Would you be a Roman sex slave for real? Are you THAT person?

A month as her real slave?

From time to time I like to ask people:

If Dr Who appeared and offered to set you up for a month of erotic slavery in the Ancient Roman Empire, safety assured, hard limits respected by your owner's tastes, some of your kinks happen,  would you do it?

The point being that your mistress (or master, but I'll stick to Femdom here) would actually own you, think that was morally OK, and would have no idea that something kinky was going on. For example, you might stand around waiting on her while she chatted to a friend. You'd experience objectification, she'd just find it handy to have her wine pourer standing by. If she had you go down on her then sent you off without a word, you'd experience teasing and denial, she'd have just had a nice slave-assisted wank.

The responses I get range from the "OMG NO!" to the "Can I go right now and can it be for two months instead?"

 I'd be happy slaving for a month.. 

I think several things are going on here.

Obviously, people have different levels of need for kink. I'd be happy slaving for a month, perhaps you prefer an evening once a month. There's also the question of how real to you like your dynamic. I'm happy to be a slave. You may like the dynamic to be a shared illusion, or prefer not to reference it at all.

I think, though, that the main issue is how subs square their self image with the business of submitting. That's what I want to talk about here.

On the face of it, it's odd that subs bother with kink at all. There are so many vanilla ways to submit!

If you're male you can experience the dynamic by just dating a woman with... ahem... boundary issues. If you're female you can even get the sex as well, and become "a mere fuck toy" .

Why don't we?

Well, take the case of a feminist lady sub who was the sex slave of a "red pill" man. She knew he knew that she knew that he was just using her submission to get lots of sex. Even though this got her off, she didn't feel good about it.

Though people talk about respect, I don't think it's directly to do with that (except when we mean "respect for safety and limits", a given for this kind of activity). A lot of subs want to be disrespected during play, and a lot of  BDSM is cheerfully anonymous... people playing at clubs or during hookups.. meaning that respect for the sub outside their role can often be only theoretical; The woman I'm flogging has a life outside this.

Instead I think it's to do with not wanting to be that person. As long as you're only playing at submission, it's not real. However, if you're being genuinely used and exploited, if your partner feels only an amused contempt for your submission, then you really are a slave, and worse, a voluntary one. You've become that person.

The problem with not wanting to be that person is that you already are that person.

No matter how much we wrap it in communication and consent, the primal part of our brains really can't tell the difference between pretending to submit and submitting for real. Yes, we need a particular context -- to feel safe on lots of levels -- before we can let go, but it is a letting go and not a stepping into that happens when we submit.

I think this uncomfortable knowledge us the reason why subs spend a lot of energy resisting being who we are anyway.

I am happy to be that person if that's not all I am.

I prefer a different approach. I am happy to embrace being a submissive as long as I can also be other people as well; a practitioner of my profession, a sportsman, a good friend, and a loving husband and so on.

This has the advantage that my submission becomes a kind of armor. I can wallow through uncomfortable, painful and humiliating experiences and come out grinning and dripping semen.

So (ignoring the fidelity issues) I would cheerfully do that tour as a Roman slave. I am happy to be that person if that's not all I am.

And that lady slaving to the Red Pill Master? I think she should enjoy it for what it is. The main issue is not that she's having sex with somebody who doesn't respect her, but that she can't build a long lasting  relationship with the man.

---

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. 

Become her Roman Slave: Using Female-centered Femdom to bring kinky life to your dead bedroom (Draft introduction)

(I've finally got my act together to start work on "Become her Roman Slave: Using Female-centered Femdom to bring kinky life to your dead bedroom.")

It’s the dark secret of modern marriage - no matter how deep your love, the middle-aged master bedroom is a dead one.

Sure, it sees moments of passion by chance, or on vacation, or at those moments when life changes and you feel sexually alive to each other. Mostly though, you consider yourself fortunate if you have lack-luster sex once a month.

They didn’t tell us this when we got married (unless those remarks about the importance of working at relationships were code for “the sex runs out, try to take up an absorbing hobby”). Even so, it’s a secret hidden in plain sight. It’s there in popular humor, in those awful seaside postcards of yesteryear, in the jokes people make at work, and in TV comedy. It’s also there in the sex therapy industry - all those self help books, couple’s retreats, and marriage therapists driving around in expensive cars. And then there are the sex studies.

It all boils down to a three uncomfortable facts of life:

(1)Romantic love lasts a year if you are lucky.

(2)Sexual interest wanes after about seven years.

(3)The more equal and stable the couple, the less sex they have.

Most of us accept the fading of romantic love as long as it sparks from time to time. We just can’t cope with that level of intensity day-in-day out, and we’re happy to trade it for the deeper more solid love that comes from a long term relationship.

However, we’re horrified by the waning of sexual interest.

Why the waning?

Some couple therapists think the “higher desire partner” chases the “lower desire partner” into a corner. In other words, the partner who wants sex the most pesters the less horny partner for sex so much that it turns them off rather than on.

Perhaps this is true in the short term.

However, if that was the whole truth, you’d expect the “lower desire partner” to be in a rush to set limits and get the sex working again, which is not — frankly — what you see in real life. Instead, the “lower desire partner” simply disinvests in sex, leaving the higher desire partner high and dry, bouncing between anger and self-doubt: “Let’s go to sex therapy so we can have more sex” - “But I’m not interested in having more sex.”

This is not “men are horny but women want cuddles thing”. Either partner can be the “higher desire one”. However, if you are reading this book, then you are a husband trying to restore your sex life with your wife.

(For brevity, I’ll use “husband and wife” to mean “man and woman in permanent monogamous relationship whether or not you are formally married”. I’m not trying to exclude gay couples; it’s just that I can’t write confidently about them. If you’re gay and any of this works for you, please let me know…)

Why has your wife disinvested in sex? (Remember, husbands do this too, but that’s not what this book is about.)

It’s possible that you have become a sexist slob and so now turn her off. However I bet you’ve already gone to a lot of effort to lose the beer gut, curb your bad temper and support her in her career, so let’s assume not.

It’s possible she’s exhausted by the demands of middle-aged life, typically work and children. However, studies show that horny couples find time and energy anyway. After all, in theory she could give up yoga or step aerobics to practice the Kama Sutra with you instead.

If it’s not you or your lifestyle, what is it?

Could it be that the dead bedroom is “natural”.

For all that we remain strongly bonded by love, perhaps we’re not “supposed” to keep having sex after seven or eight years. Back in the pre-birth control primal past, seven years would be about time to stop making babies and make a good job of raising the ones we have. In the grand scheme of things, securing the future of the next generation far outweighs a little middle-aged sexual frustration.

Perhaps our sense of adventure acts as a built in timer. When we’re young, sex is an adventure but it’s hard to feel like Indiana Jones when the territory is mapped and all the pitfalls known. Similarly, the things that make for good companionship further erode the sense of mystery, and hence the sexual tension.

Finally, there’s mounting evidence that the old fashioned gender roles, though the suck, work well in the bedroom. This disheartening information is also not very useful, since we would not want to turn the clock back to the repulsive world of the Mad Men.

This takes us to the third uncomfortable fact I mentioned: The more equal and stable the couple, the less sex they have.

WTF? How unfair is that?

Embrace equality - Feminism, if you like - regard your wife as your equal, your best friend, your life companion, and you’ll have less sex than the knuckle dragging Neanderthal next door. Worse - if the studies are to be believed - it’ll be less mutually satisfactory sex. Yes, Mrs Neanderthal likes it that way (which is presumably why she married him). The same goes for stability - stormy couples with deep seated issues get plenty of makeup sex (which is perhaps why they do it), just like in that Fleetwood Mac song.

Again this is probably nature at work. However, that’s not very helpful. You’re not a sexist pig and your wife wouldn’t want you to be that way. Nor are you in some crazy chaotic marriage that crowds out your other hopes and dreams, hence perhaps your dead bedroom.

So the dead bedroom could be hardwired (by God or Evolution, or both, take your pick), a natural phenomenon like droughts and forest fires, and hurricanes… I don’t know about you, but I’d rather be happy than natural.

So now you’re at a crossroads with four paths:

1. Divorce - but you love your wife, and there’s a shared life—kids, perhaps—in which you are deeply invested. Also, who’s to say this won’t happen all over again.

2. Affairs - some couples make this work with “open relationships” and polyamory. That could be your path (if so; good luck, play safe, go buy a different self help book) but it sounds rather time consuming and risky, not to mention that if you are like me, you would prefer to be monogamous.

3. Therapy - whether in-office or self help, but that requires time and money and buy-in from your wife, and is also perhaps unrealistic; we saw that the dead bedroom is probably natural.

4. Kink - “Spicing things up” is almost a cliche, but that’s what a lot of middle aged couples do. If your wife just read 50 Shades of Grey and wants you to dominate her, put this book down and go learn to “top”. Otherwise, given the title, I guess you are hoping spicing things up means, experimenting with Femdom. That’s what this book is about, which leads me to to the title; Become her Roman Slave.

Take a look at my favorite picture on earth:

It’s from an Ancient Roman wall painting in Pompeii, Italy. Some Roman ladies, you see, used their male slaves for pleasure. (We know he’s her slave because he is dressed and she is not, and because Romans thought cunnilingus was demeaning and unmanly.)

What you’re seeing here isn’t a sex act. She’s merely enjoying slave-assisted masturbation. Prior to going down on her, he probably gave her a nice massage. He’ll still be horny later when he serves her wine while she reads a book or chats to friends. He may even be locked into a male chastity device - the Romans called these “seed pods”. And of course, if he falls short of expectations then he can look forward to a whipping.

Imagine being her Roman slave for just one day. You’d be getting as much kink as you could handle; chastity, denial, objectification, humiliation, domestic service, oral service, teasing (though not intentional), and finally corporal punishment… all those things and yet without her needing to feel kinky or even notice your existence.

That’s Phase One of the Roman Slave approach; establishing yourself as her “real” slave so that you can make an end run around her lack of interest in sex and land squarely in her relaxation and masturbation space. It’s much much easier to get somebody to be selfish than to be cruel, not least because being selfish is easy whereas cruelty requires effort.

With luck, the cruelty — the delicious sadism - happens naturally in Phase Two, though I will show you how to help it along. Power really does corrupt, especially if backed by a sense of permission and entitlement, which is of course what the first phase creates…

You’ll notice, though, that the Roman slave has little or no control and that the “dynamic” doesn’t have much to do with modern BDSM culture. He doesn’t negotiate scenes with his mistress, nor try to direct the action through a battery of safewords. No matter how much he may enjoy the action, everything that happens is for her benefit or else is part of the logic of slavery.

So, that’s what this book is about; how to approach your wife in the right way and establish yourself as her Roman-style slave so convincingly that the power feels real to both of you, leading her to move from using and abusing you to playing out sadistic games at your expense.

Around about now, you’re probably wandering whether this is all a little manipulative!

I hope not.

There’s nothing wrong with thinking about your relationship, nor with reading books to help you do this. Nor is it wrong to be tactical in your approaches to your wife. If you wanted a blow job, or an expensive set of golf clubs, you would chose your moment and pick your words with care. Why does Femdom have to be different?

Or perhaps you feel uncomfortable with the idea of pursuing a secret program, of approaching the bedroom with an agenda?

Don’t worry. I’m not asking you to lie to your wife. You can tell her the truth about this book; that it will help you explore Femdom with her and that not everything in it will be her or your cup of tea, which is fine because she’s very much in charge.

After a while, that mistress-slave relationship will start to feel natural, so natural that you may start to wonder whether perhaps Femdom is as natural a arrangement as the knuckle dragging alternative.

Read on if you dare…

This book will be a while coming! In the mean time, why not try one of my other Female Centered Femdom self help books?

New product description for Roman Dominatrix

I'm just about to update the Amazon product description of my How to be a Roman Dominatrix self-help guide.

Some readers seem to be expecting a very different kind of book, perhaps the Mistress Lorelei's Mistress Manual,  which as I recall - it's been a while - uses the male partner's fantasies as a starting place and relgates benefits to the dominatrix as a byproduct. It's a good book, and by giving a woman permission - since she's doing it to please her man - has a good chance of giving her the space to explore her own feelings.
Roman Dominatrix just does something different - it starts off with the idea that owning a slave can be fun in vanilla ways and assumes that the sub gets his kicks as a byproduct.

Other books I haven't read are more embedded in the BDSM Scene. That's not a bad thing. A sense of belonging to a wider culture can - again - grant permission. However, some women just aren't interested... aren't natural joiners. They only want to know "What's in it for me?" That's who my book is for.

I've tried to update the product description to reflect this more clearly. Hopefully this will help me avoid any oddly angry reviews. What do you guys think?

Ancient Roman ladies enjoyed having male slaves, and - yes - they did put them to erotic use. Why does modern bedroom Femdom have to be so much effort? What’s in it for you?

Written from experience by an otherwise normal (!) submissive male, this book is for women who are sexually adventurous but have neither the time nor inclination to embrace BDSM culture just in order to satisfy their partner’s fantasies.

It WON’T teach you to be a “good” dominatrix, nor guide you through clubs and munches, nor drill you in bondage, topping or protocols, nor help you negotiate scripted scenes, nor expect you to manipulate your man, nor urge you into a Female Led Relationship.

It WILL use techniques drawn from modern psychology to help you build a strictly part-time Roman version of your relationship… and to make that mistress-slave relationship feel 100% real.

You need never feel silly or awkward or at a loss. You’ll always know what to do because you’ll be following your natural inclinations, albeit unrestrained by consequences or reciprocity.

Relax and be… self-indulgent, introvert, extrovert, mean, affectionate, playful, practical, flirtatious, sensual, clinical…  There’s a good chance that, as a byproduct, enough of his fantasies will be satisfied to make it worth his while.

You get to be yourself. He gets to be your slave. You get to have a hot secret couple adventure. Everybody gets to be happy.

But why are you reading this description? Take a look inside the book and make up your own mind!

How to be a Roman Dominatrix published!

My new femdom how-to guide is now available on Kindle! It's for adventurous female readers who want to dominate their man, but are "vanilla", meaning not naturally kinky.

As you might imagine from the title, it's based on the (very hot) idea that Ancient Roman ladies routinely owned male slaves for pleasure!

What Roman slavery can teach  us about enjoying modern Femdom

Why the obsession with Ancient Roman slave owners?

This -

 

Yes,  a Roman lady... enjoying her slave. 

Authentic slavery means kink for him, vanilla for her

From her point of view, nothing kinky is going on. She's just enjoying  a quick licking the way a modern woman might take out her vibrator. 

From his point of view... well, it ticks many of the Femdom boxes: Oral Service, Male Nude Female Clothed, Humiliation, Objectification, Denial, Teasing (accidental) and, if he's wearing a theca, Male Chastity! If she's feeling playful, then there will be other kinks as well.

Roman-style slavery just works!

This asymmetry is a revelation! What if, instead of trying to tune in to her submissive husband or boyfriend's fantasies, the modern vanilla dominatrix simply treated him as an authentic slave?

Sure, it wouldn't deliver everything he'd spent years imagining, but it would give him a dose of 100% authentic slavery - no guilt, no second guessing, just service and suffering. 

Better yet, she'd know exactly what to do with her slave, because she'd be entirely suiting herself and relying on the situation to generate the kink for him.

And that's what my book "How to be a Roman Dominatrix" is about.

Four steps to hell - how to mentally submit to your wife or girlfriend

The central idea of my Femdom how-to book is that...

Having a part-time slave should offer a Vanilla partner something she shouldn't and couldn't get through  a normal relationship.

That something depends on who she is, and it will be an extension of what she already enjoys. If she's a natural flirt, for example, it will be Teasing and Denial. If she likes being pampered, it's Service.

Once she's used to being in charge and getting what she wants, then she'll may be more comfortable throwing in your favourite kinks at the start of a session, and you're certainly in  a better negotiating position than before!

All this only works if, when you do submit, you really submit. Here's how:

1. Visualise what real slavery would be like
   Use a historical example, like Roman Slavery, or a fantasy (but only as long as it's actual slavery, not an excuse for Fetish).
2. Embrace Slavery
   You are an object. You have no power, no control. There's nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. You are totally at your owner's mercy. Forget what she might or might not do - she will do as she pleases. 
3. Feel the delicious fear
   You are as lost as if you were 2 miles underground wandering darkened caverns.
4. Let go
   You can't do anything about this. Accept it and just be.

Authentic slavery is the key to getting your Vanilla partner to dominate you. Read my book and find out how.

Ancient Roman femdom

A million miles and 2000 years
from a fetish dominatrix...

So, what's so special about Roman women?

If you read forum Femdom advice, it's all about how he can persuade her to do this or that, or how she can make him feel something, usually "used", "objectified" or "denied".

If you're persuading and she's making you feel something, then it's all an illusion! For example, she can't be using and objectifying you, because in setting out to create that effect she is treating you as a person.

And another one; how can she become more dominant? If you're truly submitting, why would she need to be dominant?

There's nothing wrong with her setting out to create a kinky effect on you, but now we're in the territory of Femdom as service - fine if she's already kinky, or has the time an energy to be playful, but not so easy when she just wants to kick back and relax, or if she doesn't regard Femdom as a hobby.

It's also true that the reality is darker and more enticing than the game. Wouldn't it be nice to truly be used, objectified, or toyed with and tormented? To be a real slave, if only for a short time and with a safety net?

I decided to explore this in some erotica about Ancient Rome, where women really did own male slaves. However, what I found catapulted me into completing the femdom manual I'd been tinkering with.

In a nutshell, the Femdom fantasies were all true!

Some Roman women did casually use their male slaves as sex toys or lovers, and did keep them in male chastity belts called "thecas" or "seedpods". There's even good evidence for male prostitutes, presumably slaves, providing cunnilingus to female clients.

Real slavery is nasty and evil, but the Romans didn't see things that way. They took it for granted. So these all-using, all-objectifying Roman dominatrixes weren't kinky fetishists. Nor did they have to negotiate, or dress up in thigh boots and strut. They were just vanilla women who took for granted that they had power over a male slave.

..and yet capable of spreading their legs and ordering "lick"
without even thinking about the slave's reaction.

The women may have been vanilla, but the results were kinky!

Plenty of  accidental teasing and denial, permanent chastity, corporal punishment, objectification and worship. Better yet, the men - the slaves - didn't have to plead or nag for it.

Now, I'm sure many or most of those real slaves were utterly miserable. However, imagine if you had a chance to take one's place for a day...?

And that's what's important about the Roman slave mistress.

Her  power is real, she is utterly unselfconsciously self-centred in her dealings with her slave, and yet that genuine power relationship generates awesomely hot femdom action.

Better yet, she is actually prepared to pay for a slave - a far cry from modern wives and girlfriends having one foisted on them by drooling partners acting like double-glazing salesmen!

Despite being vanilla, the Roman mistress chooses to keep a male slave because her total power over him ensures that she can get what she wants and no more. The benefits far outweigh the inconvenience of managing a slave.

Wouldn't it be... interesting... to offer your partner the same sort of power, with the rider that if she wants you to act like a slave, then she must also treat you like one? That's what The Vanilla Dominatrix is all about.

UPDATE: I've also written a  book for female readers - How to be a Roman Dominatrix.