Why use protocols?

I promised breakdowns of the D/O workshops, but that is not happening right now. I had this piece drafted, and so am going to go ahead and post it. May be a bit more use of slightly older material through next Sunday as I have a grueling set of deadlines in the outside world.

So one of the questions I get is “why use protocols.” A quick guide is that protocols are a formal set of rules, positions, actions that a girl is supposed to know and is trained to. Protocols are more D/s than BDSM. Mine are a work in progress.

To a lot of people the idea seems not intriguing but kind of stilted. I admit for a long time it did to me. Even the first set of protocols I designed were based around a group of nonstandard positions that I currently call my “club” positions. I like them, they’re a mixture of sort of Bond-girl-esque posturing and model poses that I think in some ways are more fluid and attractive than the standard full present, the ubiquitous “nadu” kneel, etc. Sorry when Rubel uses it, I’m going to say “nadu” is one “Gor” term that has just passed into common leather parlance.

I eventually decided that I was not doing any favors to train girls to a set of standards that aren't practiced anywhere else. Realistically I expect most of my submissives to at least play with other Dominants, if not to eventually move on. I think you have to be realistic and life is like that. At the risk of sounding emotional, it doesn't mean I don't care about them very deeply

So…why do this? Not “why does it look cool” but “what purpose does it fulfill.”
Let me try to explain.

It is every boy’s fantasy (well every alpha/dominant boy anyway) to have a woman say “take me, control me, use me.”

But let’s face it. What is our initial reaction when it happens to us at first. Usually to treat the woman like a piece of glass because we are so scared and freaked out that we might damage her. I suppose the other reaction is just to not give a shit and abuse her until she leaves us, and I have plenty of anecdotal evidence on this. So let’s establish that two things are desirable.

a) To give her the sense that she is controlled and you are in control. Not just for it to be real but for her to feel it.

b) Not to hurt her in bad ways…even if one lacks any other conscience, it means eventually she’ll go away and you won’t have her as a toy anymore. “If you break your toys.”

So, I remember being a young Dom trying desperately to come up with things to command a woman to do. Often defaulting to little more than “what should I tell you to do sweetheart,” or “well, let’s relax and I order you to do what you want.” Sure I was never quite that lame (though I understand that’s a real common order).

But sometimes I was really grasping to do much better. And here’s another tip. “Fuck me” or “go down on me” can be incredibly exciting orders once a sense of control is developed. Being ordered to give sexual service is a big experience to most women. But even as a rank novice I knew pretty well that they weren’t exciting just by themselves without any warmup. Yes you can hang a scene on not having warmup, just like you can occasionally hang a sex scene on “I am going to fuck you without foreplay.” But there has to be other content there, or it gets dull fast.

So…in S/M we don’t just go up to somebody and go at them full force with a heavy cane, unless that’s the scene, and then it’s mostly mental and that’s an unusual scene. What do we do? We ramp them up. Hands. Doeskin flogger. Light caning. Cane taps. Varied sensation. Get them up to a level where that’s exciting to them. Yes as time goes by we can train them to ramp up faster. And some women can drop very quickly, feel the bend right away, and be ready for heavy D/s. But in most cases we recognize the need to do some buildup.

That’s where protocols come in. They’re the equivalent of the doeskin flogger for control. They are the tool that is available to the Dom when the girl says “tell me what to do, I want to surrender to you,” and you know on a lot of levels that she is not in a headspace where she is ready for that to be a sex order, and wants to be controlled, not just tied up and flogged.

For every new Dom who has ever had a young girl saying “take me, control me, tell me what to do.” That’s the key. There are others of course. Learning how to actually instruct a woman how to have sex or suck cock is also fairly important, because “tell me what to do,” does not mean “expect me to read your mind.” Even if they know part of the control element is being told.

But protocols are the bread and butter. They are the way to ramp up a control/mental scene. They are the way to build a feeling of surrender and control quickly and recall it with a word. They are the water in the soup. I’ve never heard of any woman coming from being ordered to kneel (though I’m sure it’s happened) or assume a standing position. But positions and protocols for behavior are the start to a control scene that ends powerfully with far more emotional release/exchange/reaction than can be as easily obtained in other situations.

Dark Odyssey - I - Overview...

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Miscellaneous Comments, Baldwin, and Fear...

I missed a post but after the maximum strength core-dump of the moview review, I think everybody can spot me a post. I haven't updated my arts blog either. I'll be at Dark Odyssey http://darkodyssey.com/ over the weekend, in case anyone who reads this blog happens to be there. I mean who isn't going with me.

So, first, a few answers to questions. Almost everybody reading this blog knows who I am. The names on it are real. I don't have my last name dangling out here because while I probably couldn't be fired for this blog, I feel some compunction to show a little discretion.

Scene Names
Likewise, I've been using "James" instead of "Gordon" in the BDSM world. That's just my first name, and I grew up, like many southerners, going by a middle name that happens to be my mother's maiden name. I like my first name fine, but my parents never wanted me to be "Jim," and I don't much care for it either. It's actually nothing new. For whatever reason, very early on, a couple of submissives just felt "natural" calling me James in scene, so that's kind of where it went.

Facebook
For a couple of folks who wanted to find me on facebook, try Gordon (no James) O-D (my last name), spelled out. If you actually don't know my last name, drop me an e-mail through the james@vialarp.org addy on this blog, and I'll put you in contact. And...as a side note. I don't get upset if people spam me with apps, but I don't usually have a lot of time to deal with stuff like that so...YMMV.

Telling people about this Blog
Finally, about the blog itself. A couple of people have asked me about mentioning it to friends, and a few people already have *chuckle.* It is better to seek forgiveness than to ask permission, d? Anyway, all I'd ask is...use discretion. I've gone to some effort not to put this in the face of friends who aren't comfortable dealing with sexual issues. I'd rather not have it circulated as a sensation, and I've gone out of my way to make it a bad source to get gossip about my relationships. But that said, if you want to pass it along, I don't mind. I'm not going to badmouth anyone here, and I'm not worried about people reading me. I go out of my way to protect the privacy of my partners, but I don't personally have much of anything to hide.

Dark Odyssey

So a couple of Dark Odyssey notes...

They finally got a class schedule posted. I'm actually trying to suck in education these days. Let's face it I have a lot to learn. There's a workshop on kicking and punching an unresisting partner I definitely want to see. One of the hottest scenes I saw in a public setting this year fell into that category. Not that I haven't done it before, but I've typically pulled pretty substantially because my training is stage, not BDSM. I'm up for learning more. I've no will to seriously injure a partner.

So funny thing about Dark Odyssey. I know some of the people who organized it/worked on it the first year. It was billed as a big breakthrough event, merge the pagan community and the BDSM community, was going to be BDSM but with a heavy spirituality theme. I kind of yawned. Now I tend to take my spirituality where I find it, and don't really obsess much on it. "I'll have years of old age when I'm too old to fuck to worry about spirituality." Anyway, they came back from the first year, and somebody said "well they made Tristan the primary guest, and the whole thing was really about assfucking and sex and we were really disappointed that there wasn't a big spirituality track." And I said "hmm....sounds like I might have liked it after all..."

What can I say. I'm irreverent. To each their own. There are people who get a lot of spiritual depth out of BDSM, and I'm supportive of that. I get...emotional...depth...passion...out of it. But I don't tend to see that in spiritual terms.

Literature Review

So the first news is that the literature review is going stunningly. I’ve found a resource that is 80% of what I wanted. A lot of what is in it are things I already do (which makes me pleased and probably slightly smug). But there are a lot of new things, a better coherent pattern, and generally a lot of good terminology. Review coming up in the next few weeks. Otherwise a few interesting things, but the same basic issues. Basic, and problems with tone.
I've been re-reading (or having someone read) Guy Baldwin's Slavecraft. Baldwin serves as the editor/interlocutor for "a grateful slave" in a series of essays many of which were originally published in Leather magazines before being bound into a book.

I'd read most of these before, but I've been more impressed in returning to them. Maybe I'm just more able to accept the emotional content now. Most authors who have written high-flown spiritualistic prose about BDSM have been imitating Slavecraft, so it is at least the original thing.

In the coming weeks, I'm going to try to go through the essays a little more in depth. I already covered “Transparency.” The Second Essay is particularly meaningful to me. It concerns the inability of Dominants to really “get” submissives, and suggests that few of us are really able to help our submissives with their growth. Really it’s a substantial critique of Dominants, and I think you have to be able to read it and accept that much of it is true…and is true of you, not just Dominants in general…if you even want to try to be a good Dominant.

“All too rare are the masters for whom “training” means something more than giving orders and correcting compliance. A sadly small percentage of the Masters I know savors the often delicately balanced orchestrations by which a slave does truly develop a deeper level of surrender under Their direction. These Masters delight in devising subtle situations and conversations that challenge and guide us. They watch us to see how we wrestle with our inner struggles with surrender, and then determine the best way to coax, tease, kiss, lure, argue, reason, support, reinforce, hurt, or love us onward past our sticking points and into doing or accepting exactly what They want from us…and, making us love Them for it!”

Something to aspire to. Yet…

“Masters can tell us to obey, but they are usually at a loss to explain to us where we are to reach down inside and find it in ourselves to do so. Even more so whenever those orders bump up against any internal slave obsta­cles, encounter internal reluctance, or lack of experience.

And how often is that really true. Can I say that I really understand the submissive urge in my partners. I am fascinated by it. I spend hours on it. But do I understand it, can I make it happen, can I teach them all they need to know.

No I cannot. I fail as often as not.

In the first essay, there is an elegant summary of the process of giving over to submission which reminds us why it is important to try. I want to note that the one place I strongly depart from Baldwin is the assertion of the real primacy of submission. He very quickly disposes of anyone who is not so deeply called to it as to be moved to it for life. Even though his submissive narrator takes breaks, plays conditionally with Masters and is obviously in many cases a “sub” not a “slave.” I think there is validity in the experience, even if one balances it with other aspects of life. I don’t think it has to be an all consuming urge.

Fear

In the final analysis, the issue is whether one will or will not honor his passion. To back away from the passionate call of deep and ongoing submission and slavery, one risks his integrity and self-respect. Turning away means building into one's aware­ness the knowledge that he is hiding from something important inside himself. The consequences are eventually the same as when a gay person denies their gayness. A war within the self inevitably ensues. These sorts of wars create friction within one's psychology and act as a drag on one's creativity and spontaneity. Such internal wars and the fallout from them are the enemies of anyone's serenity and happiness.

Most often, the thing that is responsible for not honoring one's passion for submission is Fear. Some who hear and feel the call of submission fear that it might mean the loss of, or destruc­tion of, one's Self: "Who will i be if i surrender absolutely?" Others fear that no one will want to Master them. "What if no one wants me?" We may fear that if we explore submission too deeply, we won't ever enjoy any other kinds of sexuality. "If i go too far, maybe i won't ever be able to be anything other than a slave. "

But in life, the pursuit of great reward often means tak­ing great risk. Those who launched for the Moon knew they were risking their lives, and others who have launched for space have paid that price. Even changing from a good job to a better job car­ries with it the risk that the new situation won't work out. Entering a doctoral program does not guarantee a position upon graduation. Getting married does not necessarily mean "til death us do part." Choosing to beget a child does not guarantee that it will be born healthy and will not become a serial murderer.

Know this: slavery requires bravery.

If you're not courageous enough to make yourself take the risks, then i suggest that you go out and insert yourself into programs designed to help you find your own bravery within yourself. If you are too frightened to proceed toward the realiza­tion of your slave passion, then the acquisition of this courage must be the first part of your preparation for the journey into submission.

There is no shame in being fearful. It is only a shame to remain so. And this shame is esteem-killing and destroys integri­ty and self-respect. Who can afford that? Besides, what worth­while Master wants to try things with a slave wannabe who is paralyzed by his fears and has no self-respect? It is not that you must do away with all fear. It is that you must find enough courage within yourself to prevent your fears from paralyzing you to the point where you will be unable to submit enough to actively seek your bliss in surrender.

It is here that I think a Dominant can do the best work. Even without fully understanding they can try to guide past the fear and provide a safe place to explore from. Also I don't think there are a whole lot of programs that give you bravery. But trust in a partner can. Baldwin also suggests…

It is my opinion that, for most Masters, what under­standing about deep submission They do have will usually be an intellectual one at best anyway. It is very useful for Masters to develop a clear understanding of a slave's individual personality so that Masters can provide us with the opportunities to manifest our slave destiny in the context of service and, with skilled sup­ported development, gradually reposition our limits to suit Their appetites.

I have a sort of horror of the idea of working with someone without exploring their individual personality. It is something I may get too deeply involved in. But beyond that, I think the point there is that even when we don’t fully understand we can provide a safe place, a center, where the submissive can explore without fear…

Interesting Note

El Pregonero, published by the Archdiocese of Washington is not only DC's largest Spanish-Speaking Pregnancy Fetish magazine, but in fact the largest Pregnancy Fetish publication in the Baltimore-Washington area.

"Black Snake Moan," Rape and Abuse...

I’m not given to media reviews, but I’m going to break with precedent today. First a quick bow to Gaspar Noe’s Irreversible. This came out in 2002 and got a lot of comments, largely because of a savage beating with a fire extinguisher, and brutal, and very extended, rape sequence with Monica Bellucci. The movie is frank, honest, hides nothing and glamorizes nothing. It is a series of things that happen. They are not pretty. It has in many ways all the honesty that the next movie lacks. You may or may not be turned on by any of the sexualized violence, but you'll be hard placed to say it doesn't evoke passion.

Black Snake Moan

But today’s movie is Black Snake Moan. This is a little dated (2006), and got bad reviews when it came out, though I am not sure if it got bad reviews for the right reasons. I never get around to seeing movies in the theatre, so I give it a watch when Netflix brings it to the door. I watched this with S. and neither of us expected much of it…was a lark film. We thought it might be “bad good” and have some raunchy sex.

Two disclaimers:

Rape: this started out as a review, but ultimately it got into my private feelings on rape, abuse, incest, etc. I am going to talk about those things. Every American boy knows how to talk about rape. Be completely shocked, tearily comforting, and combine that with some firm macho dick waving about what you’d do to that guy ”if only he were around.” If that behavior doesn’t get the woman in question to stop actually communicating about the uncomfortable topic, then panic. For good measure emphasize that you can’t possibly understand how someone would do that, because of course you’re not like that, thus ensuring that there is no possibility you might actually be called on to talk about it in any detail. This is something that has been a part of my life for a quarter century. So I am going to talk about it and probably say intense uncomfortable things rather than waving my cock around to show how tough I am. You were warned.

Critical Writing: I came early in life to hate critical writing. The easiest way in the world to get a cheap laugh is to deconstruct the flaws in someone else’s art. So, if I’m going to criticize, it’s for more than a cheap laugh.

The Review

As I said, I ended up disturbed by this flick, and having ranted about it to several people got convinced that I ought to write it up as a blog entry. Nothing like the desperation of being behind and short on material to turn one’s table conversation into a blog post. “Write what you know” the man said, and when it comes down to it, if the only thing you know is what you were talking about over drinks, spew that into the keyboard.

So…this stars child star Christina Ricci, and “hand me my lightsaber…it’s the one that says ‘bad motherfucker’ on it...” Samuel L. Jackson. That ought to produce something at least amusing.

At the beginning of the movie, Ricci fucks her boyfriend who is Justin Timberlake. I’m not going to bother with the character names, if you want to know them IMDB them. Timberlake leaves to go be in the National Guard. She begs him not to go, he mumbles some bullshit about needing to do things and leaves. She keels over on the lawn. We find out through backstory inserts that every time he leaves town she does drugs and fucks around.

The movie revolves around Ricci’s “sex addiction,” more or less clinical nymphomania. Of course it doesn’t actually show it, because showing her repeatedly compulsively fucking guys would make her less cute and sympathetic.

In the film’s only actual hot sex scene, Ricci fucks rapper David Banner. In the only moment of emotional honesty, she asks him if she has any money…

He responds: What we just did, you askin' for money, make a man stop. I ain't callin' you no ho. But I ain't gonna be played like no trick, neither. Remember... you called me.

In her one moment of truly good acting, Ricci manages to look disappointed, fidgety, and self conscious.

Arguably that and the other references establish well enough that she fucks around, though I think it's a bit of a cop out.

That said David Banner’s character is the only one in the film I like. He’s not an ass, and he even comes off a little defensive of Ricci in a tough guy way, later on, without seeming artificially involved.

The next hour or so unfolds a series of events that are promising because of what they could lead to…though I knew the cast well enough to have this horrifying clenching growing gut feeling that Craig Brewer is no Tarantino and that he’s not going to be content with any moral ambiguity.

So…Ricci’s husband’s buddy tries to rape her, and then beats her when she won’t sleep with him. It’s unclear why she won’t other than that she’s fucked up and doesn’t want to shit where she lives and it’s plausible he’s pissed enough to lose his shit and hit her. He doesn’t actually go at her that hard (because everyone in this film has to be slightly sympathetic) but he thinks he’s killed her by accident and dumps her in the road.

In the meantime Jackson is drinking because his woman done left him. The other man tries to make it better, and Jackson takes a noble poke at him then goes on home because he’s not the sort to kill people by accident, but he don’t take shit neither. So we are clear right off he’s a man, and moreover a man with the blues whose woman done him wrong.

Jackson finds Ricci and takes her home. I’ll give a bow to Brewer from managing to keep this scene from being comic, because it really should be. She’s delirious with a fever, and he chains her to a radiator. That’s the hot part that gave the film a vague BDSM connotation that is the reason it came to our attention, and crept towards review here.

She tries to jump him and he realizes that the Devil is in her and like your best old line religious nut pulls out a bible and begins quoting scripture at her. He keeps her chained up for a while, until she can fall under his spell as a magical negro. I should add that of the two things that made me sick about this film, the intense pandering to the magical negro archetype was one. It’s not actually the worst example ever. It isn’t The Legend of Bagger Vance. But it’s not good.

At this point my gut was telling me the film was doomed. Because I did the math. Samuel L. Jackson playing Morgan Freeman is never going to be wrong, or act in vain. And if he isn’t then the film is going to have a warm ending. And this film needed a warm fuzzy ending like Resevoir Dogs needed a group hug scene.

But you keep watching because up to now it’s credible. Nothing truly awful has happened. Jackson's character would react this way.

I’m getting long so a quick montage.

Jackson plays Ricci Jazz music, lets her go, and gets her to cook dinner. Honestly I have no problem with this. She’s confused and pliant under the spell of a personable, powerful, older man. Nothing about Jackson’s hold on her is inherently unreasonable. He won’t sleep with her, which arguably makes him more fascinating to her. She becomes quiet and almost mystical around him, and that’s honestly all fine...she’s under the spell.

He is convinced to play a club though he hasn't performed in years. He plays a blues song about murdering men, to prove that he’s okay with violence, just not sexual infidelity. Well, okay he’s not really okay with violence. It’s a wonderful device to make him suddenly less prude without actually sullying his character.

Still, great cultural throw, I’ll buy it. Culture that deplores sexual adventurism but glorifies violence. Welcome to the South of my youth.

Somewhere in all this Ricci is left alone and jumps the boy who brings fresh produce. Samuel L. Jackson has a talk with him in which he somehow manages to evoke shades of Andy Griffith or Eddy Arnold on a old episode of “Green Acres.” “Eb…we have to do something about the girl…she’s getting…whooo…eee…” At this point you can hear the whole film slipping south with the monstrous sucking sound you knew had to be the case from the moment Jackson preached.

He takes Ricci to town to reconcile with her mom. Ricci and mom end up in a fight in the mop aisle. Now this might be a moment of honesty. But since Ricci can’t be a bitch or anything other than a victim, it relies on her mother being a villain of unlikely proportion, who screams rejection at her daughter. There’s no hint of any justification…just bile and venom. I’m buying it, but it just seems a foil. We learn that Ricci was raped as a juvenile by one of her mother’s boyfriends, and her mother let it happen. We are presumably to conclude that this is the source of her profound sexual fuckupedness…

Obviously this is near and dear the root of my dislike of this particular piece of film. Because that particular set of circumstances, or variations on it by Hector Berlioz has been in and out of my life in the form of fucked up girls for a long time, and that’s what brings it to this blog. Some cope better and some worse, but the dirty fingerprints on the sexual psyche…the oilstains, rips and tears. I’ve seen those. So in premise at this point this film had something powerful to say.

Because I know how movies are made, and how cast are written to, I knew it wasn’t going to say it, but I kept watching, hoping. Because this was exciting. Ricci was an abuse victim who wasn’t a sterile chaste victim too aware of her own uncleanness to contemplate…gasp...sex…

Instead, Moan borrowed the ending from To Wong Foo, or a hundred other formula comedies. The 'colorful celebration.'

Can I just stop telling you about this. It’s painful.

If you like the ending to this film you probably also like the aerial view ending to the 1982 mass release version of Blade Runner, which features tacked on footage from The Shining. The ending has absolutely as much to do with the film.

Boyfriend Timberlake comes back. He’s been kicked out of the National Guard because he has anxiety disorder. So he’s back to claim the woman he abandoned, with proof he’s pretty much the not man that she was able to confide in, but compelled to fuck around on.

Jackson gets the girl. Since he can’t keep the girl he magnanimously passes her off more or less as property to her emotionally deficient beau. He summons his delightful character-actor friends and has a vocalist and a preacher, and makes them marry. Everyone breaks out Sunday best and there is a festive atmosphere. A moment of dignity and grace is brought to the shotgun shack. All is good…

Then Ricci and Timberlake drive off into the sunset.

Somehow we are actually expected to believe that after having been the first influence powerful enough to begin to get through to Ricci, Jackson can play a few bars of music, produce a magical ceremony and “whoosh” everything is alright. You expect him to suddenly give them the fucking ZZ Top car. Jackson as savior is weird and fucked up but sort of plausible. Jackson as “too good to get the girl” not savior, sending the girl off with an anxiety medicated Victor Lazlo is not. Ilse Lund’s problem was not having been raped by her mom’s boyfriend, and she wasn’t compulsively trying to nail Louis because she was sexually unfulfilled by Lazlo.

As Porky Pig would say "Th-Th-Th-Th-Th-That's all, folks!"

So, there’s one redeeming moment….

On the highway they are boxed in by semis and Timberlake freaks out. He has to pull the car over, panting.

There is nothing so bitter as disappointment. For one brief moment…I actually thought things were going to turn around. Remember that point in Gilliam's Brazil where there is the pull back and Helpmann says “He's got away from us, Jack.” And you realize that the entire beautiful ending where he escapes with the girl is just a dream…I thought for one moment it would be like that…

I don’t like people who try to fix other people’s work by fantasizing the “right” ending, so I’m not going to say any of the things that raced through my mind right then. Honestly they weren’t well formed just “oh wow, some reality is going to firebomb this situation.”

But no...it is at best irresolute. Ricci hugs Timberlake and tells him it’s okay.

Clearly the scene was introduced to inject some faint redeeming hint of plausibility after a fantasy sequence worthy of “Cinderella.” To suggest that there was trouble in paradise. But really it turned into just a bit of “we’ll get through because we have each other.”

But it was too little too late. It did nothing to seriously retract the film’s major proposition. Which was more or less “maybe there will be a miracle.”

So why do I dislike this film?

Well first there’s the obvious cruel lie. Having explored a truly significant area of psychosexuality in a way that had a lot of promise, the film ends with a cheesy, hokey, ending that suggests that a few blues riffs and some stern talking to can get you right over those old “my mom’s boyfriend raped me” blues and back into the swing of things. This isn’t fucking Stella getting her groove back for Chrissakes, this is somebody who was sexually abused as a child or teen. And putting her back into the same situation where she was fucking around six weeks earlier is no sort of answer.

The problem is everything about the film suggests it is. She’s reborn and on the right path now, and with the weak boyfriend she fucked around on before she’s bound to go off and make things work. Because you know they…well we don’t know if she loves him or even likes him, but she’s comfortable with him, and he’s devoted to her except in the beginning where he dropped her to go play soldier. It wouldn’t be much of a fix even without her history but in this case it’s comically absurd.

But that’s not really what I hate. I kept turning it over and over in my mind, and I came to something else.

In some historical societies, and even some societies today, when a woman has been raped she is effectively segregated and not allowed to have intercourse. Even if it is not her fault, she’s never allowed to have a sexual existence again, she’s “damaged goods”

Our literature and cinema do that. A woman who has been raped may never be seen in a sexual light. Oh it’s fine to show rape. But the classic “acceptable” portrayal of a rape victim is frigid. She pushes men away, to the point of screaming “don’t touch me.” She feels unclean and therefore doesn’t want sex. If she is ever depicted as having sexual relations again it is because she is “cleansed.” She may get to have quiet vanilla intercourse, if she's good, and shows that she has totally removed any vestiges of her violent sexual experience from her psyche. That she is "over it." But as long as she’s tainted by it, she’s unclean. If she is allowed to have sex again this must be portrayed as being gently reclaimed through love.

Why? As long as that influence exists. We're sharing. And if we can feel that influence, if there is a hunger for wanton sex, or a passion for violence or harsh treatment, then we become the abuser. And we can't stomach that. Better for us to cut a woman off than come into contact with that in ourselves. Men aren't big on sexual revelations about themselves, and a woman who might be a mirror in which to see our own tendencies to sexual violence...that's scarier than most of us are prepared to deal with.

We say that rape doesn’t really make women unclean. But are we in any way prepared to handle the concept that it may have impacted their psychosexual drive? No. And the most ashamed are the ones who go through life hiding it. Who know that it colored their sexual perceptions, and will always be ashamed of what excites them.

This made the portrayal of Ricci’s character awfully promising and poignant to me. I’ve seen a thousand troubled, frigid, and distant abuse victims in film and media. A thousand “don’t touch me” girls, sterile in their own uncleanness. They don’t intimidate anyone because they can be treated like a Victorian housewife. They’ve conveniently put their own sexuality up on the shelf, out of reach where it won’t bother us. But those aren’t the ones I’ve ended up dealing with.

The women I’ve known who had these experiences were incandescent with the same sexual needs as anyone else. Yes in some cases, amplified, twisted. In other cases, probably not but scared as hell about it. In every case, fucked up as much by guilt as by trauma. Isolated forever by the fact that no-one else will touch those dirty spots, is willing to scrub at the oilstains, get down and get their hands dirty, get involved in the sexuality of their trauma. And with its premise this film looked as if it could say something about that.

I'm not saying that every abuse victim becomes a sex-starved nymphomaniac. But I am saying that every woman I have ever been involved with who was abused...and that is more than the fingers of one hand...bore marks of it in her sexual makeup or felt fearful and guilty that parts of her sexuality emanated from that event, whether they did or not. And in more cases than not sexual violence, and abuse or self-abuse formed some part of their sexual closet. And that is not something that most drama can deal with. I don't fault many films for leaving it alone, but I fault this one for opening the can of worms, then wandering off into an embarassing childish make-believe.

The unclean female must be castrated, or to use the equivalent, locked into a nunnery. So she was. Denied sex by Jackson. He was too moral, too firm, too good just to fuck her. He had to be better than her. He possessed her mind but refused her body. Oh yes, he was married and she was too young and he was “decent.” Not the sort who would do something like that. Pure.

But he used his influence to hand her over to another man. And despite a moderately sweaty sex scene at the beginning of the movie, Timberlake’s character is patently sexless. He says outright he has a gun but can’t use it. He is as symbolically castrated, as close to a eunuch as any male character I have ever seen portrayed. The writers belabor the point. He’s not just broken. He is not a man. He doesn’t have the strength to shoot Jackson. He has no resolve. He’s castrated.

And the powerful man who masters her and denies her sex hands her over to this symbolically sexless man. Oh sure this isn’t the Middle Ages, she should get some vanilla sex. But the vibe is very much that her “wild days” are over, and she has been “tamed.” The “influence” that caused her sexual need is washed away by jazz. We don’t need to investigate it. We just wave our electric guitar and make it disappear. And then the girl is put somewhere very safe. Timberlake might as well be “Our Lady of Perpetual Solace Monastery.”

It’s the same portrayal just external, rather than internal. If she doesn’t have the resolve to force her own sexuality down, Jackson will do it for her. Her sexuality must be alien because it was shaped by her trauma, so rather than treat her as a human and it as a part of her, it must be washed away. And that means limiting her sexuality, and that is what this movie is about.

Black Snake Moan had the potential to say something and by and large it failed by supplying an ending not unbelievable because it couldn’t happen, but because the producers seemed seriously in their framing to suggest that it was a good thing that had potential, not an empty joke. Because it made Jackson a hero for his abrogation of the responsibility that he’d taken on in becoming the focal power in Ricci’s life.

But that’s not what made it cruel. In the end, it reaffirmed what any good boy knows. Abuse is best swept under the carpet, and a woman who has been raped or abused is only clean to touch when that is erased from her, washed away, and she denies any influence of it upon her. If that means denying her own sexuality well...small price to pay for cleaniliness.

And that is where the film stopped being disappointing, and became cruel. Crueler than others, because it promised more than society’s pat answer, and failed to deliver it.

No afterjoke today. Despite my penchant for bad taste, I don't much feel like it. The afterjoke was the formula ending to this provocative film...

Third Person Address

So today we have a kind of throwaway column. Sunday died because I was on the road. Drove back Monday, and at about 3:30 Tuesday morning woke up. There is nothing quite like the experience of trying to maintain one’s composure as a Dom while explaining to your submissive that you believe you are coming down with the flu, and may soon be absolutely incapacitated, and need to get away and isolated and so forth. A credit to the girl in question, who handled having her Dom come down with the Black Death quite well…

Add to that the fact that there was a family medical emergency (in-laws) exploding on channel 2, and I hit that point where I’m glad I’m not hiding my lifestyle from anyone or keeping a lot of secrets, as I was in no shape to drive safely (which is saying quite a lot given my ex-hacker creds), and having various people not know about the other elements of my life would have been...embarassing to say the least.

There was in fact no flu, though for about thirty hours I certainly felt like there was. Whatever was wrong cleared up, but predictably pre-empted a Wednesday post. So I throw a late, lame ass post out, and we see if I can get something of measurable worth out on Sunday. It’s kind of like an update if they happened several days late and several hundred words short…

So. A week or so ago I was having a conversation with someone and the topic of “formal address” came up. Specifically the style where a submissive refers to herself in third person. An acquaintance was referring to that as “Gorean.” Now for those of you who have been living in the Kuiper belt for the last forty years, “Gor” is the ethos of a popular and interminable series of schlock fantasy by author John Norman. It’s also a fairly popular BDSM subculture. In the 1970s, well before BDSM was publically acceptable, you could go into a Safeway or Drug Fair and buy these books beside the fucking “Perry Rhodan” series. Kids could thumb them.

I never read Norman's novels myself. I’ve thumbed one since to get a feel for the writing style and might have liked them when I was a sex starved twelve year old. But they were fantasy and I wasn’t much interested in schlock fantasy. Still, for a lot of people they were a gateway to BDSM, so you can’t hate them too much. That said, Norman has a strident point of view that most people in the community don’t agree with – that women are naturally submissive, and that all women, no matter who they are or where they come from, desire to be dominated by men. So that tends to make Gor an outlier, and…well if your BDSM practices come straight from a grocery store bookshelf without passing Go or collecting $200, there is more than a hint of geekiness that it takes a lot of personal poise to overcome.

At any rate, there are a number of basic procedures I use when I do a full training drill and formal address is one of them. I never thought of this as “Gorean” but it occurred to me I really had no idea where the fuck it did come from.

I mentioned in a previous post that there really isn’t a technical manual for D/s. So the practices and training procedures I’ve patched together come from places as bizarre and far-fetched as a Season 1 Episode of “The Wire.” There’s no one person I’ve “trained with” just various books, seminars, demos, workshops, etc. down the line.

I’m a historian by training and inclination, so I got interested at this point. Where the fuck does the concept actually come from and when did it enter the BDSM world? When I get interested in something I tend to get obsessive, which may be good with women, but is not so good with etymology.

So here’s what I gathered, after some reading and extrapolation

The fact is that “organized” BDSM may have existed in the hetero community from the Victorian era, but there’s no evidence it was really vey organized. There are some rumblings about an “old guard” that had setups in the 50s and 60s like “Story of O,” but there’s better firsthand accounts that say there was no such thing, or rather that to the extent it did exist it was just roleplay organized along the only lines anyone had much reference for.

However the same could not be said of the Gay BDSM scene. Gay Leather culture was exploding in the 1950s and 60s, and predictably, had strong military elements. Boys and Daddies often used military discipline and codes of behavior. It’s very clear that a lot of our actual practices came through the exposure of Gay leather culture in the post-Stonewall era, and even before. Certainy it’s a mélange, but there is a very strong influence in the “leather” scene, down to the fetishization of leather itself.

Given this, the origin of the tradition of “third person” address would seem to be the Military, which provides a lot of the backbone for modern interpretations of discipline, and most likely it comes to us through the Gay Leather Community. It’s been posited that slaves as far back as Ancient Rome were made to reference themselves in third person, but I find the Military antecedent far more likely and relevant.

Still the Military use isn’t identical

I did a bit of poking around about the Military usage.

In Military and Naval Recognition Book: A Handbook on the Organization, Insignia of Rank, and Customs of the Serivce of the World's Important Armies and Navies, by Lieut. J. W. Bunkley USN D. Van Nostrand Co., New York, 1917 we learn that:

“An enlisted man in speaking to an officer, always stands at attention, uses the word "Sir" and addresses him in the third person.

"Sir, the corporal directed me to report to the Captain."

"Did the Lieutenant wish me to, etc."

Of course this doesn't account for "the girl" referring to herself in third person. Where does that fit in?

Even without an exhaustive knowledge of the military, it seems clear that this is a more exaggerated form of address common in the military. Specifically we can establish that it was common in boot camps. The simple citation is of course Stanley Kubrick’s classic "Full Metal Jacket."

Sir, it is the private's duty to inform the Senior Drill Instructor that Private Pyie has a full magazine and has locked and loaded, sir!
But however good Kubrick’s research department, I’m not entirely satisfied at a movie reference, so I looked around for something more definitive and substantial.

I found this in Daniel Borgström’s “Free Speech Zone” blog.

At the time I was pretty gung-ho on-the military, so maybe it was a good thing for me to experience it first hand. If you've seen the movie "Full Metal Jacket," you have some idea of what boot camp is like.

When addressing the Drill Instructor we always had to speak in the third person. If you needed to go to the bathroom, the proper dialogue would go like this:

"Sir, Private Smith requests permission to speak to the Drill Instructor." "Speak, Private." "Sir, the Private requests permission to go to the head."

And there in general we have the construction of formal address…

I imagine the matter has been researched more thoroughly, but I found it interesting to give some thought to where the custom comes from and how it was derived. I’m easily fascinated by these things. Probably a little dry and technical, but it’s a stopgap.