform to fit its molds, and it makes most people miserable in the process. It’s not about you, it’s about what you can do for your country: school is patriotism at its worst.

Yet, when we are no longer in school and no longer find ourselves in environments where a sense of belonging (wanting to be “one of the popular kids”) is more important to us than a sense of safety (”how am I going to pay these bills?”), suddenly being smart is a huge sexual asset. This is obviously because “smart” people are generally far more capable at providing safety than dumb ones.

Or are they?

Let’s take a look at that assumption for a moment. I was taught, even threatened, throughout much of my life that intelligence is what I needed to make my way through the world. “If you don’t get straight A’s,” I was once told as a boy, “you’ll never get into a good college and you’ll have a harder time of finding a good job and then you’ll never be able to make it as an adult.”

Parenting tip from me to you: if you ever want to really scare a child, tell them they’ll never make it as an adult. It’s not going to make them do what you tell them to, but it’s certainly going to give them second thoughts about wanting to wake up the next morning. Or maybe they’ll just become obsessed with Peter Pan.

As we become sexualized, we are indoctrinated with another gem of a truism: “Women’s value comes from their sex appeal: To succeed as a woman, just be sexy.” According to conventional gender wisdom, all women in positions like CEOs, businesspeople, politicians, or other leadership roles probably got there by fucking the real decision-maker’s brains out (who was obviously a man). Likewise, women who are actresses, models, or any other field based largely on looks have to be a very specific kind of beautiful, and, naturally, sexy in some way.

Even though we know intellectually that this just isn’t always accurate, it’s still considered to be implacable. Today, after long, hard battles fought primarily by feminists, women are allowed to be smart—they just also have to be sexy. If they’re not, their smarts stop being a good thing and turn into a bad thing. As a woman, if you’re too smart, suddenly your brain has become a huge liability.

And what’s “too smart”? A recent New York Times article, Should Hillary Pretend to Be a Flight Attendant? makes the case that “too smart” means “smarter than men.” As part of his conclusions on a two-year speed-dating study, Mr. Fisman, who is a Columbia economics professor, is quoted as saying the following about men’s perceptions of a woman’s intelligence:

…even in the 21st century, many men are still straitjacketed in stereotypes.

[…]

“We found that men did put significantly more weight on their assessment of a partner’s beauty, when choosing, than women did. We also found that women got more dates when they won high marks for looks.”

He continued: “By contrast, intelligence ratings were more than twice as important in predicting women’s choices as men’s. It isn’t exactly that smarts were a complete turnoff for men: They preferred women whom they rated as smarter — but only up to a point … It turns out that men avoided women whom they perceived to be smarter than themselves. The same held true for measures of career ambition — a woman could be ambitious, just not more ambitious than the man considering her for a date.

This is hardly surprising, though it is rather depressing and the short New York Times article makes this point with such starkness that it is also very remarkable. I can imagine most feminists are seeing this as a battle cry to “protect the rights of smart women,” a noble and important goal to be sure:

Catalyst, an organization that studies women in the workplace, found that women who behave in ways that cleave to gender stereotypes — focusing on collegiality and relationships — are seen as less competent. But if they act too macho, they are seen as “too tough” and “unfeminine.”

Ms. Belkin said that another study shows that men — and female secretaries — are not considered less competent if they dress sexy at work, but female executives are.

Women still tend to be timid about negotiating salaries and raises. Men ask for more money at eight times the rate of women.

Victoria Brescoll, a Yale researcher, found that men who get angry at the office gain stature and clout, even as women who get angry lose stature because they are seen as out of control.

However, for all this research focused on women, I am wondering where the analysis of the men is happening, if it’s happening at all! Specifically, the question we need to ask is not (only) “why are women judged so harshly on looks,” but rather “why are men so afraid of their own shortcomings?” And indeed, men have stereotypically always been afraid of their own (ahem) shortcomings, haven’t they?

Whatever dating studies reveal, part of the key to empowering women lies with understanding men. Not just masculinity, but men. Not just their gender role, but their gender identity. Not just who they are and how they behave, but why they behave the way they do.

We always need to ask why. Always. And, we need to have solid reasons for our answers.

So why is a smart and sexy woman threatening to a man? I posit that it might have something to do with a perceived disparity of privilege and, more specifically, with the fact that our culture sees value in a woman’s appearance that it does not see in a man’s. A woman’s sexiness is based on (surprise!) sex, whereas a man’s sexiness is based on smarts, power, influence, or money, which is, let’s see here…not sex (though these things certainly can be made sexual and when they are I find them rather sexy).

The point is that a man can’t be considered sexy unless he’s also got something else going for him, and a woman can’t have something else going for her unless she’s also considered sexy. This is why my painfully-obviously brilliant friend Calico and I end up talking for hours about why I don’t feel sexy and why she doesn’t feel valued in non-sexual ways even though I’ve been told countless times that I’m sexy and wanted and even though she’s been told countless times that she’s supremely intelligent (and not just by me).

In the end, to the world at large, it doesn’t matter. I get judged on my smarts, and she gets judged on her looks. And that’s not fair to either one of us.

All of this begs the question: so what’s the value of intelligence? And what’s the value of sexiness? I don’t really know how to answer those questions (beyond elementary concerns) yet, but I’m starting to wonder if the answers we once thought had to be so different from one another actually may be more alike than we could possibly have imagined.

Comments (15)

Wednesday, December 12, 2007

The rules of flirting are sexist and wrong

Category labels: BDSM psychology, Bisexuality, Bitter and jealous, Communication, D/s dynamics, Gender fluidity, Myths and misconceptions, Personal history, Politics of sex, Sexism

When I was a little boy, I was uncomfortable in social situations. My mother has a VHS videocassette of me in kindergarten. In it, I am sitting on one of my teachers’ lap while all the other girls and boys are sitting in a circle.

“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:

Compliment someone on something specific such as one’s jewelry or choice of attire.
Move into personal space with a touch, gesture, or other motion, such as by offering a massage or initiating snuggling.
Buy an ephemeral or otherwise insignificant gift such as flowers or a card.
Capitalize on a subtle opportunity to communicate positively such as remembering a birthday or other personally important date or time mark.
Present oneself with particularly physically alluring traits such as specific, perhaps revealing, styles of dress.
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.
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.

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Wednesday, September 26, 2007

Stupid, stupid gay tops are just as bad as other men and women

Category labels: BDSM psychology, Emotions, Personal history, Rant, Stupid dominants

I realize this is very old news but I wanted to share this little gem of a message I receieved the other day on the piss-poor web site ALT.com. For fairness (and because it’s funnier that way), I’ll quote the thing in full without breaks:

Master has attached a copy of his profile.
It may be a little long but if you read it you will understand Master better. Read what Master has to offer and wants.
There are a few question in the profile for you to answer.
Reply show respect.

—— Profile Attached ——-

Master owns His bussiness and hom.
Free of all STD’s and drugs; as slave must be!
Sane and safe.

Over five years Experience as a true MASTER.

Slave should be 18 to 38; slave should be in good shape and health.

If slave is free of all STD’s not just HIV, AIDS but herpes and all STD’s then MASTER willing to talk with and plan on relocating; live in, room and board.

Master looking for a slave to care for all slave’s needs.

********************READ FUTHER**************************

> Master is free of all STD’ as slave must be.
> ARE YOU FREE OF ALL STD’s?
> Master will give his slave room and board.
> Master wants a Master slave relationship and more.
> Master has been train to be a Master over eight years.
> Master has been an active Master for five years.
> Master’s last slave need to tend to his mother.
> Master want a slave who knows it’s place.
> Master know what He wants from his slave.
> Master is safe and sane. Owns his home and businesses.
> Master need to know if slave has any medical needs.
> Master want to know if slave has food slave can not eat.
> Master can help relocate if we get to that point.
> Limits respected

Slave’s reply will show respect.

Okay, I could rip into this forever. Respect? No, that’s not something you’re going to get.

For instance, it’s clear to me this person is suffering from some kind of disassociative state since he only seems capable of referring to himself in the third person. Maybe he’s spent so much time looking at himself in a mirror he forgot he’s not actually two people. I actually have additional evidence to support this hypothesis; along with this articulate writing sample came a cropped photo of a naked man’s body obscured only slightly by the camera’s own flash. I can thus also deduce that this person doesn’t know how to use the timer feature on a digital camera. I’m frankly impressed he can use a keyboard seeing as how he can’t even keep his facts about himself straight. (Five years ‘experience’? Eight years? Oh fuck it all, why not fifteen years?)

However much fun the ripping into is, this message does actually illustrate what’s been said dozens of times before, but is interesting because it’s an example of a gay man doing it. I don’t think that’s something a lot of people realize happens, or if they do realize it happens, don’t realize just how similarly pathetic and stupid it is as all the straight women (and straight men!) who do similar things. It’s at least illuminating to see the cold, hard copy-and-pasted evidence that this shit goes on regardless of sexual orientation.

A variant on the above example is also the reason why I’ve never been able to find myself that interested in the gay leather community, rife with its protocols and traditions. Whereas this man is simply pathetic and arrogant (a dangerous combination if you ask me), the gay leather scene that I’ve encountered is rigid and formalized, with a much more unyielding cultural structure, an expected path. This is especially true for younger men.

It is identical, in my mind, to the completely head-in-ass thought process that leads “normal” people to think that school, then college, then a job, then marriage, then kids, and then a house is going to bring them happiness and fulfillment regardless of personal feelings. In the gay leather scene, this path is often being a bottom, usually some daddy’s boy, getting trained or “molded,” thereby learning to serve, then eventually growing up and becoming a daddy by one’s self. (Yes, I do realize this is a narrow view of the gay leather scene, but I’m not talking about the scene at large. I’m talking about the one I’ve experienced directly.)

In all of these things are expectations; expectations like these make me angry. Jaw-clenchingly, fist-poundingly, I-want-you-to-try-to-hit-me-as-hard-as-you-can angry. They do not make me feel submissive. Anger, I think, completely destroys submission because submission, by its very nature in a relationship context, is voluntary.

I get angry whenever I feel as though I’m being saddled with expectations that I interpret as matching any of these very touchy chords—touchy because I’ve always had long-standing battles with authority figures since I was 6 or so. It’s not only a kink thing. I still don’t speak to my mother very often because our relationship has been on rocky footing since she all but forced me to attend a religious school I despised. I’ve seen her once in maybe the last half year, and she lives not three blocks away from me. (Perhaps this is a shame; there are things about her, like her staunch persistence, that I admire.)

But tell me to do something without apparent reciprocal gain or respect, expect it of me, and you’ll only strengthen my resolve to fight back or give me impetus to “rebel.” (What an immature word; damn useless thesaurus.)

This is not actually at odds with my sexually submissive tendencies at all, by the way. My sexually submissive tendencies are self-serving, self-centered, and selfish, as are yours, and they’re healthy that way.

Also, in case someone’s thinking it (because I know someone is), non-consensual fantasies and fetishes are not a waiver of liability to disregard a partner or place your own expectations on them. So fuck non-con bull shit. I love non-con stuff, but if you think that submission or even so-called “slavery” (and certainly that crap about 24/7 “Total Power Exchange” in whatever form it shows up) is non-voluntary then you’re headed towards a disaster. Voluntary means free of coercion, duress, or undue inducement, which is not the same thing as consent (which merely means, in English, to say okay).

Comments (9)

Tuesday, August 28, 2007

The kink culture of fear

Category labels: BDSM psychology, Community, Kink events, Masochism, Myths and misconceptions, Personal experience, Personal history, Spanking and paddling, Strap-ons and dildos, Stupid submissives, Whipping

Where do I start? Do I begin with the retelling of the stories from years now long past, or with this weekend? It’s hard to tell what would be more effective. This weekend, while filled with spectacularly virginal experiences for most people in the realms of play, pain, pleasure, and of course sex, was actually somewhat old news to me. After all, unlike for most of my friends, this was not my first BDSM convention.

So what was new for me? Some play was new, like participating in a friend’s gangbang fisting along with seven other people, getting suspended in rope bondage by two switches, and getting jumped by I don’t even know how many people for a “forced” sex scene. Those things were new for me, but after the fact I am finding that my mind is reflecting on quite another element of this past weekend that is new to me.

For the first time in my life and the first time in all the (more than five) years I’ve spent in the public BDSM community, I felt that other people who are not necessarily friends actually respect me for more than just my pain tolerance, that they began to actually see some things about me that don’t have to do with how hard I like to be hit.

As a person who primarily bottoms, I’ve often felt that people in general only listen to me when I talk about what it’s like to get hurt. It’s as if, in their minds, all I am is a punching bag. For some reason, it’s hard for people—even other bottoms—to see bottoms as anything else.

The awful phrase “take it like a man” rings loudly in my ears whenever I see this because more than anything else I see it cause self-doubt in men who bottom, and makes them afraid they won’t be able to “take enough pain.” I will instantly confess that I, too, once felt and sometimes still feel this pressure. I think this is stupid.

Mind you, I have little trouble playing the part of a punching bag. In fact, I rather like it, I think I’m very good at it, and wish I had more opportunities for it sometimes. But after more than five years of interacting with people at large, being a punching bag is a very unsatisfying, frustrating social existence. It’s made even worse by the fact that I’m a rather picky punching bag to begin with—I don’t let just anyone hit me. You have to earn it first.

On the first night of the three-day weekend, as a kind of appetizer scene, I got whipped ’til I bled and that night the white hotel sheets were speckled red. Shortly after the whipping scene was over, Anita Velez, the official event photographer, asked if she had permission to take a photo of my back (I said yes). After that, Eileen and I found her again and asked her for a photograph of our own.

On the second night, after I fisted my friend along with seven other people, I got suspended in a rope bondage scene, and then after that I got jumped by I don’t even know how many people who all beat my arms, ass, thighs, and chest ’til they were bruised using a rubber nightstick, an acrylic cane, and some other heavy objects I couldn’t identify due to the spandex hood they put over my head. They pushed an NJoy wand into my ass and then made me go down on some of them while beating my already-whipped back with what I’m pretty sure was a rubber tire tread flogger. (I had felt that particular rubber flogger before.)

On the third night I got bound in a hog-tie with my hands behind my back and my legs kept bent with thick leather belts. Once secured, I was again beaten on my back and ass, this time with what I could identify as a (probably deerskin) flogger, a flat paddle-like object (but it was small, so I’m guessing a kitchen implement), and a heavy rubber taws, among other things. The rubber taws hurt the most, especially when it struck my already-bruised ass.

So like I said, I rather enjoy playing the part of a capable punching bag.

Of course, I got the usual, “Wow, great job,” awed comments from all sorts of people who had seen us play (and who I didn’t even know were watching the scenes). I also eventually overheard from second-hand accounts that others had more negative remarks, such as things like “That’s wrong; you should never crack a whip on someone’s back.” (Fuck that, whoever you are, by the way. I’ll play the way I want, thank you very much.)

Of course, this wasn’t really the hardest Eileen and I have ever played with a single-tail. I even have another picture of more marks taken some time ago, for example. I have been beaten much worse before, like the week before that previous photo was taken; Eileen gave me my first caning which an inch-wide acrylic artist’s cylinder, which resulted in purple and yellow bruises that lasted well over a week and a half. Another time, my friend who made the tire-tread flogger brought over a wooden table leg and bruised my thighs so badly that they swelled to the point where I could no longer fit into my jeans.

Nevertheless, people were still impressed by the intensity of my play this weekend and they still expressed their respect in the form of an appreciation for my personal preferences for pain. Misguided as I think this expression is, I did (and still do) enjoy the recognition.

This kind of misplaced respect happens to me all the time. It’s happened many times in the past, when “heavy” single-tail scenes have earned me the respect of someone who prior to witnessing it didn’t seem to think very much about me.

In 2003 I was a fixture of the New York BDSM scene among the ranks of TES members, quickly earning a reputation as the quiet, shy boy in the corner who watched but never played. Reminiscent of all my school years, most people treated me with an uninterested attitude evidenced by their neglect to acknowledge my words or my presence. Later that year at TES-Fest I had my first single-tail scene that ended with band-aids and a giddy if somewhat worried pair of tops who relished in retelling the story of how the waifish, quiet boy took the hardest whipping either of them had ever given. I’ll admit to being very surprised at my own enjoyment and what I interpreted back then as “stamina” and now simply call my usual preference. All of a sudden people were coming up to me and remarking on how impressed they were with me.

The lesson was clear: to get noticed, play extremely hard.

Even though I was certainly getting noticed a lot more, I hardly felt respected. Perhaps that seems strange to many people because playing that way is exactly how a lot of people who bottom, such as myself, earn respect in the scene. (We would all also be wise to remember Richard’s words when he reminds us that the scene is actually representative of a tiny minority of kinky people and we are, for the most part, the public exception to the normal kinky person.)

We play “hard.” We can “take more.” We have a “higher pain tolerance.” We can “handle it.” Tops respect us because we can challenge them, bottoms respect us because they’d consider themselves broken by things we consider warm ups. People think we deserve respect because of the way we play, because they are scared of how we play. And they’re completely wrong.

Bottoms who don’t play as hard as I do feel bad about it; they feel frightened and inadequate. What a horrible shame that is. Tops who don’t want to rip open flesh or turn skin rainbow colors or emotionally batter a bottom until they sob and beg also feel bad about not wanting to do these things. Again, what a horrible shame that is.

Respect should not be accorded based on someone’s preferred physical intensity of play, and yet every time I play that way in public I get at least someone coming up to me and saying, in an often dejected tone of voice, “I could never do that.” I try to tell them that they don’t have to, that it’s silly to think they should try if they don’t want to. As Eileen said cleverly before me,

And then let’s talk about the fuckupery of according respect to a scene member based upon the intensity of their play. What kind of logic is that? That’s like saying that you respect The Rolling Stones more than The Beatles because The Rolling Stones are louder. Respect isn’t about what people do in the scene; it’s about how they do it. I have young friends who have been in the scene just as long as me, who don’t get the respect I do because they don’t have the balancing factor of being intense players as a weapon to carve out a place for themselves. God help you if you’re perfectly content with a light spanking now and then. The patrionizing smiles will probably drown you.

(Emphasis added.)

In other words, I’m not more worthy of respect than any other bottom because I have a higher pain tolerance than they do. If you respect me for that reason, I feel invisible. I’m worthy of respect because I have impeccable judgement, a razor-sharp mind, incredible intellect, a generous attitude, a commitment to my scene partner as well as myself, and because I respect these same things in others. If you respect me for that reason, I feel seen.

So this weekend I didn’t feel respected when I was asked “How much were you really struggling in that take down scene?” I didn’t feel respected by the people who thought I was on the Power Bottoming panel because I like to limp for days after I play. I definitely didn’t feel respected by all the people who stopped me in the hallways and told me what an intense scene they saw me do (though, again, I did appreciate the kind words and enjoyed the obvious admiration and surprise—I don’t look like someone who likes to scream until my throat is hoarse, but I do).

On the other hand, I did feel respected when a fellow attendee approached me and asked for my opinions regarding TES’s web site (and others) because he had heard people mention my name in conversation about the topic. Likewise, I also felt respected when people came up to me privately after some of my presentations and told me that they thought I had made good points, that I articulated myself well, and that I exposed them to something new and provoked some new thought or insight inside of them.

Thanks to the transman who told Eileen and I that we had finally articulated his primary kink in our Sexual Teasing and Denial presentation. Thanks to the young woman who taught me the word cyberbalkanization in my Sex and Technology presentation. Thanks to the people who congratulated me on my bravery and willingness to get naked on the first night in front of more than thirty clothed people during the demo for the G and P Spot Stimulation presentation.

In other words, thanks for seeing underneath all the cuts and bruises and welts. Thanks for rejecting the rhetoric that to be worth a damn as a bottom you need to have a pain tolerance that rivals a super hero’s. That’s the kind of thing that makes most men think they need to be stoic and “strong” when they are in pain, which is stupid because the last thing a sadist wants to see when they’re hurting someone is a lack of painful reaction (duh).

The people who did this with sadness and envy in their voices made me the most upset at the BDSM community’s constant self-aggrandizement through what amounts to nothing more than fear mongering. The people who I think should be the most ashamed of this are the ones who call themselves teachers, who present so-called “classes” in thinly-veiled attempts to advertise themselves as “intense players” in order to earn what they think is credibility and respect, like the one Switch encountered and wrote about in her post.

Those people are spreading a culture of fear through BDSM that is damaging to people’s self-esteem (both bottom’s and top’s), to the BDSM community’s image in mass media, and—most importantly—to their own partners. Playing at a certain physical intensity is simply one very mechanical aspect of what makes a scene work. It is natural that players with more physically intense tastes would be drawn to one another. There should be no reason to fear that you’re “not playing hard enough.”

It’s just a matter of BDSM chemistry. No one’s going to put you down for liking blondes over brunettes. Don’t let people put you down for liking, or not liking, a certain kind of play.

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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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Wednesday, August 1, 2007

Your fantasy is not reality, and you should know better

Category labels: BDSM psychology, Fantasy, Femdom, Personal history, Vanilla life

A major problem many people have is the inability to draw distinctions between one thing and another. This is especially true when the separation between two things are gradated. To simplify the problem, most people resign to black and white distinctions, this or that, tearing things apart that are inherently interwoven together into what they perceive as separate strands. It’s as if they believe doing so will magically reveal all that which created the thing in the first place. But they are misguided, at best, and purposefully destructive at worst.

Many things about me are more than the sum of my parts. While it is certainly possible to break these parts away from one another, doing so reveals information only about my constituent parts in their new, isolated context. I should know; I continually undergo this exercise as part of watching myself growing older.

Possibly the saddest of things to fail to distinguish in my opinion are the emotional paradoxes brought on by sexual fantasy. It creates a situation where most people structure their relationships around their fantasies, when they should be structuring their fantasies around their relationships.

Trinity said it another way:

I was honestly flummoxed (though not surprised) when he didn’t understand. Wouldn’t it be better for someone to accept your service because you’re you than because you’re a boy?

I mean, I get the whole “I’m just one of many, depersonalized, a number in a harem” as sexual fantasy. But the guy in question is so obsessed with asserting he’s not talking about fantasy when he is… that befuddles me.

Fantasy is fine and great, when clearly marked.

As did Richard:

For other men it is just another sort of hot sex fantasy. But they don’t know how to distinguish the source of the thrill from actuality.

A couple of women have based lucrative careers on promoting this: Sutton, Abernathy.

And there is a legion of telephone prodommes who invoke the rhetoric as a means of attracting clients.

Unfortunately, the rhetoric is sexually exciting at first glance and too few people are trained in the skills required to control their own immediate gratification to put thought into their emotions and see the rhetoric’s flaws.

Inequality turns me on. As a result of that, I enjoy fantasies of female superiority over males when I’m feeling like submitting to feminine authorities. Long have I had dreams, like most submissive men, of being objectified and degraded because of pieces of my identity: my gender, my physical attributes.

Some fantasies are quite vivid. I remember one from when I was barely a teenage boy (maybe 13 or so) of being captured by a race of women who kept me bound in a dark cave (where there were other such helpless male victims in abundance) with a substance similar to super powerful spider’s webbing and whose only contact with me would be to feed me food and drink and occasionally come to “collect” my ejaculate. A classic fantasy, really, undoubtedly from the mind of a youth twisting science fiction imagery to suit his preferred sexual expression.

As I grew older, I maintained the same fantasies, but the imagery changed somewhat. Instead of science fiction, I more often used personal experiences as fuel. As I was more-or-less in school at the time, school-grounds were a favorite locale where the girls (and sometimes certain boys) could take sexual advantage of me in all manner of creative ways. The image above has been a favorite source of this kind of fantasy for many years now.

In that way, I enjoyed the fact that I was as skinny as a twig and frightfully anemic. My sexual fantasies of being overpowered actually dissuaded me from taking care of my body and ensuring my own health back then.

That’s the kind of inability to distinguish fantasy from reality that I’m talking about. When it’s so personal, as that is, and when you crave something so much, as I did, you don’t want to let reality get in the way of your fantasies. There’s not anything wrong with trying to live in reality more elements of your fantasies. I do that all the time. But I’m only successful when I take reality into account.

Doing anything else is foolhardy.