"Actually I prefer you this way!": Permanent Chastity and the Other Keyholder Dynamic

"Actually, I prefer you this way."

"Actually, I prefer you this way."

About four years ago, I had just serviced Xena and was about to remove my chastity device to and get myself off in the other room. I had a sudden attack of insecurity: was she still OK to play this "game"(longer log post here).

"Actually, I prefer you this way."

God just thinking about her answer gets me hard in my chastity device!

 Being locked into a chastity device
somehow releases my sensuality.

A lot of keyholder relationships seem to be about the chaste male and his ravenous genitals.

We are told that the chastity device and orgasm denial are the keyholder's main leverage with her caged male. We're asked to believe that without that leverage he'd go back to being his boorish, domestically lazy, semen-daubing self. Permanent chastity would destroy this dynamic by removing the leverage.

Perhaps that's true for some couples.

For us, male chastity is transformative.

With fetishes, it's hard to disentangle turn-ons from things that give permission to be turned on. Being locked into a chastity device somehow releases my sensuality. I am far hornier locked than unlocked, and, on balance, more comfortable as well.

Xena feels the same. For some reason, me being locked up seems to allow her to be sexy, and knowing I'm locked makes her also feel comfortable.

The dynamic that tends towards permanent chastity.

Neither of us are really interested in my orgasm. Xena hasn't been there when it happened for years. Though I have the urge to get off, and try to avoid penalty days,  masturbation is lonely. It always leaves me a little depressed and deflated.

Conversely, I find it immensely... comfortable when she denies me an orgasm. It's more than masochism, it's to do with identity and being owned.

Earlier this year, my orgasm was months away and kept receding. An extra penalty day here or there felt like a drop in the ocean! I simply stopped being scared of the red clicker. What did keep me in line was my submissive nature confirmed by my chastity, and Xena's ability to beat me and make me kneel in the corner.

So Xena doesn't need penalty days to control me, and we are both more comfortable with me locked in a chastity device. 

That means that we are living the other keyholder dynamic, the one where the chastity is more important than the keyholding... the one that tends towards permanent chastity, even if it never attains it.

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Why Commander/Champion isn't a simple predictor of Dominant/Submissive BDSM Roles

...the knotty business of gender roles.

I'm proud of my Commander/Champion insight - please go and read the original post if you haven't, or else none of this will make sense! I also think it's useful. I don't, however, offer it as the BDSM version of gaydar. Here's why.

First, like Gay/Straight, Commander/Champion is a spectrum. People may wander around it almost randomly, and particular relationships may trigger or re-enforce particular positions. (Though I suspect life tends to nudge people one direction or the other.) When I use the terms, I mean people who are clearly at one or other end of the CC spectrum.

As important, it's easy to misidentify Commanders and Champions in the wild. 

CC preference is about where you get your certainty from, and doesn't guarantee particular skills or attributes. You can be an introverted, inarticulate Commander, or an extroverted charismatic Champion. It follows that roles and status don't map to CC.

Not all Commanders are any good at being in charge in the real world - we all know bossy, angry people in low status jobs and stormy relationships. Not all Champions are nurturing, or even like people in general!

The attributes of each are applicable in a variety of professional roles. You'll find some Commanders in subordinate or supporting  positions, and some Commanders in leadership roles. Consider, for example, the sales assistant who knows just what jacket will suit you, and the manager who fiercely buys into corporate identity, or who is all about consensus building.

People also learn to perform their opposite style. For example, to reach their goals, a Champion may need to step up and be a decisive leader, and a Commander may need to adopt persuasive techniques. Or the Champion may see that the best way to help is to be commanding, and the Commander may decide that somebody needs championing...

There's also the knotty business of gender roles. Our culture demands that men be Commanders and women, Champions. This nudges people into styles that don't naturally suit them, with resulting blowback - e.g. the unfortunate stereotypes of the loudly alpha bank manager who is a wimp at home, and his super feminine wife who controls his life.

Then we come to the problem that BDSM is about play as well as dynamic.

One the one hand, a Commander may enjoy the experience of "bottoming", say being tied up and edged or whipped. On the other, a Champion may really get off on giving pleasure through "service topping".

Thanks to identity politics leaking into BDSM, and the related erosion of the terms top and bottom, they may loudly identify as respectively Submissive and Dominant, even though the Commander has no interest in more general submission and the Champion only ever dominates for effect.

Just to confuse things, people develop strong fetishes through repeated masturbation and actual experience. So it's quite possible for a Commander who enjoys bottoming, to become so fixated on the experience that that's their main and preferred source of sexual pleasure. Their head may also be full of complex submissive fantasies, precisely tweaked to generate the precise physical scenarios they like.

So though the Commander/Champion distinction might be helpful, it's no kinkdar.

If you meet a woman you experience as "domineering", she may actually be a Champion: championing somebody or somebody that's not you; or gritting her teeth and performing Commander in order to "lean in"; or she may just have good reason to be angry (because patriarchy generates a lot of bad experiences for women). God help me, if your dating and she's old school, she may even be actually goading you in order to see if you "man up" and act dominant.

Conversely, a woman who seems insecure and lacks confidence may be Commander who, lacking role models or just the right kind of personality, has experienced some nasty knocks whenever she acts naturally. Even nowadays, girls are told not to be bossy, and are raised to be nice. End result there are a lots of female Commanders who second guess themselves and self sabotage and never reach their full potential at work or in bed.

Even so... Commanders and Champions have a different feel. Each seems a little brittle when they perform the opposite style. Each makes different private choices whenever they don't feel judged. And, if you look closely and take them in the round, you'll find they do have different sources of certainty.

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Ask Giles: How do I get my willing wife to take charge of chastity lockup?

It all comes down to "what's in it for her?"

One approach is to grant her privileges that would otherwise be unreasonable, but only when you're locked. This could be as simple as "She's in charge" or as specific as "he does all the cooking when locked".

Don't present this as a trade. Rather, when you are locked you are more submissive.

Beyond that, vanilla partners usually have trouble with Masoch's Paradox: Us wanting things we don't like/liking things we don't want.

It might be worth explaining that your kink operates on a continuum from "Fun" through to "Fun to be Scared Of" and that therefore chastity can be both a torture and a punishment.

Once you have that established, two possibilities come to mind:

1. Adopt some elements of FLR. Ask her to set you targets with chastity penalties. These could be specific chores, or - perhaps better - personal improvement targets.

2. Connect your chastity to her orgasms. In our case it amuses Xena that her orgasms add penalty days to my chastity. However, you might want to work it the other way around and have so many of her orgasms required for you to earn one for yourself.

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Commanders and Champions: How to spot a dominant woman (sort of)

Guinevere was a Commander,
Lancelot was a Champion.

(This came up on reddit. Here's my tidied up response.)

This of course is a minefield. My (unscientific) observation of real life kinky people is:

There's no correlation between kink preference and social or professional status, introvert/extrover or stereotypical kink behaviour. In real life most dominants don't strut, most subs don't cringe or flaunt their small dicks and so on.

However, I do see a correlation between D/s preference and what I think of as a Commander - Champion spectrum.

Just to illustrate the idea:

Champions are natural joiners, Commander's aren't.

Commanders lead decisively, Champions tend towards consensus building or else implementing/defending existing traditions or practices.

Commanders know what's good for you or an organisation, Champions are all about facilitating.

Commanders build empires, Champions run them.

Guinevere was a Commander, Lancelot was a Champion.

People at the Commander end of the spectrum can be very natural sexual dominants, but, because they like to be actually in charge, make lousy service tops. Just to muddy the waters, they may have an instinctive reluctance to buy into kink culture or pander to expectations. They may also be very adventurous bottoms, with no interest in doing all the hard work of topping.

People at the Champion end of the spectrum can be very natural sexual submissives, but also make great service tops if sufficiently motivated. An interest in topping may be a reaction to the fear of succumbing to a submissive undertow...

It's not simple because it's a spectrum, and because culture, upbringing and personal growth may mask natural type. It's also unhelpful that "bottoms" increasingly identify as "subs".

However, a good strategy would seem to be to look for Commanders and introduce them to kink that has some clear benefit for them. This may mean stepping out of your social comfort zone and approaching women a little different from the ones you naturally end up talking to, and perhaps tapping slightly different social skills

One of the big hazards of being a Champion is that you naturally feel more comfortable talking to other Champions and don't necessarily know how to have a conversation with a Commander.

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How to tell which BDSM fantasies are OK to do in real life

Whips from Fred Norman

The other night, Xena merrily beat the hell out of me with  a selection of whips that Fred Norman sent us, including one he'd thoughtfully marked, "Xena use with love."

It hurt like hell.

I was yelping, groaning, straining.

However, I couldn't get away. I was strapped into a bondage bar. I couldn't get free if I wanted to.

I could have, in theory, used a safe word. However, that's not really in my mindset.

So I was to all intents and purposes utterly at Xena's mercy while she actually punished me for actual things that made her actually cross.

Oh and I was also locked into a chastity device, with no prospect of an orgasm for at least a few days.

Xena merrily beat the hell out of me 

So real punishment. Real denial. Fifty lashes that left me shaking, just short of weeping, and deliciously terrified of my wife, and still in need of an orgasm.

It turns me on just writing about it. However, the experience was so painful that I'm scared of the next time - which is perfect, because it was supposed to be punishment. Oh and living under the threat of such harsh treatment is both psychologically satisfying and a turn on - a pity about the chastity device I'm locked into right now...

Not really a game in any practical sense of the word.

Ten years ago, I would have fantasised about this, perhaps tried to get Xena to simulate the experience in nerfed form: lighter whips or a nice soft flogger, and I would have been allowed to get myself off at the end. "Have you been a naughty boy then....?"

Metal bondage, for example, can lead to
nerve damage. 

Which leads me to: How can you tell which fantasies it's OK to experience for real?

I'd say you can do a fantasy for real if you can answer "yes" to the following three questions:


1. Can the fantasy be done by consenting adults? We can skip this first point - it should be a no-brainer.

2. Is the fantasy realistic? A lot of fantasies ignore the awkward or unpleasant realities. Most extreme fantasies can and should fall at this hurdle, because deep down people know that, for example, mutilation really, really hurts, other men smell of male sweat and semen, and with the exception of vaginal juices, most of us find other people's bodily fluids taste and smell foul... unless we don't, or swing that way.

3. Is the fantasy safe to do? Assuming that your fantasy only involves consenting adults and is also close to the reality, then really all that matters is whether it's physically and emotionally safe to do.

 The person who actually lives out a fantasy
is surely less of a "loser" than the
mere fantasist!

Some BDSM activities are more physically dangerous than they seem, sometimes to the point of being life changing or potentially lethal. Metal bondage, for example, can lead to nerve damage. There are also, for example, things that shouldn't happen to your anus. The only way to be sure is to research whatever you're into and adjust accordingly.

Depending on who we are, some BDSM activities may be psychologically dangerous. 

People often exaggerate this fear! Is there really much difference between being a person who masturbates over a kinky activity and one who actually does it for real? Surely, matter how sordid and humiliating the act, the person who actually lives it out is surely less of a "loser" than the one who merely jerks off to it!

However, if you've been abused, or assaulted, if you have some deep-seated ideas about masculinity, then there are things that may trigger you or damage your self image. It's your job to introspect or even talk to a therapist to work out whether you're going to be OK. It may also be wise to approach doing it for real, whatever it is, slowly and with a sympathetic and fully informed partner.

BDSM isn't radioactive waste. 

Similar cautions apply to fantasies that may damage your relationship. If, for example, cuckolding is your bag (it's not mine, but horses for courses), and assuming your partner really does consent, then you still need to consider what this will do to your relationship... the one in which you have invested precious years and perhaps built a family around. 

If the fantasy passes these three tests, then it's probably OK to try it in real life.  

There's no guarantee you'll actually "like" it. 

You may find yourself irritated, angry, in pain, bored... 

It doesn't really matter! 

BDSM isn't radioactive waste. It's not a disaster if something you thought you might like turns out to be a let down. Just be sure to thank your playmate or partner for giving it a shot. You've not really lost anything.

However, my experience is that if it's consensual, realistic and safe, then the reality of a fantasy is far better than the, um, fantasy of the fantasy...

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Safe Words and Consent in our Female Focused Femdom

Our Femdom only really started working
for both of us when it stopped being play.

You know, I have never ever used my safeword with Xena.

Nor have I used "traffic lights" or, since we stopped thinking of our Femdom as "play", tried to direct the action.

In fact, our Femdom only really started working for both of us when it stopped being play.

I do from time-to-time give her feedback, but it's of the technical variety, as in "I can't stay still for this, mistress, you need to tie me up." Occasionally, "Sorry mistress, cramp! Let me go."

There's no break in the dynamic, not stepping out of character because we are the characters.

Of late, I haven't really negotiated either. I'm still the one who provides the new ideas, but as a facilitator. It's up to me to suggest and her to pick and choose, and she only goes with innovations she likes.

We don't have the layer of fantasy or roleplay, nothing is simulated. If Xena acts angry, it's because she is angry. If I'm serving her, I'm really serving. Punishment is real punishment (yes the hazard turns me on, but that's different).

So we don't really fit into the BDSM mainstream.

What triggered this entry was blogger "A Strange Desire" talking about a similar approach to Femdom.

I don't share his scathing feelings about the BDSM scene; horses for courses, I think. However, I do think the emphasis on negotiated "play" is not useful for established couples like us where one partner is deeply submissive, and the other likes uncomplicated control.

However, I do diverge from him when he writes...

....I reject the use of safe words. If I can stop an activity with a single word, then I am in control, and I don't want to be in control. A safe word discourages progress in the activities, and reinforces the sense of unreality, because we can stop and step out of the activity at my whim.

Punishment is real punishment.

As I said, we do have a safeword, but have never needed it. However, our safeword is really a safety word.  I would only use it if there was an actual safety concern that couldn't be, or wasn't being, handled within the dynamic.

This emphatically does not give me power of veto, or the ability to skip tracks.

As a submissive in established Female Led Relationship, I find it hard to think outside our dynamic. I'm also terrified of breaking the Femdom. I'd rather put up with something unpleasant than have that happen, and the more I've suffered, the less willing I am to throw away my "investment". Finally, the knowledge that I'm trapped by my own kink is itself a kinky turn on.

My consent is therefore, for most purposes, irrevocable. And we both like it that way.

---

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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...

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

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