Shades After 055
Just wanted to clear something up- while Raven is Chris’ friend, she is also a professional domme. This is something that I wanted to imply more than state, but when Anwar mentioned it in the previous page I noticed a lot of people in the comments calling it an insult.
Pro dommes are a very hot topic in BDSM and what tends to get the most media coverage. I have mixed feelings about the subject myself, so I included it not to judge, but to just bring it up and start a conversation about it. On the one hand, these women are doing something they love and that’s fantastic, on the other hand, why are there so few women in the kink scene that they’re in such high demand? And what concrete steps can we take to make the scene a better place for women?
I wish I could write a story about the fetish scene being a beautiful place of acceptance and love, and in some ways it’s great, but other times it’s about as fucked up as the real world.
Chrissss <3 :( :( you're making my heart hurt.
Chris looks like a vampire :F
OH. Knowing that about Raven clears up A LOT. I thought it was Anwar being ignorant and a dick about the kink scene, but knowing that Chris DOES usually pay women to domme him changes that a lot. (Not because Chris is somehow in the wrong, but because ‘War wasnn”t just leaping to the most hurtful assumption possible and flinging it into Chris’s face.) As it is, by this stage… I’m honestly a little proud of ‘War. This is in contrast to his previous conflict resolution, which we’ve seen is that he barely possesses it. But here he is, realising he’s in ‘say stupid things without thinking’ mode and leaving the argument, then once he’s thought about it carefully, coming to talk to Chris and establish clear boundaries in a mature conversation.
^ Agreed, it helps a lot that it isn’t just a random insult/assumption, which it seemed like in the initial outburst. And I’m proud of him for thinking things through and talking about things too, even if the initial outburst was a little out of line he took time to step back and calm down and then talk about these things like a normal person. (:
Chris you poor babe, you shouldn’t feel like you have to pay someone to like you when you have your boyfriend who thinks you’re great as is.
Honestly, I don’t think that pro dommes are in such a high demand because there are so few women in the kink scene. Much in the way that some people are always going to be willing to pay for sex, strippers, etc… likewise, some are going to be willing to pay for a domme. It’s, in large part, because they don’t have to build the relationship that would otherwise be necessary. Relationships come with their own “costs” after all and for some people, it’s just much simpler to put a price tag on their sexual needs (be it porn, strippers, prostitutes or pro Dom/dommes.) That having been said, another reason why these women are in demand is that a lot of what they do is either illegal or in a gray area of the law that puts them at high risk legal complications. At least in the US, what a pro Dom/domme is allowed to do varies by state and there are many states where it’s frowned upon enough that even if it’s not technically illegal, they’re often harassed by police and arrested.
Interesting point! I guess the question is if that’s the case, why aren’t pro male doms a much bigger thing?
My experience in the scene has been that it’s pretty heteronormative. I don’t just mean that it favors or privileges different-sex couples (that too, but I live in San Francisco where it’s less pronounced) but that traditional gender roles are followed – men dominate, women submit. Obviously it’s not universal, and there are men who bottom and women who top (and same-sex couples obviously subvert that dynamic) but they’re the exception rather than the rule. It means that people who enjoy being topped by women have to look pretty hard to get what they want, or they can go to a professional domme and save a lot of time and effort. Male tops are a dime a dozen; there’s no need to pay for one. (As someone who prefers bottoming to women, I’d pay a modest fee to get male tops to leave me alone, honestly.)
For the same reason male sex workers are extremely undervalued. Most people identify as straight and women are taught that they’re not supposed to be sexual creatures, while men are taught to define themselves by their sexuality. While we here know better and know that women enjoy sex just as much as men and that neither should be praised or shamed for being sexual (except of course in the context of a consensual negotiated kink), those social constructs mean that there is an abundance of men in sexually driven circles, while women are less inclined.
If I had to guess, male ProDoms are also less likely to face legal charges than female ones thanks to those same social constructs. If men are praised for the notches in their belts, the ones who manage to get people to pay for it must be “gods among men” or some similar tripe.
I don’t usually comment on here (as in haven’t ever, although I’ve always skimmed through the comments) but I kind of feel a small need to toss my two cents in on this one.
I think the thing with pro domme’s might be a bit about the payment but also about the slight rarity of domme’s in the scene. There’s an abundance of male Dom’s, and quite a lot of female subs running around, but it’s not quite as common (at least in my experience) to run into Dommes. Most of the women in the scene seem to lean towards the submissive side of things, which sort of does leave the dommes as an in-demand thing, and combine that with the somewhat common stigma a lot of men have about submitting to begin with, and you run into the situation that it’s ‘easier’ for them to pay and not have to worry about rejection than open up to someone on a more personal level to build that relationship.
This, and also skill level. Ideally, someone offering a professional service will know how to hurt people* in a way that doesn’t put them in any actual physical danger or cause long term injury. This is especially important for folks who are into stuff like breath play, where an inexperienced person could accidentally collapse your trachea or something equally horrible that could result in brain damage or death. For the kind of activities that ought be subtitled with “Do Not Attempt Without an Experienced Spotter”, a pro domme can provide a needed safety net as well as a sense of security for someone who may be willing but hesitant. And also, experience is sexy :)
*Not all BDSM activity involves pain, but a lot does involve some degree of physical discomfort bordering on the cusp of pain. Just clarifyin’.
agh, poor Chris, he looks like he’d been crying while Anwar was getting his head together… Love the details in the first two panels, especially Chris’s eyes.
Ugh, just take the damn gift and stop being such a dramaface. Chris is an honest person, you’d think there’d be some trust already. Couples gives each other gifts, right?
Couples definitely give each other gifts, but sometimes one or the other partner has emotional background that puts that gift in a different light than the giving partner intended.
Say, for instance, a couple both enjoy playing video games. One has a Nintendo DS-XL, while the other doesn’t. The one with the DS finds out a cool, limited-run version of the DS is coming out with extra art on the case. Partner with the DS decides they want the special/new DS and can afford it without trading in their old one, so they decide to give their old one to their partner because receiving partner doesn’t have one and giving partner wants to share the thing they both enjoy.
It’s entirely possible the receiving partner will be fine and happy with this. On the other hand, the receiving partner may have grown up poor/had a DS once but had to sell it to pay rent/had previous relationships where a partner would give things with the expectation of compensation/had family who used gifts for emotional blackmail/any number of things. Feeling uncomfortable with expensive gifts very rarely has any basis in logic; it’s often a gut reaction based in previous experiences.
Anwar has a different kind of emotional thing going on here that seems to be largely based on him possibly internalizing others’ perceptions. Trust levels with Chris don’t even enter into it. He did, thankfully, realize he had a knee-jerk reaction and is now trying to come up with something that will help them avoid this kind of situation in the future. Poor Chris is probably a combination of mortified that ‘War might think that way about receiving a gift and angry/annoyed with himself that he fell back on his “pay people to like me” habit without even realizing he was doing it.
Wow. Oops. Long rant got long. tl;dr: Yeah, couple give gifts. Not all members of a couple may have positive reactions to gifts due to any number of emotional reasons.
Oh, Chris :(
Part of the reason paid dommes are more popular is because the act of paying is one more sign of subservience. There’s still an image of man=breadwinner floating around, and voluntarily turning money over to a domme supports the symbolism of giving her control.
I think it is more likely that the reason why there are more paid dommes are that there are more men who are willing and able to pay. Men in general have more disposable income. I disagree that the act of paying is an act of subservicence it is more of a demonstration of who ultimatly has the resources and therefor the power. It is also a comfortable measure of distance between two people that makes them able to think about it as a transaction instead of a mutual interaction.
In short, men pay because they can and because they want the convenience.
Anwar said some shitty things before running into the bathroom. He needs to apologize for that. He’s doing a very smart thing now, expressing that he needs Chris to be more communicative before getting Anwar a gift.
Good job, Anwar. You’re establishing boundaries. That’s good.
But Chris is now being passively self-deprecating. He’s still upset about what Anwar yelled at him before retreating to the bathroom. Chris may also be projecting some resentment of his ex wife onto Chris, too. Chris ought to be direct about his hurt feelings and allow Anwar to apologize properly for his misconduct.
*Chris may also be projecting some resentment of his ex-wife onto Anwar, too.
Fixed.
I find the emphasis on the fetish scene sort of weird? I’m kinky. I’ve never been to any ‘scene’ thing anywhere. I’m aware of it sure, all the books I read that helped me figure out my sexuality were brimming with information about ‘the scene’. It’s given me an image of the scene in different countries and time periods and a sort of bizarre over view of changing etiquette within bdsm. But I wonder how relevant it is.
Discussions of bdsm always concentrate on the scene and I’m pretty sure I’m not alone in…….muddling it through with my partners instead. Hell with the information now freely available on the internet and the internet making it easier to make initial contact with people of similar tastes I wonder whether it’s relevance could be waning? It seems a little like……viewing homosexuality entirely through gay bars. And I think it sort of helps ‘other’ us a little, concentrating solely on the scene. It gives the impression our sexuality is always……semi public, I guess? Like it’s all conducted out in the open so vanilla people can freely judge how weird us pervs are. The focus is on clubs, orgies, one night stands, settings society finds easier to judge and dismiss. A sort of undercurrent of ‘if you like this sex is possible but a relationship isn’t.’
I think you’ve summed up some of my experience. I’ve never met partners through gay bars or the kink scene, it’s just been a happy coincidence. I’ve actually found both scenes to be a bit *boring* in a weird way- I want to date people who have my interests (geekery, comics, general passion for learning and life) AND are compatible in other ways.
Former pro domme here.
I thought the biggest reason why pro dommes are in high demand was obvious – it’s not that the “kink scene” lacks women, but that there are more men with a desire to submit to women than women who like to (or – and this is where change could happen – are confident enough to) dominate men. Hell, not even pro dommes are necessarily dominant – it’s a JOB after all.
Another reason is also pretty obvious: Men are generally more willing to pay for sexy stuff, so it should be no surprise that this applies to kinky sexy stuff, too. In fact, I got the impression that many of my customers weren’t even particularly submissive, but they a) had a fetish that they didn’t trust anyone else with, b) had concerns about regular prostitutes not doing their job voluntarily and felt on the more ethical side with a pro domme, c) simply enjoyed confident and active women.
So RE: “making the kink scene a better place for women”. I agree with Nestor above that things don’t need to happen via a “scene”, the issue is more general than that. And it’s not about making the scene/relationships/society better for women, but for men as well. It made me sad to see so many men paying me even though they were obviously married and most likely would have preferred to do such things with their wife instead, but they either feared being judged or they’d already been turned down (if, of course, it really just wasn’t something she could do, but she’d let him do it with someone else then that’s cool).
Thank you for commenting- I appreciate you chipping in! Sadness about men not being able to express their desires properly is something I’m trying to get across in Chris’ character, it’s covered a bit more later but you’re right that there’s a lot of stigma there.