tiedupinthecloset:
I’ve recently been thinking about how I seem to like the idea of bondage...
I’ve recently been thinking about how I seem to like the idea of bondage scenarios that are unsexual. I’ve often said that I found movie and TV bondage more appealing because of it’s seemingly believable illusion to reality, and I believe that part of that “reality’s” appeal comes from the idea that a hot guy just happened to find himself in a position where he had to be bound and gagged. An example of this kind of scenario would be of a home invasion where the invader has to subdue the homeowner, and whomever else is present, to get them out of the way and prevent any kind of a struggle, and heavily gag his hostage(s) so he can do his thing without having to fear that some pedestrian might have heard a call for help and try to be a hero. In this scenario, the invader’s focus is on whatever he’s stealing or trying to do in the house and not on who is bound and gagged. This means that the homeowner probably isn’t handsome, or even a man for that matter, but if it turns out to be a handsome man, then it is a win for us.
I’m not trying to say that I DON’T like to see bondage porn or imagine a tied up captive being taken advantage of sexually, because I do. But I think that I enjoy idealizing the fact that bondage can be on the table for some situations without being about sex until I, or one of us, makes it about sex. For some reason I adore that most of us can get off to scenes from terrible movies or TV shows that nobody remembers just because they have a sexy bondage scene in them and our culture immortalizes those scenes for that “wrong” reason. It’s kind of like being attracted to someone who nobody else finds appealing. Part of you might be a little confused as to why people don’t share that attraction with you, but then it makes your attraction to that person seem more special. I think that’s the entire philosophy of fetishism–finding something attractive/special about things that most people don’t seem to appreciate. So with this, I think that as a fetish, I like the idea of keeping the fetish as far from normative sexuality as it can be.
Perhaps this might be why I’ve thought of myself as an asexual fetishist, but I don’t know if this preference of mine is rooted in some homonormative construct that takes sex out of our queer sexuality and over idealizes the unavailable, the heterosexual. I say this because gay culture seems to really revolve around the shaming of themselves and other queer people, and fetishizing the heterosexual. I know, I’ve fallen prey to this too, but we tend to crush on straight guys more than we do gay guys, and I don’t know if the appeal we attribute to them is the thought that they are better than us, if there’s just something we like about the unsexualized dynamic we have with them that makes us want to sexualize it, if we see it as some kind of obstacle or hurdle we can deconstruct with the right amount of finessing, or some combination of all of these. We see a lot of this “deconstructing” in regular gay porn, and a shit load of it in our porn too, and what these scenarios usually share is our placement of straight guys on pedestals, then some kind of sexual break down where we kind of make them one of us or maybe even lesser than us because we “broke” them. What I think I like about non-sexual bondage porn, which we “construct” as bondage porn, is that it doesn’t really matter if the captive is hetero or queer. The invader just wants you wrapped up, nice and neat, and out of his way regardless of how cute you are or your sexuality, which seems like an added loss of control to the captive.
Another thought is that from being somewhat involved in bondage culture, I have learned that subs are usually the ones with the most power because of all the sex that we involve with bondage, and that even though my fantasies about being submissive involve me having some power, the sexually uninterested captive still runs the show because he isn’t leading with his dick. Here I mean to say that most bondage usually revolves around the one in the submissive position in some way. On the surface, it of course appears to be the opposite because the submissive is well… submissive, but that doesn’t quite get to the bottom of it because as anyone who actually practices bondage can see, submissives often run the show. I know, this is mainly for safety reasons and we don’t want to actually hurt anyone or cause any real displeasure, but as a submissive and somebody who has played with submissives, the focus is usually revolved around them and what they want and as a dom, I’m just kind of there to help with their experience. I hope this doesn’t seem like a complaint for anyone I’ve dominated because I do enjoy helping you through your fantasies while I include some of my fantasies. This is probably the same for all of you, but a big part of the pleasure I get out of dominating is seeing how turned on my sub gets from my dominance.
Aside from what doms and subs actually do, the real power I’m saying that subs have is the power of being desired. As the more feminized position, subs are usually the ones who have to be the more physically attractive ones, where doms seem to have a little more flexibility. I can at least speak from my own experience as a switch that I can let myself be tied up by pretty much anyone, but I have to find something about a guy’s appearance and character attractive to motivate me to tie him up. This power that subs seem to possess is something that wouldn’t exist outside of bondage culture because we tend to want to feed this power by obsessing over them, validating that they are handsome, stripping them, worshipping their feet, pleasuring them, you name it, when what might be “real” bondage can be for a number of other things. In fantasizing about bondage that seems like it’s outside of bondage culture, I like to think of handsome men as mere props who are secondary to the home invader’s grander scheme. But then I’m the one who gets to focus on “what I shouldn’t” for the scene.
