SERE

Isn’t funny how all sorts of life skills help train you for all things kinky?

I promised, more or less, to explain a lit­tle more about my col­lege class that involved eat­ing rab­bits and wan­der­ing through the woods avoid­ing bad guys.

SERE was a three-​​week required class offered between fresh­man and sopho­more years at the United States Air Force Acad­emy. The class is no longer taught, but there is a Wikipedia page avail­able. SERE stands for Sur­vival, Eva­sion, Resis­tance, Escape.

The Resis­tance and Escape por­tions refer to wartime prisoner-​​of-​​war con­di­tions where the Geneva Con­ven­tions apply. The pre­cise con­tent is clas­si­fied. But, sur­prise, sur­prise, a major por­tion was the the­ory and prac­tice of “mind games” aimed at subverting/​brainwashing some­one. I was sur­prised to dis­cover that the bruises obtained in the R & E train­ing per­sisted quite a while — it was days before it dawned on me what the source was of a cer­tain area of sore­ness. (more…)

Public Play

When I play with peo­ple other than Sarah, I nearly always play in pub­lic. For that mat­ter, when Sarah and I have the option of play­ing pub­lic or in pri­vate, we’ll often play in pub­lic. Play­ing in front of an audi­ence allows her to go fur­ther — she doesn’t want to disappoint.

She also enjoys watch­ing me play with oth­ers. She’s quite sadis­tic her­self, and enjoys mak­ing sug­ges­tions. “What a lovely cane welt. Wouldn’t a clothes­pin look nice on it?” (more…)

Personality Modification #2

This essay by Mid­night Writer is used on the Old Tom Archive with permission.

Per­son­al­ity Mod­i­fi­ca­tion: Tech­nique #2, Pavlov­ian Key conditioning

By Mid­night Writer

This tech­nique is a bit more sub­tle in use than the self-​​programming with affir­ma­tions tech­nique I spoke of ear­lier; it can be used with­out the subject’s aware­ness. One should be very care­ful about what one pro­grams with this, and what one uses for a trig­ger; con­sider care­fully what will hap­pen if the trig­ger is used unex­pect­edly, and the ethics of pro­gram­ming another per­son for what you’re pro­gram­ming for, and what will hap­pen if the trig­ger becomes unavail­able. Go back and read the more exten­sive warn­ings in the pre­vi­ous arti­cle, please.

That said, I used this on Babalon with­out her aware­ness, though I care­fully worded our meta-​​negotiation so that she’d con­sented to it. With­out her informed con­sent, I was care­ful to pro­gram for a fail-​​safe — if any­thing goes wrong, the pro­gram­ming is use­less, but doesn’t dimin­ish her qual­ity of life. (more…)

Personality Modification #1

This essay by Mid­night Writer is used with per­mis­sion on the Old Tom Archive.

Per­son­al­ity Mod­i­fi­ca­tion: Tech­nique #1, ver­bal self-​​programming

By Mid­night Writer

Okay — I’ve had it with the angst.

I’ve got­ten a lot of email on this topic — mostly, requests for the tech­niques, all promis­ing to be care­ful with them. Some of the email was giv­ing me dif­fer­ent POVs on the ethics involved in mak­ing these tech­niques public.

Many thanks to the per­son who asked me how I’d feel if I’d heard that some­one was try­ing to keep, say, an unusual flog­ger tech­nique under wraps, because it took mod­er­ate skill to keep it from being dangerous.

I’ve been focused on free­dom of infor­ma­tion for a long time — I just had to have some­one point out to me that it means me, too.

So, I’ll be post­ing on the tech­niques — from easy/​safe onward to the difficult/​can eas­ily be mis­used. First, how­ever, I’ll have my say on the ethics and moral­ity of psy­cho­log­i­cal manip­u­la­tion of oth­ers. (more…)

Holding Position

First, we’re assum­ing the scene is severe enough, that hold­ing posi­tion is a real issue. We’re not just play­ing tippy-​​tap. This might include full-​​armed swings with some imple­ment — so let me first address the safety issue.

What if you move at just the wrong time? Is a full-​​armed stroke with a hair­brush on the back of your hand a good thing? Hands are del­i­cate — any­thing wooden which was intended for your bot­tom but hit­ting your hand… could cause quite seri­ous and pos­si­bly per­ma­nent damage.

In the case of a hand spank­ing, reach­ing back at the wrong time could mean acci­den­tally bend­ing your fin­ger the wrong way. Again, this is unin­tended injury. If there is a missed stroke dur­ing a full-​​horsepower can­ing… well… even with Hal­loween and hor­ror movie sea­son approach­ing, we don’t want to go there.

There does seem to be com­mon agree­ment that safety issues are seri­ous, and non-​​negotiable. If the ses­sion in ques­tion is severe enough that hold­ing posi­tion is a prob­lem — in my opin­ion, that prob­lem must be solved. Because, it is a safety issue. (more…)

Thoughts on the Submissive’s Pleasure

This essay by Shun­y­ata is used on the Old Tom Archive with permission.

Thoughts on the submissive’s plea­sure in sex­ual servitude

by Shun­y­ata

There was a news­group dis­cus­sion about sex­ual servi­tude, and where the submissive’s plea­sure comes from. One per­son stated that the sole source of plea­sure should come from the knowl­edge that his or her Master/Mistress’s plea­sur­ing has been accom­plished, and that they have per­formed their duty well.

I agree with Shunyata’s response, repro­duced below.

I would say that it gives me my great­est plea­sure, my deep­est plea­sure, per­haps the one plea­sure that is most impor­tant to me spir­i­tu­ally and emo­tion­ally; but it is by no means my sole source of plea­sure. I’m a very tra­di­tional man in a lot of ways, with a lot of self-​​esteem, and I’m a roman­tic. I need lots of old-​​fashioned give-​​and-​​take in a rela­tion­ship. I need to be able to argue (respect­fully, of course), I need to be able to be force­ful, and I need to get my way some­times. I need to be told I’m spe­cial some­times, and asked for my opin­ion or my pref­er­ence (I don’t nec­es­sar­ily need my pref­er­ence to be hon­ored, but I do need to know that my owner cares enough to con­sider it some­times). I’m human, not some machine or char­ac­ter in a story. (more…)