The New Bottoming Book

Welcome to The New Bottoming Book. In the nearly ten years since we wrote the original Bottoming Book, there has been tremendous and wonderful evolution in the culture of BDSM. More and more people have become involved in an even wider variety of kink, and all of them are being much more vocal and communicative than ever was the case before. And we, your authors, are proud to have been part of this evolution. So we are writing an updated and expanded edition of our first book.

S/M culture has massively emerged from the closer. There are dozens of books, endless information on the Internet, national and international conferences publicly held in major hotels, support groups everywhere - we are no longer the ghettoized subculture that we used to be. More people are connecting to S/M, finding others like themselves, and realizing that they are very much not alone with their kinky fantasies.

The Internet. The 'Net has become a major player in the BDSM scene. Along with providing lots of information about kink and connection to like-minded people, the Internet is also exerting a major influence on the content of BDSM. Many things are possible in virtual play that are more difficult to manifest in reality: for instance, we know individuals who are engaged in ownership relationships with people they have never met in person. And so new ways of playing are being devised, and participants are engaging in ever deeper explorations of the psychological aspects of S/M, including extensive dialogue about how our fantasies can inform us about ourselves. We discuss the 'Net and its ramifications at much greater length in Chapter Four.

D&S. Over the last ten years, we have also seen rapid growth and evolution of the dominance and submission aspect of BDSM, with extensive discussion of how the relationship dynamic between two or more persons can be expanded, intensified and eroticized by a conscious and consensual shift in the workings of power and control.

More on this in Chapter Ten.

More of Us. Meanwhile, as the scene has become more accessible, more and more new people are joining. This growth in population has made its own changes to the scene, and there is increased market for products and services, which offers much more support for the teachers, artists and craftspeople of our community.

A perhaps less desirable side effect of growth in the BDSM scene is that we are seeing more separated populations emerging. Support groups now are often targeted to very specific members: gay men, dykes, heterosexuals (with bisexuals and transgendered folks welcome to some degree in most if not all of them), with even smaller groups for crossdressers, fetishists and the like. While it may be nice to be able to join a support group exclusively composed of people like yourself, we mourn the loss of diversity. When we were coming out, we learned so much from people who were different from ourselves, and we miss the sense of a larger community and the stimulation and adventures we encountered.

Finally, for us this growth has offered an expanded opportunity in the form of a much wider audience for our writing. When we wrote the initial Bottoming Book, publishing in this area was so economically constrained that we had to keep the book under 120 pages because if it got bigger than that we couldn't afford to print it. How's that for basic? We are proud to announce that our books are now widely distributed, our publisher well established, and we can afford to speak our minds at whatever length we choose.

Language. With the expansion of S/M and extensive public discourse, we are also evolving new language and terminology to describe our experience. And do we all agree on what these new terms mean? Of course not! A definition can be visualized as a way to make a fence around a word so that we can clearly distinguish what is inside

and what is outside the meaning of the word. This works great for science and mathematics, but can be a problem when we are describing our physical, sexual and emotional experience — especially the experience between two or more of us. (See? We can't even assume that a relationship means only two people.)

So our approach to language in this book is to assume inclusive rather than exclusive meanings for all the words we use. Furthermore, we acknowledge more than two genders, and also chat many of us explore more than one sense of gender. Common language usage has very few ways to denote the full range of gender expression. In the first edition of Bottoming Book we wrote "s/he" in an attempt to include everybody. In our later books, we alternated using he or she, mostly by paragraphs, which seemed to read more smoothly and provide interesting opportunities to challenge gender stereotyping, so we have rearranged this edition accordingly.

On another linguistic front, here is much public discussion and dissent about what to call what we do. Variously our perversions have been described as: BDSM, perversion, sadomasochism, S/M, dominance and submission, D/S, bondage and discipline, B/D, leathersex, kink, erotic power exchange, fetishism, wiitwd (what it is that we do), powerplay, shadowplay, topping and bottoming, sex magic and radical perversion. Similarly, the people who do these things are known as: perverts, tops, bottoms, masters, mistresses, slaves, dominants, submissives, Daddies, Mommies, pitchers, catchers, boys, bois, girls, leatherpeople, and players.

All these words have slightly different meanings, and you will definitely meet people who choose one of these terms and not the others because that is what best describes their desire. We, however, enjoy all of these aspects of our play, and would be very distressed to have to choose only one category. Thus, as we see it, pigeonholing limits our experience, and we are explorative girls who always want more. So in this edition, we will use all of these terms to describe the whole world of S/M play, except when we arefocusing on one particular aspect of play, and we will use these terms, as we do the gender pronouns, interchangeably throughout the text.

We've Changed Too. The two of us have matured, which we hope would happen for any of you in ten years. Our children are no longer children, our careers have ripened, our bodies have aged.

In fact, one of us has changed so much that even her name has changed. The one of us who wrote the first Bottoming Book as 'Catherine A. Liszt" did so under a pseudonym, because at the time she had minor children whose boundaries she wanted to protect. Now that her children have grown 10 adulthood, "Catherine" is now writing and publishing under her real name, Janet W. Hardy.

And we know more than we used to. So the final reason to make a new edition of The Bottoming Book is to share with you everything new that we have learned in the last decade about our beloved world of BDSM.

We think you're reading this book because something in your life - a fantasy, an experience, a partner who wants to experiment - has led you to a desire to explore bottoming.

But what, exactly, does that mean? There are as many different ways to be a bottom as there are to be a human being. An experience that feels intense, profound and highly erotic to you may do nothing at all for the next guy, and vice versa. So before you begin your explorations of bottoming, it would be a good idea to get a handle on what bottoming is, or could be, to you.

Many bottoms talk about a state of mind they call "bottom space" or "sub space," a kind of altered consciousness in which their relationship with their own minds, with their partners, and/or with the outside world becomes in some way different. Bottom space manifests itself in many different ways: Dossie gets very nonverbal in bottom space, while Janet chatters like a magpie. Among bottoms we've played with,

we've been privileged to witness bottom spaces that range from docile and passive to resistant and bratty to serene and transcendent. Some people find that they go into different bottom spaces in different kinds of scenes - the bottom who is an obnoxious brat in a spanking scene may become a calm, centered nurturer while giving service.

We know people whose bottom space is an extension of their real-world persona — perhaps they're timid and shy in their day-to-day lives, and they like to be "small" and receptive when they bottom. We know others whose bottom space is exactly the opposite of what you'd expect — they're powerful and assertive in their real-life interactions but like to experience being victims, slaves, babies or other powerless beings in their fantasy and play lives. Some people's real-world hobbies and professions are a clue about their bottom space — Dossie likes to knit and crochet, and loves rope — while others bottom in order to have experiences outside their ordinary existences. So your real-life choices may or may not be a clue to what your bottom space will look like.

Some people have negative judgments about bottom spaces that don't look like the kind of bottoming they have in their own fantasies. Unless you're considering playing with someone, they don't get to vote on your bottom space at all. If it's someone you're playing with or would like to, then may need to give you some direction as to what feels sexier to them (talkative Janet is fine with tops telling her that now would be a good time to shut up, thank you very much), or some compromise may be in order. But whatever your bottom space might look like, if it feels real to you, it is real.

What Do You Want From Bottoming? Bottoming gives us a chance to explore feelings, roles and interactions that may not be a good fit for us in the real world. So when you bottom, you may want to experience emotions like.

loss of control, fear, passivity, forgiveness, resentment, sadness, "smallness", nurturing, being nurtured, humility, power, shame, catharsis, competence, anger, helplessness, martyrdom, rebelliousness, objectification, victimhood, redemption, neediness, innocence, lust, abandonment, belonging, pathos, humiliation,

You can experience these emotions while enacting variety of roles, too. Maybe you want to be a...

victim, brat, baby, saint, good girl/boy, fixer, cherished possession, object, target, scapegoat, drama queen, captive, rebel, orphan, sex object, servant, whore, animal, sissy, pleasure slave, nothing, "proud beauty", child, prisoner, criminal, bad girl/boy, martyr, wild thing

When Does It End? It is, unfortunately, not too rare for these roles or emotions to be so potent that we find ourselves, consciously or unconsciously, trying to enact them in places where they don't work out too well for us. For example, you may find yourself so attached to the role of "fixer" that your need to fix things for other people is getting in the way of getting your own needs met, or so fond of being a "bad boy" that you're alienating your friends and coworkers.

If your chosen bottom role is turning into a script for the way you live the rest of your life, this can be a big problem. Some people find that playing that role in the dungeon or bedroom can help make them more conscious of the ways that they're enacting it in the outside world, thus giving them better boundaries for when to play the role and when to leave it alone. Others may find that this form of erotic roleplay reinforces the outside-world behavior to an unacceptable degree, so that they may decide that this role is too risky for them to play right now and is better explored in therapy.

For some people, the identity they feel as a bottom feels like their primary identity. They understand themselves better as a submissive or a slave, and seek to manifest that sense of self in all aspects of their lives: they tend to seek out relationships with dominant people in which they can live in their chosen role full-time. People living in full-time D/S relationships have created many clever ways to satisfy the needs of healthy living in a role-defined lifestyle: you will read more about this in Chapter 10.

On the other hand, some bottoms wish to be in role only when they playing a scene, because who they are as a bottom is not compatible with their needs and desires in the outside world. Dossie is one of these: in her bottom space she is very much the passive victim (when she isn't being a brat), and in the rest of her life she is an assertive, outspoken professional.

Neither of these choices, nor any of the gradations between, is inherently more "real" or more valuable than any other: your success will depend on your ability to make your choice work, and your willingness to work hard at it. Either way, it can be very illuminating to examine why we choose the roles we do, what turns us on about them and why this particular role is so very very hot for us.

When we bottom we feel fabulously powerful. This is the experience of most bottoms we know, and it is in complete contradiction to the popular stereotype of a bottom.

How can bottoming make us powerful? Here is Dossie's description of how she gains power from a flogging:

When I'm being flogged, early on I often come to a place where I need to stretch to take in the intense sensation, where 1 struggle and wonder if I can take it at all. That struggle seems to make me stronger and soon I feel intense energy running through me, as if all the force with which the whip is thrown at me is injected into me — becomes my energy to play with. While my tops throw the whips at me as hard as they can, I take in their power and dance in the center of the storm.