Big Bad Ass Book of Sex

by Nancy Armstrong

  “Dominance and submission” is the all-encompassing term for the behaviors and rituals involved in one person relinquishing control to another who asserts dominance. This power relationship may be expressed in many ways, and it needn’t be—and in fact generally isn’t—physical. It may occur over the telephone or through e-mails, or it may be in person; it could take place in a love relationship or between virtual strangers anonymously. It is not limited to heterosexual partnerships or homosexual ones, nor is it even limited to partnerships; polyamorous domination-submission scenarios surely exist. Dominants can be male or female; ditto with submissives.

  So why on earth is this a sexually satisfying scenario that you might want to sample? Hell if we know. Seriously, though, there is a ton of research into why so many people seem to get off on this, and it all starts and ends with the fact that power struggles make up many of our day-to-day relationships and interactions, and a scenario in which there is a clear power delineation (and one that ultimately they control) is a huge stress reliever—and hence a turn-on—for lots of folks. Some studies say that especially people who wield tons of power at work, say, or even maybe in their marriages, get off on submitting to someone else in a sexual situation—thus the ability of professional dominants to make a great living and be much in demand.

  SECRET TIP

  Is your boss a tad too bossy? Perhaps he or she has a secret.… Check out the bedroom closet the next time he or she invites the department over for a barbecue.

  Aficionados of D/s, as it’s often known, often think the turn-on comes from the intense emotional trust and communication that happens between people in a power exchange relationship. Indeed, since power and who has it inform the dynamic in most relationships anyway, putting it right out in the open and turning it on its ear doesn’t seem like such a bad idea. Or maybe it’s just that humans in general like to look up to other people; hero worship is certainly not in short supply these days. But then again, neither is building someone up just to cut him or her down as soon as possible, so perhaps that’s why some D/s couples switch it up. (That’s literal. A “switch” is a person who’ll play either role in a D/s power exchange.) Whatever the reason, the turn-on must be there for so many people to take part in this kind of relationship.

  There are several different D/s “relationship models” in existence, and any of them can last for just a few hours or a day or go on indefinitely.

  Generally a setup like this falls into one of these categories:

  Servitude: The submissive is the dominant’s servant or slave.

  Cross-dressing: The submissive dresses as the opposite sex. (More on this later in this section.)

  Infantilism: The submissive dresses as a baby.

  Physical or verbal humiliation.

  Objectification/dehumanization: The submissive behaves like an object or animal.

  Chastity.

  Fetishes. (More on this later.)

  The way you set up your fantasy-turned-reality BDSM scene is, of course, up to you and your partner and your various fantasies. A majority of D/s relationships take on the master or mistress and maidservant dynamic, in which the submissive fetches and does things for the dominant and is disciplined for misbehaving and/or becoming sexually aroused (though generally that is the point, as is the punishment part).

  This brings us to bondage and discipline. But before we get to the whys and wherefores, here’s the terminology for the tools.

  GLOSSARY OF BDSM IMPLEMENTS

  This is by no means an exhaustive list of tools used by BDSM enthusiasts, just a sampling of popular ones.

  BALL GAG: A ball attached to a strap; the ball is placed in the mouth, and the strap is tied or buckled around the head to gag the wearer.

  BERKLEY HORSE: A type of BDSM furniture used to support a person who is being flogged.

  CAT-O’-NINE-TAILS: A whip with nine lashes.

  DUNGEON: An area specifically set aside for BDSM, often equipped with any or all of the implements in this list.

  FLOGGER: Any of various types of tools used for beatings, such as whips, switches, and crops.

  NIPPLE CLIP: A clip or clamp attached to the nipple to provide stimulation with varying degrees of pressure.

  PARACHUTE: A device that is wrapped around the scrotum from which weights may be suspended.

  SLEEPSACK: Shaped like a regular sleeping bag but used to keep a person entirely immobilized in bondage games.

  SPREADER BARS: Used in bondage to keep the legs or arms spread wide apart; usually can be adjusted.

  ST. ANDREW’S CROSS: A bondage cross that is X-shaped, providing places to affix hands/wrists, feet/ankles, and waist.

  STRETCHING THE TRUTH

  Not sure this is what Saint Andrew had in mind while being martyred, but who knows.

  YOU’RE WELCOME FOR THE TIP

  Don’t forget about “conventional” toys such as vibrators, dildos, and butt plugs in BDSM play—they are decidedly equal opportunity in their fun potential!

  BONDAGE

  Bondage is just that: being bound. More precisely (and stuffily), in BDSM it’s the restraining, humiliation, discipline, and/or discomfort that come from bondage that provide sexual stimulation.

  There are all kinds of ways to be bound. One kind pushes parts of the body together (such as arms or legs), and another kind forces parts of the body apart (arms and legs again). You might have your feet and hands secured to each other but not be bound to anything, or you might have chains or ropes wound around your body that aren’t constricting and can be worn under clothing. Or you could be suspended from something, or your movement might be restricted in some other way. What binds you might be just another person’s hands as he or she holds you down and does various things to your body or that person’s voice as he or she tells you what to do. It could be a set of rules you’ve promised to adhere to. Being helpless is generally the turn-on here, being completely at the mercy of the person who has bound you.

  There are all kinds of games you can play with bondage. Assuming your partner has consented to giving up power, you might tie him or her up and leave to go to work for the day. Your partner is immobile, waiting for you, entirely at your mercy, and you can think of him or her that way, waiting for you, all day.

  YOU’RE WELCOME FOR THE TIP

  Make sure to go to the bathroom before agreeing to be bound all day.

  Or you can tie your partner to the bed and do all the naughty things you’ve ever wanted to do but maybe weren’t allowed to. Say you have a fantasy of being handcuffed to your headboard and stroked with a feather for hours, until you just can’t take it anymore. Being tied up and having sex withheld could also be the punishment a dominant inflicts on a submissive in a master-slave relationship for some infraction of the rules.

  The limits of imagination and desire for bondage play are the only parameters you need to stay within here. If you and your partner are on the same page, you should be able to talk it out and figure out hot scenarios featuring bondage that get you both off. There are also professional dominants whom you can pay and instruct to enact whatever fantasy you have.

  DON’T BE A JERK

  There are, of course, safety concerns with any bondage play. As was mentioned above, a safeword is necessary in all BDSM activities. Words such as “stop” and “no” aren’t good ones because your slave will probably say them but not really mean them as part of the scene, so pick something a bit less common.

  You should take these precautions:

  Don’t use restraints that impair breathing, especially if you leave the submissive alone. Don’t tie anything around anyone’s neck.

  Try not to leave a bound person alone for very long, no longer than a few hours, certainly.

  Keep safety scissors around—the medical kind are best—so you can cut off tape or ropes if the knots don’t come undone.

  Don’t stay in the same position for longer than an hour without moving at least a little. It’s no good if an appendage lo
ses feeling. If that happens, move around immediately.

  Avoid liquor and drugs.

  Keep the keys to padlocks and handcuffs in accessible places, and if possible, keep a spare key.

  If you’re totally grossed out or confused at this point, bondage probably isn’t for you and you needn’t bother trying it out. But if you’re intrigued or titillated, you might want to chat with your partner about it.

  SECRETS TO MAKE YOU LOOK GOOD

  Maybe read some of the stories at the end of this chapter with your partner before surprising him or her with spreader bars and a penis gag for your anniversary.

  Start slowly and really talk about why you’d like to try it. If your partner is on board, fantastic. If not, try not to push it. After some time has passed, you might try a little light BDSM, as described in Part 2 of this book, and work up from there.

  SADOMASOCHISM

  Sadomasochism is the blanket term for the practice of inflicting or enduring pain to become sexually aroused. A sadist (from the illustrious Marquis de Sade) is one who gets off on inflicting pain, and a masochist is one who digs receiving it. S&M, as it is often known, may or may not be part of BDSM; it’s not required. Often, though, it is the pain that ultimately comes from a D/s relationship—and the inflicting of discipline and punishment—that is sought. As was mentioned above, the desire to feel pain is described frequently in the BDSM community as being divine or exquisite, and it is here that pleasure is often found.

  COMMUNICATION

  The terms “sadist” and “masochist” are actually psychological categorizations and are not entirely accurate for describing BDSM activities, since psychologists note that a real sadist or masochist would not discuss the pain beforehand and wait for permission to indulge in the behavior. But in any case, they are the words most often used to describe this little corner of BDSM, and the suffering is real whether it’s celebrated or not.

  So those are the main categories of what goes in to most BDSM play. The following topics are some nonvanilla kinds of sexual expression that often go under the heading of BDSM or are included in BDSM scenes. Sometimes a dominant may “force” activities upon a submissive, and these activities may include some or all of these.

  FETISHES

  As was described previously, a fetish is a sexual fixation on an object, body part, or practice that generally is not associated with sex, for example feet, shoes, stockings, waste materials, and stuffed animals. This list could go on and on.

  LISTEN UP, THIS IS IMPORTANT

  But wait, you’re saying. When my girlfriend gets dressed up in stockings with garters and heels, I get turned on. Does that make me a weirdo? The answer is, probably not. If you were unable to be turned on unless she was dressed in those things or if those things became the focus of your sexual experience rather than your girlfriend herself, that would be classified as a fetish. Whether that makes you weird depends on the company you keep.

  BDSM play is often fetishistic, but not always. Many who engage in it are able to get off through regular, vanilla types of sex, too.

  So what causes someone to develop a fetish for, say, desk chairs? Shrinks seem to think that traumatic experiences in childhood cause them, either that or the way the brain is made up or the way a person’s parents’ brains are constructed. So it’s nature versus nurture, and psychological treatment—even aversion therapy—doesn’t often “cure” people of fetishes.

  No matter what, fetishism isn’t a big deal if you can come only when your man wears a tool belt in bed and it so happens that he gets off on wearing that very same tool belt when making love to you.

  STRETCHING THE TRUTH

  Nature versus nurture really means that no one actually knows what causes a person to decide that the only way he can come is if he’s in a swiveling vinyl desk chair surrounded by stuffed Elmo dolls.

  No matter what, fetishism isn’t a big deal if you can come only when your man wears a tool belt in bed and it so happens that he gets off on wearing that very same tool belt while making love to you.

  SNAP OF THE FINGER

  The scientific term for this scenario is “a match made in heaven.”

  You do have some choices if your nonvanilla urges run to the fetishistic:

  1. Try to ignore your fetish, hope it goes away, and try to gain sexual pleasure in other ways.

  2. Talk to your partner about your interest and see if he or she is willing to indulge you.

  3. Consult any one of numerous websites for personal ads and try to find a person whose fetish matches yours—the yin to your yang, so to speak.

  Each of these options has its merits, and you just have to decide what you can live with and what you can’t in terms of sexual satisfaction. For partners of those with a fetish, accepting the fetish is a good idea, but only as far as you’re comfortable with it. If it’s okay with you that your husband gets excited only when he’s rubbing himself with your dirty undies, more power to you. But it probably wouldn’t be okay with you if his fetish were for pregnant women and he wanted you to be constantly with child or he was going to look elsewhere, or if he wanted to have sex only when you have your period because his fetish is menstrual blood. And you might not be so open-minded if your wife’s fetish revolved around pee or poop and she expected you to produce them for her sexual pleasure regardless of your feelings of revulsion. (We’re not making this up; water sports and scat play, as they’re known, are huge in the fetish market.)

  QUICK FIX

  Don’t believe us? Google “fetish porn.” We dare you.

  The list of fetishes is endless. If it exists, someone somewhere probably gets off thinking about it. There are just a few more specific fetishes we’ll talk about, and they have a pretty prominent place in the world of BDSM.

  Cross-dressing and Transvestism

  Cross-dressing is the act of putting on clothing associated with the opposite gender in your particular culture, and in Western culture it is mostly men who dress up in traditionally female-associated garb. Transvestism basically means the same thing, though it does have homosexual connotations and is a more out-of-date term. In fact, cross-dressing men are not always or even usually gay, nor do they generally wish they were women and become transsexual down the line. This practice is often called dressing in drag, though that usually connotes a more open, theatrical version of the often hidden cross-dressing.

  The sexual arousal part of cross-dressing comes from identifying with being a woman or from the silky feeling of women’s underthings rubbing against a penis or testicles. In BDSM, cross-dressing generally involves men wearing bras, panties, stockings, and other feminine-identified sexy clothing, sometimes being called by a feminine-sounding name, and being dominated in any number of ways.

  There is nothing detrimental or even particularly strange about wanting to dress in the opposite gender’s traditionally accepted clothing or in being turned on because of the power (or lack thereof) that cross-dressing generates, but lots of men still hide the fact that they get off on wearing ladies’ clothes. Whether this is because they worry that they will not be seen as masculine while dressed in a corset or because they have lingering shame about having been dressed as a girl while only a kid (as it turns out lots of cross-dressing men were), the shame is there either way. And as with fetishes, therapy isn’t likely to help cure a man of his urge to wear dresses.

  LISTEN UP, THIS IS IMPORTANT

  So ladies, if you find your man in your closet wearing your nightie, try not to freak out. Or if he confides to you that he wants to wear it, definitely don’t freak out; he’s telling you, and that’s huge for a cross-dresser.

  Try to have an open, honest conversation about it and see if you can’t both understand why he’s doing it and how you might accept it and even perhaps be included in it in some way in the future. Outside support is available in the form of organizations such as the Society for the Second Self Inc., and of course, there are dating websites for everything under the sun, cross-dressin
g included.

  Exhibitionism

  Flashing one’s naked body in public can be taken many ways, from the group of guys who run around a college campus buck naked, to the woman who gets undressed with her shades open much to the delight of the neighborhood boys, to the couple that gets off on making love in the backyard because someone could see, to the creepy guy in the raincoat who wears nothing underneath and exposes himself to children in the park. It is by turns funny, sexy, thrilling, and illegal, and it all falls under the heading of exhibitionism.

  Exhibitionism is not going to a nudist event and taking off your clothes; the key element for an exhibitionist is that the place where he or she bares all is not a place where nudity is accepted or encouraged. That’s where the thrill comes from, and that’s why exhibitionism is a fetish. If being seen naked is a rush, imagine the rush an exhibitionist gets from masturbating or having sex in public.

  Obviously, indecent exposure and public nudity are crimes, punishable by fines, maybe even jail time, and plenty of embarrassment.

  SECRETS TO MAKE YOU LOOK GOOD

  We can’t condone illegal activity, but we can urge you to investigate the laws of your community before you decide to blow your sweetie at the apricot festival this spring.

  However, in many BDSM scenarios, it is possible to set the scene to mimic an exhibitionistic display if that’s what you’re into, and that’s really the only exhibitionism this book can sanction, even if the safe setting cuts down on the thrill.

  A NOTE ON BODY MODIFICATION

  Because of the exquisite pain usually involved, piercing and tattooing are often thrown into the category of BDSM. It’s true that many members of the BDSM set sport full sleeves on both arms and have their septa, eyebrows, tongues, clits, penises, and whatever else pierced like crazy, but it’s also true that a lot of people whose sex lives are decidedly vanilla have multiple tattoos and faces and bodies full of metal. For this reason, we’re not going to take an in-depth look at this type of body modification.