praise

I have been offering some mentorship to a sub friends. She had recently come out of a long term relationship and was missing her submission. So I have been providing her with some support and tasks to help her maintain and develop her submissive feelings until she feels ready for a new relationship.

As I am not her Master - and also I suppose because I am standing back a little - I have not felt it appropriate to "punish" her. Instead I have used lots of praise for when she has done well - which is most of the time as she is committed and trying very hard.

So she has had lots of praise and encouragement as a sub and no punishment ...

... and she is doing very, very well. She is blossoming into her submission and feels that herself as well as it being my perception.

So I have a couple of questions.

1. Is it possible to have a D/s relationship where training relies totally on praise?

and

2. Am I misleading her by providing a regime that may be very different from a more punishment based one with a future Dom?

punishment

I have written a number of times before about punishment. However Uncle Agony recently received an email on this topic and I have published it here. Do please add your own comments.

It was a coincidence as I had planned to write a post about praise instead of punishment within D/s. I will publish it in a couple of days.

waxing

Subs - do you wax? Do you like to be smooth for your Master?

Dom's - do you like your sub to be smooth?

Is it an issue for you?

What if it was something that was particularly special. An issue for you. What if it was an issue for you both? What if it was a major issue for one of you one way - but equally so for the other in the opposite direction.

Is it always the Dom's call? How should it be resolved?

star has this as a real problem and has written to Uncle Agony here.

Do let her know what you think.

road block

Trance has written to Uncle Agony.

She is in a relationship where they are both new to D/s and keen to move forward. However they have hit an early road block. How do they get past it? If you think you may be able to help then please do comment here.

the role of submission in shamelessness

On a comment to an earlier post "submission and sex", Remittance Girl wrote ...

"I'm about to say something that will probably be considered very politically incorrect. I've come to believe that, for a great many women who take on the roll of submissives, submission is, ironically, a liberation that allows them to be sexual beings in a way they find more difficult in a vanilla situation. It becomes a very sexualized transition for them - even if it doesn't specifically involve sexual acts.

We live in a very strange time. Ostensibly, society encourages women to be equals, play the part of sexual aggressor, be proud of their sexual appetites, etc. But we are labouring under the weight of history - and our culture is steeped in a much older Judeo-Christian aesthetic that has, for 4000 years, drilled into the very fabric of our language that women with sexual appetites are bad, dangerous, evil, immoral.

And traditional feminism would have us believe that in the space of 40 years, all that earlier cultural conditioning can be negated with the click of the fingers. It's just not realistic.

Being submissive allows women to be hypersexual beings - to admit, explore and express that hunger - with 'permission'. This relieves them of the burden of being responsible because it is the Dom who acts as authority. And he, in essence, takes responsibility for when and how she gets to be sexual. But within that boundary, she usually gets to be very sexual indeed.

That's why I've argued very strongly that deciding to be a submissive is an intrinsically feministic act. It allows women to be who they want to be, without doubt or the subconscious guilt born of thousands of years of conditioning.

I do think, for most submissive women, sex is a pretty major part of being submissive. Even if that sexuality is not always explicit."

I am interested in her comments about being "politically incorrect" and on "feminism". I may come back to those issues in another post. However here I would like to discuss her view that being submissive frees their sexuality from restraints and gives them permission to be shameless. Because a submissive is no longer in control of her own actions - having given that responsibility to their Dom - they no longer have responsibility for them. In this way all guilt and social conditioning is removed. In its place is developed a new sexualised conditioning implicitly agreed with the Dom.

Many commenters to my previous post "shameless" also wrote of how their submisive relationship helped them to become "shameless". Sophia Anne wrote about "finding my sexual freedom in slavery" which led her to becoming more and more debauched and a libertine.

So does the argument hold water? Does the very act of submission help remove sexual inhibitions? Does submission make one shameless?

shameless

So powerful to feel totally shameless.

Though I wonder how much society can make some feel shame is aspects of their behaviour. A sub friend I know once felt some shame in her promiscuity and also in her submissive desires. I was so pleased with her when she wrote on her blog that our time together had helped her cast aside her feelings of shame.

Can you do that? Be strong and proud and cast aside your shame?

Are you shameless?