by Julian Robinson
(9/6/00)

You do something to me,
And then I'll do something to you!

-- with apologies to Cole Porter

Mini Glossary

BDSM -- umbrella term for what leatherfolk love to do
Top -- does the whipping
Bottom -- takes the whipping
Dominant (Dom) -- gives the orders
Submissive (sub) -- obeys the orders
Dominatrix (Domme) -- woman who dominates/tops men for pay (legally, in many jurisdictions)
Collar -- worn by a sub to symbolize approval and commitment from a Dom

My wife Rebecca and I enjoy BDSM -- bondage, whipping, hot wax, public nudity, pain, endorphins, the usual. Well, who's the top? Who's the bottom? Which one's dominant? Which submissive? We say "Both." Some say "Neither." We're switches.

No, we're not thin, flexible rods used for flagellation. We're members of that sizable segment of leatherfolk who seldom rate more than a glossary entry or a grudging admission that we're useful at parties if there's an imbalance between Doms and subs. We're the utility infielders of kink, because we enjoy giving as much as getting. Switching in BDSM can be like androgyny or bisexuality, limbo in a binary culture determined to impose the almighty either/or.

In the Beginning

The intensity of Rebecca's scholarly interest in Anne Rice's Beauty books clued me in that her interest might be more than scholarly. I mentioned having done some bondage. She recalls that she recoiled. I recall that she drew closer and huskily repeated, "Bondage?!" One night she admitted, "Okay, so listen, I've been having these fantasies too, and I have these velvet ropes, see, but there are two conditions. One: if we're going to do this, we have to take turns and I have to tie you up first, because I'll be too scared if you tie me up. Two: I have to be able to talk to my therapist about it." I wondered what the point of therapy would be if she didn't (her therapist turned out to be wonderfully supportive); Reb blindfolded and bound me, and the rest is history. Guys, if you have an interest in playing some kinky games with your girlfriend or spouse, letting her do unto you first builds trust, and trust is what it's all about. Besides, you might enjoy being on the bottom for a change.

Mutually satisfying vanilla sex isn't so different from leathersex in principle, and shares the back and forth of switching. Isn't the point to provide desired sensations to your partner and receive some yourself? ("Vanilla" is categorical, not pejorative. Vanilla is a perfectly good flavor -- try making chocolate chip cookies without it.) In vanilla sex, don't we often take turns being do-er and do-ee? And don't we sometimes enjoy a little pain when we get hot? Fingernails down the back, hickeys, a bite here, a spank there? How 'bout "Take me, I'm yours?" That's submission. The taking part is dominance.

Players

Providing and receiving stronger but still highly desired sensations is what leatherfolk call "play." Consent is mandatory. Causing damage is prohibited. The implements that players use are called "toys." Toys range from rabbit fur and ostrich feathers to neurological pinwheels (can you feel this?) and bullhide floggers hand-crafted by master artisans. The players who give are called tops and the ones who get are called bottoms, though tops get, too. They get to enjoy the bottom's reactions, to be plugged into a human feedback loop.

For many leatherfolk, the play's the thing. These players don't tend to kneel in reverence, lick boots, or say, "Yes, Master." They're more likely to say, "I need a good beating. Are you busy?" Those who identify as players are more likely to wear leather because it smells wonderful and feels sexy than because it makes them look ominous and powerful. Switches are generally accepted in the easy-going players' community.

I enjoy walking into Hellfire, in Manhattan's meat-packing district, in full leather, only to strip it off and submit to a refreshing flogging from Rebecca. People who saw me thrash her last time do doubletakes: "Wait a minute, I thought you were the Dom!" Switching is genderplay, but the genders aren't male and female; they're dominant and submissive. Dominance and submission disciples put role play first and sensation play second. Control and ownership, compliance and subjection are what ring their chimes. For them, sensation play is often scripted as punishment or a training session in which the sub learns self-control and how to suffer for the selfish pleasure of the Dom.

Roles

Newcomers to leather culture often get the impression that roles are mandatory and that master/slave or client/dominatrix are the only possible male/female pairings, especially if their initiation is via the Internet. This is no more accurate than limiting vanilla heterosexual roles to salaryman and housewife or john and prostitute.

On the Net, where the play is farthest removed from reality, formal roles are de rigeur -- male screen names bristle with titles: Lord Largeparts, Master Melvin, Sir Stubble. A reality-check T-shirt corrects: "You're not my Master!" On his parody site, Dork E. Dom claims: "I'm a Dom. It says so in my AOL profile." Peggy, a.k.a. O, writes in "BDSM IRL:" There tends to be a great online emphasis on 'what is a Dom,' 'what is a sub.' The sneer of not being a 'true' whatever is consistently seen." Even among perverts, there are in-crowds and ostracism.

Switches role play, too -- they can be daddy's girls, daddies, mommy's boys, mommies, police officers, ponies, smart-assed masochists, governesses, headmasters, Catherine the Great, you name it -- but Doms and subs who don't switch seldom consider them authentic. Fixed, formal personas offer security and identity; if you play only one role, it's possible to pretend that it's not a role at all. In a chat room, Rebecca once stated that she was a switch. She was questioned, "Switch-top or switch-bottom?" In other words, occasional deviation is tolerated as long as you identify as one or the other. Switching immediately placed her in the player category; "Switch-dom or switch-sub?" would have been unthinkable.

Lifestylers

BDSM personas, like gender roles, e.g. the all-American ideals of the butch man and the femme woman, are socially constructed. A stage actor's performance is never questioned, merely because she plays multiple characters during her career. So why are switches deemed false for switching? Because some maintain that their BDSM personas are reality, not roles. Many of these identify as lifestylers -- Doms and subs in permanent relationships who claim to live their leather identities 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Duration, in addition to constancy, makes roles seem even realer. (Vanilla swingers also refer to their sexuality as the lifestyle, but leather lifestylers tend to be monogamous, at least in one direction; a slave can wear only one collar.)

Players are sometimes treated by strict leather lifestylers as the vanilla world treats swingers; they're accused of cheapening BDSM interaction by removing it from the context of long-term relationship building. In "Erotic Pain, a Bottom's Perspective," Peggy writes: "In the online community, there's a strong delineation between D/s and S/M, which is considered inferior in terms of quality of relationship and intimacy level." In vanilla terms, players are sportfuckers and switches are guilty of genderfuck as well, despite the fact that many switches maintain deep, long-term, monogamous or polyamorous relationships with their play partners.

Except as extended fantasy, 24/7 is an impossible ideal, akin to Erica Jong's "zipless fuck." When the sub is at work (possibly earning more than the Dom), when the Dom's at the dentist, and at social occasions with vanilla friends, the Dom/sub dynamic must be suspended. (Or should be -- at my vanilla wedding to Rebecca, despite written request to the contrary, a sub woman appeared wearing a collar fastened with a padlock.)

The role play of players is more playful. Irreverent. Rebecca is also known as Rowdy, a male Cairn terrier puppy (like Toto) with a strap-on. Puppies have no boundaries, so at clubs, Rowdy's likely to be humping your leg. A pat and he goes away. A dour Dom once studiously ignored Rowdy and punished one of his two subs for enjoying Rowdy's act.

Acting out fantasies is deeply fulfilling provided you can distinguish fantasy from reality. Successful BDSM-lifestyle relationships (and there are many) are built and maintained outside the fantasy by two equal partners. Even the strictest 24/7 relationship requires prior negotiation. The sub must choose the Dom, as well as vice versa. They collaborate on the terms of the slave contract. The sub can always walk away, but most Doms and subs prefer to discuss problems before they reach that stage. 24/7 in practice frequently turns into 24/6 with regular time-outs scheduled for egalitarian feedback and mutually-agreed-upon adjustments.

Literary Interlude

Pure 24/7 is impractical unless the partners occupy a remote chateau and don't need day jobs; hence the popularity in kinky fiction of wealthy dominants with palatial estates or private islands. This role-as-identity attitude blooms the fullest in Laura Antoniou's very popular Marketplace trilogy (plus the recent anthology The Academy: Tales of the Marketplace). Antoniou portrays a demi monde where the submissives are so submissive they're willing to be sold to the highest bidder, with no veto. "They intimidate the poseurs, the weekend sadists and the furtive dilettantes who are so endemic to that world . . . " In other words, the players.

The literature also reveals switching where you'd least expect it:

"For on two occasions, Anne-Marie had handed O the thonged whip -- both times the victim had been Yvonne -- and told her to use it . . . she had been overwhelmed with a terrible feeling of pleasure . . . she had found it almost impossible to restrain herself from striking Yvonne as hard as she could."
-- Paulne Reage, The Story of O

"If the aim is both to escape from one's self and to discover the reality of other existences, there is yet another way open: to have one's flesh mortified by others. De Sade is quite aware of this. When he used the cat-o'-nine-tails and the switch in Marseilles, it was not only to whip others with, but also to be whipped himself. This was probably one of his most common practices, and all his heroes happily submit to flagellation."
--Simone de Beauvoir, in Must We Burn Sade?

Orientations

The pioneering sex researcher Alfred Kinsey shocked the mainstream when he challenged either/or duality by proposing a sliding scale between the extremes of one-hundred-percent straight and one-hundred-percent queer, suggesting that both are extremely rare and that most of us lie somewhere in the middle. In Sensuous Magic: A Guide for Adventurous Couples, Pat Califia proposes similar sliding scales, one between dominant and submissive, the other between sadistic and masochistic. Dominant is an orientation; Master Melvin is a role. The middles, where switches reside, mean "both," not "neither."

Dr. Gloria G. Brame (Different Loving) writes in Come Hither: "The vast majority of kinky people have fantasies on both sides." She observes how Doms use the alleged superficiality of players to their advantage in gratifying their own complementary desires. Doms may safely bottom, since this is altogether different in their eyes from submitting, which would violate their primary role. Apparently allowing your butt to be paddled is scarcely submissive at all.

History and Myth

The above rationalization reminds me of the old Navy saying, "It ain't queer unless you're at the pier." The military has always had plenty of men who weren't asked and didn't tell but simply enjoyed, and some of them enjoyed leather. That tortuous transition's purpose is to dispel a prevalent switching myth: that the Old Guard (the World War II veteran gay leathermen and the forebears of our tribe) always started out as bottoms to begin their training as tops. There was a shortage of bottoms back then, so there was strong pressure for newcomers to the scene to bottom and strong motivation for masters to take turns switching so they'd have someone to play with. In the Old Guard, "master" was a term of respect for a supremely accomplished top -- a master craftsman. Training was formal and rigorous, but didn't necessarily include bottoming. (Switching wreaked havoc with the handkerchief code. Who has a middle pocket?)

In Leatherfolk, Joseph W. Bean notes the emergence of a free-wheeling Old Guard offshoot: "There were already circles of leather-clad, long-haired bikers in the sixties. They were rejecting the military standards of the group I knew, and doing it all their way . . . they prided themselves on being able to take what they 'dished out,' meaning they were mostly switches rather than Tops and bottoms." He also writes of a tit-for-tat form of switching called "mutuality." In a typical mutual game, two players face in opposite directions, tie their left hands together and wield canes in their right hands. Keeping the rope taut, they circle and endeavor to give as good as they get.

Switching

Switches make the best permanent partners for switches, since both can enjoy their top and bottom sides in such a pairing. A pair of switches inspire each other: "Hmm, I really liked how she mummified me in Saran Wrap. Next time, I'll try that on her but I'll leave a few strategic openings." Then there's the ever popular revenge motif: "Just wait till it's your turn!" Switches make empathetic tops because they know what it's like on the bottom -- even pure tops try out new implements on themselves first. As bottoms, switches are excellent guides for novice tops, having mastered the required technical skills. A switch, a top, and a bottom could form a mutually satisfying triad, where everybody's needs would be satisfied.

Before we enter the realms of higher math, let's move on to the fundamental question that switches get: "So how do you decide who does whom?" In the beginning, Rebecca and I strictly alternated, then it became more spontaneous. During the hugging and kissing (how perverse!), one of us might make a submissive gesture, like placing hands on head. Not knowing in advance who'll be on top adds a delicious element of suspense. Top/bottom preference often varies according to life circumstances. When Rebecca was a beleaguered graduate student, she showed a marked taste for topping, doing her share of real-life bottoming to sneering professors. Now that she's a (much nicer) professor herself, she enjoys bottoming as a respite from being in authority.

Switches are at last emerging from limbo. The triskelion, the latest symbol for the leather tribe, resembles a three-part yin/yang. The three parts have three subtexts:

Safe, Sane, and Consensual

Bondage and Discipline; Dominance and Submission; and Sadomasochism

Tops/Dominants; Bottoms/Submissives; and (drumroll) Switches.

Here's Rebecca. Maybe tonight we'll flip a coin.