Fuck back in anger

In my travels through Kinksville, I've been all kinds of horny, but rarely angry at the same time. The closest I can remember is experiencing a pent up sexual frustration with Captain, about a year ago. That was a submissive need to be used, to be taken, to be fucked: to have an emptiness filled. This was almost precisely the reverse.

I was at a club, with Mannequin and a number of The Collective. We were very much in public and something in me had just snapped. I needed to use, to take, to fuck. To let all my frustration and annoyance boil over inside me and vent out into someone else's body. It wasn't passion, or sexual desire as such, it was about power. I absolutely needed to exert myself over her. Not play, certainly not my usual, planned, coolly methodical and detailed play.

Every single part of me was screaming out to do something violent. I was vaguely aware, through the heat of it, of an audience and could maintain a certain dark humour to the edge in my voice thanks to the role - I was taking the part of a military rakish cad, and she was my doxy. I barked for kit -for all the kit, any of the kit. And for my girl who was in easy reach, although her corset made me wish I'd bought it for her so I could just take a knife, cut the fiddly cords and throw the thing over my shoulder.

I pushed her down, hard against the bed, pulling off the rest of her clothes and unbuckling the thick leather belt from my waist, feeling the heavy weight of it against my hands. I hit her raised bottom with it, feeling her jerk back a little. That felt good. More than good. It felt right. There was something about the whole combination - my savage urges, her willingness to accept them. Even how we both looked enhanced the mood: her vulnerable and feminine in strips of lacy cotton, me strapped down and boyish in white vest, braces, big black boots. I looked and felt like an utter bastard and was relishing every moment.

A few blows with the belt and that was as close to foreplay as I got. Dildo went in the strap-on harness I'd fortunately had the presence of mind to put on before leaving the house. Lube. Condom. Her cunt. Fucking. Fucking until my legs were tired of fucking and I needed to drag her into an alcove and procure Boy Wonder to fuck her against the cold, dirty brick. Not til she was satisfied, but until I was.

Thinking back, there was nothing nice about what I did. Ringmaster turned around to me later and said "That wasn't for her. That was for you." He was right. It was about use. About what I wanted, and what I took. Like pounding the pavement on a hard run following a bad day, there's an exhilaration in getting it out, but also a self-centered-ness. Something you do for yourself.

It wasn't even about an urge to hurt her specifically - in the sort of mood I was in I'd have ripped or punched any soft target. Hurting her was better than hurting anyone else though. Safer and more satisfying. Not only because I knew my passion would fall on appreciative ground, but because she wasn't the cause of my frustration - she wasn't being punished. I was using her to make me feel better. And that was what we both wanted.

The day after, sated, tired. I lay in the sunshine on her lap and she fed me grapes. I've got an email in my inbox full of appreciation for what I did. The thrill of behaving like that and getting thanked for it.

I am a lucky bastard, and no mistake.

Boy troubles

Hi, I'm electronic doll. And I have a boy problem.

Turning the events of last weekend over in my mind now that I'm a little more able to express them without just repeatedly typing the words "I am an idiot" over and over again.

Friday evening. Happy and high from a small but perfectly formed play session with Mannequin, I unexpectedly happened upon Dandy playing intently with a roped-up submissive. I reacted by telling him to "fuck off" then storming out the building leaving confused friends in my wake.

The trouble wasn't what had just happened on the night, although it was an unpleasant surprise. It was my own understanding of where we were, and how my hopes and expectations caused miscommunication. The day before we'd had a classic "let's be friends" conversation. I explained my frustrations over lack of play and how I was having to quash and control my nascent feelings for him. He was clearly very unhappy and dealing with the emotional fallout from his previous relationship. We then discussed how he didn't want sex, intimacy or play or really any human contact beyond a hug. We hugged, we held hands. Then (crucially) we kissed, which broke all the circuits created by our conversation.

I'll admit to being confused. I'll also admit that my feelings for him meant that I probably erred on the optimistic "he actually wants me really" side rather than the "that was just a kiss" side. I let myself believe what I wanted to believe. I allowed myself to be let down. I do it a lot. We've talked since and cleared the air, although the hangover of feelings remains and I'm waiting for it to die down.

In the meantime, I have a problem. It's a very specific boy problem. I have always had it and probably always will. There is no known cure, and it can cause the world of difficulties on the kinky circuit: I get attached. Easily. To certain kinds of boys.

Here's how it works. I know that the person I will settle down with, for love and for keeps, is going to be male. It will also be one person - although we might chose to be open I know that emotionally I am not poly. The problem only occurs if I am single and available. If I already have a specific partner who fits my parameters or if I'm still feeling sore over the loss of a previous one, then, swan-like, I won't be interested in forming a serious bond with another until the feelings for them have faded.

I have a very particular type that clicks very strongly. I know them by their smell, I can track them down the street. Dandy falls squarely into that type. One of my long-term exes met at him and said "It's like looking in a mirror." At least I'm consistent. Something about them screams in my hind brain as being right for me and I need to have them. They are quite rare - to date I've met four or five - which might account for the ferocity of my response when I do find them.

When it happens, it happens. I can feel it happening. There's usually a point where I can back off, but generally, I don't, because that would be going everything that I want to do right there and then. And I'm only flesh and blood. So we fuck, or in certain instances, a kiss is enough. And it happens. Chemical reaction. Magic. Physical desire and lust at first but it will blossom into something else if allowed to do so. It will become a beautiful thing. If it can.

But if those feelings have nowhere to go I will get angry and frustrated. This is when it become really ugly. This is where I stop being rational and start to need very clear rules of engagement or the part of me that is deeply animal, into territorial pissing and obstinately uncivilised will get very angry. This is where D/s helps, actually, because it means I can sit down and agree with them what we are doing, how often and where. As long as there is clarity, I can manage. And this is how The Photographer and I mediated our relationship. And also how it broke down, because the weight of what I wanted was too much for what he had to give.

Rightly or wrongly, I size this sort of man (more than other men, and more than women) up as future partners. And I do not want to share them emotionally. This means that there is more stress, more pressure on my interactions with them. More capacity for emotional investment and, when it goes wrong, for unhappiness. Sometimes I despair a little because it makes life difficult and complicated. However, it is just how I am and frankly, can't be helped. It's also the side of me that makes me passionate, energised and, eventually, when it works, deeply, wholly and utterly in love.

I'm now firmly in an "off phase" at the moment, sulking and glowering a little until I've sorted myself out from this latest failure. It will fade, I know. And there will be others, I know. Especially with the Spring weather wrapping itself around my heart and my cunt in such a way that each bouncing step is getting nearer and nearer to a predator's click on the pavement.

Dedicated follower of fashion

"Fashions fade, but only style remains."

I'm always going to support a woman who favoured androgynous styles. There are fashions (popular styles and practices) in BDSM as in everywhere else. Tastes change as time goes on, not only in fetish wear but in what people do, how they do it and with what.

There is a current yen for Ultra Violence in public play, particularly scenes that resemble, and in some cases are, "proper" fights: grappling, wrestling, punching, kicking and martial arts. Ultra Violence is a very showy form of BDSM, and as an exhibitionist I can fully understand the attraction. It's big, loud and brash, it looks terrifying and makes everyone feel hopped up on adrenaline as well as feeling like they are in Fight Club.

Now, I perform violence when I do live torture shows and I have been known to enjoy struggle play. But those are much more about the illusion or threat of violence. It is very rare that I hit or am hit with anything like full force. In private, I don't actually play especially hard as my first preference. Generally, I like the more D/s aspects of care and control. When it comes to pain delivery I tend to go for very focused and detailed "sharp" pains such as needles or electricity. So whilst UV is on my kinky spectrum, it's not my number one priority.

There's an anxiety from certain quarters (warranted or not) about the safety of UV and following from this, some criticism of how younger members of the scene are playing and allowing others to play - I include myself in this since I've had such comments directed at groups I'm involved in. I'll admit that I have also been a little unnerved at the prevalence of such play, especially when it seems to involve blows that are not pulled and using techniques that stem from combat training rather than play techniques.

However, UV is an exciting form of play, and given that nothing we do in BDSM (or in life) is without risk, what exactly is the problem here, if everyone is consenting - is it just another in the long list of things that we have done to upset our elders and supposed betters on the scene or do we risk overlooking a serious concern in favour of turning into yet another Old Guard vs New Guard false binary debate?

I've outlined the attractions of UV, so here's some of the problems. I think we need to be mindful of the way that this can make the scene can look to outsiders. This is something of a concern, because attracting and maintaining new blood (and new, male submissive blood in particular) is an ongoing issue. This isn't to say that we should reign in our passions or our predilections because of fear of what other people might say, but it is worth bearing the "trend factor" in mind when you are dealing with new folk. Or indeed if you are new (hi!) and you see/hear about it.

The problem with trends is that whenever something is a la mode, it becomes common to talk about and to display it in public. It becomes representative of the scene as a whole. It can even be a major part of what the scene is and there is a danger that something which is simply The New Black becomes a shibboleth for entry into Kinksville. This could be true of any sort of play, not just UV - and it marks certain sorts of play as "better" than others (which, unless we are talking about genuine and real safety concerns, doesn't exist). So if the cycle of trend makes something out to be the be all and end all, then there's an issue. There's nothing more damaging for the scene, and by extension for ourselves, as making people feel excluded because they don't play hard enough, heavy enough or in X or Y fashion.

The second point is more related to the type of BDSM that UV represents. Excessive force is dangerous, especially martial arts or fighting styles - that's what they are for. They are not designed for play, they are designed for hurting people. When it comes to any sort of heavy, fast, violent play (of which UV is only one) things can go wrong and people can get actually hurt. So, knowing that, and being a bunch of responsible, peer-supportive type kinksters, what do we do?

I've had innumerable conversations about UV and recently organised a small peer learning workshop with martial artists and stage combat practitioners. Now, we didn't reach any grand or dizzying conclusions beyond anything you might know yourself, but the event was well worth doing because it reinforced some points I've suspected:

People are squishy and vulnerable. Oh how true this is! There's nothing like a room of perverts with mixed fighting skills to show you just how many ways there are to really hurt someone. And these aren't "just" punches and kicks, these are broken bones, broken backs and going-to-a-hospital-in-a-hurry injuries. More to the point, even amongst the four of us, there was extra-ordinary variation in where and how the same action hurt, or didn't hurt, how it could be done or if it could be done at all.

Combat training that teaches you to kill people is dangerous. I did say they weren't ground breaking conclusions. But it's always worth checking the obvious. And we decided that some things are just not safe in a play context and cannot be made sufficiently safe. There is a school of thought that all risk can be mitigated, and whilst that is true, we do not all have multi-million pound budgets and sometimes the reward is not worth the effort needed. We worked on ways to deliver the same result in different ways.

Violence - and simulated violence - is hard to do even if you know how to do it properly. We all warmed up, stretched, talked through what we were doing and knew what we were doing. We still made mistakes. We forgot things that we had been taught. We landed funny. We hit harder than we should have done and began to react in "non-play" ways: this was especially the case when we got "in the zone", which is precisely the sort of situation that is likely to occur in play - adrenaline and excitement can take over even the most careful, controlled and experienced person.

Your environment and your partner will be as much, if not more, of a factor than you. We were working in an extremely controlled and safe situation. During a scene it is unlikely that there will have been, as in this case, step by step discussion of what is going to happen, your partner will not know everything you are going to do. You will not know everything about how they will react, and even if you have prepared the space yourself you may not be aware of all environmental factors.

The pain barrier

"What do you feel like tonight then?" Mannequin is a little poorly with a cold, half curled up on top of me at a quiet gathering of The Ladies Who. She squirms a bit in my lap and brings her face close to mine: "pain"

That's it. The one word. That's all I need. My eyes probably glinted with greed and pleasure. I know what it is to want pain, to have something inside that needs to come out through your skin, the kind of frustrated charge that builds up. But is that the same as what she gets when she needs pain? I'm not sure. I know from conversations that I can hit her harder than I have been, she's got a small frame and little body fat so I've been erring on the side of caution, but I know I need to get over that.

I strip her down slowly, tie her to the St Andrew's cross. I start to pat the backs of her legs, bottom and shoulders. Light touches, but firm, then building up. As I hit harder, I concentrate on her bottom, cupping a little so I'm hitting the "sweet spot" just where the curve meets the top of the thighs. More and more I'm relying on my hands to deliver pain, I have better control of both my impact and of measuring the response. Also hands can get places that tools can't. Fingers pinch and dig in between muscles to grip, pull and grind something half way between a deep tissue massage and a bruising thrust. There is a freedom in hands and a lustfulness of simply clutching flesh.

After a while, I position the Sybian underneath her spread legs and sit her down on it, turning both the vibration and rotation on mid-way, then continue to spank her. As I build the blows to a peak she moans and then starts to scream, I stop for a few seconds then start again. I switch to a long crop to give a contrast, striking both against her breasts and bottom.

The screams are hot. I love her screams and I feel myself get wet as I hit her as she cried out. But they also concern me. I'm not sure whether I'm reading the screams correctly - are they a warning signal or a signal that the "right" level of pain has been reached? We haven't done much with pain before and I'd rather give less good play than too much bad play.

I've reached the dominant pain barrier. This is the point that exists for the person delivering the blows, when giving pain becomes difficult. My empathy is counting against me, as is my own memory of submission. I realise that what I was aiming for was a less extreme version of my own experiences with the balance of pain and fucking machines. But why did I feel the need to tone it down? After all, I enjoyed those extreme experiences: they were hard going but they were also powerful and wonderful.

I am letting my view of her as "delicate" become a barrier to delivering SM. This attitude works very well for dominance - I am the strong one who is protecting, authoritative and in control. A curator of a beautiful porcelain object. Look, but don't touch, I want to tell others, and the warning is holding true for me as well. Ultimately, I have a very contrary set of impulses. I want to hurt her. But I don't want to hurt her hurt her. I care for her and she is "mine" to look after, which means not breaking her. I am perhaps stopping too soon and being too gentle. It's not a moral barrier. I don't feel bad for hitting her, or as if I am a bad person for wanting to hit her, that at least is one quandry I haven't faced yet, the much talked about "dominant guilt." For me, it's judging the exact quality and quantity of pain to give her.

We haven't had a big discussion yet so it might well be that what I did give her was enough, was the right amount: I hope so. It might also be that there is a need for me to put myself through the pain barrier: to push her to the breaking point and to dry her tears afterwards, wrap her up in a blanket and fuck her.

All kinds of conversations

I had a day full of perverts old and new yesterday, and lots of discussion.

I started out with a breakfast date with a good looking black man who messaged me from a kinky Internet dating site. It's been a while since I've actually been on a date with someone I've never met before. I've been selecting from friendship groups quite a lot and am attempting to break out of that due to the general lack of available, suitable submissive men. He was a little late, but apologetic, and earned bonus points for looking like his photograph, if not better. We chatted for a while over coffee, about the usual things: our kinks, what we do for a living, our passions. The conversation felt a little strange, as if neither of us was especially at ease. It felt almost like a job interview, which I suppose in some ways these kind of meet ups do.

I am appalling at small talk, I've never really seen the point, and he appeared to be a little on edge - it took me the longest time to get him to crack a smile and longer still to laugh at one of my crappy jokes. We walked around town a little, and I tried to get a feel for him, as best as is possible within a few hours. I found him attractive, he was interesting, ambitious and we had kinks in common certainly, but there was a disconnect, perhaps because of his "newness", perhaps because I'm not sure how much space I have in my life for a completely new partner. Was I feeling awkward and just imposing that on him?

But there was also something else. And I'm still turning it over in my mind. When we discussed his kinks it turns out he is interested in submitting specifically to a Caucasian woman for racially orientated humiliation play. He said the word "nigger". I tried not to squirm. I tried to - and am still trying to - put this in the context of YKIOK. I don't know if I can do it, I don't know if I want to do it, or whether it does anything for me as a dominant - the specificity of humiliation usually means that buttons and triggers are variable according to different people, but this one makes me feel awkward (never a good thing) and it also doesn't feel particularly personal: would any Caucasian woman do?

So, still reeling a little, I met with Dandy for some much needed hugs and assurances about being neither strange nor a stranger. Unfortunately, he's still sore from his own personal disappointments and we ended up having a rather unsatisfying conversation trying to work out where we stood and whether he was still interested in me. I want to support him as a friend but I also miss him as a lover, which he doesn't want or is unable to deliver. It wasn't really clear. I'm not sure where that really leaves me. After a no-score draw of circling repetition we went in search of pastures new to yet another coffee place to chat with more perverts, including the poorly but always beautiful Mannequin and realised that I had missed her rather a lot.

Then to dinner with Boy Wonder and Majeste and we got to discussing the malaise that is wrapping itself around Kinksville at the moment, and something I am feeling certainly. It's more than a preponderance of colds, sniffles and sadness. I tried to describe it as everyone currently facing the wrong way in a complicated dance. Person X likes person Y who wants person Z but not in the same way that they really would prefer. If it were a piece of string I might spend an hour or two untangling it, but you can't do that with people and their feelings. And some things cannot be fixed.

By the end of it all, I was a very confused mix of confusion, happiness and sadness. Confusion for my reaction to the date this morning: I'm not at all sure what it says about me or what I'm going to do about it. I was very happy for having spent a day with so many of my friends, and to be reminded of how much I am loved, wanted and liked. Sad for the fact that I am missing some of those things that I really want, including regular sex, romance and the stability and quiet energy of any sort of "fixed" relationship that is definitely mine.

I took a piece of advice once offered to me in my teens whilst at University, by a very Scottish friend of mine (say it in your best accent, it works better: "go home, have a wank, you will feel better in the morning."

He was right, you know.

Frustrations and friendships

A conversation I had with Knight of Wands a week or so ago keeps going around in my head. It was about the challenges of protection in a BDSM context (no, not condoms). We both get a lot of pleasure out of being a protective dominant, in being the strong, reliable one and we both find it hard when that aspect is thwarted because it makes us feel out of control.

At the moment I am feeling frustrated. And the worst part is that it is no-one's fault so the blame falls nowhere but sits heavily around my shoulders and makes me more frustrated. There's a lot of boring life stuff going on that means I have very little time and the time I do have is being eaten by work. Both Mannequin and Dandy, for very good, very real and very sad reasons have been off the radar and off kilter. Given that the nature of our relationship with each other is deliberately light-touch (low protocol, casual) reacting as a dominant is inappropriate. Also, you can't really order someone to "feel better" or rather you can, but it doesn't work and makes you an insensitive wanker.

When I care for someone, when I start to develop even an iota of feeling, I start to become fiercely protective. I do the same for my friends, for my family and for my lovers. The latter category is interesting because it is coloured with D/s. As a dominant I feel a sense of duty towards the other person. It's an odd phrase to use, because that makes it sound onerous, whereas it's absolutely not a chore, quite the reverse, it's something I want to do, need to do. By being able to care for them I make myself stronger.

Just the same as when a friend is hurt and you cannot help nor comfort them - you feel like less of a friend. If I cannot protect my submissives, in some way make their lives better by being in it, then I am less of a dominant. I can't fix any of the things that are making them unhappy. I think it's fair to say that "apply more dominance!" is not the answer in these circumstances, and I'm hoping that I'm doing the best I can by giving them space and being their friend. And I'm happy to be so, because I am their friend.

Mostly.

Because, let's face it. I also want to be their dominant, which isn't always friendly. And there's a selfish kernel of concern in me that worries perhaps more and more they will want to be "just friends" and less and less be interested in the sexual, emotional, intellectual pot-boiler that is D/s. Because it's not easy going, casual fucking. It does take it out of you (and gives too, but there must be effort expended first). I am as demanding and high maintenance as a dominant as I ever was as a submissive: I don't give much quarter, I expect whatever orders I give to be obeyed and I have high standards. In short, I'm probably hard work. I like to think I'm worth it, but I can also see that at times it might be too much.

The consequence is that at the same time as I have been rather missing them, and generally missing out on kink and social activities, I've also been feeling less and less like "their" dominant and more and more like just a dominant. And a slightly lonesome, frustrated one at that.

Tissues

I currently have Pervert's Plague. Which is like Manflu only much, much worse and together with some very dull Real Life Things is getting in the way of many BDSM activities.

Exciting installments to follow, in the meantime, have a look at this website full of kinky kitten things that Mannequin was purring over last night before I had to, sadly, send her home so she didn't catch plague. Although being the thoughtful sort, I made sure she was equipped with some ben wa balls to keep her amused in my absence.

In the meantime, I am enjoying the gossip our mere presence (there may have been some shocking and deviant hand holding, and a kiss or two) at a recent house party "blew the mind" of one of her vanilla friends. If they only knew...

Inappropriate content

Recently, mobile Internet providers (mine is o2, here's some of their thoughts here) have been blocking access to particular websites deemed suitable only for the over 18s. Needless to say, regulators are being blamed. However the lack of consultation, prior warning and indeed complete randomness of sites that are banned (I can get IC, but can't search for latex tentacle dresses) is entirely the bag of the service providers, not their regulators. Also, the regulator in question is funded by the mobile companies, so we can put the problem squarely back at their door. You broke it, you bought it, o2.

The reason for this? Someone wanted to think of the children. It seems that parents are getting contract phones for their children, so rather than setting up parental controls on those phones, all phones need parental controls. Now, aside from the fact that this is rather like me buying a dog and expecting everyone else to walk it, as an argument it seems a little like, well, bullshit.

There's a good article here on bitterwallet.com which touches on some of the problems caused by this decision. The key one being that the remit of the IMCB means there is absolutely no way of ensuring that parental controls could actually stop children from seeing any "inappropriate content".

Let's also take a moment to consider the phrase "inappropriate content". It is almost certain that you and I are thinking about different things and indeed there is a general lack of any consistency in terns of what is and isn't appropriate, even before I lament the grammatical failure of the phrase (if I'm googling porn, and get porn, I'd consider that pretty appropriate).

Sadly, a lot of the sites that are blocked are educational, specifically sex education. Exactly the sorts of sites that young people need access to. There's a good article here on the problem with how mobile censorship (doesn't) work and how it often restricts access to useful areas (like sex education) but allows "family friendly" boobs-out images, such as appear in The Sun. This means that not only is this censorship not working, it is actively working against that which it purports to do: look after children.

So, if you have a spare few minutes today, I'd suggest you shout at your mobile phone company. Then email them.

Who's your Daddy?

Boots. Sharp trousers. White shirt. Gold signet ring. No makeup. Wide stances. Wandering hands. Reaching up to feel someone's bottom, groping. Handing out drinks, grinning like a bastard and saying "who's your Daddy?". Feeling up pretty girls and boys with little differentiation, when I'm feeling like this, dressed like this, behaving like this, their actual gender is irrelevant, only the fact that they beautiful and that they are on one level or another my bitches.

I've been experimenting more and more with my masculinity of late, and it's making me rather pleased with myself. That I can express this side, and feel comfortable, powerful, sexy and happy in doing so is a testament to the people around me. It also an acknowledgement of my own development. Like my switch-self, there is a queer self which encompasses masculinity as a natural bedfellow with my androgyny, my womanhood, my kink and my cultural background.

In the past I've been nervous about expressing either my femininity or my masculinity. When younger, I often felt gawkish and out of place as if I was neither one thing nor the other. I wasn't brought up as particularly feminine - a fact I am extremely grateful to my parents for. I was a tomboyish kid with the endless bruised and scraped knees of a childhood growing up on a street with no "little girls" so constantly falling out of trees or off bicycles. We got a lot of hand-me-downs and from those I was allowed to chose my own toys and clothes. I was never forced to dress in girly outfits and that together with my short hair and Tonka Truck obsession meant that I was often taken for a boy outside of school (there was a ghastly skirt and hat uniform). At school, with its clear, gender defined lines my fledgling identity was put into crisis.

I remember losing the boys as friends when I grew a little older: they were encouraged to play less and less with girls by their deeply sexist (I can see that now) parents. I became marooned on Girl Island. The games that girls played were strange and odd to me - composed of cliques, secret languages and power plays that would make the cruelest psychological dominant blanch. Each day was spent working out where you stood in a shifting social order of who was best friends with who, something I was spectacularly poor at. I still hankered after male companionship, made less and less easily accessible with the onset of puberty and my lack of conventional feminine attractiveness. I was stuck in the middle at a time and place where there was no middle ground.

A common term of abuse thrown at me was "boygirl" because I had no female friends. There was a lot of bullying, of that uncertain kind where you know you are excluded and you know people are being horrible to you but because no-one is actually calling you names or pushing you in puddles it's hard to quantify, much less tell anyone. Eventually I told someone and then spent the next few years being steadfastly ignored alternating with frustrating periods of trying to "fit in" with other girls including bouts of controlled eating patterns until finally, eventually, and with the escape velocity that comes from leaving home and going to University (thanks to a thoughtful and well prepared Grandfather who calculated the cost of the education he never had) I realised that fitting in was a dreadful, soul crushing compromise. The better plan was to work out who I was and to enjoy it.

And that's a work in progress.

I'm still finding the language of masculinity a challenge, especially when it comes to kink. Uncertain whether I am merely playing with the master's toolbox and in essence, supporting the system of "naturalised" Mf assumptions and prejudices deeply prevalent in the scene. I adopt masculine language patter and use feminine subservient terms such as "bitches", riffing off gangsters old and new, and also in part that marvellous scene in Elizabeth The Golden Age, which I really enjoyed for its presentations of the challenges of being female and being in power.

I solace myself by remembering that whilst masculinity, and the words that surround it, sits well with dominance it is only because they are both perceived as synonyms for power. In fact, masculinity is a socially constructed mode of behaviour rather than simply the biological happenstance of "being male". There is no reason that having a certain set of chromosomes should mean one is especially given to operating on a particular side in sexual games of power or control except that we train boys to be masculine (dominant) and girls to be feminine (subservient). Our upbringing and education system is practically a pink/blue caste system in which we separate everyone into girls and boys and raise them into male and female irrespective of the sorts of people they are. We are also taught that the two are unbreakable binaries: that to be feminine means you are emasculated, to be masculine is to be unfeminine.

The truth of the matter is that "masculine" and "feminine" are just models of presentation or performance consisting of many fine strands of behaviours, ways of seeing and doing. I feel at my most comfortable in jeans, tshirts and trainers. Even now, either hyper femme or very butch I feel as if I'm "dressing up". I've learnt over time to enjoy being playful with these roles rather than getting sucked into social anxieties of contrived gender impulses.

It also helps that the more I break out my boyishness the more I seem to turn those around me into blushing masses of uncertainty and excitement.