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Chapter 1
A few years ago,
Jane, the woman I worship, who is almost twenty years my junior,
admitted that I was not the first man she had brought to his
knees. She told me that the subjugation of men had been her
fantasy for as long as she could remember, that she had played
at it with various boyfriends and a few near-strangers, but
had only really understood how deep women's power over men
could go after confiding in one of her professors, a well-known
writer with whom she'd formed a friendship. Jane said that
this woman's matter-of-fact assurance that she herself had
always lived in total confidence of her ability to rule men
had brought her enormous relief and courage with respect to
her own desires. She then showed me a packet of letters from
this woman, written in the year after Jane's graduation, offering
her guidance and reflection in the matter of woman's domination
of man. I think they are quite extraordinary. Jane has received
the author's permission to publish parts of them (omitting
any personally revealing elements, including their singular
mode of salutation and other tics of style), provided they
remain anonymous. Their author has set them up as numbered
"rules," though she has not always kept close to this scheme,
sometimes offering very terse instructions, sometimes seeming
to wander far from the subject of the rule in question. But
we have kept her numerical scheme, since we have found that
there is usually some logic to her digressions. We intend
to release these letters in several chapters. This is the
first.
Before the rules,
some generalities.
Knowing themselves
vulnerable to women, men become narcissistic; knowing the
penis the particular instrument of your power over him, a
man will instinctively attempt to impress you with his. The
paradox may not even be lost on him, but his behavior will
still to some degree follow this pattern. His own curiosity
and fascination with each and every woman as though she were
a species unto herself makes him hope, against his actual
intuition of the contrary, that in some way he too might appear
exceptional to you. He will have trouble, in other words,
distinguishing the pleasure you might take in your own sexual
power from some idea of HIS having won your favor (and if
he is in fact attractive to you, the additional pleasure you
derive from this will further confuse him, although in a way
perfectly useful to YOU). What is remarkable about this more
or less inevitable male confusion is that it easily becomes
in itself a further means for your assertion of power, since
the need to be your favorite and to draw your seemingly unique
attention to his exceptional potency will compel a man to
serve you faithfully for the reward of your mere acknowledgement
of his response to you. Men may at different moments dream
of different pleasures with women, but the most basic, the
most primitive, taking precedence over any hope of intercourse
and sexual equality, is, crudely, that of having their penis
noticed - merely noticed, even where the more extravagant
fantasy of genuine admiration and power of attraction has
been quelled. This is why you should not be afraid to press
a man out onto a sexual limb, even when you have no intention
of joining him there.
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| 1. |
Never
labor to have your effect on a man: the ease, the nonchalance,
with which you play with his feelings and sensations can
only increase their clarity and certainty. Do only what
you like to him, and as much or as little as you like.
He must strain for you, but you must never for a moment
reciprocate. Strictly speaking, you need never touch a
man (and, it goes without saying, you need never show
yourself to him or let him touch you) in order to overpower
him. Women discomfit men all the time simply by crossing
their paths, and what you are doing now is only an extension
of that effect. Your glance, your word are enough; if
you are reluctant to caress him, use an implement of some
kind and coax and prod him with it: this will have the
further welcome effect of objectifying him and making
him a mere abstraction of all maleness. Or have him touch
himself according to your instructions while you observe
him: this is a very powerful instrument for undoing his
defenses, a most humbling invasion of his privacy. You
may enjoy at the same time investigating some part of
his body remote from his sexual organs: this emphasizes
to him his complete accessibility and vulnerability, the
fact that his entire nature is subject to your pleasure.
Once again, do not strain or labor. Always be comfortable:
if you need to reach some part of his body, have him assume
a suitable position, or extend your reach, and your ability
to abstract him, with something that can serve as a pointer
- an appropriate accessory in any case because you are
always teaching him (no matter who he is, no matter how
much older than you, or how much more "experienced"; it
is never a small thing to be reminding a man of the truth
he already professes, since no man ever believes that
he grasps it as fully as he should). |
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2.
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Be
patient with yourself. The longer he is "kept under,"
stirred and taunted and, of course, kept from climax,
the more deeply enchanted he will be. Allow yourself any
distractions you like, but impress upon him that he must
await you without allowing his own thoughts to wander.
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| 3. |
Do
not be distracted by any thought of his wishes, or fear
that you are not suiting his peculiar predilections. He
exists for you, and his fundamental yearning is to have
you know it. Anything you do for your own pleasure, or
even your own convenience, reassures him of your knowledge
and adds to his pleasure. |
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| 4.
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Do
not be afraid of your own power or of the ways that occur
to you to indulge it. No matter how much your heart is
in this adventure, it is likely that you are still to
some degree apprehensive about it, ambivalent, at the
very least, about the revision of your image of yourself
which it may require. Tolerate your misgivings, but don't
be too quick to give in to them. Some of the deepest and
most permanent lessons to be had from this entire experience
have to do with those forces within you which have led
you, despite your better knowledge, to concede to the
myth of masculinity. Now, with having a human male in
your hands, those forces will attempt to shame and unnerve
you with the vision of your own boldness, to make you
feel that confidence is only temerity, exploit danger.
But if, in the face of this temptation to return to "safety,"
you remain audacious, your very soul will be transformed
and strength become a habit to it. |
.Remember that
a man's ego is protected by concentric walls of pride, the
more inward, the more ingeniously constructed. Essentially
you are demolishing these walls. The first is down when the
man is naked before you, the second when he is aroused by
your glance or command or touch. These are, however, his weakest
defenses, although when they break he already knows that he
is defeated. An intermediate wall defends the man by establishing
a barrier between publishable weakness and a more fiercely
hidden kind, between sex as a precinct of life and sex as
its sole dominion. Most men would admit to "a weakness for
the ladies," but few without conditioning are at ease truly
revealing this weakness as it spreads throughout their emotional
systems. To break down this intermediate wall, you must invade
a man's deeper privacy, his memories and his fantasies, his
techniques for masturbation, and also all the behavior of
his "private parts" even when they are not sexually active.
You must have him recount his experiences and fantasies, have
him touch himself as he would if he were alone, and also according
to your instructions; you might put him through exercises
so that you can observe while he is naked the effects of all
kinds of movement on his genitals. It doesn't matter whether,
during these activities, he remains erect: the very fact that
he is exerting himself for you proves his ardor. You might
watch him pee, even hold his penis for him when he does. Let
even this bodily process, which supposedly preempts his organ
away from sex, become an instrument of your power OVER his
sex.
The inner walls
of a man's defenses are both less massive and more resilient
than these I've mentioned. You, and the man himself perhaps,
are very likely to think the last of them down when it is
still standing. If he thinks this, it is because the final
defense of his ego is the preservation of a pride so tenuous
in substance as to be barely conscious; it is a light and
translucent thing, but as a last defense it is also strangely
tenacious, and when it shatters the effect is by no means
subtle. Just as, at the earliest stages of this process, when
you are still merely undressing the man, although his exposure
and vulnerability are foregone conclusions, there is still
enormous symbolic power in removing his last frail covering
(he will always indicate the power of the event with a sigh
of recognition and gratitude), so in this very last stage
the disintegration of the final, light resistance creates
a massive effect. The man is plunged into the most profound
and instinctual submission - the word may seem frightening
in its absoluteness, but it is accurate and inescapable; he
feels wholly possessed and the only fear left him is that
he will be unable to demonstrate the full identification of
his will with that of the woman who has subjugated him. To
him (and, he hopes, to her) there is a mystical dimension
to this, and it is no longer figurative if he calls himself
her worshipper.
This final state
is usually reached slowly, and not always by a direct route.
But (as in all mystical experiences) it is important not to
imagine prematurely that it has been reached. A man can be
intensely enchanted, to all appearances mesmerized, and still
not be all the way there. In any case, it never hurts raw
him further into your power, and there is no question that
by protracting this process of assault and titillation you
will eventually bring on his absolute capitulation and then
be able, with the most careless tap, to knock him from the
precipice. (I will have more to say about this tap later.)
If you have been pleasing yourself and only yourself, if you
have been satisfying your every whimsical curiosity, this
effect will inevitably occur and you will have no doubt of
it when you see it. Exploit it, preserve it; don't let its
intensity deter you. But let it linger as a quiet intensity.
Ironically, this interlude of exquisitely honest emotions
will make you feel your artistry. At the moment of pure truth
you will see your own instinctive gifts, your female genius.
The man is your instrument, beautifully tuned now, every key
of his body hungrily alert to the nuances of your touch, the
dance of your will. You must restrain his eagerness lest it
overwhelm him. With care, you can keep him in this state of
grace indefinitely (and perhaps, unless you are particularly
interested in observing his ejaculation, you should terminate
at any rate your early encounters with him before orgasm occurs).
One way to control
the zeal of a man's body is, of course, to remain indifferent
to its eagerness, as you have been, in a sense, all along:
to be slow when he would hurry, to be light when he wants
force, to be brisk when he tries to detain you. Always oppose
the momentum of a man's body: it does not represent his heart.
Especially do so now, when his heart is entirely yours. Slow
your pace to a crawl, withhold your touch now more than ever,
create a perfect stillness in which the most flickering stroke
anywhere on his body will be equivalent to a resounding shock.
The slow motion you induce will simply confirm his impression
that he has entered permanently into a state of adoration.
There is a second
way to still a man's body, and one which will at the same
time help him to feel that he is indeed doing everything to
demonstrate his will to please: this is to subject him to
some discomfort or pain. Ofourse, you may do this at any point
along the way, and to some small extent you probably cannot
avoid doing so and still feel, and be certain hat he feels,
that you are in command. Even when you direct a man's posture,
or instruct him to move a certain way or exercise vigorously,ou
are of course discomforting him and even "punishing" him a
little. But women tend to fear taking the initiative in such
acts, and most women have been educated to regard them as
perverse (as indeed they are when the cruelty becomes a pleasure
in its own right, and sex a mere theater of cruelty). But
the fact remains that there is no better way to demonstrate
devotion to another than to show one's willingness to suffer
in some way for her, and a woman's eye will not see more convincing
evidence of a man's steadfastness than his unabashed acceptance
of distress. Here, again, it is the willingness that counts,
not the measure of the pain itself.
But, of course,
there is no willingness without a way to display it. How you
evoke it is your own choice entirely, and you have done enough
simly by being satisfied that you have. But try not to shrink
from this enlightening gesture; press yourself even a little
beyond what you feel comfortable doing. There is no question
that, especally when he is in full surrender, the man will
be grateful for the opportunity you give him to demonstrate
his sincerity, and when he is in such a condition it is far
more cruel to refuse him. You may feel hesitant to begin with,
even "unnatural," but to his eyes you are generous and kind.
And you will certainly discver, f you practice this after
all quite moderate ruthlessness a while, that it becomes exhilarating.
From the time they are girls, women are taught to be gingerly
and tender toward the bodies of men, and with this lesson
women learn to accept a great part f their unnatural subordination.
If a woman wishes
to recover her supremacy, she must learn to show men her knowledge
of their fragility. A man will recover without physical harm
from a slap to his face or his penis, from meticulously applied
scratches, from the quick thrusts, or the gradually intensified
pressure, of a finger or pointer to any part of his body,
including his famously delicate groin, or from any intrusion
into his anus. But he will never recover psychologically,
for he will have known love.
end of part one
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