Different Loving: The World of Sexual Dominance and Submission (24 page)
Read Different Loving: The World of Sexual Dominance and Submission Online
Authors: Gloria G. Brame,William D. Brame,Jon Jacobs
Tags: #Education & Reference, #Health; Fitness & Dieting, #Psychology & Counseling, #Sexuality, #Reference, #Self-Help, #Relationships, #Love & Romance, #Sex
Activities vary according to the age—and sometimes the gender—one has eroticized.
The things you do to daddy’s boy aren’t the same things you might do to daddy’s girl in a sexual context. Daddy’s little girl is meeker, shyer, and scared and curious about daddy’s genitalia. Daddy introduces a sexual context—you put daddy’s girl on your knee or spank her. Whereas with daddy’s boy, it’s different; daddy-boy relationships have more of a roughness. You’re not being gentle all the time
.
—D
YKE
D
ADDY
Some ageplayers seek to replay one key fantasy. One example would be a person who eroticizes a specific age and fantasizes about a specific scenario, such as being caught masturbating by an authority figure who scolds and disciplines him. The clothing worn, the dialogue spoken, and the punishment implements used may be an indispensable sexual signifier. And no matter how often this fantasy is reenacted, its psychosexual spice never fades.
But many D&Sers experiment with a wide range of scenarios.
I’ll put diapers and rubber pants on [my husband] and feed him out of a bottle. He’ll have no privileges. Then we have the naughty-schoolboy scenario. I’ll put him through certain lessons. If he doesn’t write proper letters, he’s caned. I’ll dress in a schoolmarm outfit, very Victorian looking. I’ll use the hairbrush on him. I have different implements for different scenes
.
—T
RUDI
HO
D
OES
I
T?
Ageplay seems equally popular among heterosexuals, homosexuals, and those whose sexual or gender bias is changeable.
[The background of infantilists] seems to be a total cross-section of society. We have those who seem to have very little education, those who have [some] education, and those who seem very bright: business managers, doctors, lawyers, clergymen
.
—T
OMMY
Although both women and men enjoy the submissive role, heterosexual men seem a bit more likely to take an interest in expressing a child’s persona, and their female partners are more likely to play the parent. Interviewees concurred that infantilism, at least, is largely a male phenomenon.
Only [a small] percentage of the population is interested in [infantilism]. Most are men. However, I have found that if you introduce baby seats to women, they like it. Everybody likes to be cuddled, to be petted. It’s a very innocent scene. Not everybody needs to wet their diapers. But it’s fun to be babied
.
—M. C
YBELE
The women ageplayers we interviewed said that the mother (or father) role combines romance with maternal instincts.
I never knew I would like infantilism until I played with an adult baby. Now I enjoy being mommy. I’ve never really analyzed it, [but] I’m an extremely maternal person
.
J
EAN
L.
It is commonly believed among ageplayers that because girls and women have socially acceptable opportunities to express their childish personae, erotic impulses to ageplay are sublimated.
I have a theory as to why our membership is primarily male. One reason that I’m sure of is that males tend to be more active when it comes to playing out fantasies. [But] I also believe that one of the causes [for infantilism] is what I call “not being able to express the
soft side.” Women are allowed to express theirs. I’ll give you one quick [and] obvious example. Go into a women’s department store almost anywhere in the United States during the winter, and you’ll see women’s pajamas that look like baby sleepers. They even have feet on them. You’ll never see that in men’s stores. It’s one example of how women are allowed to express a more childish part of themselves. No one’s going to laugh at them. The husband will say, “Oh, how cute.” But if the average husband puts one of those things on it’s, “What are you doing!”
—T
OMMY
There are notable exceptions. Many D&S women enjoy playing the “naughty girl,” and nowhere is this more true than for spanking enthusiasts, among whom disciplinarian-male obedient-female fantasies are common. (This is discussed in depth in
Chapter 9
.) And lesbians seem to be increasingly exploring ageplay fantasies.
Male-to-female cross-dressers who play mommy or female child also exist, as do female-to-male cross-dressers who play daddy or boy. Interviewees Kelly T. and Dyke Daddy (both biological females), for example, combine gender switch with ageplay.
Being Kelly [the persona of a young, gay male] sexually, and allowing myself to be submissive, has really opened sex up for me
.
—K
ELLY
T.
I’ve always had masculine feelings. The first opportunity I had to be daddy in a relationship was fun. We could get into it and play for hours. I really loved it
.
—D
YKE
D
ADDY
HY
A
GEPLAY?
The parent-child relationship undoubtedly has the single most profound effect on a child’s life. The relationship shapes not only one’s self-image but in later life is expressed in one’s religious biases, social behaviors, and sexual expressions. It is not surprising that some adult D&S relationships may be patterned on this original power model. Many of our interviewees believed insufficient nurturing caused their need to be babied. They felt precipitously rushed into adult behaviors.
Many of the people that I’ve played with have been toilet trained too early. They tell me about being out of diapers at age one or [the] mother giving enemas, so that the kid would go when she wanted him to!
—M. C
YBELE
It is possible that some early punishments merged with some ageplayers’ understandings of physical intimacy.
The type of punishment we received as children … is often translated into the SM fantasies we have as adults. These flights of mental fancy are not limited to the experiences we actually had, or which our playmates told us about. Much of the direction these adult fantasies take is caused by the prevailing punishments meted out to kids in our particular culture. For instance, the American fascination with “good old-fashioned woodshed discipline” is as firmly rooted in the frontier mentality of Middle America as the “public school” cane is a part of British tradition
.
—L
ARRY
T
OWNSEND
1
Interviewees typically recalled periods of great unhappiness in childhood, particularly times when a parent was physically absent or emotionally remote.
When I was a kid, bed-wetting made me feel really rejected. I had a really bad time with it because my parents completely ignored it, apparently in the hope that it would go away. It always bugged me that they didn’t do something about it. They wouldn’t do anything aside from changing the sheets. I didn’t have a real loving family. We weren’t physically demonstrative. We were all aloof. Maybe I missed out on affection
.
—G
LENN
While early experience certainly marks the child, often profoundly, cause-and-effect patterns are not always straightforward. There is no clear correlation, for example, between trauma and eroticism. Television talk shows teem with presumably sexually conventional people who had dysfunctional families, and most unhappy children seem to develop a passionate hatred of any situation that makes them feel childlike again. For the dominant, it is critical to ascertain how the submissive will respond to ageplay before initiating a scenario.
One thing you have to look for when you start playing with this is [the woman’s] experience [with] sex. If they were sexually abused as young children, you don’t want to get into this. You have to make sure that you’re not going to be bringing up incest issues for them. They may not have liked their father at all, or not [have] grown up with a father, or have no feeling for who daddy might be
.
—D
YKE
D
ADDY
For the ageplayer, reexperiencing childish vulnerability or helplessness in an emotionally and physically safe context satisfies a profound emotional need.
Infantilists commonly feel that they didn’t receive all of the love and attention that they needed or wanted when they were babies, toddlers, small children. I think they’re striving to fill that deficit
.
—T
OMMY
To feel safe and loved when at one’s most vulnerable seems to be particularly gratifying to the submissive who may, for this reason, form deep and abiding bonds with the parent figure. In cases where the parent figure assumes a mentoring role in the submissive’s daily life, the bond may assume central importance. Dominants, conversely, create or emulate the image of an idealized or worshiped parent.
In some cases ageplayers perceive their roleplaying as a safe and acceptable outlet for incest fantasies.
I work with children. I am
not
about to have any kind of sexual activity with them! I think their innocence must be protected. But when I play with an adult baby, I act out [incest] fantasies in a safe context
.
—J
EAN
L.
Adult sexual contact is not a typical component of ageplay, because it might detract from the authenticity of a fantasy. But there are certainly many exceptions.
I enjoy taking care of people: That’s my thrill. It’s sexual for them while it’s happening; for me, it’s sexual afterwards. When I agreed to take [a friend] to an S/M party, I made [him] the New Year’s baby. I had him take off all his outer clothes and leave on his diapers. I wrapped computer paper around his chest as a banner [and] wrote “1992” on it. He loved it! I told him that afterwards I was going to take him home and fuck his brains out. So I [gave] vent to
my
incest fantasies
.
—J
EAN
L.
Ageplay permits another pleasure: guilt-free narcissism. Just as children may be innocently and delightedly self-centered, the submissive ageplayer often makes little effort to return obvious stimulation to the dominant.
His or her sole responsibility is obedience to authority. The compensations are many: All wrongs are righted by a loving authority, and every child, however naughty or dirty at the outset, is ultimately transformed into someone lovable and good. This thrilling resolution of old psychological wounds or conflicts is probably the single most emotionally satisfying experience of
ageplay. The fantasy child receives an unconditional approval that the real child may never have known.
DOLESCENTILISM
Adolescentilist fantasies among heterosexual D&Sers almost always focus on physical discipline. Scenarios involving an unruly high-school or college-aged student who is subjected to stern discipline—and whose comeuppance is delivered with his pants lowered (or her skirt raised)—are popular, as are misbehaving “nieces” with exasperated “uncles” and “woodshed” fantasies, where the submissive is escorted to an outdoor structure for stringent physical discipline.
The authority figure is unlikely to assume responsibility in nonerotic matters, and the fantasy is likely of only temporary duration. The roles, without exception, are played for the sake of psychosexual gratification (although there may be no directly sexual activity), and partners revert to egalitarian (or, among lifestylers, top-bottom) roles.
The very significant exception to disciplinary-based fantasies occurs in daddy-boy relationships, which are well known and accepted throughout gay society. Daddy-boy is a particularly important romantic variation in gay and lesbian D&S.
I like to consider myself—although I sometimes don’t like the term with my own children—a “daddy.” There are a lot of people out there who consider themselves bottom and are always looking for a daddy. I didn’t start out that way; [but] more and more people were looking for daddies, and I said, “What the hell? I’ll try anything once.” I began to enjoy it more and more. Everyplace I go, people look at me and right away they say, “Ooooh, Daddy!”
—L
OGGER
V.
Daddy-boy relationships seem to most completely transcend the bounds of fantasy; they are multidimensional and often carry over into a couple’s daily life.
Daddy-boy relationships have the special possibility of being lived all the time, even when daddy and boy both go off to work. It’s still daddy that the boy is going to come home to
.
—J
OSEPH
B
EAN
Leather or not, a daddy plays a transformational role in his partner’s life and may help shape and improve his partner’s self-esteem. Fatherly counsel may include wardrobe selection and social etiquette; it commonly includes an
introduction to gay eroticism (even among equally experienced partners, the fantasy of the boy’s naiveté may be acted out). The dynamic of the relationship is that a familiar, trustworthy, mature partner intiates a younger partner into adulthood. Frequently the relationship ends when the boy has matured sufficiently to move on to other relationships; in some cases a boy may become a daddy. Some couples, however, form permanent unions.
The daddy in a leather love affair additionally instructs his boy in submissive service.
I think the appeal of daddy-boy relationships probably comes from the familiarity of the words and moods and options. A lot of stuff can be unspoken because everybody grew up knowing who daddy was: Daddy’s complete ascendancy is not questionable. Yet you may expect [a] daddy to be somewhat permissive or more accepting; certainly more supporting. A master expects his slave to need training, but he certainly does not expect his slave to need to be supported in his emotional growth. He expects that the creature is already adult, whereas a daddy is expected to make a contribution towards raising the boy: providing him with the support and the encouragement and guidance that he may need
.
—J
OSEPH
B
EAN