Submissive Skills
2012 16 Jan
This was written for and originally published at Role/Reboot, where I became the Sex + Relationships Section Editor on December 15, 2011. For more of the Role/Reboot Sex + Relationships section, click here.
I write a lot about my experiences with BDSM — that’s a 6-for-4 acronym that covers Bondage, Discipline, Dominance, Submission, Sadism and Masochism. I have a fair amount of experience engaging in BDSM; I also have a fair amount of experience in the BDSM subculture. The subculture consists of meetup groups, educational workshops, dungeons where people practice BDSM, a set of well-reputed books and resources, Internet social networking sites, etc. The subculture also has its own norms and pitfalls.
Many BDSMers use the word “bottom” to refer to a masochist and/or submissive, and “top” to refer to a dominant and/or sadist. I am a switch, which means I feel comfortable in either the top or the bottom role. I haven’t observed every BDSM group in the world, but in my experience, one BDSM subculture pitfall is that we don’t explicitly teach very many “bottom skills”. In fact, a lot of the time, “bottom skills” aren’t even recognized as skills.
But bottom skills are totally the skillsiest skillz you can imagine. Let me start by describing my ex-boyfriend who was most in touch with his bottom side. When I met him, I was much less experienced than him at BDSM, and I was basically unaware of my top side. I think there are probably a lot more women than we think who would be up for being BDSM tops, but since cultural norms tell us that women aren’t dominant, lots of those women simply don’t recognize those feelings. My ex-boyfriend agrees, and as a result he’s specifically trained himself to surreptitiously draw out a woman’s dominant desires.
With me, he started by giving me the gift of his fear. We saw each other around the community a few times, and I guess he took note. Then one day, we were both at a BDSM meetup, and from nearby — while he was speaking to someone else — he remarked that I terrified him. He knew that I’d overhear.
I looked at him. He avoided my gaze. Eventually he worked his way around the crowd so he was actually speaking to me, and that was when he actually met my eyes and said directly to me, straightforward, in a charming and casual tone: “I’m terrified.”
Of course, this is vulnerability on a silver platter: it’s confident vulnerability. You scare me. Yet I’m still talking to you, even though I’m sure you could hurt me real bad. He was being so obvious, yet there were still so many tacit dimensions to what he was doing, and I had never quite seen anyone like him before. I was intrigued, and felt myself gain a predatory focus.
He was like that throughout our relationship. Throughout the flirting, throughout the BDSM encounters. He communicated very directly when there was a need for direct talking. But he also showed me so much of what to do. When I put my nails in certain places, he’d arch his body directly into them and groan. When I did something that was difficult for him, he’d get quieter and less responsive in an extremely obvious way while he dealt with it. He’s the only man I’ve ever seen who knew how to tip his head back for a kiss (he was also tall, so most women would have to be in very particular positions for this to work, ahem). A lot of this was instinctive, of course; many bottoms would recognize themselves in these tendencies … but he’d learned his own instinctive responses and fine-tuned them.
I want to make it clear here that I don’t want anyone to “perform” a type of sexuality that they don’t like; trust me, I know just how much a person can feel responsible for “acting out” their sexuality. I’ve been there. But that’s different from a person taking their own desires and reactions, and honing them for maximum communication power. That kind of thing takes experience and self-knowledge. Which is one of the things I value most about BDSM — the inner exploration it can enable. I just wish we taught about it better.
I definitely think the BDSM subculture is great at teaching certain topics: for example, how to perform certain activities safely. In major USA cities, there are often workshops on how to safely hit people with whips. Communication also gets a decent amount of airtime; for example, everyone in the community knows what a safeword is (indeed, a lot of people outside the community know about safewords, too). Sometimes, tops are even “judged” on their “dominant skill set”. But bottoms are usually seen as just being “along for the ride” — or are merely judged for “how far they’re willing to go”, which is even worse, because it discourages some bottoms from setting boundaries.
(As a side note, here’s a pro tip on looking for tops. If you’re talking to a top who can’t stop bragging about how awesome and experienced they are, I advise you to walk away. Or perhaps I should merely say that I, personally, would walk away from that. My favorite, most respectful dominant partners have all had a hefty sense of humility and been very willing to learn — even if they were very experienced.)
So why sub skillz got no respect? I think it’s partly because a lot of them are subtle and hard to see. In general, any “receptive” social role is going to get less credit in an interaction, because lots of people think that the “initiating” social role “does all the work” — but the truth is that the “initiating” social role simply does more visible work. You see this happening with mainstream gender roles, too; for example, some men complain about how women expect them to do “all the work”, like asking women out on dates. But the truth is that for any role played by one gender in the usual heterosexual mating dance, there is an opposing or matching role that takes its own kind of work. For every man who has trouble asking women out, there is a woman who has trouble appearing approachable … or who wants to ask men out but thinks that she will freak men out by doing so (and indeed, she might well be correct). Things are tough all over, baby.
Communication — any kind of communication — is not just explaining one’s desires out loud. There’s also a ton of non-verbal feedback and non-verbal reading that goes on. Everyone communicates, but because a lot of bottoms communicate primarily by responding, bottom communication is often invisible. There’s also a whole nother level of bottom communication sometimes achieved by people who are really good, which involves tacitly running the encounter from the bottom side. Like what my ex-boyfriend did in my anecdote above.
Other bottom skills have to do with bottoms monitoring their body and taking care of themselves. Some of this is physical. One thing I would absolutely love to see is a BDSM workshop on body chemistry: I’ve written about it and I try to keep an eye on how it works in my life, but I’ve literally never seen a class on the topic. My experience is that all kinds of things — from sleep to intoxicants to the quality and amount of food I’ve eaten — can drastically alter my experience of BDSM (and, for that matter, sex). But I’m not a nutritionist or a doctor, and although some things are obvious — like: it’s easier to take pain when I’ve had enough sleep — some things are not obvious at all.
And then there’s breath control. I am definitely a novice at this, but I’ve got the feeling that understanding how my breathing intersects with my pain tolerance could lead to a whole new level of BDSM. The one thing I’m sure of right now is that it’s easy to reflexively stop up my breathing when I’m in a lot of pain, or to breathe irregularly. But if I can force myself to breathe more regularly, then it gets easier. So the only advice I can offer bottoms here is for them, too, to watch their breathing and look for patterns.
Of course, taking care of oneself isn’t just physical; it’s mental and emotional too — setting boundaries and understanding oneself. It’s important for a bottom to know what they won’t do, will do … or what they want to do, but suspect will be complex and hard to deal with. In fairness, it is also important for tops to know these things about themselves, but the risks bottoms take tend to be more intense and direct than the ones tops take. Also in fairness, the BDSM community has developed some tactics for talking about this: for example, I often write about BDSM checklists, which list a huge array of BDSM activities and encourage people to rate their desire for and experience with those activities.
A lot of taking care of oneself involves a self-aware learning process. Calling a safeword is absolutely a skill, and it’s a skill that gets easier with practice; but sometimes I’m still not sure whether I actually want to safeword, and I’ve been doing BDSM fairly regularly for years. (For this reason, a lot of BDSMers use the “stoplight system”, whereby “red” means “stop definitely for real!” and “yellow” means “I’m not sure about this, but I don’t think I want to stop, so let’s slow down or switch activities”.) A lot of bottoms enter an altered state of consciousness we refer to as “subspace“; understanding how to navigate subspace is its own highly personal thing that deserves multiple stand-alone articles. Plus, I’ve learned a lot about which types of pain I like and dislike, but my tastes (like everyone’s) can and do evolve over time.
In short, processing intense sensations — and understanding where a person’s brain is at, and what they want even when they’re processing those sensations — is its own constellation of BDSM skills. Again, most relevant for bottoms, but also relevant for tops.
Tags: BDSM, communication
When I started to get into BDSM I was under the impression that I was only bottomy as well. I only discovered my toppy side when someone I hooked up with out-submissived me. I recently started seeing a wonderful switchy fellow who is far more comfortable with being far more submissive than any other man I’ve gotten to know, and that has enabled and encouraged me to explore my dominant side further. I still find myself holding back at (semi-)public play parties somewhat, but I will get past that soon enough.
Loved the anecdote. He sounds extraordinarily sexy.
You’ve written another excellent and valuable piece, this time highlighting how important it is for bottoming skills to be both learned and appreciated. Your points about “receptive” roles in general are especially interesting and relevant. In addition to being less visible and more individually personal, I think one obstacle may be that bottoming skills are not normally fun or sexy to teach – and not easy. Teaching and learning those skills need to be more rewarding for all participants.
This topic reminds me of how bottoms are, sometimes correctly, accused of expecting the tops to read their minds. Even with partners who don’t know each other well, this phenomenon can seem real. (Of course, it’s not their mind the top is reading.) As a bottom, my first few partners were such a good match for me I didn’t make a point of learning much about negotiation and other important communication. Things might have worked because we made the same assumptions, or perhaps I gave off clear signals. As a top, I won’t make a single move without knowing exactly what’s going on – a reason I don’t top much.
As you point out so well, there are many specific skills both partners can and should learn. I would add that this is important even if the play is currently satisfying.
Thoughts?
http://almostclever.wordpress.com/2012/01/07/a-truly-chosen-sexuality/
Erk. If someone said to me that they were terrified of me (especially if I’d overheard them saying it to someone else earlier) then, regardless of the tone of voice, that would be a huge barrier; they’d pretty much have blown it with me. That’s partly my vulnerability and emotional health issues, but basically it’s about knowing I can bring a partner back: I need to know that she’s safe with me, before I can make her scared of me (and feel safe).
Also, I’m not keen on having a partner using their reactions to direct play. Newmahr wrote about that in her book, in similar terms, but I recall feeling that it would be a dangerous game to play with me, because firstly, I don’t like being manipulated and secondly, if I read it wrongly, it can end up in one of those “scene gone wrong” type situations where the emotions go all wonky (for instance, going quiet and less responsive to suggest a different approach might very well make me panicky and bring things to a complete stop). Anyone going for “tacitly running the encounter from the bottom side.” is going to have a bad experience with me sooner or later, just because it’s going to give me a bad experience, too.
But I think that’s a different thing from what you described in terms of him letting you know what’s going on for him:
I don’t see that as “tacitly running the encounter”, but rather, giving valuable feedback and information to enable the top to run it better (although, again, “less responsive” would be a worry for me, the picture in my mind’s eye when I read that passage wasn’t “less responsive” but rather “more understated responses”). I am always extremely appreciative of that kind of feedback from a bottom, and I think it is a valuable skill indeed.
I agree that safewording is a skill that bottoms need to learn; with one partner, I had to make her practise it before taking her to that kind of edge, because she was reluctant to use it.
Incidentally, on ‘nilla dating protocol, it’s a big problem if women use the passive “approachability” skills to try to attract a particular guy, and he’s oblivious to it (as I tend to be!) I’m pretty sure I would be more at home if I had that passive role, I think the work would be more suited to my brain type (I noted in the linked article you referenced Hugo Schwyzer on dating, but he’s admitted to having contempt for those who don’t find it easy, because he doesn’t understand what’s going on for them). All I can say is that, at least for me, it actually is a relief when I am approached directly, and I have the experience to prove it. I feel like I actually have a script for that, whereas I don’t for the reverse (or “natural” male) role.
@Snowdrop — I lost my copy of Newmahr, and I never finished the book in the first place, but I remember thinking that the passages you cite in your post were interesting. And especially liking this Newmahr quotation:
Unlike the formalized, technical learning process in becoming a top, this is a meaning-making process. Participants who bottom choose from sometimes competing discourses to contextualise, recast, make sense of, and enjoy the pain, anguish, or subservience of bottoming.
It’s an interesting line you draw between “feedback” and “manipulatively running the scene”. I can see what you mean, I think, but in practice I think it gets blurry. I’m not sure I see much of a difference between giving a top feedback that I’m pretty sure will influence him into doing something, and “running the scene”? I mean, I can see a difference of degree, but not kind. But maybe that’s what you mean?
@AlmostClever — Honestly, I feel uncomfortable with how the person you cite discusses SM. I feel that this person is making a lot of general claims about experience. I understand that this person has had traumatic experiences, and is reacting against SM partly from that place of trauma, and that this person further feels that SM “propaganda” influenced her into doing things that she didn’t want to do. However, I don’t feel that this excuses some of her more aggressive blanket claims like: “When your doing SM, you’re practicing how to treat your lover like shit. How can that be healing?”
I also feel uncomfortable with the assertion that SM cannot be used as a tool to understand, process, or recover from abuse. I have met abuse survivors who are into SM and who would, I think, feel that their voices are ignored by the person you cite. Right this moment, I am considering sending your link to some survivors I know who are into SM, but I suspect that it would be triggering for them.
I have drawn some insight from posts like this one from the submissive violetwhite:
My last vanilla relationship did in a way cause me to temporarily forget that I existed.
How I ceased to exist was to miss out on the reality of my own needs. From age 22 to 26, unwittingly, I stopped seeing my friends, pursuing my own sexuality (from a little bdsm play with a few casual partners to no bdsm, from poly-bi to mono-het), and setting my own goals of self-fulfilment.
Instead I continuously remade myself into a support structure for someone else. Part of me must have derived some gratification in doing this or I wouldn’t have kept at it for four years. But it was by no means hot. There was certainly covert manipulation at work, and it strikes me as so odd that I didn’t see it at the time. I came across an old love-letter from that partner a couple of weeks ago and it astonished me to see how sly its embedded directives were. They are so clear to me now.
But yeah, overt hierarchies and power exchange (and happily negotiable mutual equality and openness in my awesome primary relationship) from here on in.
Is this post from violetwhite “propaganda”? I see it as simply an outline of her own experience, and what works for her.
That having been said, the narrative you cite is an interesting one about the potential for “rewiring sexuality”. There are plenty of people for whom attempting to “rewire sexuality” simply does not work, or causes more harm than good (see: the ex-gay movement). But it’s an area of inquiry that I think is worth considering, and I would be pleased to see this narrative about it if the narrative weren’t so aggressively anti-SM.
@ Clarisse:
It’s about the type of information being conveyed, or intended to be conveyed, rather than the degree. There’s information about the effect I’m having, which is one kind of thing, and there’s information about what my partner wants, which is another type of thing.
The “blurred space” you’re talking about seems to be where a bottom second-guesses how a top will react to the communication of certain effects, and then chooses whether or not to convey that as part of hir communication? Personally, I would feel upset if a partner did that because a) it takes away from my ability to understand her and respond in a way that I feel is appropriate (so it makes me feel less safe as a top) and b) it takes away from my ability to choose the effect I have, and get the maximum enjoyment. It is also the case that I am quite unpredictable in terms of what effect I am going for, with the caveat that I’m never going for something damaging (and a safeword might be more appropriate if that seemed to be a possible outcome).
@ AlmostClever:
I have to agree with what Clarisse said above.
I am very disturbed by the implication, in your opening remarks, that BDSM is always a consequence of abuse. That is a very offensive and harmful stereotype, and it has been used to pathologise, criminalise and marginalise kinky folks and their lived experiences. While it is true that some BDSMers have been victims of abuse in the past, many do not. My belief is that there are several different sources of BDSM desires, and that while “abusive history” is one of them, there are several others.
The technique of rewiring sexuality: I recall reading a post by a female top in which she described how her therapist had tried to get her to use a similar technique to “rewire” her sexuality away from being a sadist. It didn’t work, except to cause a lot of harm and emotional anguish for her. She eventually got herself a different therapist. I, too, have only been harmed by my attempts to “lose” my toppiness. It seems that for some of us, as Clarisse says, it’s equivalent to “pray away the gay”.
One of my former partners used her BDSM relationship with me to escape out of a cycle of abusive relationships (that began in childhood), and to rebuild her self-dignity, to the point where she could articulate her own desires and what she needed from a relationship instead of (when we first met) putting everyone else’s needs above her own. In other words, to heal and move on from that history.
@AlmostClever
Even though I have a surprising number of spoons today, I do not have enough to deal with this shit. So let’s just leave it here: don’t speak for me. Speak for yourself. There are millions of women (and people of other genders) like myself, for whom BDSM is a positive way to deal with abuse, and we do not appreciate your sex-policing and shaming.
@Clarisse
Was that diplomatic enough? I might be able to muster a thorough takedown if it’s required.
@AlmostClever
Also, yes, BDSM is not ALWAYS (or probably even *usually*) a response to abuse, as @SnowdropExplodes points out, and it is HELLA presumptuous to say that.
Also also, some of us don’t want to rewire our sexualities (or re-re-wire them, as I was vanilla before my abuse at age 13) . I personally don’t believe I *can*, and I don’t want to waste any more effort trying, especially since my sex life is perfectly fine and it’s my chronic mental illness that I’d rather waste hours talking about with a shrink.
Argh, yeah, there’s my two (or four) cents.
And now that I’ve looked at @AlmostClever’s blogroll and realized that she’s an anti-sexwork, anti-BDSM, radical feminist of the nastiest sort… yeah, I think I’m done engaging with her.
@LoriA, thanks for stopping by. I appreciate the effort. While there are some anti-sex work blogs on AlmostClever’s blogroll, there are some sex-positive ones too. So I was hoping there might be space for a conversation, but I totally understand your reaction; and I also hope that reading that material wasn’t too rough for you.
@Snowdrop — The “blurred space” you’re talking about seems to be where a bottom second-guesses how a top will react to the communication of certain effects, and then chooses whether or not to convey that as part of hir communication? Personally, I would feel upset if a partner did that because a) it takes away from my ability to understand her and respond in a way that I feel is appropriate (so it makes me feel less safe as a top) and b) it takes away from my ability to choose the effect I have, and get the maximum enjoyment. It is also the case that I am quite unpredictable in terms of what effect I am going for, with the caveat that I’m never going for something damaging (and a safeword might be more appropriate if that seemed to be a possible outcome).
Huh. I wasn’t intending to imply any kind of dishonesty. Or downplay the role of the top. I just think that bottoms can use their feedback in a conscious way. But I’m getting less certain about the mechanics of this as you challenge me on it. Interesting.
AlmostClever:
In your post, you wrote, “But for women who are working to heal beyond their conditioning to abuse, participating in SM – sex that involves pain, humiliation, or a situation in which one person wields power over the other – makes no sense. It would be like an alcoholic trying to heal from alcoholism by drinking only in special environments created for that purpose.”
Actually, it can make a great deal of sense. You’re just focusing on one of several possible — and applicable — analogies. Exposure to controlled amounts of an aversive stimulus in a controlled environment is the definition of exposure therapy, which is used in the treatment of OCD, PTSD, and various phobias, and is more than relevant to the subject of abuse.
Clarisse: And then there’s breath control. I am definitely a novice at this, but I’ve got the feeling that understanding how my breathing intersects with my pain tolerance could lead to a whole new level of BDSM.
Please tell me you don’t endorse suffocation or choking. That’s more dangerous than kidney-slapping.
@GudEnuf, I was actually referring to breath control in the sense of exercise or yoga, where a person moderates their breathing as part of their bodily control.
The type of activities you are thinking of are referred to as “breath play”, and while they are more dangerous than a lot of forms of BDSM, there are some safer and less safe ways to do them, and I don’t feel comfortable telling other people what they should or shouldn’t do, particularly if those people have done research.
@ Clarisse #11:
I don’t think I was implying dishonesty either, but trying to make sense of the varieties of conscious use of feedback to illustrate why some (“tacitly running the show”) is different from others (letting the top know what’s going on). I think both can be conscious or unconscious, and there is a definite skill in giving informative feedback, as well as a skill in giving directive feedback (which is not to say that feedback can’t be both, of course). However, I do think that for me, personally, I would feel as though a bottom were being dishonest by using a “selective informative” approach – even though I don’t think from a purely rational point of view, that is necessarily a fair characterisation.
I think it is challenging, and another skill involved is understanding that simply exercising some conscious will over the manner of non-verbal feedback is not the same as controlling through it, and in finding where the balance is. I guess a part of it is also in understanding for each individual partner, what sort of feedback is going to be helpful and what is going to be read badly (and Newmahr discusses how reading feedback is a skill that tops have to learn, conversely). I guess if informative feedback is misread as directive feedback, that would be bad (for me as the top, anyway), just as if directive is misread as informative (which could lead to the bottom needing to safeword).
@GudEnuf – ‘Please tell me you don’t endorse suffocation or choking.’
I reckon this sort of play is especially ripe for the practise of sub-skills. Before I even identified as a bottom I was being choked by my long-term partner, and all I had to do to get him to let go was cough slightly – i.e. make a ‘hey, being choked here’ noise. No safeword/safegesture necessary.
I’m not sure what sort of research you would need to do in order to know that restricting someone’s airways without being able to instantly unrestrict them is a bad idea.
I would say a few things about breath play –
#1) Some BDSM educators say that it’s too dangerous and shouldn’t be done under any circumstances. For this reason, classes can be hard to come by. There are some information resources if you search on FetLife for “breath play”. As always, look for second and third opinions whenever you can.
#2) However, I hear stories all the time about people who do breath play whether there are educational resources on it or not. I constantly hear about people doing it even before they get into the public BDSM community or read BDSM resources. My position is that people are clearly going to be doing this whether resources are available or not, so I’m in favor of offering classes and other educational thoughts on the topic.
#3) Although I talked a lot about skills that submissives use in this post, I do think that the top needs to take primary responsibility for any given encounter. And if the encounter involves something like breath play, then the top needs to be paying extra close attention, because people can be seriously hurt when choking or suffocation is involved. Basically, what I’m trying to say here is that although the couple should probably have some kind of safe-gesture that the bottom can use if they want to stop, and the submissive should try to communicate as well as possible, the top really needs to be super-duper aware as well. I hope my work doesn’t come off as excusing the top from that awareness.
#4) I don’t personally have much I can contribute to any conversation about breath play, because I have almost no experience with it.
GudEnuf:
There’d be thousands of people doing chokes on a weekly basis in judo, ju jitsu, BJJ, etc. clubs. How dangerous are chokes really?
machina:
When I was in judo, as a kid, chokes were restricted to certain belts and above, carefully instructed, and monitored closely during sparring. And I’m pretty sure that at least one of the instructors was certified in CPR.
So, there’s that.
Personally, I wouldn’t do breath play without having someone present with at least that kind of certification, or unless it were with a partner with that kind of training. At a minimum.
@GudEnuf – On the topic of kidney slapping, most commonly talked about in terms of wrap from floggers.
Flogger Wrap, especially abdominal wrap, will ramp up intensity and pain and is much harder to control and be accurate with. If it’s unintentional or inappropriate it might be a very bad kind of pain and that has it’s own risks. But organ damage is incredibly unlikely. Unless you have a partner with existing liver or organ conditions that contraindicate impact play anyway – organ damage is incredibly unlikely.
The kidneys are fundamentally, quite well protected. Strikes in combat sports / martial arts that aim to damage the kidneys are hard to land and and require very deliberate methods that are incompatible with the reality of most BDSM impact play. Pain from those punches is most often associated with damage to the abdominal external oblique muscles, which hurts like a mofo. Combat sports conditioning focuses heavily on building muscle density in the abdomen to protect against these blows, because of the frequency and mechanics of these kind of strikes, particularly in boxing. Without that conditioning, minor muscle damage in the region is relatively easy to suffer from impact or torsion.
The physics of a flogger impact means that the chances of actually landing a blow against someone’s kidneys in a way that leads to an injury are so staggeringly small, that they make the lottery seem like a coin flip.
If you have a partner who’s trying to damage your kidneys, that’s probably a bad sign. What a jerk. But on an accident level? Canes or single tails that are poorly controlled and striking in the vicinity of your kidneys can certainly be a bad thing. But in my experience, that’s rarely what people are actually talking about and I’ve seen maybe two occasions where I thought someone was risking their partner’s health in that way in more than a decade of public play parties.
On the breath play thing, Jay Wiseman is very vocal about this topic. And his credibility in the area is regularly questioned in the forums where he’s most vocal. His ethics in utilizing the controversy of the topic have also been questioned. If you’ve read his position on the topic and that’s lead you to write it off as insanely dangerous and terrible – I urge you to read the opposing positions. If you hunt through his Fetlife.com postings you’ll find plenty of very credible people very elegantly rebutting his positions in great detail.
Also, as Machina pointed out – kids judo classes regularly choke to unconsciousness and despite being one of the most popular children’s sports in the world – there are no recorded instances of serious incident from the training.
As infra also pointed out – there’s a level of correct training and monitoring before doing breath play and health and safety concerns. I certainly consider breath play to be edge play and would never encourage anyone to try it without a significant investment of time and education first.
That said, I routinely utilize carotid constriction chokes in scenes, most commonly rear naked chokes. I have a background in martial arts and first aid training that I consider suitable for the risks at hand. But I’ve applied carotid constrictions to unconsciousness many times in scenes with many partners and not a single issue. I’ve also choked out, and been choked out in martial arts settings without a problem.
The risk level of restricting airflow with either bagging/gas masks/bare hand covers varies from case to case, but are all in my view somewhat higher than carotid constrictions. But all are potentially risk manageable activities if performed correctly by a well educated top.
I generally don’t think applying pressure to the airway’s is a good idea – strangle holds (where the airway is constricted rather than the carotid) carry a higher level of risk and can lead to major incident even when correctly performed in rare cases.
Like all edge play though – there is a great deal of potential physical harm that can be done by playing with an unskilled or careless top. But I personally know far, far more people who have been injured or seriously physically harmed by unskilled rope tops than by breath play/kidney impact. Needle play probably follows a close second, and fire play a distant third.
As a caveat, a correctly applied carotid constriction can certainly lead to real harm to your partner if held for much too long. But it’s my contention that it’s pretty much impossible to do this by accident. Between unconsciousness, and actual harm from extended duration carotid constriction (brain damage, or death) from a carotid constriction, the person being rendered unconscious will almost certainly lose control of bowel and bladder function. If you hold a carotid constriction after someone has defecated and urinated, I don’t feel that it’s an accident any more. I feel that it’s a malicious act with intent. To my knowledge, this has never happened in a BDSM scene or martial arts class. I’ve read some accounts that imply it may be possible to cause clotting/embolisms with partners with specific conditions that make them more prone like Factor Five, but I’ve never been able to locate a case of it happening, and those people are far more at risk from standing still against a cross during a flogging than carotid constrictions, and can in most cases offset the risk for either scene variation by simply taking an aspirin before playing.
It occurs to me that this recent post of mine is actually also about a type of submissive skill: “questioning obedience”, which is the skill of obeying while also questioning. Comments appreciated!
Hi all who replied to me. Thanks for taking the time to read and reply.
First, I would never “endorse” something that I do not have enough knowledge of (SM/BDSM being something I have very little knowledge of).
I wanted to know people’s thoughts because the book we use for our therapy with sexual abuse survivors falls along the lines of what I was writing about. My learning has been in specific relation to sexual abuse survivors (as I am one also, which is how this field really became my passion) and this is how I have come to understand healing from sexual trauma.
I would never imply (nor did I imply) that SM is all abuse survivors. That would be ridiculous.
I asked what you all thought, and you answered. Thanks for that.
Infra: Can you explain how SM would work as exposure therapy for a woman who was sexually abused?
LoriA: I know it is really hard to believe that someone just wants to have a discussion (especially when most people just want to push their ideology), but I assure you I am not here with a hidden agenda.
“And now that I’ve looked at @AlmostClever’s blogroll and realized that she’s an anti-sexwork, anti-BDSM, radical feminist of the nastiest sort… yeah, I think I’m done engaging with her.”
Uhhh.. LOL… I am not a rad fem. I have many people on my blogroll, is it wrong to have some diversity?
I am more of a pick and choose kinda girl, I don’t really fall into any camp. I claim feminism.
Two things. One, I’ve had some experience with breath play, and I “tap out” kind of like in wrestling. I just tap my partner and he stops and checks in.
Two, recently I’ve been told by a couple of people that I bring out their “dominant side.” How does this happen? Maybe it’s how I flirt or something? I have a very strong personality, so I wouldn’t think that I come off as a bottom.
@Emmy – it’s different from person to person. Some people just feel like they’d be fun to play with. I’ve had partners who set off my Rule #43 receptors (the more pure and innocent something is, the more satisfying it is to corrupt it). Someone can trip Rule 43 by seeming innocent, or looking innocent. I have a friend who is a pretty active perve – but she looks like a doll or an anime character or something. It completely pushes my buttons.
I’ve had other partners who pushed all my buttons by being bratty/strong/demanding/pushy – because the chemistry was there to play and I really wanted to (consensually) slap the sassy out of them and ‘win’. I knew they wouldn’t submit unless it was a contest and I was the big bad. I really like being the big bad.
I’ve had partners who pushed my buttons by being vulnerable and needing protecting or by being completely fearless and needing nothing from me and knowing that I didn’t need to hold them with kid gloves – they were up for the full roller coaster and more than strong enough for the curves.
Hell @Clarisse pushes my buttons by being such a good writer. It totally makes me want to do bad things to her. There’s no one thing.
AlmostClever:
I can’t speak for how it would work for a woman who’s been abused, but earlier on, when I was more of a switch, I used it in that way to process some of my own abuse history. I didn’t attempt to restage any specific occurrences (when I did attempt to work anything out along those lines, it was literary, or through sketches that have remained private), but the main thing was that it gave me an opportunity to prove to myself that I had the capability to endure, to survive, to not be completely broken by whatever it was that I’d chosen to expose myself to in the scene.
I don’t think that doing that requires having any similarity between what’s done in scene and what a survivor has gone through; some may find that useful, many more probably won’t. But to go through the actual experience of *knowing* that you can endure, of *knowing* that you can survive — that rebuilds something in us. And there are many ways to do that. Some of us choose to do it through fire.
Infra,
I celebrate your survival, and I hope you have begun to thrive :) The fact that you are here today is a testament to your survival and endurance.
I just want survivors to feel safe, and to heal. If your experimentation with BDSM has made you feel empowered how could I ever knock it? I couldn’t.
This was what I was looking for, really. At my org we teach from a specific view, especially in regards to sex. We want to make sure women know they don’t have to have fantasies of their abuse in order to have an orgasm (which is a lot of what we see). We have some women involved in SM who can only have an orgasm if their partner is a top, AND reenacts the abuse of her father. Essentially, she has to fantasize about her dad in the role play in order to be satisfied sexually.
I wrote the paper at my blog after working with her, and watching her heal from the abuse and be able to claim her own sexuality.
I just wondered about how the SM/BDSM community reacts or feels about issues like this, how it has affected the BDSM community, people’s own experiences with it, if one can “tell” when SM/BDSM is unhealthy and when it is not.. Etc…
@ AlmostClever (#27):
I think these are important and interesting questions. I’ve been in BDSM relationships with two women who identified as being survivors of abuse. I described the journey of one of those partners in my previous comment replying to you. The other partner was not so balanced and I suspect that she may have been seeking to reenact previous trauma rather than work through it. Because I was not willing to play the role she wanted, she pulled away from me and I lost touch with her. I think I have learned from the contrasts between those two partners that there are “red flags” that can be seen for when someone is engaging in an unhealthy way (as she did) and when they are coming from a self-empowerment and self-reclaiming engagement (like the partner I described in the earlier comment). From a personal perspective, I would be very perturbed if a partner wanted me to play out the role of her abuser in that way, unless I was sure that she found it helpful as a means to move forward, and I understood the role that it played in helping her do that – the scenario you describe of needing that roleplay to take pleasure from sex would make me very uncomfortable as a top.
There is a trope in BDSM topping that I call “Healer Dom”, where the top engages with a victim with the sincere wish to do good, but the relationship becomes damaging to both partners, sticking at one stage rather than actually helping; I recognised in the second example that I was being drawn into a “Healer Dom” mindset, and needed not to go there.
There is a lot of emphasis on “power exchange” and how one has to have power in order to give it to another. I think that it is often left to couples to negotiate these issues as relating to mental health and so on, but I have seen descriptions in various kink forums of couples using therapy to resolve past trauma interfering with the consent or self-empowerment aspect.
@Scootah and Clarisse – on breath play…
I’ve clearly revealed my newbie status and softcore nature by failing to appreciate that anyone *would* choke their partner into unconsciousness. For me it would have to stop way before then, and an unconscious partner would be a major fail in many senses. Out of interest, is that the end of a scene usually?
Obviously if you are trying to get someone to pass out, you’d need to take classes of some sort – whether kink or martial art – for safety of the brain. I was imagining a rope-top hanging someone, or leaving a tight gag in place carelessly, as examples of unsafe and unreasonable conduct. This kind of carelessness wouldn’t make the activity itself unsafe, just the top.
Obviously the top takes the majority of responsibility for whatever goes on in a scene. But I think it’s relevant to the main thread to assert that when the bottom is unable to speak for whatever reason, it’s even *more* on them to have a signal to give that they’re in trouble, and make sure that their partner understands it. Communication at that level is definitely a skill.
Thank you for sharing that, SnowDrop Explodes.. Definitely something I am keeping my mind opened to.
@Elisabeth – In the movies when you see someone choked unconscious – they die, or at least stay unconscious for a while. In reality, a carotid constriction like a sleeper hold/rear naked choke that you release after they ‘drop’ or lose consciousness will render someone unconscious for a few seconds. Maybe 30 seconds. You need to keep holding that constriction for longer to render someone unconscious for any period of time – I generally don’t because that’s when the risk level starts rising (although only slightly for the first period) – I Generally play with a mirror, or a position like one of their arms raised so I can observe immediately that they’ve lost consciousness even if we’re in position where it might not have otherwise been obvious (sitting with someone in front of you/in your lap is a common way to practice in judo classes so you don’t lose control of the fall).
It really depends on the scene if that’s the end or if it’s foreplay. As a for example, I’ve choked someone out using a rear naked choke during penetrative intercourse. They had the blissful gray’ing out experience and then regained consciousness a few seconds later mid coitus. I’ve used choke out’s for consensual forced fantasies – where my partner ‘drops’ and wakes up to find that I’m tying their hands, or have them otherwise restrained for the rest of the scene.
I’ve also done a few choke outs in a row, where my partner drops, regains consciousness and wants to go again. I think five in a row is the most I’ve ever done, with a partner who regularly did a lot of breath play and had a lot of experience with it and at a play space that had first aid station with paramedics and oxygen just next to where we were playing. By the end she was bouncing off walls and wanted more – but I pulled the plug for concerns about what her o2 sat’s would be doing after that many drops.
With any kind of take down play or play that involves rough body contact, I’m very quick to back off unless it’s a negotiated ‘forced’ scene. Any indication of distress at all – I back right off. I also use martial arts style ‘tap out’ indicators, and ‘jazz hands’ or ‘spirit fingers’ in scenes where verbal communication might be an issue as stop signals and the usual safewords.
In ‘forced’ fantasy scenes, I tend to use safe words other than the usual traffic light ones, as I’ve had partners who wanted to have a ‘Red’ ignored and I use a 3 fast, 3 slow tap signal for non verbal. But I’m also very reluctant to do that kind of scene with anyone I don’t know very well, and only after extensive negotiation in a space that has a lot of preparation.
Lots of things that are entirely reasonable, or even fun, when done on purpose and with reasonable intent – are disastrous when they happen as an accident. I’ve done ligature strangulation scenes for example where we used rope to restrict the airway of the person I was playing with – with full intent and extensive preparation and a lot of safety measures. It was still a really dangerous and edgey scene that had a lot of things that could have gone wrong. For all our care – the person I was playing with still had a rare (for her) set of bruises that meant she had to wear turtle necks or scarves to work for a week afterward.
I try to make sure before I do any kind of breath play scene that we talk about what could go wrong, and ensure that enthusiastic and informed consent is present from everyone involved.
Clarisse, I love that story about how your ex got your attention. I would find that really hot. I’d be tempted to try that on some dominant in the future, but I don’t think I’m quite that bold.
My current dilemna is how to teach someone who is interested in developing his topping skills. I’m an experienced switch, but I learned to top primarily by bottoming. My partner isn’t interested in trying to bottom…I’m kind of at a loss on how to guide him. Some things, like providing the right feedback to physical sensations, come quite naturally. But how do I teach scene pacing, when to switch up activities, playing with a bottom’s embarassment, fear play – all the mental aspects? It’s an ongoing journey. Fortunately, it’s a fun journey too!
@Emmy — Two, recently I’ve been told by a couple of people that I bring out their “dominant side.” How does this happen? Maybe it’s how I flirt or something? I have a very strong personality, so I wouldn’t think that I come off as a bottom.
People have often told me the same thing, but I also have an extremely strong personality and tend to gravitate to leadership positions. For me I think it’s two things:
1) I’m hyper-aware of my emotions and inclined to analyze everything I feel — I think a lot of doms are really into this (like Scootah for instance ;). When I’m dominant, I’m really into it myself. A partner who can tell me about their strong feelings, the dreams I inspire, etc. using beautiful words will make me feel really powerful.
2) There’s a certain type of adversarial flirting that creates a lot of tension and a kind of interpersonal violence. I suspect that it correlates to (or replaces) certain types of erotic tension that can also be built with BDSM. I thought about this a lot when I was writing my upcoming ebook on pickup artists. Some people are really into that kind of adversarial flirting, and some aren’t. I think it’s more common among certain subcultures (e.g.: Los Angeles nightclubs), and that pickup artists have tended to gravitate towards those subcultures, so they’ve developed elaborate ways of talking about it (e.g.: the “shit test” concept).
@Elisabeth — I’ve clearly revealed my newbie status and softcore nature by failing to appreciate that anyone *would* choke their partner into unconsciousness. For me it would have to stop way before then, and an unconscious partner would be a major fail in many senses. Out of interest, is that the end of a scene usually?
Haha. Heavens, please don’t worry about “softcore nature”.
Thanks to Scootah for sharing his experience with breath play. Like I said, I’ve really never done much of it myself. For a while I thought I simply wasn’t into it. Then I had a partner who did it in such a way that I realized I could see a way that it would be really, ridiculously hot. That partner offered to choke me unconscious (he had fair bit of experience with it I guess), but I didn’t quite feel comfortable enough with him, and we stopped seeing each other soon afterwards. I haven’t been motivated to pursue that activity since then. I know that some people “specialize” in it to a certain extent, but I usually seek partners based on personal compatibility and sexual open-mindedness rather than shared kinks, so I haven’t hooked up with anyone who was experienced with and/or into breath play since then.
@Leah — My partner isn’t interested in trying to bottom…I’m kind of at a loss on how to guide him. Some things, like providing the right feedback to physical sensations, come quite naturally. But how do I teach scene pacing, when to switch up activities, playing with a bottom’s embarassment, fear play – all the mental aspects? It’s an ongoing journey.
Definitely familiar with this problem! Some people have a real instinct for those things even if they’re inexperienced, and others don’t. I used to have a partner who had unbelievably good instincts for topping even though he was very inexperienced, and when we talked about it, he said that he thought his instincts had been honed by a bunch of improvisational theatre training he’d done when he was younger. I thought that was interesting. I find that one of the best ways to communicate about these things is also to share stories — whether your own stories, or novels/movies/whatever that seem to push your buttons and might provide good examples or springboards for BDSM encounters.
@AlmostClever & others — Thanks to everyone for talking about experiences with BDSM and trauma. I’ve never been able to contribute much personally to this topic, but I think it’s an important one.
SnowdropExplodes wrote:
“I think I have learned from the contrasts between those two partners that there are ‘red flags’ that can be seen for when someone is engaging in an unhealthy way (as she did) and when they are coming from a self-empowerment and self-reclaiming engagement (like the partner I described in the earlier comment).”
Getting back to this… personally, I’ve found that the most reliable “red flag” is along the lines of an inverted safeword. By which I mean, if a safeword signals “not this specific thing, in this specific way,” the red flag is “nothing except this very specific thing, and not except in this very specific way.” And in that sense, I suspect that the more practiced a person is with safewording, the more able they might be to recognize that kind of red flag.
@Clarisse:
“I’m hyper-aware of my emotions and inclined to analyze everything I feel — I think a lot of doms are really into this (like Scootah for instance ;).”
Again, personally, I find that there’s a kind of hyper-awareness that I key on when it comes to this, and a kind of strong personality that comes along with it, that will bring out the dominant reaction in me: the sense that someone is enduring their own awareness. It’s the difference between suppression and repression, really.
A strong personality that doesn’t show enough self-control will turn me off. So will a strong personality that represses. But a strong, hyper-aware personality that rides the ragged edge of suppressed expression will make my blood boil and my nostrils flare. In a very, very good way.