Liberty, sexuality... inequality

I once shared a flat with a very good (vanilla) friend of mine. He knows I'm kinky and never seemed to have a problem with it, until one day he said "I can understand bondage and stuff cos that's just sex, but someone who wants to be a slave must be mentally ill."

I didn't say anything, but I thought - Hmm. Maybe now isn't the best time to tell you that it wasn't actually me who cleaned the bathroom so nicely while you were off on holiday, but some naked guy I met off Recon...

A lot of people are faced with this dilemma. They want to be liberal and open-minded about us alternative lifestyle types, but that same liberalism balks at the inherent inequality in Dominant/submissive relationships. It just doesn't compute. Surely equality is one of the great achievements of the modern age, of the evolution of human society? Isn't it taking a backward to step to embrace its opposite?

The answer is that equality is a wonderful thing ... but inequality can also be pretty special, in context.

The truth is, of course we don't really have full equality in all our relationships, even here in the West where we like to congratulate ourselves on our progressiveness. Despite decades of legislation, women are not equal to men economically and bigotry still persists. On a more personal level, we all have unequal relationships. At work I have those who are under me and those who are above me. My working environment would not function without everyone respecting this hierarchy.

What is not discussed quite so freely is the fact that there are many people who do not want equality. Some women are very happy to be housewives and let their husbands be the sole breadwinners. Some people do not want to be promoted at work because they enjoy their job as it is and have no interest in taking on different responsibilities.

Why is it so hard to accept inequality? Probably because there is so much invested in the long, hard struggle for freedom that so many have fought and are still fighting. And at the core of it is something very precious, the concept of individual dignity, worth, rights and life. With human rights abuses continuing all over the world, it would be wrong to be complacent.

However, these two positions are not incompatable. A D/s relationship, as it based upon informed consent, is fundamentally an equal one. A BDSM slave is not literally the property of anyone, he can opt out of his 'ownership' any time he chooses. Though he is inferior in the relationship, this does not mean he is any less of a person generally... nor does it imply that he has a lesser value within the relationship. Many a novice Dominant thinks the best way to court a submissive is to talk down to him, insult him, call him worthless scum, etc., and while there are a few guys who will enjoy that, most subs and slaves do not actually see themselves as worthless, and neither does a good Top. A devoted, committed sub is the exact opposite, he is very much of worth - very precious in fact. Without them us Tops would be a pretty frustrated bunch!

Where the difference comes in is in the roles that people take on at different times and in different situations. At work I am in a position of responsibility and authority. Having dinner with friends I am in a position of equality. I don't become a different person, I just present the appropriate side of myself for the occasion that requires it.

For this reason, political correctness does not belong in the privacy of a D/s relationship. In the hetero kink world there are the Goreans, whose men are alpha males and whose women are treated as sex slaves. I once spoke to a submissive Asian guy who wanted me to play the part of his fantasy abusive racist skinhead. Is it fair to say that these people hate themselves? A bit too much cod psychology, I think. For them, like everyone, equality has a context.

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I don't do phone sex

Here is a poem I wrote once.
Just to show that I DO have a sensitive side...

I don't do phone sex
I don't do cyber
I just wanna know
If you take it up the khyber

Don't dial my number
Or log onto your computer
Unless it's to arrange
Me porking your tight pooper.

You can call me on my mobile
Or land line if you wish
But please keep it brief, my only relief
Is mounting is your pocket starfish.

No, I won't discuss my sordid life
With a boy in Londonderry
Unless he's hopping on a plane
For me to pop his cherry.

Log in, log out
What's it all about?
"Getting it online"?
I'd rather take my log and stick it
Where the sun don't shine.

I'd love to see your smutty jpegs
And a raunchy profile to link ta
But I need it real, I want to feel
The tightness of your sphincter.

Tap tap tap, blah blah blah
Maybe I sound too cocky?
But it's better, I've found, if you just come round
And be my sausage jockey!

Typing one-handed is fun I suppose
But if you're way over in China
I don't see the point as my knob is six thousand
Miles away from your mangina

Sex over the phone? I'd rather be alone
Today, tonight or tomorrow
I'm destined, I hope, to sow my wild oats
Deep inside your furrow.

I would like a high-speed connection
But not just to chat through the ether
I want a connection that's in the direction
Of something quite tasty beneath ya.

You can stimulate my brain for hours
But it just leaves me bereft
I don't want to probe your secret desires,
I want to probe your cleft.

Limerick:

The once was a guy from Brum,
Whose computer it made him quite glum,
He said "I'll chat till I'm blue,
But what's a guy gotta do
Just to get a bum chum?"

haiku:

July, the grey void -
Technology mocks my keen
Yearning for anus.

Millions are destined to love cybersex
Yes, I'm sure there must be legions
But I'm not interested until my knob's destined
For your nether regions!

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Who's the Daddy?

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Masculinity

What is a real man? The one wearing big, butch boots? Or the one licking those boots?

One of the most fascinating things about BDSM is the way in which it pays homage to traditional, old-fashioned concepts whilst simultaneously making us look at them in new ways.

A Dominant/submissive relationship uses restrictive archaic social structures as the basis for innovative modern relationships. A BDSM Master does not truly own another human being, except perhaps in an emotional sense if he has earned the devotion of his slave. A BDSM slave is not a real slave, he just uses the trappings of real slavery as a tool for the liberation of his own desires.

Traditional ideas about masculinity and superiority are celebrated - and also turned on their head. In gay vanilla culture there often exists an attitude that a top is in some way superior to a bottom. For a man to hold on to the man's role in penetration makes him 'better' than the one who takes the 'female' role. Some even look down upon bottoms, ridicule them (even if they are bottoms themselves), reserving all their respect and admiration for the manly penetrators.

It escapes many tops that respecting bottoms is very important, for two very good reasons:

(1) - Bottoms deserve our admiration for their willingness to provide the essential receptive role, which takes courage; the physical courage to expose themselves to potential pain from those tops who are less skilled than they should be, and the courage to stand up and declare themselves as bottoms in the face of ridicule and scorn from ignorant individuals who, for reasons based on old-fashioned bigotry, regard a bottom guy as being 'less of a man', or 'lazy' or in some way inferior to tops.

(2) - If you respect them, you get to shag them a LOT more often. :-)

How much more courageous, then, is a man who submits to the command and discipline of another man? The physical and mental endurance he suffers would make your average vanilla top wilt like a daffodil in a hurricane...

We love all the trappings of masculinity - the boots, the leather, the physical and mental strength and toughness, the authority to weild power - and these qualities are rightly prided in BDSM Tops who possess them. In a good Top, however, it goes beyond the surface. He must do more than just talk the talk, he must take on responsibility for the gift of submission he is receiving. He must cultivate the right kind of assertiveness, resilience, resourcefulness and wisdom that will drive the relationship in the right direction, for the benefit of both himself and his sub. He must become like a father figure who guides, instructs and above all protects those who depend upon him.

His sub possesses a different kind of courage and strength. Different, not inferior. There is more than one type of strength ... and more than one type of masculinity.

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Pain - Right & Wrong

Outsiders will sometimes look upon those of us with more unconventional desires and decide that what they are seeing is morally wrong. Pain is bad, surely?

Not so surely... Pain is a natural stimulus without which you would probably not be alive. Its biological function is to tell us that something potentially harmful is happening. The automatic response to this is to do something to make the pain stop, and thereby avoid/limit the harm.

We are more than just biological beings, however. We also have minds and we can interpret and perceive pain in different ways and for different reasons.

Should pain always be eliminated? Childbirth is usually a painful experience for the woman (modern medicine notwithstanding) yet no-one would say that childbirth is unnatural. Certainly not heterosexuals!

Many parents will use pain to punish their children, and this may just be out of anger or it may genuinely be an attempt to curb the child's bad behaviour. Whether or not this works is highly debatable, yet it remains socially acceptable so far in our society. If a parent uses pain as a deterent to stop a child doing something that is dangerous I can see the logic in its use. The pain is an instrument of protection - the fundamental motivation being love.

And what of self-inflicted pain? Marathon runners have to conquer physical pain barriers to excel at their vocation. They may be labelled masochistic - even by themselves - but only in jest.

I regularly go into a room with one or several other men and we spend an hour or so inflicting pain and some minor physical damage on each other. No-one calls us sexual perverts, though, because wrestling and martial arts is accepted as coming under the category of sport. Some would even say that the pain and suffering is 'character building' ... In the British Army raw recruits are tested for their mental toughness by 'milling' - they are put into a boxing ring with gloves and told to thump each other to see if they have got what it takes.

Similarly, many tribal cultures have initiation rituals as a rite of passage to adulthood which involves a painful ordeal. The Dinka of southern Sudan use scarification for this purpose. In Western culture tattooing serves a similar function.

In BDSM pain also has a purpose, or rather purposes. It may be perceived by the sub or slave as an adrenaline rush that enhances his sexual pleasure. It may be a way of proving himself, a kind of trial by ordeal. It can also of course be pure punishment, a tool of behaviour modification / attitude adjustment, to make the submissive more submissive. In this way the Top is helping the sub to reach a goal that they both desire.

No pain, no gain!

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What is Dominance?

OK, I've given this some thought. Maybe a bit too much!

I see Dominance in two different ways:

(1) in terms of the fundamental sexual characteristic, and

(2) in terms of the assumed role (what it "means" to be "a" Dominant):

* * *

(1) I perceive the essence of sexual Dominance (in myself and others) as being the complimentary opposite to submissiveness. A sub likes to serve and please; a Dom likes to be served and pleased. To be reductionist, it is a kind of selfishness.

When I have sex with someone I am motivated by my own pleasure. I like to get my own way, maximise the physical sensations for my satisfaction. If it is a vanilla encounter I get off on giving pleasure as I receive it - on MY terms - which obviously suits my partner very well, even though it is perhaps motivated by an arrogant/conceited desire to control someone else's sexual experience.

In a D/s encounter, of course, it's even MORE all about me! But although the mechanics are different, the same 'me' is there, taking what he wants from the other person and not worrying all that much about whether he is getting as much pleasure as I am.

I know this self-centered quality can be present in switches (and faux-subs) too, but when it is the overriding, central sexual characteristic of a person I think that is what spells D-O-M!

This quality is what a lot of subs are attracted to; they want someone who is a bit of a bastard, the 'unreconstructed typical male' who isn't softened by considerations of equality and fairness in sex.

The thing that lifts this above basic selfishness is the context of the relationship (committed or casual) and my perception of my role.

(2) True Dominance is my role as leader, guide, mentor, nurturer and protector. I have responsibilities towards my subs that come before my own gratification. I need to exercise self-discipline before I can competently discipline others, not that I strive to be perfect but because the more correct I am, the more correct I can make others.

I have to be strict sometimes, gentle at other times. I have to be patient when my sub is having genuine difficulty following my orders, and I have to be firm when I know he needs punishment, even if my inclination is to be lenient.

My duty is to lead him from the place where he is to the place that he wants to go to, but is afraid of. I have to teach him that fear can be faced and that pain is one of the unavoidable paths to fulfilment and happiness.

I have to be dependable, constant, strong and resourceful. When my sub needs me I have to be there for him to lean on. He needs to know that he is never alone. I have to be his rock.

* * *

If a person only has the first kind of Dominance he might make an exciting shag for a sub, but not a lot else. If he has the more 'noble' Dom qualities he obviously has a lot more to offer. I personally feel the closest affinity with someone who has BOTH.

(Apologies for the male slant here, I'm sure women can also be Dominant in both ways)

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