Playing with fire

I think that my biggest kink is mind play. I like physical experiences, but the body has so much more limitations than the mind. You can vary the intensity and parts of the body to which you apply physical pain, but in the end, the experiences are quite similar. Of course, most of the time there is some emotional aspect related to the physical pain, but the spectrum of emotions you can elicit this way is rather limited to low-level ones, like fear or anger. The human mind on the other hand… There, the possibilities of inflicting pain are almost endless.

I am fortunate enough to have found someone who is equally fascinated by the possibilities of mental torture that the human brain has to offer. I love to be emotionally tortured and he loves to give me pain in this way. Seems like a match made in heaven, right? I thought so too, but it is not as perfect as it seems. What feels kind of schizophrenic in our relationship is that what we feel for each other enables us to play the way we enjoy the most, but also puts us at a huge risk of losing each other. One of the things that drew us together was almost impossible compatibility of our kinks. The same compatibility might bring our doom.

One of the things that we love to play with is rejection and humiliation. I suffer the most when I feel unloved, unimportant and ridiculed. When I am made to feel worthless and lonely. And there is no better person to make me feel that way than someone who I love dearly. He owns my heart and he can easily break it. And is there a worse pain than that of heartbreak and betrayal? For me, not much can compare. So I give him my heart to play with. And I urge him not to be cautious. Each time we play, I can feel it crack a tiny bit more. So far, we've been always able to fix it, so that not even a scratch is left. But will we always be?

Even though he has so much control over me, the biggest part of it, is the control over breaking things. And I am the one who does the fixing. I am the one who puts the effort into bringing myself together. It is not like he wouldn't want to make this effort, he just simply can't. He can help me with that, but he can’t just order me to feel better and wait until it will magically happen. For some reason, fixing things is way more complex, uncertain and internal than breaking. I have to do the work, and it is a kind of work that can't be forced. That’s the scary part for him because it is something that he has no control over, but at the same time, it affects him. So, even though it seems like I am putting my life in his hands, he is also putting his in mine. Or at least his emotional well-being. He has all the power to break me and he has a big understanding of the results of his abuse. At the same time, each time that we play, we push a bit further and it is a new territory that we are discovering. So he can never be sure if he is not going too far this time. And whether or not it was too far is actually entirely up to me.

It is not only my emotional health that we are toying with. Also, the future of our relationship is at stake. We are putting at risk something that we both care a lot about, for the sake of what? Sexual pleasure? That doesn't sound very reasonable... But is it only sex we are talking about? Would our relationship be as deep and intense without our sick little games? We actually need immense levels of trust and knowledge of the other person if we want to engage in this kind of play. Levels that you might not come across in a ‘vanilla’ relationship. We are extremely vulnerable as we display the darkest corners of our souls to each other. And being loved in such moment or even especially for those dark sides feels radically accepting.

So isn't it ironic? The more we are putting our love at risk, the deeper it becomes and the more there is to lose. The more we feed the fire, the bigger it becomes and the more heat it gives, but also the harder it gets to control. So here we are, caught in this bidding game, where the only way to go is to go forward and hope that you will keep winning. I feel that the odds are in our favour. And even if we lose, isn’t it better to have something special and then lose it, than never have it at all?

Lessons on pain, suffering and humiliation from Soptik and EisEve

Last weekend, Soptik and EisEve gave a performance followed by a 2-day intensive workshop at Ellipsis in Rotterdam. I attended both with high hopes and was not disappointed. In fact, I've learned way more than I expected.

The performance

Their performance left me speechless. I’ve heard that Soptik is a real sadist and I was prepared for an hour of enjoyment mixed with embarrassment while watching EisEve being tortured in his ropes. What I have seen was nothing like what I have expected. True, she was suffering for most of the performance, but mostly it was a spectacle of humiliation and objectification and a show of an intense D/s dynamic. And it was beautiful.

He started strongly by cutting open EisEve clothes and putting her in a partial involving only a neck rope, causing her to tiptoe and struggle for her life while he was tying a TK. He then put her in a series of transitions, each one slightly more difficult and exposing than the previous. She took them all gracefully. What was amazing to me was how intensely Soptik was focused on his model. He barely watched his ropes. His eyes were almost constantly fixated on her. And he was taking his time. He wasn’t hurrying from one position to another. Each position was a feast on its own and he was delighting in every little drop of EisEve suffering.

And she does suffer beautifully. From the first till the last moment of the performance, she was completely surrendered to him. You could feel that she would let him do anything to her. She was there at his disposal, surrendering completely to his ropes, with her eyes closed and her body relaxed. At the same time, she wasn’t lifeless. She was truly present and you could feel the intense emotions that she is going through.

At some point of the performance, Soptik gagged her with her own panties, which he previously cut open, and tied a white cloth around her mouth and eyes. Then he proceeded to draw a smile and a pair of eyes on the fabric. This was a powerful message of objectification. For me, it was like saying ‘Look at her, she is all mine. She will let me do anything to her. And I will execute this power.’ That really touched me. I rarely see such expressions of submission in rope performances, and at the same time, they are something that I really look for in kinbaku.

On top of everything, Soptik is an extremely skilled rigger. His moves were confident and fluent and each position that he put his model in was executed with great care and seemed simple, but was actually very complex. He was deliberate in creating shapes from EisEve body. And the shapes that he was creating were not always making his model beautiful. She was a material that he was forming according to his desires. And his desires were often to expose and objectify her. He ended the performance with a single point TK suspension, which was a very dramatic position, making the model resemble a hanged person. Another powerful message.

For me, the entire performance was comparable to that of Bingo, that I’ve seen in Paris, in terms of the intensity, skill and the qualities of kinbaku and D/s that it displayed. It left me extremely excited for the workshop.

The workshop

And the workshop didn’t disappoint. There was lots of pain and suffering, but most necessary, it was not without a reason. I think that the most important lesson that I have learned from it is that as a model you want to suffer in ropes for someone. If you see your rigger paying attention to you and enjoying what he is creating, it really makes it worthwhile to go through all the pain and discomfort.

Soptik kept repeating that for him every moment of the scene is important and that he wants to enjoy the model in his ropes as much as possible. Therefore, it is really crucial to pay attention to your model by learning how to minimize the amount of time that you look at your ropes when tying. You want to enjoy the model and the feelings that you evoke in her and for that, you need to pay attention to her, not the ropes that are on her body. They are just an object, they don’t have feelings. But your model does. And that is what you are after.

For me, it really does make a difference, because I treat my scenes as an emotional journey. I go through a spectrum of emotions when being tied and if the rigger does not appreciate them then I miss the point of doing it. I know that there are different reasons why people tie and this is not the only ultimate one, but it is for me. That’s why Soptik teaching resonated so much with me.

Another thing is that as a model, once I decide to tie with someone, I should be willing to suffer for them. That also means that I should try to overcome small nuisances, like a pinching rope, as long as they are not dangerous. In that way, I make sure that we can enjoy the scene and its flow with minimal disturbances. I learned that any time that I communicate to the rigger, I take us out of our headspace and we have to make a big effort afterwards to get back in. Therefore, it makes for a way better scene if I suffer through small discomforts, even unintentional, and only communicate things that I really important.

Finally, watching Soptik tie and interact with EisEve completely changed my views on D/s relationships. Throughout the workshop, he kept exposing and humiliating her, by for example casually exposing her breasts and crotch. Not for a moment though it made me think of her as weak or less a person than he is. (And that is how I usually feel when someone does something like that to me.) On the contrary, I thought that she is very strong and brave for being so vulnerable to him in front of us. I could also see how much she means to him and how much he appreciates her and I understood that even though there is a power imbalance in their relation, it does not mean that either of them is less valuable.

Some of you might say, ‘Duh...’, but for me, it was quite an eye-opener. So far, I’ve rather seen myself as showing weakness when expressing my submission to my boyfriend in front of other people. And now, when I saw how it might look from the outside, I don’t think of it as appearing weak anymore. I think that it is touching and beautiful. And both sides show strength by expressing it.

Our scene

As a culmination of this weekend, I experienced Soptik’s tying myself. And it was again both different and better than I expected. He asked me to tie because he really liked my expressions of suffering in ropes and I agreed because I could see that we have many common kinks and I expected that he would put me through an amazing journey. And he did.

I think that I have never experienced so much pain and humiliation at once given with so much intention and enjoyment. Especially by someone who I barely know. The way he was hurting me and the emotions that he was able to evoke in me by giving me pain made me re-evaluate how I see myself as a masochist. For a while now I have thought that I prefer emotional masochism over the physical one. And partially it is still true. Soptik made me realize what you can achieve when you combine the two. A mind-blowing experience.

I guess that there are not so many things that can make one as panicky and vulnerable as experiencing pain from which there is no escape. I am a masochist and I like pain, but only to a certain degree, and I am not even sure if my pain tolerance is that high. I can take quite a bit, but not without strong reactions and I only experience mild levels of very specific kinds of pain as pleasurable. The pain that he was giving me was definitely above my limits. But he overpowered me mentally and physically and made me feel like there is nowhere to go from it. He made me submit to the pain and to him and accept whatever he is giving to me. And that really changed my perception.

At some point, I started enjoying way more than I usually do. It seemed like because there was no escape, my mind decided that it is better for me to think that it is what I truly want. And then, for a submissive, there is something really special about letting someone torture your body and seeing them enjoying it. And he definitely was enjoying torturing me. It made me very confused because, on the one hand, I wanted the pain to stop, but on the other, you wanted to keep pleasing him. Also, he kept humiliating me. He twisted my body and exposed me. He tied my face and made me drool on myself and then smeared the saliva over my face. He slapped me and beat me and stepped on me. At some point, it turned me into a needy wimp and I just wanted him to be nice to me and caress me, but he kept only hurting and degrading me. That made me only more miserable and more submissive.

I was truly amazed by how much I can take from a complete stranger. He was my teacher for two days, I have seen him tie and we talked a bit, but there was not much more that I knew about him. I have always thought that degradation and humiliation are something that I can only do with someone that I have a deep relation with. But it turns out that it is not necessarily the case. I think that because I could see very clearly that it is something that he enjoys, I felt safe to enjoy it as well. To show my real self to him and let him take us on this journey.

At the same time, it was very different from what I experience with my partners that I have a deeper relationship with. I think that there was not so much emotional depth behind it and because of that, it was less (emotionally) dangerous. It was a very strong and pure D/s power exchange, but at the same time did not have the emotional loading of humiliation play that I have with my boyfriend for example. Having a deep relationship with someone definitely changes the angle of play, because he can hit you in more emotionally vulnerable places. And that requires way more aftercare that I felt like I need after this scene.

Here, I felt like a victim, first caught and overpowered and then slowly, by means of torture, turned into an obedient pet. It was really amazing and intense and at the same time very contained within the scene. I feel like rope is a great tool to create this kind of emotions. It makes you powerless and vulnerable and can cause a lot of pain. At the same time, it's not like cuffs or straps that only immobilize you. Your partner keeps on making you move, reminding you of the power that he has and at the same time putting you in a kind of trance. It's also very theatrical in a way which for me works great in putting my mind on an emotional journey. Since it is a non-verbal tool, the flow of energy is in a way purer and therefore might be stronger than when you use words, even though the exchange might be less intricate, as I feel like only more basic dynamics can be expressed without verbal communication. Still, you can achieve the intensity and experience emotional journey that is really special and hard to come across otherwise with such minimal tools.

My lessons

I can already see my boyfriend laughing at this one, but I think that I can safely say that this weekend was a life-changing experience for me. Or at least, it changed the way I look at many things.

First of all, I strengthened my conviction that what I am looking for and want to experience in rope is an intense D/s dynamic. I want to see suffering and submission. I want to see humiliation and eroticism. And finally, I want to see simplicity and beauty created by using the model as a canvas. And that is exactly what Soptik and EisEve showed in their performance.

Secondly, I’ve learned that the intention of both the rigger and the model can make or break the scene. On the rigger side, it is extremely important that he enjoys what he is doing to the model. And for that, he needs to pay attention to her. He should maximize the time that he looks and reads the model and minimize the time that his attention is on the rope. From the model side, she needs to have the intention to suffer for the rigger, to give herself to him for his enjoyment. That also means that she should try to not break the scene with every little pinch of rope on her skin. Sometimes it might be better to suffer through the discomfort, also unintentional, and see where the scene goes than to break the flow.

Thirdly, I learned to appreciate and respect the submissive role way more. I realized that it requires strength and vulnerability to be able to submit, but that the same goes for the dominant. Even though there is a power imbalance in a D/s relation, there is no value assigned to either of the sides. They are both equally strong and brave and beautiful. And there is something truly magnetic in observing a couple with a strong D/s dynamic. Like watching two elements both fighting and needing each other to exist.

Finally, I’ve learned that rope is a perfect tool for creating intense and complex D/s scenes, even between people who don’t know each other that well. You can degrade, scare, torture, humiliate, give and take hope, caress and evoke many more feelings, using only rope. At the same time, the dynamic is very contained within the context of the scene and the strong power exchange that you experience does not have to exist outside of it. This made me appreciate rope even more and it might have made me more open to tie with new people.

Thank you Soptik and EisEve for teaching me so much about rope, D/s and myself. It was a truly deep experience and I can’t wait to learn from you again.

My gift

I have recently realized that one of the things that I enjoy the most, sexually, is giving myself to my partner. Being completely at their disposal. Not just letting them have my body to use, but giving them the entire me, entrust them with every corner of my being to penetrate. I think that it is a very special gift and it should not be taken lightly.

I used to put it in the wrong hands and it returned to me battered and bruised. Multiple times I've heard from my partners that I'm sexy, but I should have more initiative. This statement evoked mixed feelings in me. On the one hand, it was making me feel bad and was causing me to beat myself up for being a passive and lazy lover. On the other hand, I didn’t feel like it's entirely true. I didn’t really feel passive. On the contrary, I felt active in proposing, in opening the doors. All they had to do was to push it further and step in. But my partners did not see it. They didn't appreciate it. I was giving myself to them on a silver platter and they were returning it to the kitchen, asking for another dish.

What I offer is my body and my mind for you to entertain yourself with. I want to be the canvas on which you paint with my emotions. I want you to play me like an instrument, to strike my chords and create haunting and captivating music. Because I can't play it myself, but I do want to hear it. I am a raw material that needs an artist to turn it into something beautiful. It doesn't mean that, like an inanimate object, I will stay still and passive in the creative process. I will respond to your actions. There are forces within me that will co-operate or fight you, depending on what you do. But I need your touch to awaken them.

At the same time, I need to feel that you are respectful of the material that you are working with. There are certain shapes that you can turn it into. It's almost asking to be formed in a certain way. As Michelangelo said, “Every block of stone has a statue inside it and it is the task of the sculptor to discover it.” I want you to be my sculptor and to look for the statue that is inside me. Work with me, not despite me. Don't try to create an arbitrary shape that's not part of my nature. If you strike a wrong place with your chisel, I might crack open and fall apart. Be careful and try to look for the forms that are already there, waiting to be discovered.

What I want, is to create intense emotional moments for both of us. I want to go through a spectrum of emotions in a frequency and intensity that you would not come across in normal life. I want to play out all the dramatic scenes of love, devotion, suffering, humiliation and rejection that I enjoy so much to see in movies and literature. Only this time I want to feel them happening to me. And I don't want to fake them. I want to truly experience. For that, I need you to guide my mind to the places from where I can make it believable. Where I can truly feel and experience the things that you put me through.

I also want to entertain you. I want to be your little actress. I want to put up a show for you, just pass me the script. Just say the first line and I will go from there. Initiate, and I will follow. I will follow actively, filling in the blanks that you leave for me with all the passion and engagement that I can muster. But I need a structure. I need a skeleton that I can fill in with my being. I will do anything you want. I will fulfil every crazy scenario that might be born in your head. Just tell me what it is. Give me a structure. Something to hang on. And I will put all my heart and mind into bringing it to life.

So, do you understand what I am offering you? And can you appreciate it?

Do you also see the dangers that come from playing with my fire? Can you maintain and grow it without burning any of us down?

Finally, does it make you feel excited?

If all your answers to the above questions are a resounding yes, then I might just be the right gift for you.

Celebrate the 10 year anniversary of 'Lungs' with special edition re-release on August 16th - https://FATM.lnk.to/Lungs10 Official Store: http://po.st/FATMSt...

I'm sorry for forcing you not to fuck me

The story

Last weekend I broke a rule set by my owner. For the first time. It was a simple rule. I was not allowed to cum until he decides otherwise. I think it was around a month since I came the last time and I was pretty sure, that the next time we'll see each other, he'll finally fuck me.

It was a day before our next date and I've met for tying with one of my favourite riggers. As it usually happens with me, the tying turned into a light play. And then a bit more serious play. I told him that we should stop because I'm not allowed to cum. But the truth was that I didn't want to stop. I love to be teased and I love the thrill of playing with the forbidden.

Unfortunately, the more we played, the more I was able to convince myself that maybe it will be fine if I let go. In the end, my owner will finally have a reason to punish me seriously. Plus, he was probably expecting me to fail at some point anyway. That's also what I communicated to my rigger. And he read my hints.

I was about to leave when he started to touch me and play with my clit and finally his fingers dove deep inside me. At that point, I just couldn't hold it anymore as we've spent most of the evening playing on the edge. So I let go.

As soon as it happened, a loud scream ‘No!’ appeared in my head and on my mouth. This was the moment when I came back to reality and I realized the immensity of my mistake. I realized that I fucked up badly. On my way back home, I anxiously tried to contact my owner a couple of times to tell him what happened and release the feeling of guilt, but he wouldn't reply. The next day I did everything to make up for it. I dressed up in sexy lingerie, cooked a nice dinner and made sure it's ready on time. I greeted him on my knees, trembling, holding a board above my head saying ‘I'm sorry Sir ‘. I don't think it really worked, but it surely didn't make things worse. I got punished and I've atoned in the eyes of my Sir. He forgave me, but I haven't entirely forgiven myself yet. And here is why.

The learning points

The worst part of the punishment was not what he did to me. The worst part was being brought to the full realization of the consequences of my deed. As a result of my immature need for thrill and playing with fire, I've destroyed a scenario that my owner had been planning for a while. I have not only given up the opportunity to finally be filled up by him, but I also took it away from him. He was forced to start building up the tension and neediness in me from scratch again, which also entailed not having sex with me that night. By punishing me, he was also punishing himself. He denied a pleasure to himself in order to teach me something. The difference between the two of us is that he is able to control himself if he thinks it serves a bigger purpose. And I was not.

This situation made me realise that by not following his rules, I put myself in a dynamic that I really don't enjoy. The kind of dynamic where he is my mentor and the wise man and I'm a stubborn child. And I really hate feeling like a child. I hate giving an impression like I don't appreciate what he's giving to me and that he needs to force-feed me his ideas. I hate feeling like I lack in terms of maturity and commitment compared to him. There are many aspects in which I love to feel inferior, but this is not one of them. I want to feel equal when it comes to responsibility and commitment. I want to feel like we are building our dynamic together and that we both respect what the other one brings to the table.

The truth is that I do appreciate immensely what we are building and the traits of his character that enable us to do this. I find it amazing that he's able to design a scene that takes ages to play out. That he is like a spider secretly building his web around me, when I least expect it. I love how patient and deliberate he is. I know I can never be like that. I want to get everything right now, at this moment. That is why I appreciate his ability to delay the reward. It creates amazing emotional constructs. I would not able to create them myself, but I love to be part of them. And the least I can do is not to destroy this opportunity by being reckless.

In the end, this situation taught me (or even forced me) to take the responsibility for my own actions. Not only in terms of the impact that they might have on me but especially in terms of the impact on others. It is definitely not the only way to look at what happened. I know that my owner had lots of fun with punishing me and it could just have been a playful incident. But what I discovered is that these kind of incidents are not what I want to build our dynamic on. And I am grateful for this lesson.

If I am living a dream then why does it feel so much like a nightmare?

Once upon a time, there was a girl who had a dream...

Throughout my life, I have grown used to getting what I want. It's quite amazing to what length others will go to please you if most of the time it is you, who is pleasing them. Now, you might think that I was a spoiled child, but it wasn’t the case. Quite the opposite. I was, in fact, a very good girl. Good student, good daughter, a good girlfriend. I've been moulding myself into a person who is pleasing to others, in order to make sure that, when the time comes, they will please me. I'm not sure if I would call it manipulation, but I guess in its essence, that's what it was. Intricate and well disguised, but still a manipulation. And it really worked. Family, friends, teachers, partners, they were all under my spell. Because how can you say no to this cute, innocent girl who is trying so hard to make you proud? The problem was that I wasn't really happy in that setting. In the back of my head, I was dreaming of meeting someone who will see through my tricks. Back then, I wasn't fully aware of it, but now I am. And I see a couple of reasons why that was the case.

First of all, if I would meet a person who is stricter than I am, I could finally stop being so hard on myself. Most of my life lacked external discipline, therefore, I was providing it to myself from the inside. It worked and helped me achieve many goals, but it's not a very emotionally healthy trait to have. Usually, when I learn something, I try so hard to be the best that my teachers/people who raise me only praise me, since they think that I'm already hard enough on myself. Well, maybe… But actually, I think that I need a lot of stimulation and push and very little praise. And if you don't provide it to me, then I just disregard what you're saying altogether. If someone is too soft on me, then it must mean that their standards are lower than mine. Why should I then rely on their opinion when evaluating my performance? But if there was someone (let’s call him a Master) who is hard on me, and whose judgement I trust, I could finally relax, and just focus on doing the work, while leaving the evaluation to him.

Secondly, with a person who doesn't fall for my tricks, I could stop pretending and finally be myself. When you keep being praised and rewarded for how well you are doing, it is easy to fall into a trap of associating your value with what you hear from others. Additionally, you become anxious about its end. So you keep trying harder to please others, and you forget about yourself. When you meet someone who can see through that, and who can see you for who you are, flaws and all, you can finally let go and just be yourself. It is who they see anyway. You don’t need to second guess anymore what kind of person you should be for them to like you. They already know what kind of person you are. And they like you. It would be so liberating to stop trying to control how other people see me and just let them be.

Be careful what you wish for, you might get it.

So it looks like I finally found this person from my dreams. This person who can see through me, and doesn't fall for my cute looks, and an impression of a good girl. This person, who wants me to go further than that. To make mistakes and to grow. This person, who gives me challenges that are impossible to overcome, who bounds me to fail, only to show me that it's OK to be less than perfect, as long as I try hard enough. This person, who punishes me for every little mistake, with no room for excuses. Because it's OK to fail, but it doesn't mean that you shouldn't try harder the next time.

Finally, I've found this person, who doesn't give me what I want. No matter how much I beg, plead and curse. No matter how much of a good girl I am. No matter what I try to do to convince him to change his mind. He won't. Because he has all the power to execute his will. Because he has something that only he can give me, and he decides how and when it happens.

And it is heaven as much as it is hell. You see, when you are so dependent on one person to provide for your needs, it creates an entirely different level of suffering. The kind of suffering that you have no control over, and that lasts long after it was initiated. The kind of suffering, where you stop trusting yourself, because your mind will make you believe anything, to get what it needs. This suffering is not sudden and acute, like pain from a punch or from being called worthless. It's a process. A process of being taught a lesson. A process of adjusting to a new situation. A process of a painful realization, that not everything in your life you have control over, and sometimes you have to patiently wait for the things that you value.

It's a difficult experience, but at the same time, it's beautiful and exciting. It feels like this dynamic might teach me something way more valuable than only exploring my sexuality. It feels like it has the potential to change me and make me more at peace with myself and life in general. It already made me realize that sometimes, the things that you have no control over, are the most beautiful and rewarding. And even though there is nothing you can do to get them, you can help yourself, and stop chasing a dream (or a nightmare) living in your head, and start being present and appreciative of what you have and the people around you. Otherwise, you might miss what you so much wanted. And I so don’t want to miss it!

Am I a bad feminist? - A sub’s question

I’ve read an article entitled ‘The female price of male pleasure’ today and it stirred up a lot in me... Sadness, shame, guilt, disappointment, anger. A lot of old triggers came up. But also a lot of fresh thoughts were buzzing in my head. The tension was calling for a release. And what is a better valve for an angry and disappointed feminist then listening to Beyonce’s Lemonade and crying? Writing your thoughts down. So I did. It helped me to get over some things. And I feel like sharing it with others might make it even more powerful.

Let’s stop victimizing women

My first reaction to reading the article was a slight annoyance. At first sight it seemed like another statement on female distress in the likes of #metoo campaign which I think did a lot of good but also went a bit off course. It is highlighting the problems that exists in our society, but also victimizing the women, leaving the power still in men’s hands. Coming back to the article, it read a bit along the lines of ‘those poor women need to endure unpleasant sexual intercourse in order to please the stronger sex’. But hey!? I do have a lot of pleasure from sex and I don’t feel like it is only because I give pleasure to my partners (definitely my vaginal orgasms are a very direct and bodily source of pleasure).

So why is nobody talking about female enjoyment, but treating sex like men’s business that women have to endure?

That was a burning question for me. But then, I’ve realized that I am in a privileged position. A lot of women really do not enjoy sex, mostly because they have never had the opportunity to learn to enjoy it. They were conditioned not to think about their needs but about pleasing the others. That realization made me feel guilty and sad. While I am opening up to my kinks and the beauty of a fulfilling sexual life, some women don’t even realize that sex can be pleasurable at all. Let alone getting on a path of finding out what their kinks are.

How can we create an environment when women stop being the victims and start enjoying themselves?

We want a situation, where women are empowered to think for themselves and not allow others to use or abuse them. How do we make women feel that it is ok to say ‘no’? And how do we teach them that saying ‘yes’ is not the only way to get where they want? I believe that women will feel more empowered to speak up when they feel like there will be people who will listen and stand behind them. Even more than that. They should feel that the society as a whole will stand behind them. And for that using sex as a tool of power needs to stop. Sex should be a way to connect to the other person and give pleasure to both participants and not a contract or an exchange of goods.

Wait… Isn’t the kind of sex that I enjoy embodying the power dynamics that we are trying to put an end to?

So yeah… Apparently what I enjoy the most in sex draws on gender stereotypes that are the most deeply rooted within us. Am I enhancing them? How can I be a feminist and at the same time enjoy being humiliated and used by the opposite sex? This is exactly the type of dynamics that the feminists are trying to fight. We are trying to level up the field. Give more power to the women! And what am I doing in this regard? If I was a switch at least… I could kind of feel like I am giving evidence to the equality of the sexes. But I am submissive to the core. Especially when it comes to men. I might even enjoy seeing some cute little girl in distress… But men? Overpowering them really doesn’t turn me on. At the same time, I feel that since I started to explore my submissive nature I have finally became my true self. Am I just fulfilling the role that society conditioned in my brain and that is what makes it feel so good?

Where does my submissive nature come from?

There was a thought in the article that really triggered me:

"At every turn, women are taught that how someone reacts to them does more to establish their goodness and worth than anything they themselves might feel. (…) One side effect of teaching one gender to outsource its pleasure to a third party (and endure a lot of discomfort in the process) is that they're going to be poor analysts of their own discomfort, which they have been persistently taught to ignore."

I felt to the core the truth that was for me in that sentence. I am fighting every day to stop caring so much about what other people might think about me and want from me and start doing what I want. It is one of the biggest obstacles that I have in a pursuit of a fulfilling life. And I do feel that women struggle with this more than men. At the same time, as a submissive, pleasing the others is exactly what I get my pleasure from. I ignore my own discomfort and humiliation in order to make the other happy. So, my submissiveness is basically a betrayal to my daily struggle. I tried to convince myself that the goal of the feminist movement should be to give women the freedom to choose the way they want to live. I should be free to make my own choices on how I want to live and have sex.

But still, why is my pleasure coming from acting out the most stereotypical gender and power configuration?

Is it coming from a cultural brainwash? Am I weak? Why am I not turned on by having power over people, but instead by being overpowered by them? I am not sure if I will ever find answers to these questions.

And does it really matter?

Even if my sexual preference comes from the social conditioning, so what? I can’t change the way that I am wired and why should I? Is pleasing other people really that bad? The fact that you take pleasure in pleasing the others does not make your enjoyment less valid. My feelings are real even if they are conditioned by the way I was raised. In the end, everybody is wired in a certain way due to his genetics and past experiences. Why should I feel bad about myself for being a submissive woman and a man with the same kink should not? Or should he also feel bad because it is considered as a weakness by the 'male' standards? I guess that the way to get free from all that and take control over your life is to accept and embrace who you are. Know yourself, know what gives you joy. Use that to bring happiness to those around you, who can appreciate it. And stop f***ing care what others think.