I’ve decided that my skin gets marked up fairly easily. The marks may be a [...] No related posts. Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.]]> I’ve been doing quite a bit of rope stuff over the last few months. A new friend of mine has been giving me some rope pointers, and has also been practicing his tying and suspension skills on me.

I’ve decided that my skin gets marked up fairly easily. The marks may be a little troublesome – my mother saw them and instantly guessed what they were, though she feigned ignorance for a while – but I like them a lot. They remind me of the good feelings that come from being tied, so every time I catch a glimpse of them I get a little happier.

Being tied and being suspended are very different beasts indeed. Often, being tied sends me right into bottomspace. And if combined with a few other factors, e.g. a little roughness, it makes me melt. I modeled for a rope class that Esinem lead last week, and while it was not “orgasmic”, I experienced the floatiness that usually happens to me post-orgasm, where all I want to do is lay there, totally immobile; perhaps doze off for a while. And I’m not sure if it’s because my bottomspace often manifests as feeling like an inanimate object, but directly after the demos I very much desired to not-speak. Unfortunately, after the demos ended, everyone would try out what they had just seen, which meant people came and spoke to me, and I had to gather myself back together and respond to them.

After the second demo, I took a break and lay down on one of the couches, eyes closed and body curled up tight.

Being suspended is a little similar – I begin to float away and lose the desire to speak¹ – but it’s tempered by the stress that the suspension puts on my body. Getting suspended hurts. But because of this hurt an interesting thing happens – I know that I can’t escape what is happening to me² so I end up finding a very narrow space in my mind where the hurt becomes… alright. It’s a very meditative, very powerful place; and being able to find that place – dig my fingers into it – when I am suspended, makes me think that I am a step closer to finding it during every day life as well.

1. …Which can be bothersome when my tier is checking up on me
2. Well, I mean physically nothing I can do. I could call off the scene, but I don’t want to or need to since I know there’s nothing damaging going on.

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I call myself “theoretically polyamorous,” as in, I know that I’m capable of being being attracted to or in love with multiple people at once, but I don’t put it into practice in my life, i.e. in a practical sense, I am monogamous.

A “fetishistic” set I created using Polyvore.
“Poetic Penumbra Dress” from Modcloth, “XIT” shoe from Jeffrey Campbell,
& random jewelry from everywhere.

Lately, I’ve been thinking about forms of dress and its relationship to fetishes and various BDSM practices. Anyone with a rudimentary knowledge of BDSM probably [...] No related posts. Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.]]>

A “fetishistic” set I created using Polyvore.
“Poetic Penumbra Dress” from Modcloth, “XIT” shoe from Jeffrey Campbell,
& random jewelry from everywhere.

Lately, I’ve been thinking about forms of dress and its relationship to fetishes and various BDSM practices. Anyone with a rudimentary knowledge of BDSM probably knows something about certain clothing items and their connotations w/r/t power and control within D/s: collars, boots, corsets, crazily high heels and ballet shoes with 6″ spike heels. But forget about power for a minute. Maybe you’ve been to a kink party with a dress code. Maybe you know something about latex, vinyl, rubber, leather, or shoe fetishes. I’m talking primarily about that; about clothes both as aesthetic objects and as sexualized objects, and about clothes being part of a cultural norm within kink communities.

I think that clothes within a BDSM context can be both aesthetically pleasing, and sexually charged. Sometimes they can be one thing; sometimes they can be both. I don’t think they have to be both, though. I assume that if you’re a [material] fetishists, your pleasure is derived primarily from the material itself, and whether or not it’s artistically appealing or not is just a bonus. Is that true? Maybe it’s only true for some people, since everyone has different reasons for liking what they like. I don’t know very much about [material] fetishes, so if you know more than I do, I’d be more than happy to hear from you in the comments.

Anyway, my personal experience with clothes and BDSM goes like this: certain clothes have a power component to them, for me. Sometimes I want to wear certain things while I’m topping someone or when I’m at a party because they make me feel more confident and put me in a better headspace. I do sexualize shoes sometimes, but for the most part, my interest in clothes is aesthetic. I wear things and am drawn to things that I find beautiful. I might think something like “this piece of clothing makes this person look hot/sexy/attractive/whatever”, but I wouldn’t necessarily look at the same piece of clothing by itself and think “this turns me on.”

That said, I’ve attended a couple of kinky parties where dress codes were either enforced/encouraged/incentivized (Suspension, in New York City, which I only went to once) or where people favored a particular sort of dress regardless of whether or not there was a dress code (private play party). I was happy about this because I was about to wear cute corset tops and leather skirts and high heels and elbow-length gloves without receiving weird looks. My personal style can tend towards the “gothic,” and I would argue that there’s quite a bit of an overlap between gothic fashion and typical dress within BDSM communities. There aren’t many contexts where I can wear gothic-like clothing without receiving negative attention, so I liked that I could wear those clothes at the kinky parties and not have it be considered anything out of the ordinary, and even be complimented on what I was wearing.

What I also find interesting is that certain types of clothing seem to be commonly perceived as “kinky clothing”; wearing said clothing marks you as a member of the BDSM community, e.g. I went to a munch recently, which was purely a social gathering, and even though there was no dress code, practically everyone there was wearing black. (I showed up in what I had been wearing all day: a pink floral sun dress and white tights.)

Clothing might even be an integral part of whatever activity you might be engaging in, e.g. whipping someone, tying someone up, whatever. In this sense the clothes take on a performative value; they are aiding you in doing BDSM.

While parties like this are valuable because they provide a space where BDSMers can dress the way they want without fearing any sort of negative repercussions, I wonder if it’s necessary to have a dress code in the first place:

cost: $15 in proper attire, $30 sharp all black
dress code: Fetish wear, creatively dressed, burner beautiful, uniforms

- Taken from the description of one of New York City’s regular “Suspension” events. Event listing found on Fetlife.

At this party, people who adhere to the dress code get in at a cheaper price, people who wear black get in at the regular price, and I assume people who are dressed casually don’t get in at all. I don’t really know what they mean by “creatively dressed”, but I guess that’s up to the organizers/people at the door to decide.

Again, I think it’s great that BDSMers have spaces where they can wear what they want to wear, but having a dress code could potentially alienate BDSMers who wish to dress casually, or who don’t have a clothing component to their kinks and can “do” BDSM while wearing their regular clothes:

I think one of the most disappointing things I saw when I went to my first leather (not BDSM, but “leather”) events was that everyone was in the same uniform. I guess that should be expected from a community that places a high emphasis on protocol, but it also negates or devalues a lot of other interesting expressions of dominance and submission (let alone switchiness).

I’ve seen a lot more fluidity of sexual expression in my friends from the west coast for some reason. Not sure why that is, but it’s been liberating to talk to them about switching roles, dressing up (or not) and mostly just doing whatever they want that feels right.

- Excerpt from a message exchange with a friend on Fetlife.

I have at least one other acquaintance who I know tends to avoid parties like this because of the dress code (among other reasons, I think).

There’s nothing wrong with dressing up, but I wonder, do I not think kinky thoughts and do kinky things regardless of what I’m wearing; am I not still “kinky” when I take off the corset?

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I was going to write a post that was more or less the opposite of the above title. A few months ago, me and L had a threesome with another guy (who I’ll call X in this post) at our college. Since our college is on the [...] No related posts. Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.]]> It’s sad, but true.

I was going to write a post that was more or less the opposite of the above title. A few months ago, me and L had a threesome with another guy (who I’ll call X in this post) at our college. Since our college is on the small side, there aren’t ever many degrees of separation between me and somebody else, and soon enough I saw X’s best friend at a concert. He gave me lots of weird looks. Probably because X had told him about said threesome, and maybe the friend was judging me a little bit. I don’t know.

Typically, I don’t like drawing attention to myself. I prefer to blend in with the crowd. But, at that moment, I realized that while I wouldn’t necessarily go out of my way to announce to people that I’m down with threesomes, if someone asked me about it I’d be completely candid. Because of the small chance that my lack of shame might convince the asker that liking sex and liking group sex was nothing a woman needed to be ashamed of. And because of the small chance that a woman overhearing the conversation might secretly like “risque” sex, as well, and might feel somehow reassured by hearing someone else talking openly about it.

I’m not sure how true that is anymore.

Being in the working world has changed a lot for me. When I’m at work I try to be as appropriate as possible. I never talk about my sex life, about going out and drinking, I don’t swear, etc. Not even when I’m hanging out or having a casual lunch with my coworkers. You never know if people will end up gossiping about you to someone influential, right?

The problem is that it’s becoming increasingly evident to me that work doesn’t just stay at work. It takes over your life. Example: I’ve heard that to be successful in the PR world, you need to network constantly, not just by going to work-related events, but by going out to bars frequented by people related to your work, and, you know, “bumping into them” and getting in that face time. I feel like it’ll end up that I’ll only be completely comfortable being myself and being open about my views with people I trust and who I’m already close with, because when out “socializing” I’m never going to know if something I say will spread to someone who might be in a position to hire/fire me.

This includes “vanilla” blogging, as well. I’ve started a vanilla blog under my real name, where I talk about stuff that interests me. The only things I really keep off of there are anything X-rated and stuff about my personal life. Recently, though, I’ve noticed that I don’t feel comfortable talking about certain things on that blog. My queerness is one of them. I feel like I should be okay with talking about being queer openly, but I don’t think I’m the “right kind” of queer, i.e. I don’t want to settle down and get married to a woman necessarily. I can easily be perceived as the stereotypical “promiscuous bisexual” who is just attracted to and enjoys having sex with lots of different kinds of people. I’m also not comfortable talking about anything that’s related to sexuality or sex-positivity, my anxiety/social anxiety, or anything that’s overly liberal (e.g. how I’m anti-censorship, pro-corporate-social-responsibility, and that I prefer small independent businesses to huge corporations). I recently was speaking to a mentor from my college, who said if she were a recruiter, she wouldn’t hire me because of a picture I had re-posted on said blog. After she told me that, I took the picture down.

I don’t like admitting these things, but honestly, I have too much to lose right now to just live in the way that I think is right. I’m a fresh grad with a liberal arts degree who comes from a lower-middle-class family that doesn’t have any useful business connections. I have enough going against me as it is. I think it’s horribly unfair that I’ll be penalized for being sex-positive/being “promiscuous”/whatever when that has nothing to do with how well I work, but I can’t think of how I’ll be able to change that. I don’t think being completely open and candid no matter what the consequences will do any good.

TL; DR: I want to be the sort of person who is speaks up for what I believe in, but I’m just… too cowardly (pragmatic?) to do it. I really hope that someday I find a way to change this.

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Fetishists open [...] No related posts. Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.]]> I read Salon.com fairly frequently, and have read many articles of theirs addressing feminist issues, sex politics and porn, so when I saw they’d posted an article about spanking, my interest was definitely piqued. After reading the sub-headline alone, though, I already knew I’d have lots to say about this article:

Fetishists open up about their private thrill, where it came from — and how normal they really are.

Sigh.

First off, the writer of the article is clearly vanilla, and not just vanilla but quite the wide-eyed n00b. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but I feel like every time I see BDSM depicted or talked about in the mainstream media (when it is at all), it’s usually through the eyes of someone who doesn’t do BDSM. I mean, why not get a spanko to write the article? Or, if that’s too hard considering people aren’t typically “out” about their fetishes at work, why not have a collection of interviews and have the spankos tell their story themselves?

Anyway, what bothered me the most about the article was this:

Logic would dictate that the need is Freudian: that spankos were spanked as children and eroticized that abuse. But while many of the people I spoke to for this piece were spanked when they were little, just as many were not.

[Emphasis mine.]

Okay, it’s only one paragraph of the entire article. But, again, the concept of BDSM being the direct result of some sort of emotional/physical abuse or scarring or general mental fucked-up-ness is something I feel like I run in to a lot. And the thing is, whether or not people who practice BDSM are also dealing with emotional issues is neither here or there. Sure, there are probably some people who do BDSM due to some sort of abuse in their past. There are also probably plenty of people who have issues and do BDSM without the two things having a connection. What bothers me is that I feel like people tend to jump from “BDSM” to “emotional issues” all too quickly when, for me, that isn’t at all a logical step to make. BDSM and actual abuse are two very, very different things, and asking someone if they like spanking because they were spanked as a child makes just as much sense as asking someone if they like spanking because they liked strawberry ice cream as a child.

This reminds me of the movie Secretary. While Secretary does draw a difference between BDSM and (self-)harm, it still situates the two things very close to one another. Lee is shown getting into BDSM right after getting out of rehab for hurting herself, and overcomes her self-harm habit partly through her submission. Again, I don’t think that connection never exists in people, but I’m not sure it’s all that common as seems to be popularly believed.

What do you guys think? Am I completely off the mark here?

Edit [03/22/11]: I was talking about this post with an acquaintance, who he had this to say:

It’s still slightly frustrating to see yet another person trying to pin the ’cause’ for BDSM/fetish behaviour on childhood trauma.

To which I replied:

That’s another reason why it bothers me, too. I mean, you don’t see anyone going around asking people “so, what is the cause of you liking penis-in-vagina, missionary sex?”

Which I thought was important enough of a point to add on here.

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Porn and sex work will always exist; why not stake a claim in it and work to create more liberties and spaces for our own representations? As Annie Sprinkle has said, “The Answer to bad porn isn’t no porn… it’s to try and make better porn!” (And for me, [...] No related posts. Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.]]>

Porn and sex work will always exist; why not stake a claim in it and work to create more liberties and spaces for our own representations? As Annie Sprinkle has said, “The Answer to bad porn isn’t no porn… it’s to try and make better porn!” (And for me, this means more porn.)

- Jiz Lee, in this interview with Rabbit White

Last spring, I caught a ride with a co-worker for some work-related thing and (of course!) we started talking about porn. I’m not sure how we got into the topic, but she had a young son at home and worried about his one day being exposed to porn via the internet. She was quite a progressive lady and wasn’t worried about him watching porn in general, she just worried about how he might start thinking that everything that happened in porn also happened in reality, and that he’d internalize unhealthy views about sex as a result. I could see her point. While I watch and enjoy porn, there is definitely a lot of “bad” porn out there.

And with regards to that, I agree with Annie Sprinkle and Jiz Lee. The answer to bad porn isn’t to try to eliminate or censor it all completely, but to make more porn! Better porn, more diverse porn, porn that we want to see. And in that spirit, here’s what I want to see more of in porn:

I want to see more beautiful men. Not just hot or handsome – beautiful. I want to see men who are coy, men who are pretty, men who are delicate, and men who are vulnerable.

I want to see more porn actresses who look like me: short, chubby, brown women.

I want to see more female tops who look like me.

I want to see more female tops (performing with male bottoms) period.

I want to see more female tops whose topping styles I actually like. Read: less high-pitched yelling; more understated, low-voiced commands, with all the power, instead, in her glance.

I want to see more female tops who aren’t decked out in uber-feminine, domme gear like corsets and high heels. Don’t get me wrong, I like corsets and high heels, and sometimes I want to see corsets and high heels. But sometimes I don’t. Sometimes I want to see female tops who aren’t uber-feminine. Or who, again, are understated and don’t need to perform their dominance through their clothing, they just do it.

I want to see more cunnilingus. I love being eaten out; I love it when my partner obviously enjoys eating me out, and I want to see more of that sort of thing in porn. There is so much head-giving in porn. As in cis-women giving cis-men head. So many blowjobs. I do not like watching blowjobs. I like giving blowjobs, but watching blowjobs is boring. Yawn. I’m fed up of seeing blowjobs¹. I want to see women getting eaten out, I want to see close-ups of her partner’s tongue against her clit, and I want to see both her and her partner enjoying the hell out of it.

I want to see more porn performers who look like ordinary people.

I want to see more porn featuring gay men, but geared towards women.

I want to see more lesbian sex that looks real, not just like eye-candy for the men.

I want to see more safe sex. Safe sex is sexy too.

I want to see more behind-the-scenes commentary.

I want to see more genders being represented besides cis-men and cis-women.

I want to see porn that isn’t all about the money shot.

What kind of porn do you want to see?

This post is part of a blogosphere-wide carnival called Lady Porn Day! Read more Lady Porn Day posts or keep up with the discussion on Twitter under the hashtag #ladypornday.

1. I do, however, love seeing people receiving head if they’re wearing a strap-on.

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Or: The “Porn” I consumed as a 14-year-old.

Disclaimer: I don’t profess to be an expert on this topic. As with practically everything else on this blog, it’s all drawn from my personal experience, and the examples I’m giving are in no way representative of the fandoms as a whole, since there are [...] No related posts. Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.]]>

Or: The “Porn” I consumed as a 14-year-old.

Disclaimer: I don’t profess to be an expert on this topic. As with practically everything else on this blog, it’s all drawn from my personal experience, and the examples I’m giving are in no way representative of the fandoms as a whole, since there are millions of works out there and I’ve probably read a tiny handful of them, cumulatively. Yaoi and slashfic culture are also, really, two separate things, but I’m addressing them at the same time here because I had pretty much the same relationship to both. I was/am primarily a consumer of these works and never really participated by commenting or posting on forums or anything like that. In short: if you want a Yaoi 101 or Slashfic 101 or heavily researched analysis of either, you should probably look elsewhere.

I can’t remember the exact event that marked when I first started to become a sexual being. I do know that it started when I was 14. Sure, I had had sexual thoughts before then, but they were quick and fleeting and I had no idea that they were sexual at the time. No: 14 was the year that I became aware of my sexuality and started thinking about it in a coherent way. It was when I fell in love for the first time, got over my homophobia, realized that I was bisexual, and started consuming pornography or erotica.

Except I didn’t look at porn videos and pictures online, or at smut mags. No, my porn came in forms that some may consider unexpected: manga and fan fiction.

Yes. I used to be (and still sort of am)… a yaoi fangirl.

For those who don’t know: yaoi, shounen-ai, slash and Boy’s Love are all terms for pretty much the same thing¹ – media created and consumed primarily by women that features gorgeous boys who make out with each other a lot. They range from fluffy and innocently romantic to raunchy and plotless, but most of them incorporate the characters’ dynamic and build up emotional tension so that the sex scene is 100x more delicious when it finally happens.

How it all Began

I found my first slashfic by accident on Fanfiction.net. I was skimming through the Harry Potter section and didn’t know any of the slash jargon used in the story descriptions,² so I ended up reading a steamy twincest scene between Fred and George Weasley.

At first, I was shocked by what I had read. I felt like I had done something bad and forbidden, and I didn’t understand how anyone could write things that were so awful and wrong. Of course, soon enough the guilt turned into fascination, then thrilled, then not being able to get enough. This was around when I started getting into anime, as well, so I started reading slashfic based on anime series I liked – sometimes even before I had finished watching the series themselves. I discovered Adult Fanfiction and Media Miner and fan archives and started downloading original yaoi manga from scanslation directories like Aarinfantasy. Sometimes, during the weekend, I stayed up really late – often somewhere between 3 – 7am – consuming slashfic for hours after everyone else had gone to bed, so I didn’t have to worry about anyone seeing what I was doing.

Discovering yaoi and slashfic was like discovering a buffet of impossibly beautiful boys who I could mix and match together to create an infinite amount of new and exciting flavor combinations.

Doujinshi of Heero Yuy & Duo Maxwell from Gundam Wing. Possibly one of my most favorite yaoi pairings of all time³. Pictures via 1x2x1.org.

I never masturbated when I looked at yaoi. At that point I didn’t know how to. I attempted “masturbating” only once: while laying in bed, without fantasizing about anything, I put one hand inside my underwear and pressed it against myself. Nothing happened. Exasperated, I decided that masturbating must be overrated. I didn’t try masturbating again until three years later, when I started dating and had a better idea of what to do.

I didn’t masturbate, but I of course got pleasure from what I read. These warm, fuzzy, exciting feelings built up towards a fever pitch and I’d go to bed thrumming and content. There was this one time where I’m pretty sure I read myself to orgasm – I reached a climactic point in one story after at least a couple of hours of reading, and I shuddered as my eyes widened and liquid fire spread all the way through me.

The Context: a Catholic, All-Girl’s Secondary School

The backdrop to all this was a primarily Catholic, all-girl’s secondary school, i.e. middle and high school. We never interacted with boys. We didn’t have any male friends. Going on dates was completely out of the question, let alone experimenting with sex.⁴

I never spoke about my fascination with my friends. I didn’t want them to think I was strange. It wasn’t that we never talked about sex – we did. But we never talked about doing it, wanting it, fantasizing about it, or of the actual mechanics of it. Our conversations about sex consisted of nervous giggling and making random nonsensical jokes about boobs and balls. I’d giggle along with the rest of my friends during these silly, perverted discussions; all the while thinking about my “secret.” Looking back, the frequency of these conversations probably meant that all of my friends had “secrets,” too, that they didn’t feel that they could talk about in the open.

Fanart of a young, naked Daniel Dreiberg (Nite Owl) coming onto a young Walter Kovacs (Rorschach) from the Watchmen graphic novel. Found via the Watchmen Kink Meme on LJ. I have no credit for this picture, so if you know who drew it, let me know.

Women as Observers in a Perfect Fantasy World

Most mainstream porn videos and magazines are geared towards straight men. Consequently, most of that porn consists of unrealistic ideals like drop-dead gorgeous babes with slim builds, big boobs, and a love of being jizzed on. Or whatever. Likewise, yaoi manga is full of idealized romantic relationships that are for the most part completely unrealistic and unrepresentative of actual Japanese gay men. Just like women in porn all look mostly the same (white, thin, busty, feminine, made-up, etc), men in yaoi manga are all thin and beautiful, fall into several typical character types, go through some sort of convoluted relationship drama before they actually get together (and have sex), and think about their passionate loving feelings amid falling roses and shoujo bubbles. For the most part.

The interesting thing about yaoi manga is that women are rarely present in the stories, and hardly ever appear as main characters. Sometimes women take on “best friend” or sisterly roles, but more often than not if a woman plays a large role in a yaoi story, it’s as a villain – an ex-girlfriend or a love-rival who is preventing the main couple from getting together. I read one story – Zankoku Yuugi – where Man A was romantically pursuing Man B, but Man B already had a girlfriend. So Man B indirectly causes the girlfriend to get into an accident, and she ends up in the hospital. And Man A and Man B end up dating at the end of it. Even though Man B knows that Man A put his girlfriend in the hospital⁵

A page from Zankoku Yuugi Ch.1 , scanslated by dokidoki. Remember to look at the panels from right to left!

Within the Gundam Wing yaoi fandom, the main female “threat” to the Heero x Duo pairing was female lead Relena Peacecraft. While she and Heero weren’t a canon couple, it was heavily implied that they were interested in each other, or that one was interested in the other. Among the Heero x Duo fanfics I read, I encountered countless stories where Relena was demonized beyond belief, ridiculed, traumatized and, in some cases, killed off.

And remember: the vast majority of these works are created and consumed by women.

I can’t really begin to address the sinister negativity with which women are sometimes treated in yaoi. But I can address the absence a little bit. I’ve come across articles arguing that one reason why women like consuming gay male porn is because the absence of women in that porn is actually a relief. For me, it definitely was a relief. It took me quite a while before I was comfortable including myself in my sexual fantasy fodder; imagining someone else doing things to me or with me, and not just being a detached observer in my own fantasy. Imagining myself would just make me think of all the aspects of myself I felt insecure about. I did not think of myself as hot or charming or sexy and therefore I could not possibly think of myself as sexual.

Consuming yaoi was a form of escapism. I knew it was a fantasy world; that it wasn’t real. And because it wasn’t real, it was a safe space where my curiosities and potential turn-ons could come out to play, without any consequence or responsibility. I could be sexual without… actually being sexual.

In the world of yaoi, women are the ultimate voyeurs of a perfect fantasy.

10 Years Later

So yaoi played quite a big part in shaping my sexuality. This post doesn’t really have a conclusive point; except that after writing this I find several things worth noting. As a teenage girl:

• the Internet was probably the most important tool I used to develop my sexuality – not magazines or talking with my peers
• I didn’t feel like consuming porn or talking about sex were things that were appropriate for me to do
• I didn’t really involve myself very much in my own sexuality – I didn’t touch myself or even picture myself in my own sexual fantasies

I wrote this post both to include yaoi and slashfic in “lady porn” and to prompt a discussion about it; but also, I guess, to prompt a discussion about teenage girls and porn. When most people think “teenage boys,” they think “sex-crazed horndogs” and assume that of course they’re looking at porn. Or they’re trying to. Which isn’t exactly a positive picture and probably isn’t completely true, either. But what about the girls?

This post is part of a blogosphere-wide carnival called Lady Porn Day! Read more Lady Porn Day posts or keep up with the discussion on Twitter under the hashtag #ladypornday.

1. Except yaoi and slash are usually more explicit, and slash refers to fan fiction, not anything canon
2. e.g. lemon = explicit sex scene; using an / or x between two names denotes a pairing
3. I somehow found out about the pairing before the series they were from, probably because they’re such a popular pairing. I didn’t really like Gundam Wing, the series, all that much. Too much mecha and war and politics for my taste
4. Although my school ended up having a lot of lesbian, bicurious and queer women in it. Go figure.
5. In order to persuade Man B to date him, Man A also basically took Man B hostage, blackmailed him, and once or twice forcefully coerced him into doing sexual acts against his will. So it was a fucked up story, in many ways. But oftentimes in yaoi manga, destructive and extreme acts performed by a character are just taken as evidence of how strong and passionate that character’s love really is.

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Like I said: not a new concept. However, considering my relative newness to BDSM, it is a concept that I’ve [...] No related posts. Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.]]> This probably isn’t very novel or mindblowing or even particularly interesting to read for many of you, yet I feel the need to articulate it in some way: I don’t always associate BDSM with sex.

Like I said: not a new concept. However, considering my relative newness to BDSM, it is a concept that I’ve had some difficulty managing. While I think that most seasoned BDSM-ers know that not everyone likes to connect the two things, for some reason I’ve always been worried that if I ask someone to tie me up at a play party, they might think that I’m also hitting on them. I mean, it would be a fair assumption to make. And, while I obviously enjoy incorporating BDSM into my sex life, getting tied up gives me many sensations and feelings that aren’t necessarily sexual: peace, security, vulnerability, joy. Sometimes I can appreciate rope bondage purely for its artistry; and sometimes learning how to tie from someone or trying out new ties is simply fascinating and fun.

I’m not really afraid of the other person taking it too far, or assuming that because I want to do X, I might also want to do Y and Z. I’ve always felt very safe in the kinky events I have gone to; and because of the usual emphasis on consent and negotiation in most BDSM communities, I can trust the other person won’t try to do anything else before asking me first. I am, however, afraid of sending the message that, though I might not want to do anything sexual now, I might want to later. I’m afraid of misleading the other person and then having to “reject” them. Doing that is always really unpleasant.

I suppose one of the inherent problems with socializing at events where the primary thing everyone has in common revolves around sexuality, i.e. being into BDSM or being a queer woman, is that some people will think you’re looking for sex. Since I’ve been dating L, I have been trying to meet people both in the BDSM and queer women communities and it’s always a little awkward to explain that #1 I’m in a monogamous relationship and #2 my significant other isn’t here with me because we don’t live in the same place.¹ It’s not like I think you need to be dating someone to justify looking to make friends or to participate in non-sexual BDSM, but it definitely has been more of an issue for me, personally, since dating L.

…There should be a hanky code for this.

1. And then re: the queer women events, there’s the added difficulty of having to explain that I still identify as queer and want to meet other queer women even though I’m currently dating a man.

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Instead, they’d take that as an indication to try harder [...] No related posts. Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.]]> During my “wild” college days, one thing that bothered me about the flirting dynamic, or whatever you want to call it, was how I would say “I’m sorry, I’m not romantically/sexually interested in you” and sometimes the other person wouldn’t take me at my word.

Instead, they’d take that as an indication to try harder (?!) and that I needed to be “won over.”

Or they’d assume that I was being coy or playing hard to get.

Or that I was putting them up to some sort of challenge.

Or that I could somehow be persuaded to change my mind.

I mean, if I ever were to give in, it would be out of desperation; because I really wanted to have sex and there was nobody else available. But does anyone really want to be fucked out of desperation?¹

Some of this probably stems from the assumption that men always want sex, but women either don’t want sex and need to be talked into it, or can’t admit that they want sex because then they’d be branded “sluts”, and everyone knows that’s a horrible thing for a woman to be.² Oh, and that dating used to (and in some places still does) involve the man “wooing” the woman. I also think some of it also stems from people sometimes playing “hard to get” because they’re afraid of making themselves vulnerable, or because people value things that take more work to have, or whatever.

I’ve never really cared for, or been very good at, games like those. I either completely ignore or avoid the person I like because I’m too chicken to do anything about it, or I come right out and tell them how I feel about them.³

I don’t think I make a very good pursue-ee. But one day I discovered I could be the pursuer, and the world got quite a bit brighter for me.

1. I only did this once and, while I don’t act like it never happened, I try to put it out of my head most of the time.
2. I’m being sarcastic, clearly.
3. The first time me and L slept together, we were making out when I suddenly stopped and told him I really wanted to get naked with him :/

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