BDSM Labels

On and off I’ve debated sexual labels with people. I’ve enjoyed writing about them: sapiosexuality, pansexuality, fauxmosexuality (and Yahoo may still have me listed as an authority on metrosexuality).

Alford Korzybski’s famous old saw: the map is not the territory. OK, but often you’d get lost without your map.

Labels are fine if you think of them as a sort of signpost. A label is a starting point.

Rejecting sexual labels is an ambiguous practice at best. Like many words they are needed to communicate. You have to be wary less your personalization of a word degrades it into meaningless.

But you can engage in a dialog with the labels that might describe you. Work out the nuances of how it seems to apply to you or eludes your nature. Often a label may do both. The word captures something of who you are but not quite.

I better figure out a way to get some BDSM content into this or I’ll have to put it on another site.

We all know what a masochist is right? He (or she, forgive me if I’m a bit sexist and cast this in F/m terms) needs pain. Want to be beaten. There’s also what I like to call masochism of the heart: the need to be humiliated.

Many masochists, like myself need both. But some only want the physical pain. They don’t care, may even object to being called a worm. Others want to be shamed but have little or no tolerance for bodily hurt.

It has been a long since I stopped to read anything about the old topic of “submissive” or “slave.”

I hardly remember how they went. Something like a submissive can set limits, a slave cannot. Which of course a slave can. Any dominant who ever pushed someone into a nonconsensual act would deserve jail or whatever the punishment was.

I could suggest that the difference is in the totality of commitment. And I can easily imagine the objections of women who identify themselves as submissive to any notion that they weren’t committed to their masters.

When think of the motto or subtitle for this site I opted for “part time male slave.” I’m sure there are many people who’d call that an oxymoron.

And the oxymoron “consensual nonconsensual” sums up my reason. When my beloved takes control I don’t want the option - physical danger aside - of saying no. And as I discovered when I reach the place I need to be I simply cannot imagine disobeying her. Reaching that blissfully vulnerable, seemingly involuntary surrendered state is the goal of my “slavery.”

Interestingly there’s no nuance to Domme, Dom, Mistress or Master.

Really there isn’t to any erotic labels: once you chose one you have to work out for yourself and any potential partners what that designation means.