ASH - My True Submissive

 This is dedicated to ASH - My Submissive

To be a submissive is different for everyone. We each have different ideas of what a submissive is, should and might be. 

I meet many different types of submissive in my line of work. Some I will remember for eternity, others not. Some I have enjoyed being Mistress to, others I have not.

I can outline four types of submissive I have come into contact with - all in their own ways unique and interesting.

The Role Play Submissive is just that - They want to play at being a submissive either face to face with a Mistress or online. For a few hours they will "play" the part of a submissive calling Me Mistress in order to fulfil a fantasy they have.

The Sexual Submissive have a kink or fetish they wish to explore. They want and need to be restrained, blindfolded, spanked, flogged, beaten or whatever their fetish is. And once the fetish and sex act is over, they go away happy until the next time.

Then there is the Online Submissive. I first discovered just how many online submissives there were when I joined Twitter. Within this group there are submissives who do genuinely devote their time to one Mistress, there are those who are 'Fans' or active followers of a Mistress. But there are also those who are submissive while in the chat room, write out elaborate serves for the One they serve, vow eternal love and submission to the One but then when they go to another room or another name they're saying the same things to Another. Sometimes, they even have a camera to prove how submissive they are - photos to prove it.

To me, a True Submissive is not easy to find. When you do, it's hard to let them go. These are the submissives I am fond of and eagerly await our meetings. To me, a true submissive serves from his heart, and they don't need a Mistress driving them to do something, they do it willingly, gladly, eagerly.

They have insight and truly care. They see their Mistress's glass as half empty and they fill it, they take care of their Mistress's needs. I have found that True submissives  don't need words of praise showered upon them, it is enough that their Mistress is pleased and comfortable - knowing their Mistress is content  is praise enough. The sparkle in their Mistress's eyes or a touch by the hand of their Mistress is high praise.

Recently, I found one such potential submissive. He had all the qualities to become a perfect true submissive. I call him Ash. He takes what I teach seriously and into his heart. he practices tasks I may have asked of him and endeavours to perfect them. He remembers the rules, the postures and instructions.

He has always chosen to bring me a gift - not because I asked him, but because he wanted to - it is what true submissives do. They think of their Mistress, even at an airport lounge and purchase a little something to see the sparkle in their Mistress's eye. It pleases Me when I know I have a session with Ash, I know it will be, for me, both a spiritual and mental pleasure to have him in the dungeon. In our last session, he informed me that he would probably have to leave at the end of May to return to India as his work would come to an end. This saddened me. For a blinding few seconds, My mind sparked for inspiration as to how I could keep him in the UK - for My own selfish reasons.

A true submissive is difficult to find. I am hoping Ash will find more work in the UK as he serves from his heart. He will do something, willingly, gladly and fervently.

I will purchase him a gift this week - A colour coordinated bra and panty set. I know he will wear them well, even when not asked to.

We need to give up transphobia

March 27, 2013

By: Nico Lang

Trigger warning: Transphobia. A lot of transphobia.

A month ago, my friend Todd Clayton came out as a recovering transphobe in an incisive essay for the Huffington Post entitled “The Queer Community Has to Stop Being Transphobic.” In the piece, Clayton details his own journey on transphobia and inclusion, how a Lana Wachowski speech opened his eyes to the quiet bigotry in his own life. He hadn’t openly attacked trans people or worked against their freedoms. Clayton was transphobic in a lot of the ways our community members are: insensitive and dismissive, not realizing the ways in which trans lives and struggles intersect with our own.

When he asked me to read it, I told him it was a common experience of cisgender people in the community. As someone who came from a similar place as he did, it was my experience. I told Todd that if he ever published it, I would come out with my own story. This is that story. It’s not easy to tell. I’ve been holding onto it for awhile, keeping it secret and safe. But it can’t stay secret any more.

My name is Nico Lang, and I used to be transphobic.

I never thought about myself that way. I thought that my emotions were normal and valid, feeling justified in my passive disgust for trans bodies. The first time I heard about trans people was when my father talked about seeing The Crying Game in the theatre and the way the audience convulsed with shock when the heroine’s “secret” was revealed. My father claimed that people walked out or threw up when confronted with the image of transness or a life that didn’t fit their binaries.

I was a teenager. Binaries were all I knew. Like Patty Hearst, I grew to love my captivity. I identified with my oppressors, working to uphold that marginalization in my own life.

When I met a trans person for the first time, I didn’t think my emotions were hatred, but they had to show on my face. For the purposes of this essay, her name was Megan, and she was one of the oddest characters I’ve ever met, the kind of person you’ll never forget. Megan claimed to be a vampire and drink blood; she also told us stories of being a general’s wife and getting married in Egypt, as if she were a real-life Orlando or Candide. She wanted to believe she led a life that was too big to comprehend.

I thought she was pathetic. Rather than looking at her identity as a natural defence mechanism for a conservative Cincinnati that would always see her as an outsider, I refused to understand her. I didn’t try. My friend told me that Megan had been kicked out of her home and most schools she’d attended. This should have helped me be more compassionate, but my heart couldn’t open to let her in. I still think about her sometimes. I don’t know if she even knows I have anything to be sorry for, but I want to apologize anyway.

Like all hate, I held onto it and secretly nurtured it in my refusal to believe there was anything wrong with the way I felt. On my first day of Human Sexuality in college, we watched a video on transitioning, one that included thorough graphics on gender assignment surgery. Just as the doctor discussed creating a vagina out of the shaft of a penis, I tapped out. I went for a drink of water. I milled around in the halls, checking fake text messages. I didn’t even have a texting service at that time. I just couldn’t go back in there. This wasn’t what I’d signed up for.

I wasn’t sorry yet. I started to feel the void where sorry was supposed to be, the same one I felt when I saw Transamerica and turned away during its brief flash of nudity. I couldn’t look at her, just like a part of me couldn’t comprehend the identity of a trans masculine classmate of mine. When a friend showed me what trans masculine bodies looked like (from a coffee table book he owned of Loren Cameron's work), I almost couldn’t believe it.

This is an actual quote: “But they look so normal.” It would be years before I learned to regret those words. I wish I could go back in time and punch that person in the face.

I wish there were a moment where I look at my behaviour and realized that I needed to change, but life isn’t like that. There isn’t always a moment; there are a million moments, where you are made accountable to your lack of compassion and openness to the experiences of others, and that part of you will always still be there, nagging and pulling. Sometimes hate stays the same way it did before, and sometimes it lives on in racism, sexism and homophobia. Sometimes it just takes a nap.

My hate was always secretly directed inward. From an early age, I identified as female, and it was years before my parents could get me to put on a pair of jeans. I wanted to wear dresses. I settled for sweatpants. Most kids were obsessed with Barney or Chuck E. Cheese; I wanted to be like Jane Fonda, in her spandex and matching headband, commanding a room of women to be their best selves while protesting the war in Vietnam, winning Oscars and being married to an eccentric billionaire. Many of us grew up secretly believing we could have it all. I knew I could. Jane told me so.

My father has the same name as I do, and I didn’t want his name, just like I didn’t want his maleness. I went by the name “Nicky.” When my parents resisted, I started spelling it in increasingly elaborate and stripper-esque ways, like “Nicki,” “Nickie,” “Nikki” and “NICKEE*.” I dotted it with hearts, wrote it in pink and shellacked it with glitter. Some kids have to come out; I was barely ever in.

For a long time, my parents let it slide. This was at the height of my brother Jonathan’s illness, and my mother’s days were too filled with breathing tubes, doctor’s visits and press appearances to pay attention to anything else. My brother was born with a condition that they didn’t have a name for. Basically, his insides swelled until they couldn’t anymore. It was like his brain was trying to push its way out.

They didn’t name my gender variance either. They figured that if they didn’t pay attention to it, the problem would go away, like a car alarm or a Jehovah’s Witness. My father expected that I would grow to only love the things he did; he expected me to give up Barbies for G.I. Joes and teatime for football, the sport he so loved. He just wanted us to be playing on the same team. He didn’t expect to see me in dresses.

As a culture, when we see a man in a dress, we do one of two things: We laugh or we beat it out of him. We do that in different ways. My parents caught me playing Cinderella at daycare one day after work, and they didn’t hit me or punish me. They didn’t throw me on the street or pawn me off on a religiously conservative relative. They just showed me that wasn’t an option. This isn’t what boys do. I was never taught that it was okay to be a woman or that it was okay to be myself. Boys aren’t princesses; they rescue them.

They didn’t realize that one day I would need to rescue myself.

Hating yourself is easy. I found a million outlets to hate myself. I had Jesus, who was nailed to a cross because I wasn’t good enough. I had the locker room, which helped me learn to hate my body, on top of hating my soul. I had the guys who would wait outside my Pre-Calculus class to stare at me as I walked by, treating my queerness as a spectacle. I had the uncle who stopped talking to me when I came out, who would only direct questions or statements to me through my mother. He didn’t hate me for being a socialist or wanting to tear down his capitalist patriarchy because of my political beliefs or any interesting reason. He hated me for the same boring reasons everyone else did. He hated me without even knowing why.

Boring or not, hate sticks. And low-simmering hate is particularly dangerous, because it's easy to ignore. Hate becomes a pattern, and you learn to hate for the same stupid reasons everyone else does. You hate without even knowing why, not recognizing that hate is a reflection of yourself.

You don’t choose to give up hate one day and wash your hands of it forever; the feelings stick with you, and they take lifetimes to cleanse. It’s not enough to simply not hate people, and you don’t get a pat on the back for looking at Lana Wachowski and saying, “Oh, I accept you now. Here’s an award. Go us!” You have to actively work to include trans people in your lives and spaces, accept a callout when you get it wrong and educate yourself to be better. You have to be accountable to yourself.

As Virginia Mamey Mollenkott argues, "It is vital for gay men, lesbians and bisexuals to recognize our movement as basically a transgender movement." Mollenott tells us that it’s not just about homosexuality. It’s about being queer -- or  different from the norm. Our struggle is about gender. She writes, "The fact that the most effeminate gay men and the butchest lesbians are the most endangered among us should alert us to the fact that society cares less about what we do in private than it cares about a challenge to its longstanding gender assumptions."

There was a time when I accepted not hating people as enough and credited myself as a good ally for “having trans friends.” Look how far I’ve come! However, our engagement needs more than love; it needs action. Trans people are some of the most visible and at risk in our collective struggle, and we must actively work with trans people, rather than simply for them. Gay cisgender men need to stop wondering where the T is and realize that the T is all around us, organizing and working to make the community safer for all of us. The trans movement isn’t the next movement.

Look around you. The movement is happening now, whether we care to recognize it or not.

The movement is KOKUMO. The movement is Kate Bornstein. The movement is Monica Roberts. The movement is Julia Serano. The movement is We Happy Trans. The movement is Girls Like Us. The movement is the Trans Month of Action. The movement is being broadcast all around you, and it’s coming to Chicago this weekend with The Trans 100, celebrating the incredible diversity of the trans community. Trans people are here. Are we paying attention?

I thought of Megan this week when GLAAD announced that it would be changing its acronym. The organization will no longer stand for the “Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation” but GLAAD, as in the emotion. This reflects that the organization not only speaks for gays and lesbians, but also includes trans people in its mission. This was announced even though the G and the L will remain in the organization's name and their board is mostly comprised of white, cis males -- much like HRC, our friendly neighbourhood transphobes.

I don’t discredit them for that. I know personally that we all have to start somewhere, and that we can’t move forward without taking that first step. However, in giving up transphobia, we must do more than just mention trans folks. Trans people are worthy of full inclusion, and they must lead, speak, sign, march, walk and wheel next to us (or in front of us). We must realize that their perspectives and issues are as worthy of championing as ours. We need to shut up and learn to listen. As GLAAD moves forward, I hope they continue to listen and push inclusion further. I hope we all do.

A month ago Janet Mock very politely called me out on Twitter for getting something wrong in an article I wrote on transphobia in The Observer, and I learned from her. I haven't always been great with callouts, but this time, I was happy to get schooled by the best. My work isn’t perfect. My work needs to be pushed and to push itself. I’m still learning -- and that includes learning to love myself, finally. Personally, I’m still figuring out what gender means to me. Like everything else in my life, it’s a journey.

If I saw Megan today, I wouldn’t just apologize to her. I would thank her. After all, she succeeded in at least one way: I never forgot her.

Nico Lang writes about LGBTQ issues in Chicago. You can follow Nico on Twitter, Tumblr or on Facebook.

http://gendertrust.org.uk/

A scenario for the true masochist! James Bond interrogation.

You will be playing the role of Bond in this scenario and you have information I require. I will also require 2 submissive's  to play the roles of guards who will capture Bond and bring him to my Dungeon.

The role of Bond must be for the real, true masochist as there will be very few rules, in fact, Bond can only choose 3 things which I cannot inflict onto him. Only 3, so you will have to choose wisely as other than those 3 things - all is fair game. So, think carefully about your choices!

Here is a basic outline of the scenario

Bond will receive via email a code which must not fall into My hands at any cost. (this code is also your safe word!) The code is the information I will interrogate you for. You will be ambushed and taken from a street in Reading by the 2 guards, brought to Me at my dungeon.

Here I will interrogate you in any manner I please, until you tell me the code, or use the code as a safe word. There will be no escape until the end of the session unless you divulge the code. the guards will cater to My every need, fetch equipment, man handle Bond and even participate in his interrogation.

Simple!

The session will be for 2 hours. I need a Bond and 2 guards - this scenario cannot be played without all the required character, so encourage others to apply with you.

Tributes: BOND £200.00

             GUARDS £100.00 each

Don't waste my time by applying then cowering out! Not cool! 

EMAIL ME TO APPLY: mistress.lady.leyla@gmail.com

'Time' is money in my business and the 'Player' who wastes it.

Time is a precious resource to me as it is for most people. In some ways, 'time' is money in my business, in other ways, 'time' is something which cannot be regained once lost.

I sometimes wonder how much of MY  time is wasted on 'players' - those who fruitlessly waste the time of others. I view these people as lacking a genuineness to them and are not serious considerations in MY world of BDSM.

Having kept a diary of callers and mailers, I have come up with what I consider a breakdown of my potential clients:

 40 % of them seem to be TOTAL players 30 % of them are real, but pretend to be something they are not.
 25 % of them seem to be genuinely interested in BDSM but will never commit to any activities - whether online, one to one, munches or clubs. 5 % are real, genuine and dedicated.

So, if I receive 10 calls in a week, 10 new twitter followers and 10 emails;  only 1.5  of those enquiries are real. Sad really.

Who are those people in the 50% group? It would seen they are the scammers, con artists, married men masturbating while the wife sleeps, the bored office workers, etc...  Most, if not all, of what they say / write is bullshit.

The 30% group are 'make-believers' - stating they are submissive but are not,  they like to top from the bottom. They question exactly what they will get for their money, want a reduced rate or even question ones monetary  value. They want their step by step instructions followed to the letter - making a session a one way street of personal gratification. These people don't really know what BDSM is all about. These are the ones who, for example, want a Twitter Mistress without it costing them a penny - because there is no real respect for BDSM from them.

The 25 % group is everywhere. They fantasise about BDSM, being dominated and humiliated, but will never ever step out of their comfort zone and experience it for real - whether in person or online. It will always be; "Next year..week..when I get divorced..."

Finally, I come to the 5% group. These people know the scene and what is going on. They are genuine and committed. these people are My needle in a haystack. The genuine submissive.

As I mentioned earlier, time cannot be recouped.  The problem I find in dealing with the pretenders, scammers, fantasists and players, is that the time spent interacting with this "submissive" is gone forever.  I have given my genuine attention to this person and while I interacted and had my 'time' wasted on a fruitless pursuit, I have probably missed a call from a genuine sub.

As any Mistress will point out, experience means the ability to recognise the 'player' quickly.  But, with the economy keeping genuine subs away and spending less at the moment, I'm finding myself in situations where I spend time interacting and nurturing  for nothing.  There are so many pretenders out there, that it seems most of my communications are nothing more than time wasting.

What is Financial Domination?

Recently, I have noticed a split between Dom's regarding BDSM scenes, sessions and Financial Domination. Many Mistresses see Financial domination as a cheap, gold digger opportunity practiced by young, inexperienced so-called Mistresses. granted, there does seem to be quite a lot of those about. But, Financial Domination is no less a fetish or practice than one to one sessions.

There needs to be clarity as to what Financial Domination actually is. It is not just about getting money for nothing. True Financial domination requires skill and planning.

A submissive who wishes to be in the presence of a dominant female, to serve and be trained has his erotic fantasies, a need to lose control, be sexually, mentally and / or spiritually humiliated. A submissive offers him/herself willingly - because they want to. The same applies to a submissive who has fantasies of financial humiliation. They offer themselves willingly because they seek a form of fantasy involving money - they seek an erotic fulfillment by giving up control of some or all of their finances - something quite dangerous in today's capitalist society.

A submissive who longs for a Mistress to control his money knows that there is no benefit in the arrangement for themselves and that they will need to make financial sacrifices to manage their fantasy.

If, and often it is, Financial Domination is coupled with Blackmail, the submissive feels even more humiliated and out of control as s/he is forced into making a choice between financial humiliation and an even greater humiliation where certain details, photos etc might be available for public viewing. Again, I stress, the submissive is a willing participant - all actions were entered into by the submissive, knowing they could be used as blackmail.

The question asked by many about submissive who wish for financial arrangements is; "Why would anyone want to do that?" The answer is simple - they get off on it.

As I said earlier, financial domination needs planning, thought and creativity. it's not just a matter of "Submissive X. Pay my bills. Do It!" It's far more than that. As with BDSM sessions where a Mistress will train, guide and push her subs limits, so Financial Domination needs to be the same. With a direct Mistress / Submissive relationship, the dominant has a chance to gauge the submissive psychology, emotional state, limits and moments of reflection and so on - a very important factor in a D/S relationship. The same principles MUST be maintained within a Financial Domination / Submissive relationship too. A first meeting is essential to gauge the submissive, run through starter limits, budgets and the all important question - How does the submissive really know this is what s/he really wants, are they aware of the consequences? How the submissive can stop the 'game' etc.

Meetings do not have to be in person but they do need to happen. Mistresses who are expert Financial Dominants have been known to 'attend' meetings as their submissive's 'new' PA, or an executive from another company arranging a meeting with the submissive, using the opportunity to check on their submissive's finances,  set sales goals for their submissive's to achieve, which would mean more bonuses for the submissive at work and thus more financial contributions to the Mistress.

Financial Domination - in it's true sense is great fun for both the Dominant and the submissive, but has to be undertaken with caution - Blackmail is a big NO NO within the legal sense, therefore a 'contract is essential - to dismiss any legal mishaps. 

Counselling

To be honest, the days of counselling  just for “the mentally ill” is out. Yes, you can still find bad jokes, stigma attachments and sometimes judgements attached to counselling by narrow minded  individuals but, to the growing number of people these days, counselling is just another positive resource many individuals and families utilise to help them understand themselves and make sense of  the world around them.

http://www.lifecyclecounselling.co.uk/

In today's world, we are more informed about caring for our Body, Spirit and Mind and that each part plays an important role in our overall health. We will all, as you might expect, at some point in our lives experience situations or emotions that we cannot make sense of. Counselling will not offer immediate fixes, but will help you find a sense of direction so you can work through your problems.

http://www.lifecyclecounselling.co.uk/

Transexualism, Feminism, and Gender

This is an article I found some years ago on Below the belt.org, regarding Transphobia and Feminism.

For those who follow my BLOG, you will be aware that I have a huge interest in the psychology behind all aspects of BDSM, including transgender issues.

As aggressively vitriolic and hurtful as radical feminist criticism of transsexuals often is, I believe that transsexuals do themselves a grave disservice by dismissing that criticism as entirely rooted in blind transphobia. There is certainly a very strong element of transphobia in certain quarters of the feminist movement, but even a broken clock is right two times a day. It is hardly surprising that the majority of transsexuals are heteronormative in terms of their chosen gender presentation and behavior, but this becomes exceedingly problematic due to the extremely loud and highly active minority of transsexuals who are militantly heteronormative.

Due to the disparity in visibility between different types of transsexual, there is a very unfortunate illusion that female-to-male transsexuals don't exist at all and that male-to-female transsexuals are mostly overcompensating super-macho males transitioning into oversexed, hyper feminine females who insist on absolute conformity to patriarchical norms and the "Madonna-Whore Complex". Given that perception, it's no wonder that radical feminists tend to brand transexualism as nothing more than a particularly crazed attempt to invade and subvert the women's rights movement. This ugly misunderstanding is exacerbated by the small but extremely vocal minority of transsexuals who condemn non-traditional gender expression as "perverting" or "diminishing" the meaning of gender itself. While the vast majority of transsexuals do not agree with this militant conformist position, many of them also do not speak out against it because they are personally comfortable with traditional gender roles and often fear the lack of structure involved in a gender deconstructionist world.

It is important to point out that those who are not familiar with the psychological treatment protocols for transsexuals often fail to realize that a lot of the gender policing in the trans community originates behavioural requirements imposed on transsexuals by the medical gatekeepers who control our access to treatment. The Standards of Care for Gender Identity Disorders mandate that transsexuals go through a "real life test" to demonstrate their gender identity prior to receiving hormone replacement therapy and sexual reassignment surgery, and the majority of psychologists use this requirement to demand and enforce gender policed behaviour throughout the transition period.

Those who have completed the gender transition process are largely free of the mandates of psychologists, but the intense social and legal discrimination against them often pushes them into continued gender policing as a defence mechanism. The safety provided by "stealth" status is in many ways only an illusion, but it's very fragility tends to make "passable" transsexuals extremely reactionary towards anything which has the slightest possibility of outing them. Exercising passing privilege is a double-edged sword in that living in stealth is living in constant terror of discovery, and that terror may cause transsexuals to betray everything they should believe in. This is why stealth transpersons' often hypocritically adhere to social conservatives or the transphobic flavour of radical feminism; in their persecution-induced paranoia, they decide that no one would suspect an outspokenly transphobic man or woman of being a transsexual.

The fearful silence of the "stealth majority" has given the militant conformists a disproportionate voice within the American transsexual community, and this has produced an distinct tendency towards both internal and external gender policing behaviour. Relatively few step forward to challenge the conformists' dogmatic assertions that that anyone who exhibits gender variant behaviour is "not really transsexual", that only transsexuals merit treatment because they are "normal", and that transsexuals who cannot pass should "be realistic" and not transition because it would trigger witch hunts against those who do pass. To be perfectly blunt, the militant conformists have chosen to sell out to the very society which oppresses them, spurning the deconstruction of rigid gender roles which would set them free, and instead embracing a traitor's thirty pieces of silver in the form of passing privilege.

Most transsexuals are distinctly uncomfortable with the extremism of the gender conformists, but they also seem to be unwilling to completely distance themselves from it. This is probably because the clear lines and standards drawn by the conformists are reaffirming to those who are themselves comfortable with gender normatively in the first place; they may not necessarily agree with excluding others, but they still feel reassured of their own "belonging". This is extremely unfortunate because as long as moderates do not clearly distinguish themselves from extremists, they will inevitably be smeared with guilt by association. As long as the bulk of the transsexuals who make themselves visible to outsiders are the militant conformists and those conformists have (or are perceived to have) tacit support from the majority, it is going to be nearly impossible to refute the assumption that all or most transsexuals are the same way.

The long term solution to these issues is for the current generation of transsexuals to reject the vicious orthodoxy of conformist gender policing and to embrace in its place the freedom of gender deconstruction. This does not mean that all of us must reject traditional gender expression or stealth concealment as personal decisions, only that need to cease imposing them on others as moral imperatives. Just as a feminist may choose to be a housewife while fighting society's attempts to force all women to be housewives, so also can a transsexual chose to be gender normative while fighting misguided attempts to force all transsexuals to be gender normative. The bottom line is that there is no one "correct" form of gender expression which all males or all females should be required to adhere to.