| 6 Jan 07 "The Story of O" revisited |
| I first read Story of O in 1993 and at the time I didn't really like it
- certainly not its BDSM themes. I could see it was capital-L
Literature, and I'd read enough modern fairy tales and fables to read
between the lines, but to be honest, I was indifferent to it. I reread
it twice over the years with no change in how I felt, although I did
start to notice some astute observations and quotable passages. [more...]
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| 24 Oct 06 "Why men rule: a theory of male dominance" by Steven Goldberg |
| I thought I'd write a short review of
"Why men rule", since I've just finished it. It deals with the unpopular truth in sociology: as Goldberg says "this book attempts to demonstrate and explain the universality (the presence in every society that has ever existed) of three institutions: 1. patriarchy: males occupy the overwhelming numbers of upper hierarchical positions; 2. male attainment, the association of high-status roles - whichever they happen to be in any given society - with males; and 3. male dominance, the association of dominance in [more...]
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| 11 Sep 06 OwnershipFlag.com |
| Today www.OwnershipFlag.com went live, to publicise the
ownership flag and the ownership icons that I
posted about in July. The site includes image files in a wide range of sizes, that can be freely used for commercial or non-commercial purposes.
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| 17 Jul 06 Ownership Icons |
| Today (Sunday) I put a page of ownership icons online on The Slave Register, and added them to the TSR system so people can show them on their web board posts (so far - other places in the system to follow.) I think they might be more generally useful too, since we don't really have symbols for this kind of thing amongst the various flags and signs that BDSM/Leather has acquired. [more...]
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| 26 Feb 06 Themes in Household D/s |
| This is my second draft essay about my personal style of D/s, which I'm calling "Household D/s." Last month I dealt with Roles in HDS, and here I provide a brief overview of some other themes that I keep in mind. [more...]
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| 20 Feb 06 "The economic case for polygamy" |
| An "economic" analysis of
polygyny has appeared on Slate, written by Tim Harford for the FT
earlier this month. He makes the point that polygyny is really a way for wives to get "high status" husbands (ie husbands with access to something that people value - wealth, fame, skill etc), even if it means sharing them: "wives decided they'd prefer one-quarter of a billionaire." This is about the economics of status and desirability, not really about money itself: so it applies to being a film star, or a good father, or [more...]
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| 20 Jan 06 Roles in Household D/s |
| This is the first draft of an essay about Household D/s, which explains how a household is built up with different roles. [more...]
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| 16 Jan 06 Commercial vs Domestic Slavery |
| Discussion of the "slave" in BDSM is heavily influenced by American historical slavery. This is partly due to the prominence of the various US scenes, which have the Old South as part of their national history. The power of the US in vanilla culture also plays a part, with depictions such as "Roots", "Amistad" and "Cold Mountain" all promoting a view of the slave as downtrodden, abused and undervalued. [more...]
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| 2 Oct 05 Zentai-ism and the loss of egocentric emotion |
Sometime i find humility hard, humiliation even harder.
By humiliation i do not mean the verbal humiliation brought about through name calling (i have never been required to endure that.) Nor the embarrassing humiliation of a more physical nature (though i have, on occasions, been required to do that!  ) [more...]
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| 29 Aug 05 The Spirituality of Sado-Masochism (Excerpt) |
| As far as Sado-masochism goes I don't mind admitting that I've struggled at times with calling myself a masochist. But then there have also been times when I've struggled with my bisexuality, my submissiveness and indeed, my desire to Top. I think its true to say that about 95% of the pain I enjoy has to be delivered in a D/s context for it to transform into the hedonistic experience I know its capable of becoming. As a consequence I always feel somewhat reluctant about ranking myself a "true" masochist. [more...]
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