I’ve found myself
feeling cloudy-headed and in an increasingly irritable mood lately.
Usually I look for some sort of critical point where things tipped for
the worse. In this case, I’m finding none of those things. This is a
case of erosion.
I’ve been blogging for a long time. A really long time. I’ve had friendships made through blogging come and go over the years. There are a couple of people that I have gotten very close to through this medium. I’ve had many more fall by the wayside. My original purpose for blogging was to come to terms with my identity in D/s. It wasn’t long before things shifted. I began to write about my thoughts and the things I cared about in the lifestyle. I began to explore ideas and things I was curious about through words. I searched for answers to questions. I has been a lot of fun.
At some point I found that what I mostly do is teach. People that were eager to learn would find me. Other times I would stumble upon those in need of guidance. I like to talk about the ideas that aren’t covered in guides or recited as cliches anywhere you find BDSM on the web. I like to find the magical formulas that make D/s successful (e.g. if communication and consent were enough, almost everyone would be golden, right?). When you have been around the block as many times as I have, you have seen pretty much everything at least once. It makes me feel good to impart what I have learned to others when it will help them. It gives me a sense of purpose while D/s doesn’t exist in my life. Things had been going pretty well on that front recently.
What has been wearing me down isn’t something I can articulate easily. The “scene” I am currently immersed in is not my natural habitat. People have bee accepting of me and open to my ideas but there are times when topics come up that just make me feel off and/or out of place.
The past few times I have hopped in with groups it has been similar. I am the token male sub. The first task is always to break down the stereotypes of F/m. Dommes aren’t raging man-haters that abuse the hell out of some poor soul that shouldn’t even be there in the first place. I don’t even know where this idea comes from. I still end up having to overcome it. A lot of people end up feeling naive that they didn’t understand that D/s is D/s, regardless of if it’s M/f or F/m. Flipping the slash doesn’t make relationships non-loving or miserable.
Once the stereotypes are broken it’s a lot easier to talk about things in a mutually-understood way… for a while. There is a period of connection, friendship building, and camaraderie that feels great. I feel like I belong. That feeling is rare for me. Over time, things inevitably start to eat away at me because of numerous reminders that my role is not perceived as legitimate. This is rarely if ever thrown in my face intentionally. It is rarely blatant. I doubt people even realize they are doing it.
Before I go any farther I do want to mention that I’m debating not posting this. I don’t want to come off as some “whoa is me whiner” with thin skin looking for someone to play a violin for the depressing emo-boy. It took me days to recognize that this is legitimately affecting me in a negative way and not just some downswing in mood. I also don’t mean for this to guilt trip anyone. If anything, I just want people to be aware of it and that it does have an impact.
There are ideas that perpetuate that are really ugly. They are ideas that in any other arena, people would be offended by them. For some reason in M/f, it’s easy for people to believe that this is the correct orientation. Men dominate, women submit. People make these statements. They nod and agree. They will talk about how equality was ruining their marriage and now that the man has taken charge, the woman realizes what a bitch she has been and obviously needed to be dominated. This is the natural order and now everything is perfect. Feminism is destroying the world. They nod and agree.
I sit back and shake my head. D/s isn’t a perfect substitute for maturity. I think in many cases when people take responsibility in their roles they mature. I think this maturing could have been done without D/s. I think people can choose who they want to be instead of just following baser emotions. When people enact D/s they choose who they want to be sometimes for the first time in a long time. I don’t think this has anything to do with natural order. I think it has everything to do with people truly trying to understand the one that they love and what will make them truly happy. This can happen without D/s even if D/s was their vehicle for finding it.
I shouldn’t have to explain why the sexist nature of the common view bothers me. I’ve ranted about it before. I will simply make a comparison statement. If a man said that women shouldn’t be CEOs or in hold government office because men are better take charge leaders, many people would get pretty damn offended. Very few people would nod and agree.
The other factor is at the core of what wears me down. If M/f is the natural order, then I am an abomination. I shouldn’t exist. My existence becomes trivialized. If people really see my role and existence as real, they could not and would not make those types of sexist statements, nor agree with them. They would probably get offended.
If someone truly sees me and accepts me, they would not even think those things.
I’m not really going to take this any farther as anything more I could say is only beating a dead horse. What I can say is that experiencing weeks of this has worn me down and I feel unnerved. It doesn’t feel good. A Domme friend of mine told me that she thinks it’s easier for a man to come out as gay than to come out as submissive. I’ve agreed with her since I read that statement the first time and still agree with it now.
Hopefully I didn’t piss anyone off by writing this. If so, I apologize in advance as it wasn’t my intent.
I’ve been blogging for a long time. A really long time. I’ve had friendships made through blogging come and go over the years. There are a couple of people that I have gotten very close to through this medium. I’ve had many more fall by the wayside. My original purpose for blogging was to come to terms with my identity in D/s. It wasn’t long before things shifted. I began to write about my thoughts and the things I cared about in the lifestyle. I began to explore ideas and things I was curious about through words. I searched for answers to questions. I has been a lot of fun.
At some point I found that what I mostly do is teach. People that were eager to learn would find me. Other times I would stumble upon those in need of guidance. I like to talk about the ideas that aren’t covered in guides or recited as cliches anywhere you find BDSM on the web. I like to find the magical formulas that make D/s successful (e.g. if communication and consent were enough, almost everyone would be golden, right?). When you have been around the block as many times as I have, you have seen pretty much everything at least once. It makes me feel good to impart what I have learned to others when it will help them. It gives me a sense of purpose while D/s doesn’t exist in my life. Things had been going pretty well on that front recently.
What has been wearing me down isn’t something I can articulate easily. The “scene” I am currently immersed in is not my natural habitat. People have bee accepting of me and open to my ideas but there are times when topics come up that just make me feel off and/or out of place.
The past few times I have hopped in with groups it has been similar. I am the token male sub. The first task is always to break down the stereotypes of F/m. Dommes aren’t raging man-haters that abuse the hell out of some poor soul that shouldn’t even be there in the first place. I don’t even know where this idea comes from. I still end up having to overcome it. A lot of people end up feeling naive that they didn’t understand that D/s is D/s, regardless of if it’s M/f or F/m. Flipping the slash doesn’t make relationships non-loving or miserable.
Once the stereotypes are broken it’s a lot easier to talk about things in a mutually-understood way… for a while. There is a period of connection, friendship building, and camaraderie that feels great. I feel like I belong. That feeling is rare for me. Over time, things inevitably start to eat away at me because of numerous reminders that my role is not perceived as legitimate. This is rarely if ever thrown in my face intentionally. It is rarely blatant. I doubt people even realize they are doing it.
Before I go any farther I do want to mention that I’m debating not posting this. I don’t want to come off as some “whoa is me whiner” with thin skin looking for someone to play a violin for the depressing emo-boy. It took me days to recognize that this is legitimately affecting me in a negative way and not just some downswing in mood. I also don’t mean for this to guilt trip anyone. If anything, I just want people to be aware of it and that it does have an impact.
There are ideas that perpetuate that are really ugly. They are ideas that in any other arena, people would be offended by them. For some reason in M/f, it’s easy for people to believe that this is the correct orientation. Men dominate, women submit. People make these statements. They nod and agree. They will talk about how equality was ruining their marriage and now that the man has taken charge, the woman realizes what a bitch she has been and obviously needed to be dominated. This is the natural order and now everything is perfect. Feminism is destroying the world. They nod and agree.
I sit back and shake my head. D/s isn’t a perfect substitute for maturity. I think in many cases when people take responsibility in their roles they mature. I think this maturing could have been done without D/s. I think people can choose who they want to be instead of just following baser emotions. When people enact D/s they choose who they want to be sometimes for the first time in a long time. I don’t think this has anything to do with natural order. I think it has everything to do with people truly trying to understand the one that they love and what will make them truly happy. This can happen without D/s even if D/s was their vehicle for finding it.
I shouldn’t have to explain why the sexist nature of the common view bothers me. I’ve ranted about it before. I will simply make a comparison statement. If a man said that women shouldn’t be CEOs or in hold government office because men are better take charge leaders, many people would get pretty damn offended. Very few people would nod and agree.
The other factor is at the core of what wears me down. If M/f is the natural order, then I am an abomination. I shouldn’t exist. My existence becomes trivialized. If people really see my role and existence as real, they could not and would not make those types of sexist statements, nor agree with them. They would probably get offended.
If someone truly sees me and accepts me, they would not even think those things.
I’m not really going to take this any farther as anything more I could say is only beating a dead horse. What I can say is that experiencing weeks of this has worn me down and I feel unnerved. It doesn’t feel good. A Domme friend of mine told me that she thinks it’s easier for a man to come out as gay than to come out as submissive. I’ve agreed with her since I read that statement the first time and still agree with it now.
Hopefully I didn’t piss anyone off by writing this. If so, I apologize in advance as it wasn’t my intent.
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