Are there ANY others...?

Ah, thank you Georgie! You are one of a very small group of people on these boards whom I can always count on to make sense!



Woman is the Earth and Man is the Sky.

I'm not at all offended, Terry; you can't help the way you feel any more than I can help the way I do. You raise several important points in your post, and I'll try to answer the way I feel about them. It is, of course, only my opinion; we all have different feelings and you have to do what is right for you, no matter what some silly bitch on an internet message board says!


"But people rarely think better or worse for anyone by what they like to eat. It's not quite the same with sexuality...I'm afraid, much as I hate to admit it, there is an implied judgement involved...I don't really like topping men (although I have experimented with it). But I do respect a good male masochist."

You're exactly right, most people think sexual preferences are different from food preferences, though both derive from the same mysterious psychic processes that make us individuals. People act as though my aversion to greens is some childish "choice" I can "just get over", whereas of course it is not. I try to eat lesser "greens" fairly often (in fact I tried cabbage again last night), to no avail. No matter how well-disguised, the repulsive taste comes through and I start to feel sick. Spinach is the worst, though; I can't even smell it without losing my appetite.

I think part of my problem with male subs is that I do NOT respect them, at least not sexually. I still respect them as human beings, but I would never let a man whom I had seen submit sexually have me afterward. I feel being penetrated by a man is intrinsically submissive, and I just can't submit to a man who has in turn submitted to others. This may derive from the form my own submission takes. I have an extremely strong personality; my presence is so strong people turn to look when I enter a room, and I can hold my own against several others in a confrontation all at once. Back when I used to do bachelor parties, I felt completely comfortable and in control of the situation while alone and naked in a room with a dozen fully-dressed men. This strength serves me well in business, but as you can well imagine is a bit of an obstacle in sex. If a man acts submissively toward me I have no desire to mate with him; I'll snarl and snap like a cat out of season if he tries it. If a man is at least vanilla I can have vanilla sex with him, but I can't fully submit to a man unless he is very strong indeed. And I can't do anything at all with male subs, though like you I have tried.

"For example, Bob Flanagan, the performance artist who made a movie about his life called Sick, bills himself as "Super M" (complete with Superman cape). He was a super M, too."

That's one of the things about male subs I really hate, actually. As children we all have the "all attention is good attention" thing, but most women outgrow that. Many men, unfortunately, never do. "Look at me! Look at me!" they gleefully shout from the stage, screen or pulpit as they make absolute and utter fools of themselves. As far as I'm concerned politicians, TV preachers, drag queens, flamboyant rockers and guys who appear on reality TV shows are all driven by the same motive: To be the center of attention, even if it is bad attention. And the male subs I've dealt with are no exception; they want to be the center of sexual attention, sometimes even to the point of making a public exhibition of themselves. I'm sorry, but no. I am a private person; it's hard for me to discuss personal sexual details in even as anonymous a forum as this one, and in real life I would NEVER talk about my husband tying me up in front of strangers. Making a spectacle of oneself is just not at all appealing to me. Good attention, yes; bad attention, definitely NOT.


Then there's the philosophical angle. Woman was designed to attract man; her body is the altar on which the sacrament of sex is performed, the center of attention of the sexual act. Even porn recognizes this, which is why the camera centers on the female even at the point of ejaculation. It's why people of BOTH sexes are attracted to pictures of beautiful women. It's why the stereotypical question a man is asked of a new relationship is, "Do you love her?", while a woman is asked "Does he love you?" As is discussed in the forewords to both Story of O and The Image, the submissive is the center of sexual attention in a D/s relationship; it is HER feelings and experience that are of paramount importance, HER reactions that are the focus of BOTH participants' actions. When the submissive is a female, it goes right along with the natural sexual focus on the female. But if the sub is a male, the focus on him runs counter to the normal sexual focus on the woman. If role reversal is your thing, you're welcome to that, but I personally cannot handle it, any more than I could have sex with a cross-dresser.


Woman is the Earth and Man is the Sky.