Nobility and Morality

"You spend your formative years being told that you're sick, you're a deviant, that who you are as a person is wrong. Then when you reacted as you did... tell me, mom, do you think any less of me knowing what you do now?"

"Not in the slightest. There is no consensual sex act between adults that is immoral."

While I was relieved to hear it (of course, it failed to allay her fears on other fronts), I had to wonder if it was a complete answer to my question. I have never once doubted the morality of my actions; there can be no moral evil involved in what I'm doing here, even if I do get hurt because of my own actions.

But it seems to me that, "is what I'm doing harmful to other people?" is a very different question from, "should I be thought less of because of what I do in the bedroom?" There may be no justification for governmental intervention, for anyone to protect me from myself, but that's not to say that I'm living the best life here.

However, "best life" doesn't seem to hit the anxiety I'm feeling. I believe that the best life is the happiest life, and, whether or not my submissive sexual orientation is more or less conducive to that, now that I have it, exploring it seems better for my happiness than keeping it repressed.

I suppose the best way to phrase my question is, "Are my actions noble?" As corollaries- "Do my actions or desires align with what I would consider a good human being to do? Do they align with my political and philosophical beliefs?"

I feel adrift here. My questions are getting closer to the mark, but they're not hitting it yet. Perhaps it's because I'm not sure of the nobility or virtue that I'm striving for. In any case, if I can't get a handle on the question yet, I'm certainly not equipped to come to a satisfactory answer.

At least I've got a goal to strive for.

Home Fires Burning

I'll be returning home in around a week for the first time since coming out about my submissiveness to my mother. In preparing, I've been greatly helped by Eileen's posting about her being outed to her family. Like mine, hers isn't as simple as a rigidly intolerant, closed-minded bigotry; I've weathered God hates fags; I can weather the charge of perversion of the natural order. If it were so, it would be easy; I could cloak myself in the mantle of righteous rebellion, refuse to let the intolerance of small minds prevent me from pursuiing the life I deem best, and not really grow in the process.

Of course, her objections are far more principled than that, objections I have to answer for myself as well as for her. If you want a succinct statement of the principled objection to my lifestyle, look no further than the spanner decision:
"In principle there is a difference between violence which is incidental and violence which is inflicted for the indulgence of cruelty. The violence of sadomasochistic encounters involves the indulgence of cruelty by sadists and the degradation of victims. Such violence is injurious to the participants and unpredictably dangerous. I am not prepared to invent a defence of consent for sadomasochistic encounters which breed and glorify cruelty [...]. Society is entitled and bound to protect itself against a cult of violence. Pleasure derived from the infliction of pain is an evil thing. Cruelty is uncivilized."

What defence to this indictment can I offer? Certainly, from the outside, I can see why it would seem a dark place. Screams, in more extreme instances blood; the disgusting arousal of the sadist, the degradation that the masochist craves; how could one spring to their defense? Even from the inside, you will often run across profiles of people bragging that they revel in the darker side of human nature.

Except that framing has never rung true to me. I think back on the night I lost my virginity, the ecstasy, the caring dominance of Socrates, how my heart exults when I reflect on my submission and his dominance- and the only thing I can see is joy. I KNOW, with the certainty only emotional engagement can bring, that there was nothing shameful, nothing degrading, about that joy.

But, if I ever doubt my own virtue, I know this much: I REFUSE to believe that that is Socrates. The man who performed the most sterling moral action I have ever had the pleasure of witnessing; my lover, my Master- he is not some corrupted deviant, not the high priest of a "cult of violence," not driven to the archevil of human affairs by an impurity in his soul! Whatever one can say of me, I know this- Socrates is good at his core. He has too consistently proven his goodness for me to believe anything else.

And, of course, the damnable thing is that I can't just react angrily, tell them to get the fuck out of my life and be done with it. Even more painful than if this were borne out of hatred, my mother is doing this precisely because she loves me, because she's worried about me, because she thinks that I've gotten myself into something that's physically and emotionally risky, and potentially spiritually degrading.

Of course, it had to be her. The disappointment with which the majority of my extended family would receive it, I can dismiss as closed-minded intolerance. My sister and my father's rejection would hurt, but I can live without their approval. But she is so intelligent, so even-handed, and so much my role model that, should I fail, I'm not sure I could ever be certain of my goodness again.

Crossdressing

Socrates suggested adding crossdressing to our repertoire awhile back, and my feelings on the issue are mixed. Of course, there's the power exchangey, "if it gets your Master off, do it, even if it is a bit distasteful" - but I also trust that, if I air my grievances, I can trust Socrates to come to a just conclusion on what we should do.

I said recently that I don't find submissive men very attractive, and until fairly recently more imagined myself as a submissive woman within scenes than as a submissive man. As the son of two feminists, you have no idea how much this galls me, because it says that, in my deepest self, I see feminity as a weakness, and the natural order of things as a dominant male, submissive female. And if I haven't yet been able to find submissive men attractive, I have at least fought long and hard to decouple my feminine traits from my submission (if not integrating my masculinity and submission, seeing as a I have little and put little importance on the former), but these gains, I feel, are fragile, and I don't know how long they'd last.

After my first less-than-positive experience with Socrates, I met another dom on collarme- call him Thrasymachus. He eventually flaked out on me, and probably for the best, because the online conversations I had with him didn't give me much faith that he'd respect many limits or have any of the traits of loving domination that Socrates exhibits- but truth be told, his relentless misogyny and determination to turn me into his "sissby bitch" were incredible turn-ons at the time. I don't want to head back down that road. Ultimately, crossdressing in a BDSM context says that feminine traits in a male are shameful, and should be mocked, and that the only natural order is a dominant male and submissive female. I subscribe to neither of these views. While crossdressing in most situations is an act profoundly subversive of the gender binary, and while I've a lot of respect for those that flaunt that convention, ultimately in my context it's only reinforcing that pernicious institution.

Burn the Switch!

Socrates proposed an interesting scene the other day- he and I tied up together, the key to whatever is locking us in place being frozen in ice, slowly melting away. If that seems a little odd for a dominant to suggest, well, I can just say that having a former submissive as a Master does have its perks. But while with anyone else, the scene could be hot, I just couldn't imagine it being so with Socrates. I'm too used to seeing him in the dominant position; seeing him tied up would just feel odd.

Then again, it may just be that particular scene, because his next suggestion seemed rather intriguing. I recall reading in one of the Kushiel books- recommended to me by a somewhat kinky friend as "BDSM meets political intrigue" (two of my favorite things!) about a holiday in which everyone switches places for a day- a lowly servant becomes lord of the manor, and the lord is reduced to scrubbing chamber pots. While both he and I are certain that we've heard of some real-life holiday in some culture that corresponds to this, we haven't been able to find it, but that's not stopping us from adopting the custom as our own. Truth be told, I've thought about reversing the tables once or twice, and I'm particularly interested in how pain feels when I'm the one delivering it. But while being in the dominant role can be somewhat hot for me, invariably whenever I imagine it, my mind starts to drift to being the submissive partner in the scene, and it becomes even hotter. The only exception is pain -which, as I've discovered, I've little tolerance for, and derive little pleasure from, though in the proper doses it can be suitably erotic. But I couldn't get the thought out of whipping someone out of my mind last night- which could make me a submissive sadist, as odd as that sounds.

The other wrinkle in these plans is that, honestly, I don't find submissive men attractive. Just don't. Blame patriarchy, blame the fact that all the porn I was watching in the early years of my sexuality had submissive women, but whatever the reason, I find a tied up woman far more attractive than a tied up man. Truth be told, before I got over some of my gender identity issues and self-esteem problems - which was in great measure aided by Socrates - I always imagined myself as a submissive woman; that went away once I got a more positive body image and could concieve of myself as someone who could be desired sexually. And that's not getting over the fact that, again, seeing Socrates tied up and kneeling at my feet just seems wierd, maybe even wrong.

And, of course, there are some wierd identity issues at play. I recall Socrates trying to comfort me when I bemusedly remarked that everyone I told about my sexuality assumed I was a submissive (even my mother!), but truth be told, that wasn't distressing in the slightest. I've long since incorprated that part of my sexuality into my overall identity, and made them into positive traits- and how could I not? I was raised on the Jesus who washed his disciples' feet, the civil rights activists who were blown away by fire hoses without lifting a finger in violence. Turn the other cheek, the last shall be first and the first shall be last. The nobility of service, the strength of yielding, the courage of surrender; all balms to my teenage self in search of identity. All of which isn't to denigrate the caring guidance of Socrates' conception of dominance, but it's never been something that I identified with; truth be told, my own conception of myself taking dominance is of the overbearing and cruel. That's something I hope to change.

All of these things are probably not going to prevent me from experimenting, because, beyond anything else, I'm really curious how it feels to wield a whip. And perhaps, on some level, it could be cathartic.

Second night in my cage

It's one o clock on the morning, and I'm just now getting to sleep. As should be expected from a 19-year old guy who's been stimulated but denied orgasm for a fornight, my thoughts turn to sex. The knowledge that my cock will soon be straining unsuccessfully against the cage goads me on, the sensation being mildly discomforting. The thought provokes yet more torrents of submissive feeling, as I am acutely aware of his control over me, my sexuality, my cock, which only gives my member yet more momentum toward its constriction. It hits just that, and I grit my teeth as a wave of frustration sweeps over me. I figure I should do my best to enjoy it, since it's not going away any time soon: even as the cage restricts the growth, its stimulation also makes losing a boner difficult.

30 minutes later, the mild discomfort has turned to something quite else, and I long , if not for release, at least for my libido to shut the hell up so I can get some sleep! Miraculously, it does so, at least partially, and I begin to relax. But, of course, as horny as I am from the past few weeks, any sexual thought is enough to stimulate me, and sure enough, my deflating cock turns my attention to that area, enough to remind me of my cage, the fact that it's completely owned by Master. "Fuck, again!?" part of me thinks; the other is eager to begin the cycle anew. Not that the former has any say; soon enough my cock is once more straining against that vicious metal contraption. Even as my libido begins to wane a bit later, that latter part of me once more wishes to feel the torment of frustration, and conjures yet more thoughts to my arousal, over the protestation of the part of me that just wants to get some fucking sleep. Being, at least partially, the instrument of your own torment is an interesting experience.

Lather, rinse, repeat for the next two hours.

All of which is to say I haven't had this much fun all summer.

BDSM as religion

This, too, is sacred.

In BDSM, I encounter the numinous. It is a mystery in the authentic, religious sense: inscrutable to non-initiates, a madness; yet a wonderful one, whose practice transcends the mundane. They are profoundly irrational, profundly powerful subjective experiences, made all the more wonderful for their preposerousness (as the 3rd century theologian Tertullian said, "It must be believed because it is absurd.") Their experience cannot be denied by those in the throes, nor can they be understood in the same way the rest of the world is; they require their own logic, their own lexicon, a profoundly different way of viewing the world. Here, I shed the trappings of and authentically experience the world, authentically become my own self. I have never known any truth more true than what I feel kneeling at the feet of my Master. Subspace, they call it, but, by the gods above, it is so much more wonderful, so much more terrible, so much more meaningful than that nearly clinical term can express!

Betimes I wonder what the God of the bible had to do with this. Of course, a vengeful God with a penchant for poetic justice might see it fit to afflict one who sees hubris as a virtue and considers obeisance to divine forces unfitting to the dignity of man, with a need, rooted in the basest of human inclinations, to perform yet more humiliating acts at the feet of the merely human, not divine. Yet I prefer to think of it as a divine gift, if divinity indeed be involved: that, if my rigorously logical positivist viewpoint prevents me from authentically grappling with the issues of faith, that nevertheless, he saw fit to instill in me a capacity to feel at least some measure of the awe and ecstasy that the faithful experience when contemplating the numinous, even if its causes be purely material.

And yet, if this be the case, am I doing the numinous a disservice by bringing it to the realm of the rational? As I will away the recalcitrant longings in order to concentrate on the logical formulations in this post, do I do the longings, the authentic experience, a disservice by placing them in a subordinate role? Either alternative seems distasteful: I can easily see myself losing sight of the experience in my musings, becoming BDSM's equivalent of 3rd-century theologians hashing out whether The Holy Spirit proceeds simply from the Father, or from the Father and the Son. Yet the unexamined life is not worth living, and mere surrender to the experience feels as if it would cheapen them as well. Perhaps there is a middle ground between stoic contemplation and hedonistic indulgence. If the simple faith of the believer and the staid scholasticism of Aquinas ring hollow, nevertheless, I may find guidance in Augustine and Kierkegaard, those who strove to never let go either of the experience or their examinations of it.

The skeptic in me periodically dismisses the above as so much flowery rhetoric. The entire labor of this blog, it says, is merely so much posturing, an attempt to set yourself above the majority, while reconciling your intellectual self-identification with your perversions. If this is what is needful to convince yourself of the kind lie that there's something there beyond a quirky, if not pathologically abnormal, misifring of the sex drive, then, perhaps it's worth it: but you know that you are only deluding yourself.

And then, the emotions return. And I know the doubts for the rank, entirely unjustified pessimism that they are.

Chastity devices are made of metal

Metal is not good for airport security.

I think I dodged a bullet. Socrates sent out my cage awhile back. I was really hoping it'd come in in time for a week-long trip I was going to take, but it was not to be. Had the postal service been a bit swifter, I'd have probably shown up at the airport with it locked, without the metal detector part ever occurring to me.

Could be a hot humiliation scene, but I imagine I'd be missing my flight. And having a record of that sort of thing would probably not augur well for any government employment I'd be seeking.