Letters from your sisters
The Asj community offers a wide range of resources available to anyone within the D/s lifestyle, regardless of role or level of experience. One of the most important aspects of this web site is to provide advice to novice submissive women from more experienced submissive women (and also from a few others considered knowledgeable about the D/s Lifestyle). Although the Asj site may not always 100% agree with the information presented, overall we do find it beneficial, and just because we have our view about the D/s Lifestyle, that doesn't mean there aren't other views equally acceptable.
CJ
Angie's Letter
"The heart has its reasons, of which reason knows nothing." -Blaise
Pascal ********************************
Hello!
I'm glad for the chance to share what I learned. I'm only going to tell
you about what I've learned from my own experiences- and not about what
I've heard from the experiences of others. I don't do cyber play, all my
experience is RT. I assume some of this may be relevant to cyber, but I
do not know. I'm not striving for any kind of completeness either- since
there are so many good resources available now!
These are some things you need to do, as far as I am concerned.
1) Be responsible for your own mental and physical health.
Surrendering that responsibility is a great fantasy and a crappy
reality, at least when you are new and vulnerable. This means several
things to me:
You need to understand the relevant safety concerns regarding any
technique you are going to allow to be performed upon you. You need to
understand clearly what is safe and what isn't, so if there is a problem
you can protect yourself and put a stop to the play.
You are the only person who can and should assess the level of risk that
is acceptable- to you. You must know enough to give truly informed
consent.
You are the expert on yourself. If you are putting yourself into an
entirely new situation- wonderful- you are brave- such bravery makes
life worth living! It may, in brand new circumstances, be difficult to
anticipate your own needs and responses. But know thyself. Do your best
to estimate what your own special physical and emotional needs will be,
and provide for them.
You must advocate for yourself and make certain that your needs are met.
It doesn't matter if other people you meet do not seem to have the same
needs you have.
Think through what your needs will be- before, during and after play.
I got into trouble once because I failed to think through how much I
would want/need to talk about a scene afterwards. This was early in my
kinky career. I ended up spilling my guts to the first friend who called
me the next day. You wouldn't believe who she told. :-( My indiscretion
had consequences. And it happened simply because I did not figure out in
advance who I was going to talk to about the scene. I was just so
excited, and overwhelmed. An innocent mistake.
You must be able to say "no". If you have a hard time being assertive in
certain relevant situations- and difficulty with assertiveness in sexual
situations is a real issue for many, many women- then you are not yet
ready to go into the BDSM community and negotiate play. I waited a long
time to join a SM group and go to my first party- because I wasn't sure
I was ready to make "no" really stick under pressure. Once I did get out
into the community, I was so glad I had waited until my assertiveness
skills were so well developed. I needed them- and not because I had
really terrible things happen- but because assertiveness is a basic
necessary skill for successful BDSM experiences!
If you are likely to try and talk yourself out of what you feel, when
what you feel does not suit you or your dominant's agenda, then you are
not yet ready. You will be ready someday- there is no need to rush- and
rushing creates problems, accidents, and otherwise-yucky scenes.
2) Learn about the scene. Participate in the scene, in whatever way is
possible for you.
Workshops and parties are great places to learn. Getting to see what
other people actually DO is incredibly valuable in making your own
fantasies into reality. Actually, when I got into SM I wasn't really
clear about what my fantasies were- I had few specifics- I was mostly
seeking a certain emotional tone/dynamic. By watching others play, I
learned what to want!
If you have found a dominant who is not active in the SM community- then
insist upon being part of the SM community.
Isolation is bad, bad, bad. Did I mention isolation was bad?
Dominant personalities may not relish having their appearances,
behaviors, choices and techniques of play scrutinized by other players.
TOUGH. Insist on being part of the community and using whatever
resources are available to you in the area.
It does not matter how much he thinks he knows, he does not know enough
to do safe SM/DS in isolation. And you will not know enough to be
responsible for yourself either.
Don't let him get away with trying to reinvent the wheel, because he has
some "reason" (it's usually just some flavor of fear) for not reading
books and going to workshops and learning the right way to do things.
It's a little bit hard for me to believe that a person might have valid
reasons for avoiding the SM community- simply because in my experiences
with dominant men, all the "valid" reasons turned out to be smoke and
mirrors designed to hide the truth that the person was afraid and simply
unready to do the work to come to terms with the dominant, sadistic and
sexual side of himself. However, I have been assured by a person wiser
and more experienced than I that there are a few such persons out there
who have public personas... and these public personas make it so that
kinky events are not safe places for them, because the threat of
exposure is serious.
If there are legitimate reasons for avoiding contact with the SM
community, then there are still books, online resources, etc. that can
and should be used... If he can't be a part of the SM community, then
you still should. Do not easily give up on the support that can come
from even casual associations with people who care enough about
themselves and others to figure out/teach how to play safely and sanely.
Problems come up in SM relationships that are substantially unlike
problems in other kinds of intimate connections. Do not put yourself in
the position of re-inventing the wheel either!
I would probably feel safe enough to proceed, cautiously, with someone
who was widely and carefully read about SM technique- even if this
person did not have any possibility of involvement with the SM
community. I have a lot of confidence in my own "mastery" of the
literature and safety information available- and so I think I could ask
questions and assess whether or not the person was really knowledgeable
and ready to play.
In one of my few cyber interactions, I "met" someone who claimed RT
proficiency and competence. I asked him what kind of toys I needed to
own/bring to a scene for use exclusively on me- because some toys are
difficult if not impossible to clean adequately for use on more than one
person. The conversation died quickly. Maybe it was my attitude- but I
suspect the person simply didn't know enough to address the question. So
the person did not know enough to play with me!
If your dominant is inexperienced, if he does not have a long and
successful history with SM play, then there is this risk of a
funny-awful thing happening in a scene where his fantasy of the scene
that you are actually doing becomes more vivid and gripping than the
reality- the reality in this case being You, your needs and your
well-being.
In a scene, if his mind is anywhere other than in the moment, paying
attention to you, you are not safe. I have been hurt several times by a
man who is a perfectly loving, caring person who simply had a hard time
staying focused on me rather than his inner head experience. His
"crimes" were crimes of enthusiasm- which is hardly a heinous trait.
Still, I got hurt and that sucked.
Most men don't get nurturance/empathy training from early childhood the
way that women do. So they are generally not great at paying that kind
of careful and focused attention to start with, and you can simply
assume that their cherished SM fantasies did not include the part where
they constantly monitor the submissive for any signs of physical and
emotional distress.
Good tops have learned how to pay attention to/nurture/ empathize with
their bottoms. This is a real challenge for most men, however- most men
really have to work at it. Good intentions and a good heart are not
sufficient to carry the day. There are some essential and indispensable
emotional skills in SM. I guess the capacity for empathy/nurturance on
the part of the dominant and the capacity for gritty tough assertiveness
on the part of the submissive are these essential skills, as best I can
figure. And neither of these skills are likely to play a part in the
fantasy- for either party.
The last point I wanted to make is about a problem that seems sadly
persistent for various people I have gotten to know in my life... It is
troubling to me, but it is real and must be faced. I will try to be
clear.
Most people in our society have split off their sexuality to some degree
from the rest of their personality. By this, I mean that people who may
have otherwise healthy, well-developed values and personalities may have
drastic lacks when it comes to how they participate in sexual activities
and make sexual decisions. I guess it is because as a society we are not
generally permitted to spend as much time talking and thinking about sex
and sexual decision-making as we need to in order to develop ourselves
fully. What I have seen, over and over, is that a generally-good person
may not have a sense of integrity that stretches to include sexual
situations and sexual relationships.
One big consequence for me of this phenomenon seems to be that I cannot
assess someone's sexual integrity and sexual values by looking at how he
conducts himself in the rest of his life. For this reason I think of
sexuality as "split off" for most people. It's like I have to get to
know two people- the primary personality and the sexual personality-
because the strengths of the primary personality may not be integrated
with the sexual personality.
I guess if we are taught young enough that sex is bad, we may carry that
with us and behave badly/irresponsibly in sexual situations, simply
because down deep we feel that if we were good people we wouldn't be
having sex anyway.
Dominants are not immune to this, in fact they carry an additional
burden of shame. Throw dominance and sadism onto the pile with sex and
what you get is a person who-deep deep down- may think or fear he is
some species of evil. If these feelings have not been addressed, at some
point, he may behave in that way. If he has addressed these feelings, he
will probably be able to talk about them in a clear and straightforward
fashion.
Getting more plain- because this feels really important to me- although
he really, really seems (and is) okay in the rest of his life, he may
not be okay in situations relating to sex. I have learned to assess
someone's sexual self by getting to know that person's sexual self- his
history, choices, reputation if he is in the SM community. A man's
ability (or lack of ability) to talk about sex in an educated and
relaxed manner is very telling.
If someone is not teachable in sexual areas- if he is not actively
seeking to educate himself in sexual areas by reading, attending
workshops, etc. then that is a sign to me that this person may only be
about fourteen years old in that particular part of himself. Or even
younger. Not safe!
I hope something in here was helpful- borrowing a maxim from another
context- "take what you like, and leave the rest (for someone else!)"
A. Garner
P.S. In reading back over this I was struck again by the paradox at the
heart of DS- in order to be a good dominant, you must submit and
surrender to the needs of your submissive, and in order to be a good
submissive, you must be prepared to assert yourself over the needs and
wants of your dominant (and yourself)... so we all have to learn to
switch. :-)
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