20 Dicta About D/s & S&M in the 21st Century

(From February 2007.)

Stop sex! Stop it now!

21st Century Femdom

That is the name of this MS Word document.

After coming up with the title I started typing sentences. Isn’t it just plain annoying that you have to do that when you want to write? If only the damned things would just write themselves.

It having been a reasonable while since I composed a list making up, say, 10 Things About 21st Century Femdom would be an easy way out.

After a few notes on gender - the subject that I most often wrote in the days before starting Down On My Knees - my aphorisms (nothing like flipping through Oscar Wilde to push your imagination in that direction) applied to BDSM in general.

What is “Femdom” if not D/s and S&M with a certain arrangement of pronouns?

The list grew to twenty. Could’ve been seventeen but our fingers have left us with a prejudice favoring multiples of five.

Herewith a list of things for fetish folk to meditate on. Disagreement is as always invited.

1. Female superiority and supremacy may make hot fantasies. Some like to play plantation slave and concentration camp victim. None are part of a sane reality.
2. Gender is fluid - biologically, socially, personally. The only gender rules or roles anyone adopts should be those they enjoy.
3. Genders don’t have inherent social behaviors. Women are not necessarily X nor men necessarily Y. Some are Q. Others are z1nMn3pR.
4. Gender can be playful self-expression with components that can be manipulated blurred or blended.
5. Clichés can be sexy and fun. One person’s stereotype is another’s archetype.
6. The only rules are those agreed upon by two people who are at least trying to be sensible.
7. Never be Dommelier (or slavier) than thou shall be the whole of the law.
8. Pleasure is individual to each person’s nervous system: your greatest thrill may do nothing for someone else.
9. Never try to convince a man that his wife can surely enjoy dominating him unless you are willing to pay his legal fees for a divorce.
10. BDSM maybe entertaining, enriching, fulfilling: it isn’t a morality play.
11. If anyone tells you that a real something or someone must be such-and-such warn them that you may be compelled to report them to the Society for the Suppression of Boredom.
12. Other fetishists’ experiences are invaluable. Others ways of performing BDSM aren’t necessarily yours.
13. Risk is always there. If you can’t accept this don’t cross the street. You probably shouldn’t even leave your house.
14. Never be ashamed to admit you want or need a safeword or stop words.
15. Don’t confuse letting yourself become miserable and unhappy with topping from the bottom.
16. You may enjoy feeling like a slave but your slavery isn’t a legal, political or social actuality. Sorry.
17. Porn - for better or worse - is not reality: understand what real life people are saying not what you want to hear. Then you can enjoy both porn and reality.
18. Any BDSM relationship may embrace multiple levels of play from the most intense to the lightest.
19. Never to be neglected in any century: honesty, communication, clarity, respect and empathy.
20. TLAs - three letter acronyms - are much worse than four letter words.

It could’ve been twenty-one maxims. Or thirty-nine. Have one to add? Is there one you feel I should retract?

Hmmm. Maybe I should have cut this back to ten. 10 Best Things About BDSM seems a better list.