Stringing People Along

One of the more common things you’ll see is people looking for NSA (no strings attached) play. And it’s out there if you know where to look. Casual play is done in the local scene all the time. While it’s not as fulfilling as play in a relationship, it’s still fun.

Online, lots of women try to smash that desire by saying that NSA play is unrealistic. They use this as a means of prying something out of the sub, usually money or housework. It’s that whole “pay to play” mentality.

Their hypocrisy is evident when you read a little further. Usually these women are themselves looking for NSA housework. So NSA play is unrealistic, yet getting someone to do your housework NSA isn’t? How much crack do you have to smoke before that makes sense?

Another Femdom Myth for the Pile

One of the often-quoted myths online is that there are supposedly a hundred, a thousand, even 10,000 submissive men for every dominant woman. If that were true, there would be, at the very least, a few hundred submissive men in my local scene. And we’d all be standing around staring at each other.

I think the roots of this myth are twofold.

First, people tend to include all the online wankers who e-mail random pics of their cocks to anyone vaguely female. These are the guys who post things like, “im no limits slav 4 dominate women i serv u cuckold me plz”. If they ever met an actual domme in real life, they’d probably faint or immediately soil their pants. If you include these guys in the numbers, then yes, it’s accurate. But I don’t consider them to be in the same category as the people who actually do this in real life, so I don’t include them.

Also, I think that there are a lot of women online who tend to perpetuate this fallacy because it gives them power. They can tell men that since there are sooooo many other subs out there, finding a replacement is easy. So, of course, the sub must give her money, do her housework, and spread the word about what a wonderful domme she is. Otherwise, he’ll be out the door. It’s manipulative, but it happens. These types prey on those with low confidence or those who are new to bdsm and don’t know any better.

When you look at the real-world bdsm community, the numbers are much more even. Sure, some cities have an abundance of guys who pounce on women and immediately ask if they can lick their boots. Again, I don’t count them since they’re more along the lines of “predatory fetishist” than “sub who’s active in bdsm”. And locally, these types tend to hang out in the fetish/club/goth scene rather than the bdsm scene. Occasionally one might show up at the dungeon, but they don’t come back often since they don’t get what they’re looking for there. There’s a basic amount of social skill needed to thrive in the bdsm scene, and those who don’t have that (whether they’re in-person or online) are often counted in this 1000-to-1 ratio. Eliminate them from the numbers, and you get a more balanced, realistic view.

The Firm, Inescapable Grip

I just got a leather shirt I ordered a little while back. I had to wait since it was backordered. No problem there, no hurry.

When I opened the package up, the shirt looked better than I expected. So I tried it on. Beautiful. It had lacing on the sides and on the outside of the sleeves, so there’s a little leeway in the fit too. And it looked amazing. Good fit, a bit snug. After checking it out in the mirror, I went to take it off.

Now we’ve got a problem.

It didn’t want to come off. At all. I loosened all the lacing as far as it goes. Still having trouble. Now I was getting panicky. I wasn’t planning on getting into any bondage that day. I kept tugging and squirming, trying all sorts of ways to get out of this shirt’s firm deathgrip.

After about five minutes, I finally got it off. I never thought getting undressed would be such an ordeal. And I couldn’t imagine going through all that at a public event or dungeon- it’s just not that graceful-looking. So I sent it back for the next size up. Originally, I ordered (and got) a medium, which is what I normally wear. But apparently these run a little small. On the plus side, I finally escaped from the solid grasp of the shirt that tried to kill me.

This is why I avoid buying clothes online. Yarr.

Man-meat

I’ve been thinking about the paradoxical (at least for me) nature of masculinity lately, and one of Bitchy Jones’ recent posts struck a chord with me.

I’ve been called butch by friends before, which felt a bit odd being applied to a guy. I dress in a masculine way which emphasizes my body. One guy in the local scene even said, “You’re the only normal male sub I know” since I’m not the stereotypical obsequious sissy maid type. Working out and dressing this way gives me a boost in confidence and makes me feel sexy when I go out. I take pride in my appearance. When I go to a bdsm event, I’ll be in jeans (which fit properly) or leather pants, a somewhat snug shirt, or maybe a leather shirt. I don’t go in a French maid’s outfit. Pretty much the exact opposite.

On the other hand, I have done some feminization play in private, and the woman I was playing with and I both found it hot. To me, the appeal was more that this isn’t who I am in daily life, so it pushed me some. If I were in that state all the time (by my own hand or someone else’s) it’d lose a lot of appeal.

Plus, I think the traditional gender roles are a bunch of crap. Being told that we should do certain jobs around the house, get specific careers, or take the majority of responsibility for romance just because of how we were born is hypocritical and worthless.

Masculinity itself has become a caricature. When people talk of masculinity, some often cartoonish images come to mind. Yet we’re expected to hold ourselves to these played-out standards and be the crotch-scratching, overly-hairy, money-throwing, willing-to-do-anything-for-sex, drunken frat boy types who aren’t able to talk about feelings in any capacity. Personally, I refuse to be that. It’s not who I am.

For me, masculinity has two faces. There’s the sexy, comfortable side, and there’s the prefabricated stereotypical sludge that others push on us.