Showing posts with label why male subs are crap. Show all posts
Showing posts with label why male subs are crap. Show all posts

Monday, 20 May 2019

Confabulation and Crap Male Subs!

....all about receiving a service that
can be rated and
judged on excellence.
Confabulation is the concept I was looking for! The internal narrator constructs a story to make actions and feelings consistent with self image.

Confabulation explains much of where Femdom gets in a knot.

Crap male subs confabulate both ways. They reshape their self image to fit their masochism, telling themselves they must be the lowest of the low. Or else they reframe their masochism to match their self image as a strong empowered adult male and make Femdom all about all about receiving a service that can be rated and judged on excellence.

Dommes often seem to do similar. They can interpret their urges as meaning they must be a bad person. However, given a gazillion years of patriarchy telling them to be nice, it's more common that they take "good person" as a fixed point, and reframe domination as providing a service.

The reality is - probably - that Femdom is an orientation that exists independent of the morality and culture through which we express it. If the context were different, it would be the natural way of things, just as Maledom was once pretty much how sex was supposed to be.


Learn how to how to walk the same Femdom path with your partner! 

CLICK HERE to download my Femdom Erotica (all written while chaste!)
(For ebook format, 
Lulu or iTunes.)

Monday, 28 May 2018

12 Rules for Malesub Life

1. Never remove your invisible collar

Your invisible collar
If you collar your submission, if you own it, then you can control it or at least know when it's subverting you.

Most of the worse sins of malesubs result from flip flopping between abject submission and total rejection of submission. Most of our worst relationship foul-ups result from being in deep denial that we are in fact submissives.

Wear your mental collar to remind you that you are never not a sub.

2. But be your own protector

Ultimately you are the one responsible for yourself and your own happiness. It's OK to be careful where you give your submission, and to withdraw it when a relationship makes you unhappy.

3. Get on your knees

It's the simple dynamic that matters
Accept that it's the simple dynamic that matters, not the masturbation fantasies and fetishes we develop. Don't over think or over ask.

4. And bravely do it for real

All the fantasy play, complex negotiations, and scene jargon? The prominence of dominatrix culture where all is simulation and the intensity adapts to you like a video game?

They're all ways to walk around the elephant in the room: the starkness of the urge to submit and the urge to dominate. Of course you need the communication and the consent, but they are mere safety lines that free you to plunge into the delicious darkness.

5. Submit by offering her the tools to get what she wants

What she wants
Whoever she is, she has her own motivations and desires. You can submit more ethically, more sustainable by submitting to those. However, remember the bit about being your own protector?

There's nothing wrong with doing this by offering her your kinks as tools to get what she wants, as long as they make some kind of sense.

She is unlikely to want some of the things you spin as a "service", but she may be happy to use them to get other things.

6. And revel in the resulting asymmetry

 Not everything she wants will turn her on.
If you're being used for real, wallow in the authenticity of your submission, but do not complain that she does not reciprocate your excitement. Not everything she wants will turn her on. Not everything that gets her off will get you hard.

7. Make yourself worthy

Begin your submission well before you meet her. Get fit. Attend to your personal grooming. Learn to dress yourself. You are not a loser, and positioning yourself as such may feel submissive, but it's not attractive.

While we are at it, learn to do the services you'd like to offer. Know how to truly clean a room, make a meal, massage a back and serve at table. And the kinks. With notable exceptions, most women aren't gearheads or bondage geeks. You need to know how to make complex kinks work, and test any equipment well beyond what you'll ever ask for.

8. Embrace the vanilla

The root of all kinky action is vanilla. 
All long term kinky relationships have to at least survive in the vanilla world, meaning you need to be good enough at vanilla life in order to be able to make and keep commitments. Most real long term kinky relationships are also vanilla ones, meaning you need vanilla as well as kinky relationship skills.

The root of all kinky action is vanilla. Tease and deny is just weaponised flirting. Corporal punishment is just amplified power play, or one-sided martial arts. A chastity device is a penis wedding ring. Service is service.

This means that you can find new kink in your partner's vanilla tastes and that - happily - even if she isn't a fetishist, she may well enjoy what kink has to offer.

It also means that you can find kink in vanilla places.

9. Seek kink with brave honesty

When you ask for kink, actually ask for it. Don't hide your desires until the relationship is established - that's bait and switch; immoral but also foolish. Just as men have no leg to stand on complaining when they end up in the friend zone, malesubs have only themselves to blame if we end up in the vanilla zone.

10. Wander humbly, don't be a pilgrim or a thrill seeker

It's tempting to orbit around a dominant
woman being an enabler
Kink isn't a quest to get to a certain goal. Have the humility to accept that you won't know whether you truly want something until you experience it. You can only escalate so far before you become dangerous to yourself and others. At some point you need to settle into wandering around your kinky comfort zone.

11. Don't be a vanilla enabler or a pushy sub

It's tempting to orbit a dominant woman being an enabler, blindly supporting her, encouraging her to drift further and further from acceptable real world behaviour. You may tell yourself it's a form of submission, but really it's exploitation.

And in kink, especially with an inexperienced domme, it's sometimes easy through pushiness to nudge her into a service topping relationship... for a while before she dumps you or the femdom goes away. Don't do this.

12. Enjoy the other stuff in life

It's not all about kink. Just because you are kinky doesn't mean your life has to revolve around it. Get out and enjoy the world.



Learn how to how to walk the same Femdom path with your partner! 

CLICK HERE to download my Femdom Erotica (all written while chaste!)
(For ebook format, 
Lulu or iTunes.)

Tuesday, 19 December 2017

Ask Giles: Why Are Malesubs Crap (*Often* crap, that is)

Malesubs are often crap, especially the inexperienced ones: entitled, demanding, gross, weird, blinkered... I don't need to give examples. But why?

First, our culture still enables men to be crap about sex in general

Our culture still portrays men as the ones with sexual agency. Sex is still about men, and most men themselves approach sexuality in a wide-eyed boyish way that combines innocence with a lack of reflectivity: "Me... me... me..." In this world, female pleasure is a proof of masculinity and the female body territory to be conquered.

The unreflecting assumption is that Femdom will simply be an inversion of traditional male/female roles, hence the obsession with "serving" one's mistress by being penetrated, and hence unsolicited ass picks.

Couple that inversion with sexist assumptions about women's "naturally" subordinate role, and you explain why malesubs are so keen to emphasise their lack of masculine or high dominance traits: "I know you're a mere weak woman, but I'm a total loser with a small dick who likes wearing panties so you will be able to dominate me."

This exaggerated inversion makes sense when the sub is in boyish mode, but not after he's had a good orgasm. Hence the tendency to flip flop, overcommitting then retreating.

Second, Service Femdom is more visible than "Actual" Femdom.

Prodommes are disproportionately represented in mainstream media, and have a disproportionate presence on the Internet. (After all, this is their vocation. They are easy to contact, often look good on screen, have lots of cool gear, and - if articulate - have tonnes of practical experience to share.)

Meanwhile, the Internet is a good place to talk about the technical aspects of BDSM, so there's more online information about cool rope tying techniques than there is about kinky dynamics and emotions. This makes Femdom look like a service, even when it isn't.

So it's easy to regard dominant women as a cheaper alternative to a prodomme - the equivalent of the nymphomaniac of 1970s sex fantasies: all the convenience and lack of complications of a hooker, but free.

(And perhaps there lingers the assumption that women don't really experience desire anyway, so all straight sex is service; why should Femdom be any different?)

Finally, porn amplifies all this.

Not much to say about that one!

So
Malesubs are crap because: 
Patriarchy, highly-visible Service Femdom, 
and Porn.
(But not my porn!)

Learn how to how to walk the same Femdom path with your partner! 

CLICK HERE to download my Femdom Erotica (all written while chaste!)
(For ebook format, 
Lulu or iTunes.)

Monday, 26 June 2017

Venus in Furs: Wanda and the Original Pushy Sub from Hell

Venus in Furs
I got my copy of Venus in Furs before the Internet.

I had a student job in a highstreet bookstore. When things were quiet, I'd get a guilty thrill looking up kinky works in Books in Print. (This involved using a microfiche - actual microfilm reference cards you had to consult through a special viewer.)

And, OMG, Venus in Furs turned up in the catalogue! The book by Leopold von Sacher-Masoch who'd given his name to what I was: "a masochist".

I'd read about the book in a history of sexuality, but never really thought of it as something I might own, let alone read. I had to have it.

So I dithered, and obsessed and finally - betting that the nice ladies in the order department wouldn't know what it was - ordered it.

Weeks of guilty waiting... and it arrived.

It was everything I'd hoped for and more, and much less.

Let me explain.

Femdom as something mythic,
darkly poetic and primal
It's a Victorian-era romantic novel about Severin, who's obsessed with the idea of being dominated by a cruel mistress. He meets Wanda, a wealthy widow, who is intrigued enough to try to satisfy his urges and take him as her slave. Beset by qualms, she determines to "cure him" by taking an alpha male lover and having the chap beat our hero. We close with Severin, dreams of submission rejected, now living a suspiciously preformative hyper macho life with his own harem.

As a work of erotica, it's a failure. There are several sensual events, but delivered in summary. Only the whippings and beatings get loving detail.

As an erotic  romance, it's both engaging and uncomfortably realistic. The lovers struggle and fail to get the dynamic right. All the classic femdom relationship tragedies are here.

Wanda is a dominant woman. She is at once drawn to what we now call Femdom, and at the same time ambivalent about following somebody else's script.

Meanwhile, Severin is the archetypal pushy sub: Me me me do it this way I want you to spontaneously dominate me but in the way I imagine me me me ME! ME!

He doesn't know what an empowered
woman looks like...
To be fair, he's trapped in extreme Western patriarchy. He doesn't know what an empowered woman looks like, let alone a dominant one. He must resort to history and legend for archetypes, and otherwise extrapolate from his own submissiveness... and we know how that goes.

He also - and this is a classic thing - thinks of a dominant woman as so very Other that he has to other himself in order to be with her. He doesn't get that a real dominant woman is most likely to want a considerate lover, companionship and a wider life*. So he presents himself as a willing servant with "benefits" and harsh discipline.

*This is one reason why my Femdom erotica generally has the dominant female form a lesbian relationship.

The result is a realistically predictable train wreck of a relationship, except in that Severin gets his homoerotic payoff, which we vaguely suspect is the point of the exercise.

It would have been nice - useful! - if Sacher-Masoch had shown how the romance could work out and had them end up in a stable Female Led Relationship with heaps of Femdom in the bedroom.

But no, the original Masochist was also an emotional masochist. On some level he wanted the disaster at the end. The novel is an articulation of his sexuality, but he doesn't appear to have learned anything in the writing of it. Go read about his life. It's excruciating.

We're left with a picture of a writer and a protagonist for whom women are just a means to an end. He wants his experience, and damn the fallout for other people.

Wanda remains herself throughout. 
But even so, one aspect of Venus in Furs is rather marvellous:

Submission - Femdom - is presented as something mythic, darkly poetic and primal.

We open with a dream vision of the Goddess Venus in furs (duh!) by the fireside. Then there's a mesmerising sequence in snow-covered parkland where Severin discovers the statue of Venus also draped in furs.

Wanda and Severin try to do Femdom for real. Wanda remains herself throughout. She doesn't have recourse to pornodomme speak ("My Divine Will shall be imposed on my Grovelling Worm of a Slave... etc").

For me, all this was as liberating as it was validating!

It took me a million miles away from the stock 1980s PVC and rubber Personal Services image of BDSM  ("have you been a  naughty boy?") and gave my sexuality back its dignity.

So I'm glad I read this book when I did, but wish I'd had something a bit more informative to read...

Learn how to how to walk the same Femdom path with your partner! 

CLICK HERE to download my Femdom Erotica (all written while chaste!)
(For ebook format, 
Lulu or iTunes.)

Friday, 10 March 2017

3 crap things people say about sexual submission

For all that a lot of male subs are crap, it's not helped by the crap that people say about sexual submission. Here are three memes that bug me:
Ultimately, nothing happens
without the dominant

1. The submissive is really the one in control

This is an old one.

It's guaranteed to be off-putting for young dominants - guess what, you're a service provider! - and a poor guide to behaviour for subs.

I'm guessing it has its origins in the early BDSM world of pro-dommes, where it still makes approximate sense. Otherwise, it feels like a wilfully... twee misreading of the situation, desperately trying to make sadomasochism into something nice and affirming.

Of course, the sub has - must have - the ability to pull the plug at any moment. However, a veto is not the same thing as control.

Ultimately, nothing happens without the dominant, and the minimum requirement for D/s is a pro-active dominant and a consenting sub.

2. A submissive is just a strong person looking for somebody stronger

A strong submissive nurturing their
more vulnerable dominant.
This one is so toxic it's hard to untangle!

It paints the submissive as a tragic figure whose strength masks weakness: Look, I'm so strong that my strength is a burden.... I've gone on so long... To me that feels vaguely passive aggressive.

However, its worst sin is that it conflates relative emotional strength with relationship dominance. 

This is misinformation.

It discounts the possibility of a strong submissive championing and nurturing their more vulnerable dominant. Its implied advice for emotionally strong submissives is about as useful as telling a tall woman to look for an even taller man. It also obscures the risk of being drawn into vanilla submission to a weaker but emotionally person. Finally, it paints the D/s relationship as vaguely paternal/maternal (how patronising and unattractive for many dominants ) and implies that a proper dominant must be strong all the time.

The truth is, dominance and submission are relationship orientations or preferences. If there is a correlation with relative emotional strength, it is only a weak one.

3. It takes strength to submit

 It takes strength not to submit.
No it doesn't. It takes strength not to submit.

OK, at first it takes strength to transgress gender roles and vanilla norms. And perhaps some submissive acts require emotional or physical bravery (though that line of argument seems disingenuous, since many of us enjoy being scared).

However, people with a strong submissive streak spend most of our lives submitting one way or another, while seeking out actual kinky dynamics.

We drift into orbiting other individuals, sometimes appropriately, often not. It's where devoted PAs and doormat spouses come from. It's what drives unrequited love and maintains the friend zone. Understanding and embracing erotic submission often comes as a relief since it actually provides a safer outlet for such urges.

If we don't have a dominant partner, we put vast effort into trying to find or make one, even surreptitiously through stealth submission.

Perhaps submission makes us stronger. Having our needs met plugs a chink in our armour. Weathering all sorts of BDSM experiences and coming out whole can make us feel social indestructible  - once you've licked cum off a boot, there's not much in the vanilla world that can truly embarrass us.

Even so, it really doesn't require strength to submit.


Learn how to how to walk the same Femdom path with your partner! 

CLICK HERE to download my Femdom Erotica (all written while chaste!)
(For ebook format, 
Lulu or iTunes.)

Monday, 9 January 2017

What do crap male subs do wrong? #4 Fantasy Blinkers, #5 Stealth Mode. Any more?

I've been trying to nail down crap male sub behaviours (rather than the underlying motivations behind them). I've now got a name for my 4th category:

  • Fantasy Blinkers: Wrong-headed behaviour in which the sub is overly certain "this is how Femdom works". It covers everything from inappropriate use of protocol, e.g. addressing a new acquaintance as Goddess, through to sending unsolicited dick pics. The behaviour usually conveys a sense of a knowing wink and self-entitlement: I know the Secret Femdominate Handshake.

However I now have a 5th category suggested by what Marcia B calls Desire Smuggling: essentially all the dishonesty, duplicity, disingenuousness, self-victimisation and hidden agenda-ism displayed by subs who can't or won't ask for what they want.

I'm going to use my own term, associated with an existing strategy known as "stealth submission":

  • Stealth Mode:  Getting submissive kicks through deception while failing to own one's own sexuality. (Of this, more later.)

So, so far we have:

  1. Flip-Flopping
  2. Self-Negging
  3. Do-Me-ing
  4. Fantasy Blinkers
  5. Stealth Mode

Have I missed anything?


Learn how to how to walk the same Femdom path with your partner! 

CLICK HERE to download my Femdom Erotica (all written while chaste!)
(For ebook format, 
Lulu or iTunes.)

Friday, 16 December 2016

Help me Kinky Internet! What do crap male subs do wrong?

Probably a bit of Do-Me going on here.
Yes, I've given in. I'm working on a new book provisionally titled, "How to be a male sub without being a loser or an ass." The first step is to nail down the main categories of male sub behaviour that are both self defeating and annoying.

Note, I'm looking at behaviours here, things subs do (or don't do!). What's behind them is mostly either heresies (wrong ideas about BDSM, women or humans in general), or issues (low self-esteem, muddled fantasy life etc). I'll get to these later  - though please do help by sharing your insights in the comments...

Three obvious crap male sub behaviours - please tell me what you think

This sub has over-committed
and is likely to Flip-Flop
So far, I think three general terms capture most male sub crapness:

  • Flip-Flopping, the pattern of enthusiastic commitment that turns out to be over-commitment. This covers everything from "submissive until orgasm" through on/off relationships, to abortive internet courtships.
  • Self-Negging, meaning activities in which subs put themselves down or take a position of generic rather than fetishised inferiority.  Classic examples include approaches along the lines of "I'm an overweight small-penised slob who needs a Goddess to sort me out" through to just feeling like a loser because of your kink.
  • Do-Me-ing, which describes a general focus on what the sub wants, rather than on the dynamic or reciprocity. Making first contact with a list of very specific "needs" falls under this, as does going into a scene or session with overly restrictive limits, or using a safeword as a skip track button, all with the intent of channelling the domme through particular activities. Do-Me can be innocent due to simply not thinking, but can also segue into duplicitous scheming, e.g. deliberately planning to end a session once you've had your kicks and before you reciprocate.

Help me name the fourth category! 

The Magical Secret World of Femdom....
I'm missing one category - a catchall for wrong-headed behaviour in which the sub is overly certain this is how mutually satisfactory Femdom works.

This covers everything from sending unsolicited dick pics and worse, through presuming a dynamic out of the box (e.g. using protocol terms with a new acquaintance in inappropriate circumstances), to weird expectations of a domme (e.g. that she telepathically divine your needs, or automatically regards pegging you as you serving her). 

I am pretty certain it really is a family of behaviour because a sub who, say, sends unsolicited dick pics is quite likely to call a dominant woman "mistress" on first meeting her, and offer to serve her by sniffing her panties or licking her boots.

The behaviour is different from Do-Me-ing because, though the sub may come across as creepy or presumptuous, he's really an innocent abroad - a comedy tourist, somewhere between Twoflower and Borat, or Inspector Clouseau undercover. 

The sub is so very certain he's mastered the phrase book and knows the secret handshake. All he has to do is send you a picture of himself in panties and you will induct him into the Magical Secret World of Femdom....

What should I call this? Or does the behaviour really fit into the other three categories? (Or is it really two categories?)


Learn how to how to walk the same Femdom path with your partner! 

CLICK HERE to download my Femdom Erotica (all written while chaste!)
(For ebook format, 
Lulu or iTunes.)

Thursday, 1 December 2016

Characteristics of a Submissive Thrall

Thralls want to serve, 
as in really serve
(If you've just tuned in, then "thrall" is my term for a submissive who submits for real. You are still a "real" sub or a dom if you don't thrall. I just think it's time we identified this flavor and gave it a signal boost.)

Things like this article from my friend Ava Ex Machina got me thinking:
So oral worship huh? That’s your primary thing?” he asks.
“One of many things. Even vanilla women tend to like oral sex.”
“I don’t, at least not giving anyway. I don’t eat pussy. I’m old enough now that I know I just don’t like it, never have. Don’t do it.”
“I understand if that’s not your thing, but it’s a deal-breaker for me. I’m not really into play that’s only about pleasuring the submissive.” (He had just finished telling me in extensive paragraphs all about his desire to be pegged.)
“A deal breaker? That’s fucking ridiculous.”
And then the... gentleman outed and harassed her by proxy at work. And she reflects:
...entitlement to my body, my sexuality, my space still exists, a function of how men see women: consumables, objects available for their sexual consumption.

We are defined by our submission,
not your dominance
Ugh. 

Submissive Thralls wouldn't do this! It's not that we are good people or think we are the "nice ones" -- #notallmalesubs -- it's just that we wouldn't want to. 

When we submit, we want to actually submit. Yes we have our hard limits, but they are of the "Danger Will Robinson" type, not "Me no like can we skip to my blowjob" kind.

So much for what we're not. Here's some of what I think we are.

1. We are defined by our submission, not your dominance. Yes, you may or may not "dominate" us or have a "dominant personality". 

Regardless, we want to submit to your authority as if it were Ancient Rome and you owned us. When you say come here, we come here. Our limits serve as safety barriers, not guide-ways.

2.  We like doing things we don't enjoy. Partly this is masochism. Mostly, it's proof of our subordination. That means that if we don't enjoy giving head, we'll still gain some satisfaction from doing it. Moreover, if we're doing it because you just want an orgasm that way, then we really don't want you to second-guess our experience. The same goes for leaving us kneeling in the corner, or having us spring clean an entire apartment. Or whatever.

We're more interested in your wishes than our fantasies
3. We want to serve, as in really serve. I don't mean serve by licking boots or wearing panties or weathering a beating. I mean serve as in doing things that would make sense to a vanilla observer. 

Yes of course you can play with us if you want, but we also want you to have us give you a foot rub, cook you dinner, clean up, not because it's a fetish but because we are your submissive.

4. We're more interested in your wishes than our fantasies. This is partly participant voyeurism. The pleasures you seek when you have "permission" to be selfish are far more intriguing than anything we might imagine. However, it's primarily about experiencing actual submission rather than fantasies resonating with submission.

5. We like it when you don't focus on us. You can if you want -- if you enjoy torturing and teasing and BDSM for effect. However, you don't have to. You can, in fact, just kick back and enjoy being in charge. What's in it for us? Again, submission and voyeurism.

6. We still want to submit after we've come. If we get to come, we still feel submissive after ward. We'll bring you a nightcap, tuck you up in bed, and -- if that's what you want -- crawl off to our cell, and do all this long after the afterglow has faded. In the morning, we'll bring you breakfast in bed, even though we're too groggy to feel horny, and it's a work day anyway.

In short, when we're your thrall, we're as low maintenance and consistently obedient as if you owned us.

Learn how to how to walk the same Femdom path with your partner! 

CLICK HERE to download my Femdom Erotica (all written while chaste!)
(For ebook format, 
Lulu or iTunes.)

Wednesday, 16 November 2016

Why male subs are crap 2: Warped or missing role models and prototypes

Listen to the chatter around Femdom: "Goddess... Mistress... Queen... punishment... service... worship..."

Look at the posturing and the posture taking!

Roman widows kept male slaves as
lovers....never depicted in
mainstream culture. 
It all points to a prototype:  a mutually fulfilling sexual relationship in which the woman holds all the formal power, not just over the sex but over the man himself.

Unfortunately, it's a protoype that never existed.

Oh sure, some Roman widows kept male slaves as lovers. Some of those relationships had to be about more than just captive masseur who does happy endings. However, these are never depicted in mainstream culture.

Instead, our cultural heritage views female dominance through the lens of the Battle of the Sexes: there to be defeated - Cruella De Ville; tamed - Kate from Taming of the Shrew; - or laughed at - every comedy housewife who wears the trousers.
The powerful woman spends the movie trying to
submit her way into his world.

Think about the film Notting Hill.

Hugh Grant's character is a penniless bookseller. He's in love with Julia Roberts' screen goddess. The whole film hinges on overcoming the power imbalance between them, and ultimately on her escalating attempts to surrender to him.

The powerful woman spends the movie trying to submit her way into his world.
Imagine if the genders had been reversed?

So, yes you can have a living goddess like She or Cleopatra or Julia Roberts, but - since sex is surrender - when the right man comes along, she's revealed as "just a girl wanting to be loved" (presumably this is the origin of the idea that dommes are just waiting for a real alpha male to come along and tame them).

 She's grotesque, and he's a figure of fun. 
Think about... how about... yes! Do you remember Suburbagatory?

Sheila Shay is clearly - explicitly! - the dominant partner in her relationship, but she's grotesque, and he's a figure of fun. Moreover, he's weak in his relationships outside the marriage, and therefore less of a man.

That's fine because this is comedy, but can you think of a non-comedy show where she rules the roost and that doesn't constantly generate challenges for them as a couple?

So, yes, the wife can be in charge, but that makes the man defeated and emasculated.

It seems our mainstream culture doesn't know what a happy vanilla Femdom - "Female Led"- relationship looks like, let alone what kinky Femdom sexuality might look like when she's actually in charge.

This is perhaps why some male subs have odd or unhelpful ideas.

They envisage Femdom as a simple reversal of traditional roles.

In the crudest form, they present themselves as feminised in the expectation that a dong-wielding domme can't wait to peg them "for her pleasure". In a more subtle variation, they assume that if a woman is in charge then her approach to sex will become "masculine": just as a manly man wants to "force" one extra orgasm out of his woman, so should a True Femdom want to milk her sub dry. (Of course, some women do want to do this, but not all.)

Castle: very much a happy vanilla Femdom relationship
Or they narrate their submission as an inevitable act of surrender in the battle of the sexes, and portray themselves as weak while loudly proclaiming the truth of gynosupremacy - because that's attractive, right?

Finally, they read female sexuality as being inevitably submissive, so focus on anything other than satisfying it.

This is one reason why they imagine being done to rather than doing for.

In this view, receiving a hand job is a form of surrender. Where the sub is the active one, it must be about his submission. She must either be the scornful goddess - e.g. having her boots licked - or else take pleasure in an aggressive posture, classically through pegging and face sitting, but also - if she really must lie back and enjoy cunnilingus - through gloating over his inevitable denial.

God forbid they should actually have sex!

These warped substitutes for role models and prototypes must affect not only male subs, but also dominant women as they grow up, thus making what should be a very simple idea - she's in charge, we do kink - into a minefield of conflicting expectations.

Hopefully things are changing. Market forces are slowly generating shows about powerful women, some of whom have supportive partners who are neither weaklings not brats.

...hints that there is actual Femdom in the bedroom
from time to time.
The best example of all is Castle

Beckett clearly calls the shots, owns the sex, and the entire series is about his struggle to fit into her life, and ultimate acceptance that she will mostly go her own way and that he can only support her in that.

This is very much a happy vanilla Femdom relationship, though we have hints that there is actual Femdom in the bedroom from time to time.

It's a start.

Learn how to how to walk the Femdom path with your partner! 

CLICK HERE to download my Femdom Erotica (all written while chaste!)
(For ebook format, 
Lulu or iTunes.)

Tuesday, 8 November 2016

Why Male Subs Are Crap 1: Transactional Analysis and Femdom Styles

"...all I want is a full body massage
and dinner I don't have to cook..."
Submissive men are mostly crap and getting worse.

A domme friend of mine posted:
Guy asks to worship my boots, but all I want is a full body massage and dinner I don't have to cook/pay for.
And increasingly (it seems) dommes are complaining of being treated as "kink ATMs" or cheaper alternatives to a pro domme. This can manifest in one-handed email and IM exchanges and then no further contact, through to actual in-person encounters where the "sub" is mostly manipulating to get his particular kinks (perhaps using safe words as a sort of skip track button).

Finally, male subs seem to feel the need to position themselves as losers, as if diminishing themselves will make them more rather than less attractive.

As a first step to understanding what's going wrong. it's worth revisiting the transactional analysis ego state model.

Short explanation:
We all have three mental places we stand - Ego States. How we behave is determined mostly by behaviour we've learned from other people. So when I'm in my "Parent" ego state, I'm usually nurturing, but at other times disapproving or judgemental. When I'm in my "Child" I can be playful but also needy and brattish. When I'm in "Adult" I'm - supposedly - above all this, though I may carry around funny ideas of what an adult does (look for "contaminated adult").

Interactions between people are actually transactions between their ego states. For example, an Adult-Adult transaction can be super sensible and productive, a Child-Child interaction can be playful, and an Parent-Child interaction can be patronising or nurturing depending on the people and situation. And of course, people can shift between states, sometimes in weird ways, which gives us Games People Play.
It strikes me that most BDSM activities belong to a single transaction. This doesn't tell the whole story. For example, Adult-Adult covers both two kinksters trading kinky pleasures and the core of a coldly instrumental owner-slave relationship. Even so, it gives a sense of where people are at when they do stuff and why, for example, Xena likes me to be stoical when she beats me.

When I look at this, I can see three ways that wannabe male subs screw up both when approaching self-identified dommes (and when trying to bring onboard a vanilla partner, but that's a different topic).

It's not entirely their fault, though a little critical thinking might help.

The trouble stems from the way two kinds of kinky transactions that get more prominence than they should:



#1 BDSM Culture encourages Adult-Adult conversations about kinky activities


Adult-Adult conversations about kinky activities
This is a good thing and fits in with the wider emerging consent culture.

The snag is that online BDSM culture puts so much emphasis on these conversations and how to have them (because they can be difficult and require both assertiveness and shared terminology) that to an outsider, it appears that all BDSM is about the activities, and that all  kinksters like to be approached this way.

This is where, "Hello I like face sitting and golden showers and want to be your submissive plz" comes from.

Some kinksters do like to be approached this way, especially if you're part of the same community of trust (anonymous subs often seem to miss that part!).

However, most dominants are interested in a particular dynamic (because power exchange) and have their own kinks that reflect that. Also - tragically - most male subs are in reality also more interested in dynamic than particular fantasies, if only they'd stop and reflect. The Adult-Adult conversations are just there to permit the power exchange to go ahead.

Thus, opening with particular requests without context is like trying to pick up vanilla women by boasting about your oral skills: it's at once not enough information and too much information. It's also cold and unengaging.

There's also the problem that unreflective men presuming a reciprocity of fantasies: that what gets them hard and sweaty will get a domme hot and wet. (The reality, of course, is that much D/s is asymmetric at any given moment, which can be hot.)  That's one of the reasons why some men think stating a list of their own kinks is enough, that announcing you like being feminised is the equivalent of sending up a flare.

This partially explains the "domme as kink ATM" attitude. However, there's another factor...


#2 The high visibility of Pro Dommes emphasises Parent-Child transactions (meet the Kink Fairy)

 (Let's be very clear, I'm talking the ego states of consenting adults here. Also, what follows is not a criticism of pro dommes! They are often community leaders, they push the boundaries in terms of skills and toys, and - most importantly - stop some men going crazy. They also have a right to sell erotic services to consenting adults without having to justify it by being useful.)

Combined facilitator and personal trainer,
therapist and local guide. 
The top prodomme is a Kink Fairy: combined facilitator and personal trainer, therapist and local guide.

The Kink Fairy helps the sub embrace and fulfil his kinks, expand his limits, and possibly expand his horizons. For example, she may make his complex feminisation fantasy come true, "torture" him in highly technical ways using expensive equipment, and then parade him around at a BDSM club.

The sub in question may be middle aged, feel unattractive, and insecure about his sexuality... the pro domme is a kind of rescuer. A good thing.

The Kink Fairy dynamic is, of course, focused on Parent-Child (and not unique to pro dommes).

The snag is that the high visibility of articulate and mesmerising pro dommes makes the mainstream media treat the Kink Fairy as the default for Femdom, and confirms this view when male subs look online.

To add to the confusion, to an outsider, the lines between pro dommes and non-pro dommes can seem blurred. Pro dommes often teach activity focused classes attended by other dommes. They also often have non-paying relationships. Nobody makes a big thing about who is or isn't a sex worker (nor should they!) . And many of the most visible non-pro dommes are also Kink Fairies.

So it's easy for wannabe male sub, who possibly already feels insecure about his kinks, to assume that all dommes are happy Kink Fairies, with non-pros being cheaper but less well-equipped alternatives to pros who can, however, be approached in the same manner.

This is where the weird supplicatory self-infantalising fantasising approach comes from: "I'm weak and dirty and need somebody to control my masturbation and sit on my face..."

The sub assumes that the Child Ego state is the right one for the initial approach. They are playful - don't differentiate between their fantasies and their real self - and at the same time needy, demanding a bit entitled, and above all else, too immediately intimate.

Presumably a pro-domme plays along with this she is there to provide a service and knows how to move the client to where he needs to be. Just about everybody else, however, goes "Ewwww.... BLOCK."

#3 Focusing on a Single Transaction whether Adult-Adult or Parent-Child

Even a kinky relationship is more than
just its kink...
Finally, even a kinky relationship is more than just its kink, and the kinky dynamic needs to cover more than one type of transaction. This is especially true when kink and vanilla are interwoven.

Xena and I - who do this 24/7  - go through the whole range of kinky transactions kink:

Sometimes I'm the long-suffering slave to her brattish mistress (Parent-Child), sometimes she's guiding and disciplining me (Child-Parent), sometimes we have serious conversations with serious consequences (Adult-Adult), and sometimes she toys with me in delicious ways (Child-Child).

So any approach that obsessively fixates on a single transaction - "let's trade kinks" or "rescue me, Kink Fairy!" - feels neither like it comes from a real person nor that he is treating the domme as one. It certainly doesn't suggest that any kind of relationship is possible.


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