As one of the few sadists who is out and active in my kink community, I get a lot of offers for play. I think it may also have something to do with the fact that I'm fairly non-threatening, respectful and I do want people to get some sort of play out of parties.
However, I've been approached so many times for play at parties that my boy has started to feel as if the other people I play with are hedging in on our time. It isn't the fact that I'm playing with other people that's causing the unhappy feelings, so much as the constant pressure from a community that is full of unowned bottoms and people who don't get to do much bottoming in their relationships.
I'm aware that no one ever means to put that pressure on a sadist or the sadist's spouse/partner/masochist, but with a large group of people who look at me with doe eyes and ask 'so, have any plans for the next party?' well, it gets to be a bit much. Yes, there are plenty of people who approach me with the utmost respect, who give me time before a party, who realize that my partner comes first, but it's still a pressure.
This isn't the first time I've heard of a top getting harassed by bottoms. Apparently it's fairly common for communities to be bottom-heavy (tee-hee). I won't let it keep me from the community, but it has changed my priorities. At first I tried to accommodate them, but it put a strain on my pet and I, so now I've decided that I won't be playing with others for some time. I may eventually play with a few, who are close friends and who approach me with my partner there, but nothing for now. It just seems best to relieve the pressure completely.
Carrion will post about this eventually too.
Service
The server can't move, seeing as the bondage at her ankles is pretty restrictive looking. Is she meant to stand in one place and serve tea? Is she just meant to be a living tray?
Interesting picture, but I'm not entirely decided on how much I like it. The bondage seems a bit tight around her arm, though I've definitely seen worse. They're both lovely models and the clothes are beautiful. It's obviously posed, and I think that might be why I'm not sure how I feel about it. I like it, but I feel like something a bit more real at the moment.
Victim blaming and responsibility
Please read through this. Though I recognize that victim-blaming happens, I find that this also happens a great deal in bdsm circles.
"Once upon a time (not so long ago), when I wasn't yet Piper and was very new and verrrry naive about the scene, I fucked up - biiiig time. After only going to a few public play parties, I decided I was ready to go to a private one, staying with people I barely knew, and not telling anyone the truth about where I was going. I didn't yet know my limits, thought I was the biggest baddest bottom to ever hit the scene, and threw myself into situation after situation I wasn't yet prepared for. I pushed myself way past my limits, didn't safe word when I should have, and did things I was later uncomfortable with, and too upset to voice publicly until now.
"Once upon a time (not so long ago), when I wasn't yet Piper and was very new and verrrry naive about the scene, I fucked up - biiiig time. After only going to a few public play parties, I decided I was ready to go to a private one, staying with people I barely knew, and not telling anyone the truth about where I was going. I didn't yet know my limits, thought I was the biggest baddest bottom to ever hit the scene, and threw myself into situation after situation I wasn't yet prepared for. I pushed myself way past my limits, didn't safe word when I should have, and did things I was later uncomfortable with, and too upset to voice publicly until now.
I was ill-informed, I was unsafe and I messed up.
When the top I was staying with learned of some of this, he sat me right down and explained how unsafe being mute about my limits and feelings was, and how dangerous I had been to myself. He forced me to accept my limits, and wouldn't play with me until I was comfortable voicing them. He saved me from countless potential future violations and negative interactions.
No one has ever held this against me, called me a predator, or accused me of making the scene unsafe.
However, had I been on the other end of this, people might do so.
I have seen numerous times in this community, a top/dom(me) been held to higher standards of responsibility than a bottom. This is incredibly unsafe and unfair. Not only does this often lead to tops being quickly accused of violating someone's limits, being a predator, or even a rapist before all the facts are out on the table, but it also wildly skews the balance of power and responsibility in the scene - if the tops are given more responsibility, they are likewise given more power.
If I was writing this saying I was new in the scene, I went to a party I wasn't ready for, and I did some things I was ashamed of/uncomfortable with/upset about later, I know there would be people on this site that identify with me. And I know if I said, I know it wasn't all my fault, that it was partially the fault of the people who topped me for not checking in, that people would identify with that, too. What I'm not trying to do here is put my experience on anyone else or theirs, but simply express my frustration.
It wouldn’t have been fair of me to expect these tops to be mind readers. I never gave any inclination of my limits or that I felt pushed too far. They didn’t push me too far – I did. I violated myself, and did so through others, which breaches their consent and their limits, and to those people, I’m truly sorry.
I will never, ever blame someone for something I screwed up.
What I am not trying to do here is put my story and experience on others’. What I am trying to do is voice my frustration about bottoms being absolved of a lot of responsibility and guilt. I don’t think tops can be the only dangerous people in the scene, and yet they receive the harshest criticism and attacks.
I understand, that like me, a lot of bottoms may not fully realize how uncomfortable or not-okay they were with a situation until after the scene has died down. That doesn’t make any violation they felt okay. What it does do is give the bottom a responsibility to talk to the top after the fact. A scene is not a top doing something to a bottom – it is a relationship between two or more people, for however long, and everyone involved in that relationship should have the same amount of power, responsibility, and right to know what happened. How can you blame someone for fucking up if they never knew? How can you publicly chastise someone for being monstrous or a predator if you never discussed that with them?
I am not, and never will be, victim blaming. If a friend came to me saying they’d been hurt, I would immediately be on their side. But I would ask them, did they say something? Did they fully and clearly express their limits beforehand? Did the other people involved know they felt violated? If not, they’ve given up their responsibility in the scene to respect their partner’s/s’ limits and consent.
If you left a scene with everyone feeling good, seemingly happy, and then months later was publicly called out by that person for violating and abusing them, wouldn’t you feel jarred, that your trust in that person to communicate with you had been broken?
I know everyone has their own views, stories, experiences and processes, but I hope that the community begins giving an equal amount of respect and responsibility to bottoms, to not automatically assume that because someone feels badly after a scene that it must have been the top’s fault. Every time we relieve the bottom of all responsibility for their own safety and for their relationship within the scene, we’re not only perpetuating domism, but encouraging a dangerous mindset and process, that I, for one, feel sick about.
So, please don’t throw your story and your experience on other’s/s’. Please don’t absolve bottoms of their responsibilities, and likewise, their respect. Please don’t victim blame, but please also don’t be quick to yell ‘predator.’ And please give everyone the same amount of respect and responsibility you hold yourself."
-tied_piper
Death
I'm watching "Dark Side of Porn--Does Snuff Exist" because...I felt like watching something and I have it, lol. And it occurred to me--isn't it natural that people would have a certain ('morbid') fascination with death? The old saying about death and taxes isn't entirely true--the only things that are absolutely certain in life (at least for humans), the only things that are without a doubt going to happen, are birth and death. It's ok to show birth in grade 8 classes, but death is this huge hush-hush taboo thing. I'm not saying that we should be killing people on film for the education of pre-teens, but I think that a video of cool, calm trip through an actual morgue, with no pretty CSI-esque actors or fancy camera angles would be ok, if not a good thing. Why hide death? Why make it scary? It's going to happen to us all, so why hide it? No, don't revel in it or glorify it, just tell it like it is.
I recently had a discussion with friends about death. One of them was saying that life used to be cheaper, but the other one (and I) didn't agree. There are places where human life is still extremely cheap--there are people in 'civilized countries' who consider human life to be very cheap. It wasn't that life was cheap, it was that death wasn't hidden. You could walk down a street and see corpses (you still can in some places, but they get cleaned up more quickly and there's a system in place to deal with them). My point was that more people are now considered human. People could walk by those corpses in the street because they were the poor, they were trash, they were sub-human. It's become less and less acceptable to have that attitude, and it's able to be applied to fewer and fewer people. I'm not saying that we should go back to the bad old days where people died all the time and it wasn't an individual tragedy every time because...people died all the time. If you grieved that deeply for everyone you knew who had died, you could never get on with your life. I heard once that humans only truly grieve for about fifteen people, because that's the size of family groups our ancestors had. If you whipped through those before you were out of childhood, you'd be a pretty emotionless adult! Maybe it was different. Maybe they really were able to go, "Nuts, lost another baby! Let's get makin' another!" I don't know.
But now we've almost become the opposite. We've become obsessed with living. Not with being alive, just with living--for making our hearts pump blood for as long as possible. We stuff our old people in homes, fill them with tubes, so they can last that extra month. And in some cases it's a great thing, because they'll recover or they'll get to see their grandkids that one last time. But at what point does quantity of life outweigh quality? At one point do we become so obsessed with a state of not-dying that we're not actually living? How much do we miss out on because of fear?
One thing I've always found fascinating is post-mortem photography. Seriously. Check it out. These are just portraits of people who just happen to be dead. And that's my point. Why can't we have memorials like this, show things like this to our children? They shouldn't live their lives in fear of death, they should live their lives...and know that they will die someday.
My point is, it's going to happen if you're in denial or not.
So I don't think that people who watch accidents are morbid freaks, or people who watch Faces of Death or even horror movies. In many ways, modern society has taken away our ability to watch the natural world. How many of us have even seen a chicken being slaughtered? But that's where we came from. I would be more worried if people weren't curious. I'm not saying that we should traumatize people--when I was nine or so, my mother decided that we could only continue eating meat if we either a) went to a slaughter house or b) killed a rabbit. Luckily we didn't. But if someone makes a choice to explore their natural world, to learn more about something that will happen to them, to someone they love (to everyone they love, given enough time) why do we now look at them like they're perverse? We have lost our connection to ourselves, to the cycles that created us that we are still very much a part of. We stuff our dying into hospitals (I don't mean people that we're trying to save. I mean terminal cancer patients, people who are not walking away). Wouldn't they rather die at home, surrounded by loved ones? I know I would. But we might upset someone. We can't bring death home with us.
I recently re-read Neil Gaiman's brilliant Sandman series. My favorite character has always been Death, I've had a huge crush on her since the very first. I'm sure that says more about me than anything, but I was also very impressed by his concept of the Necropolis, a whole realm or dimension of undertakers. They spend their lives surrounded by death, but they learn to respect it and not let it become a job, while not having it bother them.
My point? I don't know if I have one. If I do, it's this: we are part of the cycle of birth and death. We cannot foreseeably remove ourselves from it, and an insistence on doing so just causes friction.
Listening to: Mein Teil by Rammstein
omg hey guyz
Look at this!
I pretty much never expected anyone to pay attention to my little blog, lol. This was mostly for my own pleasure and apparently people like it! I'm really quite flattered.
On being ‘born a dominant’
A lot of people seem to have this notion that people are born dominant. This applies to submissives, masochists, sadists and switches, etc, but for the sake of simplicity of writing, I’ll stick to dominants. Though I believe that some people are born with certain tendencies, I do not believe anyone to be a dominant born.
Eg; I am born. I have a proclivity towards taking the top role during kink. However, due to society’s view on kink and never educating myself about it, I never take the opportunity to try this role or to learn anything about kink, D/s or topping. Am I a top?
I am born. I have an interest in receiving pain. Due to it being taboo and my belief that it is wrong, I never indulge myself. I never truly enjoy pain, as any enjoyment I receive leaves me with a sense of guilt. Am I a masochist?
I believe that someone has to practice to learn this sort of role. It’s like saying that you’re a musician. You’ve only ever touched an instrument once, but you know you like it. No one has ever enjoyed hearing you play, but you were born a musician. If you’ve never played with anyone and never tried to learn more or to better yourself as a dominant, how can you call yourself a dominant anymore than that musician can call themselves a musician?
It also goes both ways, though. You can learn all the skills and technique you like, but if you don’t truly enjoy what you’re doing, why bother?
Bettering yourself as a dominant is certainly possible. It’s just like learning to be a better person. You can learn to be a dominant and then you can learn to be an amazing dominant. I think anyone with an interest in becoming something can be great at it. The fact that they’re interested combined with the fact that they practice their interest makes them that person. I am interested in being a dominant and I read about dominance, talk to other dominants and practice D/s with my submissive. That makes me a dominant. But if you only have the interest, or only have the practice, I don’t think it’s the same.
Please remember that this is my opinion, but this is what I think of these people;
-I have the interest, but don’t have the practice yet. I’m new/curious and haven’t started learning yet. That doesn’t make me a dominant, but I can become one.
-I have the skill, but I don’t really care for this role. It may have been an experiment or me trying to please a submissive partner. I am not a dominant.
-I have the interest, but I will never practice this role for whatever reasons. I will never be a dominant unless I change my mind.
-I have the interest and I practice it! I am a dominant.
Germania/Rome
Here are Germania and Rome from Hetalia, all drawn by Arkham. I really like this pairing, apparently. It gives me historical glee.
Spankin' on an Airplane
I just love this! The way he's being held (I'm not sure if it's physically possible, but I definitely want to try!) the fact that it's all happening on an airplane, the old-timey postcardy goodness, the way his pants are down...prr...
*edit* PS - this spanking position is not only possible, it's really fun! :D
Short crop
I want a crop that short.
From Our Sexy Secrets.
Alcohol
Hm, alcohol and play. Never a really good idea, but I have to admit, it's a not-particularly-good-idea that I've tried before. I've never played drunk, but I have had a glass of wine or a coffee and brandy before playing. As a community 'educator-type person' I always tell people never to drink and play, but as a person who has had some alcohol before playing, well, I always feel a bit like a hypocrite.
Photo from Jim Duvall.
Veils
I am so totally in love with this picture. It's from this article . I'm not usually that into Maclean's (or, well, any news) because it's always so fucking depressing. Not that this isn't, but it's interesting and informative and not just OMGTEH WORLDZ IS SOON TO END!!!!!
Some background info
on me: during my summer after grade twelve, I decided that I was fed up with the bullshit the media feeds us about Muslims and Islam and the Middle East, so I came up with a sort of immersion program for myself--I read everything I
could: literature, poetry, history, commentary. I cooked Middle Eastern food, I listened to Middle Eastern music. I didn't go to a mosque or, you know, talk to anyone actually from the Middle East, because I am (and was, probably even more so was) very shy. But I did everything I could solo. I even had an Iranian e-pen-pal. It was extremely enlightening but I will keep my conclusions to myself, or for another rant.
Now for the controversial part: I find veils incredibly sexy. I love the air of mystery they automatically bestow. I like them on men (oh yeah, betcha didn't know about that? Wull...I didn't), I like them on women, I like them on sheep (only because I think that a sheep in a veil would be really, really cute. Jeez). My mother is one of those left-wing Atheist fundamentalist whackjobs that seem to be popping up more and more--she went (and I assume still does) up to Muslims, Sikhs, Mennonites--anyone who dressed 'differently' for religious or cultural reasons--walked right up to them and said "there is no God". *bashes head repeatedly against keyboard* I really, seriously have no idea why no one has cut her throat in an alley or at least beaten the shit out of her. It's more a testament to these people's good natures (or complete bewilderment) than anything else.
Whether or not her statement is true is not the point. All she does is sound like a total insane person who makes everyone (including me) want to become more insular and shun outsiders and nonbelievers. You're not going to convince anyone of anything like that, except the fact that we need more looney bins. My whole thing is always, 'cool' or 'what's the big deal?'
Yes, I understand the need for social freedoms and equality and democracy (at least until we can come up with something better). But so many people seem to have forgotten that freedom means just that--a state of being free. So that if they choose* to wear a veil or a burqa or several live possums...ok! As long as the possums aren't rabid and decide to bite someone's stupid toddler, who cares? Who gives a flying, monkey-propelled crap what people choose to wear (teenage daughters not included).
Maybe I feel so strongly about this because of my 'lifestyle'. BDSM gets a lot of flak. From a lot of directions, including my apparent sisters, lesbians. (Why does nobody like lesbians? Because even lesbians don't like lesbians. My 'straight' friends were like...how does that work? Because every time it's, "You're not like other lesbians" or "You're usually straight, but you just like me so much that you made an exception". Anyway.) Even within itself, BDSM gets a lot of flak--"OMG! How could you do _____? That's disgusting/horrific/repulsive/unnatural!"
As a band teacher I really hated once put it, don't yuck someone else's yum. I even hate how she phrased that, but it's always stuck in my head and overrides any better phrase I could come up with. But the point is, just because you don't like something, or even you think something is wrong...if it's not hurting you, and they've gotten into it voluntarily...leave it the fuck alone! It would be like if all gangs did was kill each other. They didn't recruit anyone and there were never any injured bystanders or property damage or anything. Well, they wouldn't be around for long, but they also wouldn't be much of a problem. Except to themselves. And that, of course, is my point. If I choose to coat myself in nail polish every morning, as long as I do it in a nicely ventilated space so I don't give anyone else headaches or other health issues...why do you care?
If someone else were coating me in nail polish every morning against my will, that would be a problem. Don't get me wrong. But "an it harm none do what thou wilt" (which I am about 98% is from something much more authentic than Wicca, but I can't seem to find the reference I'm thinking of).
Anyway. Veils. Sexy. Look at this guy! I can't see his whole face! He could have hideous warts. He could have massive scars. He could be the most beautiful man on earth and I'll never know! I read somewhere once that there is no single feature that allows for universal facial recognition (or UFR, lol). People have to be able to see the whole face in order to recognize someone. I think that's what it comes down to. People say, "Ho, yuss, women shouldn't be subjugated, turrible, harrumph." But their gut reaction is "Ahhhh!!!! I can't see their faaaaaace!!!!" And people's gut reactions, especially fear, are very strong. I don't know. Maybe my guts are just weird, but when I see them I just go "Praarrwr!" whether it's this:
Or this:
Or this:
(Ok, who am I kidding, especially this:)
Or this:
...waaaaait...
This:
is ok. But this:
isn't? Whaaaat?
One of the sub-plots of one of my favourite books of all time (FBoaT), Snow, is about how young women in Turkey are committing suicide over not being able to wear head scarves just like that one. They're killing themselves because the government isn't allowing them to wear a piece of fabric. Some people might say, what the fuck, why are they killing themselves over something so trivial? But they clearly don't see it that way.
And now for another weird episode from my life. Back in grade school, you know how they give you a huge stack of weird old magazines and you have to make a collage?
This picture
freaked us out so much that we ended up cutting out her eyes.
Many years later, when this was published:
I of course remembered that face, or more specifically, those eyes. They're unforgettable. And the thing that struck me about the interview with her, twenty years later or whatever, was how normal she was. She didn't care that she was 'being oppressed' or 'impoverished'. She had no idea! How dare she! If this sounds condescending, I truly don't mean for it to--I genuinely find her life admirable. She was just doing her thing, taking care of her family. She had no idea that her face had been everywhere, and she didn't give two shits. Wow.
Here she is wearing a veil, to bring me sort of back on topic:
Ok, it was apparently seventeen years. Anyway. Umm...here's some eye candy. I have no idea
what this is about, but I like it. And it's a veil. I'm sure part of the romance of veils is, for me, the pure sensual side of it. Yes, there's the mystery, but there's also the feeling of soft, gauzy material on your skin, on one of the most sensitive parts of your body (the face). You can kiss through a veil, a la Victor Hugo, and it's a totally different experience. Even the familiar becomes new, exotic, erotic. I even like walking around town with a scarf over my face and just my eyes showing during the winter. I'm invisible, or rather unidentifiable. I can be anyone and no one. The only thing anyone knows about me is my clothes and the colour of my eyes. I, personally, really like that idea. In conclusion: I like veils because they're sexy, sensual, and render a person incognito. Cool.
Anyway, it's a fantastic article and I highly recommend it. My one complaint about it is that it falls short of its magnificent cover picture (waaaaay back at the beginning) and the question it asks: what is more offensive and sexist and backward, covering every part of a woman but her eyes, or only covering her eyes? Which one makes women more of an object? How would you rather be seen?
If this sort of thing interests you, I also recommend The Terrorists of Irustan, a very well written (and very depressing) book.
*key word here
serving and distracting
From Saturno Butto.
Expressive
I'm in love with the coloring style. :S I haven't felt very creative lately, so going through all this art that I adore just makes me envious.
pearls
Not sure where I found this one, it was just in my collection of porn.
tea
just your everyday visit
I get so much joy from seeing people caning whilst wearing sweaters! Is that strange? :D
Gracefully suspended
From the talented Zuleta.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)