:eek:
Serves me right. I thought I was making a joke, sorta. Who knew?
Next time I ask a question as a joke, I’ll keep in mind that I might not want to know the answer. 
Oh, my word! That first paragraph is so far out of line. I have several lady-friends who would have you strung up and beat you black and blue for even insinuating that a “top” is usually masculine (no, no…I wouldn’t be one of them! :rolleyes: ). A Dom is masculine. A Domme is feminine. Believe me, there are plenty of ladies out there to whom you’d best reply, “Yes, Mistress.”
Now, a safe word is correct, but you’ve got a whole mouthful of words there, not just one. The most commonly used safe word is “Red”. You may not have breath for more than just that one word. There is also the “tap out”. This is a tapping signal that is used if you have no breath or enough sentience left to speak. Believe it, when the endorphins kick in it happens.
The reasons are varied, and some level of pain can be associated with pleasure without any genuine sadistic intent or desire. For a few who have been sexually mistreated it becomes emotionally important to learn that sexual response is not limited to gentle stimulation, and even unwanted and truly harmful experiences can still initiate sexual responses. Learning you are not unnatural because you felt pleasurable elements, or even an orgasmic response to violence can be a liberation from guilt. Learning to accept it as an element of consensual sex is one path out of isolation and fear.
And that is only one set of background elements out of millions of possibilities.
Tris
I think he was describing the situation in terms of normal, “plain vanilla”, M-F sex. When the average guy goes home and his wife isn’t feigning a headache, he’ll be on top, the wife on the bottom. Probably not well worded, but I really think he just meant to describe the terms in relation to “normal” sex.
The whole mouthful of words was Bippy’s description of the meaning of the safe word or action.
Oh, and the thought of engaging in sexual acts that render me without enough sentience to speak is intriguing, but, frankly, goddamn intimidating.
Well-performed sexual acts of extremely plain-vanilla varieties rend me unable to speak… in English!
Caused me some problems with Anglo boyfriends, it did…
It’s this tendency to carry the roles and games outside of the bedroom that gives me the jibblies about this sort of thing. People taking their games -way- too seriously…
In my mind I always call BS on the whole pain gives me pleasure thing. I mean if I went to some BDSM club I don’t think anyone will be lining up for me to punch them in the face with brass knuckles.
Using a tap-out in lieu of a safeword is also useful when the bottom is gagged.
The Lizard Queen was using a bit of hyperbole to make her point; I’ve never met anyone who tried to impose their sexual role on someone without their consent. What makes you say that there’s a “tendency to carry the roles and games outside of the bedroom”?
Probably not. For one thing, you’re talking about doing serious, intentional physical harm at a level that’s well outside the realm of “safe, sane and consenual,” a mantra in the BDSM community. I’ve seen people do punching scenes, but they focus on areas like the upper back (avoiding the spine), buttocks and pectorals (on men) that can take a lot of impact without causing any serious harm. For another thing, not all pain is good pain. A lot of people don’t like to be marked - left with bruises or welts - and even those who do enjoy marks have limits to the level of pain they enjoy. Many people won’t be involved in any play that breaks the skin.
Forgot to add, if you or any of your partners have ever wanted their nipples pinched or nibbled, that was pain giving pleasure. If you’ve ever had rough sex that hurt afterwards or (for women) used sex to relieve menstrual cramps, you were enjoying an endorphin high that blocked the pain.
I’ve always been struck* with the extent to which BD and SM are so ritualized and homogenized. I mean, rather than there being a phenomenon of varied people independently discovering different ways in which they like to mix pleasure with pain, and enact scenarios in which power diffs are eroticized, it looks (at least from the outside) as if everyone in the scene does the same unimaginitive things with the same unimaginitive props.
That, too. I’m reminded of (I think it was) Mark Twain on the subject of duelling, where the two gentlemen have decided they must have a duel to defend their respective honor and Twain (?) suggests hatchets at five paces to the horrified dismay of both parties, who instead fire very old pistols at each other, miss each other entirely, and then go indoors to drink. i.e., the actual violence and pain involved seems vastly overstated.
- oh shut up
Well, I think part of that is that some D&S (dominance and submission) scenes - the ones that are most popularly portrayed - draw from real life. Student/teacher and nurse/patient are power exchanges that we’ve actually experienced, so they’re more accessible. But most of the scenes I’ve been in or witnessed didn’t involve that sort of role-play; it was simply a matter of one person having some level of power over another person. They weren’t pretending to be anyone other than themselves.
As for similarity of S&M scenes, it’s true that tradition carries a lot of weight. When you’re talking about hurting someone without doing real harm, it’s easier and safer to do the same things that other people have tried, found enjoyable, and can teach you how to do safely. That said, there are a few new trends in S&M: electrical toys are fairly popular, to the extent that people can afford them. I saw a crowd gather around a couple at a party who’d brought their violet wand and were letting other people try it out. Also, the easy availability of disposable, sterile needles and sharps containers make play piercing (warning: contains an image of a person with needles in their back) an option for those who enjoy more extreme play. Play piercing is widely known but not very common (in the Boston scene, at least) because it takes a higher level of knowledge and skill than most other techniques and is a more intense kind of play than most people want to engage in.
I’d also like to point out that a lot of people who enjoy D&S don’t necessarily enjoy S&M. Here’s a blog post I wrote about semantical issues surrounding the use of the terms sadist and dom (short for dominant, spelled domme when referring to a female). (Linked page is work-safe, though other pages on the blog are not. Links within the post are also work-safe.)
“When people are free to do as they please, they usually imitate each other.” ~ Eric Hoffer ~
Not to upset any dominatrix, but I was talking about the sexual rather than bdsm form of the terms top and bottom. In which case the one doing the penitrating is the top whilst the one who is penitrated is the bottom. A dominatrix requiring her slave to use a dildo uppon her is being a sexual bottom but a bdsm top.
As for safe words, the only requirement is for the absolute safeword, without which you are getting into dangerous and possibly nonconcensual teritory. The tap out is useful when your mouth is full, or otherwise you can’t speak, but that is just detail. Any words used to modulate the session “amber” for go slow etc. are optional. For some saying “stop” would be a perfectly good safe word, for others they like to say “stop it tickles/hurts” when they absolutely don’t want the scene to end.
The sexual top/bottom terms are often used in homosexual situations where the gender of the participents is the same you cannot assume the male it top and the female is bottom, or even where the butch/macho partner is top and the femme partner is bottom. Hetrosexual couples rarely have the woman as the sexual top and the man as the sexual bottom (except during cunnylingus). But the BDSM (specifically the Dominant partner is the Tops, the Submissive is the bottom) terms a normal (not into BDSM) hetrosexual couple are almost as likely for the male to be the bottom as the top.
It boils down to there are two different uses of top and bottpm to do with sex that I am aware of. The sexual usage, and the bdsm usage. It can be very important to know which usage someone is refering to.
Very few if any people find all tipes of pain give them pleasure. Also extremely few find that pain which includes actual permanent bodily damage (such as a broken jaw or nose) gives pleasure. So you are right that noone is likely to line up to be punched in a BDSM club. On the other hand many people like the sensation of being slapped or smacked, others like the sensation of being pinched. I’m sure many women who consider themselves completely normal sexually enjoy having their nipples pinched, and even their clitoris pinched when they are feeling very sexually arroused, I’ve certainly met a few and have no reason to expect they are not a fairly representative group.
Hee! That sounds adorable. I know I’d be mightily entertained if my girlfriend reached a kind of linguistic nirvana in the midst of fun.
As to those who can’t quite believe pain can be pleasurable, consider the common phenomenon among those of us who’ve been tattooed who describe it as an addicting experience. Yeah, it hurts, but there’s something alluring about it as well.
It’s all about degrees of pain and being in the right situation. For example, my SO gets really turned on by being spanked. I don’t mean little taps either…I mean full on, turn you red, using a paddle spanking. When I do it as foreplay (or during ) he gets that pain/pleasure mix. If some stranger came up and randomly started using a belt on him, he’d kick their ass and not find it pleasurable at all. Well, he might enjoy kicking their ass but not in a sexual way.
Some people like more pain then others and I have known people that truly enjoy being beat until they’re bruised. Some people like it rough enough to draw blood. (I don’t get into blood or permanant marks) Point being, there most likely are people out there that would let you punch them in the face AND get off on it. But they are a distinct minority.
Hello, my name is Anastasaeon, and I’m a bottom. I don’t even know where to start, so whatever I leave out, feel free to ask questions. I can only give my personal feelings on the whole matter, since it is obviously different for everyone.
For me, it can’t just be a punch in the face - that’s not pleasurable. I have to be built up to it, slowly, and the more turned on I get, the harder things can progress - with my consent - and up to the point that I want to be slapped, hit, spanked, etc. I don’t know why I enjoy it, and it took a long, long time for my husband to be as comfortable as he is now.
As a bit of background, for those wondering: I had a pretty good childhood, I was not abused in any way. I lived in a very bad town, and I got beat up quite a few times as a teenager; not pleasurable. Today, I have a great, mostly stress-free life, my husband and I make damn good money, we spend a lot of time together in a friendly way as well as a romantic way, while having our outside friends we each spend time with - in short, we have an enormous amount of respect for each other. I had some bad relationships in the past; however, my sexual preferences were already established at that point. I was actually abused in my first relationship, and I had never let him know much about my kinks, and when he hit, it was not pleasurable, and I got the hell out of there. I was attacked once, by several men; it, too, was not pleasurable, and I hated it, but nothing vital inside me changed, I took it to the police, was taken to the hospital, brushed the incident off, and put it behind me. Still didn’t change my sexual preferences - which, as I said, were firmly in place before these incidents, none of which were pleasurable or enjoyable. There is a* huge * difference between consensual and non-consensual pain. Non-consensual has never equalled pleasure to me.
Okay, I’m sure this was rambling and possibly a little redundent in some places, and possibly I left a lot of information out. Ask away, I will answer as best as I can.
Anastasaeon, thanks for sharing. It’s important to differentiate between S&M and abuse.
I can’t remember if I followed the link from this board or not, but a few months ago, I did read a lengthy post from a BDSM board by a woman who was usually a dom(me), but learned a valuable lesson during a session in which she was the sub, and wanted to share it with others. Basically, she said that relying totally and solely on a safeword is…well, not safe. What happened in this session was that she was so distressed, she couldn’t remember the safeword, and couldn’t respond except by nodding when her partner finally asked if she wanted to stop. The safest practice (she said) is being in tune with your partner.