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| Why not skip to the bit where you are happy? Find out how to get some of this in your life! |
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."
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| 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! |
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.
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| 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:
UPDATE: Isolated 18-year-old sub battles with obsession.
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.
Small comment: I suggest that problem (1) of "embracing kink before experiencing vanilla" is just as strong for inexperienced vanilla folk if you substitute:
ReplyDeletewhen you do find a [partner], the [sex] is so utterly compelling that it's hard to see beyond it
In other words, I don't know that what we do is intrinsically more potent, just that it is to us.
I think it's supply and demand. As a vanilla youth I "knew" that if I could have great sex with girl A, then I could probably do the same with girl B. Kink, however, is much harder to ask for when you're young and much less visible unless you're part of an Alt community.
DeleteSixties something here. My earliest kink memories were prepubescent. I saw a scene where a cowboy was staked out on the ground by a tribe of Indians (This was pre-native Americans). In my version I was the one staked out. I was naked and the tribe was all female. Later I read how young Spartans were kept naked during their training to make them tough. I became a young Spartan with all grown woman as my trainers. Spankings and humiliations were a constant threat.
ReplyDeleteThis was pre-internet of course so there was no way easy way to meet others. I was small, not overly articulate and certainly not a awesome high value person. It wasn't until my later 20's that I worked up the nerve to visit a pro Domme. I finally found where I was comfortable. Although there was almost always a commerce component to these relationships some of them were long and close. At my current age the drive has gone down but I do keep in touch with some and I do so love my memories.
I think the advice you gave the young man was dead on.
Thank you! I'm reminded that sucky as pre Internet was, it was even suckier pre... not sure; some kind of watershed. Was it the batman film that did it?
DeleteI'm not sure what the watershed would be. I'm guessing you're referring to Michelle Pfeiffer's Catwoman, though Lee Meriwether in the outfit did wonderful things for me...
DeleteBefore that there was Emma Peel in The Avengers; before that the not-very-covertly kinky versions of Wonder Woman.
Emma Peel (and Lee Meriwether, for that matter) was before my time, though might have been right for your previous commenter. One of my very first memories is a Wonder Woman comic cover with particularly sexualized bondage.
Are we talking about personal watersheds?. Dianna Rigg was big for me. Also there were a bunch of men's "adventure"magazines back then. One particular cover had a bound American GI with most of his clothes torn away while a big breasted booted woman in Nazi regalia stood over him with a whip.
DeleteThanks! No I mean the watershed whereby suddenly everybody knew what BDSM was. Some time in the 1980s I think. But why?
Delete