D/s, S&M : The Infinite Variety

Day before yesterday’s note was partly prompted by some web searching.

I was curious to see what sites there were that discuss female led relationships. Even when I don’t feel something is for me my curiosity about erotic and romantic relationships is usually fairly lively.

Quickly I ran into sites focusing on male led relationships.

{Pause.}

Did you shake your head in disbelief? Or disgust? Or like me think the idea harked back to millennia of conventional sexist relationships and sounded as thrilling and original as packaged bologna on American white bread?

But. Wouldn’t be much point in writing this if there weren’t a but to be found.

They are called Taken In Hand relationships. And the author seems a caring, sane man. No pretending that it is somehow the proper order of things or satisfying for all people. No male supremacist crap. The guy is clearly a romantic.

This led me to think; a bit amorphously I’m afraid, about the erotics of power exchange relationships. (If I didn’t use phrases like that I’d probably get more comments. Some of you guys are intimidated by the superficial signs of intellectual sophistication.)

What a range it spans, from mostly conventionally romantic relationships like mine with Alexandra to total power exchange.

Gay men: some meet in a leather bar for a night of S&M after which they’ll never meet again. Old Guard leathermen live together with strict rules, protocols and titles.

M/f couples span a huge range. There are the domestic disciple couples that act as if a woman should submit herself to her husband as a god given rule. Loving marriages that include power exchange and punishment. There’s the Gorean variants that range from people too literally try to build a life around John Carter of Mars rip-offs spiced with BDSM. And there are Goreans who aren’t wacky.

F/m couples. Couples who enjoy it as play. Men who feel they need to be led by a woman and women who want to lead. The most extreme sort of female supremacists (who are sometimes pros who’ve found a profitable angle). Men who imagine they want their life to resemble a prisoner of war camp.

And a rich rainbow of nuances, variations and permutations that I’ve left out.

Some are unhealthy. Others aren’t. Mostly it isn’t how the couples categorize their time together. Slapping an adjective and noun together only says so much. It is the qualities of the two people involved.

It is enjoyable to survey the variety and scope of D/s and S&M. In varying degrees I identify with much of what I read. Some wouldn’t be right for the two of us. There are times when my hungry slavish masochistic self wishes it were. Or that I could escape into a fantasy parallel world and live out this and that situation. Other times I’m appalled or even snicker.

But that abstract fascination with the spectrum encompassed by BDSM is what prompts many of the notes I publish here.