FemDom with a Twist: Tanya Chris' MINE

I'll be the first to admit that I'm no expert when it comes to FemDom romance. But the books in the genre that I have read tend to depict submissive masculinity as heroic, largely in keeping with traditional masculinity: the submissive male demonstrates his strength and power by standing up courageously to the pain his dominant lady love so enjoys dishing out. It's far more rare, at least in my reading experience, for a submissive male hero to be portrayed as enjoying the emotional aspects of submission, of enjoying caring for and serving another, as opposed to glorying in the physical triumph of enduring pain. Which is why I so enjoyed Tanya Chris's latest erotic romance, Mine, a companion volume to My Guys (reviewed last year on RNFF). For its hero, handsome, unassuming, slightly goofy Derek, is someone who yearns for a girlfriend who will tell him what she wants, and who will demand that he give it to her.

Readers of My Guys will remember Derek as the unassuming bi-racial (Norwegian father, Asian mother) rock-climber who was drawn into an affair with an older woman, a woman who was already sleeping with his friend. At the start of Mine, Derek is once again unattached, but is nursing a crush on tall, muscular, white, assertive redhead Amanda, who has recently moved to the area and has become a fixture at Derek's rock-climbing gym. After noticing how turned on Derek gets after she orders him to tie her climbing shoe, Amanda invites herself over to Derek's for dinner. But Amanda's expectations for some fun BDSM times go awry when Derek greets her demand that he kneel in front of her with a innocently humorous "Neil who?"

Amanda's been clear about her own sexual preferences since her teens:

There'd been a girl, a worshipful, adoring girl, who'd followed her from class to class, jumping to fill her every need. One day Amanda had looked at this girl and thought, If she was a guy, I'd fuck her, and her sexuality had clicked into place with a single, solid thunk. (Kindle Loc 356)

And Amanda has also "lived in her own body long enough to know that the media overestimated the uniformity and blandness of the American male's taste. They weren't all looking for women who were fragile or stupid, not even most of them" (319). But even as an experienced Dom, she doesn't quite know what to do with Derek, who appears to enjoy being submissive, but who also doesn't seem to have a clue that being a submissive might be an sexual proclivity, rather than just a response to a particular woman to whom he is attracted. And Derek, nice guy that he is, isn't after a one-night stand; he's longing for someone to call him "Mine" for the long term. Amanda may be experienced when it comes to kink, but not when it comes to romance. She hasn't ever had a romantic relationship, and isn't sure she wants to start one, especially with a guy who is far more comfortable identifying as "submissive to you" rather than "submissive" full stop.

But as Amanda spends more time with Derek at the gym, she's increasingly drawn to the "sweet-faced, pretty-mannered, submissive boy" (579). Which to her mind is a major problem: "The problem was... that she liked Derek. The problem was that she did want to be what Derek wanted. And that was definitely a problem. Because she didn't think she could be what Derek wanted and who she was all at the same time" (839). Amanda assumes that Derek wants a vanilla girl—a bossy vanilla girl, yes, but a vanilla girl all the same.

Derek's so gone on Amanda, though, that he'll try anything, even a little BDSM. But can Amanda truly enjoy herself if her "puppy" isn't taking pleasure in receiving pain, only pleasure in serving her?  Especially after Lissie, Derek's former lover and current friend, insists that she's trampling on Derek's feelings, and pushing him to do something he really doesn't want:

     "He's only doing it because you want him to."
     "Yeah, duh. That's the game, Lissie. That's how we play it." She looked around for Derek.
     "It's not a game to him, Amanda. He's crazy about you, obsessed. He'd do any fucked-up thinking you asked him to, but that doesn't mean he wants to. I see how he looks at you. If you care about him, you won't take advantage of him this way." (2066)

If Derek is only agreeing to submit to her to please here, is it submission at all, Amanda wonders. "What did yes mean if he wasn't capable of telling her no?" (2396). Even if he promises "I won't ever let you do something to me I'll hate you for," can she trust him to tell her when she needs to stop?

There's so much to enjoy in this funny, heartfelt romance: Amanda's brusque self-confidence, and her frustrations with the lingering male privilege of even the most submissive of men; Derek's growing realization about, and acceptance of, his own sexual likes and dislikes ("He'd never wanted to own up to who he was, and so he'd settled for women who were bossy rather than dominating" [2611]); a scene in which Amanda teaches a younger girl how to physically stand up to her pushy older brother at the climbing gym; another when Amanda brings Derek home with her to her "normal" family for Thanksgiving; and the hilarious discussion between Amanda and Derek's mom when she realizes that the small Asian woman may be even kinkier than she is ("Although, you know, your Mom and I were talking about voluntary restraints, and it got me thinking..." [3087]).

And especially the way that Amanda finally figures out how to be sure that Derek's devotion to her is given with full consent, rather than coerced from him by her. A way deliciously reminiscent of the the black moments of many a classic romance.

Another romance for the feminist keeper shelf.


Photo credits:
Redheaded climber: 123RF
Combination lock choker: Le coq sportiv

Tanya Chris

Mine

indie-published, 2018

The Feminism of Pain? Sarah Taylor Woods' HOLD ME DOWN

Daddy fetish and feminism? If someone told me five years ago that I'd be putting those two ideas in the same sentence, I'd have laughed them out of the room. But since returning to romance reading in the intervening years, my eyes have been opened to a far broader spectrum of human sexual practices that my white middle class upbringing ever even acknowledged. And I've learned that the feminism or lack thereof in any sexual practice depends not just on the practice itself, but on the people who partake of it, and their reasons for so doing. So, daddy fetish and feminism? Sarah Taylor Woods, you've convinced me it's possible.

Woods' debut romance novel, Hold Me Down, is told in the first person by Talia Benson, a junior at the University of South Carolina. Talia's been in therapy ever since her mother found her cutting herself in high school, an emotional reaction, everyone assumed, to the messy divorce her parents just went through, to her father's verbal abuse, and to her boyfriend of three years unceremoniously dumping her. Talia knows that she's emotionally a mess, but her reasons for the cutting are far more complicated. Ever since she can remember, Talia's been fascinated by bondage and pain—wrapping curtain cords around her wrists when she was six; playing as many contact sports as she could as a kid and a teen; masturbating to fantasies of being held down by a faceless man who bites her and hits her when she was twelve; asking her boyfriend to tie her up as a present for a teenaged birthday (which led to the above-mentioned unceremonious dumping).

Woods, through Talia, explains in a way I've rarely seen in a romance novel, why pain is so appealing to a masochist:

    "So what is it? Why do you do it?"
     I shrugged. "Because it feels good."
     "What does that mean, 'It feels good'?"
     "You know how funerals make people horny? It's that. It's affirmation. Like I'm reminding myself I'm here and alive and this is all I've got." (1240)

     "But it's like... you want to do this thing, right? A hard thing. You have to work for it, and it hurts. It takes time and energy and effort. And you get the shit kicked out of you for your efforts—like roller derby, right? and at the end of the day, you see these visible, physical reminders of your ability to take what's thrown at you. To take it and keep going and come out the other side. It almost doesn't matter if you win." (Kindle Loc 1258)


But Talia's fantasies and desires bother her, especially in light of her progressive values:

Never mind that I'd identified as a feminist since I learned the definition of it. I was so invested in determining y own future and making my own decisions and being as good as any man walking down the street—but as soon as I got my clothes off, boss me around, hurt me, threaten me, humiliate me.
     How on earth was I supposed to reconcile that? (2068)


Because of her ambivalence, Talia hasn't engaged in a romantic relationship since high school. And because she's not found anyone at all interested in the same sort of "not normal" desires that she has. Until, at a lunch get-together sponsored by her Archaeology professor, she meets doctoral student Sean Poole:

     Pooley was hot.
     Hot like, Thor moved to Portland and got a job in a logging company hot. Blond hair pulled back into a little knot. Beard. Plaid button-down, solid tie. Flat front chinos, broken-in work books, and—
     Jesus. Legs for days. (135)

Talia finds herself initially tongue-tied by this gorgeous specimen of male pulchritude, but her usual brashness quickly reasserts itself, a combination that catches Sean's attention. And Sean, who always goes for what he wants, immediately asks sassy, mouthy Talia out.

As the two gradually begin to date, it becomes clear that they share a lot more than a love of archeology. Sean's a fairly experienced dominant, a sexual sadist who gets off not just on control, but on marking the bodies of his lovers—biting, bruising, and whipping them. But Sean, who has been taught how to do BDSM safely, recognizes Talia's ambivalence about her own desires, and will not engage in any kinky behavior with her unless she gives her consent first:

     He let me go, and I wanted to slap him. I couldn't stop my hips rolling toward him, pushing back against the door. He reached down and swiped his shirt off the floor. "Someone told me I wasn't allowed to boss her around."
     I gaped at him.
     "And I promised I wouldn't until she asked me to." Grinning, he laid a hand over his heart. "And I am nothing if not a man of my word."
     "Sean."
     "I'd hate to violate your trust." He pulled his shirt back on. "Relationships are based on trust."
     "Oh my God. Sean."
     "Yes, Talia? What is it?"
     I opened my mouth to ask him to boss me around, but for some reason, the words wouldn't form. I couldn't deny I wanted him to. But why? Why this insane urge for him to hurt me and push me around? What would Olly [her psychotherapist] think?
     What would my other think? Where was the independent girl she'd raised?
     Forget all that. What should I think? (1405)

No one's ever suggested to Talia that sexual desires such as hers are "real and normal and attainable" before Sean. And so Talia gradually grows comfortable enough to give her consent, and  the two begin a Dom/sub romantic and sexual relationship, one in which Talia eventually finds herself calling Sean "Daddy" and Sean calling her "little girl." (Given Talia's very real issues with her own domineering father, I had to do some outside reading here to get a handle on why people in Dom/sub relationships might use such language; this article in Broadly helped a lot).

Talia's never been happier in than her unusual romantic relationship with Sean. But Talia's friends and family aren't quite so sanguine. Especially after catching sight of the marks Sean leaves on Talia's body, Talia's roommate and longtime BFF Mallory, her therapist Dr. Oliver, and eventually her mom begin to challenge her belief that her relationship with Sean is a healthy one:

     "But I worry about you," [Mallory] said gently. "I worry that you get so wrapped up in seeking male approval you forget about all the approval the rest of the world is throwing at you.... You know you don't need some human with a penis to make you appreciate how awesome you are. Penises are just really well-irrigated skin tags." (2169-77)


     "I'm not talking about consent," [Dr. Oliver] said. "I don't doubt you're both very interested in what you're doing. That you're both very excited by it. But that doesn't make it healthy. Do you see the difference?"
     I did. God help me, I did.
     "Talk to me," she said. "Tell me what you're feeling."
     "I'm feeling really judged," I said. "And I didn't think that was a thing that was supposed to happen in here."
     "I'm not judging you," she said. "I'm diagnosing you." (3809)


    "How does he talk to you?" [Talia's mother] asked.
     You're not in any position to question me.
     I swallowed. "What do you mean, how does he talk to me?"
     "Does he tell you how to be better? How to do better? Because that's how your father talked to me.
     Wear a skirt.
     I'll tell you when we're done.
     We're going to talk about self-preservation
     Don't drink too much.
     Someone oughta teach you some patience. (4250)

I loved that the narrative didn't just brush off these questions as unimportant, or make out that the people asking them are stupid or uninformed. They all question Talia out of caring, out of worry that her decisions are not wise.

But at the same time, the story, through Sean, offers a counter-narrative:

You are probably the bravest woman I know.... It takes a lot of guts to ask for what you have, and guts to go through with it."
     "Because it's weird?"
     He took a deep, steadying breath, his jaw working under his beard. He said, "No. Because everyone keeps trying to convince you it is, and you want it anyway, bad enough to ask for it. Baby, I need you to know I don't give a fuck about those people and you shouldn't, either. Okay?" (3056)


Talia's not always comfortable buying into Sean's take on her desires. And deep into the story, when up until now her perfect boyfriend makes a huge misstep during their sexual experimentation, Talia's trust in him, and in her own judgment, takes a nosedive.

Where was the line between getting off on someone else's pain and being a fucking monster? Was I rationalizing? Was that something abuse victims did? Justify it with but we're both getting off? Could one-sided violence really be consensual? (2677)

That Woods offers no easy answers to these questions, but ultimately grants her protagonist the freedom to decide for herself what will be her own normal, what best constitutes her own happiness, makes for an unusual, and decidedly feminist, romance.


Photo credits:
Cord around wrist: Claireabellamakes.com
Consent heart: University of Wisconsin-Platteville
Daddy Vanilla card: Etsy

Sara Taylor Woods

Hold Me Down

(Carolina Girls #1)

indie-published, 2017

Feminism with a Kink: Teresa Noelle Roberts' DRIVE and Tamsen Parker's DUE SOUTH

Hearing Teresa Noelle Roberts and Tamsen Parker speak at February's meeting of the New England Chapter of Romance Writers of America on how to use kink to develop a romance arc reminded me that I hadn't read either of their recent releases. And so I spent a few evenings this week most pleasantly entertained by two erotic romances that use kink not only to titillate readers, but also to advance feminist ideals.

Roberts' Drive, the first book in her Cougars, Cars and Kink series, spins a romantic suspense story about a forty five-year-old recent widow who finds herself in the midst of car chases, break-ins, and terrorist plots after she discovers her husband's high-tech business focused not just on the industrial and consumer markets, but on defense work for the government. The suspense plot wasn't what grabbed my interest, though; instead, it was the book's parallel story about a middle aged woman who had once enjoyed walking on the kinky side but who had suppressed those desires for the sake of her marriage. And who rediscovers her pleasure in being sexually submissive with a hot guy fifteen years her junior. So many romances, even erotic ones, take it for granted that the natural heterosexual pair is an older man with a younger woman. The gap between the ages of said heterosexual pair has narrowed over the years, but the rarity of older women paired with younger men in romance indicates that the general principle is still alive and well in the genre.

Suzanne Mayhew had initially been attracted to her husband, Frank, because he seemed in control, an adult while she was still floundering, figuring out her life. But Frank's controlling nature did not extend to the bedroom ("If the world ever needed proof that control freak and Dom are two different traits..." [Kindle Loc 53]). Suzanne was on the verge of getting a divorce when Frank wrapped one of the classic cars he seemed to care about far more than his wife around a tree.

Eight months after Frank's death, Suzanne is finally ready to move on with her life. Part of that moving on includes confiding to her old college friend, Janice, a Domme in Boston's kink community, that Suzanne misses "the spanky side of sex" (19). And Janice, good friend that she is, arranges for one of her Dom friends to go and check out the 1965 Mustang, Frank's favorite classic car, that Suzanne is putting up for sale. That neither Suzanne nor Neil, Janice's thirty-year-old friend, has any idea that they've been set up only adds to the excitement of their flirty meeting.

Suzanne has no hangups about a short term fling with younger guy Neil, and for his part, Neil has a decided preference for older women: "Older women were more confident, as a rule, more in touch with their own sexual needs and less likely to use the submissive role as an excuse to avoid responsibility" (97). But when things start to get really intense really fast, Suzanne ends up backing off. Only when Neil experiences his own personal crisis, after Suzanne's have all been resolved, can Suzanne shrug off her worries about their age difference and realize what she wants for herself, and from Neil.

I'm looking forward to reading future installments of this unusual series, which promise more romance and thrills for other members of Janice's Kinky Cougars support group. Younger men, bring 'em on!

Parker's Due South, the fifth book in her Compass series, features two protagonists who aren't nearly as sure about their sexual desires as Suzanne and Neil are. Lucy Miller, assistant to hard-driving boss India Burke (see books 1 & 2 in the series) and Evans, India's second in command, are about as awkward and deferential as two people can be. As Lucy describes them, "A flutter of 'sorrys' follows because both of us could probably get Canadian or British citizenship based solely on the amount of apologizing we do" (56). Evans has been nursing a crush on Lucy for years, but has never acted on it, not only because fraternization between employees is strictly forbidden by the company handbook, but also because "I can barely speak a sentence to women outside of a work context because I don't want to impose, and I feel the urge to apologize just for existing" (115). As for Lucy, she likes Evans, but has never really thought of him in any romantic, never mind sexual, way. As unlikely a pair of lovers as one is likely to find in romance today.

And it takes something completely unexpected to bring them together: accidentally observing their tough-as-nails boss engaging in BDSM sex with her husband at the office. And taking the submissive, rather than the dominant, role. While watching India's husband hit her with a belt kills Lucy's tiny crush on him, watching the two engage in hot sex turns her on—as does the sight of Evans' own arousal. And as soon as India and her husband leave, Evans' mouth comes crashing down on hers, not in any mild, tentative way, as his affect might suggest, but "demanding, passionate...hungry. Like he wants to devour me" (367). And Lucy isn't at all reluctant to be devoured.

But Evans, being Evans, immediately apologizes for his unacceptable behavior and flees. But the evening has even more embarrassing moments in store for them both until they begin to see a way out of their predicament:

    "What if you... weren't you?"
     He starts, but then it seems as though the sun comes up and shines on his face. "You mean like pretend?"
     "Yeah. Pretend. Like we could still be Lucy and Evans, but braver."
     "Bolder."
     My breath speeds up, and I bite my lip. "Yeah. Sexier." (479)

Even under the guise of pretend, though, Lucy, who grew up in a conservative family, has difficulty bridging the gap between what she wants in her head and actually speaking her desires aloud:

But I can't quite get the words from my brain to my mouth. They keep getting hung up on everything I've been told my whole life. That sex is only appropriate inside the bonds of marriage and I need to set a good example because girls have more self-control than boys." (509).

Lucy knows, now, as an adult, that her family and her church's teachings are misogynistic. But still, it's difficult to keep those teachings, those voices, out of her head. It takes real work, feminist work, to allow herself to believe her desires are not bad, that "it's okay to want sex, to like it, to enjoy my body and be proud that men find me attractive. It's okay to be a sexual creature" (523). But with Evans, someone equally as diffident, ready to combine bold and sexy with shy and awkward, Lucy finds the courage to be an active participant in her own sex life.

But conquering your inner slut-shamer isn't a one-time affair; the old familiar feelings of shame and embarrassment don't disappear overnight. With an awkward, but equally eager partner, though, Lucy can get in a lot of practice reciting her sex-positive mantras and laying down new patterns in her brain. Patterns that say "yes" to pleasure—even if said pleasure includes a touch of kinky exhibitionism—and "no" to misogynistic shame.


Photo credits:
Red Mustang: Mustangattitude.com
Office spies: Metro

Teresa Noelle Roberts

Drive

Cougars, Cars and Kink

Samhain, 2016

Tamsen Parker

Due South

Compass series

indie-published

What's Missing from BDSM Romance?

At February's monthly meeting of the New England Chapter of Romance Writers of America, Tamsen Parker and Teresa Noelle Roberts, two talented members of the chapter, gave a fascinating workshop on "How to Throw a Kink into your Romantic Arc." Focusing not on the whips and chains aspects of kinky romance, but instead on its psychological and emotional aspects, Parker and Roberts talked about what an author who wishes to write kinky characters convincingly needs to know about the world of BDSM and kink, explained some of their pet peeves about erotic romances that portray kink less than convincingly, and explored how to write about specific kinks when you yourself don't find said kink sexy. I don't write kinky romance myself, but I do read it, and I found their presentation both informative and thought-provoking.

From a gender standpoint, one comment that Parker made really stood out for me. Masochism, she noted, can come in two different flavors. Some masochists enjoy pain, and experience it as pleasure: a "a pain slut." Others, however, don't like pain in and of itself, but instead "enjoying taking it for their partner." For this latter type of masochist, pain is painful, not pleasurable. But the pain is worth it, for the pleasure it gives the partner to inflict it, and the pleasure it gives the receiver to offer that pleasure to a partner.

In my own BDSM reading, I've often noticed a difference in the depiction of female submissives and male submissives, and Parker's comment clarified for me just what that difference was. Female submissives in BDSM romances are far more often depicted in the first masochism category, people who enjoy pain, people who take pleasure from the pain itself. In contrast, male submissives more typically fall into the second category, people who "take pain" for the pleasure of a partner. Why?

Submission as strength

At the end of the workshop, I asked Parker about the gendered portrayal of masochism in erotic romance, and whether she thought it accurately reflected real-life BDSM practice. Were actual female masochists more often pain sluts, and male masochists who enjoyed pain in and of itself far less common? Or was this a reflection of historically gendered romance tropes, romance tropes that insisted that men and masculinity be depicted as strong and empowered?

I didn't write down her exact response, but I think that our conclusions were similar: both romance tropes and larger social norms about gender make it not as commercially viable to portray masochistic male characters who enjoy being submissive, who enjoy pain, who enjoy being humiliated. Especially if their Dom is a woman. If an erotic writer wants to appeal to a wider market, aka a market that includes non-kinky readers as well as readers involved in the kink scene or lifestyle, that writer cannot stray too far from the gender expectations of that wider audience. The one bright spot: Parker did say that she thought while a writer who crafted stories with masochistic men of the first type might develop a smaller audience, it would likely be a more devoted one.

Many readers envision erotic romance as a space of freedom, a space where anything goes. I know I did when I first started reading it. It seems more than a little ironic, then, to discover that erotic romance may be just as gender-bound in as more traditional romance fare...


Have you read any compelling erotic romances (as opposed to erotica) with a male character who enjoys pain for its own sake, not for the sake of a female partner? Who takes pleasure in being submissive?


Photo credit:
Submission as strength: Pinterest

Having your Kink and Condemning it too... A discussion with Madeline Iva about 50 SHADES OF GREY film & books

A few months ago, Madeline Iva over at the Lady Smut blog asked me if I'd be interested in joining her for a conversation about the 50 Shades of Grey phenomenon in February, on the weekend when the film of 50 Shades Darker opened. I had to admit to Madeline that I'd never read the books, or seen the first film, but that I thought it might be time to catch up with the popular romance zeitgeist. So I spent a chunk of this week reading 50 Shades of Grey and 50 Shades Darker the books, viewing the DVD version of 50 Shades of Grey that I borrowed from the library, and sitting in a (surprisingly empty) theater on yesterday afternoon, watching 50 Shades Darker the film.

Hope you'll check out my talk with Madeline over at Lady Smut, and that you'll add your thoughts here or there about the books and the film, and whether they represent a step forward, or a step back, in regards to women's sexual freedom.

Political Disagreements and the People Behind the Rhetoric: K J Charles' A SEDITIOUS AFFAIR

My heart always sinks whenever I open a piece of mail from a political candidate, or an organization whose work has become the subject of political debate. The rhetoric deployed in such mailings is most often of the ad populum type, an emotional appeal that speaks to negative concepts rather than the real issue at hand. Such appeals tend to demonize the person, party, or organization which are in opposition to the person, party, or organization making the appeal, using overblown language to insist that if I don't send money, the world as I know it will in all likelihood come to a bitter, nasty end, all at the hands of those being demonized. While I often agree with the candidates or groups whose letters clog my mailbox, I can't help but be turned off by their insistence that no good/intelligent person ever could/should/would disagree with their position.

how much political mail have you been pulling out of your
mailbox this season?

Being in the midst of a presidential election year (year and a half?) made me more than receptive, then, to the quite different message in K. J. Charles' latest m/m historical romance, A Seditious Affair. Its two protagonists could not be further apart when it comes to political beliefs and assumptions. Dominic Frey, God-fearing English gentleman and conservative Tory, believes in the natural order of society, with aristocrats at the top and the poor at the bottom. He is committed to his job at the Home Office, working to suppress radical and seditious calls for English government to be violently overturned. A realist, a man of means, and of power. Silas Mason, bookseller and printer, believes that the rich oppress and tyrannize the poor for their own aggrandizement. He is just as committed to his job as is Dominic Frey, although that job is the exact opposite of Dominic's: selling radical political tracts by day, printing seditious pamphlets advocating democracy by night. An idealist, a man scrabbling for means, one who must fight for every bit of power he can take.

If these two men met in the street, they'd likely sneer, or spit on each other's boots. Yet Dominic and Silas share a secret that brings them far closer than either might ever have imagined: a sexual preference for other men. In particular, men who get off on the power games involved in dominance and submission, power and shame. After they meet, anonymously, in an "assignation house," it is this shared secret identity, not the myriad differences between them, that keep them coming back each Wednesday night, week after week, for more than a year.

And soon it's not just for the sex, but for something more:

He couldn't remember which of them had started it, whose chance comment had begun an argument. Had no idea now when the first bottle had been laid out and waiting on his arrival, what day he had said, Have you read . . . and how long after that before the Tory had handed him a book and said, Tell me what you think. He didn't know when the fucking had become just one part of the night's pleasure, the thing they did before talking (238).

Charles gradually and organically reveals Silas and Dominic's different assumptions about the way the world works, both to the reader and to each other. For instance, at the beginning of the story, this exchange about their differing responses to reading Mary Shelley's Frankenstein shows their almost polar opposite views:

   

1831 edition

 "I finished the book," the Tory said.
     "Oh, aye? What'd you think?"
     "Good. Terrifying. Strange. I can't understand why you would like it."
     "Why would I not?"
     "I wouldn't have thought you'd agree with it." The Tory gave him a wry smile. "After all, its burden is the need for man to keep in his place—"
     "What?" said Silas incredulously.
     "The overreaching man dares to play God and pays a terrible price. Abuses the natural order and creates a monstrous thing."
     "Bollocks," Silas said. "That ain't what it's about."
     "It's what happens."
     "No. What happens is he creates, he's responsible something that should be"—Silas waved his hand—"great and strong, something that he owes a duty to. And he says to it, The hell with you. Go die in a ditch. I'll have my big house and pretty wife. And it says, You don't get to live in a grand house and ignore me. Do your duty or I'll tear you down. Treat me like I'm as good as you, or I'll show you—"
     "That I'm not,: the Tory interrupted. "The creature murders—"
     "Because he ain't given a chance to live decent," Silas interrupted right back. "You treat men like brutes; you make 'em brutes. That's what it says."
     "No, you create brutes when you distort the rules of nature and the order of things," the Tory retorted. "That's what the book's about. It's obvious."
     "It's not." (193)

Dom dislikes talk of rights and equalities, believes revolutionaries "intended to steal land from its rightful owners and share it out amongst what they called 'the people'" (367), and that the "Peterloo Massacre" is a "melodramatic nickname" for "the unfortunate incident at Manchester," "nothing more than a tragic misfortune" (305). Silas meets with those who "could no longer bear the stranglehold of the rich on England's neck" (205), and has been part of the struggle for the rights of the common man ever since "he'd had his eyes opened by Eupehmia Gordon, a radical firebrand and agitator for the rights of women, at the age of sixteen" (205).

Hard to imagine two people with such differing philosophies of life could ever find enough common ground to be anything more than casual lovers, no? Yet over the course of their weekly meetings, Silas and Dominic's understandings of one another gradually begin to change, because each begins to listen to the truth of other, not to dismiss, but to engage:

Arguing with Dom was damn near as good as fucking him. When those dark eyes narrowed in thought, when he bent that formidable determination to confront Silas's beliefs—not to ignore or dismiss, but to take them on at equal value, so that the pull of his attention became a physical thing—then Silas understood what it was to be important. (1412)

But even as they come to appreciate each other in private, by challenging each other's taken-for-granted beliefs, pointing to each other's hypocrisies, and insisting each recognize the complexity of what they've always seen as black and white issues, their public lives are putting them on a crash course for disaster. Especially when Silas finds his fellow radicals, made desperate after the passage of the repressive Six Acts of 1819, not just writing about overthrowing the government, but planning to stage an actual coup. "Pure pathetic fantasy," thinks Silas; "great chance to show the people that the repressive laws are vital" think the spies in the Home Office. And there are Silas and Dom, caught in the middle of the impending fiasco that will come to be known as the Cato Street Conspiracy.

Is it possible to disagree with respect? To become less absolute in one's convictions, to learn from those we've been taught to demonize? And yet still fight on behalf of one's principles? By way of William Blake ("Without contraries is no progression"), Charles' romance answers all these questions with a resoundingly hopeful "yes."


Photo/illustration credits:
Political junk mail: The Suburban Times
Frankenstein, 1831 edition: cbc books

K. J. Charles

A Seditious Affair

Loveswept, 2015

Complicating Dominance and Submission: Alexis Hall's FOR REAL

When some people who know I write this blog hear that I'm also writing historical romance fiction, they fear that my novels will end up reading like message-heavy political screeds. Writing fiction is difficult enough; writing fiction with a larger social message can too often fall on the wrong side of the entertainment/didacticism divide, such people worry. Even when I tell them that no, my novels aren't specifically about issues of feminism or gender, the worry often still lingers.

If you read Alexis Hall's comments about his upcoming BDSM novel, For Real, on a recent Wonk-o-Mance post, you might have had a similar reaction. But if you did, and avoided the novel because of it, you'd be missing out on one of the best kinky romances published this year. No, one of the best romances, period.

Hall's post outlines a specific political agenda behind the writing of For Real: to "de-exclusify the role of the dominant." Hall notes the "the strong tendency for romdoms to replicate their sexual proclivities in all areas of their life," something with which he has no problem per se; such books present successful, dynamic, reserved, and above all in-control men as fantasy objects, as "catalysts for the viewpoint character." But if a reader wants to identify with, rather than simply idealize, such a character, then the über-dom characterization doesn't work all that well. The prevalence of all-alpha all-the-time romdoms also "tacitly denies that dominance and submission can exist within a dynamic between two perfectly ordinary people, simply because that's what they're into," Hall argues.

In For Real, then, Hall presents us with two men who seem not only an unlikely romantic pair, but also the embodiment of the opposite role each truly prefers to play during kinky sex. Cool, quiet, and reserved thirty-seven-year-old Laurence Dalziel is a trauma doctor, the one who gets sent in to triage when major accidents, natural disasters, and terrorist attacks hit London. Most people know him as "D," a sharp-tongued introvert; only his closest friends call him "Laurie," and know his sexual preferences lean toward the homosexual and the submissive. Six years after breaking up with his first real boyfriend, with whom he first discovered love in college and only later discovered kink, Laurie is world-weary, cynical, and above all, grumpy: "Look, I've come straight from work, and I've had a really long day, and I simply haven't had time to slip into a spiky collar or a mesh shirt or whatever else you deem necessary to get into your haven of safe, sane, and consensual depravity," are the novel's first words, spoken by Laurie as he attempts to gain entrance to at Pervocracy, the latest kink club in town (Kindle Loc 53). Tired of the games, tired of the hypocrisy, all Laurie wants is to have his sexual urges satisfied for one night, even with someone he doesn't really like. He knows his emotional needs won't be, after all.

Despite his distaste for the "scene," Laurie's prepared to engage in yet another one-night BDSM stand, if only to reassure his worried friends and to relieve the sexual cravings for submission that no one he's dated since his breakup has been able to satisfy. He's hardly expecting that one-night stand to take the form of a "thin and wary and absurdly young" man whom his friends immediately nickname "the foetus," and assume is a "bijou sub-ette" (125, 133). Laurie, initially worried on the young man's behalf, goes over to warn him off: "You shouldn't be here. This isn't Junior Kink-Off" (142). Yet the shorter, slighter, nineteen-year-old "foetus" has a quick come-back to Laurie's insult, and Laurie ends up first apologizing, then being shocked when the young man announces precisely what he's searching for:

     "It's like," he went on tormentedly, "you're not allowed to be a dom until you're forty and six feet tall and own your bespoke bondage dungeon. But I'm probably not going to get any taller, and forty is forever away, so what the hell am I supposed to do now?"

     "I have absolutely no idea." I'd been with Robert, and we'd somehow figured it out together.

     "I just want to know what it feels like, y'know?"

     "What?"

     "Anything. Any of it. Something really basic. Like—" he drew in a deep, surprisingly steady breath "—I want to know how it feels to have some guy on his knees for me. And not a kid. I want a man, a strong, hot powerful man, doing it because he wants to and because I want him to."

     .....

     He twisted both hands into his hair until he was all edges and angles, fingers and wrists and elbows. "I think about it all the fucking time. When I jerk off at night. But I'm so bored of the fantasy. I want something real. I fucking need it. I need to know how it really feels." (195)

Caught by his fervency and need, Laurie ends up giving the young man, Toby Finch, a taste of what he's looking for at the club. And then he invites Toby back to his house, to give him even more.

Laurie's expecting his night with Toby to be just that—one mind-blowing, body-rocking encounter, never again to be repeated. But forthright, outspoken Toby comes back, and comes back again, until he worms his way behind Laurie's wary guard, enough to persuade the older man to a weekly sex date. Even though Toby really wants so much more: "And I suddenly realise there's other fantasies  to go alongside the filthy, kinky ones. I want to cook for him. Make him smile more. Do something about the dark circles under his eyes. I want to fucking take care of him" (1110).

Laurie keeps himself emotionally unavailable, though, and for months, Toby makes only slight inroads into his lover's reserve. Because in everyday life, it is Laurie who is older, Laurie who has his life under control, Laurie who seems the powerful one, despite preferring the submissive role during their sexual trysts. But it's Toby—intense, funny, needy, unsure, wanting to be dominant in the bedroom but not always sure how to accomplish that goal—who keeps pushing at Laurie's boundaries, hoping to someday become more than just a fuck-buddy to the "wild stallion of a man who tames himself for me" (2116).

Arguments, losses, fears of abandonment and fears of self-worth (and how to combine kink and cooking in a hygienic manner)—Toby and Laurie have a boatload of issues to work through. Never mind the difference in their ages, which, Laurie discovers, does matter, just not in the way he had initially thought: "Not... because of how other people would judge, but because while some of the bridges between us were instinctive and effortless, love and sex and faith, others had to be carefully built" (5473). Learning how to build such bridges won't make either of the lovers "complete, or some shit like that," but it will help the "bunch of pieces of [each]... fit together in a way they didn't before" (5965). The pieces that want dominance and of pain, humiliation and submission, as well as the pieces that want hand-holding and snuggling and sharing breakfast in bed. The pieces "beyond shame, fear, and vulnerability": the "true things: sex, and love, and us" (5996).

Photo credits:

London Air Ambulance: Telegraph

Lemon Meringue Pie: Cooking up Romance

Alexis Hall

For Real

Riptide, 2015

You Don't Complete Me: Solace Ames' THE SUBMISSION GIFT

"You complete me." "You're my missing half." "You make me whole." Such phrases were once the stock in trade of romance, both of the filmic and the written variety. Find your soul mate, connect with your one true love, and you'd find the one person who could—and would—give you everything you'd ever wanted, ever needed. Fall in love, and you'd be happy and sated for the rest of your life.

In real life, people who expect their mates or spouses to fulfill their every need are doomed to disappointment. But even today, romances that reject the "you complete me" trope are far less common than those that embrace it. Perhaps that's why I found Solace Ames' The Submission Gift such a treat. For Ames' erotic romance (the second in her LA Doms series) insists that one can be happily married, even if one's partner can't meet all one's sexual desires.

Adriana and Jay, a Mexican-American couple, have had a difficult start to their married life. A car accident a little over a year ago seriously injured Jay, and Adriana has spent the subsequent months splitting her time between caring for her husband and working grueling hours as a sous chef. But now Jay's almost completely recovered, and ready to resume his life, including his sex life with his wife.

Jay loves Adriana so much, he'd do anything for her. Or, at least, almost everything. Adrianna's into being dominated in bed, but Jay's just not that into playing that role. Because he cares for her, Jay can sometimes get into such scenes:  "Even though he wasn't much into controlling—he played these games for her sake, not his own—sometimes he'd sink far enough into her feelings that he'd genuinely enjoy this easiest, most playful level of teasing, denying, restraining" (Kindle Loc 162). But he doesn't enjoy it enough to fully satisfy Adrianna: "If he gripped her wrists and held her down... She wanted that. Such a small thing, and he couldn't do it, couldn't take that step. Because she only wanted it if he wanted it. And he didn't, not really" (187).

Jay wants Adrianna to be happy, though, and comes up with the idea of using some of the insurance money they've just received to hire a "rent boy," a sex worker who can take on the dominant roles that Jay just doesn't enjoy. Jay finds Paul, a white thirty-year-old who specializes in BDSM work both with gay men and also with couples. As a threesome, and later, pairing off individually with Paul, Jay and Adrianna gradually find themselves growing not just more sexually fulfilled, but also developing a real emotional bond with Paul. A bond Paul, too, recognizes: "We've got a strong emotional connection.... I feel it as much as you. It's okay. It doesn't take away from what you have with Jay," Paul reassures Adrianna (1039).

All too soon, though, the extra settlement money is gone, and Jay and Adrianna can no longer afford Paul's services. But before they can tell Paul, Paul announces he's firing them as clients. Not because they've done anything wrong, but because he wants to "see you, both of you, on a non-paying relationship basis.... Dating. Or free sex. Whichever way you want to look at it. I'm easy. I'm very easy" (1915).

Ames gives us the point of view of all three members of this unusual threesome: Adrianna, tough and competent on the job and in everyday life, who gets off on sexual domination and pain, but not discipline or punishment; Jay, a "bi guy on the femme side," a social worker who counsels abused women (2867); and Paul, who enjoys his sex work but imagines leaving it behind someday, after he's earned his architecture degree. Each continually questions his or her own motives, his or her desires, wondering if they are wrong, if they are hurting one another, or themselves: for example, Jay thinks "Maybe there was something wrong with his mind, or his heart, for him to not feel particularly torn or jealous. But he just couldn't bring himself to care about whatever flaw it was. As long as she was happy, the whole issue was academic. Boring, even" (1159). They key is to find a proper balance, one that allows each member of this threesome the chance to have his or her needs met. Their sex together, as a threesome or in pairs, is hot, but it's not just there to titillate the reader; it's there to convey and develop a fascinating set of characters.

In typical romance novel fashion, secrets from Paul's past throw a huge monkey wrench of a black moment into the burgeoning relationship of this threesome. Add in some work angst, some overblown tempers, and, ultimately, some straight talk, and you have all the emotional lows and highs of a traditional monogamous romance story. It's a tribute to Ames' skills as a writer that she had this reader, with her own personal investment in monogamy, rooting for this unconventional threesome to overcome their differences and hurts and make their relationship work.


Photo credits:
Feet in bed: Advertolog

Solace Ames

The Submission Gift

LA Doms Book 2

Carina, 2014

Short Takes: Dominant Woman Romances

Last fall, in a review of Cara McKenna's Unbound, I mentioned in passing how much more common it seems for BDSM romances to feature females, rather than males, in the submissive role. Not that stories about sexually submissive women must necessarily be anti-feminist (as I've argued in reviews of work by Teresa Noelle Roberts and Jacqueline Carey). But I have to admit that I find myself more curious about kinky romances with heroines placed in the dominant role, perhaps because, at least on the surface, they seem more overtly focused on calling conventional gender roles into question. So I was pleased to discover several intriguing examples of femdom romances over the past month, stories that led me to consider not just how femdom challenges traditional masculinity, but also how it addresses an audience that includes both those who might identify with its sexually dominant female heroines as well as those for whom such a role is less a mirror than a window onto a world of which they themselves are most definitely not a part.


Joely Sue Burkhart, The Billionaire Submissive

I chuckled at both the title (The Billionaire Submissive) and at the series title (Billionaires in Bondage) of Joely Sue Burkhart's new series with Carina Press, guessing that a certain irony was at play. The book's cover intentionally riffs on the more "mainstream" erotic romances of E. L. James and Sylvia Day, with its still life tableau of erotically-charged items. A closer look, though, calls the conventional symbolic logic of the gathered symbols into gendered question. Is that sparkling diamond an engagement ring? Or a cufflink? Could a lipstick be any more phallic? And who is that dog collar and whip intended for, anyways? Echoing the titles' placement of the male, rather than the female, in the position of submissive, such elements hint that the gender roles of James' books (and to a far lesser extent, Day's) are going to be called into suggestive question.

The Billionaire Submissive, though, follows the path taken by much femdom romance, creating a hero who is alpha strong in every aspect of life, even the submissively sexual. Donovan Morgan's stomping grounds may not be New York City, but he's just as much the larger-than-life businessman that readers have come to expect in their BDSM heroes: "His corner office was mostly glass, giving him an unimpeded view of the world he'd supposedly just conquered. He'd just closed another million-dollar deal" (Loc 2). But the thrill of conquest readers typically gain via proxy to such powerhouse heroes is notably lacking here: "He'd just closed another multi-million dollar deal, yet he felt nothing. No joy, exhilaration, or the rush of competition he'd thrived on his entire life" (Loc 2). Donovan finds himself frozen in the midst of a steamy Minnesota summer, lacking the one thing that might make him feel: a woman who can force him to submit sexually to her.

But Donovan's life changes irrevocably when he interviews Lilly Harrison, purportedly looking to hire the stained glass artist to design new windows for his St. Paul office building, but truly hoping he can persuade her alter ego, Mistress L, to take him on as a client, too. Donovan sends out clear vibes about his specific type of submission:

Yeah, he led the way. But only because she's letting me. Which was the crux of his issue. He wasn't the kind of submissive who would whine and beg and crawl to his Mistress's feet and kiss her toes. No. Donovan Morgan wasn't going down without a fight. The difficulty was finding a Mistress who'd relish the fight as much as him. Someone who was strong enough mentally to bend him to her will, even when he hated every minute of it.  (Loc 190)

Because Donovan's submissive desires are constructed here as strength ("She had to be strong enough to make him want to bend his pride to her will. He had to want to surrender" [Loc 190]), Lilly's wielding of power over him does not emasculate him, or de-feminize her. Lilly's explanation to herself about why she is drawn to the dominant role contains nothing that takes pleasure in a partner's belittlement, but instead focuses on her own power:

Mistress L had started out at the local BDSM club three years ago as Lilly tried to find what she'd been searching for her whole life. She'd dated. She'd had plenty of sex, some good, some not so good. She'd even been engaged. But there'd been an emptiness inside her the entire time, an aching, gnawing lack, even though she didn't know what it was. She'd found it at the club once she'd taken a crop in hand. "They test me. It's like each time I give them an order, and they do it, then I've proved my strength and will again. If they don't obey, then I have  to prove I'm strong enough to punish them until they do. Regardless, I'm growing every single day and becoming even stronger." (Loc 291)

Donovan gets turned on by pain—"There wasn't much on the discipline scale that didn't appeal to him"—but not by degradation: "the humiliation elements were easy enough to decline" (Loc 915). Because Donovan maintains the strength that serves as the cornerstone of conventional masculinity, and Lilly does not enjoy humiliating such men (and has never been sexually turned on by BDSM before meeting Donovan), Lilly's own dominant tendencies never threaten to become a turn-off for the non-kinky reader.

Delphine Dryden, The Principle of Desire

I've read a lot of "please pretend to be my date so my ex won't accost me/humiliate me" meet-cutes, but I've never come across one that takes place in a kink club. But a quarter of the way into The Principle of Desire (the third title in Dephine Dryden's The Science of Desire series), Dryden gives us just such a scene, and with a far less-than-conventional hero than Burkhart's Donovan Morgan. Geeky, cranky, less-than-cut aerospace engineer Ed follows his friends to what he thought was a music club to retrieve his phone, only to find himself in the middle of  kink club. Little does he realize that his offer to help out a friend of a friend when her ex-who-won't-take-no arrives will lead to more than just watching. But in her dismay, former submissive Beth tells her ex-dom Aaron that she came to the club not to meet her him, as he had commanded, but to try out the whipping post with her new boy—Ed.

Having just witnessed the unexpected sight of a female friend on the receiving end of a flogging, Ed consents to Beth's unexpected scenario ("I just found out all my friends are into this stuff, and you expect me to let you fake this in front of them? If Cami took it, so can I. Bring it on, Mistress" [Loc 580]). And he finds himself pleasantly surprised by how turned-on he becomes during Beth's unusual ministrations.

For her part, Beth imagines how comfortable it might be to lay her head on Ed's squishy stomach, and is struck by a craving to "see more of [his] intensity. To bring it out in him, see how suffering refined him into a clearer version of himself. To see how much he would be willing to take to please her" (Loc 498). Beth is not a straight-out dom, but a woman in the process of experimenting, trying to see whether she enjoys the role of dom as much as she did the role of sub. At twenty-eight, Beth has only recently recognized how lacking in mutuality her relationship with Aaron, who "claimed" her at the age of twenty after meeting her at their local kink club, has been. Aaron has no interesting in letting Beth explore her dominance desires ("He doesn't believe in switches. He was sure it was just a phase I was going through and now I'm supposed to be over it"), but misanthropic Ed accepts them without question: "You swing both ways. Got it." (Loc 487).

As their unconventional first date leads to another, and another, Beth, and through Beth, the reader, learn that Ed's unconventionality extends not only to his acceptance of Beth's sexual desires, but also to his views about his own: "I don't really know about this D/s stuff. I'm not either one, and I love doing this with you but I don't know that I'm really a switch either. I think I'm just generally kinky as fuck. I like it all. Is that a thing?" Beth knows that "Purists would say no," but she proves equally accepting of Ed as he is of her: "But it's like glueing your Lego. You have to do what works for you" (Loc 1343). Being a former sub may relieve some reader anxiety about Beth's less conventional femininity, but both her and Ed's refusal to fit neatly into categories may allow readers to question the rigidity of the boundaries of their own sexual desires.

Best line: "There was just something about a woman with a decent grasp of statistics and research" (Loc 892).

Rebecca Rogers Maher, Tanya

Author Maher confronts potential reader anxiety about dominant women by addressing it head-on, in the dedication to her novella: "This book is dedicated to all women who have more to offer than niceness. Fear us, world. We're coming for you." But her story is as much about convincing her protagonist, former alcoholic Tanya, that she doesn't have to be a nice girl as it is about convincing the reader. Though she's been sober for two years, Tanya has a hard time believing that she can be anything but a screw-up. She engages in one-night stands, sexual encounters in which she keeps tight control of the game. For Tanya, it's not about inflicting pain, but about "forcing [a guy] off balance, keeping [him] under her control" (Loc 152). She initially explains it to herself thus: "It's the filth of it I'm after, the vague sense of self-punishment, of eating something bad for me. I like it when they're mean, or sexist, or stupid. I like taking what I want from these men, and then shoving them out the door" (Loc 210). But there's more to it than just self-punishment:

I like it. I like being a bitch and I like making them want me that way. I like discarding them when I'm all done. It's payback, is what it is. For all those years I spent sitting in grungy apartments listening to the jam sessions and misogynist proselytizing of boys I got drunk with. It was all about them, then. What they wanted.
     Not anymore.
     It's about me now. What I want. (Loc 231)

After an anonymous hook-up with a guy who doesn't seem to feel degraded by her controlling, dominant behavior, but turned on by it, Tanya begins to question her motives even further. And when said anonymous hook-up turns out to be the brother of her sister's fiancé, his acceptance and her own questioning lead her to rethink the story she's been telling about herself: that's she's a drunk, a screw-up, a worthless person, destined to repeat the same mistakes over and over again. Just maybe there isn't another shoe waiting to drop; just maybe she can be something else besides nice and still be valued.

Best line: "What is it that you think I want, exactly? Someone to look pretty and clean my socks? It's the twenty-first century. You don't have to be nice. You can be smart and funny and sexy as hell, and believe me, that will be more than enough." (Loc 1240)

Shelley Ann Clark, Have Mercy

In both The Principle of Desire and The Billionaire Submissive, it is the female half of each pair who undergoes the most character change/growth over the course of her story, which in some ways reassures the non-kinky reader who may find a woman with dominant tendencies a bit anxiety-provoking that these heroines are not all-powerful. Beth has to learn to imagine a life separate from Aaron before she can envision a relationship with Ed; Lilly has to learn to believe that a man can love both Lilly and Mistress L before she can commit to Donovan. But in Shelley Ann Clark's Have Mercy, the bigger learning curve is granted to the hero, musician/bar owner Tom. Tom's always been the responsible one, picking up the pieces after his alcoholic father, making sure his younger sister did her homework and ate her dinner. Touring's never been an option before, but now, with his father gone and his sister seeming to have turned the corner in battling her own addiction to liquor, Tom can't resist the offer to tour with rising songster Emily "Emme" Hayes, a woman whose "voice damn near melted his spine.... He heard desire in her voice, and he longed to give her whatever she wanted" (Loc 38). But when things fall apart back home, Tom has to decide whether to keep on giving when he's getting nothing in return, or to be "who he wanted to be, not who he was forced to be by circumstance" (Loc 2655). A daring move, to create a submissive hero who also has a mess of personal problems with which to come to terms.

For her part, Emme is the most openly dominant of the three heroines, even though she's the least aware of her own desires. Or, at least, readers are given far more access to Emme's thoughts and desires than we are to Lilly's or Beth's, desires that are directly at odds with conventional femininity. Early in the novella, Emme masturbates while fantasizing about using the band's new bassist for her own sexual pleasure:

What a stupid fantasy. He seemed different from all the other guys she'd known, sure, but she had no doubt that he'd be like them in bed—pulling her hair, trying to impress her with moves like tossing her around on the bed or putting their hands around her neck. Okay with the right person, maybe, but not what she'd ever really wanted for herself. Things that had always left her feeling a little dissatisfied. Lacking. (Loc 237)

Tom's sexual desires don't quite meet the standards of typical masculinity, either: When they play a new song she's written, "about asking the Lord for mercy for the man she was about to hurt, all he could think was, Please let that man be me" (Loc 475); "He wanted her to push him down and take hi over an dover and over again, preferably while she sang in that husky wet velvet voice" (Loc 457). He seems just the right fit for Emme, who "wanted him to want her, she wanted to make him hurt and yearn, and then she wanted to reward him for it, relieve him of it, make it all better" (Loc 1060).

Tom and Emme gradually discover each other's proclivities, choosing to have an affair despite the promise Emme's bandmates forced her to make before agreeing to hire Tom: she will not seduce the new bass player. The reason behind the promise points to the sexism of the double standard the press, and the public, hold about the sex lives of famous men compared to famous women. By surfacing such openly feminist concerns, rather than blunting Emme's dominant tendencies, Clark doesn't assuage reader anxiety about Emme's unconventional femininity, but asks readers to confront it head-on, then to recognize the sexism that may underlie it.

Best line: "It took its own kind of strength to retain that kindness, that openness, in the face of all his accumulated hurts. For all his guilelessness, he was the strongest man she'd ever met" (Loc 1928).



Can you recommend any other feminist femdom romances?

Making the Submissive Man Sexy: Cara McKenna's UNBOUND

Most of the BDSM erotic romances that I've come across feature females, not males, taking on the submissive role the the sexual relationship. This made me wonder: what would such a romance look like if it were the man, rather than the woman, who got off on being the one under someone else's command? Western culture is so invested in the construction of the masculine as powerful, as strong, as in charge; would it be next to impossible to create a hero who enjoyed being dominated, and still make him appealing to a general reader audience?

This summer, I spent some hours reading femdom erotic romance that posters here had recommended, books that featured women who preferred to take the dominant role in their sexual relationships. Interestingly, few of the books featured the wimpy, take-no-charge men I had assumed would serve as the foils to these dominating heroines. Instead, most of the books I read featured men who were heavily alpha in aspects of their lives other than the sexual. Though each preferred to submit to a woman during sex, such submission has more the feel of of strength, rather than weakness; enduring the challenge of a dominating woman, and the pain of BSDM, proves men such as Joey W. Hill's Mac Nighthorse (in Natural Law) and Stephanie Vaughan's Steve Eriksson (Cruel to be Kind) to be just as strong, just as masculine as their non-kinky male counterparts. As Vaughan's Steve thinks, "He wasn't sure exactly what Megan was asking him. What she expected from him. But he knew he couldn't live with himself as a man if he backed away from her challenge." Charlotte Stein's Benjamin Tate (Power Play) came the closest to what I had expected, with the masochistic pleasure he takes in being reprimanded for his goofy fumbling and bumbling by his female boss Eleanor. But even Ben proves to have a core of competence, teaching the self-hating Eleanor how to come to terms with her own kinky sexuality. Ben doesn't struggle at all to reconcile his own masculinity with his submissive sexual needs. My reading made me wonder again: was the only way to write a erotic romance with a submissive hero to either make his submission hyper-masculine, or to have any conflicts between socially acceptable masculinity and submissive sexual preferences already resolved before the book begins?

Reading Cara McKenna's latest erotic romance, Unbound, shows that in the hands of a talented writer, even the most unconventional characters can come to sympathetic life. Rob Rush has secluded himself away in a solitary cottage in northwest Scotland, attempting to dry out after three years of excessive drinking and abusive behavior drove away all the people he cared for. Rob's been an outsider most of his life, "rubbish at friendships as a child... rubbish with girls" as an adolescent, his unconventional sexual interests only exacerbating his poor social skills. Only after discovering alcohol in college had he been able to calm his anxieties enough to "function as a young man was designed to do," to develop friendships, to marry, to start two successful businesses. But drinking gradually shifted, no longer simply "merely a bit of fuel to get the social flames to catch," but now "the means for becoming insensate." Insensate, in particular, to the most "heinous predilections," the "hateful appetites" (Rob's words) a man can have: a desire to be dominated, to be tied up, to be controlled, treated like an object, during sex.

Only by hiding himself away from all humanity can Rob be sure that he won't return to the bottle, won't cause harm to anyone else, he believes. But the arrival of a ill, injured, but quite chatty American tourist on his secluded doorstep forces him not only to play reluctant, grumpy host, but to begin to attempt the difficult work of reconciling his sense of himself as a man with his unusual sexual desires.

Merry Murray has set off on a hiking trip through Scotland in celebration of the positive changes she's made in her life of late, including losing a lot of excess weight. Seducing a man had not been high on her list of to-dos for the trip, but cagy, taciturn Rob sparks her interest. After spending a few days recovering from her ailments and doing her best to get to know the self-contained man, she decides to see if her attraction to him is mutual, to instigate and explore sex as the active, rather than the passive partner. But when Merry recognizes the signs that Rob enjoys a passive role in sex, and asks him he wishes he were tied up, Rob wilts in shame. "An entire adolescence's worth of fear, fostered up north where there was absolutely nothing worse you could be than queer. Except perhaps whatever Rob was, he'd imagined. Spanking. That was something done to girls, because men were the spankers. The punishers. So what did that make Rob? The question had dogged him for years." Sexual desires run straight into normative constructions of masculinity here; in the contest, Rob views himself as the loser.

Only the morning after their embarrassing tryst, when Rob has had the chance to calm himself after being so awfully exposed, can he admit to Merry that she might have been right. And to see that it might not be his desire that had poisoned him, but his shame. And that's when the pleasure begins...

But can a bona fide hermit and a woman just bursting out of her shell, ready to take on the world, have anything more than a quick fling, no matter how sexually compatible they find themselves? How McKenna turns what could have been simply an erotic episode into a full-blown romance once again proves that she is one of the most honest, and most gifted, contemporary romance authors writing today.


Photo credits:
Scotland loch: The Markers Club

Cara McKenna, Unbound

Penguin/Intermix, 2013

Next time on RNFF:

Guest Post by Cara McKenna,

on why she writes realistic sex in an escapist genre