Illustration by Juan Puyal.

I think you’ll find that verbal humiliation is one of those things that grows easier as you do it. (BTW, I’m a fan of switches and interested in BDSM as erotic play, not a lifestyle.)

The most common form of spoken degradation is to attack the guy’s masculinity. Telling him that he’s a sissy, a bitch, wimp. Some men get a thrill out of having the size of their penises mocked. None of this works for me personally but this is the most popular kind of harsh talking.

Related is men who want to be condemned because of their gender. They are inferior because they are male.

Slut seems to be a frequent word. Again, not for me. But it always implies the man has a sexually healthy appetite in a backhanded way.

Much spoken humiliation is fairly generic: “You are worthless!”

From my own perspective what you say only matters so much. It is the harsh or sarcastic tone that sends my spinal column into a frenzy.

Some tops fear seeming too theatrical, stiff and fake. If a man is feeling submissive he isn’t usally in the mood to practice literary criticism. He just helplessly responds.

Generally I think it is a bad idea to humiliate someone for something that genuinely troubles him in everyday life. E.g., if he’s overweight. A very few find it therapeutic. But unless you are sure you may kill the scene, even the relationship.

What you know about him will really be your guide.

You don’t seem like the kind of person who needs to be reminded of aftercare. This can be a really deep form of power exchange.

Original context: Creativity & Variety in D/s

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When I original read this guy’s profile I thought it a very good example of a positive profile by a likeable top. But there was nothing that could be cleanly excerpted.

Then he wrote me:

Although some others on this site similarly indicate that is what they are looking for, most of them only want one time meetings as such or only in role playing situation.

Your Hard limits seem reasonable and mean while your soft limits seem flexible enough that I believe we might be compatible.

I want you to read my profile, and keeping in mind that although I list several interests I clearly state that none of them are mandatory.

After reading it take the time to write back to me and let me know if you agree that we MIGHT be compatible.

None of that off-putting manner by strangers who think writing “Tell SIR why you should be allowed to become His worthless scum slave property” is a way to say hello.

The guy I quote above doesn’t drive, nor do I so nothing will come of that.

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Because my sexuality is fluid and mercurial I can say many different – even seemingly contradictory – things about my desires and needs that are all conditionally true.

In my online profiles I’ve tried various strategies for honestly capturing my sexual and affectional orientations. To be honest without confusing or overtaxing the reader.

A proper profile for myself as a submissive and masochistic man would need to be a small website of about twenty pages. Since my changes are slim I’ve never actually put out the effort to construct such. (Though I did create one consisting of several pages in the time shortly before Charles.)

What you may get out of my profiles is contingent on your expectations, inclinations and patience.

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(From about two years ago.)

Humanity, Empathy and Clarity

1. Generification. Treating personal preference and prejudice is the root of much of what follows. Many people develop theories of BDSM that reflect nothing more than what is local to their own minds. They think that what applies to them – at least they imagine it does – reflects universal truths. This is a source of foolish formulae and ridiculous rules.
2. True Submissive [Person]. Unattached submissive people ( – men? – ) are woefully annoying with their lists of what submissive people must and must not do. Their clownish criteria better fits caricatures and not flesh and blood people. Change the word to slave and many tops are just as wrongheaded.
3. Real Master or Mistress. This is really too complex a topic for this kind of list. But I have noticed submissive people unwittingly pressuring – almost blackmailing tops to maintain an almost impossible level of control. To be too unforgiving, unrelenting, never relaxing. This can cause tops to feel inadequate even guilty for merely being human and having good sense. I can’t help but wonder how often sane tops let their more aggressive peers distort their code of conduct.
4. Too Many Rules. The most famous set of D/s rules is a classic instance of someone turning their preferences into a master plan of behavior. While heavy and complex protocol enhances masturbation it makes the rest of life impossibly burdensome for both parties.
5. Projection. Many assume their cravings will match another’s complementary desires. Because of the bias of my sample population this is often masochistic men with shopping lists of what they expect a woman to do to them. The guys don’t stop to wonder how many might. Or why they would select him. They imagine there mere desire appealing in itself.
6. Objectification. Not the fun kind. Masochists forget they are interacting with a person and just see Dominatrix Mark IX (With Enhanced Torture Module). And sadists can be eually guilty, expecting the bottom accept being made miserable in bad way.
7. Unrealistic Expectations. BDSM play doesn’t eliminate working for a living, getting sleep, having health problems, not being in the mood or having enough free time.
8. Fantasy vs. Reality. Just because you read it in a story doesn’t mean you should do it.
9. Lack of Craft. My second experience as BDSM bottom was with a man who didn’t even know how to use a plastic riding crop. Particularly he didn’t know to avoid my kidneys. There was no possibility of pleasure or desire to see him again. Any sadist who doesn’t take the time to learn about risk is to be avoided.
10. Lack of Communication. If someone doesn’t want to talk about themselves, learn about you or negotiate drop him or her. If you are playing with someone never hesitate to share your feelings. Do your best to encourage their self-expression. Don’t let notions of role make you silent. (Uncommunicative bottoms and tops can easily induce paranoia and guilt in their partners.)

Contingency, exceptional circumstances and special conditions cheerfully acknowledged.

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In some ancient societies slaves had very limited legal rights. In others substantial portions of the slave population was raised for government service. Being the property of the rule was thought to make them loyal to his wishes. Some of those had very comfortable lives and political power.

But the majority of the world’s legal slaves were just beasts of the field. With no more rights and less value than a horse. The slave increased their owners’ wealth by labor. They weren’t psychosexual playthings.

Today voluntary slaves are known to sign contracts disclaiming their civil rights. Contracts that reject their legal invalidity. Pointless, expect for the thrill of the act. You can’t give away your civil rights.

One of the most common and dispiriting assertions in vanilla articles on BDSM is that the bottom is really the boss. Silliness. Safewords and stop words aren’t abrogation of power. They demonstrate the top’s risk aware responsibility. None of us really wants them. We want to visit the hospital or the morgue even less.

Tops who refuse safewords I can’t respect. They aren’t worth discussing.

Consensual slaves are exactly that. Their slavery ends the instant consent is withdrawn. They are stupefied by their craving for the absolute.

How would this human property react were master or mistress to take a handsaw and cut off hands and feet,

Would they consent to being put to death?

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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.

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People love these ten best sorts of lists. I don’t know why, suggesting that you fit in ten anything is confessing that you are generic. But as someone who did market research for many years I know that unconscious involuntary conformity is even truer than I thought as an angry teen.

1) Finding the ideal complement, partner. (Kink was much of the grease and certainly is part of the glue. There’s much else besides but without the matched desires we might have never discovered how we can bond.)

2) Achieving ecstatic experiences. Sex, of course, is swell. There’s an old cliché about baseball that it is 50% mental, the other 90% is physical. (And if I’ve botched the citation I don’t care.) While S&M is of course very physical the real power is in the heart and mind. People ruin their lives chasing intoxicants that they hope will give them the pleasure that I’ve found at Alexandra’s feet.

3) Living fantasies. For the mundane masses of men that is probably getting to bed a famous star or playmate. Given their sexual capacity that is – what – fifteen minutes at best: then they are probably left hungry for the next famous hottie on their list. With Alexandra it has been a couple of hours on a few lucky nights. And rapture from the experience recollected in tranquility glowed warmly for days, weeks and months afterwards. And I know longer wonder what the experiences would be like: I’ve lived them.

4) Self-knowledge. One of the ways in which I feel disconnected from the majority is that learning about themselves doesn’t seem wonderful in itself. Maybe they are the shallow people Oscar Wilde spoke of. Once you’ve lived through a fresh experience how can you not know yourself just a bit more?

5) Growth. Not only do I know myself better but I’ve adapted to some of that knowledge.

6) Freedom. As your fantasies are lived and you come to see yourself more clearly you mind isn’t bound by cravings. Sure there are as yet unsatisfied longings but you have a reasonable expectation of having them satiated.

7) Peace. Even if every possible libidinous itch isn’t scratched they no longer nag at you. Or if you are still wishing to have some special wicked act performed upon your person you have it in perspective and know that your life will be complete without it. (Please, please do it anyway he whimpers.)

Community. Your kink may not be my kink but we can still stand at the borders and talk. Everybody has to find her or his way to erotic nirvana. Differences need not put us apart.

9) Sharing. As I’ve learned about what men with needs and desires similar to mind are hoping to find I’ve created pages and entire websites to help them find it.

10) Self-expression. On this site alone I’ve crafted almost one thousand pages. My real audience is myself. Alexandra is second. I know that seems to violate the laws of BDSM. But as long as what I write is transparently from within it can only be good for her. Even if she doesn’t read the words the expression is part of the self-discovery that enables me to be as honest as possible.

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