The Sun is there

Sorry, but I just have to post this entire article:

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Dominatrix raises cash for sick pal – with bondage sessions

Kinky … January Seraph

Splash

By STAFF REPORTER

Last Updated: 30th March 2012

A DOMINATRIX is raising money for a cancer-stricken pal — by taking donations for bondage sessions.

33 comments

January Seraph is offering to spend an extra half an hour with anyone who gives £30 to a fund set up to help sick Hollie Stevens.

Hollie, an adult movie actress, is fighting an aggressive form of breast cancer.

And loyal January, who works in Los Angeles, San Francisco and New York, said: “Cancer is something we all know someone fighting. This is important to me, to help someone in need.

“Hollie is a friend who I care deeply about, and I’m trying to show that actions do speak louder than words.”

She added: “Hollie is too proud to ask for help herself, so myself and her other great friends are being pushy and helping her out whether she likes it or not.

“Show Hollie that she’s loved and appreciated in her time of need. Because no one should feel alone when they are ill.”

So far more than £8,800 have been raised towards the total target of £9,500.

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Bonus: The article comments aren’t totally stupid or ignorant, either.

I’m sure that we’re going to find out that this was all a hoax, but it did make me think about how much money could potentially be raised for worthy causes.

Readers are encouraged to submit some program titles. Here’s mine:
“Take a Beating for Cancer.”

Anyone else?

The Herbivore Men

I spotted this article about a sexuality study in Japan last week, but haven’t had a chance to read it until just now.

A startling number of Japanese youths have turned their backs on sex and relationships, a new survey has found.

The survey, conducted by the Japan Family Planning Association, found that 36% of males aged 16 to 19 said that they had “no interest” in or even “despised” sex. That’s almost a 19% increase since the survey was last conducted in 2008.

If that’s not bad enough, The Wall Street Journal reports that a whopping 59% of female respondents aged 16 to 19 said they were uninterested in or averse to sex, a near 12% increase since 2008.

Normally when you see those kinds of numbers of people uninterested in sex, you expect it to be about older, married couples. Oh, snap!

But this is an interesting turn of events, especially coming on the heels of a recent study which suggested that most teenagers no longer care if they get a car or driving license. Apparently the internet has made the previously unobtainable pleasures in life so commonplace that there’s no longer any pleasure in acquiring them.

Oh, wait – I may have made a hasty assumption. In Japan, the problem seems to be that young men are too busy eating salads.

Many commentators in the Japanese and international media have laid the problem squarely at the feet of soshoku danshi — “herbivore men” — a term coined by pop culture columnist Maki Fukasawa in 2006. It refers to Japanese young men who have rejected their culture’s traditional definition of masculinity, and seemingly eschew relationships with the opposite sex as part.

CNN spoke to a Midori Saida, a 24-year-old Japanese woman who described “herbivore men” as “flaky and weak.”

“We like manly men,” she said. “We are not interested in those boys — at all.”

For some reason, every time I hear the term “manly men” I get a bad feeling in the pit of my stomach. For guys of a certain age, being accused of the somewhat vague “unmanly” tag is a sure-fire way to escalate any argument into a brawl. And lately, I’ve been hearing those undertones in the discussions about “sub” inclined men.

But moving on…

BBC News spoke to one such “herbivore” man (see video above). The man, Yusaki Yakahashi said: “Building a relationship seems like too much effort. To get her to like me and for me to like her… I’d have to give up everything I do at the weekend for her. I don’t want to do that.”

Dude, I’m totally hip to that.Like, they want you to, you know, go shopping with them, look at curtains, talk about their friends, and, like, you know, do girly stuff. Don’t they know there’s more, well, manly stuff for us to be doing? Things like, umm, updating the video drivers in our PCs so we can play the latest version of Skyrim, for example.

But yeah, for some reason I’m not surprised at the idea that it would be the Japanese that would make sex somehow too inconvenient for real life:

Another theory that seeks to explain Japan’s shrinking population is that Japanese youth spend too much time engaged with technology, living in virtual worlds or settling for virtual girlfriends rather than real ones.

Now, that’s difficult to believe… isn’t it?

Help a sister out

My new BFF Dishevelled Domina and I have been kicking around the idea that the terms “dominance” and “submission” in a sexual context might have too much cultural baggage to be useful, especially to new people looking for just a little play. That prompted her to ask to interview a number of “submissive” guys last year, the results of which she posted over the course of a few months.

In the interests of further research, she would love to hear from women who do not necessarily identify as dominant, but who do enjoy taking charge or running the show in the bedroom. Here is her actual invitation:

If you are a woman who likes to decide the how and when of sex, I have some questions for you. You needn’t consider yourself a dominatrix or even claim the title dominant woman. If you enjoy taking the lead in bed or setting the pace sexually, I’d like to know a little more about you. Female sexuality is incredibly diverse and if you are a woman who prefers to be more in control than your partner then you are the kind of gal I want!

Please email me at dishevelleddomina (at) gmail (dot) com.

I think that this is a great idea. Mrs. Edge definitely does not self-identify as a domme, but certainly enjoys directing traffic. If this sounds like you, please drop her a note or visit her blog. We’d love to hear your side of the story.

And for no good reason, I’m including a picture of Gillian Anderson not being a latex-clad dominatrix.

Not as transgressive as you think

There’s a fascinating article in today’s Salon Magazine about the new book by anthropologist Margot Weiss: “Techniques of Pleasure.” It’s an insightful look at the BDSM scene in San Francisco, and how in her perception, the scene has lost (or perhaps never had) the aura of being an edgy, taboo-breaking culture.

From the article BDSM: It’s not as transgressive as you think:

“The fantasy of the scene as a safe space of private desire justifies and reinforces certain social inequalities,” she argues. The truth, she says, is that S/M “depends for its erotic power on precisely these real-world relations, within which it is given form and content.”

This is something that I rarely see discussed anymore. Is the BDSM scene simply just one more way that “privileged” people play? Perhaps. Weiss states:

“On the one hand, SM is figured as outlaw: as transgressive of normative sexual values,” Weiss writes. “On the other hand, SM is dependent on social norms: practitioners draw on social hierarchies to produce SM scenes.” The mostly-white, mostly-middle-class community is itself an example of real-world social inequality: ”These [sexual] experiments are more possible and more accessible to those with class, race and gender privilege: heterosexual men playing with sexism, white bodies at a charity slave auction, professional information technology (IT) workers with several rooms filled with custom-made bondage toys.”

And speaking of toys:

Not everyone in the S/M scene can afford to buy all this stuff. In the same way that whiteness is normative, it’s in the center, there is this normative professional-class person who has the money and leisure time to devote to S/M practice, and that is the ideal for consumer capitalism.

S/M is not alone in this. This is just a way that communities based around sexualities work in the U.S. today. But S/M is also a really great example of this, and you can see what that does to the community. People have debates about toys: Are they destroying social connections, did it used to be more authentic? And how now you can just buy your S/M identity, and that creates a lot of anxiety for people.

Much more at the Salon article, and for those interested, here’s a link to the book “Techniques of Pleasure.”

A quick synopsis:

[Weiss] describes a scene devoted to a form of erotic play organized around technique, rules and regulations, consumerism, and self-mastery. Challenging the notion that SM is inherently transgressive, Weiss links the development of commodity-oriented sexual communities and the expanding market for sex toys to the eroticization of gendered, racialized, and national inequalities. She analyzes the politics of BDSM’s spectacular performances, including those that dramatize heterosexual male dominance, slave auctions, and US imperialism, and contends that the SM scene is not a “safe space” separate from real-world inequality. It depends, like all sexual desire, on social hierarchies.

And if you stop by the Salon article, take some time to read the lengthy list of comments.

Lotus Eating

Yeah, I know it’s been a while since I’ve updated.

[Insert typical blogger excuse about buying too busy here.]

As it happens, Mrs. Edge and I have been taking a chastity break for the summer. A few minor injuries have kept me from hitting the weights for a while, but I’ve gotten a little more seriously into bicycling. I spent much of my summer modernizing an old aluminum frame touring bike, so between that and my old hybrid mongrel I’ve been racking up the miles. I’m pretty sure that the combination of the cycling plus some low carb eating has finally allowed me to break through that weight loss plateau where I’d been stuck for the last year. I’m now well into the next smaller waist size, and all of my suits and dress pants will quite literally fall off of me if I don’t cinch up my belt – which looks stupid, so now I need some new clothes. Even my shirts are too roomy, and I’m fitting into sport jackets that I haven’t worn in years. And jeans? I can wear a size 34 without creating a muffin top. I’m still too embarrassed to get some of those tight spandex biking shorts, but I have been wearing those snug tank tops when I go out. I’ve been remiss at supplying HNT pics, so here’s one that I just ook today.

A side note: my friends are very obviously envious, but not enough to actually do anything about it.

Anyway, the point that I was going to make was that even though over the years I’ve declared that you can cycle with a device, I’ve discovered that there are some limits. My mongrel bike has a split saddle which can accommodate the CB3000, but the road bike requires a more aggressive, hunched-over posture, and I have not found a comfortable saddle. The split ones tend to put you in a more upright position, but nothing is going to make that hard cuff ring comfortable on a road saddle. And since I’ve already spent enough money on replacement parts, I’ll have to wait until next year before I look at other saddle options. So, until bike season is done, my equipment is swinging free.

Let’s see, what else has kept me busy this summer? We’ve had a few family trips, most of them in places with no internet. I managed to survive with limited 3G access, and a Nook Color (birthday present). I’ve built up a couple of computers with Linux Mint, and I’m now experimenting with making a bootable SD card to turn my Nook into an Android pad. Went to a comic/anime convention — in costume. And yes, it was a kick-ass costume, and I got quite a few comments, and won a few rounds of a cosplay deathmatch. My daughter’s friends are now in awe of me as being the coolest dad ever. Oh, and I’ve been doing a lot of reading.

No, not ebooks. I’ve been reading blogs and forums, some of the older ones, and some newer ones, and I’m pleased to see that the discussions about the open-mindedness of the BDSM crowd, the nature of femdom, and the devaluation of “submissiveness” are still going on. In fact, I’ve been quite surprised – pleasantly – at the range of ideas that I’ve seen over the last few months. I think that this is important; BDSM is — in some ways — in a similar position to that of homosexuality 30 or 40 years ago. People acknowledged it existed, but it was something not really discussed in polite company, unless to make some kind of joke or disparaging comment. This is why I find it so ironic (and frankly, not a little disturbing) that within the kink community, “submissive” is perceived as a feminine trait.

Anyway.

As I’ve been watching the web boards and reading the stories of self-identified submissive men who have felt belittled or who have been dissed by their local kink community, I was reminded of something from when I was younger, back when I knew that I was kinky, but before I had learned much about it.

I was about 20, was with my girlfriend and a group of other friends from college (we were probably a little buzzed, as was the custom at the time) and wanted to see a funny movie. We ended up at Revenge of the Pink Panther; this was in the days when if you wanted to see a movie, then you actually had to go to them. I don’t remember all that much about the movie itself, until we got to the last few minutes of the film.

Tanya, the Lotus Eater
(Sorry, WordPress isn’t allowing me to embed this video. )

For those who can’t watch this, here’s the setup: Inspector Clouseau has been away for some time, and Kato has turned his apartment into a brothel. Clouseau shows up wearing the remnants of some kind of disguise, and the Madame, not knowing that he owns the apartment, welcomes him in. She explains that he can take some time to get to know the girls, and to let her know if he has any particular requests. She removes his overcoat, and sees that he’s wearing a woman’s dress.

“Ah, but I see that you already have a preference,” she says.  She rings a gong, and says “Allow me to introduce Tanya, the Lotus Eater.” Tanya, played by bit-part actress Valerie Leon, enters in a low-cut, leather catsuit. Hilarity ensues.

That’s what I remember about the movie. What I also remember is wondering why transvestism was coupled with S&M; to me, they were completely separate kinks. And after that, I began to notice how often S&M – specifically, the submissive  male part – was linked to feminine traits. That was 30 years ago, and frankly, I haven’t seen things improve much over the years. So, when we’re all wondering why the BDSM “community” has this weird concept about submissive guys, I suspect that it’s because for an entire generation we’ve never seen anyone acting any differently.

How young?

I like my women the way I like my coffee: strong, hot, and witty. That’s one of the reasons that I read Fern’s blog Domme Chronicles.

Her recent post “How Old?” has nothing to do with wit, though. Instead, it brings up a serious question: How do you deal with a young person with a sincere interest in BDSM? It’s already difficult enough to talk to young people about sex, because so many roadblocks are there, from religious and conservative groups who try to discourage it for moral reasons, to liberal and politically correct groups that try to discourage it because of the potential for power abuse.

But the inherent possibilities for a teen or very young adult to get sucked into a bad relationship with a jackass masquerading as a dominant may weigh – ethically speaking – on any one of us who is witness to such a situation.

Back when Usenet was a more frequented medium, I was a regular on the group soc.sexuality.general; it was a great place for adults to discuss various aspects of sexuality without (much) fear of judgment, and the group managed not to become a pickup dating site. Because of this, it had a large number of women regulars, so there was always a good mix of new and experienced people.

Once in a while, there would be a visitor who would ask questions, and who would reveal (as much as can be believed on the internet) to be considerably younger than the norm. Most of the group members would simply stop conversing with underaged teens for fear of the potential legal ramifications. And indeed, this was always a difficult decision because we’re so torn with wanting to be a good resource, but not wanting to be arrested for contributing to the delinquency of a minor (a legal issue here in the US).

Anyway, go visit Ferns, tell her I sent you, and then let’s have a discussion.

Are submissive men devalued?

This question has come up a few times recently; there’s some discussion at Maybe Maimed and at Delving into Deviance, and it’s been making me think about the subject; ironically because I had pretty much written such things off a while back, when I decided that the cultural paradigms that we have regarding kink are so fucked up that I can’t even bring myself to associate with any labels.

Personally, while I think that the short answer is “Yes,” the long answer is that we’re not asking the right questions because we — collectively — have no idea what we’re talking about when we use words like “dominance” and “submission” anymore.

Dishevelled Domina has been interviewing submissive men on a variety of topics (including this one), and she’s posting the results a couple of times a week. It just so happens that my own interview is up now, and I have a little bit to say on that topic.

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I don’t have much to say right now, since it’s not even 7 o’clock on a Sunday morning, so I’m just going to leave this here.

Poll Dancing

Okay readers, it’s time to help out a fellow kinkster.

Most of you know that I like to consider Edge of Vanilla not just an entertaining blog, but a resource for people in the community (for some value of community).

Angela Lewis, author of My Other Self — a book about the perfectly normal people living right next door to you who just happen to be fetishists, BDSMers, or just plain kinky — is looking to do some research for another book. She has set up several surveys on her website for people with an interest in foot fetishes, and with cuckolding. If you have a few minutes, please click on over and help a sister out.

A little about Ms. Lewis:

Angela Lewis holds a PhD in education and has worked in IT for many years as a provider of various learning programs to both the government and corporate sector. She is a qualified counsellor and has acted as IT Adviser to the Australian Counselling Association for the past 10 years, publishing extensively in the ACA’s journal on the intersection of society and technology.  While exploring and then writing about how people expressed their sexuality she found that community attitudes towards anything other than mainstream sexual practices remains deeply suspicious and judgemental. So began a 4 year project of gathering narratives and interviewing people who enjoyed a wide range of alternative sexual practices and the result is My Other Self, the stories of ordinary folk quietly leading extraordinary  private lives.

My Other Self is an intrepid anthology of the secret and sometimes bizarre sexual lives quietly practised by millions of everyday people. As these ordinary folk tell their stories it becomes obvious that the world of kinky sex is far from the exclusive domain of rock stars, movie goddesses and politicians. Angela Lewis spent four years researching a diverse range of websites, forums and online communities catering to devotees of all kinds of sexual peccadilloes. These are the stories of the people she met along the way. They live in ordinary neighbourhoods, have jobs, careers and children just like the next person, but very quietly lead far from ordinary sex lives. The result is an absorbing guide to the secret lives of those enjoying a wide range of interests from latex, leather, teeth and diapers, to spanking and hairy armpits and opens the conversation around a wide range of sexual practices in a way that is neither sensational nor confronting. The book covers an extraordinarily comprehensive inventory of fantasies and fetishes which it explains in both an informative and highly readable way.  As well as real-life stories and insights, it contains explanatory background information, links to related interests, jargon and search terms and is easy for the reader to dip in and out and move around. The author wrote for an audience just like herself, an average person with a spouse, kids and mortgage who has never set foot in a bondage dungeon but wouldn’t mind knowing what all the bits on the wall are for!

Also, she blogs about her upcoming research, and has a few insightful tidbits that you might want to peruse.

Ms. Lewis promised to let us know some of the results of the surveys, so stay tuned.

S&M in the mainStreaM

Well, it finally happened.

I would have bet on Lady Gaga to be the one to stop the not-so-subtle tease, but I suspect that she’s too busy working on her next fashion show. No, the pop singer who finally stopped hinting with lyrics and over-produced videos, and came out ended up being Rihanna. Yes, yes, I know there are dozens, if not hundreds of songs that reference whips, or leather, or some such alternative sexuality — but that’s my point. Everybody else has simply alluded to it, but Rihanna actually came out and said it: S & M

Some of you won’t be surprised, since for the last few years any number of message boards had topic threads like “Did you see her in that leather dress? I’ll be she’s one of us.” or “Did you see that video? I think she swings a whip in real life.” Yes, because the only reason for people to wear fetish-y clothing is to show off their “lifestyle” choices, right?

I’m not a huge Rihanna fan; but I have seen some of of the celebrity chatter about her, and so I should not have been surprised to see some of the comments in the media blogs from people (mainly women) who were horrified that Rihanna would even consider a song about violent sex after her stormy relationship with Chris Brown, who has been convicted of physically abusing her. And while those people familiar with the concept of “safe, sane, and consensual” know better, many of the comments around the Internet shouldn’t be ignored entirely, because they point out the mainstream perception of those who engage in various forms of sensation and humiliation play.

One interesting thing about the video, though, is that despite the blatant lyrics, she manages to be playful with the fashion. Where other music videos are filled with black leather and shiny chains, Rihanna dolls it up in colorful latex fetish gear. We’re visually treated to whites, pinks, and decidedly non-stereotypical styles, and some fast scene cutting. This is not heavy metal, it’s fun and danceable. Is this supposed to make the concept less threatening? Or is Rihanna playing with the mainstream perceptions of the kinky world?

Anyway, in case you haven’t seen it already, here’s a link (may redirect you to a Youtube channel). Enjoy!

Take it, bitch!

Dev posted an interesting picture, cribbed from Male Submission Art that depicted an angel sodomizing Satan (or possibly another demon). That led to a discussion about the cultural perception that whoever is penetrated is somehow identified with submission.

The flip side of that perception, of course, is that whoever is doing the penetrating is in a position of dominance. A side issue is that nobody wants to be penetrated unless they have a reason to be submissive. Not surprisingly, these types of issues are often discussed in those groups in which people — men and women — have an interest in strap-on play, specifically, men who enjoy being penetrated by their women partners.

Take it, bi... er, cheerleader!

With that fresh in mind, I was startled by this picture from one of my new faves, Sociological Images. Apparently, fans of a Texas high school football team — that’s a high school, not college, mind you — had a small number of these shirts printed up to show their support of the home team against some long-standing rivals. Note that despite the blatant images of two stallions violating the cheerleader (because that’s what this, in context, most certainly represents), they chose not to make the shirt too offensive by abbreviating the word “Fucking” so as not to be too obvious.

We should all be proud of such sensitivity.

This picture pretty much sums up the “take it, bitch!” attitude that is so prevalent among the sexual hoi-polloi — and indeed, even among those who really should know better.

Recently I was watching some “reality” tv show (actually, Mrs. Edge was watching it while I was net surfing on the laptop), a scene with a groups of 20-something guys happened to catch my attention; they were identified as “players” and made comments about how they a) made a point to have sex with as many women as possible, and b) decided that women who gave in (i.e., decided to have sex) were no longer worthy of their respect. What kind of convoluted logic is that? More irritating is that these idiots talked about the women in terms of hunting and conquest, and not in terms of enjoyment.

But let’s take this a step farther.

Some people enjoy the subjugation aspect of BDSM play. I’ve read of women getting so wet that they actually drip their lubrication when they think about past or upcoming scenes. I’ve read about men who go weak in the knees when thinking about being forced to serve under cruel, dominating women. Some men — and some women — become sexually excited when told by their partner to “take it, bitch!” while being fucked; their turn on is their own subjugation and submission by someone more powerful.

And yes, this is fantasy, not real life. That should make it different, right?

Yeah, sure. But if you consider that fantasies play out in the context of the culture of the the partners, isn’t it possible that those of us who enjoy sexual subjugation can only do so when the concept of real subjugation is extant in society? That is, in a culture in which “Fuck you!” never had the connotation of penetrative violence, could such fantasies arise?