Author: Ayzad

Heaven Is Full of Perverts – The Rome BDSM Conference Report

I spent the last few days surrounded by people in tears. Which was to be expected, since the setting was the largest BDSM convention in Europe. The surprising part, in fact, was the reason of their crying – but we’ll get to it later.

The third edition of the Rome BDSM Conference was held in a nice suburban hotel set in the farthest possible environment from the romantic imagery one usually associates with the Eternal City. The area is so existentially dreadful to be the subject of an actual gag in a rather famous Italian movie, where not even the overly optimistic protagonist can find anything good to it. Although I had been there the for the previous edition already, the mismatch with common expectations was no less bizarre – and would prove to be but the first of many during the kinky weekend.

What could be shocking for most people, who generally identify erotic deviations with crass porn or with the 50 Shades of Grey phenomenon, is that a sadomasochists’ convention doesn’t look that different from any corporate event or professional gathering. The lobby placards that point the attendees to the conference halls sit side by side with the indications for boring accountancy quarterly meetings, people wear nametags on a lanyard not unlike at an orthodontics exhibition, and exhausted-looking participants sneak out to the lobby bar to catch their breath – and the occasional nap in a corner armchair.

Ties and power suits are a rare sight among the casual outfits preferred by most, yet fetish clothing is equally uncommon. You don’t really see more naughty high heels or suggestive details in the common areas than you would on any given working day: the few discreet slave collars and corsets are largely offset by regular t-shirts and jeans.

The people themselves, on the other hand, are striking in their diversity. Besides their geographical provenience (foreigners predictably outnumber Italians, puzzling the organization), it is apparent that this bunch is happily unburdened by the anxiety of conforming to social standards. Same sex couples mingle with a lack of care so refreshingly alien from the unending controversy fabricated by the local media and politicians around equal rights; several unapologetically oversized persons who’d be frowned upon in another milieu are accepted just as much as the coolest fetish models here, and the same goes for the random disabled ones. Twentysomethings mix with seniors on polite yet equal terms. The situation closely reminded me of naturist resorts, where nakedness is quickly forgotten as you instinctively see people for their human essence and value, not their appearance.

As a matter of fact, this aspect of the Conference has a tendency to pull the rug from under your feet whenever you stop and consider the situation from an outsider’s perspective. «Wait, am I actually discussing anal fisting with a Slovakian asexual surgeon and a girl who’s barely one third of my own age and identifies as a bratty pony?» It took the better part of one day, for example, for me to realize that I had been talking with a trans person, even if this was pretty apparent: I simply hadn’t given this aspect the littlest thought. On a similar note, once you are immersed in such environment it takes a little while to notice that sitting in a workshop dedicated to the various techniques to safely penetrate a woman with a bayonet, or watching a lesson about biting people, isn’t exactly normal – even for me. Because yes: of course the BDSM Conference is a pretty hands-on affair too.

The event itself takes place in the convention area of the hotel, consisting of several lecture rooms set along a hallway where kinky artisans sell whips, collars, floggers, leather locking cuffs and other wicked toys. This year they shared the space with an exhibition featuring the photos from an art contest organized by the largest Italian leather association, whose winner was announced during the gala dinner held on the second day of the Conference.
The program offered over eighty workshops, each of them one hour and a half long. Presenters come from all over Europe, Israel and the USA (and Japan, in the previous editions), and this is where the similarities with other conventions end.

In the attendees-only area of the hotel participants remained indeed cheerful and civil, but the sounds coming from behind the classes doors often left no doubt on the nature of the lessons. Whip cracks and loud moans mixed with laughter and the occasional yelp, as the workshops continued with a barrage of bizarre titles. Violet wands, what to do with electricity ran side to side with The culture of consent; you could jump from Negotiating a scene to Artistic cutting or the rather technical Progressions for freestyle suspension bondage; high concept classes such as The reality of total power exchange relationships, Destructuring a BDSM scene or my own Polyamory and BDSM coexisted with the definitely down-to-earth The ups and downs of anal play and Needleplay for sadists. Other topics included fetishes, psychology, kinbaku, safety, communication, instruments and subjects as exotic as erotic tickling and the semantics of sex. The one thing you couldn’t find anywhere were the chudwahs.

‘Chudwah’ stands for Clueless Heterosexual Dominant Wannabe, a portmanteau indicating the sort of troglodytes who plague kinky communities both on- and offline thinking that a loud voice and a snarl are all it takes to bring home hot partners willing to provide oral sex and housekeeping in exchange for a few face slaps. They cannot conceive that BDSM is an art that in order to be safe and pleasurable requires dedication, much less actual study.

All the Conference participants were definitely committed to bring their game to a higher level instead, so they behaved like proper scholars. This made the workshops an especially surreal experience, with people keenly taking notes as desperate interpreters struggled to find the appropriate words to translate speeches about topics as improbable as erotic ageplay, extreme mindfuck, traditional Japanese bondage or the historical origin of a flogger flourish in Reinassance Italy. Trust me when I say that few things in life are weirder than finding yourself at the end of a class compiling a feedback form and wondering with a fellow student whether the genital suturing demonstration should get four or five stars.

No matter how apparently absurd the situation, everyone was seriously committed to learning and sharing, because this sort of knowledge immediately translates into pleasure and safety once you hit the bedroom – or the dungeon. Extreme erotic literacy took absolute priority throughout the event, keeping the discussion going all the time. Even on the third day, when everybody was positively exhausted, the bilingual conversation during lunch focused for example on the comparative merits of the lecturing style of two presenters who had both tackled erotic humiliation in their lessons. Everyone agreed that the shock of feeling seriously humiliated does help to shed your everyday persona and give yourself permission to leave inhibitions behind. One teacher however had carefully built a safe mindspace to explore embarrassment, while the other had subjected his partner to an extremely degrading session which many attendees found plainly abusive. A heated yet educated debate ensued, and it would have continued if it wasn’t for yet another set of classes coming up and demanding our attention. But it wasn’t just work and no play, of course.

You cannot expect to corral hundreds of kinksters in a secluded locations without them getting to have fun in their own unique ways. The retreat program thus included two parties: one for the attendees only and a larger one the night after, open to outsiders as well. They were both held in the large, warehouse-like rooms where the bondage and singletail workshops had taken place during the day, due to their major space requirements. The same carpeted floors that normally accomodated sleep-inducing corporate presentations were cleared of conference chairs and outfitted with an impressive array of St. Andrew’s crosses, whipping benches, cages, fisting slings, pillories and other unsettling furniture. An immense structure built with the kind of tubes used for construction scaffoldings looked like the biggest jungle gym ever, but it was meant as a support for multiple suspension bondages.

I won’t delve in any depth on the parties. What really set them apart from many analogous play nights was simply being surrounded by the very same people you had met red-eyed at breakfast, then as diligent students during the day, then slacking off at the bar or making their moves in the lobby, then elegantly (or outrageously) dressed for the gala dinner, and now flaunting their latex and leather outfits as they writhed in pain and delight in the dimly-lit halls. As I queued with them again at the pancake and juice stations the morning after, I felt sort of voyeuristically privileged for the chance I was given to see these strangers so thoroughly naked in all their daily masks and without, candidly exposing sides of their character that only spouses would witness otherwise – and not even all of them at that.

If 24/7 intimacy begets deep bonding already, the awareness that everyone was there for their passion for extreme eroticism took things one step further. With our psychosexual phantasms exposed from the start, the need to conceal and sublimate our libido simply disappeared, with three curious effects.

The former was the utter absence of the sort of neurotic behavior that’s so common throughout our daily lives; repressed sexual urges and thoughts are the overwhelming cause of personal issues, after all. I venture to say that the rare uneasy persons I stumbled into all appeared to harbor problems of a different nature.
Another peculiarity was that lechery and creepiness were nowhere to be seen. People eyed each other, sure, but erotic proposals were offered and received with a characteristic lack of drama, just like refusals got gallantly accepted. Why wrapping a normal, healthy part of life in the shroud of anxiety, indeed? The contrast with the intensely sexualized imagery spewing from the few television screens and the magazines in the hotel lobby highlighted how “normal” society twists the joy of sex into its evil twin – and how weird it is that we ended up believing this dreadful charade, often missing entirely the point of sexuality itself.

The latter and possibly most fascinating effect of the unusual cohabitation was to witness the subtle changes in the participants’ body language. The more the event got underway, the more people looked relaxed and accepting of their own bodies – including the bruises and marks that were gladly worn not unlike actual badges of honor. Far from the frigid Helmut Newton stereotypes that are still so prominent in BDSM imagery, smiles and hugs abounded; movements became softer and more deliberate; people literally had learned not to be afraid of each other and of themselves. The general attitude changed as well: instead of being always ready to criticize or get annoyed by every minor glitch as it often happens in our everyday lives, on this particular occasion everybody tended to be more inclined towards being on the lookout for whatever opportunity of pleasure – be it a new erotic practice or a simple bit of nice conversation – ignoring the rest. As a sexologist friend commented during the previous edition, anyone who had came in looking for perversion and depravity would feel disconcerted by the tenderness displayed by the attendees.

And this is why, come the end of that three-days extravaganza, so many participants were crying at the closing cerimony. For these outcasts who finally found their home and tribe, this final moment becomes so emotionally loaded that they even bet on how long will it take for the burly organizer himself to burst into tears during his thank you speech. He is not alone in that, though: just imagine how would you feel if you had finally spent a heavenly weekend, and you knew you had to wait another whole year to feel among kindred spirits again. Imagine what it is like to have experienced a perfect world – free of prejudices, ignorance, pettiness, fear, competition, hate – and having to leave it behind to step back into the mundane mess we all suffer. Imagine how strange it is to realize that life would be so much better if only more people grew less scared of their own sexuality, and how odd to discover this at a kinky convention.

This article has been republished with permission from Ayzad

Please visit Ayzad’s website to view the original post and more of Ayzad’s works.

Featured image courtesy of Shutterstock; article images courtesy of Ayzad
Have an amazing experience or tips you like to share on SimplySxy? Drop us an email at editorial@SimplySxy.com!

March 16, 2016
The Pedophile And The Explosive Doll – Interview With Fabrizio Quattrini

In the last few days one news from Japan upsetted and outraged the Western media and, by reflex, many online forums. Artisan Shin Takagi, who openly admits to harbor pedophile urges, founded Trottla: a company manufacturing ultra-realistic reproductions of little girls about five years old and above. While the dolls are presented as objects d’art unfit to be used as sex toys, thay have been clearly conceived for buyers with definitely unwholesome interests. Takagi himself states that they have a “threapeutic” function, and that in combination with other aids such as cognitive therapy or chemical castration they can potentially give socially dangerous pedophiles an outlet to let their instincts loose in a safe way. You can imagine the ensuing chaos.

As it often happens when journalists tackle sex-related topics and even more when the “mysterious” Japanese culture is involved, the matter is actually quite different from the way the news was reported – at least because it isn’t no news at all. In fact, Trottla opened no less than eleven years ago: the only reason it took so long to became a trending subject is because Roc Morin, a reporter specializing in bizarre subcultures, was the only journalist to make the effort of picking up the phone and arrange a meeting to visit Takagi’s factory. Most media just rehashed his information as they were first-hand, often “forgetting” some of them to leverage the scandal angle for clickbaiting purposes.

Among them there are the challenging yet not entirely baseless statements of the artisan, such as: «Some people maintain what I do is sick, but dolls are not human beings. They have no human rights and surely they are no victims. They can attack me, but I don’t feel the need to justify myself: I suppose most of my critics have mental problems. If you think my dolls are immoral, should we also remove every nude sculpture in the world, such as the David, just because they feature genitals?» Or: «My dolls have no sexual function because they reproduce children, and children don’t have sex. I can refuse repairing one that has been used as a sex toy, but I cannot be responsible for how my clients use them. On the other hand, I respect my buyers’ characteristics: for example I don’t do deliveries to Israel because the local religion forbids idolatry.»

There has been also no mention of Trottla being an allegedly shady business. Word is that a big part of the founder’s income is from lawsuits for “unauthorized usage” of the photos he publishes on the public company website, while fans forums are full of the complaints of clients who spent over $8,000 for a doll yet are still waiting for delivery after two years, or who got broken items, or much lower quality than shown in the catalogs. Those who emailed Takagi to complain only got very improbable excuses, while potential new customers are welcomed with maximum care.

The astute reporters’ oversight is also apparent from how none of them seems to have thought of googling the subject, or they would have discovered that there are many other pedo-dolls manufacturers: all of them in Japan, and for very good reason. In fact, the Land of the Rising Sun isn’t so alien and crazy as it is often portrayed by the media, but it sure has a very peculiar culture that sees this sort of erotic toys under an entirely different light.
The Nipponese obsession for prepubescent bodies has two origins. The former is strictly anagraphical in nature: in the society with the highest average age on the planet, youth assumes an “exotic” appeal and becomes especially arousing. The latter is the limited diffusion of Christianity and Catholic guilt – which along with a certain national pragmatism – makes the most extreme sexual fantasies to be accepted as an entirely reasonable pastime, since they are indeed just fantasies.

The local industry has recognized and fostered since the Seventies lolicon, short for ‘Lolita complex’ which indicates the morbid attraction of adults towards minors. The immense production of imagery, mangas, CGI videos, absurd sex toys and explicitly pedophiliac videogames leaves few doubts about how the market feeds with no hypocrisy on this national mania. As a matter of fact, what really baffles a foreign observer is the way lolicon imagery spilled into daily life, taking hold of sectors such as fashion or advertising.

The damage is however limited in the case of Japan, mostly because it is a very repressed society. Spontaneous human relations are so awkward that the country actually has a serious demographic issue of thirty years old (and more) virgins, not to mention the ever growing phenomenon of host clubs, where attractive young women pay absurd sums just to have some form of face-to-face interaction with boys – usually limited to chaste talk. Statistics prove that in such a context the risk of child abuse fantasies being acted upon is almost nil – but what would happen in the West?

The outrage about the dolls mostly derives from the awareness that introducing such objects into our own society would have a hugely destabilizing impact. Who cares is the Trottla and its competitors’ products are already being exported all over the world (and please don’t remind me of the scary Dollfie saga!): our talented journalists would never notice such an insignificant detail.
The heart of the matter is that our culture, still founded on sexual obscurantism, made all sexuality a minefield – which indeed more and more frequently explodes in chilling episodes of violence against women, minorities and children alike.

There is no doubt that sexualizing minors is repugnant, no matter the nation where that happens. If however the Japanese intellectual honesty partially defuses the phenomenon, the hypocrisy of the West – and of the United States in particular – makes the issue even more dangerous. We are talking about a culture that has no qualms about demonstration of rare morbidity such as baby pageants but grows outraged if it is mocked by Miley Cyrus acting as a porny infant, that sells little girls lingerie without batting an eyelid and then becomes all flustered if somebody points out that the same girls watch adult videos well before being of age.
Adding to such a schizoid soup an object that materializes the unhealthy obsessions of those who cannot serenely experience sex between adults is the catalyst making the brew explosive. Especially if habit has indoctrined us to put hand to pitchforks, turn our brain off and work ourselves up as soon as anyone speaks the word ‘pedophilia’ which – a bit like ‘Hitler’ – seems to be a magic spell capable of instantly kill any rational discussion.

My biggest vice is however an unending passion for rationality and knowledge, so I decided to do something crazy and incredibly revolutionary. Instead of randomly pontificating as many colleagues and keyboard avengers do, I asked for the opinion of someone who actually studies these subjects. Professor Fabrizio Quattrini, teacher of Paraphilia and Deviance Clinic at L’Aquila university, is a psychologist from the Italian Institute of Scientific Sexology who recently published a book about the concrete analysis of uncommon sexualities. Our little talk was unsurprisingly much more grounded and enlightning than anything you’ll read elsewhere. Here it is.

Dr. Fabrizio Quattrini

A key concept in your book is that every unusual sexual interest can present itself with different intensities, from an innocuous occasional fantasy to a pathological and potentially dangerous obsession. Before talking about the dolls I’d like to ask you what is the actual size of the pedophilic phenomenon compared to its common perception and its representation by the media. In other words: do we know a statistical figure about how many people are attracted by minors, and how many among them are a concrete danger to our children?

Among the various so-called atypical sexual interests, the pedophilic behavior is a distress where a person (usually male, but women are not excluded) lives a particular affective-erotic feeling towards prepubescent children. The level of pedophilic attraction may range from intense fantasies to actual and recurrent behaviors. An adult pedophile can put into practice simple attentions and niceties towards the minor up to gaining an affective contact, which sometimes grows into erotical-sexual intimacy. A person with pedophilic disorder may be convinced that the child finds actual pleasure from those attentions and behaviors.
Recent scientific literature sees the highest prevalence of pedophilic behavior in 3 to 5% of the male population, and in 2% of the female one.

The catalogs of these dollmakers are also striking for the absence of male subjects. Do the data about pedophilia reflect this exclusive interest towards girls?

Generally speaking a person with pedophilic fantasies and behavior might not be especially discerning about the gender of the child. This is because the interest isn’t necessarily directed towards a sexual approach of the genital kind, but towards the idea of immaturity, frailty and ease of manipulation of a prepubescent minor. There are however pedophiles who display a special predilection for one gender, and the female one seems preferred.

Talking about this, one hypotesis about the reasons behind the development of a pedophilic behavior points to having been abused as a child as a cause, later reenacted as adults in what is known as the ‘abused-abuser cycle’. Male children seem to be more psychologically and emotionally vulnerable to abuse compared to females, and this would explain the prevalence of male abusers in the long run. Most females seem react by developing a tendency to mistreat and ignore their children when they grow up instead of perpetrating the sexual abuse cycle. The very preference towards female victims by male pedophiles seems to confirm the prevalence of male abusers within the general population.

I was taken aback by Takagi’s theory about his dolls aiding pedophiles not to molest real children. Is that the actual effect they would have on the categories you described? Which factors may make the same doll a deterrent for one person and an instigation for another?

Honestly, Takagi’s hypotesis might be somewhat true. The possibility for a pedophile to vent his urges and sexual desires using an artificial substitute such as the dolls in question might draw him off acting against real minors. It is however important to remind the various characters of those with a pedophilic disorder, for some might use these simulacra as tests before unleashing their sexual urges on a flesh and blood minor. Thus the doll might not represent a therapeutic aid, but a “school” for honing abusive thoughts and strategies.
The factors that make a doll a deterrent or an inspiration aren’t easy to define. I believe that, besides the emotional and characterial differences and excluding particular psychiatric conditions, a pedophile who bought a doll like Takagi’s would experience unhealthy thoughts too freely, and that surely couldn’t be defined as therapeutic.

Come to think of it, I have a doubt. For someone attracted by minors, this sort of simulacrum isn’t even better than a real child? After all a doll doesn’t just prevent the risk of ending up in jail, but doesn’t even have the natural refusal reactions of a real person and I suppose that would make easier for the abuser to realize his fantasies without undue “distractions” to disturb him.

It may certainly be so. Personally, I do not believe however that a human being can be satisfied by a simple object unless he was dependent on the object itself – which would constitute a dysfunctional form of sexual response anyway. Using a prepubescent doll would keep the pedophile safe from the law, but at the same time it would plunge him in the vortex of a stron disfunctionality. In my opinion this could lead the person to suddenly put into practice with flesh-and-blood minors those behaviors he had anonymously performed with the doll until then. The subject could for example book the first flight to one of those Eastern countries where underage prostitution appears concrete and accessible.

When interviewed, Trottla founder is always extremely diplomatic but also very ambivalent. On one hand he admits his attraction to little girls buton the other he denies beyond any plausibility that his creation may be used for sexual purposes; he first maintains that the dolls are imbued with a kami (a sort of Shinto spirit) due to their humanlike shape, then that they are beyond criticism since they are but objects unworthy even of a name; he is proud of sculpting realistic genitals, yet he stresses that they cannot be penetrated «because children don’t have sex ». From a psychologist’s point of view are these statements just marketing-oriented hypocrisy, or they reveal any special mental process?

Someone like Takagi, who decides to market an “object” born out of his personal wish to freely experience a pedophilic high in private, definitely suggests a marketing strategy. Conversely, manufacturing such realistic yet “impenetrable” dolls denotes a character trait that not only confirms his sexual attraction towards prepubescent girls, but also a certain obsession and “addiction” for everything infantile.

The debate around this news is a sort of preview of a theme that’s going to become more and more important in the future. In fact, technological progress ensures that the first androids to reach the market –twenty years or so from now – will perform sexual functions: undoubtedly for vanilla practices, but also as “safe” surrogates for those harboring disturbing tendencies such as pedophilia, violent misoginy or pathological sadism. There already is a committee against sexbots, trying to prevent the creation of erotic androids.

What kind of effect do you think the introduction of these “superdolls” will have for psychology and sexology, but also for society in general? Pornobots will cause more issues or advantages, for example in the field of sexual assistance?

This is a very interesting topic, opening the door to new therapeutic trends in psychosexology. Clearly we must not confuse the possible use of technology for sexual wellness or for solving erotic and sexual dysfunctions, with sex abuse and violence. In fact, for delicate areas such as sexual assistance to disabled persons – and for sexual dysfunctions in general – I’d see any helping tool as a great resource allowing both the professional and the patient to create better therapies learning from experience. Should the same high-tech tools were used to satisfy urges feeding an inner distress, or dysfunctional expressions of sexuality no matter how egosyntonic, I couldn’t see them as anything but dangerous. They would embody sex addiction. While we are on this subject, I wish to remind that to be able to talk of acceptable erotic well-being, addiction and pathology aren’t contemplated even in the most extreme sexual expressions such as BDSM.

Let’s part with a mental experiment. During my online research for this article I stumbled on a forum where somebody wrote verbatim: «My neighbour just received a Trottla doll by post. What should I do? Must I report him, and to whom?». Besides the intrusiveness of this person, what shocked me were the responses: dozens of messages calling for lynching or at least for jail.
My question for you is therefore this: let’s imagine you are the father of a nine-years old girl, and that you learn that your neighbor owns one of thes dolls. How would you react?

I am used not to judge others. Your provocation is interesting, but I stand my ground with teaching my daughter respect for others, no matter how different. In this particular case I would keep an educational stance: giving her a sex education that includes paying attintion to possible external dangers. This mustn’t cause fear or terrorisms, but confidence and autonomy: the idea being to promote trust in her caregivers, giving her the means to hold a useful and constructive dialog and to prevent any hazard.

This article has been republished with permission from Ayzad

Please visit Ayzad’s website to view the original post and more of Ayzad’s works.

Image courtesy of Ayzad
Have an amazing experience or tips you like to share on SimplySxy? Drop us an email at editorial@SimplySxy.com!

March 5, 2016
Do you exactly know how unusual your kink is?

I have frequently written about the myth of ‘unusual sex’. While most media representations tend to portray sex as an extremely standardized activity (namely: heterosexual missionary coitus between athletic young persons uninterested in anything but vaginal penetration, giving them simultaneous orgasms), reality is very different. The truth of the matter is that everyone has sexual fantasies, that entertaining them doesn’t make them real fetishisms and can be very healthy, and – in the words of a sexologist friend of mine – «unless you are into three or four kinks at the least, chances are the weird one is you».

Last week however Canadian researchers published the results of a study that finally measures exactly how uncommon many sexual inclinations are. Before looking at them, a few caveats are due. The first is that, although the number of surveyed people was sufficiently high, the research took place in Quebec, which can hardly be considered a mirror of the world at large. Canada has a strong culture of respect, generally good sex education programs, a particular climate, and higher sexual restraint than many Western countries. In other words, they aren’t as wild (and irresponsible) as others.

Also, my impression is that a few questions were a bit too vague: there is a possibility that they might have been misinterpreted in part, so I am looking forward to the results of any validation study to be done in other countries or with a more specific wording. This aside, the research does offer a really unique and important innovation in how it precisely defined a series of categories for sexual fantasies. Here they are:

Typical – A fantasy shared by more than 84.1% of the population sample;
Common – Over 50% (half of) the people;
Unusual – Less than 15.9% of the interviewees enjoys this;
Rare – Less than 2.3% are into that.
Keen-eyed readers will notice there is a grey zone between 16 and 49.9%. I have no idea why either: let’s just consider it a “kinda funny, but not really weird” area.

The research identified 54 main different fantasies and their incidence among males and females. Reading the resulting table isn’t especially easy unless you are a statistician and you copied it in a sortable spreadsheet. Lucky me, then, since I had both at hand and I can summarize some interesting data while we wait for the Canadian team to release more detailed results. Since this is what all of you are waiting for, here’s the scoop:

The three most frequent female sexual fantasies are – Romantic sex, a sexy atmosphere, romantic places.
The top three common female sexual fantasies are – Doing it in an unusual place, receiving oral sex, giving oral sex.
The top three unusual female sexual fantasies are – Sex with a prostitute or a stripper, a female androgynous partner, doing it with a drunk, asleep or unconscious person.

The top three rare female sexual fantasies are – Being pissed on, pissing on the partner, zoophilia.

Talking about males, however:

The three most frequent male sexual fantasies are – Romantic sex, receiving fellatio, having sex with two women.
The top three common male sexual fantasies are – Cheating with an acquaintance, doing it in unusual places, watching two women making love.
The top three unusual male sexual fantasies are – Taking part to an orgy, taking part to an all-male orgy, wearing female clothes.
The top three rare male sexual fantasies are – Pissing on the partner, zoophilia, sex with a child under 12.

The research results can be used to gain even more interesting insights however:

The most unfulfilled female fantasies is – Participating to an orgy (wanted by 56.5% of women, but just 15,8% of men)

The most unfulfilled male fantasies is – Participating to an orgy. No, there is no error here: fact is, while women fantasize about group sex with both males and females, men dream of having sex with more than three women together, being the only male in the group (75.3% of men, vs. 24.7% of women)

The most disliked kink of them all is – Pedophilia. That was easy – but only because necrophilia wasn’t even considered.

Women are much more inclined towards – Homosexuality, apparently, with 36.9% aspiring lesbians against 20.6% male fantasy gays.

Men are much more inclined towards – Large breasts (68.6%) than women. Only 18.6% of females go for big boobs.

Quebecoises are a kinky bunch – Over 40% of the population is into BDSM (meant as the combination of domination, bondage and spanking/whipping)

So… do you still believe that you have strange tastes when it comes to sex?

This article has been republished with permission from Ayzad

Please visit Ayzad’s website to view the original post and more of Ayzad’s works.

Image courtesy of Shutterstock
Have an amazing experience or tips you like to share on SimplySxy? Drop us an email at editorial@SimplySxy.com!

January 18, 2016
Rubber men and interiorized autophobia

The latest media sensation of Great Britain is The Gimp Man of Essex, a mysterious guy appearing all over the namesake county north-east of London… clad in black rubber from head to toe. The habit of calling full-body latex ensembles ‘gimp suits’ comes from the 1994 movie Pulp fiction, but this longtime staple of fetish fashion is around since the late Fifties. Fans love the feeling of total enclosure, the scent of rubber and the anonymity, helping them into a head space completely removed from daily life where they feel like pure sexual beings – and behave accordingly.

The featureless face hoods can feel pretty unsettling to others however. The same lack of identity that makes easier to see and treat those who dons them just as sex dolls instead of complete persons hooks into our primordial fears of isolation and detachment. Faceless people are scary, and this is why they frequently appear as creepy villains in horror movies, such as American horror story or The collector. So, why is this man showing up dressed like that?

The real answer is obvious: he is an exhibitionist who enjoys the attention received by his shiny setup. That is only his own business, however. In fact, he has another explanation – and a very nice one. The Gimp Man of Essex is collecting charity: he donates one pound for each photo with him posted on his Facebook page. The money goes to Colchester Mind, a local association helping distressed people – especially those suffering of mental health conditions – to reintegrate into society. A very noble effort, that can only be explained by the man himself.

«My family doesn’t know about this. I started in June 2013 and I don’t go out during school holidays or weekends, as I don’t want to scare anyone» he says. «I am adult enough to realize people look at negatives in everything: some think I am a paedophile or a pervert into horrible things, but I only want to start a debate about diversity. Most people are very welcoming when I tell them what it’s all about, and after all if you walk along the beach you see a lot more than I’m exposing!»

So let’s forget the non sequiturs for the moment and let me take up his challenge. The Gimp Man is right: a latexclad guy is uncommon and innocuous just like most mentally distressed people. But looking at him I couldn’t help but to think of the rubberdoll fellows I wrote about a few days ago, or the furries. All of them share the same dream: just to be accepted by society, without being feared on the basis of harebrained assumptions and prejudices. Seriously, can anyone really believe that somebody in a plushy cat costume constitutes a danger?

As a matter of fact, only very few bigots do. As the Gimp Man case show, or the experiences described in the rubberdoll documentary, or the giant furry parade of Anthrocon (the furry conventions), or even the Pride week… Most people really don’t care what you dress up like nor what your kink is, provided that you are not violating their rights. That’s only normal, isn’t it? So what’s up with extremists attacking unusual people? And why don’t we see more funny guys walking around our cities?

There are several reasons, actually. Some of them are related to social power, some to money – but in the end it all boils down to fear. Fear of oneself, to be precise. Have you ever heard those people whose argument against atheism goes: ‘those who don’t fear god’s retribution and damnation surely give in to their evil desires and indulge in all sorts of crimes’? As any sane and ethical person can see, that’s downright crazy. It doesn’t take Freud to understand that such a though can only come from somebody who feels those violent urges in himself, and who can barely keep them in check.

The same goes for sexual phobias. How would exactly gay marriage ‘destroy families’, for instance? How the anonymity of a latex hood would make you a paedophile? We could make dozens of similar examples, none of them even remotely logical – yet the media love and perpetrate these common fears.

The net result is that “ethically unbalanced” people find their autophobia (fear of oneself) confirmed and strengthened by every single repetition of those scaremongering lies… but the real danger lies elsewhere. To cut a very long psychology essay short, to be exposed to this unfounded and appearingly prevalent world view worms such fears into everyone’s brain – including the very subjects of the topic. The gay community, for example, knows very well the phenomenon of internalized homophobia, that is homosexual people hating themselves and disgusted by their own inclinations “just because it is normal to feel that way”.

This also happens with other sexual minorities. Hence the rubberdolls and the furries convinced that the world hates them [Spoiler: the world generally just couldn’t care less, actually], but the same can be told about most unusual sexualities. People into BDSM are another category consumed by the certainty that revealing their interest to loved ones will end in catastrophe… while statistics prove that this is not the case at all.

Granted, statistics also show that there always be a certain percentage of people that won’t accept you no matter how gently and thoughtfully you’ll explain your harmless kink. Some of them, confronted with their own fears, are in fact bound to respond with a violent attack. But generally speaking – unless you behave like a maniac – the other person will just shrug, or be intrigued.

So, how can we fight internalized autophobia? If you feel brave, following the Gimp Man of Essex example might work. Yet a much more sensible plan of action is simply to learn how to recognize the social and psychological traps surrounding us. All it takes is a little bit of reading the right sources, and you will soon be able to distinguish real dangers – and there are a few – from scaremongering. Try to frequent diverse environments, try to stand up just a tad more for your right of expression.

This is not a war, nor you have anything to demonstrate. But you might want to win at least one small battle: the one with your own fears. It’s easier than you think, and you cannot imagine how good it feels to live without their imaginary burden on your shoulders.

This article has been republished with permission from Ayzad

Please visit Ayzad’s website to view the original post and more of Ayzad’s works.

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December 3, 2015
Japanese “erotic” game shows are not what you think

So the Web has been abuzz about the novelty of Japanese erotic game shows. The girl in the above picture, in example, is an Idol no ana contestant doing her best in one of the many licking tryouts in a show whose title literally translates as ‘The hole of an idol’ – where ‘idol’ is the Japanese term for a talentless but good looking girl catapulted at a very early age into a career of singing, then softcore modeling followed by harder and harder porn videos and, rarely, a second run as a minor television celebrity.

Girls fight off for a chance to become next year’s biggest idol, and they are subjected to many allusive tests among which the aforementioned lickings, sucking stuff from tubes, disrobing mannequins without using their hands and openly changing into cosplay costumes – freezing mid-gesture whenever they are told to, to allow a lecherous cameraman to better expose them.

The other video is even more shocking. That’s the highlights reel from Orgasm wars: a 40-minutes long contest to see whether a fat, male gay bar owner can manage to get a male porn star to come using all his secret fellatio techniques. Even if the crotch area is hidden by a small screen it is as graphic as you are imagining (not to mention the veryweird sounds of it all), with a commenter giving a moment-by-moment account of the action.

I’ll spoil this for you: the bar owner wins and the star reluctantly comes. Just like contestant number three in this older game show about… er… sucking off microphones while hidden brushes stimulate the contestants between their legs? That’s not even half as bizarre as the ass-kissing show in the third clip, or the quiz show where people give their answers while whipped by a dominatrix, or… well, you get the idea. But what does it all mean?

Japan has many unusual customs to westerners’ eyes, that’s true. But equally true is that it isn’t half as crazy as our media paint it – especially when it comes to sex. It’s just a matter of context. To understand three quarters of it you just have to remember that it is a Shintoist and Buddhist country, blissfully free of the absurd sense of guilt and shame the Christian, Jew and Islamic religions impose on sex and sexuality. As soon as genitals are just another body part and sex is just a common, everyday activity, approaching it playfully and publicly appears much more reasonable. Shows like Idol no ana do receive some flak by moralists, but most people see them as nothing more than one variation among many – on the same plane with cooking, fitness or music shows.

The second important aspect to consider is how Japan remains a very formal society. Just look at the beginning of the Orgasm wars clip: a differently-oriented stranger comes up to forcibly suck you off before cameras, and the normal reaction is to politely exchange business cards, bow and very quietly state that you won’t succumb to his techniques. Most American males would have run away shouting insults, terrorized they had “turned gay” just because they were in the same room as one. Most game shows are not about skill, but about not losing face – that is, keep your honor and your family’s high even in the face of adversity. Accepting any challenge, no matter how weird, is a big part of it.

Knowing all of this, eastern kinky shows take on a very different meaning. They can be shocking, controversial and ridiculous, but not as alien as they look at a first glance. After all, it is just a matter of remembering that everybody lives sex in a different way – and until they remain safe, sane and consensual, no interpretation is “better” than the others.

http://https://youtu.be/wlGWOBpZObg

http://https://youtu.be/tTwa62RA8aQ

This article has been republished with permission from Ayzad

Please visit Ayzad’s website to view the original post and more of Ayzad’s works.

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November 12, 2015
You asked for it: the lowdown on Dollfie sex

To this day Ayzad.com features 1,139 posts, 141 static content pages, 284 Unusual sexology column facts, 468 online resources links, 108 suggested books (often reviewed here) and, in the Italian-language section only, 1,097 items in the BDSM and the bondage/kinbaku glossaries. That’s plenty of stuff for readers and search engines alike to peruse, I’d say. So do you know what really freaks me out? That the first search term used worldwide to reach this website – after the predictable ‘Ayzad’ and ‘BDSM’ – is… ‘Dollfie sex’. Of the thousands of topics I linked to (12,815, in case you wondered), the most sought after is an incredibly obscure one I jokingly referenced to only once, in an article about weird Japanese sex toys.

Mark my words: by ‘incredibly obscure’ I mean that I had never stumbled into it before or since, not even during the research for my dictionary of unusual sex. This stuff is even more uncommon than vibrator hackers, or doorknob licking fetishists – yet you are obsessed with it. So what could I do but satisfying your ungodly deviances and learn all about it?

First things first, Dollfie is a trademarked name for a collectors’ dolls line by Japanese manufacturer Volks. They are not toys: in fact, they were originally produced as kits for artists to customize, sporting for example a featureless face to complete with painted details, glue-on eyelashes or hair to be rooted in the plastic head one by one using intricate doll-making skills. Today Dollfies are also sold in complete form, at prices ranging from 429 to 693 dollars – accessories not included. Limited editions Dollfie dolls can be over $3,000.

The reasons behind such extravagant cost are the remarkably high quality of the product and its ability to hold any pose a real human can, but most of all its customizability. Each element of the 19-parts body (not counting the ball joints) exists in many variants that can be bought separately, swapped and mix-and-matched until you get the exact image you were looking for. There are even different types of skin finishing! Dollfie dolls are produced in various sizes, the largest of which is called ‘Dream’ and stands 60 centimeters tall, more or less your average 4-years old kid’s height. So, how does all of this relate with my website?

Pediophilia – not to be confused with the I-less word – is a fetishism for dolls. It is quite rare, and it usually involves kissing, ejaculating on the doll or penetrating yourself with it. Floating on the Web there are way too many videos of this kind, while other variations are less documented and much more creative. One famous case, for example, involved a Californian man who got his kicks from swallowing the heads – up to six at a time, and with their hair cut short – of Barbie dolls. He then recovered them, boiled them to sterilize them, and went at it again. In his words, his problem was that the bodies were too large for his throat.

Dollfie dolls are ideal for doll fetishists because they are quite realistic to begin with, but also because of the large aftermarket dedicated to “special interests” clients. You can’t buy mini-silicone tits for other brands, nor nano scale ultra-detailed sexy lingerie. People can go to impressive lengths to perfect their miniature sex ideal, and you can find many somewhat disturbing forums online where enthusiasts endlessly discuss exotic arts like how to best airbrush carpet burn marks on the knees of «oral fixated dolls».

Volks has not a monopoly on the pediophile market, mind you: there are many other less known manufacturers (as listed in this entirely nonsexual dolls’ tailor website), most of which are probably doing the world a great service by keeping their customers occupied with inanimate objects instead of what they represent. And yet none of them offers their clients what they obviously crave. Except one. Dollho is a specialty firm producing Dollfie-proportioned onaholes, shaped chunks of stretchy silicone with a corkscrew-like canal running halfway through it – think of a Fleshlight, but looking like a rough-hewn torso instead of a soda can. If you really, really love your doll you can tear it apart, switch the original lower body with the Dollho one, re-attach the limbs and head, very carefully detail every little aspect of your little, delicate companion… then fuck it mercilessly, making it look like it was raped by Godzilla.

Judging by the quantity of online videos showing the act, this pastime counts a lot of fans. Also, being underendowed does help as, according to reviews, this onahole «doesn’t feel that great» and customizing your own provides better results. There are two Dollho body shapes (one curvier, the other worryingly immature), which also fit the Obitsu 60 doll system, a similar and less expensive collectors’ item produced by the same manufacturer of the perennial grandmas’ favorite, the Kewpie doll. I wonder how the nice family running the business took the news of their unexpected fanbase. This, I swear, is everything there is to know about Dollfie sex. Now, could you just stop obsessing over it and move on to other aspects of unusual sex? Please? Seriously, I’ve got 1,138 more for you to read about…

This article has been republished with permission from Ayzad

Please visit Ayzad’s website to view the original post and more of Ayzad’s works.

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October 8, 2015
Looking for the “true way” of BDSM

In a wonderful example of serendipity, yesterday I stumbled into two unrelated yet delightfully connectable things. The first was a trollish post on an Italian BDSM forum, in which a young woman writing in third person expressed her horror at the lack of “proper protocol” at a munch she had attended. You could almost smell her righteous disdain for anyone not subscribing to her view of kinky etiquette, and the guffaws behind the numerous replies generally amounting to «shut up and don’t you dare judging how others enjoy their quality time».

The other was, in fact, two documentaries about the BDSM lifestyle. Making mistress More, by Beverly Yuen Thompson, can be watched online in its entirety on Vimeo and deals with the management of La domaine Esemar, a place advertised as «the world’s oldest BDSM training chateau». The ceremony, by Lina Mannheimer, focuses instead on the domination style of 84-years old Catherine Robbe-Grillet, possibly the most revered dominatrix in Europe since the late 1960s.

I strongly suggest you to click on both the above links to get an idea of what I’m talking about. Briefly put, however, the former documentary reveals how the “chateau” is in fact little more than a mobile home in the woods out of Albany, NY. The manager, known as Master R, is a former musician and a nature-loving nice chap who keeps a somehow homely court of like-minded enthusiasts treating La domaine as a safe haven from the pressure of “normal” life. They look like a decent, fun-loving bunch whose passion keeps the place more or less running despite the obvious lack of means and organization. As a matter of fact, the main story concerns a former slavegirl drafted into service as a professional dominatrix when the previous Lady of the house suddenly quit.

Conversely, Madame Robbe-Grillet is as stylish and aristocratic as it gets. A former actress and fiction writer, she never advertised her trade yet she does live in a castle-like manor and cultivates a detached, ritualistic idea of erotic domination games. Aesthetics and elegance are paramount, so much that the only submissives she still accepts in her presence look like models or A-list actors and actresses. She is the sort of person you expect to play chess on par with master players – while holding a philosophical conversation in which each witty metaphor is commented by the appropriate move on the board – as she sips an impossibly precious wine from a crystal glass held on a tray by a silent butler.

Watching the two documentaries back to back inevitably led me to compare their wildly different views of BDSM. These are the little insights I have reached:

Each approach is the byproduct of its cultural environment

The French mistress took her first steps into the world of erotic domination in a country still recovering from the shock of WWII and adjusting to the new geopolitics. Dwarfed by the superpowers looming east and west of it (not to mention Britain, up north), to retain whatever grandeur it could France was desperately clinging to its old cultural identity. That included a strong sense of social classes and a fading aristocracy. To this day French sex personals frequently use the ‘BCBG’ acronym, literally translated as ‘good style, good class’ but actually meaning ‘rich, well-educated, high bourgeois’ – a socially accepted sign of self-entitlement inconceivable in most other countries. In such historic context appearances played a major role in reinforcing a higher social status, so attention to details and rituals was especially important.

Also, the distinction between BDSM and pathological sadomasochism was yet to come. Adopting a very stylized and intellectual approach to kink was an excellent way to distinguish oneself from the violent outbursts of criminals and madmen. Since there were no websites or manuals to learn from, formal hierarchies additionally ensured that technical information was reliably transferred to newcomers. Finally, shrouding the kinky lifestyle with a patina of philosophical, ritualistic respectability offered a modicum of social protection in times when a soiled reputation could doom a woman’s entire life.

On the other hand, the American outfit was founded in the 1990s, in a strongly sex-positive era and in a country that takes pride in its social diversity and equality. BDSM was not just an established household word, but a cool albeit still mysterious lifestyle celebrated by the media and the arts. Information about the various practices was abundant and quite easily accessible. Major cities had publicly advertised kinky social clubs, the gay leather scene was very visible and the Internet would soon easily connect people all over the country.

La domaine’s approach is also the fruit of a culture focused on empathy: communication and care for everyone’s well-being were actively encouraged, as was looking at the person behind the job – or the role – he fulfilled. We are all rather familiar with this sort of milieu, so I won’t linger too much on it. Generally speaking, however, it is safe to say that in this case integrating every aspect of one’s personality is considered a desirable goal, content is favored over appearances, and openness is seen as a virtue.

Keep these observations in mind as you watch the documentaries, and you will easily see how each approach is the direct result of its surrounding culture, reflecting its values and norms. We can also imagine how embarrassing a meeting between Master R and Madame Robbe-Grillet would be. I doubt they could tolerate each other’s presence for more than a few seconds, and surely they couldn’t share a play scene if their lives depended on it. By the way, communication would also be a problem since she’d refuse to speak any language other than Parisian French, and the American documentary shows he can’t even correctly pronounce the French name of his own business.

These approaches cannot be moved out of their context

The different interpretations of BDSM aren’t just the result of their cultures, but a part of it. The incompatibility between them doesn’t stop with the protagonists of the documentaries: think of the contempt most French kinksters would feel toward those uncouth Yankees and their loud, excessively friendly ways – or how repelled the Americans would be by the aloofness and hyper-formal requirements of the European dominatrix!

Eroticism has always idolized foreign lands and cultures, picturing them as paradises of sensuality. That’s however just a thinly-veiled hope that somebody, somewhere, has it better than us, since sexual dissatisfaction is also a constant throughout the ages. Arousal feeds on novelty, after all, so becoming inured to whatever is available is hardly surprising. This is why a New York trailer uses a fairytale-sounding name, and why in 2014 a woman still pursues the veneer of an early Nineteenth century lifestyle.

Yet again, it only takes a few minutes of watching the docs to realize that Master R would be very unhappy if he really had to live in an European castle, following its sober rituals and having to forsake his beloved country music and the football nights. Mistress Grillet, used as she is to eating very little to keep her figure – and never with clients in order not to tarnish her superhuman aura – would similarly be horrified by all those communal meals, the overabundant portions and breach of personal space.

I venture that these observations don’t apply to these specific examples only, but are generally true. We see it in example in how the gay scene changes from country to country, in how differently fetish play is experienced in various nations or even in how alien real Japanese-style bondage as performed by natives and on location looks to our eyes, no matter how many western kinbaku videos or shows we’ve watched and studied before. The warped take on foreign BDSM in China is yet another brilliant example of this.

Kink is universal

That being said, the different approaches of our protagonists once more remind me of how universal unusual eroticism is. No matter how dissimilar they look, they both pursue the same archetype of eroticized power imbalance. Or, in a less highbrow wording: sexualized master/slave scenarios are and always have been part of the human nature. This isn’t exactly a breakthrough discovery, either. Historians and ethnographers routinely find evidence of “kinky behavior” throughout the history of mankind, from ancient Greece to modern times.

BDSM and other erotic fantasies are, after all, what differentiates human sexuality from that of less evolved species. All animals reproduce; very few have recreational sex; none but (some) humans can conceive it as something other than basic genital action. When will we finally drop the pretense that kinky sex isn’t “strange”, but a celebration of our species’ greatness?

The social perception of unusual sex evolves very rapidly

Timewise, Madame Robbe-Grillet and Master R are separated by forty years only. That’s a rather short time by most standards, yet it was enough to completely change the social perception of the erotic games they practice. As mentioned before, when the French mistress first approached kink harboring BDSM fantasies was still ground enough to land you in an asylum, if you were from the wrong social class. Today it mutated into a cool fad selling millions of books worldwide.

I for one was under the impression that this was mainly a consequence of the introduction of the Web – but it turns out I was wrong. In fact, reading Julie Peakman’s The pleasure’s all mine – A history of perverse sex I discovered how quickly the acceptance of sexual behaviors have always changed throughout history – usually every half a century or so. Even the current war on pedophilia, in example, would have been unconceivable just fifty years ago. Who knows how BDSM and other deviations will be seen, come the Twentieth-second century? Making predictions, it seems, is a fool’s game.

There is no right way to approach BDSM

Beside all the above important-sounding realizations, the most important lesson (hopefully just a refresher) learned from watching those documentaries back to back is probably the simple fact that there is no One True Way of enjoying BDSM. Or, to be more precise, of course there is a common foundation of mutual respect, safety, competence, commitment and so on – including the oft-mentioned ‘SSC’ principle – but then play can take the form most suitable to the participants’ needs, tastes and views. Casual players who are just into very light role play are no less “real” than 24/7, extreme lifestyle experts.

Which brings us full circle to the debate from which I started this post. What’s with the supposed “BDSM protocol” so eulogized by that young lady, and by countless clueless websites? It is well established that the diehard “Old guard” and “training houses” myths are just a misinformed rehash of mostly fictional lore: the existence of one protocol all submission relations should conform to is equally bunk. Please create your own, if you like, but do not try imposing it on others who probably know better. Or do, come to think of it. As we have just seen, if it clicks with the cultural environment, you might as well manage to influence and shape of kink for the generations to come. For a while, at least.

This article has been republished with permission from Ayzad

Please visit Ayzad’s website to view the original post and more of Ayzad’s works.

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September 19, 2015
How to laugh off Christian Grey and actually enjoy a BDSM relationship

When my latest book – titled I love BDSM and unfortunately not available in English yet – was published last week, I was rather surprised by the prevalent reaction among both reviewers and readers alike. One of the most frequent comment to my beginners’ guide to sensible and healthy BDSM relationships is of amazement for its description of kinky games and mindsets so different from their “normal” portrayals – namely 50 shades of Grey and porn.

In fact, I had to stop and think to realize that I am privileged to see erotic domination and submission games from the vintage point of somebody with over a quarter of century of direct experience of this lifestyle. This is more than enough time to get over the loads of bullshit about ‘true BDSM’ preached by most alternative media as well as the mainstream ones, but people inexperienced with the reality of the Scene are especially prone to believe its myths and legends. As a matter of fact, most of them actually try to follow them to the letter – often to their disappointment.

All of this reminded me of a very interesting encounter I had a few months ago at the BDSM Conference in Rome. You will read about it below, but the gist of it is that it exposed me to another uncommon, candid and very down-to-Earth view of Master/slave relations. I got in touch with Stefanos and Shay, the wonderful couple who presented it to talk about erotic prejudices, extreme lifestyles and more. This is the interview that resulted.

Ayzad – Hi, and thank you for your kind availability. Before we begin, would you like to briefly introduce yourself to my readers?

S & S – Thank you for talking with us! We’re Stefanos and Shay, from San Francisco, California. We travel around the world teaching about BDSM/kink and are an unconventional D/s couple. Stefanos is the head of Bondage-a-Go-Go’s dungeon, President of BGG Association which owns Bondage-a-Go-Go, as well as the Producer/Steward of The Upper Floor on Kink.com. Shay is an ER nurse, programming director for several local venues/events, and author of the bondage safety web site remedialropes.com. We’re also the 2014 International Power Exchange titleholders.

A – I’ll let you on a secret: early on at the Rome BDSM Conference where we met, several attendees expressed skepticism for your International Power Exchange title, as the leather contests culture is something unheard of in Italy. I recall my companion at the event, in example, interpreting it as «I guess that means they’ve got their play roles stuck up their asses farther than anyone else».
When your presentations demonstrated the exact opposite, a bunch of those very same people was shocked both by your down-to-earth approach and by the tangible intensity of your rapport, as you showed a beautiful relationship, far removed from the clichés associated with BDSM – even within the scene. Do you often get this kind of reaction? Or, in other words: how much do you think kinksters are hostages to BDSM stereotypes?

Shay: Thanks for sharing that – we love hearing those initial reactions and are glad we could prove to be different than expected! Thanks for giving us that chance! We decided to become titleholders precisely to subvert the “head-firmly-up-ass serious-work-we-do” stereotypes that often go along with Dominance & submission in generally, and even more with titleholding and Master/slave dynamics. We think kinksters are very frequently held hostage to the expectations and stereotypes we internalize about the “right” way to have a relationship in the BDSM community. A big part of our “platform” for our title year was spreading a message of not trying to jam into pre-existing boxes – we encourage people to make their own boxes.

Stefanos: We came with concern already packed in our hearts about wearing our IPE 2014 patches. We wondered just how American we appeared wearing a title no one had heard of with the description of “International” in the name. Much like American baseball teams play in the World Series, when in fact, they are only playing American and Canadian teams in an American sport.

It is good to hear there was skepticism and judgement. It proves again that BDSM’ers are a thinking group, and yet we are all human and can judge those we see around us. Conventions in our communities hold us all hostage in rope, D/s, whip use and more. Humans judge all things by our nature we want to group actions and objects, and we have a tendency to judge negatively unless we are aligned with what we see.

In America, where this title is new, we are often asked about its meaning and purpose. People are surprised to discover that the title is about breaking those stereotypes of strict power exchanges and perceptions of what a “real” relationship looks like. We have never fit into a box that others could identify easily. But we are no different than the rest of the communities of BDSM’ers. None of us fit into a box; none of us are the same. Shay and I quickly discovered this in our travels and teaching. We embraced it and began teaching and sharing around this idea of trying to show people that BDSM was not always about “serious interactions” and “strict protocols”. In fact, you could have all that and fun too. We are pleased that came across in our lifestyle and presentations.

A – A very interesting part of your presentation was your candid admission that trying to conform to the classic Master/slavegirl lifestyle as described by countless stories sucked the fun out of your relationship, and how you felt “you failed” at BDSM until you invented your own brand of protocols. Would you elaborate on this?

Shay: That’s a really important message of our power exchange class and we’re so glad it stuck with you! Most of us have read (and jerked off to!) the classic Master/slave stories, and they’re great wanking material. Sadly, they’re more “fairy tale” than “how-to guide”, and trying to shove yourself (and your partners) into popular fantasy roles leads to a lot of frustration and disappointment. When we started our journey in the kink community, we very much had that experience – we felt Stefanos should be the omniscient and invulnerable Domly Dom, and Shay the meek and obedient slave. We quickly found that trying to play out those roles, to do things the “right way”, left us both feeling miserable and lonely. Also, Shay loathes (and is terrible at) stereotypically “slave” tasks like cooking meals and ironing – Stefanos is much better at such tasks, and actually enjoys them! After struggling to be Master/slave, we finally gave up, and for several years we didn’t have an articulated power exchange dynamic at all (although we continued to be part of in the kink community, volunteering and teaching). It was Shay who realized that we were still in a power exchange relationship, albeit one that grew organically rather than being based around ideals and fantasies. We think power exchange is all about framing – the meaning you give the things you do, rather than the things themselves. It works best to grow protocols organically from your relationship, because the farther your rules and protocols take you from your natural self, the less authentic and sustainable they will be. Many of our protocols grew from observing what we were already doing, and adding a layer of meaning and protocol to those behaviors.

A – At the end of the day you distilled a (simple?) set of behavior rules that allows you to play very seriously and be yourself in your daily lives. Can you describe this process, maybe offering a couple of examples?

Shay: We have worked a lot on establishing levels of protocols, which we see as a way to have elements of that stereotypical (and hot!) D/s fantasy in your relationship, without the negative effects of trying to maintain that full time. In a practical sense, this means that we have our everyday level of protocol, which is basically a re-framing and formalizing of tasks and behaviors that we came naturally to our relationship. These are protocols that grew out of our preferences and skills. For example, I’m excellent at managing money – I’m is very frugal and highly organized in that way. Therefore, we made budgeting and money management one of my tasks as a submissive. This is also an example of what we mean by framing – a task like money management could be viewed as a Dominant task – you’re in control of the finances! And in someone else’s D/s relationship, that could certainly be the case. For us, we view budgeting as a service that I provide.

So that’s the daily, default level of protocol. Either one of us can make a request for a higher level of protocol – often we do this through the use of a formal title. We generally refer to each other simply by our first names, so if Shay says “Maestro” or Stefanos calls Shay his “girasole” that signals a request for a formalized dynamic. That request can be refused or accepted by either party – generally this is indicated by a title as well. When we’re on a higher level of protocol, behaviors shift – Stefanos takes on more of an active director role, and Shay will pay much more attention to where she is spatially in relation to Stefanos, because a formal protocol is that Shay should be near enough to Stefanos so that he can touch her, unless she is performing a specific task that prevents this. There are many rules like this, specific to different levels of protocol within our relationship.

Stefanos: It is important to recall what makes you hot and connected then insert that framing into your protocols as well as what is practical to your life and give that a set of protocols too. This will enhance your roles and give you a better sense of who is doing what and for what reason. Traditional and historical western family stereotypes can give an unreasonable bias towards placing household chores or domestic service in the s-types hands. Therefore, it can look backwards when a dominant is serving the coffee and cooking the meals. But when framed correctly, it can be in reality the dominant fueling the s-type for their day of service and also fueling the d-types desire to prepare the day and be loving. In addition, traditional D/s fantasies tend to leave love out of the relationship. Shay and I share a long relationship with deep emotional connections and love for each other. So framing your love for each other into the protocols and rituals of your D/s relationship is a necessity, in our opinions. For example, collaring can often be seen as a process to establish power dynamics. This invokes a sense of control in the d-type and surrender in the s-type. In this moment, power and surrender can be viewed as emotionless due to our social and political upbringing of what power represents socially. So in contrast to that construct, when collaring Shay, I do not forget my love for Shay and express it with loving touch, sincere but not stern eye contact, and a welcome home statement that expresses our love – “Welcome home My Girasole” (welcome home my sunflower). Also, because Shay is my partner as well as an s-type, I do not refer to our relationship, its protocols or rituals as mine. The aforementioned behavior would be exclusive and deny the partnership we share in this D/s dynamic.

A – This sort of simplification came up again in another hilarious presentation where you horrified bondage purists by showing very simple, practical ties using everyday objects – which looked quicker and way more fun than classic ropework anyway. With all due respect for fancy bondage orthodoxy, it sure felt more spontaneous at the least.
Generally speaking, it seems that once people interiorize the technical and safety aspects of kink, the more they distance themselves from “proper”/expected play style, the more enjoyable it gets for them. In my experience this sort of creativity isn’t terribly valued or popular in the BDSM scene, however. What do you think of this?

Stefanos: Creativity in all areas of BDSM is a cornerstone to Shay and I.
By our very nature the BDSM/Kink/Leather/etc scene is full of rebels. Sometimes on principle we rebel against societal norms. Yet, in a community that values diversity and difference, in principle, it is shocking to see judgements placed on those that defy a perceived convention, such as bondage or D/s.

Bondage was once nothing more than a way to restrain and explore loss of control to BDSM’ers. As the Japanese style entered the western consciousness, our desire to adhere to traditions gave a one-true-way to do bondage. It is human nature even among rebels to group together as a tribe and adopt “a way” to do tasks – it creates community. We need systems and constructs to be part of a group. However, in order to achieve self-mastery people need to add their intentions and energy to make it theirs.

Many of the techniques used in bondage were once used as torture or as a death sentence, not intended as an erotic technique. So to deviate from them is a necessity. Where we diverge from the tribe is only an intersection of forming a new tribe. One that values creative use of technique and safety. For example, TK’s is not a safe technique by our standards, so we do not use them. Given that TK’s are an essential technique in Japanese style bondage, it was necessary to find other ways and possibly materials to work with for bondage. It required we research additional techniques for restraining beyond hemp and jute, which we both still use.

Not using rope presents challenges because you can’t tie the same ties as convention dictates. So creativity is required to achieve restraint. In addition, no items found in your home are the same as our home, therefore, spontaneity is achieved along with a sense of possible failure. This is freeing to experience, because restraint is problem solving and to expect failure invites solutions and laughter. In brief, “bondage purists” as you put it, choose to confine themselves to a tradition that is perceived as a pinnacle of restraint because it is attached to a tradition spanning hundreds of years and that was used effectively to confine people.

Change can be fearful for people, especially to people in a place of authority. So to watch a knowledge base (restraint, D/s, impact etc.) be used in a divergent way, threatens the status quo. Among humans, even rebels, this is threatening and therefore devalued by the dominant tribe, because it challenges the tribe’s proscribed traditions. It creates an intersection of choice – a place to have other expectations met. This intersection is nothing more than an opening for others to enter without the restrictions placed by the gatekeepers of “that other” tribe.

A – The absolute highlight of the conference for me was your description of yet another subversion of the perceived fundamentals of BDSM, which is to say your take on “punishments”. You turned a repressive act at heart into a very intense and deeply moving expression of love. Can you tell us about it, and how it came to be?

Shay: Wow, we could fill up a whole article answering this question, it’s a huge topic! I think one common failing in D/s relationships (and really relationships in general) is that there isn’t a way to effectively communicate apologies, and then also to communicate forgiveness! This can lead to resentment building up and ultimately the demise of a dynamic. We have a few different ways we address that in our power exchange, but the most formal version is the “apology position.” This position has me laying face down on the floor, legs together, arms out at a 90 degree angle from my body, forehead against the floor. We frequently say that we don’t want to HEAR an apology, we want to FEEL it, from both sides – and over the years this has become a very emotionally loaded position for us. From my perspective, I find it impossible to be emotionally disengaged when I’m face down on the floor in front of Stefanos. It takes me straight into that contemplative and emotional space of, how can we keep this from happening again? It’s also not about blame at that point, because it’s an emotionally vulnerable act for both of us.

Stefanos: Additionally because Shay was succinct: The position takes away my connection as well from Shay. I am can only see the apology and I only feel the emptiness and focus in this moment. I want it to end, so we can move on. I encourages forgiveness in me for the act or acts.

A – On the other hand, you also got the biggest laugh of the event when you demonstrated how an overimaginative and naïve sub could misconstrue even the most incompetent play session as «a perfect experience, just like in 50 Shades of Grey». The common theme seems to be the powerful role of expectations in shaping our perception – and ultimately our enjoyment – of kink. Talking about people in general, do you feel these expectations are evolving, and how? Also, how would you like them to change in the future?

Shay: The BDSM community continues to become larger and more accessible. The internet is of course the biggest thing driving this trend, but pop culture references (like 50 Shades) contribute as well (although it’s important to remember that seeing fetish in pop culture isn’t actually a new thing, one needs only to look at 80’s Madonna and movies like “9 1/2 Weeks” to know that). It’s amazing to see increased awareness and acceptance of kink, and to see more people discovering it – or feeling safe to express that part of themselves! It is simultaneously invigorating and terrifying that the “bar to entry” to come into a BDSM event and call yourself “Master So-and-so” is effectively nonexistent. This adds to the importance of education, especially for bottoms – there can be an expectation that someone calling themselves “Master” (or “Mistress”) must know what they’re talking about, and a submissive shouldn’t question them or advocate for themself, because that would somehow undermine their Domly-ness. I hope going forward we can continue to move towards having empowered bottoms who advocate for themselves. When we come into the kink community, it doesn’t matter if I call myself “Grand Mistress Firedragon 12th Archon Goddess” and you call yourself “lowly slave wormdick” – we come into this community as equals, and should treat each other that way, until negotiated otherwise!

Stefanos: I would only add that any relationship long or short term is “an equality of expectations”, without clear expectations and a method of communication about expectations, all relationships (personal or community based) are doomed to fail.

A – Thank you again for your time. And, by the way: do you have any more Italian workshops planned already?

Nothing specific planned yet, but we had a blast at Rome BDSM Conference and hope we can come back!!

This article has been republished with permission from Ayzad

Please visit Ayzad’s website to view the original post and more of Ayzad’s works.

Image courtesy of Ayzad
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August 13, 2015
Are we all a little furry?

Originally this post should have been just a quick and dirty news. Taboo, the National geographic show about unusual cultures, announced an episode about extreme furries – and about one Pennsylvanian guy known as ‘Boomer’ in particular. This joyous fellow says he feels a special affinity with dogs, that he feels much happier when he behaves like one, thus he spends as much time as possible in the shoes… er… paws of a humanlike bobtail who barks, plays at catching sticks and eats from a bowl.

The idea was to show you the trailer of his interview, crack a couple of jokes about the sexuality of furverts, explain the psychology of other full-time “animalists” like some ponygirls and move on, as I thought this phenomenon was too marginal even for my standards. While I was at it, however, I checked out the latest news from the world of plushies fetishists… and I got really surprised.

This year Anthrocon, the largest convention for furries (that is, anthropomorphized animals) in the world, had over 5,500 attendees – thirteen hundreds of whom proudly paraded in costume on the streets of Pittsburgh. Such figures are way too high to dismiss them without further study, so I read most of the WikiFur – the furries’ Wikipedia, of course – and following one link I ended up at Furries: an inside look. (Find out how to make a documentary https://www.jenreviews.com/how-to-make-a-documentary/)

This nice documentary was shot during another specialized convention, and it contains several interviews with simple enthusiasts and business operators. Their description of the furry world is much less perverse than you could imagine. The Anthrocon organizer even has fun answering a question about sex: «every environment has its creeps » he laughs «but even if we tolerate them we keep them at bay, because the community really just wants to have some innocent fun».

Right. Still, it looks like the simplest Google search turns up an impressive quantity of embarrassing smut – yet according to the enthusiasts the reason for which thousands of people dressed in fursuits meet at these events has nothing to do with sex. «Well, of course we have a sexuality» says an interviewee «but doesn’t everybody have one?»

A great answer. The amount of furry porn available online makes me suspect of some hypocrisy, but I accepted it at face value. Until the umpteenth interview in which they repeated that the appeal of furry fandom is in its nice people, who don’t discriminate those who don’t fit the norm and even support each other. Suddenly I remembered where I heard those statements before. «I feel they are my real family» says one; «I am much more myself when I interact on our specialized websites than in my daily life» confesses another; «There is more creativity at this convention than I normally see in one whole year anywhere else» gloats another yet. And every piece falls in its place, completing a puzzle that had been bothering me for years.

I heard those very phrases among comicbooks enthusiasts. And role playing gamers. But also among fetishists, and in the BDSM scene and in many erotic subcultures. After all I had just read about this in Playing on the edge: many people don’t really enter BDSM communities to follow an overwhelming sexual instinct… but because they are welcoming, tolerant environments offering more intellectual stimuli than other social circles. In a sense, sex for them is just a pleasant side effect.

But if this is how things are, this finally explains all the problems of the culture of extreme eroticism! Can it be that there are few furries who actually fuck in their costumes for the same reason for which the BDSMers who attend actual play parties are a minority, or for which fetish is trendy but specialized shops close for lack of customers? May it be so simple? The same type of slightly introverted person who as a teen seek refuge in the conflict-less world of comics and role games get older, and as an adult keeps looking for hypertolerant communities that will effortlessly accept him. Like erotic subcultures, indeed.

One of the most chilling phrases I’ve ever heard was from a famous sexologist, during a conference about paraphilias. «Most pedophiles isn’t really attracted to minors» he explained. «Fact is, they are scared by adults». Or, in other words: those with serious socialization issues express their libido directing it where they find less resistance. The unluckiest ones can end up unleashing it in criminal ways; those who are more informed and know about environments that are welcoming of diversity become part of them instead – not out of a really deep interest, but to feel accepted without having to offer much for it. In the long run they will absorb the culture of the group, but they will always be palpably different from the most serious members.

Alternative sexualities fascinate everyone. They are based on powerful archetypes like domination, transformation, androgyny, asceticism… of course it is easy to feel attracted by them. There is however a huge difference between being driven by a sincere passion (or even just by a healthy curiosity) and by a hypocrite “going for the lesser harm” because you don’t feel up to the normative sexuality and affectivity.

I have been maintaining for years that BDSM is the natural cure to pathological sadomasochism. Many people approach it out of frustration mixed with uncontrolled domination or submission instincts that generate excessive fantasies, that would be dangerous if they were actually realized. Then they encounter the complex and serene culture of extreme eroticism, they discover ways of channeling their impulses into non-destructive behaviours, they learn to accept themselves and the others, to integrate sensuality in their daily lives… and they are transformed by it. After a while, ferocious “masters” and self-abusive “slaves” find the balance they needed and they finally live sex for what it should always be: a carefree game. Their actions remain intense, but they become less neurotic; the need to show off diminishes; their presence in the public scene gets sparser. It is not like they get old: they grow up.
The problem of course is to get there. I talked about the BDSM scene because it is the one I more thoroughly know, but also because it is founded on such dynamics (of communication, self-analysis, practices…) that even involuntarily lead to the kind of course I just described. I ask myself however how complicated can this evolution be in other “transgressive” contexts like the furries’ one, or of some fetishes, or even of extreme sports, where libido is sublimated into abstract forms. How terribly exhausting must be going from «I hide behind a plushy to be accepted and I masturbate in secret on the Disney version of porn because it is less risky than having a honest sex life» to «experimenting with other identities is fun from time to time, but I learned to live happily in my own skin»? Incredibly so, I suppose – especially if your starting point is the (self) delusion to be there for an altogether different reason.

Another thing the BDSM culture taught me is the importance of always calling yourself into question. Before publishing this post I asked the opinion of a couple of psychologists and sexologists and they confirmed my theory to be generally correct, even if it is impossible to support with precise scientific data since none exist.

My other doubt is, sadly, how much of Boomer is there in anyone of us, not only in our approach to sex, but towards life in general. I wonder whether a bit of education about unusual sexualities can be the ideal therapy indeed…

This article has been republished with permission from Ayzad

Please visit Ayzad’s website to view the original post and more of Ayzad’s works.

Image courtesy of Shutterstock
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July 9, 2015
BDSM, the Chinese way

If you think you have seen it all when it comes to unusual erotica, one blog I just discovered could make you reconsider. Chinakunbang, subtitled ‘Chinese jail and bondage culture’ sure is different – at least to our western eyes. Born at the online intersection between historical heritage and uncomprehending emulation, this simple website is the window front of a virtual store selling BDSM erotica… as seen from China, where sexuality remains mostly an unspoken, mysterious topic.

In accordance to local laws the daily sample pictures are strictly non-pornographic. They somehow remind of the fetish pictures from ‘50s America, when Bettie Page and her colleagues were very careful not to show too much skin and the titillation was in the little details of their costumes or expressions. They also betray very low production values: the dresses are shoddy and occasionally ill-fitting, lighting and composition are unheard of, the backgrounds remind of dirt-cheap school plays and the outdoor shots smell of clandestine, hit-and-run sessions. The subjects, however, are a mesmerizing bizarro-version of every kinky website you’ve ever seen.

Western BDSM, you see, is the conflation of countless erotic iconographies through the centuries. There are elements of Christian martyrdom, of the writings of de Sade, of medieval punishments, the Inquisition, Nazi atrocities, high literature and pulp, popular movies, fashion, illustration, comics and classic art, porn, theatre, technology, music and much more – all ground up and processed through the interplay of many local cultures from liberal northern Europe to repressed south, from the Puritanical United States to the non-moralism of Japan. What we masturbate to on sites like Kink.com or House of Gord is the distillation of the strongest archetypes from all of these sources, mixed together in a constantly evolving blend.

Most Chinese, however, never encountered any of this. The refined sexual culture of ancient Chinese nobility was based on an archaic conception of the female role and on a generally pre-technological view of the world. The Cultural Revolution destroyed all of it anyway and relegated sex to a purely reproductive purpose. Even recent generations grew up in a culturally insular country with little or no access to western erotica. Sexual education is lacking, and the “Internet great wall” of State censorship sure doesn’t allow the kind of easy access to porn we are all accustomed to.

In this context the idea of erotic power play naturally took a very different form from western BDSM. Browsing the blog you will notice in example that “bondage” is in fact just a couple of standard military punishment ties, with none of the fancy rope work of Japanese kinbaku, nor of American-style restraints. Incidentally, Chinese ties tend to be very dangerous as they often constrict vulnerable points including the neck.

Talking about other practices, it is shocking to see that while Westerners have a vast vocabulary of sensual pain games, China takes the concept of “torture” very literally, replicating horrors like the infamous tiger bench and even mock executions like they were fashionable turn-ons. With badly applied lipstick “beatings” marks, but no less chilling for that.

The other aspect I found amazing is also the most evident. Beside the many general, bland “fetish” shoots, three scenarios keep popping up again and again: military and Red Guard abuse of common people, contemporary police interrogations and imprisonments, and historical Imperial-age reenactments. While the photos are clearly staged and the actresses have an amusing habit of maintaining a very professional-looking “no inappropriate touching” attitude, you won’t find much consensual exploration depicted. In this country (and under their laws) doing kink for mutual pleasure is clearly not conceivable. Conversely, abuse of power and the thrashing of human rights are considered normal.

The helpful tags above every photo are equally fascinating. Probably to differentiate the site from illegal pornography they are very keen of pointing out that all the pictures are ‘cosplay’ or ‘recreeations’, but sometimes they manage to turn a banal photo into a nightmare. The bored girl in the picture above, in example, is explained to be just another victim of a common wartime mode of execution where people was simply left half-buried to die. Thanks for the note, buddy.

I don’t think Chinakunbang will ever become my fap shop of choice, but as a cultural phenomenon, I find it incredibly interesting. Who knows what they think of ayzad.com in Beijing…

This article has been republished with permission from Ayzad

Please visit Ayzad’s website to view the original post and more of Ayzad’s works.

Photocredit: Chinakunbang.com
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May 22, 2015