SpanishRed

Submission Without Integrity

Everyone who ever stomped on my heart told me who they were right at the beginning. The man ignored my boundaries moved on to greater consent violations. The one whose words seemed strangely empty ended up being a blatant liar. The one whose life was constantly full of chaos ended up being the one who created 10 catastrophes a second.

It’s a little more complicated to spot the red flags in kink settings. Submit too soon and you lose the ability to see the first predatoria...

Submissive Isn't a Synonym for Passive

A man we’ll obviously call Norman once wrote that submission is laziness. Subs do little more than stand in front of St Andrews crosses behaving like perpetually inert, brainless sex dolls. The rest of the time we lie around sighing like whimsical princesses. Hell, we can barely understand The Very Hungry Caterpillar. “Submissive” is a synonym for “passive”, so dominants would get more return on their time investment with a love dolls.

Norman, I’m getting tired ...

Why Dogs?

Because there’s no such thing as angels and dogs are the closest it’s ever going to get.

Because when god said, “Let there be light,” all the doggos appeared.

Because, as the Rolling Stones said, you can’t always get what you want, but if you have a dog, you get what you need: a wet nose kiss and a wagging tail.

Because some slippers deserve to be annihilated for going missing under the bed the whole time.

Because if a creature is that happy to ...

If you think the clitoral glans is all AFABs have to offer, you’re drinking the head off your beer and throwing the rest into the pot plant

Yesterday I wrote a post about the clitoris. I cited a study that found that a quarter of men couldn’t point it out on a diagram, so a bunch of men and women told me they were different. They knew exactly where it was: at the top of the vulva under a tiny hood. A few were baffled that anyone would even call this complicated.

If you think you can fit a clit in your mouth, you don’t know what the clitoris looks like.

If you think you can see the clito...

When I Was 35 I Thought Urine Came From Vaginas

Bridget is a local celebrity with her own Facebook page. She’s not a human, though. She’s a bridge. Every week, a new truck gets stuck under her, so we erected a “Bridge ahead” sign.

It didn’t work, so then we put up signs with the precise height of the bridge.

It didn’t work, so we tried signs with actual lights.

Even digital signs and GPS were ineffective. Redirected trucks just kept choosing the 2024-05-21 07:39:02 +0000 UTC View Post

I Don't Choose the Bear Because it Might Not Kill Me. I Choose it Because it Won't Do Worse.

Yesterday I wrote a #notAllMen Post about how it isn’t all men. Some men turned up to argue that it’s #NotAllMen. If you’re confused, let me break this down.

Me: Not All Men.
Men: I disagree because it’s not all men.

If a woman says ‘not all men’ in a forest and there are men to hear her, is she still wrong? The answer, folks, is yes. She is always, always wrong. Yes, we’re back here. Welcome. You can fetch the popcorn. I’ll take butter.

I took the grave r...

No, There Aren't Three Sides to Every Story

If there’s a meme abusers and rapists love the most, it’s this one:

There are three sides to every story: Their side, your side, and the truth.

It’s a clever little meme to throw out there when your ex is exposing your abuse. Rather than calling one person into question, it casts doubt on both. Folks don’t like to side with abusers, but if Norman can convince you that all truths are lies, he has some hope of keeping his position in the community. 2024-05-16 04:28:45 +0000 UTC View Post

Positive Intentions

We Apologise for Our Bodies

We go to yoga class.
We apologise for our bodies.
We work 50 hours a week.
We apologise for our bodies.
We rise to the top of our chosen fields.
We apologise.
We raise six toddlers and five labradoodles.
We apologise.

We go out for milk.
We play.
We laugh.
We forget, for a while, that we are supposed to apologise for our bodies.

We apologise for our bodies even as we sleep, for in the beginning was the word and the word was with god and the word was g...

Things We Say to Rape Survivors/Things We Rarely Say to Rapists (TW victim-blaming)

Things We Say to Rape Survivors

You went on a date with a stranger. What did you expect?

If you don’t want to be assaulted, don’t meet people from Tinder.

You committed the sin of wearing lacy knickers while drinking cognac. Do you really think that was sensible?

Since we’re on the topic of cognac, you didn’t watch your drink closely enough. What did you expect?

He was in a bad space at the time. It’s hard not to rape people when you have a sadz.

We like to think there’s a dearth of heroes in the kink scene, but I’ve lost count of the number of women who have spoken out this week

I spent the week writing the story of a man who survived the Kyiv invasion and coordinated the evacuation of 80 families into Europe via seven humanitarian corridors. Then he went straight back to Ukraine to help the country survive and recover from the war.

You won’t know his name. Nobody speaks about him much.

I spend much of my professional life writing about such people—people you’ve never heard of. Many of them are heroes. One is helping undocumented people in India. An...

People underestimate how long it can take to get remission from chronic illness

Yesterday, people all over the world saw something they never thought they’d see: A massive solar storm brought the aurora to countries that never should have experienced them. It was as though the sun had sent us a spectacular easter egg.

You never know what life will throw at you.

I should have died when I was four, but I didn’t. In my first years of life, I’d already survived Scarlet Fever, a near drowning, and a forceps birth. Then I almost choked to death after putting ...

Not All Men

Unsafe to Play With

Back when dinosaurs still roamed Fetlife, we used to use a label called, “unsafe to play with.” It’s easy to fit a top into a predatory label. They have the power to push limits and boundaries in obvious, often devastating, ways. Predatory S-types have the camouflage of submission, and there’s no textbook language to define it. “Unsafe to play with” gave us the words that were missing, but you rarely see them floating around the kink scene anymore.

All bottoms are assumed sa...

Stop Complaining That We're Demonstrating Entitlement or We'll Hit You With Even More Entitlement

Twelve years ago, I took a walk to my local DVD store. Three women had been abducted in the neighbourhood that week, but when you need DVDs, you need DVDs. On the way back home, I spotted a car that was moving at an impractically slow pace, so I did what I always do in those scenarios: Stopped a block ahead and waited for it to drive away. It stopped. I turned around. It turned around. I turned a corner. The car turned a corner. So followed 15 minutes of abject terror. Ultimately, I turned in...

Green Flags for Sadistic Men

• He’s observant when you play and notices when you seem distressed. His masculinity isn’t threatened by the very idea of checking in or heeding yellow.

• He doesn’t assume that if you’re a sub, you must also be a masochist. He does this new, fancy trick called “listening.” Quote me on this: This trend is going to catch on.

• He’s willing to have an actual negotiation before your first scene. Better yet, you feel heard during that negotiation. Thi...

  2024-05-07 05:51:20 +0000 UTC View Post

We Overcome

My version of “What to Expect from a Strong Women”

… because I really hate the original writing.

1) She won’t play games

Don’t expect the usual game-playing at the beginning of a relationship. She’s not going to mind if you don’t call her for two days because she’s secure and having too much fun. If she wants to talk to you, she'll pick up the phone. If she feels like more attention from you, she'll tell you. Your Thursday night poker buddy who looks like Scarlett Johansen ...

How to Do Kink Events With a Social Phobia

• Events are not all created equal. Some are platonic public encounters. Some are play parties are designed for noobs, and some include AncillaL hanging from the rafters with a gun in her vagina and barbed wire sewn through her jaw. Find an event host. Ask for suggestions on the least scary events in your area. You can find your local hosts here

• Not all fear is related to social phobia. Sometimes, it�...

  2024-05-06 08:26:51 +0000 UTC View Post

More on Bears

Even Noobs Can Tell the Difference Between Kink and Abuse

If you’re new to kink, telling the difference between dominance and abuse might seem as baffling as The Riemann Hypothesis. You’re inexperienced. You don’t have a working knowledge of consent. All the red flags you learned in your vanilla life seem to no longer apply. How do you work out the difference between consensual sadism and exploitation when you’ve only been roaming around in the kink scene for a few months?

I have an answer to that question. You tell the difference by l...

Complaining that my fear is making your dating life harder is like complaining about a gnat in your hair while the lion next to you eats someone alive

I grew up with a stepfather who sexualized children. He didn’t abuse me, but I learned, from an early age, what life is like when you’re always having to check if the curtains are closed. Nevertheless, I persisted in trusting all men.

By the age of 20, A threatened to hit me with a closed fist. I continued to trust men. He hadn’t actually hit me, after all. By the age of 21, B had already forced himself on me. I insisted these were rare occurrences, and that they wouldn’t happe...

To be a Misandrist, You Kinda Have to Hate Men. Rational Fear isn't Hatred

Yesterday, The Other 98% published a list of reasons women would rather encounter a bear than a man in the woods. Here are some of its reasons:

“The bear won’t say you were asking for it.
The bear won’t say it was consensual.
A bear wouldn’t stalk you if it told you you were pretty and you said you weren’t interes...

My Scars Are Made of Gold

We were having so much fun, and then this happened

If you prefer the Fetlife of 2015, maybe you should travel back in time as a woman or a common target of hate speech

I joined Fetlife one sunny afternoon in 2014. The first consent activist who educated me is currently awaiting trial for rape and sex trafficking. This was not unusual in those days. I’ve watched a few Fetlebrities get dragged through the courts since then. They were the men who first taught me about BDSM, and their lessons became a pandemic that spread through the scene. TW taught us that you don’t use safewords if you’re The Real Deal, but MJ was even worse. His One Twue Way apologia ...

Self Love is a Lot Like Water

How Only Fans Became the Most Enraging Topic on Fetlife

Only Fans launched in 2016. The fanfare was as loud as a passing whisper. Nobody cared. In those days, K&P was an amateur affair, so if you sexually harassed a trending woman, they felt it. You knew they felt it.

This story doesn’t start until 2018, though—the year the US government passed an amendment called FOSTA, which allowed law enforcement to prosecute posts that were “perceived as promoting prostitution.”

Around 2024-04-28 08:37:26 +0000 UTC View Post

Beauty

It's Hard to be Shamelessly Single, but I Am

Yesterday, a character in a series I’m watching said one of the most surprising things I’ve ever heard: “I’m not interested in a relationship.” The clouds fell from the heavens into my lap. The doggo on my couch launched into the sky. I’d never heard it put so boldly. She didn’t say, “I’m not interested in a relationship right now.” She didn’t say, “I’m taking a break.” She didn’t say, “I’m not dating yet.” Just an unapologetic, “I don�...