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October 28, 2013 by Snarksy

Topping from the Bottom is Not Actually a Bad Thing

Part two of this post can be found here.

Just to be sure my title is clear, I’ll say it again: Topping from the bottom is not actually a bad thing.

There are many in the BDSM world who would tell you that it is, or insist on ways a submissive identified person can be too pushy, or ways that a dominant identified person always does ‘x’.  It’s bullshit all the way down, folks. Sub and dom and top and bottom exist as labels to be useful and help us meet our desires, not police the way people are functioning. Folks love to say “don’t top from the bottom”, but why exactly shouldn’t you? Whose job is it to decide what a ‘good’ bottom needs to be?

I was reminded of how irksome I find this phenomena—especially the notion of “no topping from the bottom” when I snapped the photo below at Folsom last month. Society of Janus was holding a fundraiser for TASHRA by selling public spankings. The entire thing was clean, safe and incredibly well organized, save the inclusion of one tragic phrase which really annoyed me, so a few days later I tweeted:

No one replied to these tweets. Sometimes my rants get decent feedback, but not this one. I tagged TASHRA (@kinkhealth) and the Society with no effect; I don’t know if they saw them, but have to assume they might have.

Perhaps my followers didn’t see them either—perhaps they did, and didn’t feel moved to respond. It’s easy for a tweet to get lost (and my account is really quite small.) It’s also easy to ignore how big an issue phrases like “no topping from the bottom” can really be.

It doesn’t actually matter if people read the tweets, and I am not trying to lash out against the SoJ—I’ve never had a reason to dislike them in the past. But this issue is important and I don’t think everyone truly understands that. Part of what made that sign so upsetting to me was that the SoJ was soliciting ‘noobs’ off the street, trying to persuade passersby that if they were new and curious, the spanking booth was a safe way to explore. I understand their point—in a highly public space, with skilled practitioners, you very well might be able to safely explore an impact play you are curious about and don’t currently have access too.

But I had to wonder about the impact of their sign. It made me feel anxious just reading it—and I have experience in the community, and understood the supposed context for the humor. What about someone who is new? While the guy with the bullhorn outside the booth kept giving props to the importance of consent, the sign right next to him was suggesting something else. Even in jest, that sign was suggesting that you might be less cool if you speak up and articulate your desires.

There is a pressure, represented by the SoJ sign, but found throughout the BDSM community, to not really articulate your desires fully. This pressure is not necessary.  In a culture that makes honest sexual communication hard, only those who are seeking to abuse benefit by making this communication even harder. I think the SoJ should have known better when they put up that sign, but I also think they lost out as much as we did. I really believe they wanted to have a safe and consensual environment; they got swept up by an unhealthy rhetoric that is so pervasive, it is hard for most of us to even see it for what it is.

No topping from the bottom is often a way of telling subs “don’t negotiate too hard, don’t risk not being sexy enough.” I don’t think the Society of Janus wanted that anymore than  I do. Yet, the punchline of the “your domme is always right” joke is steeped in a seriously fucked up reality about abuse and communication in the BDSM community.

In a few days I’ll be posting a part exploring this dynamic more, but for now, I just want to leave it at this: Topping from the bottom is not actually a bad thing, and you’re not doing the kink scene any favors if you try to say it is.

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October 18, 2013 by Snarksy

Kinky Harry Potter

It’s clear from this sexy Madame Hooch pic that not only am I a visionary, but I’m also an artist.

Apropos of nothing, and without paying my proper respect to the world of fanfic, I present to you my thoughts from re-watching the first Harry Potter movie with friends tonight:

My poly life in Hogsmeade is one in which I use my women’s studies background to teach an intersectional Muggle Studies course up at Hogwarts. I live with Hagrid, my husband, with whom I have no children but we play auntie and uncle to many of the local students. Hagrid’s not into scening, but he’s no wilting flower either, and his love of zoology and the outdoors helps keep me grounded from my overly academic life. We’re poly of course, and Madame Hooch (call her Rola) is my girlfriend. Sometimes when I am feeling snarky I call her my Hooch Buch, but mostly she’s just the lady of my heart, and damn does she look good in (magically created, ethical & vegan) leather.

Mostly life is sexy, happy and fun, sans the near-yearly recurrences of increasingly complicated Voldemort manifestations. I guess the only thing—and gosh, I don’t even know if I should mention it here, it’s sort of embarrassing. But well, I guess if we’re all being straight with each other, Severus and I got drunk a few years back at the staff Christmas party and let’s just say he docked me more than a few House points if you know what I mean.* We … well, we may have run into each other a few times since then, but if you really want to know you can go ask Pompfrey, she’s such a hen.

 

At wizarding kinky cons they obviously offer a Devil Snare’s 101 class. Just sayin’.

 

That’s all folks. I started a new job recently, hence the delays in posting. Have a few in the works though, so never fear.

 

* What I mean is that we did a really intense scene, and despite the fact that I really dislike him and how he treats just about everyone, I have daydreams still about the cold shiver I get every time he whispers in my ear about what a filthy little witch I am.

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October 3, 2013 by Snarksy

Notes From a Conference

So I just got back Tuesday night from a wonderful trip to San Francisco, where I was able to present at the 6th Annual CARAS conference, hang out with good friends, make new ones, and even oogle sexy queer leather women at Folsom. Total win!

CARAS stands for Center to Advance Research on Alternative Sexualities. It is a mostly academic conference geared at academics, clinicians, and community members – mostly within poly & kink issues, but on a variety of topics. At the conference, I presented my workshop on Narratives of Sexual Assault in the BDSM Community. In laymen’s terms, I was giving my presentation on the history of how kinksters have discussed sexual violence with each other. I began with the identity-based feminist activism of the 1970’s, then moved forward through the Sex Wars, the advent of AIDS, online discussion forums (primarily via Usenet) and landed in our present day amongst the likes of Cliff Pervocracy and the Fetlife TOU debates. Kali from Kink Academy has, awesomely, taped my presentation, and sometime in the next month or so it will be online for your viewing pleasure. I’ll be sure to link to it!

So what else went on at the conference? Well … Snarksy did not do a very good job of taking notes (lesson learned!) so my thoughts are more emotive than they will be academically rigorous. (In my defence, I was pretty doped up on dayquil! Colds have a habit of hitting at the worst times…)

But! Aside from the fact that the likes of Charles Moser, Amy Stone, and newcomers like Jill Weinberg all put on wonderful presentations (which will also be featured on Kink Academy!) here were some of my major take-aways:

  • Progressive, academic, altsex types need more dedicated spaces—people were so relieved to be here this weekend. I especially think it would be good if conference spaces like this were able to take place more regularly. CARAS was amazing, but the next conference is not until May 2015. While many attendees knew each other from other networks, many were experiencing this as one of their only opportunities to regularly engage with this kind of crowd. Yet, only about 70 people attended CARAS this year—in San Francisco—so I can imagine getting a crowd together outside of urban hotspots known for strong BDSM or Leather communities would be hard. It does need to happen though—I’d love to see a dedicated, IRL forum for these kinds of groups in the south, and here in New England, all over the place.

  • TNG folks would definitely benefit from more time spent learning with more experienced kinksters. A large part of my presentation dealt with the history of how kinksters have used social networking and online forums. And talking with wonderful folks like TrinSF, who were part of Usenet and older scenes when I was just a wee little thing, it became very clear to me how cut off TNG is from the history of the kink community. I am totally supportive of TNG and think that the under 35 crowd absolutely does need our own space to socialize and define what kinky gatherings mean to us. But I also wish that built into this model was the chance to meet older kinksters. I am sad about the loss of potential inherited knowledge, or it only being passed on through more formal Leather communities, which while significant, don’t necessarily represent the majority of younger kinksters.

  • Conference was amazing, but very expensive to attend. Wondering how many interesting voices were not represented this weekend. If you weren’t a volunteer, just attending the conference ranged from between $50 to $70 some dollars, for a single day. That doesn’t count the transportation and lodging costs for out of towners. I feel extremely lucky that I was able to afford the airfare, that I have friends in the Bay I was able to stay with, and that I had the time to shlep it over for a visit to San Fran in the first place. But how many people can’t do of those things? Probably most. I know I couldn’t have even two years ago. So I have been left really pondering how many interesting voices are not being represented in these kinds of spaces. I understand what CARAS needs to charge, and how expensive it is to run a conference, and how hard it is for marginalized subjects/communities to get the funding they need for these kinds of events. But something is permanently missing when the low-income of our community can’t be represented in these spaces. Talking to TheDeviantE we both agreed things like travel grants, stipends for presenters, scholarship for low-income attendees need to be made part of CARAS’ conferences.

  • Talking to travelers, it’s clear that many kinksters don’t have a clear idea of what life is like in other scenes.  I met people from England, San Diego, Indiana and a variety of other places while at CARAS this weekend. And from chatting with the native Bay Area folks it seemed clear that some of them live in a little bit of a bubble. It is a wonderful, supportive bubble where the kink/leather/bdsm scene is vibrant and you are able to be out about your polyamory while providing clinical services. But it is a bubble nonetheless. With the Internet, the ability of kinksters to learn about each other’s scene’s is greatly enhanced, but even with the likes of Fetlife and kinky blogs, it seems that many people are in the dark about how the scene functions in other locals.

  • Being around intellectual kinksters with a penchant for feminism and history is utterly amazing, and must be repeated. This is a lot like my first bullet point—but it is worth repeating. The atmosphere around CARAS was wonderful, and ought be replicated. Someone, somewhere should make an online conference, or something, where folks can gather like this more often. (Do online conferences actually work? Have never been to one … would be interested in your thoughts.) Not sure what the next steps are on this yet—but do know there need to be some.

Okay, I think that is quite a lot of thoughts for now. Please message or email if you have any questions, thoughts to add, or conference reflections of your own you’d like to share!

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September 27, 2013 by Snarksy

This Day On A.S.B.

Why, ahoy there. I am starting a new feature, called “This Day on A.S.B.” I realize that for many younger folks (especially under 30) Usenet is a relative unknown. Though many of us have a love/hate relationship with Fetlife, very few of my peers are really familiar with other ways the kink community has communicated online. But if you enjoy the trainspotting forum on Fet, the history of online forums, or the ‘thrill’ of knowing you might run into posts written by your parents prior to your ability to write in cursive*—the old Usenet forums are the place to you. I’ve written about Usenet and the alt.sex.bondage newsgroup before, but what could be better than primary sources? What I love most about delving into the old archives Google has stored in Google Groups is how versatile and robust the kink community has been online. Many of the things we are deliberating about today—safe ways to use a flogger, coming out to parents, finding that special Master or Mistress, where the good munches are, dealing with abusers, expressing fantasies in a public way, when a pun crosses the line to being too nerdy, how anonymous kinksters must be when writing openly—are actually continuations of conversations that are over two decades old. TNG** kinksters (especially those who are not in the leather or old-guard scenes) don’t always think of ourselves as a group with roots and history—but we totally are. All that said—I want to share a small sampling of what was going on at the alt.sex.bondage newsgroup this time 20 years go. It is as weird as it is random, which of course is half the fun. I am not necessarily sharing these snippets to make a Grand Point about BDSM. Mostly, I just want to make this part of kink history tangible and real for those who may be missing out. 20 years ago is nearly a generation. And for me, at least, it’s fun to think about how the kink community has changed in that time, and what we can learn from comparing our communities to how they were back then. So without further ado, I’ve posted some excerpts below, mostly without commentary, because why muck up their awesome with my own thoughts, hmm?  Fun with ice (request for comments): One person writes:

I was discussing fun with ice yesterday with my bottom (well, no, _I_ was talking, she was wimpering and crossing her legs).  The topic of an ice dildo came up.This sounds like a fun thing (to use … not to have done to me, though I think she may get bad ideas from it 🙂 ) … but I’m a bit concerned about cramps and other nasty nonconsensual stuff like that. Anything I should know/worry about?

Submissive Topping This thread was rapped up after nearly a discussion. The original author, Meriel, started the thread out with a letter: 

Hi ASB, I topped for the first time Saturday night.  It was interesting. I met my partner at a local SM club.  We had both been attending meetings for the past few months.  He knew I was submissive, but when he suggested it, I agreed to top him. We went to his apartment.  He had brand-new cotton clothesline, and I brought feathers from a feather duster.  There was a minor problem after I tied his hands and attached them to the head of the bed. We didn’t have a knife strong enough to cut the rope, so his feet didn’t get tied.  After I got him tied up, I found out that he was incredibly ticklish, just running my hands lightly over his ribs made him jump and howl.  The feathers were kind of overkill, but I used them for a bit anyway. 🙂 I was a little surprised to find out that pinching his nipples had very little effect.  They were less sensitive than the rest of his chest and his stomach.  The ice cubes worked reasonably well, I took one in each hand, and ran them over his entire body until they were completely melted. I discovered that I have have some questions about topping.  The main one is:  How do I get my orgasms?  When I bottom, I focus on my own pain and pleasure responses in order to come.  When I topped, I was focussed on my partner’s responses.  It was fascinating to watch, but not in a sexually exciting way.  Right now, I look forward to topping him again the way I look forward to doing a crossword puzzle.  It’s a challenge, and it’s interesting to observe how other people think, but it isn’t sexually exciting. What am I missing?  Is it all attitude, or are there things I could physically try which would help me to come?  How do I lose control, and have my orgasm, and still stay aware of whether my bottom is enjoying himself or getting close to calling safeword? Does anyone else have this problem?  How do you deal with it? -Meriel.

You can find the follow up posts in the title-link; she got several replies including but not limited to: a discussion on the nature of topping, cunnilingus, and bilingual puns. And this incredibly sweet homage to a really good friend. That’s all for now! I really like writing this, so you can expect more in the future. Hope you all liked it too.

 

* Sorry, not sorry, this actually happened to me! Luckily I didn’t click the post ~just~ saw the subject line. Be still, my vomiting eyes! ** The Next Generation; a designation often used for 35 and under munches in the kink scene.

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September 25, 2013 by Snarksy

Actual Nice Guys

The other night I was hanging out half-naked in my bed and making a bit of the kissy-time with two folks I am fond of—let’s call them Rick & Dana.* Rick is a guy I have been on a few dates with, Dana is a lady I am very good friends with. Recently, I introduced Rick and Dana, and they have been going on a few dates too. It makes me really happy that Rick and Dana are dating because they are both super nice people, and I like spending time with them.

In fact, Rick is someone I would describe as a nice guy. Not a Nice Guy™, but just an actually nice guy. He has all of the feminist feels, is courteous to those around him, helps his friends a lot, and sometimes feeds me Tostitos when I am over at his house.** I like that Rick is a nice person, because I like nice people, and I especially like nice people if I am going to let them into my vagina.

A lot of media and societal messages tells us that people should be jerks to each other, though. If you’ve ever read Pervocracy’s Cosmocking you’re familiar with a lot of the feels I also have towards the passive aggressive, weird and unhealthy dating advice being shilled at society on the regular. “Be honest, be kind, and try to remember to brush your teeth” summarizes most of how we ought behave in this world, but dating mags, TV shows, and most of teh interwebz don’t seem to get that.***

Being a nice person doesn’t entitle folks to sex, but when I was laying around with Rick and Dana the other night I was overwhelmed by how much it helps. In my lifetime, I have rarely ever given the sexy times to folks who I didn’t think were nice at the time. I have definitely not given the group kissy-face to people who are anti-feminist meanies. A lot of folks I know who make sexy or kissy times on even a semi-regular basis feel remarkably similar.

The dudebro’s of the world make a lot of noise about wishing they could get multiple ladies in states of undress into their beds. And then they proceed to act like total assholes by catcalling folks on the street, or insulting ladies for their weights and their wardrobes. But newsflash: the probability of sexy awesome increases a lot when you aren’t a jerkity jerk-face. While in my bed, Dana and I made several jokes about the slippery slope between polyamory and Girls Gone Wild, but we didn’t do this because of how similar polyamory is to abusive and nasty relationships. We did it because when you are nice to people who are looking for sexy people to show their bits to, sometimes they will decide you are that person who gets to see said bits.

Of course, this entire narrative so often skips ladies sexual desires so I just want to note: Dana is a really nice gal and I like her a lot and she’s my really good friend. Sometimes she shows me Potter Puppet Pals videos, and sometimes we go shopping together and eat breakfast and high five. I don’t have very sexy feelings for her, but I have a lot of trust and love. If Dana was a jerk, I wouldn’t have wanted to introduce her to Rick or let her see my tits while she was in my bed. Being nice helped Dana find some sexy-times too. Being nice is an equal opportunity way to find fun people to spend your time with.

I want to emphasize again: being nice doesn’t entitle you to sex. Thinking that it does makes you a nice guy with the “tm” attached. But being nice really helps. It helps a lot. It helps you find folks to be sexy with, and it helps you find nice folks to be sexy with. When nice folks are sexy with nice folks, it can be really nice! (You heard it here, first.) And when people uphold the expectation that niceness is the primary form of courting and respect  well—that makes everything (including teh sexy times) a little bit nicer too.

 

* Woo, pseudonymous polyamory!
** What? I’m into chips!
*** Though I should note, a lot of this crap mostly being shilled to the straights—if you never talk about gay people, you save yourself the trouble of wondering if they should be creepy and dishonest or actually nice to each other! Lololol, time saving techniques.

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