4 comments/ 4060 views/ 2 favorites Memoires of a Dominant Ch. 01 By: IvanMazlow I would say that I spend a good seventy five percent of my effort, minimum, when talking about BDSM, actively contradicting common wisdom on the topic. And it must really seem, at times, like I'm simply contrarian on the matter. Given how I go out of my way to challenge almost every perception and preconception about it, sometimes, I must seem like one of those guys that just has got to be different. And since I am a professed dominant, I suppose I can't really assure you that there's no truth to that. But the funny thing is that if I were going to write a character in some kinky story based on myself, nobody would buy it. Not because he'd be too outlandish, but just the opposite. He'd seem wholly unoriginal, like I took the most clichéd perceptions about dominants and rolled them up into a completely trite, two dimensional character. Nobody would believe it. Of course, I'm talking about the actual traits that real people with profoundly dominant natures tend to demonstrate. I mean ones that people who have spent time around lifestyle circles know and alternate between loving and hating. Not the ones that people prefer to suppose or depict in fiction. First off, let's get the rough one out of the way. Yes, I came from an abusive childhood environment, including a couple fairly traumatic events. I strongly recommend that you don't bring this one up in lifestyle circles, though. It tends to piss people off when you suggest that one of the cornerstones of their identity is actually a dysfunction caused by childhood trauma. But, I have no problem admitting that it helped shape me in profound if not always positive ways, some that still haunt me now into my forties. And I won't say that everyone with that background comes to this lifestyle or that everyone in this lifestyle comes from that sort of background. But I will say, from personal experience, that out of scores of people I've talked about to in these circles, that I have a hard time remembering more exceptions than I can count on my fingers. And I'll also suggest, again, that you don't bring it up often. From the time I started dating at about sixteen, and especially when I found my first serious girlfriend at seventeen, I displayed all the red flag warning signs of a dominant nature. Of course, that was long before I knew what any of them meant. I was territorial and controlling, probably to a degree that looking back now I'd consider unhealthy, though I wouldn't say I crossed the line into abusiveness. Especially during sex, I was a very physical guy, very big into weight lifting and testosterone. I very quickly discovered I really dug holding a girl down or gripping her wrists during sex. Fortunately, most of my first few partners liked that, as well. A little bit of spanking or hair pulling, too, in the act, some biting happened in exploratory fashion. Now, to some I'm probably starting to sound like I was some sort of little misogynist. And I really want to assure you that this was totally not the case. On the contrary, growing up and seeing my mother in an abusive relationship gave me a deep and abiding empathy for women. In fact, if anything, I can be accused of a overly protective sort of chauvinism in regards to women, based on that sympathy. I would love to say I've outgrown that idea, and intellectually, of course, I have. But the ideals you develop in childhood aren't intellectual things. It's more of an aesthetic, a way your emotions respond to the world. That was compounded by the fact that I grew up in a very socially backwards area. When and where I was growing up, gender roles were still a societal expectation. Men worked, and if a wife had to get a job outside the household, it generally was a blow to a man's pride as bread-winner for the family. A good wife was there to kiss her husband's cheek when he came home from work and to bring him his beer or coffee. I remember when I was very young, my mother telling me how important it was to find a wife that cooked. That was where I came from. Again, just to be clear, I'm not assigning any particular objective validity to any of this, not asserting or endorsing anything. But, the people I was brought up by said exactly that; mom, dad, aunts, uncles, neighbors, all firmly felt that was how it should be. And that all helped to shape my preferences and comfort zones. I'm not saying this is how it should be, or even that there is any 'should-be' in life at all. In fact, personally, I find professional women quite sexy. But, nevertheless, deep in my mind, in places I can't reach to change, it shaped how I felt comfortable acting, no matter how intellectually I can argue against it. Of course, that's not to say that my attitudes were prevalently conservative. I was that too cool for the party guy. I was the loner with the big assed chip on his shoulder that only he couldn't see. I didn't belong to any cliques because the notion of trying to placate anyone's expectations, parents included, just made me bristle. I didn't get into trouble at school, not because I was particularly obedient, but simply because their expectation of calm, quiet, reserved behavior was precisely what I tended to display, anyway. So I was left alone with my C+ average that required no effort on my part. I tried football and wrestling but the imposed structure predictably made those short lived endeavors. So I got into boxing and kick-boxing, then first tae-won-do, then later kempo, aikido, and jujutsu at a local dojo. I was that guy who was sneering with contempt when guys would be acting all cute and pathetic with big puppy-dog eyes to get girls. My idea of courtship was giving girls a reasonable chance to chase me, not the other way around. What, learn to dance to impress girls? I think not. Go find some dignity. Of course, I did later develop an interest in ballroom and Latin dancing. But that's different. That whole truism about dominants being arrogant jerks? Yes. I had that one down. Then right out of high school I joined the army. And, boy, that was a mistake. If the structure of football and wrestling turned me off, the army felt like being owned, and to this day, I've never been that miserable. A friend of mine that knew me then once observed that I didn't so much rebel against authority, because I couldn't be bothered with it. I just went off and preferred doing my own thing. But, when any authority was exerted on me, my reaction tended to be of a kneejerk, visceral, violent sort. And the sick thing was, I was kind of flattered by that assessment. That was also how I got my nickname, 'Badger'. Not the sexiest nickname, but it, too, was flattering in a way. But one good thing came of that. A friend explained what in retrospect was quite obvious; that I did not have a submissive bone in my body. And he went on to tell me about domination and submission, and told me I was a classic dominant personality. And how cool was that? Like the Blue Oyster Cult song! It was one of those moments of ecstatic vindication and self knowledge. From my first inkling that this topic was, in fact, a topic, it was my topic. Have you ever played one of those video games where you wander around finding clues? And you know the things that are important because they stand out, maybe highlighted all shiny, so there's no missing that this is something significant? That's how I felt about this. There was no question in my mind that this was here for me, almost like everything I found out was a clue left for me to find. Of course that was back in ninety one or ninety two. Today, the problem is finding good information. Back then the problem was finding any information at all. There was no internet, and most shops simply didn't have books on that sort of thing. And the shops that did have material on it? Yeah, you didn't want to be seen going into those. And the friends I made in the army were not exactly the fonts of insight that one might hope for from mentors. Of course, if I needed it, my first experiences with sharing submissives with friends would have cemented my interest pretty damn thoroughly. It wasn't until I got out of the army, which, believe me, was just about as fast as I could manage, that I found a source for better information, though. That source came in the form of a rather large community of Goreans. Tuchuks, to be exact. For those of you who don't know, Gor is a pretty hard core male-dominated master-slave style BDSM protocol that is based on a collection of fantasy novels. And if that sounds weird.. well.. yeah, that's because it's kind of weird. And yes, in lifestyle circles this group has fallen into some disfavor, most of which I feel is largely unfair. As for whether it's deserved, I'd say, if it is, many, many other practices deserve the reputation at least as much. I split ways with them before that popular image of them emerged, though I will say it was for a personal philosophical reason rather than the ones that earned their reputation. But that's a topic for next time. It's with these people that I got what I consider my education as a dominant, which I'll describe in my next section. So, stay tuned! Memoires of a Dominant Ch. 02 Warning; this is not a fun, entertaining graphic encounter story. When I posted the first part of these memoires, I'd meant to enter it under 'non-erotic', as I know it's not what many come here looking for. It showed up under BDSM, and I'm not sure if that's because I pressed some wrong button, somewhere, or if someone along the way thought better of my idea. But, it's probably better, as this is obviously it's primary active audience. Just keep in mind, this is more an offshoot of my how-to material and less an entertaining story. ***** I find it's often necessary to distinguish between someone with a dominant nature, and someone who has learned to exercise that nature in a healthy way. Contrary to popular belief, it's my experience that more of the former does not necessarily equate to more of the later. Last time I talked about discovering my nature. And, as I also said last time, my own process of learning this craft in a healthy way began with a community of Goreans. Also, as I said last time, Gor is a particular protocol of M/s (Master/slave) BDSM with some fairly rigid structures and traditions that were based upon a collection of fantasy novels. I also noted that it's a group that has acquired a bit of a rough reputation. For the record, I'd like to say that my own mentors were some of the warmest, most understanding, compassionate and responsible people I've ever met in or out of any kink lifestyle. But more to the point, they instilled in me the two keys that remain the cornerstone of my approach to D/s to this day, even though I've long since stopped adhering to that protocol to this day. The first key was responsibility. I've already written a post on the topic, and it's exactly the point I was started on. Being a dominant meant owning it; everything that happened under your watch, you were accountable for. The second was the idea I mentioned at the top of this entry. That is the idea of being dominant wasn't just a matter of a nature, but a matter of how productively and responsibly one embraced that nature. Sort of like the old fashioned ideal of 'being a man'; some were better at it than others, and one grew in the process of it. In fact, as I observed, for them, 'Being a man' and 'Being a dominant' were pretty much synonymous, or were supposed to be. They eagerly embraced gender roles in an archetypal way, like being a man or being a woman was a spiritual path to be cultivated. They did this to such extent that our favorite pastime, as men, was stick fighting. Yes, stick fighting. Have you seen those videos of people dressing up in weird armor and bashing each other with sticks? We did that without the padding. It was a thing, what can I say? Okay, maybe that part was a bit crazy. But, they embraced their lifestyle to an extent and with a passionate zeal that I've never seen anywhere else. I would probably say to a crazy extent, if there didn't seem so much method to their madness. The proof was in the pudding; these people were a genuinely happy and healthy community. They were diverse, too. Doctors and lawyers and engineers would be sitting around the fire with bikers and construction workers watching their wives dance. And you wouldn't be able to tell what any of them were from listening to them talk and interact. To them, those other roles were acts they put on when they weren't here, and this was what was real. They also put their money where their mouth was. Or rather they put their spouses where their lifestyle was. They were, to put it bluntly, the most profoundly polyamorous group of people I've ever come across. And it was not uncommon for men mentoring other men to use each other's wives and girlfriends to 'demonstrate' or offer for practice. And, before you go thinking that they were getting all 'Mormon' with it, these women were as 'into it' as the men, with one often trying to outperform another, and (I kid you not) competitions for play and attention. This allowed me to begin learning in a 'hands on' sort of way, pun intended. Now, it's not my job to be an apologist for Goreans at large. I got very lucky finding my first group, and have found a few communities, since then, that seemed equally positive. But, I've also come across maybe an equal amount that lacked any of the deeper insight that made these groups work. Some criticize that the peculiar traditions and hard-line male-dom structure were not really necessary if one recognizes the underlying principles that make it work. In fact the somewhat arbitrary mass of the form can rather distract from the healthier aspects of the latter. Also the groups traditions make no accommodation, in its natural state, for either homosexuals or for opposite gendered power exchange; male submissive or female dominants. I really can't rebut any of those criticisms other than to point out that this is hardly a tax-exempt non-profit group. They look after their members common interest and don't necessarily feel much imperative to accommodate those not of like mind. Others criticize them along feminist lines. To these I counter and say that many of the most independent and successful, self actualized women that I've known loved humiliation and objectification play and a few were in fact in this group. This is a common kink, and if you're a feminist you have to respect a woman's right to enjoy it just as much as you respect a man's right to be demeaned by a dominatrix. I'll do an entry on this sort of play at some point, but that's another can of worms. In the end, none of these were what caused me to 'stop being Gorean'. In fact over the years I drifted in and out of a few other groups of that protocol, mostly because, on top of being a Dominant, I'm a bit of a sci-fi and fantasy geek and tend to run into them a lot. They're one of the most common protocols to run into, after all, or were, at least, while I was most publically active. Really, if my group hadn't dissolved mostly due to various members relocating, some to the great beyond, I might never had stopped. That was how much affection I had for them, warts and all. But, alas, such was not to be. However, there was one key philosophical difference that I evolved that I couldn't reconcile with continuing as 'a Gorean master'. You see, unlike in the books, Gor wasn't on a separate planet, and while I was learning to be Gorean, I was also learning about other things from member who had followed other lifestyle aspects; Old Guard, New Guard, munches, dungeons, etc. And it also brought me a larger sense of context. And as that grew, I realized that the male-dom thing bugged me. No, not in a feminist sort of way. Rather, the more I got into it, the more I wanted the submissive to respond to me, specifically, as a dominant, not just because of my gender as a male. In fact, the idea that a submissive would respond to me the same way she'd respond to another male totally killed the thrill of it for me. Now, I know that some Goreans will challenge that idea. And fair enough. This isn't the place to go into such an in depth debate on Gorean culture, but I realize, to an extent, there are contrary attitudes. I simply mean to make the point that I decided after that point that I want the power exchange of my own practices to be under my own power, and not compelled by any sort of tradition. Of course, in retrospect, my next D/s relationship after that turned out to be my first wife. That will forever reign as the most negative relationship in my history for many reasons. I may go into that a bit, next time. But, probably not.