Oh, so the worst thing you will read all day.

Posted today on Shakesville was this, which is a link to an article about a "controversial" new book that postulates that feminism has ruined male-female relations and that women need to stop "acting like men" at home and give up on this whole "equal" thing because "men don't fall in love with equals."

If you've got enough sanity points, it's worth reading the article, if only because I cannot make this shit up, y'all.

Feminism does in fact tell women that we do not have to act demure, "sexually available", "complimentary", etc. and so on. 

But feminism does not tell us that we MUST not act that way.  The beauty of feminism is that we have the ability to be individual people, and decide what femininity means to us on our own terms - so far as any of us can have our own terms, growing up and living in the miasma of patriarchy.

Likewise, feminism does not proscribe narrow roles for men and say all men like THIS and think THIS and do THIS and are capable of THIS.  Which is what the authors are saying.  And yet, feminists are man-haters?

Additionally, you know, I am all for clear communication in relationships.  Part of that is because I try to do it myself and I really like the results, part of it is because I think communicating respectfully with people is just part of being a decent person and I have this thing about not being an asshole.  And it chaps my ass that these authors can advocate a healthy relationship skill like communication in the same mothafuckin BREATH as they advocate that women should tone their personalities and accomplishments down so they don't hurt the menz' precious fee-fees.

And while we're at it, could this book get any more hetero-normative?  The entire QUILTBAG community, where are they in all this?  Oh right, patriarchy tells us that only straight relationships matter.  And only those where the woman is properly "sexually available" and "complimentary" (no, the misspelling is not mine).

Oh also, what about relationships that aren't dyads?  Wait wait wait, those don't exist either; sorry my silly ladybrane forgot.

This is the same old WHAT ABOUT THE MENZ LADIES YOU BETTER STAY DEMURE ON THE GROUND WITH THAT BOOT ON YOUR NECK OR ELSE bullshit.  And it is absolutely galling that they mixed in a little bit of actual relationship advice to, what, make it more palatable?  Make it more mainstream?  I don't even know.

Is it possible someone will read this and chime to the "communication" part and it'll change their lives for the better?  Sure.  But why should they have to swallow all of that other shit to get there?

Oh god I hope not

So since it's my blog, I figure I can ask some really stupid questions here, right?

Long story short, next month Jay and I will be attending a public fetish-y event.  The reservation form for the event asks for scene names.

Neither of us fucking has a scene name.

Are scene names required?  Having never been to this kind of event before, I seriously have NO FUCKING IDEA.

Help?

Um.

So I opened my mouth again, and Jay and I drove down to the Flea yesterday.

OH GOD IT'S PEOPLE AND OUT IN PUBLIC AND BALAHAHAHAHAHAH

Ahem.

We wandered a round for a while, just getting the lay of the land and adjusting to being in a kinky public space.  We don't do that very often.  But once we were feeling a bit more comfortable, we bought a few things.

The first thing we bought was a paddle.  Nothing large, just a small hairbrush-type.  It's small, and rather pretty.

And it stings like fucking hell.

Jay, naturally, is enamoured of it.  "Ooh!" says he.  "I can smack you a lot and my hand doesn't hurt!  And your ass turns red so much faster!"

Oh why thank you darling, that's lovely OW OW OW OW OW.

He also tried it out my my breasts.  It was still an OW for me, but a very different kind of ow, which Jay picked up on rather quickly.  Activities commonly referred to as "breast torture":  I LIKES THEM.

Regardless, I have the feeling that this, our very first paddle (how the hell were we kinky for ten years, and including so many spankings, and didn't have a paddle?  I don't know.) is going to be making a LOT of appearances.

With a capital 'T'

I've been seeing a lot of Hal recently, which has led to a lot of very interesting conversations.

I saw him Wednesday, and long story short the conversation ended with me saying that if he was going to be "torturing" our mutual friend on Wednesday, then he was aware that he'd have to torture me on Thursday when we were working together, right?  To which he responds "Of course, but the difference is, you want it."

Thursday's session also included him asking "Wait, so who's the sadist and who's the masochist here?"  Responding with "Oh honey, I'm a switch" just seemed a bit too beyond the pale, although I am reconsidering.

Our conversations are always relatively flirty, and he's also admitted that he likes messing with my head as much as I like messing with his.  But lately there's been a lot of kink-hints included, and I'm not the one bringing them up.  I am not entirely sure what to make of this situation, and what to think about that boy, that is for damned sure.

Sometimes I think life is designed as a torment to me

So just what am I supposed to think when, as part of a costume, Hal had a pair of leather cuffs danging from his belt?

"Oh fuck yes, I knew he was top-ically inclined"?

Some times you feel like a beating!

Some times you don't!

(Yes, I am singing that to the tune of the old Almond Joy/Mounds jingle, why do you ask?)

One of the things I've gotten more aware of as I've gotten older (you'll note I did not say wiser) was that my life tends to move in cycles.  Oh sure, there's the usual circadian rhythms, and the menstrual cycle, and blah blah blah, but I'm talking more, and more overarching.

I've noted that I have an overarching cycle in my life, for example, with my appetite.  I cycle back and forth between a highly diminished appetite, where I can go all day without eating and nothing is very interesting, and a very enhanced one where I need to eat about every fifteen minutes and everything sounds DELICIOUS.  Similarly, in terms of how easy it is for me to get up early in the morning, how interested I am in interacting with other people, how interested I am in leaving my house and going out and being social, and how interested I am in bottoming.

Well, that last, it varies from "please beat me ALL DAY THANKS", "yeah, a beatin's 'aight", "touch me and I'll break your arm", and "I can beats you nao?"  But, you know.  It cycles.

When I first noticed this, well, it caused me some worry.  OH MY GOD I would think WHAT IS WRONG WITH ME and WHAT THE HELL HAVE I BEEN DOING.  You see, I frequently question myself.  I shouldn't really, but I do it anyway.  And clearly since I was not interested in any sort of submissive or bottoming activities, that meant that a, I was screwed up, b, I wasn't really a submissive/bottom, and/or c, I really need to not do that.  Mostly it was d, all of the above.  With a dash of "how the hell did that seem like a good idea".

Hey, I didn't say it made sense.  However, it is more or less what I thought.

I'm in one of those "please to be beating me all days thank you" phases right now, which I haven't been for a while.  It is delightful.  I'm past worrying that my ever-changing desires make me wrong, or broken or whatnot.  Now we're working on enjoying what's happening right now.  Easier said than done, but I think worthwhile.

Also linked to that is working on communicating with Jay as to where I'm at and what I'm looking for.  Again, easier said than done.  It's one thing for me to know something in my head and be aware of it, and quite another to verbalize it.  Words have power for me, and giving Jay the words to describe what I want gives him power.  Whether I trust him or not is secondary to that, really - certainly trusting him as I do doesn't make it any easier for me.  But... working on it.

Working on a lot of things, really.

If this is what getting older entails, I am NOT INTERESTED.

While digging around in old computer backups tonight looking for some music that somehow fell OUT of my iTunes library, I came to the realization that I have turned down a shocking, shocking number of opportunities of the sexual nature in my life.

At this point in my life, I have to admit, my first reaction is whyyyyyyy.

Like, there were three guys in 2003 - THREE - while I was NOT with Jay, who were all about it.  Why on earth did I not do anything about that?  Seriously?  What the hell was I thinking?

There was another guy in 2005.  Didn't do a blessed thing.


There's been a few more this year (okay so odd-numbered years tend to be good, okay).  There were all the guys in college who I didn't realize until well AFTER college that they were hitting on me.


Christ I feel fucking stupid.


To be a bit more fair to myself, I do know a bit of what I was thinking.  High school having done a number on me but good, the idea that anyone found me attractive was not a feeling I trusted.  I never quite believed that anyone genuinely found me likeable and attractive in a sexual sense.  I always figured they had some ulterior motive that generally involved my public humiliation.


Then there was the fact that I was brought up to believe that you shouldn't have sex before marriage, and once you're married, you stay married.  I still believe in the second, although the first I've done a lot of work to unlearn.  However, again in 2003, while I'd gotten around it to the point where having sex with Jay was okay, it wasn't completely okay, and the idea of having sex with more than one person in my lifetime was ZOMG WTF scary.


Still, the older french thinks the younger french was a bit of a frikken dipshit.  Just... CHRIST WHAT WAS WRONG WITH YOU AUGH GOD.

I have got to get out more

Jay decided on Sunday night that he was sick of not getting any and that whether I liked it or not, something kinky was going down. I let him, because I was kind of getting sick of not getting laid, either.

He puts one of the collars and the leather wrist cuffs on me, and then tells me to get down on all fours on the bed, right up against the footboard. He's got rope out, so I assume that I am to be attached to said footboard in some manner, and I am correct.

The man tied my boobs to the footboard.

This, naturally, broke my head. I mean, don't get me wrong, I bought this bed with the idea that we could tie each other to it - it's a heavy-ass steel or iron or something and there's lots of bars and cross-bars and swirly bits... well, you get the idea. I just didn't expect my boobs to come in to play here.

While my head was broken, Jay got out the crop and practiced his wrist movements for a while, which I did not feel because I was too busy going "so wait, each boob is tied individually to adjacent bars and I cannot move them or myself OH GOD THIS HURTS MY HEAD OH GOD STOP THINKING". Seriously, it was pretty awesome. I had a ridiculously stupid look on my face for at least twenty minutes.

Jay finally untied me (and un-broke my head) when I started shifting around too much it was getting to be an issue. Because my boobs were, you know, attached to the footboard, that meant that my hands were either on top of the board, or supporting weight right in front of me, and eventually my wrists and knees were telling me to fuck off, so I kept moving.

Once he untied me, he proceeded to hook my wrists to the headboard (see? attachment options) and make boob- and pussy-flowers. Unfortunately, the boob-flowers really hurt this time, making me an extremely sad panda. I, was about to cry, and I hate crying.

Meanwhile, Jay had gone to all this trouble, and after the near-crying incident, I was not okay with being awake anymore, and so he wound up coming on my face, which was fine by me because my eyes were closed and I think that if we'd had sex, I would definitely had freaked out, because holy god, pussy-flowers have the amazing side effect of making everything super-sensitive.

We then both got up very late the next morning and bitched all day about being stupid-tired. We are awesome.