A post in which I talk about being "nice."

This was originally a comment on Unspeakable Axe's post about the disparity between the number of books and other resources aimed at introducing female to topping, versus introduction males to bottoming.

My comment turned into an essay against the concept of "nice." So for posarity, and on the off change I have any readers left after the long summer hiatus I'm reposting it here.

I’m going to try and explain all the thoughts that are fluttering around in my head on this issue, but since I’m on day #3 of a horrible headache, it may not go so well.

I could really get to hate “nice.” I, like most females I know, was raised to be a “nice” person. The definition of “nice” shifts from person to person, but a few things seem to be constant: “nice” girls don’t hurt people , and “nice” girls don’t like sex. Needless to say, getting hot and bothered from hurting people while having kinky sex is right out.

Sadism is the refined art of being not nice. Exceedingly not nice. (And yes, not all tops are sadists. But let me get to that.) So is it any wonder that there are fewer female sadists around?

Now, as I said earlier, not all tops are sadists. But tops do take control of the power dynamic, sort of by definition. And that’s not “nice” either. Telling someone what they are going to do, to you, or for you, or in general is not “nice.”

“Nice” is putting up and shutting up, and doing what needs to be done, and not enjoying one damn bit of it. Or, at least, this is my understanding of the phenomenon.

To enjoy sex at all is breaking the “nice” paradigm. To enjoy kinky sex, more so. To admit to oneself that one enjoys things that hurt (oh so good!) is to warp “nice” all out of perspective.

But let’s be clear here. The glass (a little more honest) MY glass is only half full. Because for all that I like to think of myself as having broken the “nice” paradigm it lingers.

I’ve been reading Ellie Lumpesse’s (http://www.lumpesse.com/) masculinity interviews with great interest. In several of them, the men talk about the need to make peace with topping. This consensual power play we do SEEMS to go against the egalitarian feminist sensibility that most of us (I do hope!) hold. It doesn’t, I think we can agree. We do it from a place of informed consent, often warping the cultural perceptions around gender, power and sex, and it is a fulfilling part of many of our lives.

Take the feminist angle, and a dose of “nice” and no wonder there are not female tops coming out of the woodwork. Admitting that one likes to hit people and listen to them gasp on that edge of pain/pleasure: that is scary stuff. Even if the people you are hitting want it as much as you do, consented to be there, and are enjoying the heck out of it.

Getting out of “nice” is work. Work: reading, and thinking, and reading some. Finding a voice to say what one wants. Finding other voices who think like you.

And even then, even if you get that far, you find yourself back at “nice” sometimes, wondering if it will ever feel like it’s alright to want to what you do.

I could get to hate “nice”.

The perverse bibliophile is useful.

I have been told that I am an emotionally intelligent person, or something to this effect on more than one occasion. My sister, R. , is fascinated with the way I behave, and think about things. I tend to take this with a smidge of salt, as she is tremendously more intelligent and motivated than me in just about every way. Luckily, we went into different fields. I went the literature route, and she went the hard science route. Seldom do the two meet, although we share fiction tastes. Perhaps this is even the root of the difference: my academic endeavors were focused on the analysis of fictional characters. How they acted, why they said the things they said, and what this all means was my whole focus for several years. R., on the other hand, observes insects.

This was going somewhere. . . ah, yes.

A friend of mine called the other day, looking for my life partner, Paradox. He was not around, and she decided to ask me, instead. What her query boiled down to was weather or not it is dishonest for someone to elicit the admission of emotional vulnerabilities, if they don't really care about either you, or the vulnerabilities.

My answer would have been "No!" regardless, I think. But fresh off of a re-read of Jay Wiseman's SM 101: An Introduction, I had a reasoning and justification on tap. Namely, that it is ethically questionable, if not downright wrong to open a person's armor more than you are willing to help them put it back together.

After all, we all have a layer of armor, or skin, or manner, or something that keeps us from blurting out our troubles to the supermarket clerk when they ask us how we are doing. Intimacy, especially emotional intimacy, is, in my opinion, a reciprocal relationship. One does not offer intimacy without the expectation of intimacy in return. The exception might be in certain professional relationships, such as therapists. Even then, it seems to me, there is a commitment to working through any issues that are raise in therapy.

In Wiseman's book, this is explicated slightly differently. As I recall, his phrasing is along the lines of "Don't do anything to a person which is beyond their ability to self-heal." He, of course, is coming at this from the perspective of both physical and mental harm in the context of consensual power play, where as in this case I was using it to apply to everyday emotional exposure and intimacy.

Nevertheless, it worked. My friend felt that this concept was very helpful to her, and her situation. Then, she praised me for, what was to her, a revelation.

I took the praise as it was intended, graciously. But in the back of my head, I was jumping up and down, saying "I told you all that perverse literature you've been reading was useful! See?"