kink online: how not to cruise

You know, I’m sensing a bit of a theme here recently. I hope you’ll all forgive me for carping on it; I just feel like it keeps coming up in one guise or another, some positive, some not so much, and that makes it a constant buzz in my mind. That theme is entitlement.

Today’s post is of the not-so-much-positive variety. Today I direct my critical mind at the people who send friend requests to strangers online, or more specifically, the mind-boggling sense of entitlement demonstrated by some people who do so. It’s not the what, it’s the how… and how!

Anyone here explored the site FetLife? I joined it not too long ago. Simply put, it’s the Facebook of kinky people. It’s still in its toddlerhood, and as such it’s got some odd little glitches and such, but by and large it’s really cool. As opposed to alt.com or other such cruising sites, this one is explicitly set up Facebook-style so that people can have an online network made up of their friends. I don’t spend a heck of a lot of time on it, but it’s definitely neat to have an all-kinky network there, and others tell me that the discussion boards are absolutely excellent. I’m sure your mileage may vary, but so far I’m hearing tons of super-positive reviews. Kinksters all over the world are signing up. You should too!

Of course, like anywhere else (Facebook included), there will always be people out to cruise; especially here, I don’t find this surprising since it is, after all, a kink site. Now, I’ve been on the receiving end of pleasantly few Facebook cruises from random strangers, but this week I received two different cruise notes from guys on FetLife. And both of them managed to piss me off rather royally.

My approach to profile-based networking sites is simple. If you’re my friend in real life, then by all means let’s be friends online. If you’re not my friend in real life, then I do not want to be your friend online. The sole exception to that is if we’ve connected online via some other means - say, a chat group or by e-mail through another friend or a discussion list - and we really, seriously think one another are the bee’s knees, and possibly we’ve got mutual real-life friends who can vouch for your sanity. Then maybe we could be online friends. Otherwise, if you want to be friends, then let’s find a way to meet up in person and figure out if we actually get along. If you don’t want to do that, I’m not interested in you. There are a variety of reasons for this personal policy, and none of them make me unfriendly - but I’ll get to that in a minute.

If you’re a person who has not bothered to read my profile and find out who I am and what I’m interested in, and you send me a note that very clearly shows me you have not bothered to read my profile and find out who I am and what I’m interested in, and especially if you include with that note a picture of your cock or your breasts or your spread-open legs as I specifically ask you not to do, which you would know if you’d read my profile and found out who I am and what I’m interested in… then I am going to ignore you and probably block you. To me, this feels entirely reasonable as a response to unwanted messages that feel like the typographical equivalent of a telephone breather. But ya know what? If you don’t agree, that’s very unfortunate, and you can go off over there and have your opinion, and I still don’t have to be friends with you. That’s entirely my prerogative. Beyond that, I also feel no obligation to respond to unsolicited e-mail from strangers who don’t bother to find out what I’m about when I took the time to fill out a fucking profile in the first place specifically to make it possible for them to do so.

(On a side note, I just recently deleted my alt.com profile entirely because the vast majority of the people who’ve messaged me there over the past two years have done all the things I listed just now. Sure, there have been one or two gems… but really, the junk mail vastly outweighs the benefits. )

Now, back to the situation at hand: this week’s suitors.

Conversation with Guy A went something like this: Guy A sends me a friend request with no message. I send him the following message:

“Hello, Guy A. Have we met? If so, can you refresh my memory? I generally only accept friend requests from people I know in person - no offense intended, it’s just how I manage my accounts as a general rule. Let me know, and if not, perhaps we will meet in person someday, in which case I invite you to come and say hello! - Andrea”

Guy A responds with the following:

“Andrea - The proverbial chicken and the egg. We have not met to the best of my knowledge, and will not meet if someone doesn’t blink first and say hello to new people, even harder when your geographically challanged. However, I liked your eyes and really at the end of the day just wanted to say Hello, So Hello! - Guy A.”

Let’s stop and analyze this little exchange for a moment.

We start with a wordless request for friendship. No indication of why this person finds me interesting, or where we might have met. Because it’s more empty than rude, I take the time to inquire and to explain my personal policy in clear but genuinely friendly terms.

Guy A’s response seems relatively innocuous at first glance (though poorly spelled). But it made me instantly grouchy. Why? Well, let’s look a little closer. What is Guy A truly saying?

1. “I’m here to meet new people and possibly cruise them. Therefore, all people on this site must be here to meet new people and possibly cruise them, and if some girl decides that’s not why she is here, clearly she’s in the wrong.”

2. “Equally clearly, I’m well within my rights to be condescendingly patient with her as I explain to her what the true purpose of this site is, and how terribly inconsiderate she’s being in her failure to conform to my expectations of what she should be doing.”

3. “I’m also well within my rights to try and make her feel guilty for that lack of consideration on her part, because, well, she’s hurting my feelings! And she should feel guilty for that. Because I am right, and she is wrong, and I am wounded. I’m also living in an isolated community, and it’s of course her responsibility to make my life easier despite that choice on my part. In addition, it’s perfectly appropriate for me to attempt to manipulate her via a calculatedly martyr-toned guilt trip into being my friend despite her earlier clear indication that she was uninterested in doing so unless we had already met. And it’s also perfectly appropriate to imply that if she rejects my friendship now, not only is she wounding me, but she is showing herself to be unfriendly, cruel, and one of those awful people who makes this community less welcoming to all. (Cue “Koombaya.”) Surely that’ll work, as these women love to build community and be nice to people.”

(Is anyone hearing a similarity to the classic lines “You don’t want me? You frigid, castrating bitch!”? Or is it just me? Sure, it’s several notches down from that level of verbal violence, but the premise is exactly the same.)

4. “If I conclude on an appropriately complementary and mildly pathetic note, she’ll surely see that I’m just a nice guy who wants to tell her I find her attractive, and she’ll agree to my request despite her clear statement about how she manages her account. If I were there in person, I’d give her a long-suffering sigh, and puppy dog eyes. That’ll be the kicker. I’m being so nice, despite her cruel dismissal of me, that surely she’ll see I’m right and she’s wrong, and do what I want her to do.”

So here is my response:

“Hello indeed!

If you’re worried about the geographically challenged thing, perhaps you might try a place like Midori’s yahoogroup (divamidori is the name). That’s an excellent way to get to know people without asking strangers to friend you, and it’s a great place to connect with people all over the world. Those connections can easily develop into real friendships, whether in person or not.

I’m careful about friending people on sites like this one because to me, saying someone is my friend is like vouching for them, and I’m not willing to do that with strangers. I take friendship seriously, and because of that other people in the community trust my read on folks. I’d hate to casually friend someone and find out later that someone had taken that as my seal of approval and ended up in an unsafe situation with someone I’ve never even met. Especially in the world of BDSM I think it’s important for community members, particularly women, to help each other stay safe. I’m sure if you are a respectful and community-minded guy you’ll understand exactly what I’m getting at and why this is important.

Again - do come say hello in person if ever you find yourself temporarily geographically unchallenged!”

Honestly? I think I was too nice. I don’t actually want this guy to come anywhere near me if we find one another in the same space. He’s already made it amply clear that he doesn’t hear or value my “no,” doesn’t really care what my reasons for saying no might be, is manipulative, and has poor boundaries around who’s responsible for his well-being. Now I think he’s fucking creepy, and if he came up and said hello, I’d shake his hand and head to the other end of the room. (One wonders if he’d get the message, or perhaps think I were playing hard-to-get - ick, ick, ick.)

Tellingly, Guy A has not responded. I wonder why. Perhaps because he would then either have to admit that he’s not a respectful and community-minded guy, whether by agreeing with me retroactively (i.e. mending his ways, which means he has ways in need of mending) or by continuing to argue the matter with me, thus further proving my point. Tough one. Oh well. Terrible shame.

The second exchange I had with someone went in a very similar fashion. Guy B sent me a friend request and a note asking to be my friend. I replied with the identical “have we met” note (copy-paste is useful). His reply?

“Hi,that is fine,so many people are so afaid to ad someone ,,that si why the site is for to get to know people first and then met in person.thank you for replying.”

I’ll give him credit for being a lot more forthright with his uncouthness. Maybe it comes with being much more egregious in his lack of good spelling. He gives the same first message as Guy A, and the same second one, except that we can replace “condescendingly patient” with “righteously frustrated.” Wow. Amazing. I must be such a twit! Thanks so much for letting me know, kind sir, that I’m a coward and that I’ve completely misunderstood the purpose of this site. (Cue the Barbie giggle.) I’m so silly! I’m sorry, I’ll get right with the program. Oh, and while we’re at it, how would you like your cock sucked? (Cue vapid smile.)

He definitely makes the same third assumption, though perhaps in a less explicit way; it’s more of an underlying thing. Fourth one too. And then he also sends a fifth message:

5. “I am clearly superior to her, and therefore I’m well within my rights to approve or disapprove of her actions, and to let her know about that approval or disapproval.”

Because really, I was waiting with bated breath to find out whether he thought it was fine for me to manage my accounts this way. It was the first consideration on my mind. Really. His opinion means the world to me.

Despite all this, I sent him the same message I sent to Guy A about my reasons for choosing this particular way of managing my kinky social network. He replied as follows:

“You are right ,thank you for the explainatinon,i do hope ,we can meet at some event,for me it is this way you meet people here and then get to know them by chatting ,and after you meet in person at least you know them somehow.but some people are ,the opposite first they prefer to meet in person and that is fine too.take care.”

Now this is an interesting one. (You know, these guys do come in all varieties. Kind of like weeds.) Starting with “you are right” and “thank you” - well, maybe we’re getting somewhere. He’s at least willing to expand his perspective and attempt to integrate the fact that perhaps the entire world does not function around his own personal preferences.

But he kinda kills the whole thing with his reiteration of his right to approve or disapprove. In other words, he has now been educated, and he has declared that upon thinking about it, I am right. He may have declared, with equal authority, that I was wrong, in which case I have no doubt he would have been just as forthright about telling me so. Again - because clearly, I care about the rules he’d like to impose on my manner of managing my personal accounts. His disapproval would crush me, or make me toe the line. So it’s a good thing he approves. Phew.

This kinda reminds me of when I came out as queer to a guy I was dating many years ago, and his reaction was, “Okay, that’s fine with me.” Um… did I ask you if it was okay? No. I told you that’s the way I am. This is not a matter requiring your approbation. It is a fact. If you don’t like that fact, you can deal with it as you see fit in terms of your own choices, including the choice to leave the relationship, but the existence of my queerness is not up for negotiation and requires no stamp of authorization from anyone. Why? Because my sexuality is mine.

Likewise, my choices around how to manage my personal correspondence and networking services is mine. By taking the time to explain my choices to you, I am the one doing you a favour and going out of my way. I have no obligation to justify those choices, especially to a complete stranger. I have no obligation to respond to an unsolicited e-mail at all, especially when my profile, as usual, explicitly indicates that my dance card is quite full, and that even if I were looking, it would likely not be in your demographic. If I choose to tell you why I’m rejecting you, I’m already putting way more effort into this exchange than it properly deserves given your short but highly relevant history of disrespect toward me and my explicitly stated preferences.

This does not make me unfriendly. I’ve gone out of my way to remain quite friendly - so friendly, in fact, that I’m seriously considering toning it down the next time I encounter such disrespect because I’m being more friendly than the situation deserves.

This does not make me a destroyer of or hindrance to pansexual community-building or a hopelessly ghettoized queer. In fact, I’ve become FetLife friends with two het male doms this very week - whom I met in person first and who came across as interesting, engaged, respectful and friendly guys. They each sent me a note asking quite politely if I’d be cool with friending them, and leaving room for a respectful “no thanks” if that’s how I’d felt - which I didn’t, because for all intents and purposes they appear to be good people and I like their vibes. Yay for connecting with community outside my preferred demographic!

My approach to rude people does not make me frigid, or a cold-hearted castrating bitch, or a man-hater. It makes me a young woman who chooses to make online friend networks of actual real-life friends and acquaintances, and that’s where it ends. Everyone else can and should manage their own friend networks in whatever manner it pleases them to do so; nobody will receive any criticism from me because it’s none of my bloody business, and if someone doesn’t wanna be my online friend, that’s entirely their prerogative. If I got bent out of shape every time someone did their networking differently from me, I’d be twisted up beyond all recognition.

Anyone who feels entitled to criticize me, guilt-trip me, condescend to me, correct me, accuse me, get angry with me, disapprove of me or approve of me in my personal choices about how I manage my personal affairs, most especially when doing so as part of an attempt to cruise me (!), is clearly so far off the mark they’re never getting anywhere with me no matter what reparations they make. So far, I’ve chosen to respectfully educate these people, but you know what? I don’t owe them that either. They’re not entitled to my patience or my kindness. They pretty much forfeited that when they took their rude and oblivious approach to me in the first place.

There are lots of ways to become my friend. Cruising me in a disrespectful and pushy manner is not one of them. Attempts to make your disrespect into my failure as a human being are of even less interest to me, and I can absolutely promise you that they will not get you into my pants or under my boot.

normal work: victorian-era domestic d/s

Wow. It’s been a week since I last wrote. Yikes! For a while in there, I was able to post nearly every day. This was due to a combo of spending a lot of time alone (where I was staying in San Francisco) and a lot of time in situations of high intellectual stimulation (like, say, two leather conferences and about a dozen additional kinky workshops of various descriptions). Now I’m back at home, and all of a sudden I’m doing things like starting a kinky book club (whee!), hosting a sexy gift exchange (because it’s much funner to see people give each other gifts than have them all go to only the birthday girl), teaching a fisting workshop (to a group made up in the majority of male tops - very interesting!) and spending some long-awaited time with Boi M, who filled the house with flowers for my homecoming. What a sweetie!

The next few weeks will be very full indeed, which is a bit of a pain because I currently have a list of… ummm… 25 posts on my write-about-it list, and I’m not sure how fast I’ll get to ‘em! 

In the meantime, though, just a quick one.

Today, Boi M and I checked out an exhibition at Toronto’s Gallery 44 (401 Richmond St. W), entitled “Normal Work.” The exhibition itself is intriguing, but don’t expect huge prints of hot naked people or anything. Rather, you’ll see a range of tiny photographs of a woman named Hannah Cullwick, taken from the archived personal collection of Arthur Munby. Cullwick was a Victorian-era woman with a serious fetish for domestic servitude, and Munby was her “Massa.” You’ll also see excerpts of her diary on microfiche, and a short film also entitled Normal Work created by Pauline Boudry and Renate Lorenz that’s inspired by Cullwick’s life.

Hannah Cullwick had a lifelong relationship with Munby, to whom she dedicated her life and her service. In the book Imperial Leather: Race, Gender and Sexuality in the Colonial Context, Anne McClintock writes,

“Cullwick and Munby filled their lives with the theatrical paraphernalia of S/M: boots, chains, padlocks, leather, blindfolds, straps, constumes, scripts and photographs - some of them semi-pornographic. Their games included a variety of fetish rituals: transvestism, bondage, foot and leather fetishism, hand fetishism, washing rituals, infantilism, animalism and voyeurism.”

In the brochure for the Gallery 44 exhibition, Stephanie Rogerson writes:

“(Cullwick) had a lifelong revulsion of leisure and wealth that is stated in simple terms in a letter to Munby, ‘I will be your servant to my life’s end… and I hope, you’ll never take me out again as a lady. It makes me miserable and I feel so useless and idle…’”

Really the exhibition is just enough to make me want to devour McClintock’s entire book immediately, or at least the 70-odd-page chapter that deals with this particular couple. Perhaps I’ll have more in-depth reflections on the lives of Cullwick and Munby once I’ve done so; truly the show only left me feeling like I needed a lot more. I mean, how often do you come across the diaries of an explicitly D/s couple dating back over 150 years? Cullwick wore a locked chain around her neck and a leather band on one wrist as symbols of her servitude. This couple consciously played with the pleasures of power exchange and took the time to record it. On top of that, their records are one of the rare examples of work about fetishized domestic servitude I’ve seen that isn’t either a work of pure fantasy (I mean literally fantasy, as in Laura Antoniou’s Marketplace series) or a rather ponderous, pompous (and of course, poorly edited) book produced by one of the rare real-life practitioners and made available for public consumption. (I won’t name titles here, they’d really be a waste of your time.)

In the photos, we see Hannah Cullwick dressed as a high-class lady, as a man, as a black slave, and as a female domestic labourer - and it’s hard to tell which ones were “real” and which ones not. In truth it felt to me like all of these faces and outfits had a great deal of truth in them, and were perhaps simply theatrical exaggerations of the various aspects of her daily existence. Certainly her cross(?)-dressing traverses the challenging lines of race, class and gender in ways that are particularly mind-blowing considering historical context. This photographs and diary are rich in food for thought, especially when taken in combination with the contemporary film that does an excellent job of recontextualizing and unashamedly pointing out the deep queerness in the concepts Cullwick lived out.

This is one show that delivers a shot of intensity straight to the brain. I only wish there were more contextual information provided in the gallery somehow - but if you’re curious, just get your hands on a copy of McClintock’s book and I’m sure you’ll be satisfied. Or at least as satisfied as you’re likely to get for the moment. Truly, Cullwick is worthy of an in-depth biography, plus perhaps a play or a film about her life. I’m not gonna be the one to write it, but if someone does, I’m all over it!

The show is on until May 31, so really, don’t miss it.

Oh, and if you want further brain food, check out the Inside Out film festival (May 15-25) and the related Queer Here Queer Now film mini-symposium (May 17-18). Inside Out is sponsoring the “Normal Work’ exhibit, as well as the symposium, in case you were wondering about the connection - but even if they weren’t, I’d recommend both the festival and the symposium. Yum. Queer films. Kinky exhibits. Geeky queer film talks. Life is good for a sex geek these days! Even when I’m not hanging out in California.

kinky in canada

There’s some fascinating stuff going on in Canada these days around the question of BDSM. I’m on the NCSF mailing list, and through that I often get news from the States about the latest pro-domme getting her business shut down by the police, suspension scenes gone horribly wrong and kinky conventions kicked out of hotels based on shitstorms of intolerance raised by the Religious Right. But I don’t often see any Canadian stories about what the public and the law do with BDSM, so it’s especially interesting that in the last week two such stories have been sent my way. Even more interesting is that they show the law going in completely different directions.

The first one is here, in a story about a guy in BC who has lodged a human rights complaint against the Vancouver police force, alleging that they discriminated against him in refusing to issue him a chauffeur’s permit because he is involved in Pagan religious practices… and BDSM. The BC Court of Appeal has ruled that the Human Rights Tribunal can hear his case based on discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation. This is not quite the same thing as allowing BDSM to be legally defined as a sexual orientation, but it does come awfully close, and may result in that sort of jurisprudence if the guy wins his case.

The second one is here, in a story about a couple whose male half has just been convicted for sexual assault because he choked his female partner to the point of unconsciousness during sex. The two were together for eight years and have a son. They had apparently been having kinky sex for the duration of their relationship, and had an established safeword. The woman reported the incident a month after it happened, and then recanted her accusation, but the justice system would not accept her recant and pushed the case forward anyway.

It’s a tricky one – I hate it when reports of this kind of case come out, because it’s always so bloody difficult to figure out what the heck really happened. How much of what went on was truly BDSM, as opposed to abuse cloaked in BDSM terminology? Was the unconsciousness a one-time accident during play or did the guy force it to happen regularly despite the woman’s protests? Were there any kink-positive advisors called in as expert witnesses in the case? Did the judge or the prosecuting lawyer have a hate-on for sexual deviants? Did the woman initially recant because she’s a battered wife, or because she realized she’d had a momentary freak-out and called the cops when she should have just had a heart-to-heart with her honey? Did the reporter have their own anti-kink bias and so leave out any significant details that would help paint a clearer picture? With all these layers between my analysis and whatever took place, there’s no way I could tell you whether I think the guy’s guilty or not.

What I can tell you, though, is that here we have BDSM possibly about to gain human rights protection as a sexual orientation in one province, while in another province kinky behaviour is once again being equated to domestic abuse and sexual assault. The assault article concludes, “Citing a line of case law involving voluntary whippings, brandings and canings - some from England - Judge Nicholas said the courts have generally ruled that individuals cannot voluntarily invite violent acts against themselves.” Doubtless by ”England” they are referring to the infamous Spanner case, in which several gay men were incarcerated for committing and conspiring to commit assault… some of them against themselves. Yes, the legal precedents for this sort of thing are that fucking absurd. On the flip side, in BC, “Though the appeal court stopped short of finding that BDSM qualifies for protection from discrimination under the Code’s sexual orientation category, it ruled that in cases such as this one, where the alleged complaint may fall under the tribunal’s jurisdiction, the tribunal should hear the case and then decide.”

So which one will it be? Ideally, some form of both. It’s ridiculous that someone should be denied employment or tossed in jail for what they get up to in bed with the full consent of all concerned. At the same time, it would be a very bad move to allow BDSM to become a loophole through which true domestic violence cases can slip, where all someone has to do is wave around the word “safeword” and show a flogger collection for an abuse case to be dismissed because don’t you know that BDSM is consensual? I’m also highly suspicious of any legislation or legal precedent that would define BDSM too rigidly. For example, if the conclusion reached in BC for the purposes of this case is that all BDSM is scene-by-scene negotiated consensual play between adults involving a safeword, then that leaves people vulnerable if they happen to not have a safeword, or if consent was established early in a relationship but a specific act was not negotiated, and so forth. We need to be careful that what protects us in one case doesn’t end up biting us in the ass in another.

But for that middle road to be taken, where sexual freedom is protected and abuse brought to justice, there needs to be one helluva lot more of a nuanced understanding of how kinky sexualities work on the part of the entire Canadian legal system. And we are talking about a system whose various federal and provincial arms have legalized same-sex marriage but consistently and outrageously discriminated against queers by blocking our literature at the Canada/US border; legalized swinging and by extension queer bathhouses, but refuses to cover trans surgeries under Medicare in some provinces (resulting in a strange influx of transfolk to Alberta, of all places!); allowed women to go topless on par with men in Ontario, but is attempting to add new censorship laws to the books for government-funded film and television production; and allowed three people to become recognized as the legal parents of a single child in Ontario, but is attempting to effectively re-criminalize abortion via Bill C-484.

In other words: we’re not exactly consistent in this here fine country of ours when it comes to sexual and bodily freedom. And with laws like this already governing the way sexuality happens here, our legal acceptability as queers, women, trans folks, polyamorists and kinksters is already completely haphazard. It wouldn’t surprise me in the least if it stayed that way for a long time to come.

the challenge of entitlement (or, entitlement 201)

I think for me the most difficult challenge I faced in my journey of accepting and learning to enjoy my dominance has been that of entitlement. I’ve seen, and been on the receiving end of, horrendously entitled behaviour on the part of men for my whole life – entitlement to comment on women’s bodies and clothing and appearance (negatively or positively), entitlement to touch women’s bodies (though I have never been raped or seriously sexually assaulted, like most women I’ve fended off hundreds of gropers and breathers and jerk-offers and stand-too-closers over the years), entitlement to take up physical space (on buses, couches, sidewalks, dance floors), entitlement to take up energetic space (in conversation, in meetings, in workplaces, in volunteer groups), entitlement to anger (in difficult situations, both emotional and physical explosiveness without consideration of the consequence for others) and entitlement to knowledge (assuming they know more than others do, especially women, even when not necessarily better educated on the matter at hand).

My experience is that when challenged, the guys who do this react with offense – “I’m not a bad guy! How dare you suggest I’m doing something wrong! What’s your problem? Fucking bitch!” – that sometimes makes things worse than they were the first time around. Women sometimes display entitled behaviour too, and it irks me just as much and sometimes more, but it happens less often, in fewer areas, and far less predictably. Interestingly in discussion with Ariel, the guy with whom I’m teaching a BDSM and abuse workshop this coming weekend at International Ms. Leather (details in the workshop section!), he mentioned that entitlement is one of the things that domestic violence support services listen for when they’re screening for abusive situations. I didn’t know that in so many words, but it doesn’t surprise me in the least.

Now bring this entitlement issue into the BDSM world. I find that the place where most dominants mess up, when they do, is exactly in this realm. It’s as though a lot of people figure “I’m dominant, they’re submissive, of course I’m entitled,” without stopping to think about how a person’s role in kink does not on its own constitute permission or invitation for just anyone to take up that entitlement. I’m not sure why it’s such a hard conceptual leap to make – but bad male-dom behaviour in this realm fits right in here, much like general male entitlement in the everyday world. Again, female dominants do it too, but not as often or as predictably. These are the women who’ve reclaimed their right to entitlement and then taken it too far. But if I go into mixed play space, I can absolutely guarantee that there will be at least one guy every time who will behave with entitlement towards me or someone female or trans that I’m with. Sometimes this happens in ways that mean he gets kicked out of the event, sometimes it means we roll our eyes and ignore him until he goes away. Okay, I’m sure I’ve attended a handful of events in the last decade where this has not happened, but they are the exception, not the rule. Also, gay men tend to have way less of the women’s-bodies entitlement than straight ones do (although many of my butch friends who pass as men get groped too), and are often somewhat more sensitive to entitled behaviour than the average guy, but many can be just as bad with regard to space, energy and knowledge.

I’m queer and female so I have the privilege of spending a lot of time in women-and-trans-only spaces where this sort of energy and behaviour is simply absent for the most part, or so rare as to be highly exceptional (and boy, does it ever stand out when it happens – gah). This is good on the one hand; on the other hand it means I’m all the more sensitive to the difference in dynamics when I’m in pansexual space. It doesn’t surprise me in the least to see so many queer women self-segregate for this exact reason. I make the political choice to remain deliberately in contact with pansexual kink spaces and groups, and to maintain friendships with straight men, because for all that the entitlement thing crops up consistently, it’s essential for me to continue to expose myself to all the many guys out there who do not behave this way – otherwise I’d end up doing that “reverse sexism” thing and tarring all the guys with the same brush, which just isn’t fair or accurate.

Now take this entitlement question from the larger BDSM context and bring it down to the context of individual relationships. In addition to generalized male entitlement, in my younger years I was also on the receiving end of such behaviour in the context of two different significant relationships that together spanned about six years of my life. They were very destructive to me, but they taught me a helluva lot about what not to do. In that sense I’m glad I experienced them; I wouldn’t wish abusive relationships on anyone, but they certainly served to educate me about what abuse looks like and keep me deeply and intimately aware of how such things work.

Needless to say, given all this background, the thought of any kind of entitlement being encouraged, welcome, desired was completely baffling to me for a very long time. Like years. And yet there was always some part of me that understood that to authentically take up power in a D/s situation, a certain entitlement was both welcome and necessary. This messed with my head. I had a little breakthrough in 2006, which I wrote about here in “entitlement 101″, and the experience of having three really significant D/s relationships over a period of several years has made it much clearer. I’ve finally wrapped my head around it, and it finally makes sense on a gut level too, in the realm of the emotional – in that if someone craves to be owned and used and useful, entitlement and expectation is exactly what they need to from their partner as a counterpart to that mindset, which to them is good and satisfying and positive. (Add structure and discipline and correction and reward to that, of course, but that’s another post.)

If every time I took up power with one of my bois, I asked if it was okay first, then it wouldn’t be very powerful – that would undermine the value of the consent that was given to have the relationship exist along D/s power lines in the first place. It would be like saying, “I know you said this was okay, but I don’t really believe you, so I’m going to ask again each time and make sure.” This is great when you’re playing with someone on occasion, but it sucks the essence out of things if it’s done within an ongoing D/s relationship; it’s like saying the gift of ownership hasn’t really been given, or the desire or consent isn’t really valued, and it recalibrates things as being equal when the entire point is to create and sustain a deliberate inequality for mutual enjoyment and benefit. If we take this out of power exchange concepts and frame it in standard relationship terms, it would be like checking with your wife every morning if it’s okay to wear your wedding ring that day – that implies that maybe she’ll change her mind overnight, which is hardly an indication of trust in the depth and solidity of a relationship. In this way, behaviour that indicates an entitlement to the use of power is the only thing that truly validates what’s going on.

For example, Boi L once told me that if I were to take off my jacket and let go of it without even looking behind me to see if she was there to take it – if I assumed her to be paying attention, without feeling a need to check and make sure – that would be a high compliment, because it’s an indication of my trust in her service. In a way it’s like a trapeze artist swinging into the void, and letting go, and expecting that their partner will make the catch. The flyer is responsible for holding themselves in a way that makes that catch possible, for being timed and tuned with the catcher, for communicating through body and motion what needs to happen. But it’s the trust that makes it possible for the catcher to do their job. If the flyer doesn’t really expect the catcher to be there, and behaves accordingly, either she’ll mess up the move or she’ll never let go and fly at all. And a catcher who’s constantly at the ready but never gets to actually perform will get awfully frustrated with the situation too.

Part of what makes that entitlement okay is that it’s not only consensual, but deeply desired. That said, desire and consent aren’t enough to make it okay; you can see why I’d be so careful (see my recent post entitled “the dominant’s consent”) about making sure that the people with whom I do D/s are coming from a healthy place in their consent to, or pursuit of, that entitlement. I think for me the trick to holding dominance in a person’s world is to find ways to take exactly what they want to give, feel entitled to that because that’s what’s desired, and yet still somehow make my entitlement as much about them as it is about me. Not in the sense of disavowing my own dominance, but in the sense that if I get so wrapped up in what I feel entitled to that I stop considering what it means to them or what it costs them to give it, that’s no longer okay.

Part of this is about understanding where D/s takes the people on the submissive end of it. The trust that someone gives when they say “you own this piece of me” is enormous. In a sense, it becomes safe for someone to give over control of something when they know the person holding it will only make a decision that keeps their health and happiness in mind. But once that ownership is given over, no matter how true it is that the person can still take it back and walk away, the psychological and emotional cost for doing so becomes extremely high. There’s a huge grey zone between “I trust that she will only ever make decisions that are good for me” and “hey, that’s such a shitty abuse of my trust that I have to walk away,” and that’s the grey zone within which it’s up to me, as the dominant party, to hold to my principles and not get drunk on the power I have in someone’s life.

It’s that whole “just because you can, doesn’t mean you should” thing. I can wake Boi M up in the middle of the night to fuck even if he’s got to work the next morning. I am most definitely entitled to. Should I? Every once in a while, yes, because the thrill of being rudely awoken for sexual purposes is pretty darn good, and goes a long way to making him feel desired and used in that satisfying happy way. Should I do it every time I’m awake in the middle of the night (which is often) and in the mood for a roll in the hay (which is just about as often)? No. That would be disrespectful of his needs for sleep and to be alert at work.

But where is the line between what feels good and what’s got unhealthy consequences? Waking him once every six months? Once a month? Once a week? Every second night? Every night for a week but never again? At what point is it a special treat versus an expected part of how we operate? At what point does it become a chore instead of a thrill? Conversely, at what point does it become something that hasn’t happened in so long he starts to wonder if I’m still interested in taking him that way? This discernment is up to me – which is not to say that he has no part in it, because he very much does. But there’s a difference between expecting someone to call you out on bad behaviour or poor choices, and making sure you don’t behave badly or make poor choices in the first place. This is the responsibility I take on as a necessary counterpart to my entitlement.

As part of that responsibility, I assign certain expectations of my bois. They are, for example, responsible for letting me know the salient details of their well-being. We often refer to this with a smile as “protecting the property” – as in, because we are talking about human beings here, and not an item of furniture or clothing, their well-being may shift in different circumstances and I can’t be the sole person watching for that; that’s simply unrealistic. This is not like owning a t-shirt, where a cursory examination is enough to make sure it’s in good shape and if it’s really falling apart you toss it in the rag bag. 

I need to know if a headache is coming on, there’s a big day at work tomorrow, the old knee injury is acting up, there’s a doctor’s appointment tomorrow so big bruises are a bad idea. I need to know if they’re having a bad day or need me to be gentle. I also need to know if they’re full of energy and want a place to direct it, if they’ve been feeling neglected, if they’re ragingly horny, if they’re lonely, if they’re having a hard time at school, if they want more structure or more tasks or more explicit direction on a given point. If I’m going to assign a new task, I need to know how performing it will affect their everyday lives – are there enough time and energy and resources for them to perform it well, or will it be taking those things away from other important endeavours? If I’m going to require a change in habits, I need to know everything about the context into which those habits were born in the first place, and what purpose they served. An order to quit drinking coffee, say, is not a bad one in principle, but doesn’t exactly equip the person to carry it out or recognize the needs that bad habit fills which will now need to be met in new ways. These things are all factors in how I deal with my bois and the degree to which I take up my entitlement.

Not only that, but I need to trust that the guiding principle for all of us is well-being whether I am present to enforce it or not. In other words, I need to trust that they won’t continue to perform a service to me if it’s detrimental to them; I need to know that in my absence, the prime directive is “do yourself no harm,” so if I told them to finish cleaning the bathroom but they realize they haven’t eaten and are feeling faint, food comes first. I will not accept self-destructive behaviour in the guise of obedience to me.

Entitlement on its own pisses me the hell off. Entitlement that’s conscious, chosen, desired and responsibly maintained is a different story entirely. It’s an ongoing journey to find my way through what that means to me and to the people with whom I share that path.

some words i just can’t reclaim

Every once in a while, my happy little alternative viewpoint hits its limits. It makes me feel downright conservative at times, but what can I say? I’m a stickler for things like accuracy in language and good spelling and grammar. No, I’m not as much of a nitpick as some; if I were, this blog wouldn’t sound nearly as conversational as it does, and y’all’d be stuck reading perfectly correct but utterly bland sentences with no quirky personality at all. 

As it stands, then, some of my views on the acceptability of certain terms are based more in questions of accuracy than in questions of political correctness. I’m not talking about dictionary accuracy necessarily; I’m talking about the ways in which words are commonly used. So while I’m all for taking words that are accurate but used pejoratively - such as, say, “queer” - and reclaiming them in their still-accurate but neutral or complementary use, I’m not such a fan of some other related practices.

Queer. Queer is a lovely word. It uses the letter “Q” in such a charming fashion. It means things like “odd” or ”strange,” words which have always struck me as denoting things mysterious and intriguing and quirky and cool. I like queer. I am queer. Queer suits me just fine - I am odd and strange, at least if you compare my sexuality to the mainstream ideal, and that’s a good thing in my books. If others want to hurl it out open car windows at me along with a beer bottle, well, that’s awfully rude of them. But it doesn’t make me any less queer or feel any less happy with the term. The degree of insult inherent in the use of the word “queer” is proportional to the degree of desire the person on the receiving end of it wants to be, or be perceived as, normal. I don’t the least bit care about normalcy so the word has no power to hurt my feelings. Yes: queer is good. And it is accurate.

Not so much for certain other words. The word “slut,” for example, which some people have made valiant efforts to reclaim. Me? I just can’t get behind it. Slut is, first of all, an inherently sexist term. It’s applied in vastly disproportionate fashion to women and girls; this is evidenced in the use of the term ”male slut” when ”slut” needs to be qualified by a gender other than the one it’s assumed to be referencing. A simple Google search suffices to prove my point: 52,100 hits for “male slut” and only 16,400 for “female slut.” To me, this is a clear indication that sluts are presumed female until explained otherwise. (The term “slut” on its own gets nearly 57 million hits.)

“Slut” also carries with it a connotation of indiscriminate sexual availability. It’s used as a pejorative term for people who’ll pretty much do anything with anyone, who aren’t picky, who don’t have much self-esteem so they’ll let anyone use ‘em for pleasure. It’s an unfortunate reality that such people exist - that there are women, and some men, out there who really truly believe they’re not worth much unless someone’s groping them or sticking a hard cock in one of their orifices, and so will abase themselves to get that sort of attention from as many people as possible. Sluts are the ones who get used and tossed aside. They really are out there. Lots of ‘em. It’s a terrible state of affairs and I would love to give those people a shake and tell them they deserve way better.

I am not a slut. No matter how much Dossie Easton and Janet Hardy would like me, as a non-monogamous person, to reclaim the term “slut” and wear it proudly as they do in the title of their famed book, I just can’t love that word. Why? Because it’s not accurate. I am extremely discriminating in my sexual tastes. I deserve nothing but the best. I am willing, and fully able, to be single and celibate for long periods of time if partners of sufficient quality are not available. I do not want mediocre sex. I want top-of-the-line gourmet sex and I will not lower my standards to make anyone else happy. I’m not against one-night stands, but unless they’re with highly exceptional people or in situations where the chemistry is excruciatingly mind-blowingly strong, the chances of such adventures being truly satisfying are minimal, so my pursuit of them is correspondingly minimal.

I am also not a body to be used for another’s pleasure. I can provide pleasure in buckets, for sure, but I do so by my own agency and at my own choice, not because I’m expected to as the owner of a female body. I do not take all comers, and I do not get used and tossed aside; if I get sexual with someone at all, generally they want to come back for more. The only thing that makes me remotely resemble a slut is a mere technicality - I have sex with multiple partners. But the common ground ends there. And I am not willing to take up the use of a term that would equate my carefully chosen and highly valued sexual relationships with the indiscriminate rutting of desperate people who are fucking to fill up an emotional void inside themselves. There are sluts out there, and I’m not one of them, so that word is not for me.

Here’s another word, and one that’s perhaps even more loaded: “slave.”

Now, I don’t follow a path of submission in my kink life, but I am honoured by the presence in my world of people who do. One of those people is proud to be considered my property, and another is on the way to holding that status in my world. They both serve me, and do so with exquisite care and attention to detail. In turn, I take up authority in their worlds, and hold the role of chief decision-maker in a number of very significant areas of their lives. Their service and their submission to me are gifts of the highest quality, and I do not take them lightly.

Are they my slaves? No. A slave is someone who has been stolen or purchased and then coerced, whether by brute force or the power of terrible circumstance, to serve a master they may or may not respect. There is no honour there, no generosity, and above all no choice. Slavery is a cruel institution that’s been visited on people all over the world, and the hallmark of slavery is that it is completely non-consensual.

Sure, we can bring in the race card - and it is true that there’s a long and bloody history of slavery in many countries, where countless people, almost always people of colour, were subjected to horrendous abuses at the hands of colonizers, usually white. I don’t discount the validity of that argument. But unlike some people, I’m arguing against the term “slave” not for political reasons, but again for reasons of accuracy. My bois have chosen to be in this sort of relationship with me. They choose it actively, and with great desire and great enthusiasm. They regularly come to me with ideas and suggestions for how to reinforce our dynamic. I may be an owner, but I am an owner of treasured property, property that has agency and input and that takes great satisfaction in their position. These people are not slaves. They may be owned but they are absolutely free. I have no claim on them beyond that which they give me. If they want to leave, there is no penalty; they can simply walk away. If I want to keep them around, it’s my job to hold up my end of the bargain and be a responsible and caring owner.

Of course there are lots of people in the BDSM world who use the term “slave” in ways that hold a completely different meaning than the standard one. In no way do I want to tell these people that they don’t have a right to use the word exactly as they please. But I feel we need to be clear on what’s happening here. This is not a case of reclaiming a controversial word. This is a case of redefining one, which is a completely different project. Nobody in the BDSM world, at least not that I’ve ever encountered, purports to do slavery in ways that resemble the true, coerced slavery of past generations of African slaves in the USA, for example. No, BDSM slavery is entirely different. In many cases it looks a whole lot like what I do with Boi M and Boi L.

People can redefine words all they want, and I won’t dispute their right to their choices. But as for me, I’m not really all that enthusiastic about taking terms that carry a strong negative charge and using them in completely new ways. We kinksters have a bad enough time as it is trying to convince the outside world that what we do is not abusive or coercive - why the heck would we take a term that connotes exactly those things, and then get all huffy when people misunderstand us? Why insist that the word be redefined, instead of using or coming up with one that already means what it should? No thanks. I’d rather express myself accurately in the first place, and tell people that my bois are in a state of consensual servitude to me, with varying degrees of ownership on my part. They are not my slaves, and I don’t want them to be.

I very much understand that language is permeable, that words have multiple meanings, and that human beings are endlessly creative in coming up with new ways of expressing and conveying messages through vocabulary. One might percieve the perspective I’m taking as being overly rigid or hopelessly mired in linguistic traditionalism. I would posit, though, that what I’m doing is actually a far more radical act. I am suggesting that instead of stubbornly trying to apply new meanings to words that already have plenty of meaning in their original sense, and meaning we don’t want them to have, that we should come up with entirely new ones ourselves, or use ones that already exist but do convey the appropriate meaning.

Instead of slavery, how about consensual erotic servitude? Hey, we could even get really hip and go for acronyms: CES, which could be further abbreviated to CS if the relationship isn’t of the erotic sort. Hey, the world of alternative sexuality already has tons of those, so it’s familiar currency - BDSM itself, for starters, not to mention its component parts BD, D/s, and SM. And don’t forget M/s, AB/DL, TPE, 24/7, DD, TS, TG, TV, GLBTIQQ, SSC, RACK and CBT. As for “slut,” well, if I had to describe my approach to things, I’d simply say I’m non-monogamous, or if someone really wanted to hear something less generic, perhaps I’d say I’m a sex-positive ethical hedonist who enjoys multiple relationships, some of them loving, some of them just for fun. Really, the way I do my sex life can’t be summed up in a single word, so I’m not going to try.

In the end, people will do exactly as they please, as well they should. I’m not advocating for the community to frown on terms like “slut” and “slave”; if those words feel right to the people using them, more power to ‘em. I think I’m simply stating that while some folks may stand behind a particular usage, not everyone will, and mine is just one (nitpicky language professional’s) way of choosing against the words that don’t quite fit and adopting ones that do.