Content warning: Sexual assault.
This has nothing to do with current events, it's just a memory that's come back to me over and over for years and I want to get it down.
For a little while there was a great sexy storytelling series in Cambridge, at the Middle East, where amateurs and professional storytellers alike would get up one after another and tell stories about their sex lives without notes. Unfortunately the organizer and MC turned out to be a shitbag and so it ended, but that's another story for someone else to tell.
I tried to make it every time because it was so entertaining. The audience and performers were a mixture of the generally open minded curious, kinksters, and "sex positive" folks (which groups obviously have a lot of overlap). One month there were two standup comedians on the bill, and what happened was very interesting to me.
The first was a woman, and you could tell she was a standup because unlike everyone else, she took the mic out of the stand, with a confident gesture. She was the kind of comic who starts her set with a flurry of self deprecating jokes about her appearance and how hard it is for her to find a boyfriend. With the freedom of a bit more time than a typical showcase, she settled into a story about going to a parking garage late at night. Through all the jokes and self deprecation, we gradually realized that this was a story about her being stalked to her car by a man who wanted to sexually assault her. In fact she only got away by luck and quick thinking. Later she was used by the police in a sting to catch this repeat offender!
She didn't get nearly as many laughs as she expected. Maybe because the premise of the jokes was what a dumb idiot she was: she shouldn't have been there alone, she should have been suspicious of him earlier, she should have reacted differently to what he did. We just wanted to know if she was ok, which wasn't really compatible with laughing.
The next standup who came up was a young asian-american dude, with an ironic t-shirt and nerd-chic eyeglasses. Like the other standup, he easily gained rapport with the crowd from the start, and got us all laughing. He then got into his extended story, about meeting an beautiful woman at a club, and then to his shock and amazement, getting to take her home. They made out, but didn't have sex. However she asked to sleep in his bed with him and he said yes.
In the morning, he learned that she was getting up early to catch a flight, and in fact his apartment was near the airport. She had probably had another motive in going home with him.
I've gone to dozens of standup showcases and theatre shows, and I can tell when a comic is winding up for the finishing, knockout punchline. And this guy had that posture and facial expression.
"I have to say that I got a little mad! My pride was offended! That she decided that I was such a nice and unthreatening guy that she could spend the night in my bed, and I wasn't going to try to RAPE her!"
Dead silence.
Crickets.
There might even have been a couple of boos.
The MC relieved the flustered comic, and said, smiling, "I knew that wouldn't necessarily go over with this crowd, but I just wanted to see what would happen!" (did I mention he turned out to be a garbage human?)
Standups develop jokes that get reliable reactions from a variety of audiences. What this told me is that most audiences were laughing their heads off, or at least chuckling steadily, at a young woman not taking enough safety precautions in a dark parking garage. At a nerdy guy offended by the assumption that he wasn't masculine enough to rape.
So what I learned is that for all our disagreements, I and my kinkster friends live in a bubble of consent culture. We say that no one should be blamed for their assault, and that sex should stop at the exact point where any of the participants wants it to stop, regardless of sharing a bed, but most of the world doesn't think like we do. Most of Boston doesn't think like we do. And I'm very, very grateful to live in that bubble, and for all the hard work of the people who've built it.
Because the alternative is just not that fucking funny.
Sunday, March 26, 2017
Tuesday, March 21, 2017
My Love Doesn’t Say
My love doesn’t say, “I feel good”. She says, “I feel deliciously coherent all of a sudden.”
My love doesn’t say, “I liked that song you sent me”. She says, “I swear it took my soul, teared it into pieces and then gave it back. I’m still in the process of verifying if it stole any of the pieces for good. Also that logo. I ovulated and died at the same time. My poor poor heart.”
My love doesn’t say, “I’m just hanging around this afternoon”. She says, “I managed to put myself into a truly lugubrious mood by inadvertently listening to Saint Saens’ dance macabre while looking at Picpus Cemetery pictures.”
My love doesn’t say, “Those picture of you were sexy”. She says, “I ovulated so many times, that I could get pregnant with a record amount of babies.”
My love doesn’t say, “I really shouldn’t be so turned on by the idea of chastity”. She says, “My pussy is the organic equivalent of a handless watch. It’s somewhat pretty, but its smartness level is not through the roof.”
My love doesn’t say, “I don’t feel bratty”. She says, “I’m feeling so dissless right now.”
My love sometimes says things are “mucopalpable.” I’m not sure what that means.
My love doesn’t say, “The way Dan Harmon writes is hot”. She says, “That guy is the elemental of toxicity.”
When I tell my love that you can’t just start using your own meanings for words, like “toxic” to mean alluring, dangerous, and addictive, she says “Vectorial semantics means they’ll figure it out, as long as we don’t change all the words at the same time.”
And that is why she’s my love.
Also
dat ass.
@khatsha
My love doesn’t say, “I liked that song you sent me”. She says, “I swear it took my soul, teared it into pieces and then gave it back. I’m still in the process of verifying if it stole any of the pieces for good. Also that logo. I ovulated and died at the same time. My poor poor heart.”
My love doesn’t say, “I’m just hanging around this afternoon”. She says, “I managed to put myself into a truly lugubrious mood by inadvertently listening to Saint Saens’ dance macabre while looking at Picpus Cemetery pictures.”
My love doesn’t say, “Those picture of you were sexy”. She says, “I ovulated so many times, that I could get pregnant with a record amount of babies.”
My love doesn’t say, “I really shouldn’t be so turned on by the idea of chastity”. She says, “My pussy is the organic equivalent of a handless watch. It’s somewhat pretty, but its smartness level is not through the roof.”
My love doesn’t say, “I don’t feel bratty”. She says, “I’m feeling so dissless right now.”
My love sometimes says things are “mucopalpable.” I’m not sure what that means.
My love doesn’t say, “The way Dan Harmon writes is hot”. She says, “That guy is the elemental of toxicity.”
When I tell my love that you can’t just start using your own meanings for words, like “toxic” to mean alluring, dangerous, and addictive, she says “Vectorial semantics means they’ll figure it out, as long as we don’t change all the words at the same time.”
And that is why she’s my love.
Also
dat ass.
@khatsha
Saturday, March 4, 2017
You're So Fucked
Nothing makes me feel more instantly powerful, and turned on, than a delayed-reaction text like this, from a sub I have put under hypnotic orgasm control.
This morning, I gave @khatsha the post-hypnotic suggestion that she can’t touch her clit, directly or indirectly. An invisible forcefield stops her hand or tool.
She does, however, feel a craving for the sensation of being filled, and fucked. And her dildo is allowed.
9 hours later I get the texts above.
“GOOD GIRL” Rules You
This is based our real relationship, but shades it much creepier,
leaving out the real-life negotiations, safeguards, checkins etc. I
asked and got permission from khatsha to post it (her exact words being
“The world needs this piece of all-combusting writing.”) But this is a
warning that it’s dark.
GOOD GIRL. It feels good when I say that, doesn’t it, @khatsha? I made it feel good, by hypnotizing you.
I mean, as a submissive, my submissive, you wouldn’t ever have hated hearing that from me. It’s probably always been a deep part of your kink. But I also installed it in you, with a post-hypnotic suggestion, and associated it with pleasure. Unlike all the other trigger phrases I can say that send pleasure crashing through your body, I shaped this one for a purpose. Do you remember when I gave you that post-hypnotic suggestion, that GOOD GIRL will give you pleasure of a specific kind - an endorphin dump in your mind, not just your pussy. It feels like a job well done, like my approval, like pure satisfaction. All the warm fuzzies, in your chest and between your legs.
It seems so sweet and caring, doesn’t it, saying GOOD GIRL? Imagining sitting at my feet, me stroking your hair and praising you for being such a GOOD GIRL.
But do you know, this is how I rule you?
At first I had just one pleasure trigger that I used both to reward you, and also whenever the fuck I wanted. Anytime I felt like making you shiver and gasp. But then I decided that I would split them off, and withhold GOOD GIRL for very specific occasions. That is, when you did something I wanted. Whether it’s suck me off, bring me a piece of cake, finish a writing I assign you, or respond to my sleep trigger. I know you like to obey anyway. But do you know that I’m building a very specific neural link between obeying me and getting my reward?
Over time, obeying me feels more and more natural and automatic, and your body learns to expect that reward. To ache in anticipation, each second until I give it to you. In fact this is me exploiting your dopamine system. Can you feel how controlled this makes you? Do you see that, despite all your intelligence and rich emotional life, during those long seconds you are reduced to a salivating dog?
You know, I learned how to do this to you from a book called Reaching the Animal Mind by Karen Pryor, which is all about clicker training for dogs and other pets. It sounds so nice, training pets without any kind of punishment or even correction. Just a steady flow of treats when the criteria set by the trainer are met. But I wonder, is this the most degrading thing of all for a proud animal, to be so perfectly dominated by a human master? So completely controlled by its desire for treats?
There are so many other principles from this book I aim to use on you, my love, with names like targetting, tag points, and cuing. I copied down this passage:
I don’t know if you’ve ever tried to break a habit, something that’s become automatic. I don’t know if you’ve ever tried to resist checking a notification on your phone, or staying away from a favourite mobile game with its irresistable DINGs of victory. Mobile app makers have the same psychological and animal training knowledge - they know about the dopamine system, about stimulus-reward pathways. It doesn’t even take that many trials, to cement that link. And once made, it’s very hard to break. Just the energy you use to resist the urge to give in and get that reward, can tire you out enough that you’ll give in anyway.
If you think you’re a slave to your phone, how much more of a slave might you become to me, who can make your pussy throb just by telling it to PULSE NOW?
Did you know that this sets in motion a secondary reward system? As you learn what earns GOOD GIRL, and in general how to please me, your body starts to release its own mini reward every time you follow my instructions or do something for me. You’re self-training with absolutely no input from me!
Of course that feeling is only a faint echo of GOOD GIRL. And you know how it makes the anticipation, and the explosion of satisfaction from GOOD GIRL that much more powerful, when you next hear it from my text message or my voice. There’s nothing like the real thing.
By the way, I know you’re feeling it each time you read GOOD GIRL in this text, and that’s perfectly fine. I bet you’re so horny by the time you finish that you need to get off. I’m picturing you right now, rubbing yourself and whispering over and over, “I’m a good girl. I’m a good girl.” How much stronger than usual will that orgasm be? But what’s making me smile right now is knowing that you have been blocking yourself from fully experiencing the pleasure of these GOOD GIRLs, since you know you haven’t earned them.
But you will soon. What wouldn’t you do, on my command, to earn your next GOOD GIRL?
GOOD GIRL. It feels good when I say that, doesn’t it, @khatsha? I made it feel good, by hypnotizing you.
I mean, as a submissive, my submissive, you wouldn’t ever have hated hearing that from me. It’s probably always been a deep part of your kink. But I also installed it in you, with a post-hypnotic suggestion, and associated it with pleasure. Unlike all the other trigger phrases I can say that send pleasure crashing through your body, I shaped this one for a purpose. Do you remember when I gave you that post-hypnotic suggestion, that GOOD GIRL will give you pleasure of a specific kind - an endorphin dump in your mind, not just your pussy. It feels like a job well done, like my approval, like pure satisfaction. All the warm fuzzies, in your chest and between your legs.
It seems so sweet and caring, doesn’t it, saying GOOD GIRL? Imagining sitting at my feet, me stroking your hair and praising you for being such a GOOD GIRL.
But do you know, this is how I rule you?
At first I had just one pleasure trigger that I used both to reward you, and also whenever the fuck I wanted. Anytime I felt like making you shiver and gasp. But then I decided that I would split them off, and withhold GOOD GIRL for very specific occasions. That is, when you did something I wanted. Whether it’s suck me off, bring me a piece of cake, finish a writing I assign you, or respond to my sleep trigger. I know you like to obey anyway. But do you know that I’m building a very specific neural link between obeying me and getting my reward?
Over time, obeying me feels more and more natural and automatic, and your body learns to expect that reward. To ache in anticipation, each second until I give it to you. In fact this is me exploiting your dopamine system. Can you feel how controlled this makes you? Do you see that, despite all your intelligence and rich emotional life, during those long seconds you are reduced to a salivating dog?
You know, I learned how to do this to you from a book called Reaching the Animal Mind by Karen Pryor, which is all about clicker training for dogs and other pets. It sounds so nice, training pets without any kind of punishment or even correction. Just a steady flow of treats when the criteria set by the trainer are met. But I wonder, is this the most degrading thing of all for a proud animal, to be so perfectly dominated by a human master? So completely controlled by its desire for treats?
There are so many other principles from this book I aim to use on you, my love, with names like targetting, tag points, and cuing. I copied down this passage:
The cue thus becomes reinforcing in itself. Any time you give a well-learned cue, you are actually reinforcing whatever else the individual you are cuing happens to be doing at the time.Maybe my favourite is behavioural shaping: set a new standard, and then only reward behaviour that reaches that standard. In that way complex chains of actions, with very precise requirements, can be trained. You will still be getting plenty of GOOD GIRL - I get off on those shivers and blushes after all - but eventually you will be working harder for it, following my protocols more perfectly. You’ll also be encouraged to think of new ways to please me. New tricks that might earn GOOD GIRL.
I don’t know if you’ve ever tried to break a habit, something that’s become automatic. I don’t know if you’ve ever tried to resist checking a notification on your phone, or staying away from a favourite mobile game with its irresistable DINGs of victory. Mobile app makers have the same psychological and animal training knowledge - they know about the dopamine system, about stimulus-reward pathways. It doesn’t even take that many trials, to cement that link. And once made, it’s very hard to break. Just the energy you use to resist the urge to give in and get that reward, can tire you out enough that you’ll give in anyway.
If you think you’re a slave to your phone, how much more of a slave might you become to me, who can make your pussy throb just by telling it to PULSE NOW?
Did you know that this sets in motion a secondary reward system? As you learn what earns GOOD GIRL, and in general how to please me, your body starts to release its own mini reward every time you follow my instructions or do something for me. You’re self-training with absolutely no input from me!
Of course that feeling is only a faint echo of GOOD GIRL. And you know how it makes the anticipation, and the explosion of satisfaction from GOOD GIRL that much more powerful, when you next hear it from my text message or my voice. There’s nothing like the real thing.
By the way, I know you’re feeling it each time you read GOOD GIRL in this text, and that’s perfectly fine. I bet you’re so horny by the time you finish that you need to get off. I’m picturing you right now, rubbing yourself and whispering over and over, “I’m a good girl. I’m a good girl.” How much stronger than usual will that orgasm be? But what’s making me smile right now is knowing that you have been blocking yourself from fully experiencing the pleasure of these GOOD GIRLs, since you know you haven’t earned them.
But you will soon. What wouldn’t you do, on my command, to earn your next GOOD GIRL?
Hypnosis is Back on Fetlife and Down with Cynicism
Remember, you cannot be both young and wise. Young people who pretend to be wise to the ways of the world are mostly just cynics. Cynicism masquerades as wisdom, but it is the farthest thing from it. Because cynics don’t learn anything. Because cynicism is a self-imposed blindness, a rejection of the world because we are afraid it will hurt us or disappoint us.Hypnosis is no longer banned on Fetlife. All our groups that abruptly vanished the night of January 16th, such as Erotic Hypnosis with its 16,000 members and 326 pages of topics, are being restored.
- Stephen Colbert
This is such amazing news!
And we’re better off than ever, because search for “hypnosis” is not blocked. The thing that happened to my beloved @khatsha won’t happen again: searching for her kink on a fetish website and thinking, oh my god, I’m too sick and twisted even for these people (you’re not!).
The erotic hypnosis community doesn’t need Fetlife - and this was a scary wakeup call to just how complacently we’d become in letting one commercial website stitch us together - but on Fetlife we grew and flourished, organized yearly events that spanned the continent and onto other continents, and now, at least for a time, we will continue to grow on that platform. Besides being a nicely designed social network that at least tries to create a safer and less gross atmosphere (despite many failures), Fetlife connects us hypnopervs with the larger kink world, bringing in new people who get intrigued by the connection with other BDSM staples like power exchange, bondage, and roleplay, like the dozens of people who walked into the hypnolounge during the three days of the New England Fetish Flea Market.
Even more important, connection to mainstream BDSM gives us the explicit consent framework that has been critical for the development of the idea of ethical hypnosis play. Without it, it would have been so hard to get to the concepts of thorough negotiation, opposing consent violation, and empowering people who are bottoming to stop and redirect scenes. What else would we have as a model? Mind control porn, stage hypnosis, and the psychology profession, all of which are severely busted in their consent models.
The groups could all vanish overnight again tomorrow, and it wouldn’t change the fact that something good happened. Surviving as a political person means celebrating every single victory, and I intend to celebrate the heck out of this one!
I’m an anxious person who hates to feel out of control (see also: mc fetishist), and so I’m vulnerable to the temptation of cynicism. In fact I am ashamed to think that I fell victim to its sticky indulgence this time. I can remember myself saying to people this would be the end of us on Fetlife, that we wouldn’t find a replacement home for a long time, that there would be more rounds of erasure of our community, which would be less algorithmic and more personal and vicious (in the first round just groups with “hypnosis” in the title or description were nuked, leaving “hypno”, “mind control”, etc).
I was wrong. And the move to despair made me quite useless - I did almost nothing to support my beliefs, because I was so afraid of being disappointed and feeling even more helpless. Meanwhile mephki was organizing the effort to start a new forum, SusanWright of the National Coalition For Sexual Freedom was fighting for us behind and in front of the scenes, and many other people were contributing essays and activism.
Most frustratingly, I was going against years of my own resolutions. In searching for the quotation at the top by Stephen Colbert about cynicism in my notes, I realized that I have been copying similar quotations about it for *12 years*. I must reread them on a regular basis, whenever I feel that temptation.
No one knows what’s going to happen. But victories are going to happen, real ones. Show up, and you can be there for them.
In the end we shall have had enough of cynicism, skepticism and humbug, and we shall want to live - more musically. How will this come about, and what will we discover?(who knew Van Gogh was an Ericksonian!)
- Vincent Van Gogh
Scenes From My Day As A Sith Lord
I spent Sunday at the New England Fetish Fleamarket dressed up as Kylo Ren (minus mask and lightsaber), both because at the Flea you can be whatever the fuck you want, and because I considered it the most erotically compelling outfit I own - to the types of women I want to erotically compel.
Right from the start it was very fun reaching out with my black leather gloves to hypnotically force choke the shit out of @onlyseventhoughts and MaraFae - @zanythoughts signature move that I totally stole, and then got to practice alongside the master (“Always two there are”)
But putting on those gloves and robes, and striding like you are forced to do in those robes (or you will trip)… did something to me.
…
Looking out the hotel room window at the snowy parking lot, fists on hips: “SOON I WILL RULE THE FLEA, ALL YOU PEONS IN YOUR UTILITY KILTS!”
…
“Hey, what do you think, leggings or not?”
“I DON’T CARE.”
…
People on the elevator down to breakfast: “Hey, you’re Kylo Ren!” “I call Kylo Ren the whiniest sith.” “Yeah he’s no Darth Vader.”
Under my breath: “I WILL DESTROY THEM.”
…
“You’re pretty cute you know.”
“WHAT?”
“You’re like an adorable fluffy bunnny.”
“I BELIEVE THE WORDS YOU ARE LOOKING FOR ARE POWERFUL, DANGEROUS DARK LORD.”
“No, soooo cute.”
“WHERE DID I PUT MY CHOKING GLOVES.”
…
A funny moment out of character, while volunteering as a greeter at the hypnolounge (I thought my “Ask me about Hypnosis!” badge went well with the costume).
New person: “I’m interested in hypnosis, but I just can’t see myself getting involved with satanism.”
Me: “Huh?”
Her: “Yeah, all the dark rituals and stuff.”
Me: “…wait, is this about the robes?”
The first person she met, lurking in the hallway, was wearing hooded robes, so she assumed we were up to some rituals!
…
But the most eerily accurate thing I heard come out of my mouth was at breakfast.
Struggling with the little milk carton, @zanythoughts taking it and saying “here, let me.”
“I CAN OPEN MY MILK!!”
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