What next...?

So, after a good run with Pink Flamingo, the rights to The Chastity Belt have reverted to me. Do I publish it myself right away, or expand it by a few scenes and publish that in a few months?

Anybody...?

Promising new beltmaker

This maker of composite male chastity belts is slowy working towards something promising.

BDSM and the problem of evil: Darkness is relative

(updated for afterthoughts)

If BDSM echoes real world acts of evil and abusive relationships, then how do good people - or people who think of themselves as good - manage to live with essentially evil fantasies?

Well, mostly they probably don't. They reframe morality to fit their fantasies, or try to crush their own psyche to fit their morality.

But, those of us who do - the kinksters practical and mental - seem to have several coping strategies.

• Fantasy Acceptor: e.g. "Rape me in a car park (since it's only a game)."
• Fantasy Distancers: e.g. "I'm a Celtic slave and she's a Roman Widow (so we know it's only a game)."
• Experiential Acceptors: e.g. "I enjoy doing this. What of it?"
• Experiential Distancer: "This isn't sadistic punishment, it's a ritual of trust etc etc. (Evil? Moi?)"
• BDSM Acceptors: e.g. "Men/Women deserve to rule over women/men. (I'm not kinky, I'm righteous.)"
• BDSM Distancer: e.g. "I'm into BDSM. This is what BDSM folks do. (Our power relations are nothing to do with the real world.)"
  

These are all effective approaches for consenting adults getting off on playing with whips and chains. They are, however, not entirely compatible - I'll get to that. There's another more general problem. For example...

I'm a Fantasy Distancer. I'm happy - these days - to embrace the evil inherent in my fantasies. I imagine and play out (consensually) non-consensual scenarios. However, I shy away from anything that brings me bumping back to reality. So I cheerfully imagine being a Roman slave, but not a prisoner of the SS.

For a Brit like me, slavery is not even a folk memory, but I've seen French villages where, during the war,... well, you know. So the SS are not on the menu, despite the cool uniforms. Sorry Tom of Finland. Conversely, there are cultures and sub-cultures where slavery is a much rawer wound. Talk of owning other humans is abhorent, but posing around in Nazi-style caps is OK because - hey - it was all a long time ago in a country far far away.

So darkness is relative to culture. A bad enough cultural mismatch can be enough to override any coping strategy, and that is a practical problem to bear in mind when playing with others.

BDSM and the problem of evil: Why submit?

The problem with BDSM is that it's based on evil.

No, I don't mean that the consensual activity itself is evil. Far from it. However, BDSM acts and relationships simulate or echo evil real world counterparts.

It's not just that these are a convenient form adopted by lazy kinksters. The evil is an inherent part of the dynamic.

"No no", you say. "They may be playing a master and slave, but we are exploring trust!"

Yes, but would the trust be neccessary if the acts themselves were not acts of violation?

Even "Female Lead Relationships" are just an inversion of the rightly maligned old world patriachal marriage, with some sexual manipulation thrown in. Without the man's consent, in what way would that be different from an abusive relationship?

If evil did not provide the thrill, then the visual trappings of BDSM would be comfy clothing and sensible Velcro restraints. There'd be no dressing up, posturing, and harking back to the titles and ranks of yesteryear.

To dominate somebody, to manipulate them, to hurt them for pleasure, to force pleasure on them... without consent, these acts are evil--and yet we consent to them.

The evil poses an intellectual problem: why would people so ardently seek to become victims?

The psychological answer is probably different for each person. I have a strong suspicion that it's got a lot to do with the flow of intimacy. When you listen to other people's introspection, you also get a sense of catharsis, escapism, and physical pleasure.

But why that particular form? I strongly suspect that both submission and masochism have an evolutionary basis. Just as boredom probably evolved to prevent us from wasting time in fruitless activities, I think there's a good chance that masochistic submission evolved to prevent us from getting ourselves killed in battles for dominance, and to ensure group cohesion.

In other words, monkey people that got a kick out of submitting to stronger monkey people survived to breed, and their clans hunted and gathered more effectively because they weren't always jostling for the top position.

If this is true, then recreational masochistic submissives deliberately seek out submissive situations in order to get that hardwired buzz, partly just for the hell of it, and partly for relief from the endless subtle tussle of human society.

So much for my theory... there are countless others. One way or another BDSM looks and feels evil, even though it's not. This leads to the most pressing problems related to BDSM and evil: the practical ones...

Venus in Furs

I've been rereading Venus in Furs...

"Tread me underfoot!" I exclaimed, and flung myself face to the floor before her.

"I hate all this play-acting," said Wanda impatiently.

"Well, then maltreat me seriously."

Yes, Masoch actually touches on the cruelty paradox, though not in any depth. He's more interested in idea that...

Goethe's 'you must be hammer or anvil'is absolutely appropriate to the relation between man and woman.

In short, the message is; Equality is hard work to achieve, so why not just give in. Besides, women unfettered by morality are so very marvelous...

And yes, he's already setting out on the cuckold fantasy, something I would have said does not interest me except that if you make it a Sapphic cuckolding fantasy, then I'm in hog heaven.

Did this book influence my fantasies? I'm not sure.

I came to it in my pre-Internet youth looking for answers and found only an uncomfortable mirror. Severin, the "hero", faces the familiar real-world problem of drawing a strong woman into an S&M relationship.

He succeeds so far by topping from the bottom, and then - and I haven't got to this bit yet in my reread - she ostensibly tries to cure him by ambushing him with more than what he wished for. He flees the reality of the fantasy and sets himself up as a Gorean-style master.

What was this ending suppose to be? A sop to morality? A warning? It didn't feel like happily ever after. Perhaps Masoch was saying: Warning - most women don't actually want a lifestyle relationship.

Consensual slavery and playing at evil (1)

How can we use the term slave when slavery itself is evil?

There's nothing erotic and everything tragic, wasteful and disgusting about being flogged to death on a plantation in some Caribbean hellhole.

From time to time, somebody online points this out, and goes onto argue strongly (understatement) that using "slave" as a tag for a consensual submissive or bottom is at best in poor taste, definitely disrespectful, and at worst, undermine the public perception of the appalling practice of chattel slavery then and now.

(More to follow)

Roman Britannia AD 2009

Two ways to throw away the key without hypnotism...

One of my friends blogged on hypnotism in femdom. It's an intriguing thought. Half the fun of masochistic roleplay is the delicious ambivalnce - the wanting and not wanting to suffer. No chastity belt is indestructable, no slave contract legally enforcable, so we can only take that sufferring so far for so long. Wouldn't it be nice to use hypnotism to throw away the key?

I wouldn't want anything that negated the discomfort of my erotic roles. However, I'm sure something would work that exploited my ambivalences about freedom. For example...

Your erection is tiny and fragile. It cannot truly satisfy a woman. One day a vagina will crush and maul it. Only the chastity belt will keep it safe.

Your penis is ugly. No nice girl would want to see it. Only the chastity belt will keep it hidden.

All men are potential rapists. Only the chastity belt will hide the shame of being male.

Sex is dirty. No woman truly consents to it, even if she says she does. Only the chastity belt can save you from being a bully.

The snag is, I'm not convinced I - or my lady - could switch this off, ever. We're really just transtemporal tourists. Most of the time, we like vanilla sex!

Fortunately, there are two easier and safer ways to make it hard to break role:

#1 Reduce the need for decision making during play

• Adopt a culture that satisfies both your needs and hard limits.
  This doesn't mean you need to dress up as Romans, just that you need to identify a cluster of shared fantasies as inspiration so that you naturally stay your happy zone.
  
  
• Agree that a slave's health and safety has value.
  That way, all safety communications can be in-game.
  
  
• Set a time limit.
  No need to keep revisiting, "Has she/have I had enough yet?"
  
  

#2 Amplify the real world consequences for quitting early

• Dress up and prepare in proportion to the length and intensity of the session.
  The more you've invested, the greater the moral and emotional pressure on you to follow through on your side.
  
  
• Use hard to replace bondage gear, and timelock the keys away in something even harder to replace.
  If you can't get out of the props, you might as well stay in role.
  
  

Venus in Furs

Interesting book that. Here's the picture that kicked off Masoch's fantasy:And here's the original opening....

My company was charming.

Opposite me by the massive Renaissance fireplace sat Venus; she was
not a casual woman of the half-world, who under this pseudonym wages
war against the enemy sex, like Mademoiselle Cleopatra, but the real,
true goddess of love.

She sat in an armchair and had kindled a crackling fire, whose
reflection ran in red flames over her pale face with its white eyes,
and from time to time over her feet when she sought to warm them.

Her head was wonderful in spite of the dead stony eyes; it was all
I could see of her. She had wrapped her marble-like body in a huge
fur, and rolled herself up trembling like a cat.

What's in it for her? (continued): Dark Side Safari

Earlier, I asked "What's in it for her?" and got this anonymous reply:

For my Wife it means that all of my desire is kept intact waiting for her to use it. I can't steal it by masturbating and I certainly can't have an affair.
She now knows that after week of chastity I become needy and I dote and serve her like I am her servant. I also never talk back or raise my voice to her when she has me locked up.
I means she gets a perfect husband, or at least the ability to mold me into one.

Taking this at face value, the Mr Anonymous paints a picture of a very normal couple....

No, really, there is a lot that's normal about them: she worries about his fidelity... they both think of sexual energy as finite so have an issue with his masturbation... both have negative feelings about masculinity... and both feel she needs some extra leverage to make him behave attentively.

A lot of people are like this.

The normal thing would be for them to be dysfunctional. Their marriage should be a merry-go-round of trust and distrust, intimacy and frantic distancing, love and hostility. The options should be expensive therapy and/or even more expensive divorce.

Instead, they've addressed their issues directly and used a male chastity device to secure his mental and physical fidelity, and as leverage to resolve the conflict between his old-style machismo, and his urge to be a nurturing husband.

So, now - assuming the goalposts don't keep moving - they're not dysfunctional. But he wears a chastity belt. You can't even call it unhealthy, since they probably have a darn sight more intimacy than most couples. It's not even dark - it sounds positively fluffy.

Strange...

They've done what geeks call, "a hack" or perhaps "workaround". No need to tangle with complex emotions, just slap on this piece of hardware and all will be right.

As a lifestyle, this can't possible work unless both partners have very similar values and feelings about gender and relationships. (So don't try this at home...) But, perhaps it points to something less 24/7 that the rest of us can enjoy: experiencing erotic roles authentically and in earnest rather than in play.

Let's call it the Dark Side Safari.

According to Families and How to Survive Them, we tend to pair up with others who share similar issues by the very act of trying to avoid them. (How this is supposed to happen deserves a different blog entry.)

If you look around you, you'll see that relationships usually go either to the Light Side, where the couple resolve each other's issues, or to the Dark Side, where their matching fuckedupness locks them into a private couple hell.

Mrs and Mrs Anonymous are actually in their Light Side, but for most of the rest of us, that sort of power exchange belongs firmly in the Dark Side. (For myself, had I met somebody like Mrs Anonymous, I would have been sucked in, but would always have been yearning for something more... normal as a baseline for our relationship.)

I think the issues that lure our relationships to the Dark Side don't ever go away. Once in a while we give into the pull - admit defeat - and wallow in them. The safest - and healthiest - way to do this has to be through taking on BDSM roles.

So me, I have mixed feelings about masculinity, a nagging feeling that I am unlovable and incompetent at intimacy. Most of the time, real world experience renders these feelings irrelevant. But, when I take a Dark Side Safari into erotic slavery, I get a holiday from the (very) low level guerrilla war.... and it feels good.

As for what my other half gets - you'd have to ask her. Logically, though, there's lots of authentic benefits that a chaste lover can offer his belle. It all depends on the lady...

• Freedom from performance anxiety - she never knows whether or not he is hard.
• Freedom from penetration by penis - let's face it, chastity belt sex with a prosthetic is about as safe as you can get... it's also clean - nice, even - and not really "sex" (for those harbouring guilt).
• Freedom to indulge - there's no worry that he will run out of steam and lose interest.
• Freedom from being "used"or "giving in" - unless of course you get too clever about the whole thing.
• Freedom to be hostile - sex as a way to cause hurt is normally reserved for men.
  

Of course she also gives up things she likes about vanilla sex - mess penises squirting everywhere, the two-way intimacy of mutual pleasure, his vulnerability when he comes, and the immediate sense of giving sensually.

But then, this is the Dark Side, we'll be home safe in the morning.

What's in it for her?

Normal women enjoy relationships because they are relationships: two-way intimacy, with give and take and a sense of the other's personality. They like sex with men because they are men, with masculine traits and penises.

So why on earth would a woman want a slave, or a chaste lover?

The answer would be useful not just for selling the idea to our partners, but also because it will give us some idea of how to support the resulting action.

So, what shall I write next...?

It's time I wrote some more erotica.

I'm going to write something short - say 10,000 words (The Chastity Belt was 40,000 words) - and sell it directly for not a lot of money.

Here are the options:

Whips and Stockingtops
A slave story from my Femdom alternate Jazz Era setting. It's the 1920s, but the girls are lesbians, and the men chastity-belted slaves. It'll be a lesbian love story told from the suffering slave's point of view. And there'll be stockings.

Chastity Planet
Now we're in the far future. Chastity Planet is a resort world. It's slogan is, "Leave your panties off for the Safest Girls Night Out in the Galaxy". It's safe because all the men are stuck in chastity cups. Some are slave, some are free. There's a system for demotion and promotion, and any female can dish out demerits, leading to a public whipping. Most of the girls aren't actual doms, they're just there for a good time, or to study at one of the excellent Ladies Colleges. (On more conservative worlds, the marketing brochures read, "Where girls can become ladies, without becoming women.") Expect sex with prosthetics, and unwilling self-discovery...

Kolkislavia
The present day, a Black Sea Republic, once home of the legendary Amazons. During the cold war, promising male athletes ended up with booby-trapped chastity implants. Now, young men in a similar state pander to sex tourists. Our hero is a British backpacker who's been abducted and caged. Can he survive the dominant women of the Republic to find the chemical key to his chastity hell?

Aqua Sulis
This one started off as a thought experiment, but it's worth a story. Male tourists from our world infiltrate a female only resort in an alternate Britain where the Romans still rule, and serve as chaste slaves to visiting Roman girls. The thing is, there's always the temptation to stay....

Something inspired by my chastity captions
And finally, we've got the modern world and the dysfunctional relationships people have. The key to a male chastity belt can unlock ice maidens, tempt flirts, or assuage vengeful ex's. There are also capture stories, and seduction stories, where lust and desire take the hero sleepwalking into his own darkness. If you've been reading my captions over at Indecisive, then you know the series - which would you enjoy as a book?

So, what would you like to read? (The first person to suggest the winning topic gets a free copy of the end result!)

The Safe Word Paradox: when "no" means "Yes ", but Hyacinth" means "Heartbreak"

In Femdom, "no" doesn't always mean "no", but "Hyacinth" can mean "Get me the fuck out of this right now!"

Safewords open the gate to the erotic. Without the fuse, who would want to turn on the electricity? However, there's nothing erotic about a safeword. (Jacqualine Carey treats it like a hard won prize in her excellent S&M Fantasy novels, but in reality, a ruthless person could very easily "defeat" any sane masochist. )

With classical slave roleplay, the submission and suffering are real. But if the slave can escape whenever the boredom or discomfort pass a certain threshold, then how authentic is the slave-mistress relationship? Can you lose yourself in the role if you're constantly weighing up whether to keep going? Can she relax and enjoy the service and the control, knowing you can pull the plug, or will she second guess her every whim? It's not slavery if everything that happens is pleasant - there needs to be the random experience of powerlessness, which means being forced to suffer beyond the immediately gratifying.

So, you're the one with the off switch, so let's start with your position....

Would a panic button spoil my femdom Aqua Sulis?

Imagine...

You had such a good week last year, that this year, you come back to Transtemporal Tours and pay for two whole weeks as a slave in the alternate world where the UK is "Britania", and the Romans still rule. As before, you opt for "Aqua Sulis", our Bath, a town dedicated to Minerva where the only men are chastity-belted slaves.

Impersonating a slave in your welded-on steel underwear, you spend an hour in the shop window before Flavia, a poor little rich girl, hires you for her stay.

Like before, from her perspective you are a real slave: You obey orders, and beating you seems to concentrate your mind. She doesn't care that you're leaking from your chastity belt - your desires are simply irrelevant - and anyway, she's too busy trying to get her best friend into a pre-nuptial Lesbian fling.

Unfortunately, the seduction is not going well, so Flavia is short-tempered. She also tends to forget you exist for hours on end.

One day, as you kneel in an empty hall, your back still throbbing from the latest beating, you remember paying extra for an Emancipation button built into your right back molar. You curl your tongue to tap out the sequence, and then hesitate....

Escape has consequences.

You'll miss the moment you've been waiting for... when the relaxing girls finally indulge in a Sapphic orgy. And, you're afraid of the embarrassment of being rescued. What a waste of a vacation!

Worse, there's a good chance you'll never get to come back. Even if Transtemporal Tours don't ban you - extractions are difficult and risk blowing their cover, so this had better be a real emergency - you'll automatically lose your club membership.

Will you ever be able to afford rejoining the club? Also, you'll almost certainly also lose your deposit, which is money you need for other things.

So, you weigh things up. On one side of the scales is the intensity of your discomfort. On the other side are your fear of embarrassment, investment in time and money, the short-term and long-term erotic costs, and the real world practical consequences.

As you kneel there, you notice a real - native - slave sweeping up the courtyard. You feel ashamed to be exploiting a role he's stuck with - until you see the shiny trickle down the inside of his thigh.

"Hey buddy," you hiss. "Do you enjoy being a...," you almost say, real, "...slave?"

"Yes and no," he whispers back.

"Why don't you escape?"

"Scared of getting caught," he says with a shudder. He notices your gaze drift to the semen on his thighs and colours. "And where else would I get to be with such classy chicks?"

Before he can slip away, you ask, "What would make you do a runner?"

He frowns. "I can take my punishment as well as any man. But if my owner started to, you know, damage me, or made me blow her boyfriends, then I'd make for Hibernia in a shot." Then he shakes his head. "But that won't happen. Why would she damage her property? And no Roman man would risk his reputation..."

As he scurries off, you realise that you both have the same hard limits. In fact, you picked this very Alternate Earth because the culture not only satisfies your fantasies, it also makes it unlikely that anything really bad will happen to you.

It's also true that both you and the real slave of you are trapped by fear of consequences. The difference is just one of degree: terrible consequences keep him enslaved forever, mild consequences keep you enslaved for a couple of weeks.

And so you surrender to the slavery. Flavia 's Roman nature gives you all the protection you need. Next time, you won't bother with the button.

(Oh, and Flavia does seduce her best friend, but just too far into the overgrown garden for you to watch. You'll never forget the feeling of the cries of orgasm reverberating through your chastity belt, though.)

Back to the real world...

So, back - kicking and screaming - to reality. What keeps a voluntary slave enslaved in the rough patches? Or, put it another way, what are the consequences of saying "Hyacinth - game over?"

Just like the Transtemporal Tourist, you've invested time and effort in getting to the scene, whether it's clearing your diary, or buying toys. Pulling the plug early will be a letdown - you've everything to gain by continuing, and your discomfort will have been wasted.

Also, like the Transtemporal Tourist, you risk losing a financial investment; if the keys to your chastity belt are timelocked away, then you stand to break your expensive toy, or the wreck a lockable cabinet.

And you may well make it hard to play again - you could leave your playmate feeling silly, ruin her ability to take your slavery for granted, or blow a hole in her plans.

So, there's a lot to be said for taking the rough with the smooth and staying in role.


Playing on through...
If you pick a culture - like Modern Aqua Sulis - that respects your hard limits, then you shouldn't need to step out of role. As long as there's an assumption that slaves are valuable property, then you should be able to say, "Mistress, this (or that) will damage my muscles."

Beyond that, it's good to negate the need for out-of-role decision making, and then to weight the decisions in favour of staying in role.

Set a sensible time span for your visit to Aqua Sulis. If it's an evening session, agree 9pm to 1am and stick to it. That way, there's no need to keep revisiting, "Have I had enough yet?"

With consequences, it's a question of proportion. The longer, the more intense the session, the greater you should make the consequences of wimping out. The more she dresses up, the more effort she puts in, the greater the moral and emotional pressure on you to follow through on your side. If using a timelock, lock away your keys in something more expensive than your chastity belt. And, if you're going for a long term lockup, buy a chastity belt you'd be embarrassed to destroy, and that you can't afford to replace.

If you can reliably stay in role, you've gone a long way to helping her stay in role.

Freeing her inner mistress
Realistically, most girls aren't obsessively kinky in the way men can be. However, many of them enjoy being a tease or a bitch, if given permission, and most will enjoy the pampering and other vanilla benefits of having a slave if they can get over their self-consciousness.

Just imagine we're still us, but I'm legally your slave, and you're OK with that. You don't want to break your valuable property, but you don't really care what I'm feeling, unless it amuses you to do. You can be as selfish as you like, in whatever way you like. Mostly this will turn me on, but you will have no way of knowing this thanks to the chastity belt, and can therefore ignore the fact.

Getting over the self-consciousness requires two things, one obvious, one not so.

I'm going to be your slave. I'll do as I'm told as best I can, but you may need to punish me to get the best service. If you get bored of me, or don't have any task, just ignore me. If I'm bored or uncomfortable, I'll accept that - it'll probably turn me on. If I feel physically unsafe, I'll warn you because a good slave should protect his owner's property. I have no expectations, other than you don't ask me to break role.

Less obviously, and probably most importantly, you need to set a time for coming out of role. Slavery fantasies, unlike flagellation and torture scenarios, can be relatively gentle and lack set pieces. They're about a kind of existence, rather dramatic scenes, so they don't have a natural end point. An open ended session can be daunting to an inexperienced dom. There's also a danger she'll start second guessing you. She may also start wondering whether she's had enough yet, and feel an unspoken pressure from you to keep on going.

At 1am, we'll stop, and go back to loving each other. Right now, I love you, but you don't even care what my name is...

Pictures from Woody.

More Whips and Stockingtops

In an alternate earth, not far from here... (click to enlarge)

(Original vintage images courtesy of Johnny Mahoney, who collects and restores them.)

Whips and stockingtops

In an alternate earth, not far from here... (click to enlarge)

(Original vintage images courtesy of Johnny Mahoney, who collects and restores them.)

The Cruelty Paradox : Masochism is all in the mind - the body still suffers

Masochist: Whip me! Whip me!

Sadist: No!

And it's true. Just look online. For real punishment intended to modify behavior, some doms avoid using whips and chains.

It's another one of the Paradoxes of Consent. I call this one the Cruelty Paradox; if the "slave" is masochistic, then isn't cruelty meaningless?

The paradox doesn't really apply to regular D/S games, or even lifestyles. Judging by the fetish forums, whipping and other corporal punishments are often administered in a spirit of interactivity; pushing and playing with the limits like a dark inversion of making love. Genuine but moral sadists often get their kicks on a one-for you ("Ahhhh..."), and one for me ("Argh!"), or by playing make believe; he really does hate being whipped, (that's why he's ejaculating....).

The paradox does matter when role playing eroticized historical-style slavery – which I suppose is what this series of posts is really about. The more authentic the slavery, the greater the kick for the slave. The cruelty turns us on, but if it's done for our benefit, then rather than serving our owner, we're importuning our partner.

What would 100% genuine erotic slavery be?

Take a trip with Trans Temporal Tours to my alternate modern Bath, Aqua Sulus, and find out.

Collared and locked into your chastity belt, you'll serve one of the visiting Roman women (if you recall, in this timeline, the Roman Empire never fell), with no way out until the portal opens fourteen days later.

Cornelia, your beautiful temporary owner, is just here for a good time. You'll attend her at the famous baths, carry her shopping, dress and undress her, and satisfy her voracious erotic needs. Life with her is like a 24/7 teasing and denial session, but she doesn't care that your chastity belt is always crammed to bursting point. If your distraction makes you incompetent, she'll whip you until you scream into your gag – you're gagged because she'll be chatting on her cell phone at the time – but she's not interested in the semen pooling on the tiles at your feet. In fact, she's not really interested in the pain she inflicts. She just wants you Not To Spill the Expensive Bubbly Again, Ever.

Since your masochism subverts these punishments, isn't your visit to Cornelia's timeline essentially exploitative?

Not really, because Cornelia is still correct in her assumption that you are afraid of punishment.

We masochistic slaves have – to use technical terms – really very fucked up responses to pain.

Very few of us enjoy the pain itself (though I'm assured such people exist). Instead, most of us enjoy the prospect and aftermath: psychologically, because it means we're enslaved and powerless; and usually physically, thanks to the endorphin rush and the quickened heart rate – fear is an aphrodisiac.

Even granted this before-and-after pleasure, most of us are permanently ambivalent about the pain itself. It's no different from taking a rollercoaster ride, going bungee jumping, leaping into an ice cold ocean, or going to a horror movie. Our self is divided and we fear the experience we crave.

So, as long as Cornelia strikes hard enough to hurt, rather than just stimulate, then you – the slave – will on some instinctive level leap to obey her every order, and do your best to avoid another beating. However full your chastity belt, you're still her slave.

The same goes for the accidental teasing and denial. The chastity belt rather suggests that she does expect you to be turned on, but doesn't want to know about it.

By extension, the same applies to deliberate cruelty.

Suppose you fall into the hands of the sadistic Lucia, or the teasing Cleopatra? If the power differential and the chastity belt are necessary before you can endure the experience, then, logically, the same ambivalence applies.

You want it and you don't want it. The inside of your head odd and divided against itself, but the suffering is authentic, and so therefore is the cruelty.

The Power Paradox: Femdom is a foreign country!

A long time ago, in pre-Internet days, a bewildered girlfriend once fumed, "You want me to be in charge, but then you tell me what to do!"

Predictably, rather than trigger a stiff beating, her irritation terminated the scene. I had – as I now know – been caught "topping from the bottom".

My excuse is that I had fallen through a vortex created by the Power Paradox: How can slavery* be conditional?

*I'm using slavery here to mean the power relationship itself, rather than what's in people's heads.

Be honest, most modern 'slaves' know what we're after. There are conditions to be met before we'll play.

Yes, the web's oozing with one-handed talk of female supremacy and total submission. A real slave doesn't need a chastity belt to abstain from masturbation, nor chains to remain still during a whipping. In fact, a real slave shouldn't even need to be whipped…

However, when you get into detail, our specific fantasies are still personal to us; a kinky offshoot of unique lives. I'm drawn to submerge myself in slavery, others to the struggle between slave and owner. I like the experience of chastity, others the ritual and torment of the keyholding relationship. We share the same props, but the drama, or not, depends on the players.

So, no, I'm not a proper slave, if that means submitting to any command from an arbitrarily chosen mistress – and nor, dear reader, are you.

Why should we be? We do this for fun.

Even so, this doesn't automatically make our slavery fake. In fact, we quite like the idea of real slavery...

Let me introduce myself! I'm Giles English of Transtemporal Tours.

You're here because we can infiltrate you into any conceivable alternate Earth, and extract you after a set time.

For example, not far from here is a world where the Roman Empire never fell. Women's Lib happened on schedule, but I'm afraid slavery persists. Bath – the British city of Aqua Sulis actually - is now a female-only spa dedicated to Diana the Virgin Goddess. There she is in the center-piece of the local forum (left).

Aqua Sulis is a popular resort for women of all ages and walks of life. The done thing is to hire a male slave for the duration of the visit.

Ah, did I say female only?

Well, the men all have to wear chastity devices.

Sometimes the slave serves as guide and porter. Other times as lover or whipping boy, or some combination of the two.

I can tell you're excited by the thought of experiencing this unique culture from the inside. We keep notes on all regulars. Let me show you the online catalog… yes these are all real Roman Citizens booked in for two week holidays.

Claudia here… very pretty. Likes to tease you with her fine body, but then caress you with the whip.

The traditional dress looks odd mixed with the modern clothing, but then the Romans always did mix and match to suit...

Olivia… she's a romantic. She always falls in love with her slaves, but never asks for the same one back the next year. Multiply orgasmic, as well. You'd have lots of sex with her… oh, by sex I mean using a range of prosthetics. The chastity device doesn't come off.

Cynthia always hires the cheapest, stubbornest slave she can find. She likes a battle of wills. Careful though. If you push her too far, she'll whip you until you bleed, then rape you with a dildo.

But perhaps you don't want the intensity of one-to-one?

College parties are less predictable since the make up changes from year to year, but each Sorority has its own tradition.

These girls belong to the Sisterhood of the Huntress. The other lot… preppy, you might call them. They're the Cult of Minerva, here to study. They'd be more interested in each other than in you… would barely notice you, even when they made out. Unless you spill anything. Very fastidious and they like to do this thing with hot wax…

Or how about rough trade? There's always a busload of factory girls trundling in from Wales…

Take your pick sir and we'll arrange training and transport.

Of course, once you're there, your stuck until we extract you fourteen (14) days later. You'll be a real slave. If you run, real police will fetch you back. If you disobey, then your legal owners – usually Catriona's Vacation Slaves – will flog you.

You've made your selection already? Fantastic. Just let me print the consent forms…

Gotcha! You really did pick one. (Or come up with your own – do share.)

Imagine if you went ahead and bought a ticket. You'd control the exact nature of your slavery and its duration. So your slavery would be 100% conditional. Even so, it would also be 100% real.

Aside from the inability to withdraw consent, how is this different from - say - an evening of unscripted erotic role-play?

Sure, you pick a time when you're both in the mood for certain sorts of erotic action, but then that's no different from choosing to serve relaxed holidaying babes in Aqua Sulis, rather than workaholic career women in Londinium who just need you to cook and keep house, and outsource all discipline to Marcus's Premium Slave Flagellation Service .

In a sense, you're both taking a trip to a foreign country where the rules are different.

Of course, unless you've agreed the destination together, then you're still topping from the bottom - but that's a subject worthy of another post.

Rather good vintage erotica site

I don't know how long it'll stay up, but here's the link to amateur site full of free galleries of scanned early 20th-century erotica, mostly French postcards.

As always, some have the bored rabbit look, but others - like this - achieve a sort of natural intimacy, in part because the ladies have realistic physique.

Chaste Affair (continued...)

A Chaste Affair

(Technically, this isn't Flapper Erotica, since the lady in question belongs to the 1900s. Would anybody like to know what happens next?)