Hey chief, I know your intended audience isn’t men (and I get it, I write for women’s enjoyment myself) but you’ve got experience and a level head so I thought you might be willing to share a bit of advice.
I’m bad at talking down to women. I attract subs with hard kinks (not broken, near’s I can tell, but maybe adjacent) and they want me to say degrading things, especially degrading their intelligence, reducing them to toys, you know the drill. But – and I’m sure you know this tune – they won’t fucking tell me where the line is. I think there’s a fair chance a lot of them are too inexperienced to know where their line is either. I’m very particular in my speech, can’t turn my filters off without parameters, and I don’t believe a word of the degrading things I do say so finding the right words without guidelines feels impossible. I knew where I was with women who wanted bondage, flogging, and discipline but you throw humiliation in the mix and I’m lost at sea.
You have any tips for escalating or directing downtalk, even though I suspect the best possible solution is to sit ’em down and insist they settle on some limits?
If this is way outside your wheelhouse, that’s fair and I don’t mean any hassle; I’ll just try and learn by observation.
This is a toughie. I’m not sure I have a coherent action plan for you, but I have some suggestions.
RE: “I don’t believe a word”
That’s your first mistake… you need to find a way to believe it.
A girl can tell when she’s being spanked by someone who isn’t into spanking. It feels like he’s singing a song purely for her —one he would never hum to himself in an empty room— and rather than making her feel chosen and aroused, it makes her feel disconnected and unworthy. She believes she deserves a spanking, and she desperately craves the intimacy of agreement… she needs to know she’s not the only one who can see her sins.
Similar things apply to humiliation. If you’re uncomfortable saying it, she’ll know. She wants you to show her that you know where her bodies are buried, and how to exhume them.
I was just reading a reply to Neil Gaiman about the term “going native”, and how anthropologists use it —contrary to its colonialist origins— to indicate that one is observing and understanding a culture by subsuming oneself within it and adopting its norms. And that’s what you should be with a girl: a fuckhole anthropologist, going native inside her head. Or put another way: you’re not showing someone respect by walking into his home and disdaining the crucifix on the wall, just as you’re not respecting a woman by crawling around in her head and telling her everything she believes is a lie.
That doesn’t mean you have to buy in to her worldview. You can —and should— remember that she’s more than her insecurities, and you have a perspective of your own. But while you’re inside her, you have to allow her the dignity of her deepest disdain. Sit at the table she’s set, eat your fill of everything on offer, relish each bite, and then tell her she’s a good girl for sharing the feast.
RE: “they won’t tell me where the line is”
You’re looking for straight lines dividing good and bad, when you should be looking for a circle that unites you and your girl. Because I promise you, no matter how hard you try to avoid it, you’re going to say something one day that cuts far deeper than intended. And what matters most in that moment is her rock-solid understanding that she was just hit too hard by a teammate whose fortunes are tied to her own, rather than flattened by an opponent who has everything to gain by putting her on her ass.
Instead of crafting an arcane map of ever-shifting emotional no-fly zones, try building a framework for understanding and forgiveness — you’ve got to forgive yourself, too, by the way— that makes it easier to pick her up, dust her off, and get both of you back into the game.