Per a request from PM - as some of you remember, there was some question about my gender when I first started posting. In order to satisfy curiosity and also to remove all doubt, here is the one picture I have of me from the last five years or so. (I am extremely camera-averse, so you just have to put up with the quality and extremely goofy composition. 
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Hmm…that’s a good question. Of course, I can only answer from my own perspective, but I think it’s because at least one of the people involved is reporting mental-health issues that one might think would be a good idea to have treated by a counsellor or maybe even a psychiatrist.
If someone were to say to me that they picked up skydiving, for instance (random hypothetical example), because it’s the only thing they’ve found that helps them control anxiety and depression, I would probably ask the same thing…are you getting a professional’s input as to whether or not that’s all you need to do to take care of this problem? Is this the kind of “therapy” that will help you progressively get better, and should you expect to progressively get better? Or is it a situation where the best you can hope for is to manage it successfully?
You mentioned yourself that this can be an issue for people in your lifestyle, so I’m hoping I’m not way out of left field here!
That makes a lot of sense, actually. I know freekalette mentioned that she’s using her relationship as a tool to help her deal with her mental health challenges, but I never saw her imply that it was the only tool she uses. Perhaps therein lies the disconnect? I know a number of people (including Robin and myself) that use kink as one coping tool among many when it seems like a productive thing to use, but I don’t know anyone who uses it as their only mechanism for maintaining or treating a mental illness. Like you, if I knew someone who did, I would politely ask if they’d considered having professional input on their situation, to make sure that they were doing the best thing for them.
I guess I’m chiming in here again. I liken “using D/s to help me grow and be a better person” to someone who is afraid of heights going bungie jumping. Sure, I have a chance of coming off worse for the wear, but at least I can stand up (or lie in traction) proudly and say I tried! 
A Priori Tea danke for starting this thread.
I easily understood your post on grinding tear’s into Robin’s wounds. I wonder what that says about me?
What is the most extreme thing a sub has ever asked you to do?
What did you think of Hellraiser?
It says that you are a psychopathic, sadistic, mentally unbalanced freak of nature who should be put down for the health and welfare of the victims around you. 
Most of the truly extreme things that partners have asked me to do have been in the context of private scenes, whose details I will not divulge without the permission of everybody involved - and frankly, even if I had permission, I probably would not divulge over the internet on a non-kink-related board. 
(No offense intended, simply an acknowledgment that discussion of things that push my boundaries would probably be well into “Oh dear sweet cracker sandwich where is the brain bleach” for most people here.)
However, I will share an anecdote of one of the more exotic public s/m scenes in which I have been a part:
[spoiler]
I knew a girl once upon a time who liked to jokingly refer to herself as a “delicate hothouse flower.” She was a pain slut to the nth degree…without resorting to seriously mean toys, I could wear myself out beating her, if I wasn’t careful.
She challenged me to find a way to make her safeword…she’d never had to, and wanted to know what it was like to be forced to admit defeat in that way.
So I strung her up, naked, in a friend’s greenhouse in the heat of an August afternoon, and watched her suffer. I sat in the shade, sipping iced lemonade, reading a book, and watching her sweat…and sweat…and strain…
I never lifted a finger, never broke a sweat, and she suffered for two hours before safewording. And she hasn’t since, in my presence, referred to herself as a delicate hothouse flower…and she cringes when I say it. (Full disclosure: that’s a nearly verbatim copy/paste from when I posted about it on a completely different board, so if it sounds familiar, stop hanging out with freaks! 
And, for those concerned for her health, I did make sure she stayed hydrated and didn’t approach heat exhaustion or heat stroke - she was not in danger of collapse or serious injury to health at any time.)[/spoiler]
I haven’t seen Hellraiser, so I can’t comment on it. I take it it’s s/m themed in some way? (The extent of my knowledge is having seen pics of the guy with pins in his head, so I’m a little lost.)
Hellraiser is very sm themed. Solving the puzzle calls sadomasochists who can cause you pain and pleasure beyond human meaning- such extremes that the body is destroyed in the process- and then resurrect you whole again for the next session, over and over again for all eternity.
Skin 2 said in their review “This movie will give you some great ideas for your dungeon.”
Wow - sounds like a fair portion of the really, really bad s/m porn I’ve read. I may have to watch it sometime, though I am pretty averse to horror movies in general.
Also: reading Skin 2 gets you cool points, just so you know.
To those who don’t know, Skin 2 is a magazine devoted to PVC, latex, rubber fetish.
At the risk of seeming uncool, I don’t actually read it (though I do have a very strong kink for leather, latex, PVC, and rubber). Clive Barker quoted the review when he introduced Hellraiser at the Philly Gay And Lesbian Film Festival a few years back.
I love the idea of making a sub solve a difficult puzzle in order to be given a particularly extreme experience.
OK. I’m going to switch side on this one. What kind of medical expert are you to think you were able to tell whether she was in danger or not? I assume it’s not out of experience, since I suspect you didn’t try this with many people, carefully noting each time at which point they would collapse and/or die?
That was totally irresponsible.
You are correct that I am not a certified medical expert. That does not make me, however, either irresponsible or dangerous. As you are no doubt aware, heat exhaustion and heat stroke both have very clear symptoms, which can be detected well before a crisis occurs. It is also the case that if a person is conscious and able to communicate clearly with you, they will self-report any symptoms you may not be able to see.
In this particular case, I knew she stayed well hydrated because I checked her condition regularly, and gave her water when necessary. She never exhibited any of the initial signs of heat exhaustion or heat stroke, nor did she self-report anything more than discomfort at any time.
I am not a medical expert, but when I am engaging in play that contains risks outside the ordinary bruising, I do plenty of research - including consulting the appropriate sort of medical expert to know what I should be looking for, what the potential hazards are, and how do deal with them if they should happen. Irresponsibility is not something of which I have ever been accused by anyone who has any familiarity with my methods.
Nope, I’m not aware of the symptoms.
Let’s see…you engaged in a “play”, being perfectly aware that it could possibly result in major harm, or even death.
You relied, in order to avoid such a risk, on informations you gathered, or even possibly obtained from an actual M.D.
You apparently felt you had taken all the necessary steps to avoid a dramatic outome. You think that it was henceforth safe.
But… are you under the impression that you’re infallible? That you never could make a mistake? You already admitted previously that you weren’t, that you did make mistakes, occassionnally, during sessions. But in this particular case a mistake could mean death. You could have missed a symptom you weren’t aware of. Your sub, who was acting, as you mentionned, out of pride, could have not reported correctly her state. And despite all your readings, you aren’t trained, nor to assess symptoms in a living human being (doctors aren’t trained just by reading books and asking for advices), nor to react in case something would go wrong or very, very wrong.
I don’t need to have a close familiarity with your methods. What you reported is enough to see that you engaged in a potentially life-treathening “play” that could go out of your control. You “played” with someone’s life, someone who was relying on you for her safety. You aren’t god to play, or should I say to gamble, with someone’s life. You aren’t infallible.
You were irresponsible.
Well, to be fair, she DID say it was a public scene, which generally means that there are other folks present who could intervene if they deemed it neccessary.
The amount of research, preparation, theory, and prior work required to enjoy this lifestyle seems considerable. To my eye, it is also very dry. There is a lot of jargon: you seem to call what you do “regulating processing”. You explore the anatomies of your desire in a way redolent of literary criticism. Personally, I would have trouble taking myself seriously.
My only question is, how do you do it? I mean no disrespect to your lifestyle or your choices: what I just do not grasp is how you can practice these techniques with a straight face given their seemingly clinical nature. I am just reading your own words, but to me, the lifestyle seems quite rote and explicitly goal-directed. Can tell me how I am thinking about this the wrong way?
Not my question, but if I may take a stab at it…
It’s just like the actual sex act itself. Before you’ve ever had sex with someone, you know that it consists of a penis moving in and out of a vagina (substitute gender-appropriate appendages where appropriate) and that it can cause pregnancy and possibly lead to STDs. That’s what we are taught, and it’s true, but the lectures and sex-ed classes can’t ever give us the entire picture. Even if you watch all the porn in the world, or stand in a brothel and observe firsthand, nothing can ever really tell you what sex is LIKE. It’s something you have to experience for yourself. There are different positions, speeds, and techniques. Numerous sex aids and toys, scented lubricants, a whole smorgasboard of things that make each instance of sex able to be as different from the next as your imagination will allow. This translates into S/M as well. There are important things to remember (safety first!) but once you get some practice, you lose the clinical feel and can REALLY have some fun.
Clairobscur, it is quite apparent that you have reached a decision that no dissenting argument or information will sway, so I will not attempt to explain further.
If there are others who have questions about the hows or whys of risk assessment and mitigation inside and outside scenes, please feel free to ask.
Let me give a little feedback on your impression, if you don’t mind, and then I’ll move on to your questions. There is a lot of work, and research, and preparation that goes into engaging in potentially dangerous activities with a reasonable amount of safety. I use a lot of jargon and a lot of technical, dry terminology in describing what I do, because it’s one of the easiest, clearest ways to show people the mechanics of my predilections.
Scenes, playing, and my kink life in general are a very, very different animal from this thread. I laugh a lot, I have a lot of trouble taking myself seriously for more than a few seconds at a time, and I have a great tendency to improvise within the range of activities I’ve already decided are acceptable. There is surprisingly little hit-by-hit planning, and surprisingly a lot of fun.
Freekalette’s given a very good answer already, but let me elaborate some. While the academics of beating someone are indeed quite dry (analyzing musculature, knowing the underlying anatomy, knowing how the energy is augmented and transferred from you, through the tool, into the subject, etc.), the experience of beating someone is anything but. I get all this solidly in my head before I ever pick up a tool, and once I am in a scene, all the dry stuff is just background noise. Or, if I have some unfortunate soul who doesn’t know their own anatomy and I’m feeling mean, we might have a quiz.
It’s almost never “rote,” because I won’t know what will feel right from moment to moment until I am there, within the scene, using the energy that my subject and I create to feel really, really alive. I don’t mean I go in with no idea of what I’m going to do - I lay out a selection of tools beforehand, and establish rough boundaries of what and how much for myself, according to the subject’s tolerances and desires. But it’s very organic - I may use more of one thing, less of another, or go a different direction with the mood of the scene, or abandon the tools altogether in favor of a strictly hands-on approach. It all depends on what seems right at the time, what seems like it will be the most fun and most intense for both of us.
On risk of seeming “attention whoring,” let me add an example from my own experience which may give you some idea of how the dry background becomes a living, exciting experience.
[spoiler]
I had a date to play with a girl who belongs to someone else, who had wanted to play with me for quite some time - not least because she’s heard that I am a scary sort of top. (Context: “scary” is considered a fairly high compliment for tops and dominants who are respected in the scene, and does not generally have the negative connotation it does elsewhere.) She and I arranged a public play date at an event that her owner runs.
We negotiated beforehand that I would beat her into a little puddle of jello, and call it good. We discussed how she looks when a scene’s going well, and how she looks when a scene’s going badly, any existing medical issues, previous history with similar types of play, and all that good jazz. I told her that we would be having a teaching lesson, and that we’d be starting in about an hour.
I prepped the scene space and laid out the toys, and got straight in my mind how I wanted to get started, and basically what I wanted to do to her. When she came over, I gave her a basic position to maintain, and told her any time she moved from it, I would stop what I was doing until she came back. Then I explained that the lesson today is “Don’t date drummers, for we are horrible pricks.”
Over the course of the next ninety minutes or so, I elaborated (giggling wildly) on the reasons that drummers as tops are horrible pricks. I made her repeat my points back to me, with emphasis where she missed a word or simply wasn’t fast enough. She had trouble yelling as she normally would, because she was laughing too hard. We had a huge amount of giggling, girly-type fun - all while I beat her black and blue.
So, yeah, it can be clinical before you get started, or when you’re trying to teach concepts that require technical jargon - but really, when you are in a scene, the only time it’s clinical is if you’re doing medical play. :)[/spoiler]
This makes sense. Once you internalize the technique, you don’t have to concentrate on it explicitly during the activity itself. The best comparison for me would be to fencing, martial arts, and even reading dead languages: I don’t have to think about executing some action or deciphering an obscure bit of grammar, but if I am in the moment and I know what I am doing, my instincts will assert themselves and I will just do it.
I can definitely see the appeal of that sort of thing. I also appreciate the appeal of an art of living. I try to make one myself, drawn from a number of different sources, especially literature and philosophy. There is nothing really normative about it. I like it because it works for me. It seems that it is no more or less contrived than a BDSM lifestyle when you get right down to it.
I still do not understand the satisfaction that you derive from this, though. I have a very strong dominant streak in my personality. I am competitive and combative. I prefer to influence people who don’t actually want to be influenced. Fortunately I work in a profession where I am rewarded for these traits, and I find exercising them very satisfying. I married a very strong-willed woman because I have a hard time respecting people who do not push back against me.
So I have two more questions.
If you are a dominant person, how do you actually enjoy it when your partner submits willingly and even needs to submit? For me, that would take every ounce of fun out of the whole thing.
Second, how do your dominant traits assert themselves in your mundane life? You say you are a “perpetual student”. I love to be a student, but this isn’t much of an arena to beat down the proud. Are you more mild and meek outside your play space?
Yes! I love the comparison to martial arts and dead languages, as I have a little experience with both, and the “vibe” from functioning in either of those spheres is very similar to me.
It is a sort of “contrived” experience, in that it requires thought and preparation and knowledge in order to work well. I agree, though, that it’s not especially more or less contrived than other premeditated life patterns - pretty much everyone I know who has made a conscious decision to engage life in a certain way has to go through the same steps of figuring out what works and what doesn’t, trying to maximize their benefit within their chosen peer group.
I sympathize with your desire to have someone push back against you - as you can probably tell from Robin’s posts, he is by no means a doormat. We very often have debates over the right course of action, and I enjoy winning those by being right much more than winning them through exercising authority. For an ongoing partner, I (like you) need someone who is not automatically going to agree with me or bend to me, or I get bored. Dermott is the same way - if he were not as strong a personality as I am, we would not be compatible in the long term.
However, the drive to dominate someone in a context where I am exercising authority, rather than simply being right, is much different. I think there is a huge difference between being socially dominant and being dominant with a submissive partner. There are a fair number of submissives (a majority, in my experience) who are socially dominant, and have a drive to submit at least in part because they don’t want to have to continue that fight. For me, being dominant with a submissive partner is about having an automatic authority to decide, without having to prove that either my way is the correct one or that I have that authority. It’s about issuing a command, and having it instantly obeyed, with no questions. It’s about having the right to issue commands, without having to back them up.
In a social context, that is almost never the case (excepting things like the military, obviously). In a D/s context, it’s easy to set boundaries and limits and know that within those limits, I have complete autonomy over another person - that I can make them do literally whatever I want. So, with Robin, that works something like this: day to day, on mundane things, he has every right that an equal partner would to disagree or question me. However, in the areas where I have complete authority, I expect him to obey without question, because he’s ceded me that right. I will get “yes, m’lady” or I will know the reason why - and it had better be a damned good reason. It actually adds pleasure for me to know that he doesn’t naturally behave that way with other people - that I am special, and unique in his life, because he has given me that authority.
I’m not sure how to explain to you the difference between your experience and mine, because it’s so very subjective. I think maybe the simplest way to explain it is that having dominance over a partner who has a drive to submit makes it feel right, reassures me that I am not an abuser (because even dominants need that reassurance sometimes, heh), and allows me to square what I want with my generally egalitarian moral code. I am a strong believer in individual rights (paired with individual responsibilities), and having someone willingly and eagerly give up their right to dispute me makes it okay.
Socially, with friends or business partners or acquaintances or what have you, I am still a forceful person, but I don’t have an expectation of obedience. People who have not given me authority over them are my equals in power, so I am neither required to obey them nor they me. That returns the basic field to a struggle (however friendly) for power and influence, which has its own challenges and rewards.
So, for instance, I challenge my professors more than other students do - both because I am older and ballsier than most of them, and because I want to know why a thing is the way it is, not just that “that’s how it is, write it down.” That doesn’t mean I hijack the class, it just means I often ask more questions than other students, generally. It’s not an expression of dominance over the other students or professors, it’s just a function of me getting what I need, without worrying overmuch about whether I come off as pushy.
I think it’s certainly fair to say that I am more mild and meek outside of play space, because treating someone who hadn’t consented to it the way I treat my partners would be at best rude, and at worst criminal. Either way, it would leave me feeling like a bad person afterwards, because it wouldn’t line up with how I would want to be treated in the same situation. I try not to do things to other people that would piss me off if they were done to me, which helps me gauge how much assertiveness is okay. It may be a bit misleading to use the words “mild and meek” to describe me in any situation, though. It’s only in comparison to the extreme end of the spectrum (my behavior inside a scene) that my normal behavior fits those words.
Wow, that sounds like a really fun question to answer. Mind if I take a stab at it? I love to tie people up before I start hitting them. It’s fun to watch them struggle (most people will if they’re tied up and being hit, even if they’re very submissive masochists) and even if they don’t struggle, the fact that they’re tied provides an illusion of resistance.
Unfortunately, my boyfriend isn’t as much into bondage. If I’m doing a D/s scene with my boyfriend where I’m dominating him, I play a haughty bitch who ignores him while he does whatever I’ve ordered him to do. So there you have mild humiliation, which provides a similar thrill to dominating an struggling submissive. He also gets really turned on during those scenes and is strictly forbidden from touching himself, but he sometimes disobeys me because he knows that I enjoy punishing him and forcing him to submit.
For me, they basically don’t. I’m far more assertive, self-assured and, frankly, mean when I’m in a dominant role than I ever am in “real life.”
And I second what A Priori Tea said about laughing in scene. My haughty-bitch dominant personality never laughs, but otherwise I smile and laugh when I’m topping someone. I also tend to laugh when I’m bottoming. When I’m really into the scene and the adreneline is flowing, I start giggling uncontrollably with every stroke/pinch/slap, even though it still hurts. I also process pain by flexing my feet and ankles, so if I’m standing and receiving a hard beating, I stomp my feet. This doesn’t make me laugh, but it does my friends, who’ll point and say, “Oo, look, the stompy dance!”
In your experience (i.e., conversations with other openly kinky people) does sadism necessarily involve power play? I’ve always wondered about that. It seems like the two go together in popular presentations, but it has never seemed to me that they would have to. Someone could like pain (either end of it) without caring about power issues. Yet whenever I read things written by sadists or masochists about what they do, power always seems to come up.
-FrL-