A young man is shackled and leashed to spreader bars at both his ankles and wrists.
I like this photograph a lot, and I don’t imagine it’s hard to see why. Of particular note, I love spreader bars, and what’s especially cool about these is that they appear to be homemade. It’s relatively simple to buy thick wooden dowels at a hardware store like Home Depot (which is really a fetish superstore without a pricey markup!) and then drill eyehooks into the ends of them. I miss the set I used to have.
More interestingly, of course, is the man’s expression. He looks pained and distressed. Often, I am confronted with explaining my desire for experiences in which I am pained or distressed to people who don’t share a desire to have those experiences. This is a hard thing to do, but ultimately it boils down to a misunderstanding. Rather than merely consent to such things, I actually ask for them, I want them, and I'm happy to get them.
If, hypothetically speaking, my partners always refused to interact with me in a way that distressed me physically because they believed I shouldn’t want it, I would be sad. Passing negative judgement on my own wants would not be exerting dominance over me in “classier,” or “more intelligent” ways. They would, in fact, be denying me the pursuit of my own happiness. They would be an obstacle to my freedom, not a savior of my skin. They would not be giving me what I “deserve better,” for they would be mistakenly imposing their own will on me. Submission is not about relinquishing one’s own desires.
This may sound strange to some, but never whipping me when I want to be whipped, never tying me down when I want to be bound, never painfully prolonging my sexual pleasure when I want to be teased, might be an emotionally harmful thing, equivalent to the ways withholding loving sexual touch from a partner could be considered a harmful act in other aspects of a relationship.
Stop crying, bitch.