GAZE UPON THIS

28 * genderfluid/autosexual/ficto-androflexible

[officiallyfckingdone]

Yo idk how long I'll have this blog. But I was hauntception. If any of yall followed me before that got banned, please follow. If I was really hitting it off, I may ask for ur discord or whatever just so I can contact y'all on a more consistent basis

[featherquillpen]

D/s and Emotional Needs

This post is basically a transcript of a speech I give to newbies to the D/s scene all the time IRL. I figured it might be useful not only to people curious about kink IRL but also to smut writers here on the smut writing website.

For the purposes of this post, I am sending specific physical acts out of the room. Right now they don't matter, because you can meet an emotional need through any number of physical acts. So when I say that there are many ways to dom and many ways to sub, I am not referring to many kinds of physical acts. I mean that there are many emotional needs that doms and subs bring to scenes, and those can change the scene more than the choice of physical acts that will occur in that scene.

I say this to newbies to the scene because they tend to have a narrow view of the motivations and needs that bring people to D/s, biased by both the newbie's own preferences and the depictions of D/s they've seen in media. The same is true of people who write kink fic. Kink fic is very biased to a narrow subset of the wide range of emotional needs that people might bring to this kind of play.

It's really important to understand this in D/s IRL because a mismatch or miscommunication about these needs can lead to a bad scene. For example, let's take the approaches of sub-as-beloved-pet and sub-as-object. If a dom treats a sub as a beloved pet when what they really want is to be treated like an object, then a sub who went into a scene needing to be ignored, or at the very least the illusion of being ignored and disregarded, is suddenly in the spotlight of a lot of intense attention and affection. Again, I will note that both of these scenes could potentially involve the same physical acts, just approached differently. Let's say it's a service submission scene where the sub is naked and cleaning the room for the dom. Sub-as-beloved-pet would get frequent praise and lots of patiently repeated instructions, while sub-as-object would get one detailed instruction at the beginning and no reinforcement except a punishment if they get part of the instruction wrong.

I'm going to go through a bunch of different styles of dom and sub, with the emotional needs that underlie them. This list is not exhaustive. I'm sure there's more I haven't thought of or encountered, so feel free to reblog with additions. It may also be a bit dom-biased because I'm a dom, but I think that might be for the best, because the emotional needs of doms are generally less understood than those of subs.

Various consensual kinks discussed below. Kinkshamers in the notes will be blocked with extreme prejudice.

Dom-as-control: This may seem obvious or even trivial, but it shouldn't be dismissed: many doms are motivated by an emotional need to have some part of their life where they have total control over what is going to happen. Something that I love about this style of domination is that I always know exactly what will happen next (except if there's some emergency, safeword, or other issue to address.) There are no wild cards in a controlled D/s scene except for those I explicitly allow (like if I ask a sub to choose which whip I'll beat them with.) This is also a reason why I personally have a very hard time switching; I have difficulty with the uncertainty of not knowing what will happen next. It should be noted that this style of domination is fairly incompatible with the bratty style of submission, as the brat is constantly throwing wild cards into the scene.

Sub-as-blankspace: The other side of this coin is the sub who needs to not have to think anymore. They've spent all day deciding what to wear and what to eat and which toothpaste to buy and they just want to stop. This is a very common motivator. This sub needs specific and clear commands from a dom, without too many steps, or else needs to have a well-established protocol of kneeling and service that they can do by pure muscle memory. This sub does not want the dom to offer them a choice of whips they can be beaten with, because that forces them out of the blissful blankspace of not needing to choose.

Dom- or sub-as-service: The same emotional need can sometimes motivate domination or submission! Many people dom or sub out of a desire to please their partner. It's about taking on a defined role that you know will meet your partner's needs. It feels good to be needed, after all. This motivation for D/s is generally the best understood by the public, especially as a motivation for doms. It's generally more socially acceptable to want to control and torment people if you're doing it selflessly in order to please them. A big part of my motivation for making this speech to people, and for writing this post, is to point out that this is far from the only style of domination, and pleasing their subs is far from the only emotional need that doms might have.

Dom-as-whumper: I'm using this terminology because of the website I'm on. I'm not into whumpfic, but I recognize in people who have a visceral need to see their blorbos whimpering and bleeding the same need I have to tear apart a cute kitten with my bare hands, or to crush a sub beneath my booted foot. It's the cuteness aggression approach to domination: sometimes your sub is so cute your hands itch with the urge to destroy them. This is where domination and sadism bleed into each other; this style of domination does not work well for the sub who wants to submit without being hurt or humiliated.

Sub-as-object: Subs who like to be treated as furniture, robots, or objects are often motivated by a need to enjoy a sexual or kink situation while being free of attention and scrutiny. Obviously, some baseline level of attention is needed for BDSM safety; the dom needs to be able to notice if the sub is injured or upset. But beyond that baseline, it can feel very freeing for a sub to be turned on, blissed out in subspace, crying, drooling, whatever, without anyone closely watching or listening to them, so long as they fulfill whatever their purpose as an object is.

Sub- or dom-as-flex: Both doms and subs can be motivated by a need to feel competent. I definitely feel awesomely powerful and competent when I do a style of domination that requires specialized skill, such as hypnosis. Submission can also provide a feeling of competence: look how long I was able to stay kneeling on the hard floor! Look how perfectly I cleaned the room, exactly as Mistress told me to do it!

Dom-as-troll (or mad scientist): The sibling to this kind of dom is the writer who thinks "wouldn't it be fucked up if....?" and then writes a freaky nasty little horror story about it. A great thing about D/s is that you can have a thought like "wouldn't it be fucked up if I tied up my sub and then ate their favorite snack right in front of them?" and then you can just do it (provided you know your sub likes to be tied up and tormented.) Then you can find out how your sub would react to your terrible ideas and laugh evilly at the results. The emotional need being served here is the goblin part of your brain that wants to break things just to see how they shatter. All you need to do is find someone who wants to be broken.

Sub-as-brat: Brats are often discussed as a single type of sub, but in my experience, there are two rather different emotional needs that drive brats. Some people are brats because they need the assurance that they can act out all they want, and it won't derail the action; the dom is strong or skilled enough to subdue them no matter what nasty tricks their goblin brain gets up to. Other people are brats out of a need to live in a predictable and fair moral universe. Those brats want a very clear system of rules and punishments for those rules. Then they test the rules, and they get meted out exactly the punishment they were promised. Within the world of this scene, the world is fair, and the same misbehavior will always face the same consequences, something that rarely happens in the real world. These types of brats are rather different, because the first kind of brat doesn't care as much if the consequences of their misbehavior are inconsistent, while the second kind cares a lot.

Sub-as-beloved-pet: Or beloved child, if they're an ageplayer. I find that subs that like to be a beloved puppy are driven by an emotional need to be loved, treasured, and supported unconditionally, even if they make mistakes, even if they behave messily or clumsily, even if they look silly, because that's how a good pet owner should treat a pet. There might be discipline involved, but the discipline is very supportive and patient.

Dom-as-nurturer: Some doms are motivated by a need to be in a nurturing role that their non-D/s life may not allow them to fulfill. For example, a man who wants to express affection and tenderness to his partner but has a hard time doing so because of the way he was raised may be able to unlock that ability if his partner plays a sweet puppy and he's playing the puppy's doting owner. Basically, the D/s scene creates a little world and a set of roles in which it's expected and normal for the dom to be nurturing, even if that's not true for the dom outside of that scene.

Dom-as-enfant-terrible: The other side of the coin is a dom who needs to be in a role where they can be unreasonable, demanding, and selfish, a role that their non-D/s life may not allow them to fulfill. For example, a mother who spends all day thinking about her family's needs may relish the opportunity to center her own desires without worrying if she's being "too much." She can be impatient and fussy and demand the sub do things over and over until she's satisfied, all of which she can't do when she's working as a teacher or other caring role.

Dom-as-artist: I think this is a hugely under-appreciated motivator for doms. Many have a need to be creative and imaginative that they fulfill through domination. I've been to workshops and demos at kink conventions where I've been awed by another dom's fiendish creativity. I once watched a hypno dom with a sub who got off on being afraid, and he hypnotized her and crafted an extremely elaborate horror scene in the room, filling it with menacing shadows and phantasms. This is where I'm contractually obligated to link A Dom DM because this is where domination overlaps a lot with game running and game design.

Sub-as-aesthetic-object: The flip side of this coin is that many subs enjoy being an aesthetic object or canvas for a dom's art. Very often these are subs chasing a need to feel beautiful, or at least enjoyable to look at. Subs who want to be aesthetic objects may enjoy wearing special outfits during scenes, or being posed in sexy or appealing positions. Subs in this kind of scene may enjoy letting go of worrying about whether they look good to the dom, because the dom is shaping them to their own preferred aesthetic, whether that's via poses, makeup, shibari, or something else.

Sub-as-sexual-creature: A lot of subs enjoy being called sluts, offered up for free use, or otherwise being hypersexualized. Why is that? Well, our society has a lot of shame and repression around sex, and it can feel much easier to relax and enjoy sex if it's couched in the fantasy that you have no choice because you've been reduced to a purely sexual creature. The sub has an emotional need to give up responsibility for choosing to have sex and be sexual, because that responsibility is a heavy weight to carry.

Dom- or sub-as-taboo-breaker: This is a huge motivator for both doms and subs. We all live in a society, and sometimes we feel a need to break the rules of that society. Both domination and submission provide opportunities to do so. It's taboo to piss yourself as an adult, but a watersports scene creates a space where it is acceptable or even desirable for a sub to break that taboo. As a dom, I personally get a huge taboo-breaking thrill from slapping a sub across the face. There's something about the sheer disrespect of it, and the memory of being scolded for doing it as a child, that fills me with impish glee.

Dom-as-hunter/sub-as-prey: For the hunter to catch the prey, there must first be a chase, or at the very least an ambush. This need not be a literal chase (we sent physical acts out of the room, remember?) but it is a dynamic to hunter/prey-flavored BDSM: the hunter has to earn it. This fulfills an emotional need for both dom and sub: a dom who struggles with feelings of unworthiness can feel like they've earned their partner's submission, and a sub can feel that the dom cares enough to put in the effort to catch them. Hunter/prey also allows dom and sub to explore some pretty dark emotions within the safety of consensual kink, such as fear, obsession, and consumption.

Dom-as-shadow: I mean shadow here in the sense of shadow work. Many doms take inspiration from people who bullied them in school (and many subs enjoy re-enacting scenes of childhood bullying in a safe and consensual context.) There is a real emotional need served by claiming the power of those bullies for yourself. Those childhood cruelties can be utterly transformed by the change of context. For example, the catty whispers and sneers of straight girls who bullied me for being queer comes out very different when I perform those same catty sneers as a genderfucky adult.

Sub-as-lesser-being: While some subs like to be beloved pets, and others like to be disregarded objects, some like to be pond scum. There can be a real freedom that comes from occupying a role of being disgusting and horrible. Nothing good or useful can be expected of you, and nothing you do will ever earn praise, and so you're free from worrying about or pursuing any of those things. Sub-as-lesser-being is also a space to explore difficult emotions like shame and humiliation in a safe context.

[transandrogyny--turtlebug]

Imagine building your gender around already established societally accepted gender and thinking that makes you experts, thinking that makes you "old fogies of gender" and that being non binary is the cool hip political statement that kids are doing nowadays.

Judith Butler is older than you, a non binary transfeminist. /I'm/ only 8 years younger than ms. peterson. You two are just losers lmao. This is PEAK "I'm better than you" core Like binary trans exorsexists will throw this accusation at us, and then make podcasts about how much more real and awesome and trans they are than us. Binary trans exorsexists get over yourself challenge

[transandrogyny--turtlebug]

It kind of feels like Julia Serano without meaning to kicked off trans radical femninism, and then transfeminism has been co-opted and have been going in that direction for such a long time that we can't even recognize anymore. We gotta take it back. more non binary theorists telling transmedicalist exorsexists to shut up

[transandrogyny--turtlebug]

We have to be more critical of trans academics and their theories. Can the history of transmisogyny book be all that good if it doesn't take non binary people into account?

[polymerclay]

[polymerclay]

Ageplay but I spend a lot of money and several decades of my life obsessively trying to dig up every part of your fossilized remains scattered across different continents and when I finally hit my late 60s I display them in a well-regarded paleontology museum where your remains will be used to expand our knowledge of how Earth was like before we could even exist to witness it, a humbling thought that truly puts things into perspective of how we were never the center of the world, that we were never the entire story of it

[officiallyfckingdone]

Hey, I had a trial of ellipsus plus recently and I made a theme for all my fellow bohabs called GWAR food. So if any of y'all use ellipsus and got plus, I think this might be a good fit for y'all

(link)

[polymerclay]

Birthday party theme idea

[polymerclay]

[mysharona1987]

[theprofessional-amateur]

A ceo leaves for a week, very few people notice.

The custodial staff leave for a day, everyone notices.

Sanitation and custodial workers deserve far more money and respect than they generally get.

[ohnoitstbskyen]

I don't think people understand the degree to which society is kept alive by the labor of the least well-regarded professions. If sewage technicians and sanitation workers and their expertise and knowledge were to disappear tomorrow, the streets would pile high with bodies in every city. We live in a world where we get to be blessedly ignorant to just how fast, how brutally and how violently cholera can rip through a community. How many babies it can kill. How many elderly bodies it can devour alive. You've never seen what it's like when typhoid takes root.

"Oh but we have modern medicine" if you don't have clean drinking water and a way to dispose of your piss and shit and trash you are going to fucking die. No if or but or maybe, you are dead, and so are half the people you know.

[vergess]

Hey thanks for sharing that link actually, I was not about to subject myself to the experience of looking for the 'receipts' myself and while I did assume the accusations were More Pedojacketing I did not realize the extent to which people were saying that she was saying the exact opposite of the things that she was saying. Christ

You make a good point, actually, about ease of access to the basic truth. And I don't think anyone should have to wade through that ableist cesspool of a post ever again so, I shall make my own.

Before I begin, I want to make something very, very clear:

I think ISFF/Suggestrogen (etc) has a lot of unexamined racism rooted in her man-hating persona. I also think that she considers it insulting when this racism is pointed out by the very people impacted. I think she finds it especially distasteful if the people impacted are trans men of colour.

Her attitude of, "haha, I love being a White Femininst, I'm so ~aware~ of my own vulnerability when a man walks near me on the street, yay!" is unbelievably. Fucking. Grating.

It would be grating from anyone, but it is especially grating from a white woman who, by all rights, should still know better that to engage in this level of racism! I expect a lot of ignorance from white women, but come on! If only by virtue of being able to universalize her own internal experience with transphobia to other vectors of bigotry!!!

So.

I also think she's extremely funny. Despite my distaste for some aspects of her performance pieces, including her recurring "personal" blogs as their artist: she's so fucking funny.

Let's just admit that, okay. We can be reasonable about this. Emotionally mature and shit. She's really, really funny.

She's extremely popular because of that fantastic humour. She took a fairly common blog "bit" and elevated the performance aspect spectacularly.

And, in the same breath, she must be commended for her extremely advanced respect and understanding for sexuality and kink. Including her willingness to engage in safe, easily avoided and easily explained performances of a kinky nature.

After all, her most popular work centered around a well known (dare I even say somewhat recognizable to the mainstream?) fetish. On one level, all she did was perform that fetish, with absolute comedic timing. On another, much more important level, she engaged in shamelessly fun and harmless displays of queer sexuality in an accessible yet avoidable way. If you didn't like the humour, you blacklisted the URL, and walked away completely unharmed.

And so, she elevated a combination of common fetish and common tumblr comedy bit into something worthy of renown.

Perhaps as much renown as, say. A mid-sized blog on a small sized platform?

But no one was ever interested in criticizing a white woman for the way her absolute hatred of men (the very source of that exceptional comedy!) extended to actively furthering the public acceptance of racism and transphobia as long as it was targetting men. No, that was not adequate for the spectating public, on the hunt for a worthy victim.

People could not settle for helping her do less harm or walk more carefully. People could not settle for reducing the harmful behaviours in the world.

People wanted to sacrifice a trans woman on the altar as proof of their absolute righteousness.

And so, they waited for this woman. This famously funny, famously boundary pushing, famously sex-positive, famously queer woman.

To do exactly what she has always done:

Show a surprising amount of nuance and depth of understanding about a sexual topic at the very boundaries of public safety.

They waited for her to make this beseeching, carefully worded, kindly intended, deeply nuanced, and fundamentally research backed post. This post which begs for a reduction in child endangerment, as proven by decades of historical and scientific study. This post that prioritizes the voices of actual victims of severe child abuse.

This explicitly and implicitly anti-contact, pro-child safety, pro-victim post.

For this, they accused her as they accuse all trans women, in the end. Even ones who did not make so many rightful and deeply powerless enemies in so short a time. So many convenient tokens for the baying mob to use as proof that this time.

Oh, this time.

This time the hunt for the Ultimate Child Abuser, the Final Boss of CSA, was right to focus its sights on a trans woman. A queer woman. A sexual woman.

Note here, the absence of their concern for the groups they use as proof of their righteousness. Note here, their laser focus on their chosen victim.

"This time, it was right," they could tell themselves, because this time the "right people" already hated her.

This time, they could call her a child molester, despite her begging for interventions proven to reduce molestation.

This time, the woman calling for prevention of sexual abuse would be the real abuser.

And so they lie, and lie, and lie, and lie.

And she ultimately was forced to delete her blog.

To voluntarily remove herself and her performance work from the public space. To walk away, and claim what safety she had left. And potentially, hopefully, to begin healing from the trauma of this public humiliation campaign. A campaign which echoes the increasing murder campaign against trans and queer women, (indeed against trans people of all genders and all races, etc), using this exact justification.

Even though her blog was only recently reinstated.

You see she was temporarily suspended from tumblr, until she filed a manual appeal to prove that a similar humiliation campaign was falsely reporting her for spam and abuse. Fortunately, her appeal was upheld and she was reinstated.

Unfortunately, the everything else.

As a final note to the reader: if you would like to do something helpful here, something that prioritizes open access to the record, please transcribe the above screenshots in the reblogs, as I am currently unable to do so due, rather ironically, to disability.

And as a final note to the blogger formerly known as "ISuggestForceFem" or "Suggestrogen," should you for some reason ever see this:

I hope you will heal. I hope one day you will have space to learn again. Your behaviours in no way justified this level of retaliation. You should have been given the space to grow, the tools to improve.

Not this.

I am sorry we did this to you.

[discoursedamaged]

and it is similarly bizarre to try and separate trans men's experiences into a trans part and a man part. That's not how people experience the world. There's not a trans part that gets sexually assaulted and a man part that gets refused an abortion, there's one undivided person experiencing both. To ask trans men to defer to some baseline trans-exclusionary concept of manhood in interpreting their experience as trans men is just cruel. They should get to speak as full people.

[genderkoolaid]

the transandrophobia Wikipedia page is not being deleted (good work!) but I wanted to share the exchange that went to down.

I saw these screenshots in the notes ~2m after it was decided:

I just took these of the project page:

& looking in the edit history, I see this:

Nice to see this get defeated so quickly.

[fishtank-thinktank]

Also, I feel like it’s important to mention! That if the issue around the page is mainly the word transandrophobia, it should also be stated that the word is used two times in the entire article!



Twice, one in the intro alongside other words used to describe the oppression that trans men face in this way, the other one being a restatement of that fact: “is sometimes referred to as anti-transmasculinity,[1] transandrophobia,[2] or transmisandry” “The discrimination experienced by transgender men has been described using various words, but none have seen widespread use. Terms used include anti-transmasculinity and transandrophobia.”

The word transandrophobia is used twice in the article, both times referring to the different words that are used to describe trans men’s oppression.

[genderkoolaid]

the funniest thing about this is that transandrophobia deniers want to make anti-transmasculinity theory out to be some terminally online niche internet discourse thing soooo bad. they clearly want to present it as something completely outside the realm of legitimate theory, something no "reasonable adult" or "feminist" would ever buy into because its just so obviously wrong.

but then you have something like this. where it is just so painfully obvious they are on the same side of history as aphobes and biphobes. when you have people who 1) are not personally invested in transandrophobia not being a legitimate term, and 2) are actually looking at the academic and statistical sources given for transmasculine oppression, it becomes pretty obvious that this resistance is motivated by personal discomfort with the term.

notably, in my experience, people are super willing to come out swinging against transandrophobia, all confident in their rejection of the concept, until you respond with numerous cited sources on material transmasculine oppression and back it up with widely accepted feminist theory. then suddenly they ghost. so much anti-transmasculinity thrives as a direct result of people's refusal to acknowledge the reality of transmasc oppression, and when you can't do that because its a Wikipedia page with extensive sources, you have to fall back on petty defensive cruelty, because that was what was at the heart of this uproar all along.

keep talking about transandrophobia and/or anti-transmasculinity. use those terms. don't be embarrassed about it. if trans-rad-feminism gets to be slowly mainstreamed in queer spaces, why can't transunitism?

[cactyswhy]

vent art

[zweetiedust]

it would be so cool if Dead By Daylight had one of the Gwar guys as a killer ngl. I think if Brockie were still alive Oderus would've made an amazing killer

[oh-nox]

if he wants to get somewhere in a hurry, he'll hop on a skateboard!

[totally-not-a-goat]

gwar stamps i made with that stamp studio site smile

[oh-nox]

jizmak where are you going even???