Knowing that I was into the lifestyle, he talked to me, related his story, and got some advice. I am ever gleeful to bring someone over to the dark side. Since then he’s been reading some good literature, and getting involved in the community of FetLife.com.

Last week, he also needed a change of scenery, to get away from some distinctly negative influences for a while, so he visited me. In addition to all the normal hanging out stuff, we did a few lifestyle-oriented things.

Wednesday, my mentor was holding a demonstration on flogging, so we went to that. I didn’t tell him that it was at a gay bar until we were on our way there. What? I’m a sadist, after all! Seriously though, he wasn’t squicked by that, and found the demonstration to be very informative. He also learned that when one goes to a demonstration, one inevitably gets the intense urge to practice whatever was being demonstrated. The price of knowledge.

Later that week, we went to a local munch, and this one was good in that it had a discussion (last week’s topic was punishment and obedience training). So he got to meet some people in a non-threatening environment, and listen to a lot of different viewpoints. Unfortunately, the room we had at the buffet was overflowing, so it was a bit tough to carouse much.

Then later in the weekend, there was a play party at the local dungeon. It was one of the less crowded nights, which was a good thing in that it meant my girl and I actually got to use the whip room (it’s been way too long since I’ve been able to singletail her, and we got crack-blocked at a previous play party by someone who jumped us in line for the equipment). It also wasn’t overwhelming for Jerzeem. As almost everyone is their first time in a dungeon, he felt a little awkward, and was quiet, but he enjoyed the experience, and got to see a few different styles of play. One thing he noted was that a lot of the play was more ritualized than he’d imagined it would be.

So, he got a little taste of a few different aspects of the BDSM world last week. He’s already arranged to go to some munches in his home town, and is even looking forward to a BDSM convention there. And he just this weekend realized that Harley and Joker had a distinctly BDSM-tinted relationship. Let’s just hope he doesn’t think too hard about Batman and Robin. Ageplay, anyone?

What I engage in is really more of “oxygen play” than breath play — coming from a martial arts background, I know a variety of chokes, and in martial arts they are split into two categories: blood chokes and air chokes. Blood chokes (like the sleeper hold, also known as the rear naked choke) cut off the flow of blood to the brain, whereas air chokes cut off the air supply to the lungs (which eventually cuts off the supply of oxygen to the brain). Blood chokes are far and away my favorite, for a couple of reasons.

First, blood chokes are much safer. Air chokes, which generally put pressure on the trachea, can cause damage to the trachea if there is too much struggling or if you apply the choke too hard. With blood chokes, unless you’re incredibly strong and using all of your strength, it’s unlikely that you’ll cause any damage even if you put the choke on very hard (assuming you let go once the other person goes limp).  According to Knight’s book Forensic Pathology, there is an expert consensus that it takes a minimum of four to six minutes to start to do permanent brain damage with a completely effective choke hold. So when you’re talking about 10 seconds or less, you should be well within the safe zone.

Second, the effect of a blood choke is almost immediate – you can choke someone to unconsciousness in easily under 10 seconds, whereas with an air choke it could take a minute or more. This can be good and bad, depending on what you’re going for. With an air choke, that leaves more time for panic (if that’s what you’re going for), but also more time for struggling, and more opportunities for an accident to occur. I don’t care how bad a girl she’s been; crushing her trachea is not appropriate punishment!

A note about blood chokes and unconsciousness: there are several levels of unconsciousness, and a properly applied blood choke will put someone into a basic level of unconsciousness quickly. So quickly and easily that you might think they’re faking. Trust me, they’re not. And while you can safely apply the choke for a while longer after this — maybe an extra 5-10 seconds — their body will reflexively go into panic mode, and even though they’re unconscious, they will thrash about. While this isn’t particularly dangerous for them if you have them secured (and assuming you don’t apply the choke for a long time after that), it will cause them to come back to consciousness more panicked, and generally with a splitting headache to boot. I’ve made this mistake before, so please learn from my mistakes!

Also, choking to the point of unconsciousness is (of course) not the only option, nor one I necessarily recommend. It takes a huge level of trust from the bottom, and a fair amount of knowledge from the top, to safely do that. Engaging in carotid chokes that do not end in unconsciousness (i.e. are only applied for a second or two) also gives that feeling of power exchange, the moment of panic, the building of trust.

*    *    *

The other night, I talked some with my girl about breath play, trying to find out what she gets from it. I highly recommend that you talk with your partner about these sorts of things, by the way — not just breath play, but your SM relationship in general. Getting a peek into your partner’s head helps you know them better, which strengthens the bond, and also makes play more fun. Knowledge is power, after all. *grin*

For her, there are several elements. There is the element of struggle, which is enjoyable for her. She is physically strong, and also grew up with two brothers, so she’s used to wrestling. She also has dated far more women than men, and even the men she’s dated she’s been able to physically best them in such situations for the most part. So she’s used to winning. For me (a skinny guy) to be able to physically overpower her when she’s really trying gives a certain edge to it; she’s not roleplaying and pretending to let me take control over her, I am physically taking control of her in a very real way.

There is the physical element as well. Breath play makes orgasms more intense. This is no doubt why so many deaths from auto-erotic asphyxiation occur. I’m not sure how much of this is purely physical, and how much psychological. I can say that even clasping a hand around a partner’s throat and applying light pressure has seemed to make their orgasms more intense. Note that this experience is always with people who welcomed it though — it’s absolutely not the sort of thing you do without discussing it first. But I don’t need to tell you that. You are all negotiating before scenes, and all you tops that want to engage in breath play are asking if it’s okay, right? Good, I thought so!

But the biggest aspect is trust. Once I lock in a choke, there is the moment of panic. She knows that she is completely powerless, at my whim. And though there is that survival instinct screaming in her brain, she also knows that she is in no danger. It’s exciting; it’s a rush of adrenaline; it both requires trust and strengthens it.

And then when she comes to, there is that split second where she doesn’t know where she is, what’s going on, or what just happened. Fear. Confusion. But she sees my face, feels me against her, and she is immediately at ease. The contrast from one extreme to the other makes it all the more significant.

From my end, it’s the exact same from the other side of the coin. It is an amazing feeling of control, and it feels good knowing that someone trusts you to that extent. You can see it, and feel it. In this day and age of emotional repression and distancing, it is beautiful to be able to form a bond that close, and in doing this sort of thing, you experience how deep of a bond it really is.

Though all SM activities require trust, I think that breath play, and especially breath play involving carotid choking to the point of unconsciousness, requires a different level of trust. If the top were to do something wrong, by accident or on purpose, it could more easily and quickly result in death than with any other SM activity that immediately comes to mind.  The worst-case scenario, no matter how unlikely, is still pretty extreme. Perhaps this is one of the reasons that Jay Wiseman is against it.

For me, the risks are acceptable; my girl is more likely to be injured or killed out driving than while in my arms’ crushing caress. It’s a risk that each person involved has to weigh, but some people see it as unquestionably too dangerous to engage in, and I personally disagree vehemently with that notion.

So I’m wondering if many published S&M how-to books are written with the kid gloves on because that’s all publishers are willing to print. As one example, Jay Wiseman, author of SM 101 among other books, is pretty adamantly against any type of breath play or choking. Even carotid chokes by people who know what they’re doing; chokes which have been used in Jiu Jitsu for hundreds of years without fatality. Of course I’d never recommend that a beginner try such a thing, but saying that it shouldn’t be done, across the board, is extreme in my opinion.  There is always some element of risk, but that is also less risky than a lot of the things that he does encourage in his books.  But I digress.

I think another part of the reason that many published SM books seem to be conservative (hah!) when it comes to theses sorts of things is that the intended audience for many such books is BDSM newbies, for the most part. You don’t exactly want to tell a newbie it’s sometimes okay to play without safewords; that’s like telling a kid it’s sometimes okay to ingest bleach. While it’s true (there’s a little bleach in your tap water), it’s easy to take it the wrong way and end up doing something dangerous.

But is that perhaps giving the younger generation a bias? Laying down “laws” which, to quote Pirates of the Carribean, are really more of guidelines? It’s not uncommon to see the attitude of, “If you’re not doing it how I think is best, then you’re doing it wrong,” but these days that seems to usually end up coming out as, “If you’re not playing with these certain certain precautions (like safe words), you’re doing it wrong.”

Of course, I’m not the only one that struggles with this, and it’s not limited by any means to males or sadists.  My own bottom feels guilty for asking for pain.  My friend Clarisse went through guilt and horror and shame when she realized that she was into BDSM. For bottoms, there is the stigma that only crazy people want pain, and for female bottoms there are additional stigma — you’re reinforcing an abusive stereotype, you’re going against everything feminists have worked to give you, etc. Man, don’t get me started on that feminist one. Feminism is about equality and women having the same choices men do, so maybe not all women want to be doctors and corporate raiders, dig? Damnit, I got started. Okay, reeling it in.

In any case, I find that this often is a barrier to play at home. As if leading busy lives with often-conflicting schedules weren’t enough (which is worthy of a post on its own), she feels like she’s bugging me if she asks for a spanking, and I feel like an Evil Guy (in a bad way) if I tell her I want to give her one.

But in the dungeon, or at a club, that’s not the case.  Maybe part of it is that in those places I’m more in uniform.  Maybe it’s just that I associate BDSM activities with those places, so it’s easier to get into my headspace.  Maybe it’s less of a jump than it is at home — the difference between transitioning from watching television to spanking, versus leading her to a bench and bending her over it.

My mentor has made a few suggestions to overcome this, and we’re trying some things to see what works for us (for example, “I think I’m going to go to bed early,” usually equals, “I want to play (or have sex); follow me if you do too.”).

Anyone who knows me knows that I do not believe in black and white; I see almost everything as a gradient.  For example, I think that the hetero-/bi-/homo-sexual distinction is very crude and not representative.  I’m a guy, and maybe I would never even be able to recognize another man as attractive. Perhaps I can recognize other men as attractive, but not ever want to kiss one. Maybe I’d want to kiss other men, but only rare men on rare occasions.   Et cetera, all the way down the line to the other extreme.

I also see informed consent as a gradient. Actually I see it as two gradients; a dual-axis system, if you will: how informed one is, and to what extent their consent is valid. The informative axis is easy to understand, I think. If you’re involved in a flogging scene, maybe you know absolutely nothing about it, or maybe you know that it’s bad to get hit in the head or in the kidneys, or maybe you know that and are familiar with the concept of “wrapping” and correct target areas and how fast is appropriate to build up and good/bad physiological responses.

But what about the consent axis? Obviously, if someone is unconscious, then they aren’t able to give consent. If they’re drunk or high on drugs, their consent is not valid. But what about if someone is high on endorphins after a good scene? What if they’ve had a single beer?   Okay, many people will say even one beer isn’t a grey area and is unacceptable, so what about one drop of wine? Two drops? What is the BAC line that you draw, and is it different for different people? What if a submissive is new to the scene and undergoing “sub frenzy?”

In this article about the legal dangers of rough sex, “Steve” (a sadist in the lifestyle) further breaks down consent into three areas: consent before, during, and after.  He says that if he gets two out of three, he’s happy.  I think that’s a little callous, and one should always shoot for three out of three, but I can see his point.  If you’re negotiating a scene, doing everything you should as a top, and during the scene you do everything you should as a top, what happens if the bottom has regrets the next day, or the next week?

To further muddy the waters, various articles and books on BDSM also talk about “seducing” consent.   The book Flogging by Joseph Bean says that even within a scene, the top is constantly seducing consent from the bottom and then “spending” it.   One of the things that gets a lot of tops off is pushing the edges of boundaries.   That’s true of me personally; I think of BDSM as an experience of enlightenment and discovery as well as something viscerally fun, and in my role as a top one of my higher-level goals is to help show the bottom something new about themselves.   To show them that they’re stronger than they thought, or that they like this thing that they were uncertain about, or that crying can be liberating, or… well, you get the picture.   So even on the end of the gradient that most people think of as unquestionably acceptable, we push the edge of consent.

So in what ways is it ethical to manipulate someone into expanding their consent?   What if someone is pretty sure that they won’t like something (or if it’s one of their hard limits), but you convince them to try it?  I can’t tell you how many stories I’ve heard of bottoms having something as a hard limit, but it later becoming their favorite thing.

Okay, so what’s the point of all of this? The point is, there’s no black and white with consent. Some things we can look at and say with certainty, “That was/wasn’t valid consent.”   Maybe you have a system or heuristic that you could give a solid “consensual/non-consensual” ruling for any given scenario, but I’ll bet you I could throw a few at you that would make you indecisive.

Further, I think a lot of people in the world of BDSM see the idea of consent as a panacea to all questions of the morality of our lifestyle.   What is consent to you might not be consent to me, or to the legal system (and here again I’m resisting the strong urge to go off on a tangent about BDSM in the law in America).   And consent, even if given in a valid way, can always be retracted. My dear friend Clarisse blogged about that very topic.

What exactly does it mean to be a service top?  How is it different than being a “normal” top?  Part of the whole point of BDSM is that everyone gets what they want.  If you’re only concerned with your own needs and desires, then I pity the bottom who gives themselves into your trust.  From The Loving Dominant:

Do you get as much pleasure or more from erotically exciting your partner as from your own enjoyment of the sexual act?
If this is true, then you are likely to be a good dominant.  The essence of this kind of play is to take another’s power and then use it for mutual pleasure.

And then a bit later it goes on to say that it’s well and good to have fantasies about truly nonconsensual activities, but “what separates the civilized from the uncivilized is how tight a leash we keep on [those fantasies].”  I do realize that some bottoms get off on being made to do things they truly don’t want to (or having such things done to them), because the charge they get from pleasing their top overpowers their distaste.  I don’t oppose that at all, and in fact I think it’s a beautiful thing.  But it’s not for everyone, and I don’t think it’s fair that it be the de facto expectation of all bottoms.

So to come back to the question: what’s the difference between a top and a service top?  Not much, in my opinion.

Granted, to do every single thing the bottom wants and nothing outside of those parameters is a little confining, but I think that a creative dominant can find ways to make things interesting and unpredictable even when doing that.  Someone acts as a service top whenever they let the bottom have more direct control over what’s done to them.  I phrase it as “acts as a service top” because I think it is another way of playing, not a way of being.  I am friends with a man who has worn the title of Master for longer than I’ve been alive, and on many occasions I’ve seen him act as a service top, especially when introducing new people to the lifestyle.  But I don’t know of anyone who would refer to him as a service top, least of all his slaves (and not just for fear of reprisal, either!).

So is it actually a bad thing to be a service top?  Does that actually make one less dominant?  Would you call a professional dominatrix less dominant because she gives someone what they want?

I’ll preface this by saying that I have not seen the actual study, so I can only base my opinions off of the little information given in the article.

In a nutshell, it seems like they just asked a bunch of twins (fraternal and identical), “Do you have a g-spot?”   This is horrible research methodology.  It’s like going to 1920s households and asking the women if they’ve ever experienced an orgasm.   “A significant number of women said that they had never experienced orgasm, therefore we conclude that the female orgasm does not actually exist.”

If you’re serious about this, how about you start by doing some research on female cadavers?   Map out nerve endings, that sort of thing.

To play my own devil’s advocate, I see the point of this study.   I get the impression that the people behind this study believe that many women don’t receive pleasure in that way, and feel like there must be something wrong with them.   Personally I think in most cases that’s most likely because their partner doesn’t know how to properly stimulate it, but that’s neither here nor there.  The study is meant to say, “There, there. It’s okay.  No pressure.” (Pun intended.)  But if you want to say that, then just say it. Don’t try to prove it with bogus science.

Or is it?

When I first started thinking about this, I had heard people in the past talk about how giving oral sex is a sign of dominance. The first time I heard it, I was sort of confused as to how that could be. But then I thought about it a bit more, and it started making more sense.

When you’re giving oral sex, you are the one in control (exceptions to be noted later). You decide what the other person feels, how intensely they feel it, when they come. You can bring them to the edge, and then back off. You can tease them how you please. All of these are very dominant things, leaving you as the “giver” in control. I’ve known some people unable to come from oral sex because they have a problem letting someone else have that power over them.

On a related note, in an S&M sense (as opposed to D/s), the top is the one creating the sensations, and the bottom is the one that experiences them.  Though this might or might not involve any sort of overt power exchange, the top is definitely the one in control (safe-words and so forth notwithstanding).  And in this case, performing oral sex would correlate to the activity of a top.

But on the other hand, performing oral sex can also be a distinctly submissive activity.  It can be looked at as giving service to another.  Being between another person’s legs — not that that’s the only way to suck a cock or orally ravage a cunt, mind you — is a fairly submissive physical position.  Additionally, it’s definitely possible for the receiver to be the one in control.  For example, if a guy has a girl’s hair wrapped around his fist, and he’s shoving himself down her throat* fucking her face, then I don’t think it could be argued that she’s the dominant one in that circumstance.

So, my answer to the question is: it depends.  It can be either, or neither, depending on how you’re doing it.  Dominants shouldn’t feel less dominant because they have the desire to give — I myself identify as a dominant, but I do so love to eat a girl out.

* Guys, do get previous consent before ever attempting anything like this, ‘kay?

On various online BDSM forums, there are discussions about what it is to be a slave.  Like all things, I think that some people take it too lightly, and some people take it way too far.   To whit: there seems to be a philosophy among some that “the only need a ‘true slave’ has is the happiness of their master.”  I think this is utter bullshit, personally.  It’s fantasy, not reality.

To take an extreme example: a master decides to put their slave in a hole for the rest of their life with absolutely no human contact (not even with the master), and only the barest essentials necessary to live.   But could someone truly be happy in this situation? I don’t think so, and if it were possible, there would be something seriously, seriously abnormal (read: broken) in the slave’s brain chemistry.

Everyone has emotional needs.  Any master that enters into a relationship wherein he only considers his own needs and desires, and not those of his property, is an abusive person and not a master, period.  I don’t care if that’s what the slave wants — the slave is psychologically damaged, and that does not excuse the master’s abuse, any more than “consent” excuses the behavior of the Craigslist Cannibal (which I find simultaneously mind-boggling, and hilarious).

I realize that this is a dangerous line to tread.  Similar justifications have been used in the legal arena to make all BDSM activities illegal, even though they are between consenting adults.  The argument goes: if they consent to that sort of thing, then they’re obviously not in their right mind, and therefore cannot legally give consent.  But most of us in this lifestyle are perfectly rational, non-traumatized individuals capable of giving informed consent.  In fact, I’ve read about independent studies that show that your average BDSM practitioner is actually more psychologically healthy than your average ‘nilla.  However, I think that anyone who consents to the level of abuse I’m talking about above is not at all mentally healthy, and I would challenge anyone to prove otherwise.