apparently, there’s “orgasm conditioning” that utilizes hypnosis that makes it so someone can verbally order an orgasm.

— Joan Defers (@JoanDefers) March 9, 2013

My loins just winced.

— Jenny Lyn (@JennyLynwrites) March 9, 2013

I want to meet someone who has undergone this conditioning b/c I am calling bullshit

— Linzy Antoinette (@LinzyAntoinette) March 9, 2013

right?I am very skeptical.

— Joan Defers (@JoanDefers) March 9, 2013

So far as I can tell, the “best” source for this “Orgasm Conditioning,” is a Fetlife Group called “Orgasm Control Conditioning of Females,” where the big debate of the moment is about the “ethics” of using hypnosis for the purposes of, and I quote, “Perfecting Fuckmeat.”  Previously, the definition of “orgasm control” I was most familiar with had to do with not coming without permission.

These guys (and, not-so-mysteriously, it does appear to be largely made up of guys) have decided that they can go a step further.

The theory appears to be based on Pavlov’s experiment. From Submissive Guide:

An interesting training option for orgasm control is Come on Command training. It’s a form of hypnotic suggestion that can and does work. Then the Dominant totally owns your orgasms because you can’t control them yourself. A trigger word, phrase or touch sets it off.

Usually, when people hear “sexual orientation,” they think gay, straight, omni… that sort of thing.

Sexual orientation describes an enduring pattern of attraction—emotional, romantic, sexual, or some combination of these—to persons of the opposite sex, the same sex, or to both sexes, as well as the genders that accompany them.

I like the phrase, “an enduring pattern of attraction.”

I’ve had ”an enduring pattern of attraction” to bondage and masochism since childhood.  My first sex dream at 11?  Featured a lot of rope and threats. Pain and orgasm were good buddies in my mind before I could vote.

Now, I don’t know if that’s an “orientation.” So far as I can tell, usurping the phrase hurts people’s feelings. I don’t really want to hurt anyone’s feelings over this.  But, I think ”an enduring pattern of attraction” describes what I’m talking about.

I hear a lot of people that self-describe as kinky say they were always this way. And, I hear a lot of people, particularly women-people, say that it’s learned, it’s trained, it’s aberrant. It’s patriarchal play-acting. That sort of thing.  Like cultural Stockholm Syndrome.

I also don’t know where it comes from, specifically.

Maybe they’re right.

Maybe it is all misogyny and self-loathing.

This is at least post-polka dot bikini.

I do know that it doesn’t really matter.

I am what I am.

I can’t live outside society. I can’t just not have my own personal history.  The wank bank wants as the wank bank wants. The things that we fantasize about are often both involuntary and carefully honed and cultivated.

You run into Free Will pretty quickly with this line of discussion.  It’s sort of an enduring human mystery.  Maybe in hierarchy-less utopia, on Planet Thought Experiment, everyone has “functional” and “healthy” and “non-exploitative” sexuality. Maybe in that magical land, everyone is into the gentlest of touching and loads of loving eye contact and sex that only happens in a dense cloud of mutually tensionless energy exchange.

Maybe.

But, I kind of doubt it.

Discipline: Adding Rules and Discipline to Your BDSM Relationship

Several months ago, Mr. Daddy put on his Dom Hat and decided that we needed something contract-y.

And, I laughed, because, hello!  That sort of thing can be pretty darned funny.

“Oh, really?  Are you going to add a border full of official looking clip art?  Can you used fancy Ye Olden Script?!  Oooh. Can we include lots of pretend legalese!”

I do believe his reaction was something like, “I’m going to take that legalese out on your ass.”

For the record, he did bring home something in Ye Olden Fancy Font, just to crack me up.

Because it’s still pretty darned funny.

So, now I’ve got rules.

In Ye Olden Fancy Dragon Script.

It’s one of those things you do just have to jump into. You have no idea if the water is cold!  At first I was very self-conscious. This was that whole scary 24/7 thing that sad people try to use to prove they’re not poseurs.

Then months down the line, it’s all old hat.  Boring even.

My tips for the adding of rules and discipline, from a Sexy Contract Noob:

1. It’s okay to laugh. Really. If it’s not okay to laugh, then, maybe you need to dial the Srs Bsns down just a smidgen.
2. Don’t start with that gigantic list those contract generators spit out. Start with a handful of things you think are really helpful or really hot or really in need of mindfulness and work.  See if you can manage those first.  It’s no fun to be set up for failure.
3. Set up a time frame for a formal re-evaluation. Maybe you can add minutia! Maybe you were too ambitious in the first version. We had the big discussion about How it All Went last week. I think we should have had it sooner. I would have liked something more like 3 months. We went something more like 5 before really re-evaluating.
4. It’s helpful to be very clear about motives. There’s nothing more weird and potentially a turn off about doing something pointless, or even mildly distasteful, and having no idea why. Let’s just say, we’ve had a lot of panty-wearing battles at Casa de Joan this year, and I always lose.
5. Maybe I’m a big old baby who doesn’t have Deep Dark DeSade Monsters living in the depths of my psyche, but I think a system of punishments could do with the occasional reward. If you’re not of the Dark and Tortured bent, then remember that your new contract can literally contain anything you want.  It doesn’t have to be one long list of “don’ts” and punishments.  The word “training” is sort of overused in BDSM land, and sometimes you can train with treats.

And, good luck to Lily on her forthcoming book!

 “You’re not going to hurt me, right?”

“What sort of pain threshold are we talking about here? I mean, I’m half your size. How much damage do you think I am going to inflict? You’ve never heard Texas Chainsaw screams out of here, ya know.”

“I don’t know. Whips? Chains? Hooks? Scary things?”

There’s a lot of focus on pain, when it comes to BDSM.

It makes sense.

Dungeons! Spikes! The evil Marquis!

Those weirdos with their weirdo masochistic urges!

Look at all the bragging about collections of “implements.” It’s all very sinister. If only there were klutzy virgins out there to cure us all.

A lot of BDSM equipment looks scarier than it actually is. It’s a lot like getting your first tattoo. You’re all ramped up for the pain of a lifetime, because, oh my gawd, it’s needles going into your skin.

Then you realize it’s actually somewhat more like being daintily gnawed on by a gerbil.

Floggers?

Not so bad.  At least not the basic one you pick up at the Perv Shop. Maybe if you add beads, and alligator teeth, and razor blades, they’re a force to be reckoned with. But the pretty colorful leather ones? Meh.

Wooden clothes pins?

Not so bad. Seriously.  Put one on your finger.  It’s just not that terrifying.

It’s the psych out, really.  The fear amps up the adrenaline; it’s exciting. All that dread and anticipation. It’s fun.

I traced it back to 2009, but can’t find a source.

This is from Flickr. I’ll be damned if I remember where.  I suck.

I am having a little bit of an existential crisis.

I blame “erotic fiction.”

Well. That, and the fact that I’m a perv.

From Annabel Joseph, in a Smutketeers interview.

To be honest, most of the BDSM romance out there dilutes or homogenizes what we do. I’ve been told by publishers to “tone stuff down” because readers don’t want real BDSM, just the vanilla fantasy of BDSM. Obviously there is a more sizable audience for soft-edged kink than for realistic kink. So…as much as we would like be authentic in writing BDSM, books like 50 Shades appeal to more readers. What’s an author to do? Write what sells or write what’s authentic?

I am not surprised.

So. To relay my journey thus far:

I wasn’t much of an erotica connoisseur.

Last April, I started a porn blog. Last May, I got a Kindle.

As we are all aware, smut is cheap on Kindle.

I’d read all the old Anne Rice stuff, and as I spent about five years harboring dreams of romance novelling (don’t ask) I had a decent grip on the romance genre, up to about 2005 (aka, When Twilight hit.)  I wasn’t expecting a shock.

So, I figure, hey! Cheap porn!

And, I started reading.

Mexican Porn Still, or so says Google

Really bad. Just. Gosh. Bad.

I was burned so many times, I don’t trust anything under three bucks.  I don’t think I’m alone. Guy New York’s sales figures bear this concept out.

So, I think, “Fine. I’ll get something highly recommended.”

That worked out. I found  Laura Antoniou.

So, I try another one.

No such luck.

And another?

Yeah. Another dud.

I get it into my head that surely I can at least write the sort of thing I would like.

And, that’s about where things got very confusing for me.

I am used to being mystified by my fellow man.

I am not used to testing that mystery.

I constantly express this conundrum to my husband. He just shakes his head. He says I should be used to it. I think of it as The Nickelback Problem. Nickleback sucks. The songs are all the same. The music is firmly entrenched in 1995. It’s predictable, dependable, and it bores me.

It’s the best selling rock music of the last ten years.

Though, at this point and for this subject, it’s the Fifty Shades Problem.

Jasmine Sinclair. VAGINA. DEAL WITH IT.

I deleted what was there in a fit of panic and embarrassment. Apparently, negative reviews are “causing drama.”

I don’t even know what to think.

I read many “erotic” novels, but they weren’t working. Not a single tingle in my holy of holies. Nothing passed the so-called wet test. Plenty of it was technically well-written. I just wasn’t turned on. I felt like some pitiful specimen in a Christian morality play about the dangers of excessive porn usage. I started to wonder if I was broken. Desensitized. Ruined for written porn.

This was all very disheartening.

It was especially disheartening when I thought about about all those “ladies” out there reading this stuff and fanning themselves. Gushy reviews about the red hot hotness, full of steam and omg and whooooo and… hotness. Sighs over the rich dudes in expensive clothes, and the beautiful bodies (SPARKLEVAMPIREs!) and the domly demeanors. These women were turned on.

Or, at least they said they were.

I wasn’t.

The Nickleback Problem killed my confidence in two ways–I felt like a shitty writer that couldn’t recognize anything (flaming cheesy Cheetos) hot, and I felt like my lady business wasn’t in on the whole stuff-that’s-hot thing. I felt awful. I feel awful.

I felt like I shouldn’t finish my book, because clearly, I don’t have my finger on what’s arousing. I write not-hot.

I’ve been dragging my feet. I’m… defeated.

Found on Ruby Riot last year. No clue where it came from.

Monday, I found a book that shook me up, turned me on, and got him seriously laid. Shameful, pervy, “oral rape harness,” Golly My Heart Sings for Princess Donna porn, yes-I-do-know-what-does-it-for-me, wet tested, turned-on, actual hot.

The sort of tingle-producing erotica I suspected I had… leveled up on. Transcended? Gotten bored with?

I am a dirty, dirty girl.

But, my lady parts are not broken.

But, y’all. I am not a “romantic vanilla fantasy of BDSM” girl. I’m just not. Maybe I can write it. I guess I’ll have to write it. But, it’s doesn’t work for me.

And, much as I enjoyed the “consensual non-con rape fantasy” book, I was disappointed with the lack of “impact play.”

Yeah. He didn’t smack her around enough.

I’m that chick.

I’m the woman that all the BDSM erotic romances warn you about. 

(Oh, and they do.  I could start a tumblr full of “I’M NOT THAT KIND OF KINKSTER” excerpts at this point, by authors that claim to be in the scene.  But I won’t.)

So, now I’m working with a whole deeper notion of, “There’s something wrong with me.”

I found the actual-hot book though someone brave enough to give bad reviews on Goodreads. Lots of them. You know… I figured the good reviews she gives would mean something.

What I’ve written isn’t particularly kinky (IMO.) It’s kinkier than Fifty Shades, but not not kinkier than As She’s Told or The Marketplace Series or even Gor. It’s almost all “head fuck” stuff, with what I think of as pretty accessible BDSM play.

But, it’s not Rich Dude and Spunky Chick have a threesome with his Hunky Best Friend.  It’s not Wounded Bird craves submission with Hot Cowboy/Highlander/Werewolf/Lawyer. And, it’s not He Only Likes (Light, Non-Hurty, “Sensual”) Sadism until The Right One heals him.

So, I don’t know.

I don’t know what to do.

It’s all very confusing.

“Souvenirs.” via CleanMoralPolite, 2012

The photo is of and by cleanmoralpolite.  Go forth and follow/subscribe.

So, I’m reading Mary Roach’s Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex, because The Foster Kid’s review made it sound worthwhile.  It is, but boy-howdy I’ve read a lot of information about pig orgasm now.

According to research, when you’re sexually excited your pain threshold goes up. Way up. People achieve pretty impressive and cringe-worthy feats when hopped up on sex hormones. Doctors have stories. Fetlife has pictures.

I’ve seen things, y’all.

The first time I attempted this sex blogging thing, I posted a picture of myself, specifically of my breasts, rather bruised. I got very concerned messages. Very concerned.

And I get it. I do. I think, there is an element of wanting to save the damsel in distress when you send that sort of missive through the tubes, but really, I believe them. It looks like it hurts. It does hurt. I’ve been pretty marked up. There’s that little voice, on say… day three?  When the purple maxes out? That voice wonders, ‘Jesus, you perv, what the fuck? This is okay with you? Issues much?’

That little voice goes pretty much silent when you’re actually getting the bruises, though. You are busy, just then. Preoccupied.