30 Days of Kink: Day 2.

 Day 2: List your kinks.

1. Butts

2. Butts

3. Buttttttsssss

With that out of the way... this one is difficult for me.  I've never really experienced sexuality as an itemized list of fetishes.  I can't say, like, "rope bondage, feet, having my nose tickled with an ostrich feather by a man dressed as my third grade teacher."  There's nothing so specific.

I'm more like "confronting the physicality of my own flesh," and that's great for poetry readings, not so much for actually figuring out what the fuck I'm going to do tonight.

I also say "I don't know yet; I'm still discovering" a lot.  I've been in the scene for, shit, seven years now, and I still feel like a newcomer when I see just how much is out there.  Or a kid in a candy shop, and I'm too caught up in "I want to try one of everything!" to start narrowing myself down.

And secretly, part of the reason I get all "I like almost everything, really I'm just into this for the philosophy" is that I do have some specific kinks, but I feel weirdly embarrassed and shy about them.  Like saying "I like to be dominated" is vague and sanitized enough to feel totally chill, but when I get too close to what really makes me squirm in my pants, saying "I like to get threatened that someone will shove a huge thing up my ass" gets uncomfortable.

Not so uncomfortable that I won't do it, though!  So, in no particular order:

1. Biting, punching, wrestling, and other forms of no-tools SM.  On a physical level I like flogging, but I liiiike skin-to-skin rough body play.

2. Things in my bum.  Like, a lot.  Like, I don't talk about this much because I know that if I get started I'm going to start sounding weird as it progresses from "oh yeah, anal sex, lots of people are into that" to "no, you don't understand, I would put a traffic cone in my ass if I could."

3. Related but not totally overlapping: the general concept of putting way too much phallic object in way too little orifice.  Again, it gets weird fast--I don't just mean "big dicks," I mean "...maybe two traffic cones."

4. Being held down and forced to do things, assuming that the things are exactly what I wanted to do anyway.  Inclusive of when I feel like doing them and who I want to do them with.  This all hinges on a very generous interpretation of the word "forced," obviously, but once we've established what exactly I want to be forced to do, the scene can get plenty rough.

5. Humiliation, but only in a specific way.  I don't want to be told that I'm useless; I want to be told that I'm useful, and the top will be using me now.  I like the feeling of being used.

It's weird how shy I felt about saying those things, and how "oh, is that all? that's not so bad at all" I feel having actually said them now.  Kind of a huge relief actually.



Next up: I'm finally getting back to Fifty Shades of Grey!

30 Days of Kink: Day 1.

I live!  I live!  I graduated nursing school, am still waiting for a test date for my boards, and I live!

I live, and I want to write again.  I've been writing every day on my tumblr, but that's not the same.  It's a big mishmash of puppy pictures and askboxes and stuff.  The Pervocracy is my real home on the Internet.

So, to get back in the swing of long-form non-puppy blogging, I'm doing a 30 Days of Kink challenge.  You can read all the questions here.

Day 1: Dom, sub, switch?  What parts of BDSM interest you?  Give us an interesting in-depth definition of what that means to you. Basically define your kinky self for us.

I'm a bottom, an occasional switch, and harbor a deeply guarded but deeply treasured capacity for submission.

The kinky thing I do most often is get hit.  I like getting hit.  It’s such an OOMPH of a feeling, a sharp snap into the physical reality of my body, the tough meatiness of my muscles and fine-grained sensitivity of my nerves.

It’s also a challenge.  Because although I like getting hit, I don’t have much pain tolerance.  Sometimes that means we keep it light, more of a manhandling than a real beating, only hitting me hard enough to make a little noise but not enough to cause serious pain.  (This kind of play usually involves a lot of giggling.)

Other times I go into a subspace trance and enter an ecstatic altered state where pain don’t hurt.  This requires a lot of trust, because once I’m in that state my communication gets either garbled or absent, and I don’t have much sense of my own limits.  Feels so good though.

And other times, more rarely… I go past my pain tolerance.  I get to a level of pain that makes me think “I can’t possibly deal with this” and I deal with it.  I look at the pain head-on and transform its image in my mind into heat, into cold, into red, into simply nerves firing.  I find a moment when I can tolerate intolerable pain and I hold myself in that moment.  It’s not as sexy-fun as the other two ways of dealing with pain, but when I’ve done it, man, I feel good about myself.  Tolerating the intolerable, even for half a second, makes me feel like the champion of the goddamn world.

I know how to hit, too, and I get a little thrill, but it’s usually much less visceral.  The best times have been when I’ve been comfortable getting really physically into the bottom’s space—hitting someone while we were skin-to-skin, pressed together so close that I could feel every gasp and flinch, every time their muscles tensed or relaxed, every deep or shallow or ragged draw of breath.

As for submission… there lurk the things that still feel wrong.  Gloriously, tantalizingly wrong.  These are the kinks, that for me, still hold the delicious flavor of taboo.  The flavor, so hard to find as an adult, of sneaking out through the woods at night, of dirty comics under the mattress, of awkwardly sincere love poems hastily passed and quickly concealed.  These are the things that don’t make me feel like “you know, it’s just another way of experiencing pleasure…”; they make me feel like a god damn pervert.  I love them.

The Sexcalator.

By the time I was out of my early twenties, I'd done some fairly hardcore BDSM.  I'd been beaten, whipped, cut, bound, shocked, peed on, done most of the above naked in front of strangers, and frequently during sex.  Which raises the question--where do you go from there?  When you're so young, and you've already had such intense experiences, what's left?

Cuddling on the couch, for one.  Or having slow sleepy sex at the end of the day.  Or--not to make this sound like "but then I discovered that sweet gentle love was the most daring of all!"--getting beaten some more, not necessarily in a harder or more shocking way than before.



One of the many, many unspoken assumptions out there about sex is that it's an escalating process.  Think about how kids talk about it when they're starting to experiment--how far did you go?  Did you get to second base?  Third?  Did you go all the way?  It implies a system where oral sex is more sex than a handjob, and should be an experience you have later.

(This ended up being rather hurtful for me when I gave a guy a handjob before ever having a real kiss, and went through quite a bit of "does that mean I'm too dirty and corrupt for anyone to kiss now?" internal strife before discovering that kissing was still available to me and quite nice.)

The assumption doesn't really go away when you grow up.  It just adds on the idea that you have to stop at an appropriate point on the escalator, or you'll end up on a slippery slope.  ...Which sounds like an awesome waterslide to me.  But the point is supposed to be that if you go "past" penis-in-vagina intercourse by too much, you'll have gone "too far" and you might never return.

Then the inclined planes metaphor turns into a drug metaphor, and you get the idea that "overdosing" on sexuality will make you build up a tolerance, and then "normal" sex won't get you high any more.  You'll have to start fucking donkeys or something just to feel anything.  (I think this has some kind of folkloric connection to the frat-boy myth that vaginas are single-use and will always be the size of the largest object that ever penetrated them.) If your sex tolerance gets too high, you'll keep doing more and more depraved things, until kinky has given way to outright evil, your life falls apart completely, and you become a sex addict and maybe a sexual predator.



There's all kinds of micro-fuckups built into this macro-fuckup paradigm.  Like how sex with people of the same gender, people of a different race, trans people, or people with certain disabilities gets moved to the "more depraved" side of the escalator.  Or how activities people didn't consent to are counted as moving them up the escalator; or someone's position on the escalator is used as an excuse to ignore their consent.  Or, of course, how all this is much more intensely and dangerously enforced against women than men.

Or how something's position on the escalator, rather than its potential to harm, is used as a benchmark of "obscenity."  Or how relationships are expected to escalate, and failure to gradually ramp up the escalator to a certain point ("spicy," which is just a couple steps above center) is taken as failure of the relationship.  Or how even individual sex acts are supposed to have their own escalation, and after you've started groping you're not ever supposed to go back to just kissing.

Or how child molestation and rape are sometimes described as the end of the escalator, like they're what happens when kinkiness goes "too far." and oh my god fuck everything about that.  Or how PIV intercourse is positioned at the exact center, the gold standard which no man should fall short of and no woman should exceed.

Or how lost you can get saying "we shouldn't consider X dirtier than Y," when you ought to be setting the entire idea of sex-as-escalation on fire.


(So it's a baseball game, an escalator, a waterslide, a drug, gold, and it's on fire.  Work with me here.  Take some Claritin if you can't handle analogy.)


In the end, sex is like... it's not really like anything.  Freed from analogies and paradigms and fixed linear progression, sex can get amorphous.  There's no order to do things in, no right or wrong (consensual) things to do, no guarantee of how it will or won't change you, no idea how it does or doesn't correlate with romantic attachment, no guide to what will come next.  It's not even entirely clear what sex is.  Sex could be freakin' anything if the people doing it want it to be.

Good.

The meanings of BDSM.

One of the tough parts about discussing BDSM in a feminist context is that everyone seems to have a different idea of what BDSM means.  (The literal answer, of course, is Bondage, Disciplominance, Sadimission, and Masochism.)  What does it mean, what dynamic is really playing out, when you do BDSM?

Does topping a person mean that you're pleasuring them, or testing their limits?  Does choosing to bottom mean that you're choosing to endure harm, or that you're merely asking someone to do things you enjoy?  Does dominating someone mean that you're using them, or that you're taking care of them?  Does submitting mean that you're naturally fit to follow rather than lead, or that you have either potential but choose to follow?

The answer to all those questions is "yes."

A lot of debates about BDSM get stuck because people assume they know the meaning of a physical action.  The simplest, and most frustrating, problem is when someone interprets "hitting" to always mean "attacking with anger and intent to harm," therefore BDSM is about anger and is harmful, QED.  But there are subtler assumptions that crop up in better-informed discussions, sometimes even inside the community.  If you're talking about forced feminization, and one person thinks that means "making someone feminine to make them lesser," and the other thinks it means "helping someone explore femininity in a kinky way," they can talk right past each other for hours.

When I say people have different ideas about what BDSM means, this isn't just about intention or emotion or philosophy.  Sometimes it's quite visible when you watch BDSM actually happen. The same activities, that we describe with the same words, can be done in very different ways that completely change the meanings.

Take rope bondage.  People can use bondage to restrain someone while they do other play, or simply tie them up and let them experience it for a while and then untie them.  It can be drippingly sexual and involve fucking in bondage, or it can be done fully clothed and nonsexually.  (Not that "naked" and "sexual" necessarily go together.  Sometimes nudity in bondage is about freedom of motion, or keeping clothing from tangling up with the rope, or feeling the rope on your skin.  Or just having an excuse to be naked.)  It can be so painful it's a form of sadism, or so comforting the bottom nearly falls asleep.  It can keep a person from moving at all, or be purely decorative ropework that they can walk around in.  It can be rough, brutal, and hastily improvised, or it can be a painstakingly crafted art form.

So when we talk about bondage, we're not talking about a unified mood, intention, or effect. We're talking about an umbrella with a gigantic amount of human variation underneath it.  And we need to acknowledge that.  I'm not saying you can't generalize anything about BDSM, but... it's a lot less than you think.  So when people ask questions like "is BDSM oppressive?", the answer isn't "no" and it isn't "yes."  The answer is "it shouldn't be and it doesn't have to be."



This has a fun side.  It's not all about sexism and abuse.  It's also a tremendously powerful tool to use in play.  Understanding how to control the mood and meaning of a scene opens up a world of glorious possibilities. You can bring your negotiation from "I want to tie you up" to "I want to tie you up sexy" or "I want to tie you up mean" or "I want to tie you up artsy." (actual phrasing not recommended)  You can agree to tie someone up sexy and tease and them with not-quite-sexual bondage before turning it sexy.  You can develop the meaning of a scene in sync with your partner, something you experience together, and the cool part is, you get to decide what that meaning is.

"How can you be a feminist and do BDSM?"

[I'm back!  I know, another really long unannounced hiatus.  I have a good excuse this time.  I had to move sort of unexpectedly and under less than ideal conditions.  I still don't know what I want to say about it, except that this wasn't about Rowdy; Rowdy continues to be awesome.  Anyway.  I'm in a good place now and I have time/energy to write again.]

Journal Of Secrets

I don't think I've ever really answered the title question, even though it's the most obvious thing that comes up when you identify yourself as a feminist who's also into BDSM.  How does this work for me?  Isn't it a big ol' conflict to be for equality and respect for all genders and then give a thumbs-up to men leading women around on leashes and hitting them with whips?

My usual flippant answer--which also happens to be my most  emotionally honest--is that it's like asking how I can be a feminist and keep guinea pigs.  What do my hobbies have to do with anything?  Kink is just a fun activity that involves a different part of my personality.

A deeper answer is that it's pleasurable for everyone involved.  The things I think of as feministically troubling are things that harm someone.  Job and school discrimination harm women economically.  Sexism harms women emotionally.  Violence harms women physically and emotionally.  Receiving pain in BDSM makes me feel strong, makes me feel desired, makes me feel present in the moment, makes me feel alive.  (Also, makes me feel extraordinarily horny and kinda high.)  I know that's not proof that it's good for me or for women, but... it's a significant piece of evidence.  I put up with misogynist environments sometimes because they're the path of least resistance for my personal goals; BDSM requires absolutely no "putting up with."  Good kink experiences are personal goals in themselves.

I also find a lot of the arguments against kink, like the ones in this much-mocked article and many of the ones that pop up in feminist contexts like this random post, to be deeply... god, I'm sick of the word "problematic."  Fuckin' weasel word that can mean anything from "got some facts wrong" to "basically a Nazi."  I find these arguments to be misguided and annoying and sometimes demeaning in exactly the ways feminists are supposed to oppose.



For one thing, a whole lot of those arguments could apply to plain ol' sex.  It can be used as a weapon of, and an excuse for, horrific abuse?  People are sometimes unintentionally harmed doing it?  It's horrible when done nonconsensually?  There are some really awful people who are into it?  A lot of the narratives around it are sexist, hetero/cisnormative, body-policing, and glamorize unsafe and questionably consensual activities?  The industries that sell media and services related to it are often nightmarishly exploitative?  I don't want to deny or minimize the fact that all these things happen in BDSM.  I just don't think it's any worse in kink than in sex.

Actually, I'll go a little further than that.  While "kink is always consensual!" is facile white-washing, on average kinksters are more aware than the general population of what consent is and why it matters.  We talk about it a lot more, and we (at least try to) socially normalize the idea of negotiating it.  We acknowledge that different relationships have different rules and roles, and that gender does not determine them.  We freely admit that lots of people simply aren't wired for what we do, or for specific ways of doing it.  We have concepts like "Risk Aware Consensual Kink" and "Your Kink Is Not My Kink, But Your Kink Is OK."  Again, I won't pretend we all apply these concepts all the time, but... the fact that we even hold these as ideals puts us a little bit ahead of society at large.

I also think a lot of "BDSM is sexist" arguments wouldn't long survive an encounter with a female dominant or a male submissive.  Female dominance is not about women dressing up in leather for men to admire.  It is an actual kink that women can have.  If you see a woman getting her rocks off by having a man service her, and you think "clearly she's only doing that to please him," you're desexualizing her and disregarding her desires.  Although you're still a step ahead of the people who don't even acknowledge that female dominance is a thing at all.

Of course, if we got into the fact that same-sex, nonbinary, and nonsexual kink exist, we'd be here all day.  (I've heard arguments that queer kink is still sexist because people are enacting male and female roles, but... if you see someone who isn't a man being dominant and you think "clearly she's being the man here," I think the problem is on your end.)  And I don't even know what would happen if we let some of these critics know about switching.

Finally, there's the question of whether feminism has any business saving women from themselves.  Because there's a really bad track record here.  At various times, various branches of feminism have swooped in to "save" femme women, married women, women who stay home with their kids, women who do sex work, cis women who welcome trans women into women's spaces--and it has always been a disaster.  It's forced women to defend their dignity and even their safety from the people who are supposed to be advocating for them.  I'm not saying any of these groups are the same as submissive women, obviously, only that "you say you want this... you poor thing" hasn't historically worked out well for feminism.



How can I be a feminist and do BDSM?  Because I trust women to know their own desires.  Because BDSM does not stand apart from the world at large, and if we have to live in this world anyway, we might as well do what we love.  Because I love and respect my body, my mind, and my potential as a human being--and all three are going "hell yeah, I totally want this."

Bottom skills.

So much "how to BDSM" material is really "how to top."  Which is understandable, up to a point.  The top performs most of the obvious physical parts of the scene--they're the one who has to know how to tie a knot or swing a flogger.  The top is likely to also be dominant, which means that they're going to be the one in charge of planning the scene and directing it.  And the top is also expected to take more responsibility for a scene, because bottoms might be immobilized (or go off into la-la land) and need their tops to watch out for their safety.

There's also a certain bias in BDSM-land toward thinking tops and dominants should be the authorities and their experiences should be prioritized, because... well, partly because they're more often men.  And partly because they're in charge in their scenes/relationships so it's only logical that they be in charge everywhere, even though it's not like the community agreed to submit to them.  So the majority of kink community leaders, authors, and teachers are tops.

As a result of these factors, you can come away from a lot of kink books or conferences thinking that bottoming is... standing there.  (For advanced bottoming, you might kneel or lie down.)  It seems like a purely receptive thing.  Like a beanbag could do it, if you could teach a beanbag to moan and occasionally offer to get people drinks.



This is not the case.  Bottoming well, in a way that creates a great experience for yourself and your top, requires effort and skill.  We are not canvases for the art of BDSM; we are artists too.  Here's some of the things I've learned (or am learning, or need to learn) about being on the bottom:

• Know your desires.
If you don't know what you like, you're not likely to get it.  I've talked about this so much on the blog, I don't want to belabor the point.  Just... have some idea of why you're bottoming in a BDSM scene instead of back at home knitting.  (Knitting fetishists please disregard.)  (That is not entirely a joke.)  Or if you don't, at least be aware that you don't know, and able to say "I'm experimenting right now and finding out what appeals to me."

• Speak up for yourself.
When I first started playing, I had the idea in my head--maybe not in words, but definitely in feelings--that the best bottoms were the ones who were least demanding.  That for me to be an excellent bottom, I should take as much pain as I could stand and allow my top to do whatever they wanted.  I certainly noticed that I enjoyed some activities more than others, but I felt like asking for the ones I wanted would be rude or "topping from the bottom" or selfish or something.  So I just felt happy when I got things I liked, felt sad or annoyed when I got things I didn't, and never gave any external indication of either.

Eventually I burned myself out on the stoicism thing.  I could only suppress my specific desires and limited pain tolerance for so long.  So I became a really grouchy, persnickety bottom.  No, I don't like that.  Don't like that either.  Yellow.  Yellow to that too.  Maybe we should just take a break.  It was frustrating, but it was actually progress--being able to say what I didn't like without being able to say what I liked wasn't very fun, but it beat the heck out of not being able to say either.  My tops were stuck playing "Marco Polo" with my desires, but at least they weren't unwittingly hurting me.

And then--embarrassingly recently--I realized that asking for what you like isn't presumptuous or un-bottomly, it's something that a good top actually wants you to do.  Depending on the sort of scene you're doing, they might not give you everything you like (or they might make you earn it), but they still need to know.  Otherwise they don't know which parts are punishment and which are reward for you, and they're not in control of the experience they're creating for you.

• Look out for your safety.
This is a responsibility tops and bottoms share.  It's more the top's, because they have more control and because they're going to be at fault if the bottom gets hurt, but it's an important bottom skill to be able to help the top keep you safe.  This means knowing and sharing the limitations of your body and your mind, it means using your safewords when you need to, and it means double-checking the top when they do something potentially unsafe.  Your top should notice on their own if they're cutting off your circulation or positioning you in a way that would be disastrous if you fell, but even good tops can miss things, and it's a good idea to also do your own safety checks.

(If you're way off in subspace you may not be able, and then it really is the top's responsibility alone.  But it's a good thing to do if you can.)

• Play along.
This isn't a simple directive but a whole set of skills that depend on how you play.  This is the physical, immediate side of bottoming, and it's a whole lot more than standing there.  It's positioning yourself to assist with an elaborate rope tie.  It's being able to absorb blows.  It's knowing when to push back, when to yield, and when to stand firm.  This really depends on what specific kinks you do, and it's mostly stuff you have to learn "on the job."  And it is things you have to learn.  "Standing there" looks like a no-brainer, but standing in a way that makes it easy for your top to do their job and supports you when you go wibbly and looks good and feels good?  Takes a little bit of brain.

• Give good feedback.
In two ways.  There's the practical feedback, the "oh yeah just like that," the "wow, I'm really just melting away into the wall here," and the "okay, that was the bad ow."  And there's the feedback that tops appreciate and get off on, the... well, actually, the first two sentences above are pretty good examples of that too.  I'm not talking about playing it up and putting on a performance, but a lot of tops really like hearing how much impact they're having on you.  Giving them that, especially if they've asked for it, is good bottoming.

• Know how to cook what you eat.
I don't think this is a requirement for everyone (well, nothing here is required, we're all different and all learning, please don't take this post as a list of "things bottoms must do"), but it's something I value for myself.  I like to know how to perform all the skills that I enjoy having done to me.  I hardly ever top, but I know how to tie a rope harness and where to aim a flogger.  Having this knowledge helps me communicate better with my top, know what I can do to make their job easier, understand and process the sensations I'm receiving, and it gives me a whole lot of appreciation for how much energy my top is putting into the scene.

• Process the experience.
This is the internal work of bottoming, and I don't know what I'm going to write in this section, because it's... magic or neurology or something.  Also a lot of deep breathing.  This is where you take in pain, discomfort, fear, and/or humiliation, and you turn them into something wonderful for yourself.  And very often it is an effort.  It can take focus and intention to turn a spanking from "my butt hurts, ow, my butt hurts again" to "my butt hurts in a way that is giving me the most amazing pleasure."  Or when it isn't pleasure, "my butt hurts and I am strong and I am taking it."  It's almost a kind of meditation.

Everything else on this page is about bottoming.  It's all the logistics around bottoming.  But this part?  This is bottoming.  This is why you aren't home knitting.  And there's nothing easy or passive about it.

•Give aftercare.
Tops drop too.  Tops (at least a lot of them) also get into an altered state when they're playing and they can also come down hard.  So tops might need cuddling and talking after scenes, or they might need to drink water and stretch out and cool off, or they might want to mellow out and enjoy the lingering buzz.  It's good bottoming to be attentive to their aftercare needs as well as your own, and to check up on them a bit after the scene.


Just standing there? Bottoming in BDSM is goddamn hard work, and it deserves to be talked about.

How To Have Sex On Purpose.

Captain Awkward. Or Sue.  I might have gotten my notes switched.

I had an amazing time in Chicago this weekend.   Everyone at the University of Chicago was absolutely wonderful to me, and the talk went great; the room was packed, the audience was great, and besides my little monologue, we had a really good discussion about negotiating sex and relationships.  And then I got to go to the Field Museum and meet Captain Awkward (the blogger) and Sue (the dinosaur).  It was so ridiculously awesome that I'm all out of eloquence and just going "so ridiculously awesome, you guys!"

This is a (rough) transcript of the talk I gave.  It's on a separate page because it's quite a bit longer than my usual posts.  And that's saying something.

Sex Menu.

[For those who missed it: I haven't been not-writing, I've been writing elsewhere!  Check out my post at Captain Awkward: Pretty Should Be Optional!]


So, I don't really know how to open this except to say: I made a sex menu!

Check it out here!
(if the font looks terrible, you probably need to zoom in farther.)

There's a reason, though, a reason going beyond "I liked writing all the funny captions."

It's because I'm not good at thinking of things on the spot.  There's all kinds of things I like in bed (as you can see...), but when the conversation comes down to "so, what do you want to do tonight?", I have a terrible habit of answering "Um, sex?"  Some horrible combination of shyness and choice-paralysis comes over me and I literally forget what kinks I have.  It's like holding a pen and staring at a blank page--the endlessness of the possibilities can easily slip from exciting to overwhelming.

This has led to me tragically having unadorned missionary intercourse on far too many occasions.

So I made a menu.  It's dorky--it might be reaching new theoretical limits of dorkiness--but it's also a really nice tool for communication.  It lays out the things we know work for us and it gives us a starting point to think of things that aren't on the menu.  It frees us from the daunting blank page.

I don't know if I can really end this post with "make one for yourself!", because your relationship probably has to work a very specific way for this to be awesome instead of hilariously awkward.  But I will end it with... getting away from the blank page, however you do that, is a very very good thing for keeping sex pervy.



[EDIT: Some people report trouble getting Google Docs to open.  Here's an alternate link to the same file on Dropbox.]

Playing light.

The Dreaded Bunny Flogger. It still counts.

Last night, Rowdy and I did BDSM play and had sex.  What mental image does that give you?  What activities do you think we did?

The truth is, he bit me a little bit and then fingered me while I rubbed his dick.  Then we went to sleep.

Even as I write this, I feel like self-justifying, like telling you about the times I've gotten my skin stapled or been locked in a dog cage or flogged on a St. Andrew's cross or triple-fisted by satyrs or whatever exactly happened at that barbecue.  I gotta keep my cred!  Can't be a prude, can't be a poser!  Gotta let you know I'm real, I have real sex and do serious BDSM!

What a load of horseshit that attitude is.  There's no objective definition of these things, no standard you need to measure up to.  Your own pleasure and your partner's should be the only things that matter.  If you don't get pleasure from being the sexiest and the naughtiest and the edgiest, that's okay.

Kinky snobbery isn't just irrational, it's dangerous.  When your guideline stops being "what will make me feel good?" and starts being "what will prove my sexuality is genuine?", you're liable to do things that don't make you feel good.  You're also vulnerable to manipulation from people who try to convince you that if you were really kinky you'd XYZ with them, or people who say you're not having "real sex" because they want to rush you into intercourse.  And there's the danger of skipping negotiation and safewords (or worse, not taking safewords seriously) because you don't think a certain type of light play is "real" enough to need them.


Here's some things that can be real sex:
• Phone sex
• Mutual masturbation (I never know if this means "wanking each other" or "wanking in front of each other," but, eh, either way)
• Dry humping
• Wet humping
• Sharing fantasies
• BDSM play without genital contact
• Particularly intense kissing
• Literally anything you and your partner agree is real sex for you

And here's some things that can be real BDSM:
• Gentle spanking during sex
• Tying up just for the tying, without hitting or fucking
• Getting someone's drinks for the evening
• Teasing with a feather, a finger, or, yes, The Dreaded Bunny Flogger
• Playing the role of a servant, puppy, Girl Scout, etc., but doing nothing physically intimate while in role
• Sending pervy emails and IMs
• Getting hit just once or twice and not wanting/needing more than that
• ...sigh... toilet paper bondage.
• Literally anything you and your partner agree is real BDSM for you


There are some distinctions within BDSM that do matter. Socially-acceptable BDSM (i.e., playing with an ice cube) is not the same as you-could-get-arrested BDSM (i.e., bloodplay), and bedroom or online BDSM are not the same as being in the meatspace BDSM community.  It's important to remember that experience and expertise don't translate well across these divisions.  But none of the divisions of Kinkland are "better," and all of them are really kinky.


I want to take back all the times I yelled at Cosmo, "That's not kinky!"  What I should have been yelling is "That's kinky, but it's really irresponsible!"

Returning to Sexyland.

So this blog has been dark for a few weeks.  That's partly just because I'm a pathological procrastinator and I had a lot of schoolwork.  But it's also because my conflicted feelings about the sex and kink communities were coming to a critical point.



Over the last year (as some people may have noticed), I've been gradually withdrawing from public/communal sexiness.  Haven't been playing with new people, haven't been going to parties, haven't wanted to even write about my personal sex life as much.  I still have sex and play with Rowdy--my sexuality itself didn't go anywhere--but I've been less and less involved with Sexyland.

This is not something I planned or wanted.  I miss being able to have that kind of fun.  I miss the thrills and the camaraderie.  I miss the "I'm telling this one to the grandchildren" stories and the "I'm so turned on it feels like flying" highs.  I miss the M&Ms.

There's a few reasons I've been MIA.  The first is that there's been a lot of revelations of abusers and generally bad people in Sexyland, including people I've played with.  Knowing that I've played with people who've beaten their partners, who were using me to cheat, who've committed rape--it grosses me out and makes me question my ability to read people.  (It's also caused a lot of angst in the local scene that makes social events less fun.)

Coming out as genderqueer has been a factor too.  I was used to being in the role of "straight girl" in Sexyland, and I don't think I fully appreciated how much I would have to adapt to a new one.  Presenting masculine at events and having people not react the same way as when I looked femme shouldn't be a surprise, but it somehow was. (Maybe because, shit, I didn't feel any different.) For a long time, I didn't take that change in attitudes as a response to a change in my presentation, but as an "...is it my breath?" awkwardness.

But the biggest one has been the uncomfortable realization that I have done things for the wrong reasons.  I've let my boundaries be pushed so I could be "cool" and I've pushed my own boundaries so I could be "sexy."  Or I've done things that were entirely within my boundaries, but I've done them for validation instead of for pleasure.  Don't get me wrong--this is not my declaration that I was only kinky and poly for the attention and my true self was "normal" all along.  A lot of the validation I sought wasn't just "coolness," but validation of my kinks; I felt like I had to jump into the Sexyland deep end without a life vest to prove to myself that I really was a pervert.

At first this felt awesome--oh my god, I really am a pervert! I really can go to a party and get beaten and fucked by three guys! This is real life and it is amazing!  But then the ooky feelings started creeping up on me.  The regrets for times when I didn't say "no" and the resentment (mostly undeserved) at the people who kept going when I wish I'd said "no."  That's when I started fading out of the scene.



I've been feeling that regret and resentment for a while, but last night was the first time I worked it out in words.  (WORDS: THEY ARE FUCKING AMAZING.)  It was also the first time I started thinking about a solution.

I need to recognize that I am, in many ways, a newcomer to Sexyland.  I need to go to parties with the intent to dip my toe in the shallow end.  I need to tell partners "go slow with me, I'm still figuring out what I like."  I need to start learning what I want and what I need.  Because although I have been Officially Kinky since I was eighteen, although I have a goddamn kink blog, although I have read umpteen kink books and been to a gazillion and a half classes... in some ways, I'm kinda new here.

As a genderqueer person, as a cautious and risk-aware person, as a person still seeking her own desires and finding her own limits... I'm new here.

I'd like to start exploring.

Cosmocking Special Edition: Fifty Shades of Cosmocking!

Light pink cover!  Light pink invisi-pants! ...Hang on here.  "Wow Your Man With These Moves Inspired by Fifty Shades of Grey"?  Oh boy.  I'm going straight there.

...Oh boy.  This is gonna be a whole post.

Thanks to Fifty Shades of Grey, everyone and their mother is buzzing about BDSM (short for this laundry list of naughty turn-ons: bondage, discipline, dominance, submission, sadism, and masochism).

Hey!  They actually got our goofy acronym right!  Maybe this article will be well-researched and created with input from actual kinksters!  Maybe it will discuss how BDSM exists as a community, how it encompasses a broad range of activities and motivations, and above all else, how crucial enthusiastic consent and explicit communication are in BDSM!

Suprise-attack him with a few of these tonight... and that's an order.

...Maybe not.

Use the back of a brush to swat his thighs when he steps out of the shower--wet skin is more sensitive.

That's not a sexy surprise, Cosmo.  That's battery.

God damn it. Consent is not some advanced detail that you can skip over because you're writing for a casual audience.  Consent is fundamental.  Whether you hit someone wet or dry--that's a fucking detail.

The ridiculous part is that it might turn out your boyfriend was secretly kinky all along. It might turn out that he is a bottom and does like hitting and does like being taken by surprise--but he hates being hit on the thighs.  Hitting him on the thighs gives him the bad pain and makes him shut down sexually.  He wanted to be hit on the butt.

Having sex without negotiating isn't a great idea, but you might be able to guess what your partner likes if you stick to the cultural standards.  When you do BDSM, you can't guess.  Kinks are too complicated for that and the stakes are way too high.

Make him watch a porno--from the pizza being delivered to the pizza boy getting his "tip"--without touching you or himself. If he tries, slap his hand away.

Careful.  There's a fine line between "oh, release me from this torturous sexual deprivation, Mistress" and "hm, I wonder if they're shooting this on a XL-2?"

Press a fork (firmly, but don't break the skin or anything) into different parts of his body--his butt cheeks, his pecs, his thighs.

My roommate and I tried this--for Science! Result: jabbing a fork at me at random just feels silly and uncomfortable.  It only got interesting because he knew how to use the fork on pressure points.

...oh yeah, and because I'm a god damn masochist.  That's kind of an important part of the equation here.

Get him to wrap your wrist and ankles in toilet paper for a lighter restraint. While you are bound, he should tease you to the point where you're so turned on, you have to rip free of your shackles.

Toilet paper bondage. Oh my god.  TOILET PAPER BONDAGE.

I love Cosmo so much.

TOILET PAPER BONDAGE.

...how much frenzied thrashing does it take to rip toilet paper, anyway?

In your meanest schoolteacher voice, tell him to go stand in a corner facing the wall and not to move. After a few minutes, demand that he get in bed and ravage you.

It's like someone told Cosmo what roleplaying is, but didn't give any examples, so they had to kinda wing it.  "And next, maybe you could play cop and naughty party boy, and you could, um, write him a citation and then tell him to have sex with you."

It's also exponentially funnier when you remember you're supposed to be doing all this stuff as a surprise.

Let him write "Property of [his name]" on your underwear before you leave for work. It's an all-day-long reminder that he is your "master," which is awesomely kinky.

That's just going to make for confusing laundry.

It also raises questions like "What does 'master' mean for us? Does it connote real authority in our relationship?  In what ways will the 'master' exert control and in what ways can the 'slave' express her needs and problems to him?  A master/slave relationship is a very serious commitment--is this what we really want?  Or is this simply a short-term roleplay for us, and we happen to find the concept of 'master' hot?  Even then, does the roleplay extend to any activities or dynamics beyond underwear-labeling?"

Then it throws all those questions out the window, because who needs clarity when you've got a Sharpie?

As you're riding him, clamp down on his earlobes with your fingers, and pull on them to rock yourself forward and backward.

Oh Cosmo.

TOILET

PAPER

BONDAGE!!!

(Dear million billion people who've written in about it--no, I haven't read Fifty Shades of Grey. Yes, I'm going to. Yes, I'll blog about it.)

Kinky philosophy for vanilla sex.

Via tumblr happybdsm, which is awesome

[Oh jeez it's been too long. I don't even have a good excuse this time.  The dog ate my blogging schedule? Bad dog.]


For all the problems in the reality of kink, I love the ideals.  Kinksters may not practice perfect consent and communication (or, sometimes, any), but at least we know we're supposed to.  We talk about these things, we have classes and workshops on them, we even pass out little flyers about consent and communication.  I wish everyone did that.  I wish everyone, in this way, had sex the way kinksters do.


You can't avoid communication in kink, because the category of "kink" is too wide open for there to be any "default" script for play.  "Wanna hmm-hmm y'know? [meaningful eyebrow wiggle]" is just not ever going to convey "wanna tie me to a chair and verbally humiliate and lightly beat me?"  You've got to come out and say it, because there's just no other way your partner will have a clue what you're thinking.

You can't be fuzzy about consent in kink, because what you're doing would be literally torture if it weren't for consent.  You can't beat a person black and blue with a cane because they seem like they want you to.  You really have to reconsider your life choices if you start tying a person immobile because they didn't tell you to stop.  I mean, that doesn't make you a little insensitive or "bad at communicating," that makes you a few steps shy of being the goddamn Jigsaw killer.

Is either of these things really unique to kink?  I don't think so.  There's certainly a cultural "default" script for heterosexual vanilla intercourse, but is that the only sex you want to have your whole life?  And there's certainly more tolerance in society for "I kissed him so he should've known I wanted to have sex" than there is for "I kissed him so he should've known to handcuff my wrists to my ankles," but I'm not sure the first is any less absurd or dangerous.



Sex is a scene.  Even if there's not a bit of kink to it, if it's entirely gentle and egalitarian and "normal," it's a scene.  It's an intense manipulation of another person's body purely (or hopefully at least partly) for the purpose of pleasure.

So what are the rules for a scene?
-You have to negotiate, whether you find negotiation sexy in itself or not.
-You have to be honest with your partner what you're looking for, and expect them to be honest with you.
-You have to take safety precautions, and consciously accept the risks that exist even with precautions.
-You have to respect safewords. ("No," "stop," "wait," and such are safewords unless otherwise negotiated.)
-You have to be aware of your partner's responses and check in with them if things seem off.
-You have to be able to distinguish--and doublethink a little bit--between the fantasy that makes it hot and the reality that makes it ethical.

That's a lot of concepts but not necessarily a ton of work.  In an established relationship you can do it with one sentence sometimes.  Zero sentences if you have pre-negotiated understandings.  What really matters is the mindset--that sex is not a thing that just happens.  Sex is a thing you do, and it's worth doing deliberately.


As with most of my "Cliff's Super Confident Sounding Guide To Life" posts, this is something I'm still working on myself.  I'm guilty of asking for sex with "mmhm y'know" when I really had a lot more to say, and I wish I hadn't, but I still do it sometimes.  Learning to have sex deliberately is a process and not an easy one.  But the rewards (amazing orgasms, snugglywugglies, no "does he really like this" doubts, no "that coulda been better" regrets) are so worth it.  And kink has helped me tremendously on this journey.

I don't think the specific activities of kink are any use to vanilla people.  If you're not wired for this stuff then you're not wired for it.  But I think everyone, kinky or vanilla, should learn how to practice Risk Aware Consensual Fuckin'.

The scene is not safe.

[Trigger warning for rape and BDSM abuse.]

I went to a sex party not long ago.  I talked to a bunch of the members and organizers of the group, and heard all around that they really value consent and they're super aware of feminist issues and the danger of abuse in sex-positive spaces.  I had a pretty good time, met a lot of people, hooked up with a dude, fit a humorous number of naked people people in a bathtub at the same time.

Days later I found out, almost incidentally, that one of the guys at the party had been ostracized from another scene for "some problems."  Some problems with boundaries.  I was a little ticked that no one had identified this guy to me.

Later still, I found out that the guy had raped a woman.

Oh, but, like, she only said he raped her and no one was there to see it and it was really confusing and stuff and anyway what do you want us to do, like, treat the guy like a leper?  He got kicked out of one scene already and that was like a couple years ago and we're trying to help him change and now he's okay as long as someone keeps an eye on him at parties.



Originally I had written a rant here.  I'm angry about this, is the short version.  I'm quite angry.  I'm angry because this isn't the first time I've been around a known abuser and nobody told me; I'm angry because I've been abused under the aegis of BDSM; I'm angry because so damn many of my friends have been abused in the scene; and I'm angry because if I used the guy's name in that story above, I'd be kicked out of the scene.

If you want the long version, Yes Means Yes spells it out here, in a post I think everyone in the BDSM/swinger/sex-positive communities should be reading.

The first step is admitting we have a problem.  And we do have a problem.  I’ll skip to the end: there’s no shortage of stories that start “I was abused” and end “when I tried to say something the community closed ranks around the abuser and I was frozen out.”  It’s happened to friends of mine.  It’s happened in communities where people insist that the community isn’t like that.  And almost always, you have to actually know the participants to know what happened because nobody talks about it.  It’s all secret, there’s no sunlight and no transparency.  You, you out there on the internet, can search blogs until you’re blue in the face for a record of some of these stories, or some indication that you shouldn’t play with some of these people, and you’ll never find it.  Even when “everybody knows,” the “everybody” is very narrow.

And much more.  Go read it.



In the meantime, I like the BDSM scene.  I like the sex-positive scene.  I love that spaces exist where I can be myself and spend time with people like me.  I don't want to leave.  I especially don't want to leave and let the abusers have it.

I also don't know how to fix it. I find the efforts to do so alternately inspiring and utterly frustrating.  I understand the problems that "expose and expel anyone with any accusation against them" would create and yet I hate the default solution of "therefore, keep all abuse secret and consequence-free."  And I also understand that anything framed in terms of accusations is only cleanup after abuse has already happened--a real "fix" would cut down how much it happens in the first place.



I have a few small suggestions that don't require involvement in the question of accusations*:

1. Let new people know the scene is dangerous.  Newcomers shouldn't be hearing "BDSM is all about consent."  Newcomers should be hearing "BDSM should be all about consent, but there are a few people here who won't respect that, and we don't know who they are."  We shouldn't be teaching new people to relax and take it all in stride; we should be teaching them to be wary as hell.  I'd rather feel like I'm scaring people off than feel like I'm luring them in.

2. But don't assume all newcomers are only potential victims; newbie education should also include teaching people how not to become perpetrators.  (I'm going to hopefully write my own thoughts on this soon.)  For three reasons:
a) It may, in fact, prevent some of them from becoming abusers.
b) Seeing things from the other side may make them better at recognizing abuse.
c) It takes away the "I didn't know that was a problem" excuse in a hurry.

3. Make audience-visible consent a part of BDSM classes and demonstrations.  I've seen this done right a few times and wrong a lot more.  Right is when the presenter negotiates with their demo-partner right there in public, or makes it explicit to the audience that they've negotiated privately.  Wrong is when the presenter just jumps right into throwing rope (or whatnot) on their demo-partner, and as far as the audience can perceive, the "consent" is that the demo-partner doesn't safeword or run away.  Wronger than wrong, and not at all rare: the presenter gets "playful" with their demo-partners (or audience members!) in ways that clearly weren't pre-negotiated even in secret.

Taking thirty seconds to make it clear that you always ask, you don't skip it because "it's just a demo" any more than you skip it because "I know they'll like it," would make a big difference in BDSM education.

4. Most parties have special rules that you have to talk to the host about before doing fireplay and bloodplay--the host will direct you to a location where you won't set the house on fire or ruin the carpet, or simply say "no, we don't have facilities for that, this is a no-fireplay party."  We need to have these same rules about resistance and "consensual nonconsent" scenes.  If you're going to do something that looks just the same as abuse, you should be required to run it by the host first.

That way, if a host sees something that looks just the same as abuse, even if they're afraid/unable to shut it down with a "hey, is that consensual?", they have an excuse to shut it down with "hey, you didn't get clearance to do that!"

5. Get survivors to real resources.  I don't think we should be creating internal, informal resources in our community for this.  The "we'll handle everything internally and informally" mindset is how we got in this mess in the first place.  What I do think we should be doing, however, is making a concentrated effort to connect abuse survivors with resources like the following:
The Boston Area Rape Crisis Center
The Network/La Red (GLBTQ- and kink-friendly organization against partner abuse)
The National Leather Association Domestic Violence Project
The National Domestic Violence Hotline
 The National Sexual Assault Online Hotline

And, frankly (although I know damn well the barriers there can be):
The Fucking Police

When people report abuse, we should be referring them to outside, professionally run organizations with trained specialists who can help them through the painfully complex process of decision-making and escape and recovery.  We should not be encouraging them to keep it in the community.  We see everywhere from churches to colleges to the military what happens when abuse survivors are told "we'll handle that internally," and it's always crap.  Let's handle this shit externally for once.



The first step is to admit we have a problem.  So in a way I'm glad to see my community doing that.  Even though it's upsetting and causes a lot of strife in the short term, I'm really happy to see all these conversations about the dark side of the BDSM community coming out in the open.  I just hope we can go from conversations to actual change.



*I really fucking hate saying "accusations," by the way, when I think it's "reports," and I fucking hate acting like it's a big tough question.  As far as I'm concerned I know the vast majority of these accusations are true and that not inviting someone to sex parties is such a mild goddamn punishment we should just fucking do it when we know damn well someone is a fucking rapist.  But I'm never going to sell that opinion to the community.

What am I?

I've gotten a whole bunch of emails lately that read like the following (with various combinations of gender/orientation/activity):

"Hi Holly, 

I'm a man who considers himself straight, but sometimes I imagine being tied up and sucking other men's dicks.  I don't want to date them or have sex with them; I just want to get tied up and suck dick and that's all.  Does this make me gay? Does it make me bi?  Does it make me kinky? Does it make me submissive?

Help me, Holly: what am I?"

So I'm going to answer these questions in one fell swoop here:
You are what you are.

You're a straight man who fantasizes about being tied up and sucking men's dicks.  What else is there to say?  What would a label add, what would it clarify?  Whether you'd like this in reality or leave it in the realm of fantasy, or whether you'd like to do other things with men or with BDSM, can't be answered with a label.

I'm not just telling you that I can't extrapolate from a letter.  (Although, seriously, I can't.)  I'm telling you that most likely you can't extrapolate.  Sexuality isn't symptoms that give you clues to your syndrome; sexuality is the symptoms.

I don't think words like "straight" and "gay" and such are completely useless.  But they're only descriptions.  If you're a man and everyone you've felt attracted to has been female, eh, you might as well call yourself "straight"?  But that doesn't "make" you straight.  It doesn't tell you anything about which women you'll be attracted to, or give you a guarantee you'll never be attracted to any men, and it sure as hell doesn't mean that you "should" be attracted to women.

The people who write me these letters seem very aware of what their fantasies, desires, and actions actually are--much more acutely aware, it seems, than most people who simply have a label.  Frankly, I'd hate to see them trade in this awareness for "I'm a kinky bi man."

---

I don't mean to just give this as advice from on high; it's something I'm wrestling with myself right now.  I've been trying very hard lately to hold the lines of:

-I play because I want to, and this makes me kinky; I don't make myself play because "I'm supposed to be kinky, better live up to it."

-I play with people besides Rowdy sometimes, and this makes me non-monogamous; I don't make myself play with other people because "what kind of crappy non-monogamist am I if I don't fuck this dude?"

Both of these have been struggles. Once you establish the persona as this kinky poly super sexy sex person, it's hard as hell to violate that and say "you know what, I'm just not feelin' it."  The pressure to live up to your labels is both internal and external.  There are times when I really want to relabel myself "kinkyfluid" and "polyfluid" or something, just to emphasize that these are things I do sometimes in some ways; they're not things I've made some sort of commitment to doing.

Fixing the label isn't the real solution, though.  The real solution is to fix the expectation that the label can ever speak for me.



I'm a person who sometimes likes some kinds of kinky play (list available on request) and sometimes likes to play with certain people who aren't my boyfriend (now accepting applications).  That's what I am, and trying to figure out what that "makes me" isn't a recipe for happiness; it's a tragic oversimplification.

A concise kink worksheet.

There's a lot of kink negotiation worksheets out there, and frankly, most of them are a mess.  500-item lists of "animal play (puppy) - rate interest from 1 to 10 or hard limit" and "animal play (pony) - rate interest..." can be interesting ways to learn just what possibilities are out there, but they don't necessarily help you narrow down what you want in a particular scene.

So I've made a kink worksheet that fits on one page.  It assumes you already have a general idea of what you're into, and only need some help condensing and communicating those ideas to your play partner.

The Concise Kink Worksheet! 

(Google Docs PDF)

Notes on use:
•I don't really expect you to write on it; it's more of a jumping-off point for talking and thinking.  It's probably better to talk this over  with your partner than to hand it to them filled out, but, you know, whatever works for you.

•If you're new to kink, it's probably good to think about your answers well in advance of actually playing, when you have a clear head and time to put your thoughts together.

•"I don't know," "maybe," and "let's try it a little and see" are totally acceptable answers.  Don't feel like you have to have a super confident answer to everything.  Knowing that you're not super sure what you want is rarely a dealbreaker, but important for your partner to be aware of.

•It's really a pre-negotiation worksheet; the purpose of these questions to give your partner an idea of where you're coming from and what you're looking for before you work out exactly what's going to happen in your scene.  Once you know these things about each other, it's between the two of you to work out explicitly what you will and won't do in your scene.

Going from "so you don't want to roleplay, do want to use toys, and do want pain" to "so how about I throw you up against that wall and hit you on the ass with the paddle--we'll start slow and see just what you can take" is what happens next.  That's the fun part of negotiation and it can turn damn sexy.

•Clear, explicit scene negotiation is a cornerstone of consent culture in BDSM.  A lot of the recent talk has been about flushing out serial abusers, but equally important is making sure that well-intentioned people don't hurt each other through miscommunications or assumptions.  A cute little worksheet won't guarantee that but I hope it helps.



...Not-kinky people, I will write a totally not-just-kink sex post next.  I have not forgotten you!
...Why am I apologizing for being kinky?  This blog is called The Pervocracy.
...But nonetheless.  I don't intend to be all BDSM inside baseball, any more than I'm all gender or all politics.  I value diversity in my perversity.

The Geek Social Fallacies of Sex.

xkcd

With all apologies to the original, which all geeks should read...

I think geek sexuality is an awesome thing.  God knows it's the only sexuality I've ever known.  Geeks are tinkerers who constantly try to improve and innovate, and geeks are not bound by many mainstream social rules, and these two things combine to create some fucking hot sex.  Also for some semi-mysterious reason the overlap between "geek" and "kinkster" is, like, 90% of both groups.

But geeks also are prone to weird social thinking, some of it a reaction to the ungeeky mainstream, some of it their very own invention.  Here's some common misconceptions that can fuck up geek sex.

GSFS 1: People can voluntarily control their emotions about sex.
This manifests a couple different ways:
"We've agreed this is casual sex, so as long as we decide not to develop feelings, we won't."
"Sex is just a physical activity, so adding it to our dating/friendship won't change our relationship."
"My partner promised not to feel jealous because I'm not monogamous, but they're betraying me by feeling jealousy anyway!"  (Note that in this example both partners are apparently carriers of this fallacy.)

Pretending you can just decide whether you'll feel any emotions at all is a geek fallacy stemming from the idea that you should be able to optimize your own brain to not do anything unproductive or unintended.  But geeks ought to know better, because come on, you can't even get a computer to do that.  This stuff comes on you, it gets you by the heart and the gut, and it doesn't ask you "pardon me, I'm an emotion, are you okay with experiencing me?" first.

What you can and should voluntarily control is how you express your emotions.  It's okay to feel strong emotions; it's not okay to attack people or break promises and use "I was emotional" as an excuse.  This is when it's time to tell your partner "hey, we need to talk, I'm feeling an emotion!"  Solving the problem may involve changing your relationship boundaries, it may just involve talking it out, or it may mean you have to end the relationship.  But the solution is never "that is an incorrect emotion, please stop experiencing it."


GSFS 2: The weirder your sex, the more enlightened you are.
I've done a whole post on this, so go there if you want extended pontification.  The short of it is: geeks have a tendency to mistake "less mainstream" for "better," and to conclude that sex that least resembles the mainstream is both the sexiest and the most virtuous.  So polyamory gets seen as more enlightened than monogamy, kink gets seen as sexier than vanilla, and monogamous vanilla geeks get a big steaming pile of "I guess you're just not very open-minded."

I think polyamory and kink have great things to offer geeks of all sorts, but "having sex with multiple people" and "having ouchy sex" aren't those things.  Those are just neutral activities, things to do if you like and not if you don't.  The real takeaways are conscious and explicit communication.  That's what makes us cooler than the squares.


GSFS 3: Cool chicks don't worry about sexism.
This isn't exactly a sex thing but God does it plague some geek circles.  I know because I've been the cool chick.  I've played the "don't worry, I'm not like those other girls, I'm not into gossip and drama" card; I've played the "well, you have my permission to objectify me, because I take it as a compliment" card; I've even played the "that mean lady was such an uptight no-funster for having boundaries" card.

Those cards are the fuck out of my deck now.  And I've paid the social price for that.  There's definitely some people in my circles who've put me in their "uptight no-funster" mental box since then, or who deliberately bait me about "watch out, Holly, I'm going to patriarchally oppress you!" because ahahaha she's an angry little lady isn't that cute.

I don't blame a woman who sees this go on, decides she wants friends more than she wants to start fights about some abstract problem that doesn't seem to affect her personally, and starts telling her male friends not to worry, they can be sexist around her, she's cool.  The problem isn't her.  The problem is all the people who made it so much easier and more pleasant for her to be a "cool chick" than a woman who gives a damn how people think of her gender.


GSFS 4: Drama is always worse than the thing the drama is about.
I guess the xkcd comic has a little bit of this one.  Drama's never fun, but it beats the fuck out of suppressing real issues.  In my time in geek circles, I've seen reports of sexual harassment and even outright assault silenced with "well, I don't want to make drama" or "but whatever, that's just drama."  A woman in the group is a sexual predator? Gosh, I don't spread gossip.  A man needs to be disinvited from parties because he's repeatedly threatened people at them? No, kicking him out would make a scene, it would make drama.

In geek sexual communities, the illusion of smooth functioning and of everyone being bestest friends with everyone can supersede people's needs for comfort and safety.  A lot of this has to do with the "Ostracizers are Evil" non-sex GSF, but it gets worse when you add sex to the mix, because defensiveness about our non-traditional sexuality suppresses important issues even further.  Like, if you admit that people violate boundaries in BDSM circles, then you're admitting that BDSM isn't a perfect haven of consent and negotiation, and that's just going to play right into the mainstream idea that BDSM is abusive!  So we end up defending abusers to prove BDSM isn't abusive.

"Drama" is a trivializing word.  Let's try "conflict," instead.  "I don't want to treat him any differently just because he gets a little handsy with women, that would cause conflict."  It doesn't sound so superior and level-headed now, does it?


GSFS 5: Sex should be no big deal.
This is related to GSFS 1, but even nastier.  This is the idea that since sex is just a super simple physical act--you rub some bits together, it feels good, the end--that there shouldn't be anything complicated or difficult about sex.  That casual sex should be easy for everyone, that having multiple partners should be as simple as "it's like having a sexual partner, but more than one of them," that everyone who makes sex into a big complex issue is being dramatic (GSFS 4) or no-fun (GSFS 3) or narrow-minded (GSFS 2).

Sex is complicated as fuck, and if you think understanding sex is easy, you don't understand sex.  I've written 1300 posts on sex and I've already changed my mind about roughly half of them.  It amazes me that the same people who admit that games about rolling dice can hide deep complexity and meaning will go on and claim that sex is just some squishy bits coming together.  It's not.  Sex is two (or more) people interacting in a huge diversity of ways, and while it can be great, it's never simple.



I love geek sex.  I love the way we're endlessly willing to rethink and improve and break stereotypes about sex.  But we gotta stop buying into this crap.  We're geeks; we oughta be smarter than that.

Stupid Human Tricks.

The other night, I was topless and locked in a cage at a party.

Funny thing is, it wasn't very sexy. And I don't mean that in a bad way. It was relaxing, being curled up in an enclosed space. It was playful, hanging on the bars and acting like an animal. It was sociable, being in an area where people could come by and chat, have a seat on my cage and say hey. And, not to deny the kinkiness of it all, it was also a submissive experience having my freedom of movement cut off and being okay with that.

But hot? No. My undies were dry, my body relaxed, my mind not on sex. It was nothing to masturbate over, nothing to get you breathing heavy. It was just good clean fun.



Kink, for me, divides into two very distinct types. There's kink as a rollercoaster, a wild escape from the world and from the bounds of sensation itself, a feeling that has me screaming and groaning and losing my grip on reality and flying through endorphins and pleasure and agony. And then there's kink as a Stupid Human Trick.

It's obviously a bit context-dependent and idiosyncratic what qualifies as what, but for me, flogging is a rollercoaster; fireplay is a Stupid Human Trick. Punching is a rollercoaster; elaborate ropework is a Stupid Human Trick. Biting is a rollercoaster; fisting is, though a very intense sensation, not an intensely kinky one for me, and thus a Stupid Human Trick. Being dominated during rough sex is a rollercoaster; being dominated to "go make me a sandwich" is a Stupid Human Trick.

I probably shouldn't say "stupid" human trick, because they're not stupid at all. They're lots of fun. But they're more about "interesting ways to play with bodies and minds" than about being swept away by an all-consuming wave of sexual power. Maybe the clearest difference I could draw is that I think you have to be innately kinky to like rollercoaster kink, but anyone with an open mind can understand the appeal of Stupid Human Tricks kink.



This is of more than academic interest to me. It helps me get a handle on a problem that's been bugging me--namely, why I don't like receiving pain in most BDSM situations, and yet I fantasize and crave about receiving pain. It's not just because I'm hopelessly fickle and inconsistent. It's because there's two very distinct headspaces I associate with kink, and I only enjoy pain in one of them.

It takes a very particular sort of chemistry to get me ready to ride the rollercoaster that is pain. But I'm almost always up for the kind of kink that's more like "hey everybody, check out what I can do!"

My kinky world.

With only a few sharply-delineated exceptions, I live in a sexy little bubble. There is not a single friend I see regularly who isn't kinky and pretty firmly entrenched in the sex-positive, enthusiastic-consent, gender-liberated, social-justice-for-people-who-fuck-funny mindset. I spend a lot of my time in an apartment where all the roommates are kinky, I go to parties where everyone is kinky; hell, I play board games where everyone around the table is kinky. If I knitted, I'm sure I would be in a kinky knitting circle. It's a god damn way of life.

The funny thing is, it's gotten to the point where I have a bit of culture shock in the real world. When I go to work or talk to my family, the social rules are different--and not just in the "whether it's okay to talk about your cooter" sense, but in the entire way people interact. The unkinky world is simultaneously more reserved and less polite, if that makes sense; there's more concern about being obscene and less about being intrusive. (Also, I think my coworkers don't understand why I jump three feet when they casually lay a friendly arm across my shoulders.) They talk a lot about "men do doobidy do, women do daddidy dah" and I always grit my teeth a little, because I suspect that my own thoughts on gender would be just as annoying to them. I don't want to lay all this on "I'm so much more enlightened;" in many ways, I'm just acclimated to a different set of social expectations.

I'm glad to be a part of the kink community, although in many ways, I could get the same benefits from being part of the Albanian-American community, or perhaps an Elks Lodge. It's a circle of closely interconnected friends who meet regularly, include each other in their social events, and have just a little more warm feelings and trust for "one of ours" than we do for "an outsider." The group, while by no means a fair demographic sample, has some people from just about every walk of life. There's little sub-cliques and people who are "big fish in a small pond" types and people on the fringes of the group. We don't all like each other, but we definitely know each other. And even with all the intra-group gossip and grudges and micro-wars, that's a warm happy thing.

Really, there's only one major downside to the whole kink community thing: If you're an Elk, you can tell people about it. (Although, in fairness, if you're an elk, you cannot.) The particular warm happy community I belong to is one that's considered obscene by a lot of outsiders and dangerous by quite a few. So when I try to say "I'm a member of a lovely group of friends," what comes out sounds more like "I'm sexually aroused by human suffering." For good and ill, this makes the kink community even more insular, because there's a lot of things--things as big as our committed intimate relationships--we only feel really comfortable talking about with each other.

Still, I'm glad to have this community. It's good to be part of an "us," it's good to have a little prefab pool of friends, and I'll take it over the Elks any day, for one simple reason: I never got nearly this many screaming orgasms from an Elk.

How to go to a play party (and not play).

I've talked before about how to go to a BDSM play party. A very common question I've gotten is: "What if I don't want to play?" Is it okay to go to a play party just to watch and socialize? How do you do that and still stay within BDSM etiquette and the good graces of your local community?

First of all, yes, you can do this. It's okay to go to play parties and not play. A small proportion of parties are "players only" and they will let you know with the invitation. Your average, generic party absolutely allows people to come without playing. Really, since most people will be playing for 15 minutes and hanging out for 3 hours, nobody's even keeping track of who played and who didn't.

Be friendly. A play party can be an intimidating environment for shy people, but if you can make (or bring) even one ally who's a little more familiar with the lay of the land, you'll have a much more positive experience and make a better impression. If you're not playing because you're new, your ally can help you understand the scene better; whether you're new or not, a person who hangs out and makes friends is a better addition to the community than someone who only watches. However, don't feel that people will hate you if you do hang out by yourself--as long as you're respectful, people will catch on that you're just shy.

It's okay to watch scenes, but respect boundaries. This means, specifically:
-Leave some space between yourself and the scene you're watching. There should be at least enough room for the top to swing their arms in a big circle, and preferably another arm-length for comfort.
-Often the bedrooms or back rooms at a party will be reserved for more private play. Stay out unless someone invites you.
-Don't ever talk to the players during a scene. A scene puts the players in a very intense mental and emotional state, and you can ruin the scene or even compromise the safety of the players by jarring their concentration. If you have a question or a safety concern, ask someone in the social space or a host or dungeon monitor.
-Don't ever ever ever touch people during a scene. I wish I didn't have to say this, but it's happened.
-Use a lot of judgement in commenting on scenes. If you have anything negative or "funny" to say, keep it to yourself; other comments should be made quietly and far from the players. You don't have to watch in silence, but before you speak, remember: these are ordinary people, not performers, and they are extremely emotionally and physically exposed. Don't say anything that you wouldn't want to overhear in a moment like that.
-I don't know how to say this, but... don't make ogle-face. Do you know what I mean? Don't do that. Look don't stare, lean back not forward, smile don't leer. Look like you're interested in the players, not like you want to eat them for dinner with some fava beans and a nice Chianti. (If you don't know if you're making ogle-face, you're probably not. Don't drive yourself nuts over this one.)

Don't be afraid to be blunt about your intention not to play. In BDSM, as everywhere else, "no" means "no." If someone tries to start an argument over "why not?", makes a scene or starts following you around, or asks repeatedly, talk to a host; they're crossing a line. However, do be aware: in part because of the consent-conscious culture, people in BDSM are more likely to ask you if you want to do something with them. If they simply ask and take the first "no" graciously, they're not violating any rules.

If you don't understand something, ask! Kinksters are sex nerds, and they will be tripping over each other with their eagerness to educate you. Just make sure you ask a bystander or a host, and not an active participant in a scene.

Don't be a tourist. If you're at a play party, you're one of us. This doesn't mean you have to play--but it does mean that you can't look down on the people who do heavy or unusual play, or act like you're an objective observer of our quaint culture. Don't--even mentally--point and laugh at the freaks, because by showing up, you are a freak.

No wanking! This is obvious, right? Unless it's a designated wank-friendly party (these exist), don't wank at a party. Seriously.

Asymmetrical perceptions.

I like kinky porn. Because of conflicting and troubling stories about the consent/enthusiasm of the performers, I've gotten pretty picky about the video/photo kinky porn I use (it's pretty much come down to "do I know the people who made it?"), but I still read kinky erotica. What I don't read, if I can possibly help it, is other people's comments on the stories.

The problem is, there are two ways you can enjoy a story about a woman letting her lover tie her down, beat her, and fuck her. The first is as a depiction of consensual BDSM that is fulfilling to both participants. The second is as the humiliation of a dirty slut. And reading the comments on a lot of BDSM erotica sites makes it clear that some people see it as the latter--and they like it.

This asymmetry plagues almost any sex-positive endeavor that's open to the public. Hold a BDSM demonstration that involves nudity, and some people are going to ogle it like a strip show. Produce enthusiastic-consent-modeling dyke erotica celebrating diverse body types, and some people are going to watch it as girl-girl porn. Host a gathering for kinksters to meet and socialize, and some people are going to see it as a great place to meet slutty chicks who are into freaky shit.

I'm phrasing these as differences of semantics, but they often result in differences in behavior. Someone who sees a play party as 360-degree porn for their entertainment is going to be bad company at best, an intrusive wanker at worst. (A literal wanker, sometimes.) Every person who thinks of munches as pure meat markets makes the community less safe and less welcoming. And it's disgusting and horrifying to have what you thought was a mutual exploration of sexuality with someone, only to learn that they just thought of you as a disposable slut who was giving it up easy.

I think this asymmetry of perceptions is mainly due to two factors: context and participation.

Context:
Being involved in sex-positive activities in good faith requires education. If you come into a sex-positive activity with only the knowledge you learned in the cultural mainstream--that sex is dirty, sluts are gross, women's sexuality exists for men's amusement, and kink is freaky-weird--then you're going to misinterpret everything you see. This is one of the reasons that I'm a big proponent of people settling into a kink community socially before attending parties.

I think that every sex-positive activity that's open to the public should come packaged with some sort of education on its context. It may be tiresome for the old hands, but when there are people in the audience who may never have been exposed to sexuality without judgement before, it's important to spell out both your ground rules--no wanking, ya wankers--and your conceptual foundations--this is a place for sexuality without judgement, ya judgers.

Participation:
A big cause of asymmetrical perceptions at live events is when people are playing asymmetrical roles. People who put themselves in the role of "audience member" or "customer" at sex-positive activities tend to cause many more problems than people who put themselves in the role of "participant." When I've felt exploited after sex, it's because my partner saw himself as a normal guy fucking a slut, rather than one slut fucking another.

I don't think everyone at BDSM parties has to play. But I think everyone at BDSM parties should have to identify themselves as a kinkster, as part of the party, not as a spectator. In practical terms, I think it would help to require everyone to help in some way to create the event. This could be an entirely token thing--bring one bag of chips, pick up one piece of trash--and it would still help people feel more like community members, less like consumers. And this is a second reason that I think "munch before you party" is so important.

In a way, this is simply another aspect of providing context--letting people know that by engaging with sex-positive culture, they are now a part of it. Whatever false dichotomy someone had between "perverts like them" and "normal people like me" should be destroyed the instant they start getting enjoyment from the perverts.

Like watching what perverts do? You're a pervert yourself now--so you'd better come to terms with why that's not a bad thing. Like having sex with sluts? Guess what that makes you...