Folsom Street Fair 2013

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Your Turn to Teach Me Something

This is not a statement, and this is not a rant. This is an honest-to-God question. I'm hoping to start some discussion here, or at least, having some people enlighten me. Really, I'm trying to understand.

Some backdrop: I was having a discussion with some local veteran community members the other day. One of them, a Dom and Sadist, happened to make a comment about the "kinds" of subs he likes to Top. I'm paraphrasing here, but basically the conversation went something like this:
Him: I would never play with a sub who tells me she has no limits.
Me: Why not?
Him: Because every sub has limits. If she doesn't know what hers are yet, that's fine, but I don't want to find out the hard way. If she's so new she can't even give me one limit, then I step back and say 'sweetie, come back to me when you discover a limit or two, and then we'll play.'
Me: But what if she really has no limit? What if she'd let you do anything you want?
Him: Then she's mentally unstable, and I don't want to play with her anyway. I don't play with crazy.

At this point, a lot (I won't say everyone, but a lot) of the people in the room started nodding their heads, like, yes, he's right, a sub with no limits is crazy.

So there seems to be this prevalent notion that subs, if they have any self-respect at all, if they're mentally sane, have to have some limits. Because not everything should go; a Top should not be allowed to do whatever he wants. That's foolish and dangerous. That could lead to disaster.

So here's my question: How come this rule doesn't apply to the kink community as a whole?

We're fed this belief that in our community of Sadists and masochists, debauchers and hedonists, everything goes. We repeat the mantra 'your kink is not my kink, and that is okay.' We're expected to erase judgement from our minds, treat it like a dirty little crime, never talk about it except with an air of disgust, a tone of contempt.
(As if we all could erase it from our minds. People judge other people. That's what we do. We can try to curb it, keep it down to a minimum, but we can never "evolve" ourselves past it.)
But if we have a community that accepts everything, and deplores nothing, refuses to entertain the idea that some things should just not be abided...
Don't we end up with a community full of crazies?

I really want to know why people seem to have this belief "a community without limits is a good kinky community." How is it good? How does it help the strength and growth of the community? I understand you want to protect it from the kind of discrimination and prejudice you find in the vanilla world. But surely, going to the opposite extreme of Anything Goes can't be healthy, either.
Can it?

Sometimes I'm Sick In the Not-So-Kinky Way

So I've been dealing with a cold for the week. And I don't know about you, but I consider having a cold for a whole week a Long Fucking Time. That rule about guests staying for three days? It should apply to colds too, you guys.
Unfortunately, like extended family, colds seem to put their fingers in their ears and do the la la la, I can't hear you song when you insinuate it is time for them to move on.
This morning I was texting Husband how sick and tired I am of being sick and tired.
He responded with one simple question: "Did you take Robitussin?"
DO'H! No I had not. But then I did...and man, is this stuff awesome, or what?
I feel so much better now!
I could run to the moon and back!
I could learn Russian in a day!
I might be a little high right now.
Not high enough to be completely non-functional, thank God. Just high enough to send an email to a friend letting him know I cannot forward him a link to a website, because I do not have his email address.
Yes, that just happened.
So I think now would be the perfect time to remind all you guys I'm giving a class at Folsom Fringe this year, it's exactly one week away, and I've decided I'm going hand out M&Ms at the end of my class. Maybe even M&M cookies.
Cause this is the dark side. We're supposed to have cookies.
Also, as I've been doing the last few years, I'm going to be live tweeting Folsom Street Faire, but this year, I'm going to bring a bag of googly eyes with me, and every toy I buy, I'm going to put googly eyes on it before I take a picture to show you.
Because...why not?
KINK IS FUN!

Exercise Should Not Count (But Apparently It Does)

I am currently sick.
I have a cold.
You know what that means for me?
NO S/m.

This does not mean no D/s. Far from it. I often get the brunt of MORE D/s dynamics stuff when I'm sick.
Husband likes to order me around when I'm sick, trying to tell me what to do to get better, because he doesn't like me being sick. He doesn't want a sick wife. He likes me healthy, because when I'm healthy, I'm happy, I can do my job as a mother and wife, I can fulfill my duties running the household, and he can do evil, sadistic things to me.  So he orders me to take it easy, he orders me to put on more clothes, he orders me to take my medicine like a good girl—
He makes me take Airborne, this high dose vitamin C crap, it tastes like cat piss—
Not that I know for sure, I have never tasted cat piss, but if you can imagine it, this would be it—
And he makes me go to sleep early. Like, insanely early.
He treats me like a little girl, which can be sweet at times....

We still have sex. The only times SEX has been "off the table" during our relationship was after each time I had either a baby, or surgery. But when I'm sick, he treats me to relatively painless sex, which means no roughhousing, no tussling, and no imposing physical torment involved.
You know what that means, right? It means no fun.

A friend of mine gave me a new cane last week. Isn't it a beauty?

This friend of mine is a sadist, and when I say sadist, I mean sadist. He's got a sick, twisted, evil fucking mind. He's generous with his toys, and will give them away gladly, because he knows more masochists in the world are suffering horrendous, indescribable pain strictly because of him. I think he considers his sadism a fucking vocation. 
Anyway, he gave me this cane (with the promise I tell him what it feels like, of course), but Husband has not had the chance to do any real damage with it on me so far, because I've been sick.

But I think my luck is about to change tonight.
Husband  called me earlier while I was working out.
"I can't talk right now," I huffed and puffed, "I'm working out."
"Oh, you're well enough to work out?" He asked. "That's good to know."
"Why?" I wheezed.
"Because if you're well enough to work out, you're well enough to get a caning," he said. "I'll see you later tonight."
"Wait! Husband! NOOooooooooo"

Number #5693 why I HATE WORKING OUT.

Update: 
So I got my caning. Hard enough to leave some nice marks, but not hard enough to make those marks last as long as I wanted. *sigh* Someday.
Also, I forgot to mention: The other time sex is Off The Table is on the Jewish holiday of Yom Kippur, which happens to begin tonight, at sundown...so no fun for me tonight, either. *SIGH*

Free to Not Want

If you've been in the scene for any length of time, you've probably seen this one before: a submissive masochist—let's say female, since I am speaking as a female submissive masochist—will start talking about her journey in kink, how she's getting into things she wasn't before, how she's discovering herself, she's learning, and trying, new tools, new techniques, and new methods of play.
Her point at the end always seems to be something along the lines of I didn't know I would like that so much, but I did! And it's awesome! I want more of that! More more more!
Inevitably, people within earshot—especially if they are male Dom Sadists—will applause and congratulate the sub on her journey of self discovery. She is lauded for being adventurous, and for stepping out of her comfort zone, facing her fear, to try something more kinky. And there are usually head nods of conveyed understanding, because of course she liked what she tried, all she had to do was go for it, to open up a whole new world of kink.

Here is something you don't usually see: a submissive masochist talking about how she stepped out of her comfort zone to try something new, was willing to face her fear, conquer whatever mental restraints she had holding her back, and decided in the end, she didn't like it, not one whit.
Very few submissive masochists own up to that shit, and people in the scene don't commend that. Kinksters don't praise that attitude.

And what I want to know is, why the fuck not?

Why don't we compliment people in the scene for discovering things they don't like? I don't know if this is an issue for Dominant Sadists, but it sure is a big issue for submissive masochists, speaking from a personal vantage point.
There seems to be this expectation on our journey of self-exploration, that the farther we go, the more willing and open we're supposed to be to, well, just about anything. If we decide we don't like something, that that's just not our kink, then something's wrong with the master plan.
We're supposed to get more kinky, not less.
More kink means more toys, more humiliation, more tears, more positions, more screams, more play.
More of everything.
More more more.

But guess what? Kink is not about conquering limits and facing fears. Well, it is for some of us, but it's about other things, too. It's about options, inclinations, choices of desire, deciding for ourselves what turns us on and what doesn't.

Kink, in a way, is about seducing ourselves.

Too many Doms and Sadists out there share a mindset that women are trapped in this prison of their own inhibitions, and it's the Dominant Sadist's job to free them from it. Once done, the Dominant Sadists think they deserve, and will receive, praise, respect, and reverence from the women they've liberated, as well as the community, for managing the herculean feat of transforming a shy, ignorant girl into a full-fledged kinky woman.

But this is not true freedom. The woman isn't free, she's just traded one set of confines for another. She's stuck in someone else's expectations of fantasy; maybe it's one Dominant Sadist's, or maybe it's the community's at large. But she's striving to become someone she's not, to meet someone else's set of ideals—not her ideals.

The bottom line is, a woman should be able to decide for herself what she wants and likes, and in order for her to do that, she also has to decide what she doesn't want or like.
It is so simple a concept, so logical when you think about it...and yet so many of us forget, or choose not to see.

Fetlife doesn't make it any easier. Notice how people can add as many fetishes as they want, yet have no way of creating a "limits" list? Sure, people can write one up themselves to put on their profile, but how many people actually do that?
Why are there so few?

So this is me, this is where I am on my journey right now: I don't like rope. Rope is not my kink. I don't like anything tight on me. I do love chain, but I let a very select few restrain me in that way, so if you've never been in my house and met my dog, you are likely not one of the few. I don't like needles. I don't like bugs, especially spiders.
There's more to this list, of course. If there's ever a need, I'll reveal more. But this is good for now.

I'm a work in process. I'm evolving. We all are, I think. Our lists change with time. But we should always be able to state with pride who we are, what we like...what we want, and what we don't.