One often reads accounts from people who have been practising BDSM for a while. I decided to look at things from a beginner’s point of view. Why do people want to get started in BDSM?
So I asked people who were attracted to BDSM but had little (or no) experience to talk about what they wanted, by answering a few questions. People were lovely and played along. Their answers are varied, and a long way from the clichés. I didn’t want to shorten anyone’s answers, so this article will be published in several parts.
In this first part, we’re going to find out what Cheyenne thinks.
Cheyenne describes herself as gender-fluid. She moves between the two genders, but even as a man, retains a part of her femininity. In BDSM, she would like to find a confidante, a play partner who will guide her playfully as she explores her desires.
The desire to get started in BDSM
1Why are you attracted to BDSM?
For me, that might be more of a question to ask at the end. Let’s just say I came to it because I’d taken a path that led that way, but it was never something I was looking for, or the specific destination of the journey.
Getting started in BDSM: how the idea came about
2How did the idea of getting started in BDSM come about?
Various images, upbringing and culture, to begin with, if you go back far enough into childhood, without knowing anything about the scene and without being able to put a name to it.
First, an upbringing where you had to be strong, never complain, know how to “take it”, as they say. A certain challenge in knowing how to suffer in silence, being the child who never cries at school, being the one who takes a nasty tackle from behind and gets straight back up to carry on playing football… I quickly learnt to overcome pain, and even to get used to it. Physical or psychological.
Mutual trust before getting started in BDSM
But my first real experience of BDSM came when I was building relationships. Something I was desperately lacking eventually became apparent to me in this kind of relationship, when I heard about it on TV as a teenager: trust…
It seemed horribly paradoxical to me, to hurt each other in a relationship, to let yourself be acted upon, to give yourself literally. Me, who never let anyone walk all over me, who always hit back, who never really trusted anyone… Seeing two people give themselves to each other like that, the trust a submissive must obviously give her Mistress, but also the trust a Mistress must give a submissive.
This mutual trust often seems to me to be underestimated these days, from what I can see. Because it’s an exchange, and the submissive has just as important a role to play in “breaking” conventions, and has to say or express to her Mistress: “Go on, trust me, I’ll take it, I won’t hold it against you.”
Giving yourself
It was this symbiosis in human relationships that immediately appealed to me. I’d grown up in a world where everyone plays at manipulating others to get what they selfishly want, a game I’d been put into without the slightest knowledge of the rules, a game that had cruelly disappointed me when I discovered the truth. I was just another pawn.
And then, paradoxically, in a relationship where I imagined myself submitting and giving myself completely, it suddenly hit me how stupid I’d been not to see it sooner. It’s through giving yourself, through accepting another person, that you can truly be “recognised” as a human being, free to make your own choices, free to give yourself. And that recognition goes hand in hand with having a person with whom trust is mutual and complete, who will accept this gift and help it flourish. That way, the relationship will aim to help both people grow, in perfect harmony, with great beauty and purity. Purified of the lies and perverse manipulations of the “world below”. Here, everything is honest, whether you give or receive; everyone is equal, and everything is done with complete awareness and sincerity.
Attraction to certain aspects of BDSM
3BDSM covers a fairly wide range of practices, and can be viewed from different angles… Which aspect attracts you most? What are you looking for?
As I said above, what I “like” (I’m putting that in quotation marks because the word seems far too weak) is the exchange, the trust and the awareness of yourself and the other person. Recognising two human beings, not using the other person to get what you want, but working together to reach a shared goal.
Growing together
As for the rest, what appeals or attracts you, as they say: it’s all a matter of taste! It’s secondary; what matters is finding the right person who shares the same attractions. The aim is to grow together; you just have to find the person who wants to get there using the same “tools”.
Lending out your body
From a personal and entirely subjective point of view:
My first attraction was cerebral, then, centred on giving yourself. I didn’t know anything about it yet, and the only example I had was masochism. So I instinctively transferred my fantasies onto that practice.
Then, at 18, I got my first internet connection and started digging around. Until I came across feminisation. I understood the word, but I didn’t understand the practices or the sometimes disgusting images I came across.
As I was trying to work out who I was, I already knew there was a feminine part of me. I was only just beginning to accept it for myself, but I wasn’t at all ready to embrace it outside the privacy of my own home. Through feminisation, I saw a way to lend my body, like a doll, to someone who would love and know how to bring out that femininity. A way to offer myself and commit to exploring that path, to be guided by a woman who would like me if I were a woman too.
With the internet, you often get a rude awakening
Unfortunately, with the internet, you often get a rude awakening. All the idyllic image of BDSM I’d built up, and then I came across hairy blokes who made no effort, in knickers and stockings, calling it feminisation. It was deliberately ugly, because these men were looking for humiliation. But “come on!”, how is it humiliating for a man to want to be a beautiful woman?
There was no exchange in any of it, no attempt to help anyone grow, just degradation based on all the prejudices I was trying so hard to escape.
And then I came across “shocking”, “commercial” images, just to draw people to paid websites. The dominatrices weren’t dominatrices at all, just actresses posing for photos for websites that played on nothing but potential clients’ prejudices… No exchange, no trust, not the slightest awareness. Nothing elevating about any of it, just business.
Deeply disappointed and withdrawing into myself more and more, I kept it to myself for years, feeding my imagination with free images I’d occasionally find online… But keeping my distance, keeping my utopia to myself.
Guided, but not ordered around
At the same time, I was also exploring my femininity. I started talking about it and posting on forums for women, and I found a friend on one of those forums. She immediately accepted and encouraged my femininity. She had Dominant leanings, but encouraged me without ever imposing her ideas on me. She helped me understand that to give something, I first had to claim it for myself, fully accept it before I could offer it.
One small step for man, one giant leap for my self.
And that’s where my first photos came from, where I was finally the one in front of the camera. A few handcuffs, a collar, a lead, and so on… Lingerie, sexy clothes. I was guided, but not ordered around, and getting started in BDSM like that was a revelation for me. I’d finally found someone to share it with, and even today I owe her a great deal.
Our paths have gone in different directions, but I’ll always feel a certain tenderness towards her, even if she may not realise all she did for me. Before I could grow, she was the one who first got me out of the hole. And all of it in a friendly, playful setting, with trust and exchange — that’s what attracts me.
Soft or hard BDSM?
4More soft or more hard? And how would you define those two terms?
That’s a good segue. So, based on my previous answer: more soft. It has to stay playful, and the Dominant has to be a friend, a confidante, a guide as well.
For me, the difference between the two is that a soft Dominatrix will push, while a hard Dominatrix will pull. It’s not so much about going further or less far in a practice, but more a question of limits. Soft helps push them back; hard drives them in.
A fan of playing it safe
I understand why the hard side might be appealing and enjoyable. But for me, it remains a fantasy not to be acted out, for safety reasons, and for the psychological balance of both people too.
It’s a bit like driving at 110 on a road with a 90 speed limit. You take risks that aren’t proportional but exponential, only to arrive barely a few seconds before the person driving at the speed limit. I’m more of a fan of playing it safe. My aim is to reach my destination, not to seek the biggest possible adrenaline rush along the way.
Each to their own. James Dean could have gone on to do many great things if he hadn’t had his accident… But would James Dean really have been James Dean if he hadn’t had that accident?
Getting started in BDSM: fantasy or reality?
5Do you think getting started in BDSM will remain a fantasy, or will you put it into practice?
I’ve already had a little experience.
Because even if some people might say it was only play, that it was playful, “a bit tame”, what matters to me is that I experienced a moment that helped me grow and evolve, and that’s no small thing.
A Dominatrix doesn’t need to hit harder, be stricter, more cruel, more demanding… It’s not a competition. I think all of that is just window dressing, staging. What matters is what the people involved experience and take away from it, and it doesn’t matter how they get there.
Will I do it again? I certainly hope so.
But I have very firm ideas about the practice and everything surrounding it. And a whole ideology (or “ideo-logical system”) that has to come with this kind of exchange. Which means I’m very selective. I expect a lot and, above all, I’m looking, among all the people trying to satisfy “basic” fantasies with anyone at all, for the person I can fit together with perfectly.
A big thank you to Cheyenne for taking the time to answer my questions.
The rest of this interview series:
- The appeal of BDSM: beginners’ accounts (Part 2)
- Beginners’ accounts of BDSM (Part 3)
- BDSM sexuality, from desire to practice (Part 4)
Illustrations: Flickr galleries by Leonardo Sardinha and Timothy Wells, Creative Commons.
