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kink philosophy

What do you really mean when you ask for ownership?

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Who will own me?

Seeking ownership!

Long-term only.

Own me. Devour me. Collar me. Keep me.

Who will own me?

Who will own me?

Do you hear the longing in it? The way these words slip into my inbox full of weight, full of truths just simmering under the surface. Questions under the question. Longing that has attached itself to a single word.

Ownership.

When subs ask about it early in conversation, there is almost always something else behind the words.

It’s not simply: will you own me? Not really.

It’s this: am I safe?

Am I safe to surrender? Will you still be here when I show you the messy parts, the scary parts, the shameful parts? Will you stay when I let go?

Ownership doesn’t really promise those things, just like marriage or commitments in the vanilla world don’t and can’t either. At the end of the day it’s trust and connection that create that safety.

But.

But the request for ownership tells me something about the asker. Tells me something about what they need. What they fear. And what makes them feel safe.

Will you still be here when I show you my whole, real, messy self? This is usually the real question they’re asking and the one I try to focus on instead of ownership itself.

The reverse is also true.

When a sub comes to me and says “I never want ownership.” When they skitter at the mention of it. There’s something behind that too. It’s often the same question but with a different anxiety at its helm:

Am I safe?

This time: Am I safe to leave? Will you promise not to trap me? Will you promise not to hold me down? If I get up the courage to say that I’m quitting, will you let me go?

These are usually the subs who have been manipulated, blackmailed, or otherwise non-consentually harmed in dynamics before. And so what they need to know is this: will you let me leave without a fight?

Of course, these are not the only reasons that people ask these questions. There are those who fetishize ownership itself. There are those who want to use lack of commitment as an excuse for lack of care. There are more than two ways to feel about this.

But for most of the people in my DMs, these two requests for psychological safety ring deeply true.

They are often there because my words made them feel seen. And before we take another step they need a slice of reassurance:

Am I safe?

To stay. To go. To be authentic.

The label is nearly never the point this early on in a connection. The connection itself is.

teases

Here, little bunny, come closer

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When I was young, on a camping trip near a clay cliff-ringed lake, I stumbled upon a field of wild grasses full of wild bunnies. And after a moment of awe and thrill, I knew what I wanted:

I was going to coax one of these wild rabbits into my arms.

Some real Snow White shit, as one sub told me.

First, I made my way back to the campsite for a box of cereal. Then, I retraced my steps. And I settled in on my belly in that bug-buzzing field with my box of cereal and my plan.

I tossed some cereal to the nearest bunny, and I waited.

It took it.

And so began a long, slow dance. Cereal tossed to the nearest bunnies as they took each piece, considered each hop toward me, got used to me as part of the landscape and as a source of something delicious.

I don’t remember how long it took, only that I was committed.

To bringing that bunny ever closer. Until it let me pet it. So soft, so sweet. And then let me lift it into my arms.

However long it took, I reached that goal. I lifted that little fuzzbucket into my arms and fed it as much cereal as it could handle. And it was happy to rest there with me. To be warm and safe and full bellied until I released it back into the field with its fellows.

I told a sub this story and asked him how it made him feel.

Hunted, he said.

In a good way, he said.

And now I tell you.

When you see me say here kitty, kitty, kitty, or here, little bunny, know that I am patient. That I am waiting. That there are treats here and a warm pair of arms. That you are hunted, but that being caught feels oh so very good.

And when I say caught, I mean that you will willingly take the tossed treat, then the next one, then the next one, until you are sleepy and have a full belly and slip lightly into my arms.

And oh how it feels better here, safe and held and caught.

Take whatever time you need, bunny. The truth is you’re already mine. And all it takes to feel the relief of it is the barest hint of a step. The simple words, I’m yours.

Don’t be surprised when I answer: I know.

findom, kink philosophy

Let’s talk about self-sabotage in findom

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It starts with a spark, a twitch, a catch in your breath. She’s beautiful. She’s powerful. She’s already got you figured out and you just know it.

That’s the domme you want to serve, the domme you want to wrap you tight around her perfectly manicured finger.

And so you reach out. You hope. You send a message. You send age verification. But when it comes to your money, you hold back. It’s a pastry or a coffee and then—nothing more.

Then you wait.

I’ll send more when she impresses me, when she seduces me, when she takes over my mind, you tell yourself.

Inevitably, she never does.

Because what you don’t realize is that you’ve already put a wall between yourself and that hope.

By asking her to give and prove and invest in you without you investing in her, you’ve clung to your power instead of releasing it.

You’ve set her up to chase, to work, to beg (ew). And either she won’t because most dommes won’t. That’s not what we do. It’s not the power structure we crave, the kinds of connections we’re seeking here.

Or she will chase and beg and it doesn’t work. Because that’s not actually what you want, kitten—to turn her into someone courting your favor. You haven’t set yourself up for surrender. You have asked her to submit to you instead of the other way around.

And so you ruin your fantasy before it begins. Because of that pesky little asshole:

Fear.

One of the disservices culture offers to every person raised as a man is this: it plants in you a fear of being taken advantage of by women.

(Now, depending who you are, you might be in the findom or femdom space because you want to be taken advantage of – and hi cuties, adore you, not talking to you in this one. Y’all are already on board. But for the others, the skittish little kittens stepping into the space scared…)

You are scared of the scams, of the ripoffs, but way more than that scared of the vulnerability. Scared that if you open up, give freely of your time, your energy, your care, your truths, you will end up rejected.

That’s really what you’re scared of, isn’t it? Not even being scammed. Being rejected by a real person you admire and want.

And so you enter spaces holding back, being stingy with your money, your time, your care, your emotions—and you’re shocked when that inspires stinginess in the person you’re interacting with. When it never works.

The reality is that when you are generous—truly generous—it frees up the women in your life (be that personal connections or dommes) to be generous with you.

In other words: how you enter a dynamic either creates an atmosphere of generosity or one of stinginess. Either your domme knows from the start that she is treasured, you see her time and presence as valuable and she can trust that you will keep showing up with generosity and care—or she knows that she will have to draw every coffee send from you painstakingly.

And kittens, nobody wants the latter when they can have the former. Dommes who are successful in this space and in their vanilla careers aren’t going to chase you around for scraps. We aren’t going to trade in our power for the day just because maybe you’ll turn out to be better than this later.

For those interested in feminization or simply deconstructing the ways that society has limited you as a man, this is me ushering you into the sisterhood by telling you our secret:

Generosity is how women relate to each other.

We show up emotionally, physically, intellectually, financially. We bring each other food when we’re sick or sad. We fight over who pays for each other’s coffee. We show up planning to be generous and we are often met with generosity in return.

This takes courage. It takes a willingness to be the one who is sometimes overgenerous. It takes an acceptance that sometimes you will be generous with a person you never see again or never get anything from—and actually that’s beautiful. I’ve paid the rent of strangers on GoFundMe before just for the feeling it gives me when I think of that person checking their email and finding that stress has evaporated from their life.

This is what I personally mean when I say I don’t want findom to be transactional—not that it shouldn’t include money (lol to everyone who has suggested that; are you lost, bro?) but that you should come in with generosity, care, and admiration from the start. Show up giving. Show up sacrificing. Show up not expecting anything in return—even as you hope for connection to blossom.

That is how you set yourself up for real success in a dynamic. Any dynamic. In BDSM and in life.

This is how you make me want to surprise you with more care and play and space than you ever expected from me.

To get there, you’ll need to be brave enough to rip entitlement out by its roots, to give with only the expectation of how it will make you feel, not what you will get for it.

findom

On weaponizing kink to better yourself

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“I want to weaponize my kink against myself to become a better person.”

It was an early message from someone I’ve been playing with for a few weeks now. He knew he was into findom, feet, girls who are just a little mean to him. And in the past it’d just been another thing that he felt bad about, controlled by. But what if—what if—he could use the reward system his brain responded to to move toward his goals?

He brought his hopes to me like an offering, laid them at my feet.

He wasn’t the first and already wasn’t the last. And I fucking love it.

I love it because it’s how humans work. We seek rewards. We want to feel good. And when we can tie those rewards, that good feeling, to doing good—we do good. Be that good getting in shape, tackling challenging problems, caring for those around us, honing skills, or something else entirely.

Growing up, Pizza Hut had a program called Book It! Kids 6th grade and under could get free pizza (huge kid reward – huge me now reward, if I’m honest) for meeting reading goals. Which meant more reading. Which meant more pizza. Win, win, win, win.

I don’t know about you, but the kids in my circles did way more summer reading when there was pizza involved.

Same logic behind getting a lollypop after getting a shot, treating yourself at your favorite pastry place after doing a thing you were avoiding, promising ourselves that once we hit x milestone, we get y thing we’ve been waiting for.

Obviously, it also works with kink. I had a sub tell me it would take him three days to clear out his workout area in the basement. Alright, I said. You can’t orgasm until it’s cleaned—and once it’s clean, I’ll send you something special.

You want to know how fast that man cleaned out his workout space?

Take that three days and make it three hours. And three hours of me relentlessly teasing him and trying to slow him down.

In short: we gamified a task he needed to do. We added challenges, rewards, and a multiplayer element with me trying to slow his progress and teasing him about the pain and suffering my slow-downs were going to cause him.

And the reason we could do that was because we used his desire for kink to move him toward a goal.

I also love this approach because it gives us space to love our kinks. Instead of something taking our time, holding us back, or keeping us trapped in a shame spiral, they become an active part of bettering ourselves.

Think about how healing that is. Taking a part of your authenticity (because your kinks are part of your authenticity) and embracing it instead of trying to hide it or run from it or hate it.

In the same way that I love sweets and I could just beat myself up for that in a society that is obsessed with being anti-sugar and pro-diet culture (ew)—instead I can use sweets to motivate myself. And I can prioritize sweets that leave me feeling really satisfied and delighted (instead of hiding in a corner and stuffing mediocre candy in my mouth in shame, I take the time to make my favorite cookies or walk to the good pastry shop).

In that same way, why can’t we all use our kinks to motivate and then give ourselves real space to enjoy and revel in them? Not as something we sneak away in shame to do real quick—a hate-jerk in a dark alley—but as a treat we’ve earned, the best version of the thing, a playful moment of escape from the mundane, a pop of sugar on the tongue.

That’s it. That’s what I’m getting at here.

A pop of sugar on the tongue.

A twitch in the pants.

The orgasm you’ve been craving.

The bright, heady feeling of being seen.

And all that on the heels of the satisfaction of a goal met, a job well done, a step toward being the human you want to be.

findom

Our cultural ideas of dominance are boring

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This summer, I rescued a kitten from the undercarriage of a car. She was screaming for her mother and it brought many of us running—people on the street, neighbors with open windows, shopkeepers with open doors.

All of us wanted to save the kitten. To coax her from her dangerous hiding spot, guide her safely off the road, and make sure she was okay.

Myself and the other women on the scene were on our bellies partway under the car, coaxing kitten with treats and chicken, kitten noises playing on our phones. Come out, little baby. It’s nice out here, with treats and friends.

The men in the group—equally well-meaning—had a distinctly different approach. Without any real discussion between them, they all began to shake the car and shout. The theory: we can scare the kitten out and into our arms.

Well-meaning as they were, I think you see where this is going: it didn’t work. The terrified kitten retreated farther into the car’s undercarriage and would not come out.

I sent everyone away and promised I would come back for kitten in a few hours when she was calm again. And I did: early the next morning with little traffic and almost no people on the streets, I played kitten noises and tempted her with chicken and eventually she came close enough for me to grab.

I tell this story because it’s a tiny example of a larger societal pattern. Women are socialized to care and collaborate and de-escalate. Men are socialized to solve problems with force. That force can be caring and well-intentioned and it is still force.

And because our culture (it should go without saying, but allow me to say it anyway: wrongly) associates masculinity with dominance and dominance with violence, even here in kink spaces, dominance is so often seen as a violent act.

Outside the bedroom, we “dominate” by making war. We “dominate” by enforcing our will. We “dominate” through physical overpowerment.

This so-called dominance is “because I said so,” and it is “don’t question me,” and it is ultimately an act of fear. Authoritarian government. Authoritarian parent. Boss dangling unemployment over your head.

Then it slips into BDSM, this violent idea of what dominance is. It’s “shut up and send, piggy,” in the first conversation. It’s the “dom” men in my DMs telling me their violent fantasies of me forcing them to submit.

And god, how boring, how narrow this vision is.

It leaves behind the reality that peaceful protests have dominated authoritarians right out of power (see: Nepal, see: Ukraine, see: the Singing Revolution). It leaves behind the utter dominance of a nurturing mother. It discards the electric power of the small to defeat the large, of good ideas to defeat violent ones, of the underdog we all are rooting for. Of the quiet power we submit to because we long to do so.

I am not interested in being your Stalin, your Napoleon, your because-I-said-so mediocre dad.

I am interested in the same thing I wanted for that kitten: to overpower her fears and take her through the hard feelings into the safer place.

I am interested in your surrender as healing, as trust, as a gift given freely.

I am interested in breaking down your ego because it’s in your fucking way.

I am interested in you surrendering because of who I am, not what you fear I’ll do if you don’t.

You put yourself in my hands because they are strong and steady. You show your vulnerable parts because you know I won’t look away. You wrap yourself around my finger because it is safe there, warm, full of purpose. You serve and send because you admire and respect and long.

I am not interested in society’s broken ideas of dominance. The way it’s been gendered and narrowed into a violent box.

(I’m not saying there is no violence in D/s. There very obviously is. But you don’t serve because you fear it. You serve because you crave it or because you want to find your limits near it or because you want me to stand with you through it.)

So come out, kitten. Come to me through the dark. Come to me because your trust is larger than your fear of me. I am interested in leaving you safer than I found you. Less fleas. Less scrawniness. Less fear of the darkness, the unknown. A knowledge that you can do the brave thing and what you find there in the scary place is rest. Authenticity.

Yourself.

What you find there is yourself.

kink philosophy

Maybe if y’all stopped judging each other, you’d also stop judging yourselves

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Gather round, kittens. We need to have another talk.

This time about some sub-on-sub crime.

Yep, that’s right. I see y’all out there, participating in the same bullshit society forces on submissive men. Shaming each other. Shaming yourselves. And then partitioning submission into tinier and tinier boxes.

Those other guys aren’t really submissive, I see some of y’all arguing. Because they get pleasure from humiliation or because they shy away from shame or because they quit and come back.

Most subs aren’t as good-looking as me, some of y’all (audacious as hell) DM me.

Probably some loser in his mom’s basement.

Probably can’t get girls.

Probably society was right.

Excuse the hell out of me, but fuck that shit sixty-three ways to Sunday. Fuck it when society forces it on you. Fuck it when we dommes uphold it. And fuck it all to hell when y’all put it on each other.

Have you thought about what you are doing to your own soul when you drip with disdain toward other submissive men? Have you thought about how much that knife you aimed at their heart is headed straight toward yours?

When you say you aren’t like other submissive men, you are implicitly agreeing with every stupid societal trope that says submissive men are less. Are worse. Are ugly. Are undesirable.

And within this kink, there is space for you to explore those feelings, that kind of rejection, those humiliations—safely, consensually—if that’s your thing. But using those beliefs to rip each other’s self esteem to shreds in public spaces and domme DMs isn’t consensual kink. It’s nonconsensual cruelty. It’s boring, run-of-the-mill unexamined participation in the narrow categories society loves to box us all into.

If there is anyone who should be able to stan submissive men, it’s a submissive man.

Reminder: submissive men come in all shapes and sizes and levels of success with women and in life. Reminder: lots of people live in mom’s basement and that’s fucking fine. Mind your business. Reminder: “getting girls” is a not a measure of your worth as a human being and we’re people, not things you “get.” Reminder: submission looks different for different people, and you don’t own the definition.

In short: maybe if you stop judging the hell out of Dave, you can stop judging the hell out of yourself too. And then we can bid farewell to u/deleted for good and you can just go ahead and live your truth.

findom

On showing you’re safe vs. being safe

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“How do I let people know that I’m safe?”

It was the topic of a big discussion in my circles awhile back. How can men signal to women that they are safe? How can strangers signal to strangers that I’m a person who will help if you are in trouble? How can I communicate that you can tell me things, trust me with things?

People were looking for symbols, secret passwords, a rainbow flag to pin on their backpack—so to speak. Like when queerness was underground but you could find each other by saying you were a friend of Dorothy. A shortcut to flag how safe you are.

I understand the conversation well, the desire for those around you to know you are safe. But I think we’re all asking the wrong question here.

It’s not: how can I let people know I’m safe?

It’s: how can I be safe?

How can I—every day—do the work to become a safer person?

Because the truth is that you don’t have to scream it from the mountaintops. You don’t need the rainbow flag pin. You don’t need a secret password.

Can symbols help? Sure. Do they sometimes act as shorthand that can identify you to people who are ideologically aligned (or misaligned)? Certainly.

But the real work isn’t flagging your safety to others. The real work is recognizing that no matter how wonderful your intentions are in the world, it takes work to be safe (in any context).

Safe isn’t a pin, a label, or even an intention. It’s how you show up every day in your actions.

People don’t feel I’m safe because I say that I am. They feel I’m safe because they saw me opening my home to the community during the power outage across all of Portugal, Spain, and parts of France in the early summer—feeding everyone from the backyard grill because no power means no cooking for most in the city.

People don’t feel I’m safe because I bought the right t-shirt, wrote the right line in my bio. They feel I’m safe because they were at the table with me when someone started joking about violating another person’s consent and I was the one who said “hold on a second.”

Safety is not passive. It’s active. It takes intentional self-education and care. And it’s a skill cultivated over time.

So let’s turn the question on its head. It’s not how do I prove I’m safe or how do I let others know?

It’s how do I become safer every day in a real, tangible sense?

And as you do that, the result is this: you don’t have to tell anyone anything. They feel safe because you show up as you, as the person who cares about being safe.

kink philosophy

I’m not here to overpower you; I’m here to overpower your fears

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Lean in close, kittens, and let’s have a chat.

Because we need to talk about power. And desire. And the truth behind a truth.

I see you there, longing to be devoured. Overtaken. Overpowered.

I see the relief on your face when you think I might. The hope that I could.

Overpower you. Overtake you. Devour you.

That is your truth. Your longing.

And this is the truth underneath it:

I’m not here to overpower you, kitten. I do not bend you to my will by forcing something inside you. I am not the demon slipping under your skin so you can abdicate responsibility.

I am here, instead, to overpower your fears.

I invite you into the darkness, your darkness, and because I’m there, you follow.

I transform the darkness into desire. I rip from it the judgement.

I am shield and stone and safety net. You walk the tightrope because you believe I will catch you if you fall.

You do not follow because I force you. You follow because deep down you want to and you trust me to light a candle, take your hand, and show you that the fifty-foot demon is survivable. That you were always stronger than you thought.

When you ask if I’m going to make you cage for longer than you’ve ever caged before. When you ask for humiliation, for me to speak your deepest fears aloud. When you have been talking around on wounds that healed wrong and I re-open them so they can heal properly this time.

This is not me overpowering you, kitten. This is what you longed for the whole time. And what you needed was someone bigger than your fears.

kink philosophy

Do you serve out of love–or fear?

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Our society has a hard-on for the idea of men leaving a legacy. Being remembered. Chasing immortality.

You see it in the tech bros doing their extreme all-meat diets, drinking the literal blood of their sons to stay young (yes, that’s a thing), hustling so much that they break the entire culture in an effort to matter.

It doesn’t seem to come from a place of joy. Not building something because you love it, because you want it to change your world in some way—but building because you desperately need to matter. Need to be remembered. Need to be important.

In other words: fear.

It comes from fear.

Fear that they are not enough on their own.

Fear that they really are meaningless.

Fear of being forgotten. Unloved. Disconnected.

Sometimes I see the echoes of this anxiety in D/s. A desperation to serve that comes from that same dark, anxious place:

Do I matter?

Do I have purpose?

This can manifest in the search for a domme, all anxious energy and a terrible fear that it won’t work. It can keep you from settling in to a dynamic and trying. At the first hint of challenge or reality, you want to move on because the magic you were looking for was a bolt from the blue, a lightning strike.

Purpose! Sudden and complete.

And for a lot of the best and longest-lasting dynamics, there is a slower build than that. A quiet progression. Built not on fear but on love.

I don’t mean romantic love. I mean that instead of being driven by the fear of not being enough, the fear of being meaningless, the fear of being unlovable—and a terrible need to prove those fears untrue—a dynamic can be driven by hope and admiration for another person and a slow-building trust that you can go this deep with them. That you can find yourself in the dynamic. That you can matter.

That love is for yourself. For your authenticity. And for your domme—because even without a romantic component, service is love. Because love is action. Love is care.

What we learn in moments of real connection is that we don’t need to matter to the whole world. We need to matter to a tiny slice of it. As our complete and authentic selves.

Which is why these kink relationships often have deep meaning beyond the sexy bits. For so many in this space (especially subs raised as men), a domme is the only person who sees that secret part of them.

And sometimes sessions and service are requests for the answer to that heart-heavy question:

Do I matter?

Am I enough?

Which means it’s vital for us as dommes to answer that question with a yes in our actions. This means aftercare. It means showing up after you have seen that secret part and saying I’m fucking proud of you or I want you to stay or let’s do it again, bitch. It means consistency. It means seeing and not running away.

And for subs, if this is the dynamic you crave, it means being brave. It means being honest with dommes as you build trust. It means working on entering into what you hope will be a long-term dynamic with a readiness to face the hard emotions instead of running from them. It means prioritizing care over fear. It means prioritizing the opinions of yourself and the person who truly sees you over the rest of our extremely dumb society.


It means facing the hard emotions along the way and finding the part of yourself that serves from a place of care, admiration, and connection.

And the big secret is this: that’s when the fear recedes. That’s when you stop caring about some big bad legacy, stop fearing that you are not enough, and find instead that you are precisely where you want to be.

kink philosophy

You’re at a crossroads. Don’t set up camp there.

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Oh hey there, nervous kitten. Let’s sit down and have a chat.

Because I see that shame spiral you’re stuck in. And damn it looks nasty. You’re fucking tired, aren’t you? Fucking desperate. Because no matter how much you chase the thing your soul is craving, it never seems to work.

For some of you, that’s because you’ve hit a crossroads and you’re paralyzed with indecision about where to go.

One side leads to your authentic self. Which sounds like a pretty fucking easy choice. Yes, please and thank you.

Except the part where you aren’t sure you like that person. Where you haven’t reconciled with them. Where you see the ways that taking that path would make you subject to societal ridicule.

The other path is a path of abstinence. Cutting off that part of yourself that society isn’t thrilled out and pretending it never existed. Keeping it tied up tight and locked in a closet (and not in the fun way).

That sucks a lot too. And your soul knows you really don’t want that path. To have to pretend to be dominant forever and ever. To have to subscribe to a very specific (boring) version of masculinity that isn’t really you. To never know what it would feel like to really sink in, find the edges of that part of yourself, know entirely who you really are.

So here you are, at the crossroads, building yourself a little tent city.

I’m here to say that won’t work either. You’re in fucking quicksand there. Never able to really sink into a dynamic and find yourself. And never able to fit like you want to in Just Vanilla Land either. And so it’s yo-yo time. Back and forth. Shame over what you crave. Shame that you can’t pretend effectively enough to stop craving it.

Ultimately, you are the person who gets to decide if you:

Work (because damn it will be work) toward embracing your kinks as part of your authentic self and actually giving a shit about yourself as a whole person instead of just the parts society finds palatable

Or

Keep hiding parts of yourself, keep wearing a mask and performing a stupid form of masculinity that most women don’t like anyway (notice how in polite society more and more women are opting out of dating men). Choose this route and you get to keep feeling exhausted and shitty about it.

Make no mistake: the society path will keep you in that shitty place and so will camping out halfway. So will scrolling on Reddit and telling dommes you want to submit but then being unwilling to show up for yourself when something is asked of you and running away when the shame hits hard.

It doesn’t move you closer to being the person society is trying to force on you. And it doesn’t move you closer to confidently living as yourself, society be damned.

I’m not saying the first path means living loud and proud as an armpit fetishist with everyone you meet or putting “foot worshipper” on your resume. I’m saying that first path is about meeting your real self and deciding you’re cool with them. Deciding that you like yourself as a whole human being with messy parts and silly parts and exquisitely stupid parts (which we all have, including the vanillas).

Let me also be clear that I understand that shame is part of the kink for many. Shame is a desired feeling in some cases. But it’s also how a lot of subs describe the thing that keeps them from what they want—and it’s to those subs that I am speaking here.

If you want to take that journey, it’s one you’ll need to take with yourself, probably a kink-safe therapist, and a safe domme who can stand consistently with you in that space. But to do that, you have to stop planting that flag at the crossroads.

What you are chasing here is the relief of submission, of being who you are, of being safe to let go. And when you hold back, plant your heels to keep from going down that self-loving path, the person you are cheating out of that relief is yourself.