Two important points before you read this. One: in this blog post, I make some sweeping, gender-based generalizations, and I make them in a somewhat tongue-in-cheek manner. I am aware that not every man or woman feels, thinks and acts in the ways I mention. This is a light-hearted blog post, not a feminist manifesto, so don’t get your gender-neutral panties in a twist, please.

And two: naturally every man of my acquaintance is an exception to all these statements. Naturally I’m not talking about any man I have ever known personally here. My goodness no.

Dear Mistress Matisse

I'm a 27y/o submissive bisexual woman in a D/s relationship with a dominant man named Tom. We were both fairly inexperienced when we met, and sort of stumbled into finding out we were both kinky. It's been really great. We're well matched and are enjoying trying out every little thing our perverted minds can come up with.

However, part of my sexual history has been pretty unpleasant. I was in an abusive relationship for nearly two years, and I had crappy experiences when I was growing up due to a combination of naivete and skeevy bastards. I've dealt with it in therapy and I certainly don't consider it as defining my sexuality. But it is there, and anyone I get into bed with gets a disclaimer: I have triggery points, and although I want to enjoy myself with you something we do may hit them. This history doesn't really have anything to do with kinky sex, and working through it has been more about learning to trust partners in general than anything else.

In getting closer to Tom I've shared more of that history with him. However, he hasn't ever really dealt with this sort of thing before- he grew up a bit sheltered, and has never been close to someone who's been working through, say, depression or trauma. Dealing with this freaks him out a little, and he doesn't really know what to do. It's not that he doesn't want to be there in the event that I need him, and I've said that I would tell him what I need in the event that something does come up. Honestly, it's happened just once in the time we've known each other (nearly a year now) and most of the time all I need is a cup of tea and some time alone/a hug. But it's the idea of psychological instability, no matter how minor, that unsettles him.

But since I talked about that part of my history (and really not anything near what I would consider the worst of it) he's been treating me differently in session. It feels like he's holding back and not doing everything that he wants to. I think that he's worried about bringing up bad history, but it's pretty frustrating. I don't want him to treat me with kid gloves- that's hardly the point of this endeavor. But it also makes me feel like he doesn't trust me enough to tell him if something's getting too intense, or as though he feels like he needs to take responsibility for my feelings. While I love that he doesn't want to hurt me (in the bad way) I really don't like that. He's said that he doesn't want me to ever get to the point where I need to use my safeword- that part of being a good dom is being able to know if something's getting too intense, that him crossing that line would be a personal failing on his part (and yes, he used the words 'personal failing'). I disagree - sometimes shit happens in session. It's not pleasant, but you move along and get back on the horse, assuming that things haven't been royally fucked up. And I wouldn't be playing with him in the first place if I thought he was the kind of person with whom things could get really bad.

I really like this guy, but I'm not sure what to do about this. Is it an intimacy thing that needs to happen over time? Am I missing something really obvious? Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

This is not a wildly unusual situation. You’re both new at this. He’s still building his confidence as a top. Most people have to do that when they first start out, that’s normal. There’s not a magic-bullet answer for this, it’s simply a matter of time and experience.

You may, in all innocence, have overshared a bit and spooked him. It makes a top - especially male tops - nervous when you spend a lot of time telling them about how you might freak out if this or that happens. Believe me, everyone has their triggery points. We know this is emotionally intense stuff - that is why it’s hot. If it's true that all you’d need is tea, space, or a hug, then in the future, go light on the foreshadowing and just ask for that if it comes up.

I do think there’s a broader context to this, although you may not care for my ideas on the subject. But here goes: consider the possibility that you’re overthinking this - and that you’re being a bit controlling, too. You talk about wanting him to trust you – what would it look like if you decided to trust him, and his process? What if you said to yourself, “Okay, I want Tom to feel and behave this certain way, both because it would align with my wishes and because I think he’d like it too. But he isn’t choosing to do that. However, he communicates to me, both verbally and by continuing to do scenes with me, that he is enjoying what we do. I’ve told him what is true for me. Now I am going to stop second-guessing him and trust that he is the best and highest authority on what’s best for him right now.”

Luckily, whether it’s his nerves or you being too controlling, or a combination of both, the solution is the same: stop trying to do anything. Whatever is in Tom’s head is not yours to deal with. The thing you have complete control over is your own behavior. So you can choose to play with him, or not. You can ask for certain activities, or not. And then you can accept that Tom is the sort of top, and the sort of man, that he is. Or – not.

***

Here is where I go off on a tangent that’s not directed at the writer herself, but more at the culture in general. The idea that a woman can and should try to change how her male partner feels about things annoys me. Of course, I don't think anyone should try to control any other person's feelings, regardless of gender. But I get a lot of letters that sound much like this - and they are nearly always from women. Men have their own brand of bad habits (Lord knows I have discussed them extensively here), but I almost never get this sort of letter from men.

I place the blame on women’s magazines, publishing all those stupid articles about Ten Tips For Fixing Whatever The Hell Is Wrong With Your Man! It’s sort of borderline when said fixes are purely external. I have known and loved men who I thought really needed a different haircut, or some clothes from, say, the current decade. That’s minor stuff, and some men are happy to have a woman tactfully offer help with such things. Some aren’t, and then you have to either deal with it or not. But he couldn’t be that awful, or you wouldn’t be with him in the first place, right?

However, I strongly disagree with the idea that a woman should try to redesign the inside of a man’s head. If you want a romance with someone who thinks just like you, date other women. Men are different from us. Really. Their view of the world is neither better or worse than ours, it just – is. I myself think men are sort of like the Federal government. They do certain important jobs really well, but it’s best to keep their official duties simply defined. As far as I am concerned, the duties of the men in my life are: lift heavy things, defend me from hostile insects and rodents, tell me that I’m beautiful, and make with the sexy.

Perhaps there are some refinements to those tasks - cooking dinner, helping me with my taxes, clearing paths through crowds, et cetera. But I think with men, it’s best to stick to job requirements that are observable to the naked eye. If you tell a man what you wish to have done, he’ll either do it, or else he won’t. But if it's something both of you can see, then it's easier to discuss. Telling a man you want him to feel differently is hard to measure, and doing so rarely yields a satisfactory result for anyone, in my experience.

Again, I’m being somewhat flippant in how I’m expressing this. However, I am serious when I say: it is a mistake to try to get your partner to change how he thinks and feels. If you don’t already like how he thinks and feels, then why are you with him?

So you want a tip, ladies? Here’s a tip: take the man, or leave him, just like he is. You want to fix something around your house? Re-cover your couch. Or clean out the gutters, or organize your spice cabinet, or whatever. But fixing up a man? Bad idea.

The latest Stranger column, about unproductive behaviors that certain types of male/female couples fall into, when seeking a woman to join them. How Not To Be A Dunning-Kruger Couple.

I realize I'm cannibalizing myself here a fair amount lately. What can I say? I have phases where I want to write a lot, and then phases where I don't as much. My real life is so extremely delightful lately that I'm just busy living it.

Be assured I'm not going away. I have collected a number of stories that will see the light of digital day sometime in the future. I have a pair of Stranger columns in the chute that I'm quite pleased with, so those are forthcoming. And there's always my Twitter for 140-character bursts of whimsy, fashion-porn, and occasional bits of (I hope) brilliance.

And, now a story I've told before. It came to my mind over the weekend, as some female pals and I were talking about sexual approaches that were doomed to fail.

***

What Not To Say

In spite of sometimes-considerable provocation, I try not to talk too much here about the recent, real-life bad behaviors of people I encounter. At least not so that they could identify themselves - it just seems too unkind. I have a lot of power in this forum, and I try to use it only for good.

However, there are exceptions to that rule. So while this is not my story, it's from a reliable source, and it's so breathtakingly bad that I had to say something.

Not long ago, a woman I know moved to a new town - not Seattle - and she went to a munch where she knew no one. A man there introduced himself and was very friendly to her, as men will be. In fact, one might reasonably say he was hitting on her.

Nothing wrong with that, exactly. He just didn’t do it very well, you understand. Apparently he was a bit too forward with the social touching, for example. I have met this man myself, and I have my own observations of his social skills, and what she said lined up with my impression of him. But my friend is a laid-back girl, and so she just shrugged it off.

Okay, fast-forward: the munch is over, she’s leaving, and he’s walking her to her car. And with no obvious pretext whatsoever, he turns to her and says, “So where are you on your cycle?”

She looked at him. “Excuse me?”

“Are you close to your period? You just look kinda puffy, like you’re retaining water.”

My pal told me this, and my jaw dropped open in disbelief. “No, he did not say that to you. He did not.”

She closed her eyes and laughed a little, ruefully. “Yes, yes he did.”

Sweet Jesus Christ. I was dumbstruck with astonishment by this tale. I cannot believe that any man past the age of toilet-training would be so stupid as to actually say this a woman. I mean any man, to any woman, at any time, ever. Neither Max nor Monk would dream of ever saying something like this to me, even though there have been times when I was retaining so much water that I should have had a freaking salmon ladder built over my abdomen. If you have a female partner, yeah, sometimes you can tell when her body looks a little different. But only a flipping idiot would remark on the matter to his or her beloved. The correct response, if your girlfriend says, “Do I look puffy?” is “No, sweetheart, not at all.” If really pressed, you might squint thoughtfully at her and say, “Well, maybe your boobs look a little bigger. Otherwise, nah, you look great.”

That’s how you handle it with a woman you’re intimate with, and it doesn’t seem like you’d have to be real clever to figure that out. So I am astounded at the thickheadedness of a man who thinks it’s cool to tell a woman he just met, whom he is hitting on, that she looks puffy. I mean, what are you thinking? How could anyone imagine that such a remark would endear you to a girl? Saying that kind of thing to women is a really good way to grow cobwebs across your cock.

It's barely possible that this man thinks he's such a True Dominate Master that he can say things like this and women will find it acceptable. He'd be wrong, of course, but it's the only even-slightly-comprehensible explanation I can think of. (I suppose he could be a menstruation fetishist, but he didn't say so, and that still wouldn't make the remark any less horrifying. )

Ready for some extra-bonus-wrongness points? This man is himself a rather large fellow. Nothing wrong with that, but if you’re going to go around telling women you just met they look puffy, you invite their examination of your figure, and if it speaks of a lot of high-sodium snacks, it makes a girl think, Well at least my puffiness will go away in a couple of days, buddy.

Super-extra-bonus-wrongness points: when they got to her car, he tried to kiss her. I am so not making this up. I am not. I could not have made this up if I tried. It’s so wrong. (She dodged it, thankfully.)

No, she didn’t tell him he was a prat, she’s too polite, and plus the whole thing caught her off guard. But you can bet she’ll be avoiding him in the future.

Now, I don’t know that this fellow reads this blog. I hope he doesn't. But in case he does: yes, I’m talking about you. I am sure you’re mortified by this. However, note that I did not name or describe you, or mention the city, and I could have. Unless you tell them, no one but you, the woman involved, and me know that it’s you. Your best response would be to keep quiet and learn something from this. I don’t think you’re evil, but I think you’ve done some socially inappropriate things, and yes, sometimes you’re gonna get called on that. It’s a growing-up process. You seem active in your pursuit of the ladies, so here’s my advice: Your hands should be kept more to yourself until such time as a woman makes it clear she wants you to touch her. And your unflattering and too-intimate remarks on a woman’s appearance should remain unsaid forever.
(First published: Tuesday, April 01, 2008)

From The Mailbox

A little over a year ago you wrote a column about connecting with your strap-on and taking control. I did not read this article. My (former) girlfriend did. It set off a flame in her that set our sex lives aflame.

Now here I am a 26 year old honest outgoing man in the dating world. The type of women I attract to date are no where near interested in strap-on play. In fact, when broached I think half-hearted is a much too strong statement.

So what are my alternatives? There are lots of professional services out there. And while I understand this is (at the present time) something considered a specialty. However even understanding that there are only so many times that I can find a couple hundred extra dollars lying around. Where is it possible to find casual strap-on fun? I would love to learn. I have been told to just wait for the right girl but surely there are better ways than trying to date a girl then bring it up and freak out a great girl and start all over again. Thanks for taking the time to read. I've been typing this in a rainy tent. Hard to sleep with your mind on important topics right?

Good lord, did someone really tell you to just wait for the right girl to fuck you in the ass? Seriously? Someday your Pegging Princess will come? I can’t believe that’s the case, but I’ll tell you I find the idea highly amusing.

There seem to be a lot of men out there seeking casual strap-on sex, because I get a lot of letters like this. Now, I think men wanting to get pegged is great – the world would be a better place if more guys eroticized their butts. It’s the insistence on it being casual that baffles me. Given that women who enjoy this seem hard to find, you’d think these guys would be inclined to hang on to a girl who wielded her dildo with skill and panache.

It always makes me wonder if there’s a subconscious Good Girl/Bad Girl thing happening. As in “Good girls – the kind I want to date seriously – are not interested in fucking me in the ass. Only Bad Girls - the kind you don’t marry – do that.”

I can see why the average man would think that. Any woman who deviates from the most conservative standards of female sexuality – very few lovers, only in the context of a committed relationship, sexually receptive but not aggressive, and only engaging in very mainstream sexual activities – can be branded a slut. Mr. Average Guy doesn't want his girlfriend to have been a slut with anyone else. He just wants her to act that way with him. (How she is supposed to learn to do this is a mystery.)

What Mr. Average Guy need to realize is: participating in Good Girl/Bad Girl sorting only perpetuates you not getting what you want, sexually. As long as women fear being labeled Bad Girls, they are going to remain unwilling to do anything that might earn them that tag.

The solution is both practical and politically smart: seek and seriously date Bad Girls. Or, as I prefer to call them: Sexually Adventurous Women. And then you’ll have to sort through those women to find one (or more) that you’d like to be in a relationship with.

This is what I do. This is what almost every person whose sexuality is non-mainstream does. Yes, once in while one gets lucky and just randomly becomes attracted to another person who shares a highly specific sexual taste. That’s a special sort of magic when it happens. But as the letter-writer points out, that isn’t usually the fastest and best way to go about it.

And pray, dear gentlemen, do not tell me that you cannot even begin to imagine how to find sexually adventurous women. You’re looking at the bright square thing in front of you, right? Series of tubes and all that? Start working the web.

No, it will not be as easy as simply seeing someone, thinking “She’s attractive,” and beginning a pursuit. I know that even the most mainstream of relationships is not easy to obtain. But, if you want a more fulfilling sex life, you are simply going to have to put even more effort into it. That means seeking out a certain kind of woman, making yourself attractive to her, communicating about what you want, finding out what she wants in return, and creating opportunities to try that out. Only then you will have transcended the status of Average Guy and become that most attractive creature, the Sexually Adventurous Man.

What Do You Do?

A pal of mine asked me a question yesterday, and I’m just going to pop off an answer here. This will not be the most polished and perfected set of remarks I have on the subject, because I’m having a madly-busy week. But it’ll give a sense of my position on the subject.

The pal in question is a girl who became a sex worker (as I recall) about a year ago. She’s struggling with the question of: when to disclose to new acquaintances and potential dates that she’s a sex worker.

She’s the forthright type, which is a nice trait in a person. So when people ask her what she does for a living, she’s been telling them the unedited truth. On one hand, I can see why she’s doing that. We should not have to lie. I love what I do, and I think our profession should be considered as honorable as any other. People who work for the IRS don’t have to lie about what they do. Nor do sales reps for drug companies, or parking-meter enforcement. And sex workers generally make people much happier than those professions.

But in the real world – it’s an issue. If someone has just met you, and in the first hour of your acquaintance, you tell them you’re a sex worker, they are going to make snap judgments about you based on that. It’s just a fact. Occasionally – very occasionally - people say something like, “Oh wow, what a cool, interesting job that must be!” Usually not, though. Neutrality is the best one can hope for in that circumstance, and a lot of the time, they are going to have a negative association with the industry. And you can’t un-ring a bell. Once the information leaves your mouth, it’s out there, and you cease to have control over how people react to it and who it will be repeated to.

So sometimes being perfectly honest right from the get-go is a luxury it’s wiser not to avail yourself of. I recommended to her that she take a little time, get to know people better, and let them know her, before gifting them with this information about herself.

I don’t see this as failing to support sex work activism. There is a difference between doing political activism and conducting one’s personal life. Being a sex work activist is not the entirety of any person. We all have other facets to our lives. Supporting sex worker rights does not mean you have to sacrifice the chance to let people get to know the whole you. You can create connections and trust with people before you start raising their consciousness. That’s an okay choice to make.

She said “I don’t want to lie to people.” Well, no one likes to lie. My response is that it’s not anyone and everyone’s business to know what I do with my time. Just because someone asked me the question does not mean they are entitled to an honest answer.

Still, it’s not usually required to speak a lie, if your conscience is finicky about that. One can just be evasive and vague. In the past, with people who were clearly just casual social acquaintances, that’s what I did. “I’m between jobs right now.” Not technically a lie, since I was never actually on a professional date when I said it.

I have friends who enjoyed spinning amusing stories. “I’m studying astrology through an online school.” Or “I’m a professional babysitter.” The arts are always a refuge: “I’m an actor, a dancer, a musician, a poet.” Frankly, most people are not on fire with curiosity about what new social acquaintances do for a living anyway. They’re simply making polite conversation. It’s usually easy to make a vague reply and brush past the question.

With sex it’s a trifle trickier, because I think if you’re going to have sex with someone, that does entitle them to a higher level of disclosure. Since this girl is polyamorous, she has a little wiggle room here, because I don't think it's an absolute requirement that you always tell people the exact circumstances in which you have sex.

But it is only ethical to tell someone, before you sleep with them, “I have sex with other people. And the people I have sex with, also have sex with other people.” That’s the rock-bottom requirement, in my eyes, for even a casual one-night stand with someone you picked up at a party. Once your potential sexual partner has that information, he/she can make a choice about whether to proceed or not.

(You’d think anyone who was open to a party-pickup would assume their partner of the night was no virgin and make safer-sex choices accordingly. But trust me, I wound up on the wrong end of that assumption more than once before I learned: Say. It. And make them tell you, “Yes, I hear you, I understand.”)

With dating someone you hope might be an ongoing partner, my formula is this: have the first date. Do not tell them about being a sex worker - and don’t have sex. Just have a nice getting-to-know-you date. On the second date, towards the end of the time, tell them. And no matter what, do not have sex with them that night either. Make them go away and think about it. If they come back for a third date, okay, proceed towards sex in whatever fashion the two of you choose.

And you have to accept that you’re going to lose a lot of potential partners after that second date. I wish that wasn’t true, but it is. This is one of those times when I say, “If being a sex worker was easy, everyone would do it.” Pursuing a career in sex work is not a consequence-free choice. Naturally, nothing in life is really consequence-free. But one sees the effects of this choice rather sharply. However, it does make you deeply appreciative of the people who do truly accept you.

After a slight delay: My new Stranger column, in which I discuss the difficulty with dating normal people.

I've been being lazy for a few days, my dear readers, but I will be more in a writing mood soon. Meanwhile, enjoy the newest Stranger column: The Naked Truth Is Not Online.

Letters To The Mistress

I have been interested in BDSM for some time, and would very much like to become a part of the community as a submissive where I live. I have read multiple books on the subject, spoken with people in the lifestyle online, and searched the hell out of google. However, I have never had sex, BDSM or otherwise. I was wondering if you think that it would be better to have a vanilla experience first or just jump right in to the good stuff.

Okay, this is a complex question. First, let’s back off and define our terms here. BDSM is not, actually, sex. It is a large set of activities and attitudes that may be erotically charged for most people, most of the time. But not everyone, and not all the time. You can do BDSM without having sex. I frequently do so, and I am not unusual in this. So do lots of other people I know.

I have some BDSM play-partners with whom I never have sex, in even the broadest and most comprehensive sense of that word. I have some BDSM play-partners that I sometimes have sex with, but not other times. And I have some that I always have sex with. It really varies. Thus, you can engage in BDSM while still remaining a sexual virgin. I’m not saying you should, I’m just saying they are two different things that you may or may not wish to combine.

You don’t say how old you are, and I can’t give a razor-sharp answer without knowing whether you are fourteen, or twenty-three, or forty, or what. Neither do you tell me your gender or sexual identity, which would also shape my answer somewhat. And what's true is that I can't really tell a stranger on the internet what would be best in this situation, it's way too delicate and individual.

But I get asked somewhat similar questions by inexperienced people all the time. Here’s a quote from a longer, previous post I wrote on the subject of virginity and BDSM… Go read the whole thing.

“…BDSM is graduate-school sexuality. You take all the usual complications and confusions of a non-kinky romantic connection and overlay it with this intense and still rather taboo way of relating and being sexual. Creating and maintaining a kinky relationship is tricky, and it requires skill, persistence, and work. Dating in one’s teens and early twenties is often the boot camp where we get basic training in how to interact with the objects of our desire. Clearly that’s easier if one is heterosexual, monogamous and not kinky. But even the most dismal and banal of dating encounters – like, say, my high school dates – teach you things. Thus, I think if you aren’t going on dates with people, you should. Don’t have sex with anyone – unless you really want to. Just get some practice in the rituals of beginning a relationship. There will be hideously embarrassing blunders that will make you writhe to think of afterwards. We all have those, I assure you. Me included. But you don’t get good at something without some trial and error."

I hope that gives you some sense of how I think about BDSM and adult sexual relationships. Good for you for researching and learning all you can. Now go talk to real people in real life and see how that feels to you. Take it slow and easy, but take it. Having a good BDSM relationship is like getting to Carnegie Hall – practice, practice, practice.

Another letter, because there’s a bunch of them stacked up in the mailbox…. This came to "Mistress Matisse and Twisted Monk", but I’m just giving my take on it. I have a feeling Monk would agree with me, anyway.

I'm lost and need some advice.

This all began several years ago...13 to be exact. Me and 'Master J' have been best friends for as long as I can remember, but thirteen years ago things got serious when we were in sixth grade. We got together, and I revealed my kinky side, to begin with he tried to be just as kinky as I, but lately it seems that he is getting bored of the lifestyle, he claims that He has fulfilled his every fantasy, but in the process he has forgotten my greatest fantasy...to be his loved pet. I tried to remind him by making my own collars, he brushed it off. I even bought two very nice, semi expensive collars...of them one was locking. He only locked me after I asked him. It didn’t feel like any collaring that I have ever read about.

Should I give up my kinky side to live with him happily? I don’t want to leave him, he is my Master, my lover, and my world. How can I rekindle the spark of kink that we once had? Is there anyway to make him see how I truly feel about being his pet?

Okay, honey. Let me first say: I’m sorry you’re having a hard time in your relationship. Mismatched sexual desires are indeed very frustrating.

But I keep doing the math here and coming up with this: most sixth graders are 11 or 12 years old, so unless you and Master J flunked a whole lot of years in school, ya’ll are now about 25 years old.

You’re saying you began having a serious master/slave relationship with this guy in sixth grade? Really? You want to know what my significant sexual milepost of sixth grade was? I French-kissed a boy for the first time. That the full extent of my sixth-grade sexiness. I was aware of my own sexuality at that age, and looking back I can see there was kink mixed into it even then. But I didn’t have any sophisticated language or concepts for how I was feeling, I didn’t know exactly what to do about any of the concepts I did have, and I sure as hell was not capable of creating a complex, structured kinky/sexual relationship with another person. I was also not capable of falling in love with anyone in any meaningful, mature fashion at that age.

And it’s perfectly appropriate that I wasn’t able to do those things. Because even if she/he has started puberty, a twelve-year-old is still a child, mentally and emotionally. So I think you’re exaggerating a bit when you say you’ve been serious with this man for thirteen years. No, what you’re saying is you had a childhood sweetheart, which is fine. And then you had a teenage boyfriend, which is also fine. And you two fooled around with kinky stuff in whatever fashion you did, exploring the different flavors of this mysterious thing, sex.

Now, at twenty-five, you’re both truly adults – and he’s changed since he was twelve. Well, yeah. Most people do change a lot between twelve and twenty-five. You grow up, basically. It appears that you’ve grown up to be a kinky woman, and he’s grown up to be a man who isn’t interested in having a master/slave relationship with you. I don’t think it’s a question of getting him to see how you truly feel. Buying collars and asking him to lock them on you seems very clear to me. I would guess that he sees it – and he just doesn’t want to do it.

Do I think you should give up your kinky desires to stay with your childhood sweetheart? Um, no. Naturally "should I stay or should I go?" is not a question I can really answer for anyone else. But what I can tell you is that trying to get an unwilling partner to dominate you is the single most doomed-to-frustration endeavor I can imagine. Even if you succeed in getting him to do it… you’re still getting him to do it.

My personal opinion is that you’ve just begun your life as a sexual adult, and you have a long way to go, believe me. Kiss your adolescent romance a fond goodbye and go find a guy who really wants to own you.

I love this fun and informative graphic about men's sperm. I have only one thing to add: pineapple. For men and women, pineapple makes all your body fluids - and trust me, I mean all of them* - taste sweeter. I love fruit, and I eat a lot of it, and I think pineapple has a much more noticeable effect than any other fruit. So if you want to taste better, eat pineapple, or at least drink the juice.

(*Okay, I guess I don't know about the taste of one's blood. But sweat, spit, girl secretions, and piss? Absolutely. I also have a theory that drinking lots of diet pop makes one's piss sweeter - all that aspartame, sucralose and acesulfame potassium coursing through one's system. That's based only on remarks made to me about my particular flavor though, so I have no real evidence whatsoever to support this idea. However, if some scientist wants to do a controlled study, I can certainly supply taste-testers.)



View this image full-size, in a new window, here on the OnlineSchools site.

Link via The Sexademic

Time for a new podcast!

This one's a lulu. Let me preface it by remarking that Monk and I are practitioners of safer safe, and we want to help people learn how to do safer sex. We are sympathetic to people who are nervous about STDs.

That said, there is a right way and a wrong way to handle this conversation with a new partner, and in this podcast, we read a letter from someone who definitely did it the wrong way.

I don't usually sum up podcasts, but the take-away lesson from this is: if you have STD questions, ask them before you fuck. Asking someone about their health status before sleeping with them is a reasonable thing to do, provided you exercise some tact and charm about the matter.

On the other hand: Wooing someone online, meeting them, having a date, fucking them, going home, and then IMing them to ask them about those red spots on their leg? Gauche and insensitive is the kindest way I can describe that. I wouldn't speak to you again either. Take the spanking and learn a lesson from it: open your mouth before you unzip your pants.

From a Letter...

...I find myself 9 years into a triad with myself (male) and my original partner of 17 years and our other partner of 9 years and I'm struggling with a terrible bout of jealousy. It's one of those watershed times in our lives. We're opening an art gallery and I just got done with the total renovation of it myself and am exhausted, at least 2 of us are in the midst of an in-depth re-evaluation of our lives and choices, my original partner and I..... wait. ..... blah blah blah..... that has nothing to do with jealousy.

To the point and question, since I know you have a very busy life and don't know me at all.... do you have a way to deal with jealousy when it comes up? I'm 49 and have never really felt it but am having crazy, unsupportable jealousy with one of my partners. I'm asking about everyone I know how they deal with it in the hopes of finding a method that works well with me.

First let me say: you’ve been in a triad for nine years? You, dear man, should be proud of yourself. I think triads are the most difficult of all polyamory structures to sustain long term. So that speaks well for your ability to create solutions to your current issue.

Jealousy is an unpleasant emotion – you know that already. The thing about jealousy, though, is that it’s chameleon-like. It’s a symptom of a problem, but what exactly the problem is varies greatly.

This letter is fairly brief. I think you meant to be respectful of my time, which I do appreciate. But without having a hunch about why you’re feeling this way, it’s hard for me to offer solutions.

Does the partner you’re feeling jealous about have a new partner? If that is so, then I’d give you advice about handling a new person in your partner’s life. A lot of poly people have written about that, though, so perhaps you’ve already read up on the usual solutions.

However, I have seen people become jealous even when their partners do not have a new love interest. You allude to a lot of big life-changes, and then you dismiss them. Not so fast. Those can be very stressful, and they might be causing some generalized anxiety that is manifesting itself in jealousy. Our brains are odd – if we’re feeling anxious about something and we’re not clearly in touch with that, sometimes we unconsciously re-route the anxiety to, shall we say, a different exit. Especially if, to our unconscious mind, that problem seems like one that can be more easily fixed.

For example, someone who recently suffered the death of a loved one might have a flare-up of jealousy. The mind says, “I feel the pain of a loss, and there’s nothing I can do to make that pain stop. I’m afraid of feeling this again. Thus, I’ll attempt to control the behavior of my partner, so that I don’t lose them as well. That will distract me from my pain and soothe my anxiety.”

If you have had some loss, or you think that you might soon have one, then that might be causing this jealousy.

The other thing that occurs to me is: if this is really an unprecedented problem, it's very strong, and it seems to have no very definite cue, then this could be a brain-chemistry issue. Now, I don’t think that every emotional problem must have a pharmaceutical solution. And I am not attempting to diagnose you. But jealousy is just another word for fear. Or, as the medical profession would put it, anxiety. So when I hear “crazy, unsupportable jealousy” one of the possible interpretations I can put on that is: “I’m having intense anxiety, I can’t manage it easily, and it’s negatively impacting my life.”

If the usual methods of handling jealousy are not working, it’s not getting better with time, and the jealousy is really impacting your daily functioning, then my next suggestion is: go to your doctor and tell her/him that you are having trouble with anxiety and you’re wondering about medication.

If you can afford it, I would also suggest you find a good counselor. Finding one who is open-minded enough to not try to push you towards monogamy as the solution to your problem is the challenge here. If you want to see a talk-therapist and you can’t find anyone who seems poly-friendly where you are, drop me a note and tell where you live, and I’ll see if I know anyone. Alternately, you might find a poly-friendly therapist who would do phone sessions with you.

I hope that’s helpful to you.

Links to writings about managing jealousy in polyamorous relations. One, two, three, four and five.

Dear Mistress Matisse,

I've been reading your blog for several years now, and I always enjoy your columns. I've been curious about something: do you see transmen as clients? I know you take a hard line about not seeing women as clients, but I also know that your understanding of queers and the queer community is rather nuanced (and you were once married to a transman, no?).

Point of clarification before I go on: transman means someone who started out female and transitioned to male. I know we can get into a discussion about whether transmen were ever truly female, I’m not questioning anyone’s feelings on that. Let us say: they were assigned the female gender when they were born.

Now then...

Some letters that I get, I think “I don’t know how to answer this without sounding like a twit.”

Well, in a way I can answer this. I don’t have any female-to-male transexual clients. In fact, I’ve never had anyone who told me he was transexual even ask me for a professional session. And since I see 99% of my clients naked, yes, I’d know if one of my guys was trans. The surgery for female-to-male transexuals is not nearly as advanced as it is for male-to-female people.

So, the issue has not arisen.

I’m not sure what I would say if a transman did ask me, though. Because the situation is, as you say, nuanced.

Yes, I was queer-identified for most of my twenties. My lovers were female and I socialized in mainly queer spaces. And then I did indeed marry (and subsequently divorce) a transman. 

In my experience, a woman who is lovers with a transman occupies a very curious social space between queer and straight. But my former husband looked very, very male indeed. He used to resemble a shorter Mike Ditka, in fact. Looking the way he felt - male - was precisely what he wanted, although on occasion it complicated matters. Like the day I took him to the hospital for his scheduled hysterectomy.

He was understandably a bit anxious about having this major surgery. And it seem like when you’re waiting for surgery, every yahoo with a lab coat just wanders by at random, picks up your chart, and reads it. Picture Mike Ditka in a hospital bed. And his chart says he's having a hysterectomy. The possibility of having a gender “Who’s On First?” sort of exchange was strong.

I was not going allow that to happen. I stood at his bedside poised like a jaguar, ready to spring at the throat of any clueless medical staff who looked at him, and then looked at his chart, and then said something stupid. There were several moments when various people looked like they were trembling on the brink of a throat-tearing remark, but - they refrained. Perhaps it was the I-will-kill-you look I was giving them.

This is all my way of explaining that I am aware of the incredible complexities and challenges transmen have to deal with. *

But that’s a lot of complexities to deal with in just sixty minutes, in a dungeon. With a not-a-transexual man, I have a head-start. I can safely assume a lot about where he’s coming from, culturally, and what the some of his hot buttons and wet dreams and taboo fantasies are likely to be. I know how to do the traditional male-female dance, and I know how to twist it sideways, lube it up, and jam it into someone’s sweet pink ass.

My experience of transmen in intimate situations is that they are emotionally vulnerable in a way that I can validate and sympathize with, and they are just tremendously complex. The social/psychological dynamic is all over the map. He’s a man, which in a patriarchal world means he has social power - but he’s a transman, which means that power is actually as fragile and as permeable as a tissue.

Often he has lived for part of his life being seen as female, so he knows what that’s like. But straight transmen don’t usually want to relate to women as someone-who-used-to-be-female, they just want to be a guy. So there’s this knowingness there - but one mustn’t make too much of the fact that this guy knows exactly what menstrual cramps feel like.

Transmen’s relationships with their bodies is tricky, too. I have never had any uneasiness about interacting - in a BDSM context, or sexually - with a transman's body. I’m good with bodies. I don't care whether your body looks exactly like other men's bodies, I just want to know how you work. If I can look at you and touch you, I can figure out your body pretty quickly.

But, understandably, a lot of transmen are not super-confident about their body. They are not always comfortable being seen and being touched. Stripped naked, their vulnerability is often, to me, heart-wrenchingly intense. One can learn how each individual transman wants to be looked at and touched, and teach them to trust you, but that takes time.

And one hour simply isn’t enough, in my opinion. It's completely different from dating a transman, where you go as slow as you need to. For me as a professional – wow, I’m daunted by the idea of trying to create a scene for a transman that I’d feel really good about in that short of a time. Since I have some personal history there, I’d feel extra-frustrated by doing a scene I didn’t think was as good as it should be.

What’s also true is that my professional time is not cheap, and most of the transmen I have met were not rich. I suppose if I met a transman who was wealthy, and he wanted to see me a lot and develop that type of BDSM relationship with me, and I felt we were well-suited as play-partners – well, I’d do that.

I would bet that’s a decision I will not have to make, though.


*Of course, everything I say is a broad generalization that only reflects my view from the outside. Every transexual person has his/her/hir own different and utterly valid experience.

The One-Penis Policy column continues to generate a great deal of comment, both on the Stranger page and on various social-networking sites. I’m mildly surprised at the level of emotion my opinion seems to provoke in people. So – not that I think this is going to make the people who are upset about it feel any better – but let me just clarify a few points.

If you haven’t read the column, this will make no sense to you. Everything here is in relation to that article. Go read that, then come back.

***

First, note that we’re not talking about acknowledged, full-time D/s relationships, that’s a whole other discussion. Assume that 24/7 dominance and submission do not come into play here. I would have thought that since I didn’t mention D/s anywhere in the column, people would understand that it wasn’t a factor, but that seems to have been unclear.

I am not suggesting that the woman in the hypothetical couple is obligated to have sex with other men, okay? She gets to make that decision. And you know what, if she chooses not to sleep with other guys because she knows her male partner wouldn’t like it – well, that’s her choice.

Of course it’s her choice anyway. But there is a huge difference between your partner saying, “No way can you sleep with other men. I cannot handle that" and your partner saying, “It would be hard for me. I’d rather you didn’t. But the choice is yours.” One is pressure, and one is stating a preference.

We can get off on a whole tangent about how much influence it’s healthy to let your partner’s feelings have over your decision, but that’s a somewhat different conversation. I've heard the argument that it's a loving thing to do, that the woman in case is sacrificing her wishes to help ease her partner into polyamory. I'm not saying that can never be true.

(The woman-easing-man-into-poly idea actually amuses me greatly, given how that flies in the face of the myth that women don't really want to be poly, but men get them to be so unwillingly. Hah.)

So if a m/f couple said "Okay, for six months, she's going to date only other women, and then we'll see how that goes and how we feel," I would not think that was terrible. Setting a fixed time for the training period makes it much more palatable to me.

And notice also that he's not dating anyone. Although if he wanted to date other men, I think that would also be perfectly reasonable.

But a permanent system in which the man is explicitly permitted to fuck other women, but the woman is explicitly forbidden to fuck other men? How exactly is that easing anyone into anything?

I am utterly unimpressed with any talk about how it’s really about STDs or pregnancy. For one thing, both those can be controlled with a pretty high degree of success. Trust me on that, I’ve been doing it myself for years. Sexual health education, careful management, and planning ahead eliminate a lot of the risks in multiple-partner situations.

Besides, it takes two to pass an STD, or get someone pregnant. I find it hypocritical in the extreme that a man would want to have other female sexual partners himself – thus exposing them to those possible risks – but say it’s too much risk for his original partner. Frankly, I think that type of attitude should not be dignified with the name polyamory.

If the original piece pissed you off, what I’m going to say now will really inflame you: Just because two people are engaged in a certain system of behavior does not make it “all right, because it’s their choice.” There actually is such a thing as a bad personal choice.

So yes, I do think there are better ways and worse ways to run a relationship. Outside of consensual D/s, I think it’s inherently better to have as few “rules” as possible for other adult human beings that one is having an equal partnership with. I think that’s being controlling – not in the sexy way – and I think it negatively impacts both people involved.

I think if there’s an obvious inequity in the relationship, it should at the very least be openly discussed, and it should be a goal for both people to bring about a change to that.

And I think the basis for the One Penis Policy is basically insecurity and sexism.

Now, feeling of insecurity and sexism are both pretty common (to both men and women), and neither of those things makes someone a Bad Person. But they are traits that can be changed, and being less insecure and less sexist will make someone a better person.

Who am I to make all these judgments? I’m me. Who else would I need to be? I’m a person, I have an opinion, and I'm talking about it. Why shouldn't I? Obviously I have no power to compel anyone else’s choices, nor do I have any wish to. But that fact that people are getting upset that I dared to state this opinion is very interesting, isn’t it?

Complete and unedited email I got recently...

SUBJECT: my 3 guesses at what your fetish is that you indulge with Milo

1. He is an amputee
2. He has a very large/small cock (is that 2 guesses?)
3. He is Chinese

I get the most weirdly random email. I’m usually good at connecting apparent non sequiturs to a subject that makes sense, but this one took me a full minute or so.

What happens is: someone Googles some odd term or other, finds a page of my blog, reads it, but doesn’t note the date. And then they write to me commenting about a post from, say, five years ago. As if it would still be uppermost in my mind.

First things first: this letter is made of fail. The idea of race as a fetish is offensive to me. I am also repulsed by the idea of fetishizing people because they have lost a limb. For the record, I have had partners of all races, and I have been sexual with handicapped people. But people are not fetish objects.

I suppose you could say that someone fetishized cocks of a certain size, because cocks are sort of objects. Sort of. They happen to be attached to people, so I’m not crazy about that characterization. I’ll allow it, given that the owners and operators of cocks often speak of them as separate entities with autonomous government, and we're playing fast and loose with the literal definition of the word "fetish" anyway. But clearly the writer does not understand that women don’t usually fetishize body parts the way men sometimes do.

Other point of failure: this writer is also confusing two different people. Milo was a man I mentioned playing with, but Mike was a secondary partner of mine a little more than five years ago, before I started seeing Monk.

And Mike was not into BDSM, which I mentioned in a post I wrote about him, and I said there was a certain thing about him that I found particularly sexy, but I declined to say what it was. I was purposely rather oblique, but I’m willing say more now.

There were plenty of obvious reasons to like Mike: he was handsome, charming, intelligent, and he also proved to be good in bed.

He was also completely not-jealous and drama-free. That was a huge issue to me at the time - even bigger than it is now, which is still pretty big – because my previous relationship had ended in a firestorm of jealousy and drama.

Because of that, I spent several years skittering nervously away from anyone who even hinted they might get jealous of me. Someone I barely knew sent me a letter that was (I believe) intended to be sexy, and in it they mentioned being possessive. I think they were trying to impress me with their intensity, or something. But talk about the wrong thing to say! I all but took out a restraining order on them.

But Mike was perfectly fine with me showing up at random intervals, having a passionate evening, and then vanishing. No next-date setting, not much communication in between, and absolutely, positively no talk about where is our relationship going? It was great.

So you might say what I fetishized about Mike was his non-possessiveness. However, he did do this one thing that turned me on. He welded. I’m serious: he’s a metal artist, and he welded and worked in metal, and watching him do that was very sexy to me.

I do have a mild machine-sex fetish. Mild meaning: I rarely do anything about it, but it's fun to think about and I often think pictures of it are sexy.

But what I really have is a competence fetish. If I watch someone do something, and they are clearly very good at it, that can be a big turn-on. For example, watching Max do awesome rope bondage on people was what made me first say “Hey, that guy’s kinda cool.” I once got sprung on someone because she was a pool shark. Watching her just clean people’s clocks on the green felt table got me tingly. Looking at Mike’s art, and his tools, and seeing him do the whole make-the-sparks-fly welding thing? Yeah, that made the sparks fly for me, definitely. We had sex in his shop any number of times.

It was a charming arrangement and it was the perfect re-entry relationship. It ran its course, as relationships usually do. But it ended amicably, and Mike renewed my faith in the idea that it was possible to have a fun and affectionate casual-dating relationship without it leading to the type of insane drama that requires lawyers.

So would I get turned on by just any pool hustler or metal worker? No. But doing something manifestly well is sexy. Unfortunately for this person, he is demonstrating that letter-writing is not a skill he can parlay into hot dates.

Yes Means Yes

From the mailbag: This is an edited-down version of the letter, mainly because the original is very long and includes a lot of unnecessary detail.

And actually, I don’t think this letter is real. There are a lot of little things about it that set off my bullshit alarm. All of them could just be explained away, but my gut just says: fake. I don’t believe this girlfriend exists, I think the writer made this story up. It’s possible she does exist, and that she is the one making up the story and feeding it to her lover, but I’d bet money that someone is lying here.

But what the heck, I’ll answer it anyway. Because maybe it’ll be useful for someone else who’s contemplating a bad idea.

***

I'm male, 24, my girlfriend is the same age.… She has problems: Child abuse, substance abuse, alcoholism in her family and herself, huge eating disorder problems, rape. Now she's been raped a second time, and this time I feel like an accomplice. She told me that she'd been getting offers from a guy she'd met who ran a high-class prostitution agency. She has money problems, and it was incredibly tempting despite her revulsion for it.

I’m wondering where, exactly, the girlfriend met this guy? It’s not the usual bar-pickup line. But here’s the short answer: Anyone who says “Hey baby, I run a high-class prostitution agency, and have I got a deal for you!” is a lying idiot, or worse. Run, run, run away from anyone who tells you that.

Also, if you feel revulsion at the idea of sex work, you should NOT do it. We all do things we’re not crazy about doing in life. But, revulsion? That’s a no. This seems really simple and obvious to me, and yet I do see people acting like deep emotional responses are things they can just dismiss, without consequences, if they’re inconvenient.

Because, in my platonic dreamworld, I believe prostitution should be legal, I told her that I would support whatever decision she made. So, finally, there's an offer of one long night for 12,000 dollars. She decides to do it, torturing herself about it for almost two weeks, going through a whole process (STD screens, photos, waxing) that makes her feel like an animal. He says she needs to sleep with him, that it's standard "quality-control" procedure. He takes her to a hugely fancy hotel, buys dinner, and they do it. She hates it.

Okay, see, here’s where the story goes sideways to me. Twelve thousand dollars? And she didn’t smell a rat? Really? Because a quick search on Google will pull up escort rates for any city, and if one is going to spend two weeks torturing oneself, I’d think that would include a little internet research.

But, more advice, on the off chance it’s real: do not fuck people to get a job - even if that job is fucking people. If anyone tells you that you have to audition for a job as an escort, walk away. Only sleazeball pimps want freebies, and there are some of them around, which is why I always worked for female agency owners. (They weren’t all straight, but they never hit on me.)

Here’s how quality-control works in a good escort service: The first couple of clients they send a girl to will be regulars who’ll give the boss a report. They’re always guys who dig seeing the brand-new girls. They don’t expect smooth patter and practiced moves. If the girl messes up in some truly spectacular way, and the client is angry, the boss sends another lady for free and eats the lost money. But that doesn’t happen too often, because agency owners get good at knowing who’s going to work out, and who’s too crazy. If the girlfriend in this story exists, she is broadcasting “crazy” on every channel. No good agency is going to send a brand-new crazy-acting girl on a 12K-for-one-night date. Even if there were 12K-for-one-night dates to be had, which there are not.

The next day, she goes back to her apartment and finds a 1200 dollar dress. Goes to the hotel, but the client doesn't show. Calls the guy: his phone's been disconnected. This whole thing was a con. He's just a rich FUCK who saw someone he wanted and invented this entire thing. There was even a call from another one of his "girls" saying not to do it, that prostitution was the worst decision she'd ever made. I can't figure that out...maybe sometimes he actually is a pimp and the call was genuine, or maybe it was part of the scheme just to test her, or make her feel worse because that's what get's him the fuck off.

Well, stranger things have happened, I suppose. That seems like a lot of effort, and when I add up the costs of what he presumably spent, this guy could have just hired a lady for the night. But some people do get off on playing games. I can’t figure out the phone call from the other woman, either. But whatever it was, it was a red flag that your partner unfortunately ignored.

So basically she got paid with this dress, is what it sounds like. That's not cool, but everyone gets stiffed for a fee at one time or another in the business. You just have to handle it and move on, and not make the same mistake again.

She can't go to the police because of the humiliation if it got out, because she has no evidence of any kind, because he's covered his tracks too well anyway. Now who knows if he has an STD that maybe she has now. He has pictures of her.

Yeah - no, sweetie, you do not go to the police if you do something illegal and you get ripped off for the fee. That would not be swift.

But wait, wait, wait – STD? Did she have bareback sex with this man? Yes, I know condoms don’t prevent everything. If you decide to be an escort, you’re deciding that you’re willing to take some risks. But not using condoms is extremely stupid.

I could have stopped this at any point; I could have told her no like she clearly wanted me too. I knew how much it was hurting her, but I kept saying it was her decision because I wanted the money for her, because I wanted to be true to my bullshit theories, because secretly it turned me on. I was supposed to protect her, to turn her life around, to make everything better. I used to have daymares about her being raped again and being powerless to stop it...but this is worse. Not only was I not powerless, I helped by being so fucking logical and always talking about "cost-benefit analysis." I was conned just like her, and it was the perfect fucking con: it didn't seem too good to be true because the huge amount of money was balanced by the fucking pain she was feeling!

The last sentence of this paragraph is from Bizarro World to me, I can’t even parse that. But for the rest of it: no, you’re not supposed to “turn her life around, make everything better.” She has to do that. See my previous posts about this: You can’t love troubled people all better. And sometimes help is just the nice word for "control". It’s sweet to be loving and protective to some degree towards your partner, but you are not her parent. For whatever reasons, you thought and hoped this would be okay, so you said you were cool with it. Turns out you were wrong. I hate being wrong, too, but no one is right all the time.

And you’re definitely going to hate this part: I don’t think your girlfriend was raped. I think she was ripped off, but that’s different. She’s a grown person and she consented to the sex. Even if she hated it, he did not force her, correct? No violence, no threats, she wasn’t afraid not to? Yeah – that’s not rape, to me. It’s a lousy situation, and she’s justified in being mad. But I don’t agree that if a guy promises you X if you have sex, and you do, and he breaks that promise, then you were raped. If you retroactively withdraw sexual consent, after the sex is over, because you're angry at your sexual partner, then you render your word meaningless. That’s a dangerous precedent. If yes doesn’t really mean yes, why would anyone bother to get consent in the first place?

I read an article in the New York Times recently, about scientific studies of the nature of women’s sexual desires. It’s a long piece, but I think it’s well worth reading. So go do that, and then come back and read this, because this is not intended to be a review or a summary of the article, but rather some thoughts of mine in response to it.

My first thought about Meredith Chivers was: how come I never get to volunteer for studies like this? I suppose one has to answer those “research subjects needed” ads. But it just sounds very interesting to be shown different kinds of porn, and then have your responses measured. Of course, I’d be wild with curiosity to know how my reactions compared with other people’s, and I imagine they don’t tell you about that.

This is interesting. (Emphasis mine.)

“Richard Lippa, a psychologist at California State University, has employed surveys of thousands of subjects to demonstrate over the past few years that while men with high sex drives report an even more polarized pattern of attraction than most males (to women for heterosexuals and to men for homosexuals), in women the opposite is generally true: the higher the drive, the greater the attraction to both sexes, though this may not be so for lesbians.”

So according to this, women who are not lesbians, but who do have naturally higher sex drives, are more likely to be attracted to both men and women? That would explain a lot.

It may be be that I have done an injustice to some of the dominant men who said they could train their submissive female partners to come on command, without any physical stimulation. Although I will point out that it still doesn’t happen instantly, at the snap of a finger. Also, note the keyword: rare.

“Barry Komisaruk, a neuroscientist at Rutgers University, has subjects bring themselves to orgasm while lying with their heads in an fM.R.I. scanner — he aims to chart the activity of the female brain as subjects near and reach four types of climax: orgasms attained by touching the clitoris; by stimulating the anterior wall of the vagina or, more specifically, the G spot; by stimulating the cervix; and by “thinking off,” Komisaruk said, without any touch at all. While the possibility of a purely cervical orgasm may be in considerable doubt, in 1992 Komisaruk, collaborating with the Rutgers sexologist Beverly Whipple (who established, more or less, the existence of the G spot in the ’80s), carried out one of the most interesting experiments in female sexuality: by measuring heart rate, perspiration, pupil dilation and pain threshold, they proved that some rare women can think themselves to climax.”

All of Marta Meana’s remarks are very interesting:

"For women, “being desired is the orgasm,” Meana said somewhat metaphorically — it is, in her vision, at once the thing craved and the spark of craving…. She recalled a patient whose lover was thoroughly empathetic and asked frequently during lovemaking, “ ‘Is this O.K.?’ Which was very unarousing to her. It was loving, but there was no oomph” — no urgency emanating from the man, no sign that his craving of the patient was beyond control.”

Yes, I dislike that, too. I mean, it’s all right to ask occasionally, but I have been with lovers who ask over and over, and it is a turn-off.

“And within a committed relationship, the crucial stimulus of being desired decreases considerably, not only because the woman’s partner loses a degree of interest but also, more important, because the woman feels that her partner is trapped, that a choice — the choosing of her — is no longer being carried out…. “

Speaking only for myself, I agree with this, and I think this is one of the many reasons why polyamory is the right thing for me. I continue to feel chosen by my lovers, and to feel that I am choosing them. And that if I wish, I can choose someone in addition to them, and feel the pleasure of being chosen by the new partner.

"A symbolic scene ran through Meana’s talk of female lust: a woman pinned against an alley wall, being ravished. Here, in Meana’s vision, was an emblem of female heat. The ravisher is so overcome by a craving focused on this particular woman that he cannot contain himself; he transgresses societal codes in order to seize her, and she, feeling herself to be the unique object of his desire, is electrified by her own reactive charge and surrenders. Meana apologized for the regressive, anti-feminist sound of the scene."

As is acknowledged in the article, this is a very tricky subject to talk about. So let me say also what the researchers said: rape is very very wrong. I do not condone rape, ever.

Let us talk instead of how I have felt with people – both men and women – that I was attracted to and wanted to have sex with. In the chapter that precedes the sex, where you have not said it aloud but both of you are thinking it, the part where you are both dancing and feinting and flirting, every sense you have trained on the other – their smile, their scent, the timbre of the voice as they speak to you – in that moment, it is extremely arousing to feel that they want you so much that they wish to transgress, that they would seize you if they could, and that you would be consumed in that passion.

You can’t manufacture that electricity if one of you isn’t willing. But if there’s even a slight tingle, it is possible sometimes to turn up the juice. I have a dual perspective - I have seduced and ravished other women myself. I know how I conveyed with my eyes, my words, the angle of my head and my body, that if she would only say yes, I could burn us both up in passion, and that we would enjoy that burning. I know what it feels like to have the electricity in me run through my hands and mouth and into someone else, and electrify her. I have seen the pleasure that women took in surrendering to me in that way.

And the pleasure that I took in doing that was very different from the pleasure I took when it was my back to the alley wall, being electrified by someone else’s charge.

It’s not that you must always be either the ravisher or the ravished in sex. But it’s a potent dynamic of desire. I think that it’s one of the things that can draw both men and women to dominant/submissive sex: the wish to experience the role of either the one who dares to transgress, and thus wins his/her desire - or the role of the one who is so desired that a lover dares all for them.

Happy day - it's a new podcast! (Finally, right? I know.)

First, Monk does a crazy 30-second riff on what a porn movie would sound like - on radio. (You’ll just have to listen to it.)

And then we address a letter from a reader who asks “Since monogamy is not an option, how do you make your primary partner feel special in a polyamorous relationship?” Monk and I have some thoughts about that, so listen and enjoy! About sixteen minutes.

Call For Questions: Monk and I are going to record some more podcasts Thursday. (I know, I know - finally. Hey, we’re busy, people!) So now’s the time to send me those looooooong and complicated questions. Fire 'em off, we'll try our best to answer, with a few dirty jokes along the way.

***

On an entirely separate subject…

I am on several polyamory email lists and web-groups and communities, and there’s something I see over and over again than I’m going to try to summarize here. And then give my opinion about.

It starts when Well-Meaning Person* posts for advice about a poly relationship they are having with someone who is, to put it succinctly, emotionally unstable. Like, seriously unstable. The manifestations I see most often cited are things like: the person has wild swings in their feelings of self-worth, an inability to identify internal preferences (including sexual), and a tendency to become involved in intense and unstable relationships, often leading to emotional crisis. The unstable person can be extremely charming, but also extremely insecure, is prone to making recurrent threats or acts of self-harm; they experience chronic feelings of emptiness, and they display excessive efforts to avoid abandonment.

And the Well-Meaning Person wants to know how to do poly with someone who is like that.

The answer is: NOT. You can’t do it. A person who behaves like that is not equipped to handle the emotional challenges of polyamory. None of those behaviors are fun to be around, but it’s the last one that’s really a killer for poly. That’s why I italicized it. The phrases are taken from a textbook description of Borderline Personality Disorder.

Now, BPD is a diagnosis that some people think is valid and some people don’t. I’m not qualified to diagnose anyone, but I have met people who act exactly like that description. So I can’t say if it’s inappropriately slapped on people who don’t warrant it, but I do know there are folks running around who fit it.

So, what such emotionally unstable people should do about how they are is outside my scope of expertise. But I know something they should not do, and that’s try to be polyamorous. The part about insecurity and excessive efforts to avoid abandonment? Yeah. I think some of the unstable people think if they have more lovers, they’ll feel more loved, and thus safer. But it never seems to work out that way. (I suppose if they were polyamorous and all their lovers were monogamous, maybe. But that’s usually not the way it is.) Polyamory requires an ability to tolerate and self-soothe some short-term emotional discomforts, and to trust that one isn’t going to be abandoned. This kind of unstable person does not possess those traits.

In these situations, I sometimes try to suggest that this simply isn’t going to work. Well-Meaning Person usually doesn’t want to hear that. There’s an idea that WMP could stop the unstable person from manifesting those behaviors, if the WMP person just knew how to comfort and reassure the unstable person properly. That’s what I call the “I Can Love Them All Better” fallacy. No. You can’t. You can love someone in spite of the behaviors, but no matter how much or how well you love them, you will not love those behaviors out of existence.

The “Love Them All Better” thing is often bolstered by other people on the list making suggestions for what kind of med/therapy/ect the unstable person should be doing. None of which is bad information, and if the unstable person wants resources, I’m all for giving them. But to me, the way the situation is expressed, and the way the advice is given, it often subtly reinforces the idea that the WMP person should be fixing the unstable person.

I really don’t agree with that. Adults are responsible for their own physical health. Unless you fall unconscious on the sidewalk, if there’s something wrong with you, you are the one responsible for either dealing with it yourself, or getting someone to help you deal with it, like a doctor. I think the same is true of mental health. That doesn’t mean you can’t ask for help. You should, definitely. But you have to be the one doing the asking, and then doing the work it takes to get fixed.

However, I’m definitely not going to argue with anyone on the internet about their relationship. I’m not Sigmund Freud or Dr Phil or anything – what I say is based only on my personal observations. And no one stops doing anything – including having relationships with emotionally unstable people – until they’re ready to. It’s sometimes hard to watch Well-Meaning People run around and around in a hamster wheel

But I can vent about on my blog. So I did.



*Yes, I know I have posted before about how "help" is sometimes just a nice word for "control". But today, we’ll give the WMP the benefit of the doubt.

Letters From Readers

I found your website on the internet, and actually, I'm not emailing for a session. I'm emailing because I want your opinions.

I'm a 25-year-old man not learning about submission and domination but learning more about myself. I need to know what it is about men that makes them want to serve you completely…your personal house slaves.

I ask because I have noticed that when I feel chemistry with a woman I feel a desire to be completely controlled by her, but not in the way that might be familiar to you….I feel seriously deprived emotionally, and sometimes I feel like all I want is to serve a woman hand and foot because of an emotional need to please rather than to be put down or controlled. In other words, I don't like the silly domination games such as, "Clean the kitchen while you’re naked." The kind of games that are designed to see how far a person would go to serve the dominatrix.

As an example, my best friend is actually a very beautiful lesbian with whom I have a lot of chemistry, but who obviously would never have sex with me. She is a very materialistic girl, and I've found that nothing makes me happier than to make her happy and to talk to her. I actually don't even like pursuing straight girls anymore because I'm intrigued by how she makes me feel. And of course, the fact that she's unavailable makes her more tantalizing, but that's one of the things I want to understand.

I want to know why your slaves do what they do. Do you find them to be emotionally involved with you? Or do they expect that eventually you will have sex with them and become disappointed when you don't?

I'm asking you because this is the kind of thing I can't discuss with most people, but of course, it wouldn't surprise you. Thank you if you do even read this email, and more so if you actually answer it. Emailing you has actually been somewhat helpful.

Well, just between you and I – I do not, in fact, have full-time slaves in the sense that you mean.

I know, I know, it's practically heresy for a dominatrix to say that, but it's true. I don’t have them because while I love having control of someone else in erotic situations, and I’m pleased to maintain some low level of dominant/submissive energy with certain people even out of scene, I don’t want to have total control of another person every single minute of every single day. I’m not that kind of dominant. To have a relationship, ethically and skillfully, with someone you call your slave is a huge responsibility that I don’t want. So I don’t do it.

Moreover, I think strict, highly-polarized D/s relationships are extremely difficult to sustain over more than a few months of time. (That is, they are if you see each other very often. If you don't see each other very much, it's easier.) I’ve known a few people who were able to do day-in/day-out relationships like that, but not many. It is not nearly as common as BDSM fiction would have you think.

However, of the people I know who have strict D/s relationships – some of them are sexual with their slaves, some are not. It’s a matter of personal style, and the wishes of those involved. But I would definitely say that they are all emotionally involved with each other. It’s a very deep emotional connection to have that kind of relationship with someone.

Now, I have to say: I’m somewhat baffled by this letter. If the kind of control you fantasize about is not the kind you think I do, then why are you asking me for advice?

But if you’re just asking for my opinion in general, I’d say that just based on the situation you’re describing… you’re an emotional masochist. And that’s not a good thing.

That’s not a real psychological term, of course, and it’s not a BDSM term, either. But you’re engaging in an unrequited love/lust thing with a bitchy-but-beautiful lesbian who doesn’t return your feelings. You imply that you’re giving her money or gifts or something? And you’re not even trying to find a woman who might love you back? I call that emotional masochism, my friend. I will bet you any amount of money that the situation you're describing is not going to end in you being happy and getting what you want.

I think you need to work out whatever is so fascinating to you about this kind of interaction, or else you’re going to keep doing it over and over. You’re only 25, so nip this in the bud now and learn how to have real relationships, because whether you're vanilla or kinky or somewhere in between, being attracted to unavailability is a recipe for frustration and unhappiness.

There are many different motivations to be a submissive, and I’m not one to say “Your motives are valid - but you over there, yours are not.” But I think a spell of good talk therapy would teach you a lot about yourself that you need to know, and then you can make a better decision about whether you really want to be controlled by another person.