So, do subs have particular emotional or relationship issues? (A personal view)

...subs -- who would have
guessed? -- get cross if
you imply that we are in any
way inferior or broken

A while back I started a thread of this name on the Reddit SubSanctuary. I had thought it being a sanctuary for subs it would be a safe space for this kind of discussion. However, it I accidentally pushed some buttons; subs -- who would have guessed? -- get cross if you imply that we are in any way inferior or broken!

The dismissive responses and my considered responses made in the... sanctuary of my own blog were pretty much along the lines of:

• "We're just the same as everybody else, just with a different way of doing sexuality!" - But the difference must logically mean we have specific issues. Not more or less, just specific to us.
• "A study proves we're really emotionally healthy!" - I'm sure we are. I'm just interested in the landscape we have to negotiate.
• "How dare you imply we're different!" - LOL. I'm typing this response while wearing a chastity device my wife "makes" me wear. You're probably sporting whip marks and pierced privates. of course we're the same as everybody else. Really.

The more engaging but contrary responses (again, with my considered responses), were:

• "Purely erotic submissives - bedroom subs and bottoms - don't seem to have any specific problems." - Presumably because the kink is compartmentalized. 
• "You can be submissive and still not have a bad-boy/bitch fixation, meanwhile vanilla folks can suffer from this." - I wonder how vanilla the dynamic of the bad-boy/bitch fixation really is.

Two subs, however, both said something that indicated:

• "Some subs derive self-worth from service". 

So an interesting thread, but ultimately not one that reflects what I actually see on the Sub Sanctuary and elsewhere on BDSM Reddit.

My take on the main emotional or relationship issues for subs

Sexual submission, however,
does look weak.

Here's what I think the main emotional or relationship issues are for subs:

Our submissive kink is almost by definition humiliating and can make us look weak (and for female subs,  anti-feminist etc) 

If somebody discovers you are a sexual dominant, they may decide that you are wicked or evil, but they won't think you're weak or pathetic. Sexual submission, however, does look weak.

I think this leads to issues like shame, secretiveness and defensiveness. It can take us forever to bring up our needs with a partner, and we can often do it in such a tentative way that we irritate rather than entice them.

I certainly wasted years trying to spin my submissive nature as merely being sexually adventurous.

Since submission can be a gift, we sometimes mistake all our kinks for gifts

If I clean Xena's shoes then
that's a gift. If I lick them
clean, then that's just me
being a fetishist 

Doing things for another person, building them up, treating them like a god... that can be a gift, especially if that person identifies as a dominant.

However, many of our submissive kinks and fantasies don't offer much benefit to the dominant.

For example, if I clean Xena's shoes then that's a gift. If I lick them clean, then that's just me being a fetishist unless she specifically likes the idea. This is very true of kinks that require any kind of effort from the dominant.

I see lots of posts where people complain that their significant other isn't dominant enough, doesn't put effort into protocol, punishment, edging, forcing them to dress funny etc. These all stem from this issue.

Supply and demand makes some of us emotionally vulnerable

Some of us don't just want a
dominant to dominate us,
we want a dominant to be
part of our lives.

As a young man, I spent years yearning for a dominant, not know where I could find one, or fixating on any girl who would tie me up once.

Some of us don't just want a dominant to dominate us, we want a dominant to be part of our lives. It's an emotional need as well as a sexual one. It's quite different to a specific sexual fetish and similar to being gay in that it pervades our existence and requires another person to form the other half of a relationship.

This need makes us vulnerable because, unless we are young and attractive and move in particular circles, there are not  a lot of visible dominants to go around! We're often pathetically grateful and compliant when we do find somebody to dominate us.

This explains threads about subs being utterly heartbroken by purely online relationships, or acting like doormats in relationships, or letting a dom push their boundaries past what's sensible.

It's simply hard to discern where
being giving and supportive leaves
off and being submissive to the
demanding or needy begins.

Because giving is one of our traits, we may drift into non-sexual submissive behavior during "normal" life

I've done this and I've seen at least one post describing the experience. No matter how assertive and take-charge we are usually, sometimes we encounter a situation or person that makes us neglect our boundaries or run around after them.

It's simply hard to discern where being giving and supportive leaves off and being submissive to the demanding or needy begins.

Is there truly a difference?

We can be drawn to eroticizing and enabling domineering partners

This describes my early sex life.

Domineering is what happens when you not only let somebody push you around, you subtly encourage it. If you're young and haven't embraced your submissive sexuality, then it's very very easy to drift into this. If you're inexperienced, it's also sometimes hard to distinguish between "good domination" and domination which is really abuse.

Why I think we subs are not broken people but face challenges

No wonder, then, that subs have a
harder time than their vanilla friends

As people pointed out on that thread, we really have the same problems as vanilla people, just different variables. I once craved a dominant so badly it hurt. A vanilla friend meanwhile craved a girlfriend so badly it hurt. Ultimately, we were both lonely and looking for The One. 

You can take each of the above issues and find a vanilla equivalent. We subs really aren't broken people!

However, I think these issues are more pressing for subs because we lack role models and established norms, especially when we're young.

 It's true the online and offline kink community offers these. However, online, there's a lot of "noise" from one-handed typists, and hooking up with the offline kink community is often not practical or emotionally viable. 

Meanwhile, society prepares us for vanilla dating from an early age and as early teenagers we rehearse for the real thing via books and soap operas. 

No wonder, then, that subs have a harder time than their vanilla friends.

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Don't resign yourself to just getting off on other people's adventures! When we started out, my wife was vanilla. Use my manuals to help you walk the same Femdom path! There's one for him, and one for her. 

Where did our chastity fetish come from? Where's it going? Male Chastity Devices before the 21st century and in the future

...it's also got an illustration of a working
male chastity belt!

Back in the early 1990s I'm perhaps 20-years old and I'm reading The Anxiety Makers: Some Curious Preoccupations of the Medical Profession by Alex Comfort of Joy of Sex fame, a lucky find in my college library.

It's an amazing if depressing book, all about the stupid things doctors foisted on mostly vulnerable people in times gone by.

It's also got an illustration of a working male chastity belt!

I remember just staring as, paradoxically, my penis lurched to attention.

"I have to have one of these! But how...!"

An example exists in the Prague sex
museum

This was before Internet, and before I found out that there were professional makers of kinky toys out there such as Fetters UK. (Back then, it was all mail order catalogs and the route to finding the real stuff was something like find and get the courage to buy a Skin 2 magazine, then order a catalog and hope your roommates don't open the envelope by accident, then....)

However, that illustration was like a key turning in my head, unlocking a fetish I didn't know I had, a fetish I had no way of satisfying. I had two options, find one in some auction -- really unlikely! -- or make my own.

Making my own was also unlikely, but I did it eventually, progressing from hard cups good for an hour or so, to -- about ten years later -- a locking belt with a penis cage or prison I could pee out of. The final version was good for 48 hour wear, but not practical for daily living so once I embraced ball-trap devices, I threw it out.

Looking back recently, I started wondering what would have happen had I been more plugged in to the Fetish world?

Answer, practically nothing.

It turns out that pre the CB2000, there were a handful of boutique full belt makers. Otherwise it was all DIY enthusiasts crafting their own.

How did we get from there to here?

The Mysterious Flourising of Male Chastity

It's odd.

You have male chastity belts appearing in the 19th century as anti-masturbation devices forced on lunatics and young men... though one does wonder.

Nothing for nearly a century; no easily available devices as sex toys, no popular idea that they might function as sex toys... not like the popular stereotypes of whip wielding dominatrices and cringing bankers swapping their pinstriped suits for latex gimp-wear.

...or even the primitive CB2000

Then, at the very turn of the 20th century, an explosion of chastity devices and a flowering of chastity as a distinct kink.

What on earth is going on?

I encountered the idea in those naive pre-Internet days when Catwoman was pretty much the only Femdom image we had but my immediate and visceral reaction to that picture suggests that there's something innately attractive about male chastity.

I'd already discovered the joys of being edged, and had a strong urge to submit, and the device offers both experiences at a very intimate level. It traps you in open ended edging and at the same time prevents a proper erection, an erection of course being a primal signal of dominance. 

In other words, a male chastity is a perfect storm.

But what about the women? Why would they want -- tolerate -- having their male in chastity in bed?

Women who like Orgasms but not Penises

The student world is a small world. Back in the 1990s, I did not dare to wheel out my amateur designs to any of my girlfriends. However, what if I had had a nice Holy Trainer 2 to show off, or even the primitive CB2000?

In hindsight, it's amazing how many of the young women I felt a connection with were sensual and orgasmic, but didn't much care for penis-in-vagina sex. 

I can recall in detail ten girlfriends before Xena:

70% of my past girlfriends didn't really
 need my penis, and 40% didn't really want it.

• Three really liked fucking and were easily orgasmic penis in vagina.
• One was orgasmic with tongue, claimed to like fucking, but only got herself off through muscular action if she felt like it, which was never.
• Two were sensual and orgasmic, but we never got around to sex so I deduce were in no rush.
• Three were orgasmic with tongue or fingers, but for psychological reasons -- past bad experiences, religious hangups, fear of pregnancy -- didn't really feel comfortable with penetrative sex. (I only actually had sex with one of them, and it always came as a reward for services rendered.)
• One was orgasmic with tongue, but found intercourse physically painful and though sexually confident, had not yet approached her doctor about this, suggesting that she didn't mind or that the pain was an excuse.

Yes, 70% of my past girlfriends didn't really need my penis, and 40% didn't really want it. 

To me, this pretty much answers the what-if question; had I had a practical male chastity device in the 1990s, I would have spent an awful lot of time locked into it (and left behind a string of kink-addicted young women!)

I don't think I was alone in this experience. For a start, most of these ladies had had previous relationships that had lasted around a year and felt significant, and most seem to have gone onto other long term relationships. You'd also hear on the grapevine about pregnancy-shy girls who made their boyfriends wear Speedos in bed, or who never took their jeans off! So I wasn't the only young man who had relationships with women who weren't into penetration.

Add some context. 75% of women can't reach orgasm by vagina alone. In very long term relationships many women go "off" penetrative sex, leading to the dreaded Dead Bedroom. And, since at least the 19th century and intensely since the 1970s, a strand of intellectual culture has always viewed penetrative sex with a kind of instinctive revulsion or distrust.

Generalizing wildly from all this, it seems that that the penis has an only insecure home in the vagina. After the initial flush of courtship, roughly:

• A third of women really like penetration, are enthusiastic fuck-bunnies.
• A third of women welcome penetration for (perfectly valid) emotional or psychological reasons.
• A third of women may grudgingly tolerate penetration for the same reasons but ultimately find it too messy, too intrusive or two disquieting, e.g. due to ingrained fear of pregnancy or disease.

(We should not be too surprised if this is true. Natural selection only requires that a woman permit intercourse often enough to breed but not so often she can't raise her existing offspring.)

It follows that two thirds of men in relationships experience penetration as a gift, and half of those experience it as a grudging one. 

This adds three more motivations for men in chastity --  to sensuality (the edging) and submission, we can add guilt, vulnerability and least bad option. 

Many of us have a nagging sense of this female ambivalence. Orgasm can also make us feel exposed if our partner isn't similarly caught up in the throws of passion. Putting on a chastity device comes as a relief! Meanwhile, if vaginal sex is increasingly a disaster, then she may only be able to relate to him if he wears a male chastity device.

It also follows that there's a good chance that if a man wants to experiment with male chastity, his wife or girlfriend will enjoy it (assuming she can get over any qualms). 

If penetrative sex is really what matters to a man, then he works hard to pair up with one of those 33% enthusiasts. 

A potential chastity fetishist, however, is drawn to one of the other 66%. If she's in the middle third, a lot of her reasons for welcoming intercourse will be answered by indulging her man's fetish -- it's intimate, it's a gift, it makes him happy etc. If she's is in the bottom "grudging toleration" third, she'll embrace his device as a relief and so will he.

The future of male chastity devices

Given all this, I think I can make some predictions about what will happen next in male chastity:

1. Male Chastity is Going Mainstream. (see also)

Male chastity devices are already becoming decoupled from kink and drifting into the same add-some-spice category as vibrators, Chinese balls and butt plugs. This will continue because only one out of the four wearer benefits of male chastity is kinky ("submission"), and because the sensual benefits ("edging") loom large enough that couples can pretend that the other benefits don't exist. Of those other benefits, "least bad option" positions the device firmly as a kind of sex therapy tool.

2. Male Chastity will become a Youth Thing

Male chastity is going to become a youth thing in subcultures where men are encouraged to be sensitive, meaning primarily Geek, Goth and intellectual communities. Here's why:

Male chastity is already an acceptable option for younger men in the gay community -- we seem to get a lot of young gay wearers on the Reddit chastity forums -- presumably because it fits with the whole boi vibe. Fashions tend to cross over from the gay community. Add to that the mainstreaming of male chastity (above) and straight young people will soon be as aware of chastity devices as they are of vibrators and cock rings. Why, however, would they embrace it?

Put bluntly, I think communities of young people will adopt male chastity primarily because of the ambivalence of young women and the poor negotiating position of young men when it comes to sex. 

We've already seen that in the long term, two thirds of women don't get direct erotic benefit from sexual intercourse. Either side the age of 20, these women are still working out some accommodation with penetration. If they're at college and moving in intellectual circles, they're also part of a culture that on some level distrusts men and their nasty penises. How attractive, then, to demand that your partner wear a chastity device in bed, at least while "auditioning"? 

Meanwhile, if that's the only route to intimacy, then most desperate young men will just go along with it. Better to have an real experience to masturbate over later in private, than be a sticky-fingered loser surfing porn on your computer late at night, trying not to hear your roommate giving his girlfriend loud orgasms.

And that's ignoring the Femdom undercurrents at work, undermining the loudly proclaimed vanilla.

3. Male Chastity Devices will be Cheaper and Better

Oxballs recently produced a stretch-to-fit
rubber device for less than the price of
a good vibrator.

Mainstream male chastity devices can be optimized for the bedroom. They don't need to be secure or escape proof. They can be cheap and comfortable and -- and as long as you can't just pull them off when aroused -- they don't even need to be locking! 

Oxballs recently produced a stretch-to-fit rubber chastity device for less than the price of a good vibrator. I think this is just a start. The same companies like Tantus that nailed the strapless strap-on have the technology and experience to move into male chastity.

Cheap non-locking male chastity devices will in turn further mainstream male chastity because they will sit well next to other sex toys like cock rings and vibrators and won't of themselves look kinky or fetishistic. 

Meanwhile, for us real fetishists, I think we will see 100% secure male chastity devices by shifting from anti-pullout to pullout detection. They'll either have ingenious mechanical detectors devised by hobbyists with 3D printers, or else leverage miniature health monitoring systems to act as tell-tales.

* * *

All I can say is that it's going to be an interesting century...

Update: Tom Allen talks about another chastity device sighting on mainstream media. 

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Don't resign yourself to just getting off on other people's adventures! When we started out, my wife was vanilla. Use my manuals to help you walk the same Femdom path! There's one for him, and one for her. 

Oh god I wish my budget stretched to this!

The ultimate hi-tech strap-on!

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Don't resign yourself to just getting off on other people's adventures! When we started out, my wife was vanilla. Use my manuals to help you walk the same Femdom path! There's one for him, and one for her. 

Growing up as a male sexual submissive

Why not skip to the bit where you are happy?
Find out how to get some of this in your life!

(A follow up to this entry on how Female Led Relationships might go mainstream.)

A youngster popped up on one of the BDSM sub reddits. He was a sub and wanted some advice. Our response was pretty much:

Play safe. Do some vanilla. Become an awesome high value person. Be cautious on the Internet. Now piss off back to lurking, this is 18+

I do wonder sometimes whether the Internet helps or hinders young kinksters.

One the one hand, it makes it much easier to get some context on your urges.

All I had back-when was a battered copy of Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Sex (but were afraid to ask) and the hairy-faced classic Joy of Sex.

The first book treated BDSM urges very much as a perversion; a fixed facet of your personality.

That was good and bad! Good in that it said,"This is who you are". Bad in that it dealt with it anthropologically, and didn't really say "Go play! Here's how."

when you do find a domme, the Femdom
is so utterly compelling that it's hard to
see beyond it
Find out how to get some of this in your life!

The second book -- Joy of Sex -- was very liberating in the sense that anything went between consenting adults as long as you both got off. However it didn't really touch on the way that submissiveness can be a core personality trait. Instead, it let me ignore my darker, deeper urges and think of myself as a merely a "bottom" from time-to-time.

Looking back, even as a teenager I was a sub, and my odd choice of semi-abusive girlfriends (for whom I was an enabler, I hasten to add) reflected this. It would have been really useful to have been able to point at BDSM and say -- at least to myself -- "I am a sexual submissive and that's OK."

On the other hand, the Internet encourages you to embrace the kink before you experience the vanilla. Would I have really been happier if I'd gone straight to a Female Led Relationship?

Until recently, I took the attitude that peer relationships and vanilla sex are so much more complicated and difficult than FLR and Femdom that it would be hard to go from Femdom to vanilla and that this is a bad thing. Now I'm starting to wonder whether I perceive this complexity because I am a sub.

Why not skip to the bit where you are happy?

That leaves two related problems: (1) when you do find a domme, the Femdom is so utterly compelling that it's hard to see beyond it; and (2), until kink is mainstream, the pool of young dommes will be limited, and not all of them will be compatible with you in other ways or have your best interests at heart.

I can think of at least one relationship that was longer and more intense than it should have been because there was some kink, and at least three (3!) dysfunctional relationships I had that would have been even more harmful had the girl in question been savvy enough to pick up the keys to my heart and make herself my domme. I simply could not have resisted. I also doubt whether my lovely Xena would - in her 20s - have embraced an FLR.

we need to be more honest about the
power and reality of the underlying
dynamics
Find out how to get some of this in your life!

This leads me to think that the problem is not the Internet and its Femdom forums.

The real problem is that not only does Femdom need to be more mainstream, we need to be more honest about the power and reality of the underlying dynamics.

The Fetish Club and Pro Dommes in their Studio public image of BDSM is a start. At least the wider worlds knows a bit about what D/s. However, treating Femdom as just a sex game, or an erotic LARP performed in a safe environment makes it too easy for young men who are truly submissive rather than just kinky to convince themselves they merely enjoy being a "bottom" from time to time and to fail to master the dangerous undercurrent in their lives.

Meanwhile, portraying Femdom as primarily either a branch of sex work, or a form of swinging and public sex isn't exactly calculated to entice a wide range of young women into exploring their dominant urges.

Sometimes I'm very glad to be middle aged and married!

UPDATE: Fascinating thread about young BDSM folk here.
UPDATE: Flashback to adolescence confirms that I really am a sexual submissive. It's not just a sweetspot.
UPDATE: how was your first BDSM experience?
UPDATE: Isolated 18-year-old sub battles with obsession.

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Don't resign yourself to just getting off on other people's adventures! When we started out, my wife was vanilla. Use my manuals to help you walk the same Femdom path! There's one for him, and one for her. 

The renewal clause in our Female Led Relationship contract

"Will you look at the contract?" I say.

"Will you look at the contract?" I say.

"Oh God do I have to?" says Xena. "I'm not in the mood."

"You agreed it was a good idea," I say. "And we need things spelled out because you keep forgetting stuff."

The whole Xena forgetting I was supposed to be chaste during the day business made me feel a complete idiot. That's the one thing I can't stand; looking like a middle aged man being humored by his wife. A few days later I'd said how about a contract? and Xena surprised me by agreeing. (A bit like wanting me to call her "mistress".)

Now, having written the thing I'm feeling even more of an idiot. "Never mind," I say. "Obviously the wrong time..." I start to shut the laptop, but Xena's already reading it.

"Yes. OK. OK... Looks fine," she says.

I'm not surprised. The FLR contract merely reflects what we're already doing. There are a few clauses reminding me to shut up, and some in there to remind Xena that this is her idea too.

The her orgasms put back my orgasm day system is a nice self correcting system so when our relationship is at its least sexiest I don't feel entirely trapped and miserable. It's also a way to nudge her into more erotic activity with the added spice that it will be at my expense.

I also made sure it was clear that I was allowed to remind Xena when she was behind with administering my demerits -- otherwise the whole thing crumbles -- and that I could also remind her to make time for intimacy.

Again, all these things reflect our existing Female Led Relationship.

"There's one point," I say. "How we renew." I point at where I've set out two options for how we renew our FLR:

On reaching a milestone...
...Xena and Giles will decide together whether the FLR will continue
...Xena will alone decide whether the FLR will continue, though Giles may make his views known.

"You shouldn't have put that option in if you didn't want it."

"Which is it?" I ask, knowing she'll go for the nice safe mutual option. Xena, after all, is usually utterly useless at owning her part of the female led relationship. I'm not trying to force her hand. I'm just trying to establish what she actually thinks.

"Oh the second one," says Xena casually.

I blink at it, "...Xena will alone decide whether the FLR will continue... You mean it's just up to you."

"Well of course," says Xena, amused now. "You shouldn't have put that option in if you didn't want it."

As I bed down next to her to sleep, I realize that the contract really does reflect our existing Female Led Relationship. Thanks mostly to the economy, Xena really is the dominant partner in our relationship anyway.

My penis hardens forlornly inside its Holy Trainer.

Of course, actually I quite like things this way.

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Don't resign yourself to just getting off on other people's adventures! When we started out, my wife was vanilla. Use my manuals to help you walk the same Femdom path! There's one for him, and one for her.