Hot take: Dommes are allowed to be insecure sometimes.

simplylaura​(sub female){djinni} • Dec 30, 2019

Erick:

Congrats. You read my profile, which indeed has a moral imperative listed. Is it a generalization? Probably. But I also stand by the empirical evidence that indicates a lack of compatibility.

I'm intrigued that you equate size to ability to tolerate pain. The hardest players I know are small women, while the biggest baby I've ever met is a 6''5 350lb stacked dude (who acknowledged it). See what I did just there is offer you anecdotal evidence, which is exactly what you did, except you offer it as fact. Men are typically bigger and have more general strength than women. However, that does not equal greater pain tolerance. That is an entirely different subject requiring looking at multiple facets of a person. Remember, small people with uteri have been birthing babies since the dawn of time unmedicated. I happily secede my thrown as a heavy masochist to any person who has let a big as baby head rip open their cunt with no drugs. That's another anecdote.

To keep on topic, however, I still find umbrage with your annoyance with tops/Dom's checking in on you during play. Within the context of your personal, defined, and consented to relationships you can have whatever you want. However, the general use of it is a safety mechanism that needs to not be disparaged so people can continue to consent during a scene. Again, what you negotiate in your scenes is yours, but it does not indicate insecurity on behalf of the top/dominant. I play hard, harder than my current partner has played in the past and we both need those check ins. They build security and let us connect. It has nothing to do with her thinking I can't take it or vice versa. What's important is that it works for us and for lots of others out there.

Belligerently,
Laura

Erick​(sub male) • Dec 30, 2019

Well, Laura, thanks for clarifying.

I apologize for not being more clear. You're right that women in some ways tolerate pain better than men. That is well established fact.

What I was imprecisely getting at was that women have more reason to fear men than men have to fear women. Due to our size and strength, and also due to our testosterone, which tends to make us crazier and more violent. (And most submissive women are submissive to men rather than other women. I can't give you a statistic on that, but I trust you would not dispute it.)

As for the rest, I reiterate the argument I gave to Miki: The key word in my post was PERSONALLY--which I put right up front. Because, yes, I always keep it in mind that among politically-correct kinksters, some of the attitudes and practices of people like me are considered ignorant, dangerous, and downright subversive. So be it. It is merely PERSONAL preference. I'm not recommending it to anyone. I'm merely saying that some of us choose to do our intimate stuff differently than the way we're supposed to. Once upon a time, the Left was composed of people who were weird and didn't abide by the conventions. But nowadays, the "Progressive" side of the culture is often so regimented, you'd think they were the Reactionaries. Strange.

Anyway, Vive la Difference! Or better, Les Differences.

Miki​(masochist female) • Jan 1, 2020

Simply put: If one is human, one WILL be insecure. To deny the fact is being a BS artist.

Of course, being a Bullshitter is also part and parcel of being human, BUT anyone with a functional brain knows when to BS and when to be real.

Meg​(dom female){NotLooking} • Jan 5, 2020

I'm neither a sub nor a masochist, but I DO bruise if you look at me sideways. I always find random bruises, especially on my legs. 99% of the time, even though it looks like I'm a victim of a car crash, it doesn't hurt at all. I'll poke my bruises intentionally and they just don't hurt. They don't even feel strange. It's purely cosmetic. So if she says she's ok, trust her.

Meg​(dom female){NotLooking} • Jan 5, 2020

I'm somewhat confused as to why this topic that's about dominants and insecurity has devolved into a social justice war over who can handle more pain. Spouting statistics about the general population's ability to handle pain is at irrelevant, not only to the topic at hand, but in reference to BDSM entirely, because, simply put, masochists, sadists, and the majority of kinks defy statistics. We are the atypical outliers that skew the statistics all to hell. We aren't the "general" population. The general population likely has no idea what kind of pain they can actually handle, because they don't spend their average Tuesday night having the crap beaten out of them. If you want useful statistics for kinksters you'd have to administer pain in a controlled environment to a bunch of them at the same time (and I bet they'd volunteer too, lol)

Logically, evolutionarily speaking, men should be able to take more because they tended to beat up wildlife for food, and eachother for dominance, so a high threshold would be beneficial, whereas females usually only needed to survive shoving a human out of their bodies a few times... Though they didn't actually have to survive for successful reproduction - they only needed to survive for multiple reproductions. Males had to survive repeated painful issues. Females didn't. Also, hormones produced during labour negate some of the pain that would normally occur from a shitting a whole watermelon. (calm down, I said SOME; I know its not a walk in the park.)

The reality is we have come a long way from those days. High pain tolerance is no longer required for genetic viability, so intolerance is no longer a chromosomal thing. Pain tolerance swings wide across the genetic spectrum. I personally can, through three decades of migraine attacks, can handle a shit load more pain than most men or women I know. Broken bones? Pfft. I get migraines that hurt significantly worse than breaks I've had. But I know I'm atypical, and that it has very little to do with gender.

And yes, women, on average, are smaller than men. Women, on average, are physically weaker than men. There are physical, structural differences that cause this, so, on average, women are more likely to be hurt by men, because they are bigger and stronger, and can overpower them. It's simply a fact. Anyone who can't see that is delusional. Average statistics are empirical evidence that it's the truth. Doesn't mean we feel pain differently, it just means it's more likely that we will be the ones who feel it - in a non BDSM related fight at least.

Can we return to the topic at hand? This isn't about you subs and your pain, it's about us dominants, and ours :p

Erick​(sub male) • Jan 5, 2020

@ Meg--

I recognize references to my post in your comment, and I hope that in your view I am not the villain in this piece,. If I am, I am truly sorry. You probably know how all kinds of subjects tend to devolve on the internet. Happens frequently.

I've been a dom a few times in my life, and I once had a sub who would bruise if you so much as looked at her the wrong way. She was always covered with bruises just from bumping into furniture and so on. To say nothing of the punishments I gave her. So it did indeed make me VERY INSECURE about myself--ethically and legally--as a result of our activity, which was CONSENSUAL, yet NOT recognized as such by police, courts, and so on. Thankfully in my case it never came to that. But this is a REAL issue that needs to be discussed by kinksters of every stripe.

Which is why I liked your shorter post better than the longer one. (But I appreciate both.)

Meg​(dom female){NotLooking} • Jan 5, 2020

@Erick
You weren't the sole person to whom that reply was dedicated; those that offer evidence of their own pain tolerance and that of their butch lesbian friends are all to blame for my ire. Some more than others are to blame for trying to turn it into a faux controversial pissing match. And though I definitely see some merit to a theoretical discussion on the topic, and though I'm far too familiar with forum posts getting off track, much in the way that real life conversations become derailed, it sometimes irks me when the proposed topic is both unique and important. I've seen countless posts where subs discuss/brag about pain, but I've yet to see any posts about the topic of humanizing dominants and admitting that we are flawed, insecure people too, instead of the omnipotent gods that many subs think, or wish, that we were.

I think it's an important thing to discuss, because dominant burnout is real, and I think it happens largely because, whereas subs can brat or cry or suck up or laugh or seduce or whatever their heart desires at the moment, we are expected to always, at the very least, be firm, solid, paragons of rules or structure or authority.

Sometimes we want to be snuggled and told that it's ok to fall apart and cry, and not have people assume that this makes us a switch or a little or whatever. I have weaknesses, but I will never be anyone's submissive, in the bedroom, in my household, or in life, because it's just not in my nature. Good subs understand this, because their entire existence isn't wholly enmeshed with their submissiveness, and they can act like compassionate human beings instead of selfish assholes who are doing us a favour by gracing us with their submissiveness. I find that there are many subs, especially the newer ones, that treat dominants like one-stop sexual service robots, and expect us to want to interact with a person who is one dimensional and gives zero shits about anything but the dominant facet of our personalities.

Subs, especially male subs, need to understand that the ratio of subs to doms is highly skewed in the dom's favour. If a dom is treated like a robot instead of a person, it's going to be much easier for the dom to find a new sub after recovering from burnout exploitation than it will be for a sub to find a new dom. I'm not saying subs are disposable, because I know they are humans with complex emotions. I'm not saying this behaviour is indicative of all subs, but it's definitely statistically significant and needs to change.

Erick​(sub male) • Jan 6, 2020

@Meg--
Everything you say is true. And you express yourself very thoughtfully. I don't know whether you will dismiss me as merely a masochist for saying this to you but,. thank you for putting me in my place. I wish I belonged to you.

Meg​(dom female){NotLooking} • Jan 6, 2020

@erick id definitely not be an ideal match for you. I'm deceptively strong for my pixie-sized physique, so I constantly ask if my sub is ok.