When Good Etiquette Goes Bad: a short short story

I'm currently living in an area where manners mean a lot. By and large, people are friendly and polite as a matter of course. They smile at me on the street. They make small talk with strangers. After living here for over a year, I've started addressing older strangers as "sir" and "ma'am". It's a little old-fashioned, but it goes over well.

Unless I'm at a play party, in which case it is very bad form to assign those titles to someone with whom you don't actually have an existing power dynamic. Anyway, I don't want to be giving anyone ideas.

So I do a lot of "Excuse me, si... uh, 'scuse me."

I am going to be putting my foot in my mouth one of these days.

On Labeling Myself

One thing that keeps coming up lately is how I label myself. Since I've started labeling myself, I've been calling myself a submissive, and that's been varying degrees of accurate. For a long time it was completely true: I was primarily interested in being overpowered, in taking orders, in service, and in a system of punishment and rewards. That is a lot less true now. I know that a big part of that is my bad experience with it a couple of years ago. For a long while after that, I completely lost interest in submitting to someone else in any prolonged or serious way, and I've only recently started to think about wanting it again. That is, it's barely even a part of my fantasy life again; I just want to want it again.

That's probably another entry entirely, but the point is that it's barely accurate to call myself a submissive anymore.

It is still accurate, in a way, to call myself service-oriented, or at least to say that I'm into service, but I really shy away from doing that now. One really mundane reason is that I've been cleaning houses for money for the last few months, and that makes me a lot less excited even to clean my own house, much less that of someone who isn't paying me. The more insidious reason that I'm reluctant to say that I'm into service, though, is that I'm only into it in specific contexts, and a lot of people would love to take advantage of it.

Okay, let me be more clear. In a blog in which I talk about abuse constantly, "take advantage of" is pretty strong language. Here's what I mean by all of that: I like service, when it is eroticized. I like when the other person is also getting off on having me do things for them. I don't just get turned on by doing the vacuuming. (My job would be a lot more interesting if I did.) I know that there are people for whom the mere act of serving someone else is a total turn-on, but it just isn't for me. I don't necessarily want to make your dinner or scrub your sink; I want to please. I want to delight. Obviously, I want to arouse.

Here's the problem: most people really like to have things done for them. They want their dinner made. They want their sinks scrubbed. They want it for free. Heck, I want my dinner made and my sink scrubbed for free! If I found someone for whom making my dinner and cleaning my house was so intrinsically gratifying that they would happily do it for free, I'd be thrilled! I am not that person, though. And yet, as soon as I say I'm into service, I can see the eyes light up, and a moment later I am getting gleeful offers. When I try to explain the context situation, they say that it would be erotic for them! I could be naked while I cook! "No, thank you," I tell them.

It's hard to imagine ever accepting one of these offers; I think that service is probably something I'll reserve for intimate partners. After all, doing domestic service for someone who is in it for the free labor feels a bit like having someone fall asleep on me during oral sex. It's just humiliating - and not in the fun way. Not to mention that it is a dull-as-bones waste of my time.

On to: why no other label is good either.

Right now, I should probably just be calling myself a masochist. What I actually want is to have painful things done to me. The reason I don't use that label all the time is that I'm already tired of other masochists playing the who's-more-masochistic game of one-upsmanship, and I think that if I joined their ranks, I'd just be bringing it on myself. The other night, I had a woman ask me, very solemnly, if I'm a masochist or a pain slut. When said that I didn't know the difference, she explained that a masochist is into pain, but a pain slut is really, really into pain. ("I used to be a masochist, but I only recently became a pain slut.") I told her that I didn't know. Calling myself a masochist would just be inviting other people to challenge it - and god, will they ever - and I'm just not up for it.

Which leaves bottom. Bottom is true - and it sounds kind of cute! I feel like it's tough to take yourself too seriously when you're calling yourself a bottom. Am I being a jerk by saying that? Am I ignoring history and destroying context? Possibly. Very possibly.

On the other hand, bottom is just so vague, and seems like such a tiny part of who I am, sexually. It's appealingly neutral, but its neutrality makes it kind of disappointing to me. Not to mention that I switch, once in a blue moon.

I don't know. It was never reasonable to expect that my sexuality could be summed up with a word. Maybe I should stick with acronyms. SLUL: Submissive-Leaning UnLabeled. Or something like that.

The Fury of the Righteous (link time!)

When I started writing this, it was to fill a gap. I wasn't seeing what I wanted to see in terms of critical writing about the kink community. I hadn't read Clarisse Thorn yet. (Can I link to her in every post? Probably!) Until two days ago, I hadn't read Maybe Maimed but Never Harmed or listened to its creator's podcast, Kink on Tap. I'm not sure why I didn't listen to it before, except that I think I confused it with a different podcast that I tried and didn't like. I didn't give the blog a chance, in spite of the fact that everyone, everyone, everyone links to it, because I saw the name, and assumed that it would be about someone having all kinds of sexy sex in unexamined ways, and isn't the Master/Mistress of my passion an actual demigod? I was completely wrong. I feel like I should apologize to someone, and maybe I should apologize to myself for denying myself the absolute fucking thrill of reading posts like this incredible diatribe against the kink community.

[T]here is a fallacy, a lie, a self-protective disgusting self-consolement that the sex communities tell themselves to comfort themselves and hide their own massively, outrageously discriminatory practices[…]. And that lie is that those people simply “didn’t find the right space for them,” “wouldn’t fit in here anyway,” or some such bullshit. […S]ex communities do a fucking piss poor job of making it okay to want those things, and that in fact, sex communities are mostly filled with self-contented, complacent, lazy people whose actions make it clear they care more about getting their own lay than making it possible for other people to connect to them, or with others.

Miranda and I read it and gawked for a bit. I waved my arms around expressively. It feels so good to read that, we agreed.

So, go read it. I'm probably going to go comment on it.

How to Not Abuse Me

Ok, so I've been halfway through a post about Story of O, Secretary, and why we BDSMers are so into stuff that glorifies rape, for... gosh, an embarrassing amount of time. I plead NaNoWriMo, and how despairing that particular post makes me feel. So, a new post, quick and dirty.

This came out of a conversation I had with a friend pretty recently. Making up themey, literary names for people is fun, and I'm going to call him Hyde because he'd like it. Mina and I have played with Hyde before, and he and I have had a lot of interesting conversations about what works and doesn't work for us in the scene here. He knows about my (gasp) abusive past, and, the other day, asked me what differentiated abuse from business as usual, when it comes to BDSM. Since we've played, and since we're both total sex geeks, he's got a good idea of what I'm into - in particular, that I like pain and lots of it. Most of what goes on in BDSM would look like abuse to an uninformed observer, and would be abusive in a non-negotiated context. Spend enough time around BDSMers, though, and you'll probably develop a different idea of what's appropriate, healthy, and okay. It makes sense, then, that my friend, a dominant sadist, has been worrying that he could wind up abusing someone and not even know it. (Also, how cute is that? I love that. I want to give him a prize. The prize of knowledge!)

Clarisse Thorn wrote a wonderful article about taking anti-abuse measures within the BDSM community, and she includes a few definitions of BDSM vs. abuse. (You should also check out her blog, with which I am deeply in love.) Here's one, from a pamphlet by The Network/La Red:

The most basic difference between S/M and abuse is Consent. It is not consent if…
You did not expressly give consent.
You are afraid to say no.
You say yes to avoid conflict.
You say yes to avoid consequences (i.e. losing a job, losing your home, being outed).

S/M is…
Always consensual.
Done with respect for limits.
Enjoyed by all partners.
Fun, erotic, and loving.
Done with an understanding of trust.
Never done with the intent to harm or damage.

Just because you consent to play does not mean you consent to everything. You have the right to set limits.

Another list emphasizes intent (that both partners enjoy themselves and feel safe), risk-awareness, informed consent, and having done the research about/legwork for whatever activity you're planning on doing.

I can agree with these definitions, in general, but I thought it might be nice to talk about a few things in particular. I tend to do better with specific examples, since general rules like the ones above seem so obvious that it's easy to say, "Well, of course I knew that, and then not examine my own behavior any further. I should also add that there's a lot of debate about what's acceptable , and I've been surprised by the number of people I've met who are scornfully anti-safeword, for example. I believe that safewords are indispensable, but I know that some people enthusiastically consent to giving them up, trusting that their partner can read them well enough to stop or slow down if necessary. There's always going to be some disagreement, so I've tried to think of this as a list that I would give a potential partner, to keep it focused.


Tips for Not Abusing Susan

- If I've said no to something before a scene starts, it is off the table, even if I change my mind during the scene itself. That is, if I say no sex, and then you tie me up in painful positions and do mean things to my pressure points, and I get all hot and bothered and say, "Actually, yes, do me," do not do me. Stick to the limits I give you when I'm sober and negotiating; they are more accurate than the ones I have when I'm in the middle of a play-induced chemical rush. I wouldn't ask you to marry that chick you went home with when you were drunk, so don't ask me to live with what I think I can handle when I'm totally loopy from play. This is a good way to avoid horrible emotional fallout once the scene is over.

- And definitely don't try to seduce me into saying yes to something. This is just a more extreme version of the last one. Negotiation about limits should happen when we're clothed, sober, and have both had some time to think about it. If I say no to knife play, you don't get to try to change my mind once I'm tied up, horny, and presumably role-playing some kind of submission. I definitely get into sub space when I play, and I'm kind of a neurotic people-pleaser in general, so saying no at that point is going to be really difficult. If you wait until I'm feeling all happy and submissive to try to get me to bend or retract my limits, you're a manipulative dickbucket.

Here's the thing about this last one: some people are going to say that that's okay, in the name of training. Some folks who are into behavior modification and more extreme kinds of power exchange might argue that it's good to seduce a submissive into something that she feels trepidation about - that way she approaches it as something pleasurable, rather than as something to be dreaded. Whitewashing the fence is fun if you're wildly excited for the opportunity, basically. And yet. Limits are there for a reason. That attitude really bothers me, in that it assumes that the submissive doesn't really know what she can handle. I distrust a model that assumes that the dominant partner knows best.

- Don't hit me when you're angry. I am not your worry doll.

"But wait!" subbier_than_thou (not a real person) might cry out from Fetlife's "Sluts, Cunts and Whores" forum (a real thing). "I exist to serve my Dominant, and part of that is being there to be hit when she needs to vent some rage. She gets to take out her anger, and I get to fulfill my service kink. Where's the problem?"

"@subbier_than_thou," stockings_and_boys (not my real handle) would reply, "what happens when you make her angry? More specifically, what happens when you need to tell her something that she won't like, especially if she's at all quick to anger? What if you're feeling upset or uneasy about some activity that she's particularly fond of, or you need to cancel a date, or (if you're not monogamous) you want to plan a date with someone she dislikes, or you think that she's not behaving well and want her to behave differently? In every relationship, there are going to be conversations that need to happen, and will also make at least one of you angry. If she gets to act out every time she gets angry, you're going to start avoiding those conversations. You'll probably start hiding when things make you uncomfortable, and you may start changing your life to make it less likely to piss her off. You know: you didn't need to go on that date. It doesn't bother you that much when she makes rape jokes. Etcetera."

Which leads me to...

- I need to be able to call time-out. I need space to discuss concerns without fear of being punished, and without worrying about rules and protocols. At this point, I have no desire to do another 24/7 power exchange, so this is less relevant, but I think it's worth including. When I was in that situation before, anything I did or said was supposed to be informed by my submissive role, and it was all fair game for retribution. Part of the reason that I didn't get out of it sooner was that it was so all-or-nothing. There was no room to renegotiate once I'd agreed to be submissive. Very fucked up.

- You should reward use of safewords and communication of my comfort level. Let's be clear: it is an act of bravery to say no to something that a sex partner wants. Even in the most vanilla context, it is brave to say, "I don't like it when you touch me there," or "I don't feel comfortable with that." It is harder to do when there is any kind of power exchange, especially if you - like me - kink on service. With that in mind, you should work extra hard to make sure I'm extra comfortable telling you what I need, and what I can't handle. Let's use an example:

BAD: I use a safeword. You stop what you're doing, curl up in a ball and wail, "Why am I such a failure?!"

BETTER: I use a safeword. You stop what you're doing and find out what went wrong.

BEST: I use a safeword. You stop what you're doing, tell me what a good girl I am for letting you know, check to see if I want to be touched and give me a big hug if I do, and then deal with what went wrong. Then remind me again how good I've been.

(I'm assuming here that I'm using the "red" safeword, meaning "This is too intense and it needs to stop NOW," rather than "yellow", or "Hey, could you stop for a sec because I'm a little squicked/ that sensation is too intense/ my arm is falling asleep." I'm also assuming that you've checked for major physical damage, like a responsible person.)


These are the ones that occur to me just now. I'd love to hear what other people think of, so feel free to comment. I'll keep posting them as they occur to me. That will serve the dual purpose of helping me continue to put off writing about sexy nonconsent and how we're supposed to just wet ourselves over how sexy it all is. Tell me what advice you'd give to a dom who just wants to be ethical!

Assumptions: not just for ascending to heaven anymore!

People in the scene always guess that I'm a sub. It's possible that some of them pick it up via some kind of kink-dar, but I'm pretty sure that my being young, female, polite, and usually wearing a dress has more to do with it. It's no radical notion that, by the standards of Fucking Patriarchal Society, femininity = weakness = deference. Even I have some trouble picturing a lady dom waltzing into a party dressed like June Cleaver. (Or Betty Draper to you young hooligans.) That would be unimaginably hot, but that's beside the point.

In certain kinky circles, I get talked down to because I identify as a sub/bottom/masochist, or because people assume that that's how I identify. When Mina and would go to parties and people would see us play, some (very few) of them would approach the two of us afterward, but only actually address Mina. I can understand that some kinksters are used to certain kinds of protocol - having to ask a dom permission to approach his/her sub, for instance - but for crying out loud, we have always played in zero-protocol environments. Especially given that Mina and I have never done any public power exchange, there has been no reason for anyone to assume that we are anything other than a sadist and a masochist with an egalitarian relationship. (When I talk about Mina in the past tense, it's because she left the state for school. Boo! She is still very much a part of my life, and I'm sure I'll continue to write about her.)

A friend that I'll call Bella (yeah, I'm going there) once introduced me to one of her friends at a play party. "That's her dom, over there," she said, indicating an area across the room. I looked around, expecting to see the friend's dom, until I realized that Bella was talking about Mina.

The funny thing is that in settings where no one had seen Mina topping me, some people would assume that she is a sub. Once, at a munch, a new male acquaintance was talking excitedly about an upcoming party. There were a couple of guys at our end of the table, and he turned to them as he detailed the equipment he thought might be there, which included a hanging cage. Then, he turned back to Mina and me and asked, "Which of you is going in the cage first?" I raised my hand gleefully, distracted by the thought of toys. It took me a moment to realize what immediately made Mina bristle: he had never asked about our orientations. There was little chance at that point that Mina, sadistic switch and public top, was going to climb into a cage at a play party, but this guy assumed that she would, presumably because she is a pretty young woman, precisely the kind of person that this guy likes to top. I realize that I am now making assumptions here, but Mina and I conferred afterward, and she agrees with me.

A simpler explanation for people assuming that Mina and I are bottoms is that, at least in this particular scene and I think in general, there are more female than male bottoms and more male than female tops. When I see a man/woman couple at an event, and there are no visible signs of power exchange, I usually assume that the woman is bottoming to the man. I am usually right, but I'm also wrong often enough that it's silly to make the assumption.

Let me also add that I'm usually right *as far as I can tell*. Like I said, people who saw Mina and me play at parties might comfortably assume that I always bottom to her, which is untrue. I might see two other ladies playing, make a similar assumption, and have no idea that the one doing the flogging (for instance) identifies as a service-oriented slave and a sadist, and that her partner is a masochistic switch who likes inflicting pain sometimes as an assertion of dominance.

Of course, there's no reason that I should know this. We are under no obligation to reveal everything about our proclivities at all times. But still: our assumptions influence who we choose to spend time with and get to know better. They influence how we treat others right off the bat. We will be doing ourselves and our community a favor if we make an effort to assume that we don't know that much about the various sexual identities of the people around us, and that the people who seem to fit comfortably into distinct categories probably don't.

This is all very preschool, yes? Except for the sex part.

Then, there are the ways that we assume sameness. But of course we are all liberal, college-educated, poly atheists! And probably geeks.

Yes, in a large, loosely-tied group of people brought together by being slightly outside of the sexual mainstream, these are all very fair assumptions.

Take note of my scorn.

I love this, oh my goodness.

First off, I want to apologize for the format of the last post. I am starting to loathe Blogger.

I have been reading the hell out of this blog called freaksexual. It is everything I want. I just read one of the older entries, titled "Your kink does not get a free pass" and I squealed with delight, repeatedly, and made Miranda listen to me read it out loud.

I have nothing else to say about this. Just go read it. I, personally, probably shouldn't read it again, because I will start licking my computer screen.

As if to respond to my previous comment, Blogger isn't letting me link to this article. Here is the web address:

http://freaksexual.wordpress.com/2007/02/28/your-kink-does-not-get-a-free-pass/

Ah, to be young, kinky and uninformed!

I worry sometimes about how little information is available to underage kinky teenagers. That is, Miranda brought this up to me about a month ago, and now I worry about it.

We know that a lot of teenagers are going to have sex before the legal age of consent. We agree that there are risks inherent in having a sexual relationship, and that even kids and teenagers whom I or you might think are too young to be sexually active deserve comprehensive enough sex education that they will be able to navigate those risks, when they choose to, in a way that leaves them physically and emotionally healthy. (If you don't agree with that, I'm not sure what you're doing here, but maybe you should go.) Many -although not enough - public school students are taught about safer sex, birth control, and basic relationship stuff, like how to handle partners who try to pressure you into something you're not up for. Even for kids who are left uninformed, misinformed, or taught that abstinence is the only way, there are resources available, like Planned Parenthood and the wonderful sex-ed website Scarleteen. All of these legally distribute information about sex to young teenagers, as well they should, because helping them to protect themselves is more important than trying to keep oneself from being somehow implicated in helping teenagers to have sex "too young." Teens are going to have sex, no matter what anybody says, and they are going to do it more or less safely depending on how much information and how many resources they've had access to.

Why does this reasoning not apply to kink? Kinky teenagers are going to tie up, flog, and collar each other, just as surely as their vanilla counterparts are going to fool around in cars. Lots of people don’t realize that they want to do kinky things until after high school, but enough do, and enough act on their (perverse, twisted) desires that it seems only responsible to provide reading material – particularly about physical and emotional safety precautions – for teenagers who want it. Some of the physical stuff that people do to each other can be pretty risky (hello breath play), and while it’s rare for anyone to get seriously injured from BDSM, it does happen. I’m honestly more worried for teens who get involved in power exchange and other mental games, or whose partners use BDSM as an excuse to perpetrate a more standard definition of abuse.

There are, of course, always books, for which there are no age restrictions. It is sometimes possible for a curious adolescent to go to a library or a bookstore and pick up a copy of SM 101. For many teens, though, this is not a practical solution. I live in a pretty big, notoriously left-leaning city, and our library system doesn’t even have a copy of The Ethical Slut, much less any how-to books on flogging. There’s no guarantee that the local bookstore will, either. Even if it did, not every teenager has access to reliable transportation. It is possible to order books discreetly online, even sometimes via money order, but then there’s the question of shipping, since parents and adult guardians will likely be curious about packages arriving for their offspring. (I once had a vibrator shipped to my best friend’s house, since her parents didn’t ask questions about things like that.) Then, there is the money question. Not every teenager has access to money of her own, and books can get pricey.

Really, a teen’s best option is the internet. Most people have access to the internet in some capacity – at home, at the library, at school. It is possible to look up information online discreetly, and it’s pretty simple to cover up one’s tracks. Lots of young folks get information about sex and BDSM online already; I remember my glee when I discovered that if I clicked the “I am eighteen” button to enter an adult-content website, the computer wouldn’t know that I was lying. But then, my parents, for whatever reason, didn’t use the parental controls. I know that it’s possible to block certain websites – probably all of those that you’re supposed to be eighteen to enter. That pretty much knocks out most of the available info about kink. Granted, I don’t know how well parental controls work, but I do know that I can’t check a good number of the websites I frequent when I’m using the library’s wifi. (Yes, I’m a big pervo.)

Actually, a lot of sex-related websites will re-direct under-eighteen people to Scarleteen, an all-ages website. I’ve been trying halfheartedly to find out what kind of content requires an age restriction – and thus how Scarleteen can talk frankly about sex to an unrestricted audience – but I think that might be a project for another day, because the Family Online Safety Institute website is really freaking me out. Too many families staring beatifically at laptops, presumably streaming episodes of Dora the Explorer, or something equally wholesome.

As to online content actually directed at kink-curious teenagers, Scarleteen comes through again. (I swear, I did look at other websites, but the pickings are really, really slim. I did find a site called Queer Youth Exist, but you have to be approved by the moderators in order to get to the discussion boards, and I’ve been waiting two weeks for approval. I think the moderators may be AWOL. If anyone knows of anything else, please send it my way. I will be thrilled.) Scarleteen only offers a brief overview of some kink-related terms and concepts. It is hardly an education in and of itself.

I think that the best solution is for some of us kinky adults (or, more likely, me) to get savvy about what kind of content gets you blocked, and to put out some good, solid all-ages material about kink. I’m really curious to hear if anyone has any thoughts or suggestions about this.