DominusServae contacted me and we’ve been corresponding about his thoughts on the blog with relation to his own experience as a dominant male. It seems that much of what I have found with males is similar to what he has found. Kev and I did do some playing with paddles, corner time, kneeling. This journey is part of the evolution in our relationship and is referenced in my previous blogs. Most of that play seems to have subsided now and we use orgasm control almost exclusively although we do play from time to time to keep things exciting. While I don’t consider myself part of the D/s world, this is a a very interesting read and I wanted to publish it after gaining Dominus’s permission. I hope you enjoy the blog and please feel free to leave your comments and perspective below!
I am clearly not the most likely reader of your blog. But no matter, we have much more in common than a quick glance might suggest. I am a straight polyamorous dominant man and I have been living with my submissive, in chastity, for 21 years.
I found your blog because I went looking for commentaries on the practices of power exchange relationships that involve chastity and orgasm control.
What really strikes me about your blog is that your insights gained training Kevin and other men exactly mirror my insights training Rachel (not her real name) and other women over decades.
Like you I forbid that my partner masturbate. Like you I forbid my partner orgasm without permission. Like you I employ a chastity belt. (It’s a simple two chain arrangement. The first chain is around her waist. The second chain connects to the waist chain in the back and runs under her crotch. The two chains are connected together at her belly. Basically, it’s a chain g-string. It can’t be removed without a key, but the crotch chain can be pushed to the side to gain access. (Unlike mostly secure cock cages, truly secure female chastity devices are either too clunky for daily wear or require infibulation, which I eschew.) Unlike you we do regular BDSM, but like you I keep one specific Spencer paddle exclusively for punishments.
Like you I use corner time, kneeling on rice, and coins held against a wall during corner time. (Until I read your blog I had thought that coins against the wall was uniquely my invention.)
What is so striking to me about your blog, and the reason that I am writing to you, is that I see that we have essentially identical approaches and results.
I think, and I find this very interesting, that beyond the imperatives and essential differences associated with gender, that there is a larger, or at least parallel, categorization possible: tops and bottoms.
You have clearly discovered this as well. In your essay “In Defense of Submissive Men” you write:
“…I would describe sexuality across two different spectrums. Which gender(s) are you most attracted to? Do you desire a partner that is dominant to you or submissive to you?
Bingo!
The women I’ve trained over the years, like the men you have trained, have had trouble and deep inner struggle attendant to giving-up masturbation. They struggled to learn—my terminology—“to fuck not for their release but for their opening.”
In time each came not only to cherish her surrender, but to see her submission as a practice corresponding to her atavistic nature.
And here is the main point that I’m driving at: your piece “In Defense of Submissive Men” could as easily have been restructured, with tweaks to little more than pronouns, as an essay titled “In Defense of Submissive Women.” For example this passage:
“Submissive men are typically serial monogamists that seek to honor and become friends with their woman without “conquering” them. Submissive men seek to avoid the traditional power struggle from a relationship since they desire to be supportive and devoted.”
would be equally precise if the word “man” were changed to “woman,” and the word “woman” changed “man,” and the reference to “traditional” deleted, to wit:
“Submissive women are typically serial monogamists that seek to honor and become friends with their man without “conquering” them. Submissive women seek to avoid power struggle in a relationship since they desire to be supportive and devoted.”
Clearly the essence of a dominant women’s search for a man or men; and dominant man’s search for a woman or women is strikingly parallel.
I have the same realization as you: beyond gender our essential erotic attractions and our modes of intimate expression are hardwired as dominant or submissive. The underlying impulses to follow and serve, or to lead and take, whether they issue from a man or a woman, are fundamentally congruent.
I have a story to share about Rachel coming to embrace being owned. I’m pretty sure, from having read your blog, that you and Kevin will see your journey in it.
When Rachel moved-in she surrendered ownership of her orgasm to me. We had sex daily and I permitted her release only every few days. At first this was excruciatingly difficult for her. Sometimes, after I had “taken” her, she’d cry softly. Sometimes she would get ice to put on her pussy. If I took her late at night she’d have trouble falling asleep.
In time I extended the number of days between her releases. The famous phrase from the preface to Story of O came to have more and more meaning: “Keep me rather in this cage and feed me sparingly if you dare.” I certainly feed Rachel orgasms sparingly. You do the same with Kevin.
About 8 months after Rachel moved-in we were sitting quietly and cuddling on the couch. Under her clothing she had on her chastity belt. I asked her: “Rachel, do want me to give you back ownership of your orgasm?”
Rachel is thoughtful and generally replies after a pause, but not this time. I finished my question and practically before I had finished pronouncing the word “orgasm” she said “NO!”
I don’t know you or Kevin but this seems exactly parallel to Kevin discovering, although he would never cheat, that living “on the honor system” without his cage was less meaningful to him than living caged. He had grown, as I read your writing and his, an organic need and wish for the daily discipline of your cage which unceasingly affirms that his orgasm is not his, but yours. Submissives, both men and women, very often have this need of a touchstone. And, if you think about it, Kevin’s cage, like Rachel’s chains, are really super-powered wedding rings. The main difference is that the cage and the chains are completely private, while a wedding ring is an advertisement to the world.
In time the forms of surrender and service grow.
You have a section of essays titled Cuckolding.” Within that series of essays you write that your approach is to expand explorations within monogamy. In this we are different. In our exploration cuckqueaning has evolved as a deeper surrender and has brought us closer.
If the blogs of submissive men are to be believed at all, many caged men find a hard-to-admit but nevertheless organic impulse to be cuckolded. Some women that I’ve loved and trained, including Rachel, have sometimes meekly confessed to developing exactly the same wish, to become my cuckquean.
And just as your love for Kevin grows with his deepening surrender, I fall in love with Rachel more and more as her surrender and service deepens. I can’t tell you how moved I was a few years ago when this happened:
I had met a lovely and compelling woman at a university lecture on Byzantine iconography. I invited her to coffee after the lecture. Then, a week later, to lunch. Then after that to dinner. At dinner we kissed at the table. I told her about Rachel. I invited her to bed on the condition it be in my bed, in my home, with Rachel in the next room. She was shocked. She didn’t believe me at first. She tested and said: “How about tonight in my apartment?” I said: “No. Come to my house on Sunday at noon.” She said that she had to think about it.
On Sunday at noon she rang our buzzer.
I had Rachel open the door and invite her in. Rachel led this woman, unknown to her, to the living room where I was sitting on the couch. Rachel took our guest’s coat, and then went to the kitchen and left us alone.
About two hours later, as my date and I cuddled post sex, Rachel knocked on the bedroom door. I told her to come in. She put a tray on the bed: just-made warm muffins, butter and jam, a pot of tea and two cups.
I was so moved I puddled-up. Then I told her to get a third cup and join us.
The miracle? Not the event itself. The miracle was that the conversation between the three of us flowed and was not awkward.
This is an example of the primal Ds dynamic growing so deep and so strong that it can come to inform living itself. You understand this. I understand this. Millions are starved for it.
None of this has anything to do, as some of your readers might suggest, with belittling the sub; and nothing to do with demeaning the sub; and nothing to do with getting-over on the sub. This story is not about its specifics of non-monogamy or the genders of the individuals. This is a story about honoring the most private and vulnerable needs and wishes and organic callings in the souls of both a top and a bottom. Just those hungers and needs and callings that the vast majority of people bottle-up and never admit, much less ever explore.
I share all this because I see that your blog might help others come to live this bravely. I write because past the specifics of your impulses and mine we live in a shared universe. For some of us our natures as top and bottom are integral to our erotic orientation. Just as for others the essence of their orientation is being gay or straight, for us the center of gravity is being straight kinks. I’m convinced that this is how we are made.
To the extent we honor our primal and essential natures we honor ourselves, those to whom we reveal ourselves and those who reveal themselves to us.
And honoring ourselves and our nearest is, to my mind, the precondition of love.
With kindest regards,
Master DominusServae
This is interesting but spits in the face of some of your suggestions that masturbation and orgasm control being beneficial only with a woman in the dominant role. You posted this blog with very little commentary about how this changes your reality, if at all. What does this blog do to your opinions and the ideals promoted by this blog?
It does contradict some of my ideas about the male hormones being so much different than female hormones and quite frankly that works for me. I am just trying to tell you my truth and Dominus has a different truth that he contributed. I’ve yet to give it too much thought, he just sent this over yesterday but I did find it intriguing and asked his permission to post it.
Dominus has his truth. I have mine and you have yours. They may conflict. They may align. Any combination of confliction or alignment is quite alright with me,.
Any potential conflicting truth’s notwithstanding, this was a powerful part of his truth in his post, which I believe applies to many if not most of us that enjoy the absolute benefits of orgasm denial control and chastity:
“This is an example of the primal Ds dynamic growing so deep and so strong that it can come to inform living itself. You understand this. I understand this. Millions are starved for it.
None of this has anything to do, as some of your readers might suggest, with belittling the sub; and nothing to do with demeaning the sub; and nothing to do with getting-over on the sub. This story is not about its specifics of non-monogamy or the genders of the individuals. This is a story about honoring the most private and vulnerable needs and wishes and organic callings in the souls of both a top and a bottom. Just those hungers and needs and callings that the vast majority of people bottle-up and never admit, much less ever explore.”
VegasAng, this is the only blog post to date I recall where Emma has really touched on the words of male dominants. If anything, it is part of the epic journey Emma has been on since she started this blog. She’s thoughtful and open minded to different points of view. Her dominance, if I understood correctly, is based on practical observations of “bad behaviors” men exhibit. She’s not an ideologue from what I can tell.
Are you suggesting some kind of orthodoxy needs to be enforced? Maybe dominant men like myself should shut up? I can do that.
Thanks Spank. Yeah – I found this thought provoking and wanted to post it. Not in spite but BECAUSE it conflicts with some of my thoughts. I am just seeking to learn about relationships, what makes us tick and how we can manipulate those systems to get along in perfect loving harmony with each other.
Nobody is asking that you shut up, quite the contrary. Tell me where we differ so we can learn from each other.
Yup. Truth!
Emma, the phrase “what makes us tick” stood out for me. We all ‘tick” a little different and there is no universal box we all fit into – we are not all wired the same.
Master DominusServae, I very much appreciated and enjoyed reading your post (I can only aspire to be able to so clearly articulate my thoughts).
Both of you have had similar results with your partners (as My Goddess and I have), but I don’t believe that means the drivers/root causes of those results need to be the same. On this site there have been many things discussed about what may make us tick – hormones, compersion, insecurities, need for control, power dynamics, values and beliefs, uncontrollable urges to masturbate, etc. We will each have our own unique combination that drives us.
So, it is very possible that Rachel and Kevin are in the same place, but for very different reasons – i.e male hormones are most probably very different that female hormones – and thus there is no conflict between Emma’s and Master DominusServae’s thinking.
On another note, Emma your openness to criticism and diverging opinions is refreshing. On other sites, many of these posts would devolve into a flame war, but your approach is accepting and welcoming which instantly defuses any potential for misunderstanding or escalation by others. Thank you!
Love this!
First, I want to thank Emma for being big enough to publish my piece. The first sign of a true seeker in any realm is their willingness to listen to new, and even radically different, approaches to what they know or believe or even cherish. So thank you, Emma.
I just want to say this: if we have learned anything as modern adults it should be this: there are no one-size-fits-all prescriptions for how to live.
How many gays, terrified of coming-out, married, had families, and then, in middle age, jumped off of buildings because they could no longer endure their double lives and public lies? Many. And how did this happen? Society’s one-size-fits-all prescription of heterosexuality.
We have religious fanatics of all faiths who think the only real problem on the planet is that not everyone shares their religion. Some of these self-righteous-possessors-of-truth visit the most unspeakable crimes on those they deem apostates. These criminals, pretending adherence to some devine law or other, pedal their absurd one-size-fits-all orthodoxies and in the process visit suffering on untold millions.
Sociologists, anthropologists and therapists of all types tell us over and over that we live in a non-monogamous culture. We all know this. But we pretend that monogamy is a one-size-fits-all paradigm for responsible relationship. Poly families live in terror that the state, invoking parental monogamy as the only valid family structure, and therefore the one-size-fits-all family paradigm, will pull their beloved children from their breasts.
I know dominatrixes who argue that male dominants are, of their nature, the apotheosis of patriarchy. And I know male doms who think that dominatrixes are in perverse rebellion against the natural order. Both sets of these possessors-of-truth are absurd beings. Their views are just silly glorifications of their own subjectivities, nothing more. They are as intolerant and bigoted as the most provincial peasant.
There are clearly dominant men and dominant women, and there are clearly submissive men and submissive women.
We should strive, especially as members of sexual minorities, to support all who wish to pursue their happiness and live in harmony with their natures. Provided, of course, that their unions are consensual, without coercion and with adults.
Let’s leave all the one-size-fits-all answers to the intolerant, the bigots, the small-minded and the pedestrian. We should remember Saint Augustine who, centuries ago, wrote a book called “The Confessions” in which he wrote: “I am a man. Nothing human is alien to me.” Bravo to him! And bravo to Emma the seeker who openhandedly shares her approach and her experiences and, simultaneously, opens her blog to shared inquiry over orthodoxy.
Bravo Sir!