Ever since all that life-rebuilding stuff I’ve been doing in Sydney to get from the “Oh my god, how am I going to maintain positive cash flow?” state of mind to the “Wow, I’m really enjoying my new job” one, most of my thoughts haven’t been geared towards kink. Eileen and I aren’t playing quite as regularly because we’re both super busy, and besides, we still don’t have most of our toys back anyway. Not that we can only ever play when we have a massive pile of leather and metal and hemp, but it helps.

Lately, however, a few things have happened that have put kink and sexuality back on my mind again. Obviously, the presentation Eileen and I did to kick-start the über Skill Share Workshops is one of them, but more specifically, it was the fallout of the workshops that was really interesting. We got some excellent feedback from the presentation, almost entirely positive, which I’m very happy with. Here’s a few snippets, with emphasis added by me:

informative – finally something that speaks to dominant women

Certainly interesting. Focus on chastity and denial with little on the tease build up. But good
good info

Excellent. Very knowledgeable and enthusiastic presenters. Interesting anecdotes and comments
very informative

excellent, very constructive and professional

informative, fun and very horny :-)

inspirational and realistic. Really interesting topic and well presented

informative, well presented, good structure and extremely worthwhile

interesting – gave a good range of perspectives

informative, Entertaining – good tips & things to think about. Thanks!

It was great. Very informative. It was a friendly environment

The really interesting bit was the first item, right up there at the top. Someone exclaimed relief that they had finally listened to something that spoke to dominant women. Wait a minute, aren’t there lots of things that speak to dominant women? I mean, aren’t there hundreds upon hundreds of submissive men and other dominant women milling about the place, whether online or in person, all talking about femdom and stuff? We all know that there are. Hell, there are even books!

But if you take a closer look, almost none of them are actually saying anything to dominant women about dominant women, and instead they’re all just regurgitating the same stereotyped male fantasies over and over again. In other words, there are no good materials from which dominant women can draw knowledge about how to be the dominant woman that they want to be. There’s no good resource (that isn’t a blog, as far as I know) that discusses the kinds of things necessary for self-discovery or sexual self-actualization, such as exploring what turns you on, and why.

In conversation the other day, the woman I was speaking with remarked on how her male friends found her own awkwardness in revealing her sexual proclivities to others strange. One of her male friends, she told me, said quite bluntly that he just tells other guys he likes to tie girls up, and they all think that’s great. This guy doesn’t understand that if he had any other sexual orientation or interests, or if he were not a male, then the people to whom he might announce this interest would not think so highly of him. Why? Because any proclamation other than a male-dominant, female-submissive heteronormative paradigm is seen as “abnormal.”

That’s why this woman, and most others I know, don’t go around telling other women how they’d love to tie boys up. That’s why boys like me don’t go around telling other boys that we’d love to have women tie us up. It’s just not met with the same kind of accepted “boys will be boys” attitude. It’s not “normal.”

Thanks in part to this idiocy, I’m sure, we end up with literature and resources that proclaim themselves to be femdom-themed and “aimed at women” but in fact do nothing other than mirror the supposed male fantasy ideal. As I was drafting this entry, I found that Calico may have said it most simply:

There’s a big difference between learning to be a good pro-domme […] and learning about your own dominance. They are not always interchangeable.

She should know. (She’s a pro.) Like most things, this is also a two-way street. Submissive men, for whom new and updated content seems to be in endless daily TGP-style supply, also have a sad lack of any really good material that speaks to their needs. But I don’t want to get distracted, so back to my original point, which is that no one’s really talking to dominant women….

The next day, I read a couple of emails from a chastity group I subscribe to. I almost never read these emails, and I wouldn’t have read this one either if it weren’t from a first-time female poster who was asking the group for advice. The original inquiry read as follows (emphasis added by me):

I am new to the group. My husband and I have used the CB for play over the past few years, but he has never been locked up longer than a few days at a time. To be honest, he seems to enjoy it more than me.

He has been wanting to be locked up for longer, so I put the cage on him a week ago. I let him take it off to go to work, and sometimes I take it off at night when I want to tease him.

How do I decide how long to keep him locked up. Also, what can I do to make this more fun for me?

If you have suggestions, please help.

Here’s what blew me away. She says—in what I can only describe as painfully blunt language—that the whole chastity thing isn’t really doing it for her right now and that her husband’s the one getting his fantasies fulfilled, not her. It just isn’t fun enough. Yet nobody, not one person who responded to her, said anything about her, or even any woman, at all. Every single sentence in every single response was focused solely on the guy in the chastity device and, of course, his penis not getting to squirt.

I don’t know about you, but for me, it’s really hard to get my rocks off when someone pulls a garden gnome out from under the bed and starts yodeling at me. I’m not frigid, I just don’t get off on garden gnomes and yodeling. If you do, great, and if I like you enough and we can agree on some additional, mutually enjoyable activity, then I’ll probably even go along for the garden gnome yodeling sex session every so often. But the fact of the matter is, it’s just not going to be as exciting for me as it is for you.

If you think this analogy is unfair, take a look at some of the absolutely horrific responses this woman got to her post. Here’s the very first response:

Maam,
For the past 4 months I have been locked up in a CB 3K.  Here is how things work at my house:

1.  It doesn’t come off except for showering and she stands there and watches me so I can’t jack off (Every guy is going to jack off at work if you take it off for them to go there).

2.  I am required to deliver a minimum of two, but as many orgasms as demanded using my tounge most evenings.  I am so hard, and dripping so badly with the sorest balls imaginable after this.

3.  If I do not get to cum, I get milked every week but into a condom and I must consume the contents.

4.  If I had a nocturnal or other unauthorized ejaculation, my cock and balls are punished pretty intenseley.

5.  Sometimes when I have pleased her and am given the opportunity to cum, she will release me, have me roll a single dice, and that is how many minutes I get to cum. If I don’t, then tough luck.

Thanks Maam.

If you think that’s bad, here’s the second response, supposedly by a woman:

 
Ann ,I  somewhat agree with geoge;s list to start with ! Most deafly Keep him LOCKED when goin to work ! Try 24 hours for min of two weeks ? Switch roles and use Strap-on on him ! Milk his prastate also Very Important ! Do just as geoge said ! Cuckholding is also Very Good and Can be LOTS of fun for you ! Especially if ypour hubby avg sized and you can Find Well Hung Stud to use in front him !   Good Luck !

Mistress Coral

Okay, okay, surely the good responses just take a bit longer to arrive, right? Um…wrong. Here’s the third response:

Try this.

Put it on him. Tell him you’re giving him a longer period, but don’t say how much – tell him you haven’t decided.

Next, think of some things you really want him to do for you.

Then just let him simmer till he asks to be let out. First time he asks tell him to wait a while. Then start making conditions.

Meanwhile don’t take it off at night. If you want tease, have him satisfy you in other ways.

Sigh. I could go on, but I think you get the picture.

What does any of this have to do with answering her question, or even with her at all? Nothing. Which, for any of you unable to follow along at home, means she probably didn’t find it all that hot (even if other submissive guys did).

You see, that’s the thing about male submission. It’s been so utterly divorced from female dominants, segregated by this absolutely unbreachable moat around the castle of male fantasy (with all of its very long, very hard, very locked-up spires), that there’s just no way for womankind—dominant or not—to have any hope of actually penetrating it. Which I think is odd, considering how much some of these guys seem to enjoy being penetrated.

You don’t have to read past the first sentence in most of these responses to see that they’re entirely dick-driven, that absolutely none of them—not a single bullet point in any of the responses—have to do even the tiniest bit with how she’s feeling, or what she might want out of the chastity play. So what if you get off on having her not tell you how long she’ll keep you locked up for? What’s in it for her? Is “satisfy you in other ways” really the best you can come up with?

Why is nobody talking about the sexual rushes she might feel (instead of what the guy’s tongue may or may not be doing), or the feeling of power and self-empowerment that being sexually dominant might engender in her? Modern waves of feminism may have done heaps for women in the workforce, but they seem to have done absolutely squat for women who want to find good resources on being dominant.

Of course, none of this is all that surprising. Send an email to a group of locked-up guys who probably haven’t been having a lot of orgasms recently and I suppose you can’t expect much more than dick-driven responses. Like Robin Williams said (sort of), God gave all men a penis and a brain, but he only gave most men enough blood to run one at a time.

That, of course, doesn’t even begin to address the issue of whether or not submissive men can even speak knowledgeably about the self-actualization of dominant women. After all, I know of no dominant women who can speak with much first-hand authority about the self-actualization of submissive men.

In the spirit of being the change I wish to see in the world, here’s a snippet of the response I sent to the original poster (privately):

 
I am a submissive man, myself, and my dominant girlfriend and I play with chastity, too. We both have a lot of fun with it. I love the control over me it gives to my girlfriend, but I wouldn’t like it if my girlfriend didn’t also enjoy it for her own sake. She finds our chastity play fun because she genuinely enjoys having the power to make decisions about my sexual state, but that is not necessarily what I would expect every woman to think was sexy.

The only way to make chastity play more fun for you is to find out what you think is sexy about it. Chastity play and sexual teasing of this nature should be fun for both you and your husband. You don’t have to be a mean and demanding bitch, like some of the responses might have implied, nor do you have to go find additional sexual partners, give up penetrative sex, or set goals or tasks for him to “achieve.” These are all just things that other people, mostly submissive men, have found to be arousing. Don’t feel bad if they don’t sound sexy to you.

The key to enjoying chastity is no different than it is to enjoying any sexual activity, for that’s what a chastity fetish is—a sexual activity. What other kinds of things, imagery, thoughts, scenarios, emotions, sounds, or other stimuli do you find erotic? What do you really enjoy? You don’t have to follow stereotypes, because sexual desires are individual.
 

So, I guess that’s why I was so heartened by seeing that first line of feedback from the presentation I gave with Eileen. Someone sees that we want to talk to dominant women. I hope more people start doing that—not least of all submissive men, since it’s kind of in their best interests to do so, y’know?