I just finished an interview with Maria Coletsis of Vancouver yesterday. She’s the professional photographer and researcher who has written the new insightful portrait book called Behind the Whip.
Maria went all over the world photographing and interviewing all of the famous dominatrixes. She said it was fascinating speaking to these women. She explained some cultural differences between these dom’s. As an example, the Japanese doms use intricate rope techniques, the German dom’s are much harsher and use military discipline in their sessions. The British doms’ are all about the naughty school boy and Mommy figures in their play.
Maria explained to me that despite their differences and locations these women were all strong women who were inately kinky. These aren’t “hookers with a crop”, these women all lived the dom lifestyle 24/7 in both their personal and professional lives.
What came out of my discussion for everyday use is how much their clients need to “escape”. The hour a week when they can let go and not be incharge is bliss for these men. The role play and the fantasy varies, but that so many more men are sexually submissive. The clients are all ages, but Maria said two of the men she saw were young, good looking, and successful. They all said that they could NEVER tell their wives their fantasies. So the paid the $400 an hour to be spanked, humiliated, comforted or allowed to play a role. She said they are much more that actresses, but that there is always a part of the dramatic. She also said that the dom’s are completely turned on by their work.
I’ll post the interview and some of the pictures on my www.sexwithsue.com site if you want to hear more about her insights.
It’s interesting how fast sex changes. When I started as a sex therapist on the radio 15 years ago, I had to edit every second word.Now there are show’s on major networks showing G spot orgasms and squirting in almost prime time. Now with rub and tugs (or jack shacks as they call them in the southern US) everywhere and the Canadian prostitution law having been thrown out, sex for money seems to be everywhere. I was reading about offers on Craig’s List, on Kijiji in carefully couched language, Ashley Madison, and now on facebook. So now not only can you re-connect with an old flame from High School you can see if the woman voted “most likely to do the football team” actually turned it into a profession.
A recent sting in the US snagged a number of women on solicitation charges. Says the New York Times:
“Craigslist has become the high-tech 42nd Street, where much of the solicitation takes place now,” said Richard McGuire, Nassau’s assistant chief of detectives. “Technology has worked its way into every profession, including the oldest.”
Now as sex is always interesting and knowing that if you needed it- an emergency blow job is only as far as the back pages of the sun or one of the hundred million facebook pages out there. As one of my patients so eloquently put it “when the need strikes you have three choices. Porn, partner or the lure of of someone new for the low price of $60 for a hand job.”
And with men completely attracted to “newness”, the simplicity, ease and safety of getting sex for money with a parade of new women has never been more accessible.
I’m watching the trend with interest because I think sex has a real pulse on cultures. It’s such a need and is changing so quickly. Subscribe as I do some interviews with some of the most articulate madams around.
I had a girlfriend lend me the book "Why Men Love Bitches" by Sherry Argov for a little light reading. It was entertaining, and bang on about how guys like girls with attitude. Argov's advice put the women's movement back a hundred years as she explains how "to go from doormat to dreamgirl". This is the appeal in playing hard to get, using the combo techniques of flattery, and jealousy to build him up and tear him down. There is a school of thought among sex therapists that men have the need to chase, and to be 'tuned up" by strong women". I'm mentioned before in my writing that I think 80% of men are sexually submissive. Often the colder and more elusive a she behaves, the more men seems to desire the woman in question. The more she tries and breaks down your ego and be in charge, (or the meaner she gets), the harder you'll try to keep her happy.
Most guys think the rebels, bad girls, the ones with the sexy shoes are awesome in bed. There is the need to be punished by strong women (just like Mom- it hits some deep-seated psychological need for many men), and there is the make-up sex. Think leather, handcuffs, threesomes, and some very naughty jokes. Certainly the Doris Day act (I knew her biblically, before she was a virgin), sweet act works when having tea with the grandparents, but bitchy and demanding all the while treating you like a king in bed is what most men are craving. There is something about that tough/sexy combination that leaves men with their tongues hanging out. Think Danica Patrick and her race car driving, butt kicking stance, all the while posing for Playboy. Her Superbowl ad won the TIVO award for the most downloads.
www.sexwithsue.com
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090612/ap_on_en_tv/us_people_chastity_bono
Another week as a sex therapist, and more visits from all kinds trying to find their way in a sexually varied world. Between the adulterys, the limp dicks, the libido strugglers, the horny hoards, and the fetish guys, there really is an amazing variety of sexual deviation in your average community. People can be so troubled by their desires. Maybe I just don’t get what the big deal is, but I really live with an attitude of “live and let live”. I’m always taken aback when someone judges my behaviour (usually without asking me my side of it,), and I live a middle class, heterosexual, more or less mainstream life. Okay with a few quirks and kinks, but that’s my point- everyone has a few. I’m curious, but am aware of this whole group of people that have sexual needs that occasionally we bump into.
My aunt lives just off Church (near Wellsley ) in Toronto and takes her walk around the block talking to the plenary of tranny hookers that ply their trade in those 2 blocks. They work the sex trade to save enough money to get a sex change operation (or at least pay for the hormones, lipo, and all those cool 50’s pin up clothes that they wear). You would be amazed at the numbers of straight business men client that use their services on the way home from work. Remember, everyone has something sexually that they keep hidden. I got thinking about them as I was reading this week about Chastity Bono (daughter of Sonny Bono and Cher – pictured above) who is having a sex change operation.
“Chastity Bono is having a sex change to become a man. A spokesman for Bono, born a girl to Sonny and Cher, says he “has made the courageous decision to honor his true identity” and began the sex-change process earlier this year. Publicist Howard Bragman said Bono is proud of his decision and hopes “that his choice to transition will open the hearts and minds of the public regarding this issue.”
Here is a kid who has had their own challenges and is finding their way. The current thinking is that a flurry of the opposite hormones flooding the baby’s brain in utero at a key development time during the first trimester of pregnancy causes a child born one sex, to see themselves and think of themselves as the other gender. So Cher would have had a rush of male testosterone practically before she knew she was pregnant. Something else to blame on Mothers. This isn’t how sexual fetish develops however. Each and every guy I’ve ever met with a strong fetish (and I come across them weekly) can pinpoint the time in early adolescence when they were sexually aroused by feet, hair, rope, dominate women, a certain type of lingerie, rubber or the like. You can’t fix it or cure it, you can just help someone manage it as part of theirr life. When I have am again reminded of the trials of being sexually out of step, I’m encouraged to help (if I can) and encourage people to remember that they are not alone.
www.sexwithsue.com, www.solveprematureejaculation.net, www.schoolofsquirting.com
http://marriage.about.com/od/celebritymarriages/p/barackobama.htm
excerpts of the Sex Rebel book are available
Like many people around the globe I watched the swearing in and inaugural speech of Barack Obama this morning. I wish him well, hope he lives long enough to fulfill his mandate. Lord knows his job will get very difficult starting tomorrow. His quote about “imagination has joined with a common purpose”, and his stand on tolerance, diversity and open-mindedness is more than refreshing. One of the things that I see as a marriage therapist is how connected he and Michelle seem to be. I think they show people how loving, two people in a fish bowl can still be, while maintaining their integrity. I’m sure deep down they fall into the Ethical Hedonist model of hot sex. I’m a big believer that great marriages are a gift to everyone else around them, and it will be interesting to see if they can remain as connected despite the enormous pressures. I’m hopeful.
“When he leaned into Michelle as she wrapped her arms around him from behind after the New Hampshire loss, when she cradles his face in her expressive hands while kissing him, with every dap and nuzzle and palpable vibe between them, “you see love onstage,” said Harriette Cole of Ebony, the first in a long line of popular magazines to certify the two as a “hot couple.” All in all, a wholesome package as Barack and Michelle make America cool and marriage cool by making both sexy, or at least ready for their close-up.”
The other thing that I am am convinced in the American world of the right and the far right is an open tolerance to a plenary of sexual differences. He came out against California’s ant-gay marriage law, and after 8 years of Bush preaching abstinence-only education we may see a decline in teenage birth rates as we put forward a common sense, reality based education platform. The world seemed more tolerant today. Let’s hope that message of “unclench your fist and take my hand” will continue.
I have a girlfriend who in the midst of the craziness of internet dating, and has been for awhile. She says her experiences have become fodder for a book, but what I find interesting is how she can manage to keep the spark at such distances. She tells me she’s had relationships with men in Kentucky, London, Nigeria, Turkey, Italy, and all over the US and Canada.
She’s traveled to Istanbul, New York, and last week, had a guy from California fly 2000 miles simply to take her for dinner. Now she’s over 50, has struggled to keep her figure at times, and although attractive, isn’t stunning. A great woman for the right guy, but she wouldn’t describe herself as “barbie-like”. She’s just willing to open herself up to potential relationships, and is doggedly persistence in her search for a real guy. I asked her about the appeal, and how does she stay interested after hours logged on?
She said that “the webcam helps alot, and the erotic chat is surprisingly hot.” And with the great technology of MSN, skype, and now these new high definition web cams, it’s almost as good as the real thing. Well almost…
I’ve long believed that long distance relationships only work when you have a set date that you know it will end. You can endure much, if you know the end is in sight. Anything else is Hell.
So with my love away from me this week (not to fear, we are way ahead on the New Year’s Resolution of 300 boffs), I’m hooking up my new webcam and watching my nipples turn this slightly mottled color of thousand of flesh-like pixels. Now if I could just figure out how to plug in this wireless vibrator into the mix, it really could be almost like the real thing. 
If someone had asked me before this summer what I thought the most common fetish was, I would be hard pressed to choose between cross-dressing, or feet. After seeing the number of patients this summer who were all fixated on the feel, texture, look of pantihose, I’m beginning to re-think that statement.
Fetishes, are the sexual fixation on an inanimate object or body part. It can be anything, hair, fingernails, rubber raincoats, yellow skipping rope, garbage bags- really anything. But lots of men need the feel of nylon between their fingers, or under their clothes. I keep hearing the same story about how it starts. Boy, between the ages of 7 and 12, gets sexually aroused playing with hosery, or seeing a woman in hosery, and the desire is imprinted on their psyche. Kind of an indellible patheway that nothing can erase. Hell, they’ve tried shock therapy, and if that doesn’t cure it, nothing will. This week’s patient talked of "seeing the sun shine on his Mother’s pantihosed encased legs while lying on her lap", and the gig was up. He says he now needs to rent a storage space to keep the pantihose he has bought over the years in. Maybe over 10,000 pairs. Another gratuating patient gifted me a pair of a beautiful, European, special order seemless pair, perfectly my size, wrapped up in bows and ribbons. He just wanted me to have them as a thank you for helping him deal with his fetish. He said he preferred hose to flowers as thank you gifts, and they are unbelievably well made. I didn’t even know such things existed, and he seems to be an expert on every make, and model on the market. Like that Sex in the City episode with the show salesman and Charlotte’s perfect feet, this guy often stopped at the Fancy Sox store to discuss hosery with the manager.
A rather vanilla fetish as they go, but oh, so prevelant. So as the summer ends, and my bare legs move back into the sheerest hose I can find, I may need to get fashion advise from my patients as to the best place to buy them.
I’m not an exhibitionist in person. Don’t mind my photos and personna flashed to the world, and Lord knows I’m not modest, but I like to be sexual in private. I was reading an article that said that 80% of people like to watch, and 20% of peoplle like to be watched. The times I’ve seen sexual behaviour in public, I wanted to hold up score cards – 9.2 Wow what a dismount… That being said, here are some more of the lingerie pictures that I couldn’t upload before.
It started with a new patient and his wife who were struggling with his submissive desires. He wanted his wife to dominate him sexually, and take over in a female superior kind of way, of their life – making her the leader in their marriage. I confessed that it wasn’t my area of specialty, but they wanted to work with me anyway. So I started reading. Elise Sutton’s book called Female Domination, and Barbara Wright Abernathy’s Venus on Top book. It turns out I had met Barbara in LA at a book conference, and have found this material gobstopping. It’s not often tat I read something truly unique to all the thousands of other sexuality boks I’ve devoured. I’m now reading the Mistress Manual by Mistress Lorelei, a book about finding your inner Dominatrix, and I now think I should run out and by a black leather corset and spikey black boots.
I couldn’t figure out why men want women to paddle their bottoms, make them do all the housework, and have very few orgasms, while their wives face sit as often as they want. It turns out that the psyche of the submissive male is complex, and it is the mental sex of not being in charge that he craves. It’s far more interesting than the bondage and discipline stuff that’s been presented in your typical Friday night Kink episode. I admit, this Goddess stuff has it’s appeal. So if I can convince the men in my life that they will be far more fulfilled by lying across my lap being spanked than getting great sex, it is all theoretical, but I’ll keep you posted.
Mistress Suzy of the cool boots
So, I took my first stripping class today. And I now have a new appreciation for the hard work that peeling truly is. My bum is sore. My hands are sore from gripping the pole, and trying to get up off the ground gracefully was an oxymoron. However, I learned to flip my hair around, pick up an imaginary dollar bill, and walk rolling my hips in a sultry Mae West kind of way.
Much of what I speak on (certainly to women’s groups) are "how to keep it hot", and I’m sure the traffic-stopping flexibility of my 21 year old instructor (sigh) qualifies. It made my eyes pop, and I’m heterosexual. Important safety tip, check for heart conditions before trying these moves on an unsuspecting partner…. Increased, fitness, sexy new dance routine that should blow a gasket, and new ability to walk on four inch heels, stripping classes seem all round very beneficial.
I have a bunch more classes, and a book to read, so I’ll keep you posted. But I now know, stripping isn’t for pussies.
So my tribute to Halloween this year was by taking a Midori workshop on role playing. Midori, a Japanese American from San Francisco, is one of the world’s leading sex presenters in the area of kinky and fetishes. She put on a fabulous workshop on dressing up and playing naughty/good girl, and naughty/good boy in a variety of ways. Loads of props (and I didn’t lift any, despite the temptation), I got to play out both my cheerleader and doctor play in dialogue with another sex educator. It was fun, although there was more emphasis on the education rather than the heat. But if my husband ever gets back rom hunting season I may play game warden and bad hunter/poacher with him.
As a group we came up with a list of role playing scenarios. I wrote down and bunch here and will be brainstorming on any I may have missed. Knock yourself out trying to play them all, but given all the old Halloween costumes are on sale right now, you can get a great costume box at a fraction of the price.
So I finished Naked Conversations (the cool new Isreal and Scoble book) and they said that technology has experimented and initiated all the new ways (I have already loaned it out or I would quote the passage directly).
“Anyway, I want to add that I think it’s sex, not IT that has caused most of the new technologies to be developed and perfected. Everything from the VCR, satellite TV, webcams, virtual reality, man the whole web is still about sex.”
If I haven’t mentioned it before, sex is the second most powerful drive in the human body after food. What’s amazing to me is that so many people seem so hung up on it. I want to take out a bus ad that says, Relax, it’s only sex. So we rub our genitals together? So what? If it’s safe and consensual, to quote Martha Stewart “it’s a good thing”. I had a bunch of questions from my radio show of people feeling really different and isolated. The longer I’m a sex therapist the more I know that everyone, is uncomfortable about some of their sexual feelings, and thinks their a bit weird, or that they are somehow wrong for liking it too much, or liking it not enough. Anyway, my thought this morning reading my mail, is you are all okay, and be a little gentle with yourselves.
The longer I’m a Sex Therapist the more that I know that everyone (and I mean everyone) has something sexual going on. Even if you are asexual or don’t want sex at all you have a thing. And it’s okay. You aren’t a mutant.
Feeling the Love, Sue