BDSM (Part One)

Whenever I call upon a woman I never fail to take with me a little whip.  –  Friedrich Nietzsche

Well, I’ve already talked about my bisexuality and the fact that being paid for sex excites me, so I might as well complete my confessional and admit that I’m terribly turned on by being tied up, and always have been.  In my column of July 28^th I mentioned that certain situations on TV made me feel “funny”, but that nobody else seemed affected; that’s because most of those situations involved bondage.  Most people seem able to watch a scene of a woman being tied up without sexual arousal, but not me; watching girls being captured by bandits, carried off by monsters or chained and collared as slaves did it for me as well.  Of course when I was four I had no idea what sex was and could not possibly have connected it to bondage even if I had; the recognition of the “funny feelings” as sexual did not come until I was about 12.  But that didn’t stop me from enjoying the part of the damsel in distress in neighborhood make-believe games; somehow I usually managed to be the girl who was carried off or captured by the bad guys and had to be rescued.  And if I was lucky they had rope handy and would really tie me to a tree or chair!

By the time I turned 17 I had discovered that if a man held my wrists down during sex it really got me going, so the first time a trusted boyfriend asked if he could tie me up I obviously agreed with great enthusiasm.  That in turn led to blindfolds, gags, handcuffs, dominance and submission games and even spanking and whipping; though pain never really did anything for me, the act of submitting to the whipping was terribly exciting.  In other words, it wasn’t the pain which turned me on but the fact that a man had the power to do it to me.  Though neofeminists deny it, the fact is that most women are sexually aroused to one degree or another by being dominated by a man in a sexual situation; most male-dominant BDSM is an exaggeration of the normal female impulse rather than something completely different, which is why the rape fantasy is still among the most common of female sexual fantasies.  The opposition of neofeminists to BDSM, like their opposition to prostitution, has nothing to do with their self-proclaimed “concern” for women and everything to do with their tired old anti-sex agenda.  Neofeminism treats all non-neofeminist women as imbeciles and denies we have the right to make our own sexual choices when those choices conflict with neofeminist dogma.  This is, of course, done “for our own good”; funny how often that phrase comes up whenever sex is concerned.

BDSM is a composite umbrella term which includes bondage and discipline (B&D), dominance and submission (D/s), and sadomasochism (S&M), three different but intertwined and overlapping practices based on the principle of power exchange, the voluntary surrendering of power over one’s person to someone else.  Bondage and discipline involves physically restraining the subject with ropes, handcuffs and the like or psychologically restraining her with rules or training enforced with punishment; dominance and submission refers to a master-slave relationship, and sadomasochism refers to the giving and receiving of pain.  All three may be present to varying degrees in a BDSM “scene”, and different people are excited to differing degrees by different aspects.  As I said above, I am most turned on by bondage and pain does little for me; I’m especially partial to the classic capture scenario, and struggling against a man’s greater strength until he overcomes me has an appeal I cannot possibly overstate.  But a friend of mine finds restraint completely unappealing, and instead prefers to be spanked; yet another friend wants to be tied, but only to keep her from escaping a whipping.  The subject of BDSM is so wide and complex that it would be ludicrous in the extreme to even attempt more than the sketchiest overview in this format; hundreds of books have been written on the subject, and I direct the curious reader to this overview article in Wikipedia and this online resource guide.  My purpose in this column is only to touch on the subject to the limited degree required in order to examine its relationship with harlotry.

The first and most important connection between the two is that, like all variations from the most mundane and “vanilla” form of sex, they are perennial targets of attempts at suppression by bluenoses and control freaks.  Like prostitution, BDSM activities are illegal in many jurisdictions despite being practiced by consenting adults, and though practitioners are not targeted as often or as viciously as prostitutes there are exceptions like the UK’s Operation Spanner.  Ignorance of both BDSM and prostitution is epidemic among the general public, and the media delights in perpetuating insulting and ridiculous stereotypes of both which tend to reinforce both public prejudice and official persecution.  And neofeminists intentionally mischaracterize both as “abuse” or “violations of women’s rights” and deny that adult women have the right to choose either.

But BDSM is abuse, isn’t it?  For a man to beat a woman or tie her up or force her to have sex is wrong and illegal, isn’t it?  Of course, unless that’s what she wants!  Pushing a person out of an airplane constitutes murder, yet many people jump out of airplanes of their own free will every day.  The difference is that they freely choose to do so and wear parachutes.  The “parachute” in BDSM is called a “safe word”; it’s a word unlikely to come up in normal conversation which the two parties have agreed will mean “stop”.  Words like “no” or “stop” can’t be used because they are part of the scene; it turns me on to scream “no, please don’t!” and other such phrases while my husband subdues me and he ignores them because they are not my safe word (which, BTB, I’ve never had to use in 25 years of BDSM participation).  Many things, especially in sex, are a good fantasy but a very bad reality; this is because sex derives from a primal, irrational portion of the brain which responds to shadowy, instinctive drives we’ve carried there since before we came down from the trees.  A powerful, aggressive male sires powerful, aggressive sons, so the natural female impulse is to respond sexually to such a man, even if her rational brain tells her otherwise; the corresponding male impulse is to overpower and take women sexually, even if morality and sense dictate otherwise.  BDSM play is a way to feed those cavewoman and caveman impulses without really hurting anyone, being hurt or breaking any moral or statutory laws.  Rape fantasies are the simplest example; many women (including myself) are very aroused by them, and romance novels are full of them.  But that does NOT mean any woman (including myself) really wants to be raped!  Fantasy rapes are always conducted by a man one really wants anyhow and carry no fear of death or mutilation; real rapes are truly against one’s will and carry the fear of terrible consequences.

It’s not unusual for mild BDSM activity to take place in calls; in my column of August 11^th I described a regular I referred to as the Sadist because he was turned on by calling me dirty names, giving vulgar orders and slapping my bottom hard enough to leave handprints for an hour or so.  Many clients enjoy holding women down during sex, receiving fellatio in a standing position from a kneeling girl, pulling a whore’s hair during rear-entry sex, and other such mild and safe forms of domination.  Less honorable specimens prefer to insult girls on the phone or when they arrive and thereby stimulate themselves while denying the girl income (Barbie seemed to attract this type for some reason; I used to just laugh at them and thereby ruin their thrill).

But all this is tame compared with serious BDSM activity; few escorts dare to cater to bondage scenes because once a strange man has one bound and helpless there is no telling what might happen.  Some brothels employ professional submissives, because another girl can be assigned to supervise; Sheila (the redhead from Down Under I’ve mentioned before) worked for a while in the late ‘90s in a brothel in Amsterdam and often performed this guard duty.  She told me that she once did this for a whipping session with a Saudi prince; as soon as the girl signified she could take no more, the royal client offered her 100 guilders (roughly $50 US) to let him hit her one more time and she agreed.  He then offered it again, and again, and again; though the girl was clearly beyond her limit her greed would not let her refuse and Sheila, realizing the obscenely rich sadist could do this all day, stopped it.

I’ve done mild bondage in two-girl calls if I really trusted the other girl, but only once did I agree to it alone.  The client seemed very reasonable and was quite persuasive; he told me all he wanted was to tie me up and then masturbate over me, that it would take less than half an hour, and that I could take any precautions I wished to ensure my safety.  The hotel was a very expensive one and I felt comfortable with the offer; my husband agreed to it on the condition that he would be parked outside and would call me at exactly the half-hour mark and come banging on the door if I didn’t answer by the second or third attempt (cell phones being what they are).  The client was both nice and incredibly skillful; after he paid me and I stripped, he had me totally hog-tied and helpless in under three minutes.  Seriously, I have never seen such speed and precision in knot-tying; I was utterly immobilized yet not in the least uncomfortable, and I was more excited than I had ever been on a call before.  As promised, he took under half an hour and was just finished when the ring came; what followed was actually very amusing because he had to answer for me and hold the phone against my face after pulling the gag from my mouth!  Needless to say, I could barely wait to get home and let my husband have his way with me.

I’ve limited myself today to talking only about male-dominant BDSM, which is much more common in the general population because it derives directly from biological impulses and often appears in the subtle forms we’ve discussed above.  The media, however, prefers to concentrate on the rarer female-dominant variety precisely because it does go against the norm of male-female sexual roles and is therefore more lurid and titillating to the public.  But though it is less common in noncommercial settings it’s far more common in commercial ones, for reasons we will explore tomorrow.