I promised breakdowns of the D/O workshops, but that is not happening right now. I had this piece drafted, and so am going to go ahead and post it. May be a bit more use of slightly older material through next Sunday as I have a grueling set of deadlines in the outside world.

So one of the questions I get is “why use protocols.” A quick guide is that protocols are a formal set of rules, positions, actions that a girl is supposed to know and is trained to. Protocols are more D/s than BDSM. Mine are a work in progress.

To a lot of people the idea seems not intriguing but kind of stilted. I admit for a long time it did to me. Even the first set of protocols I designed were based around a group of nonstandard positions that I currently call my “club” positions. I like them, they’re a mixture of sort of Bond-girl-esque posturing and model poses that I think in some ways are more fluid and attractive than the standard full present, the ubiquitous “nadu” kneel, etc. Sorry when Rubel uses it, I’m going to say “nadu” is one “Gor” term that has just passed into common leather parlance.

I eventually decided that I was not doing any favors to train girls to a set of standards that aren’t practiced anywhere else. Realistically I expect most of my submissives to at least play with other Dominants, if not to eventually move on. I think you have to be realistic and life is like that. At the risk of sounding emotional, it doesn’t mean I don’t care about them very deeply

So…why do this? Not “why does it look cool” but “what purpose does it fulfill.”
Let me try to explain.

It is every boy’s fantasy (well every alpha/dominant boy anyway) to have a woman say “take me, control me, use me.”

But let’s face it. What is our initial reaction when it happens to us at first. Usually to treat the woman like a piece of glass because we are so scared and freaked out that we might damage her. I suppose the other reaction is just to not give a shit and abuse her until she leaves us, and I have plenty of anecdotal evidence on this. So let’s establish that two things are desirable.

a) To give her the sense that she is controlled and you are in control. Not just for it to be real but for her to feel it.

b) Not to hurt her in bad ways…even if one lacks any other conscience, it means eventually she’ll go away and you won’t have her as a toy anymore. “If you break your toys.”

So, I remember being a young Dom trying desperately to come up with things to command a woman to do. Often defaulting to little more than “what should I tell you to do sweetheart,” or “well, let’s relax and I order you to do what you want.” Sure I was never quite that lame (though I understand that’s a real common order).

But sometimes I was really grasping to do much better. And here’s another tip. “Fuck me” or “go down on me” can be incredibly exciting orders once a sense of control is developed. Being ordered to give sexual service is a big experience to most women. But even as a rank novice I knew pretty well that they weren’t exciting just by themselves without any warmup. Yes you can hang a scene on not having warmup, just like you can occasionally hang a sex scene on “I am going to fuck you without foreplay.” But there has to be other content there, or it gets dull fast.

So…in S/M we don’t just go up to somebody and go at them full force with a heavy cane, unless that’s the scene, and then it’s mostly mental and that’s an unusual scene. What do we do? We ramp them up. Hands. Doeskin flogger. Light caning. Cane taps. Varied sensation. Get them up to a level where that’s exciting to them. Yes as time goes by we can train them to ramp up faster. And some women can drop very quickly, feel the bend right away, and be ready for heavy D/s. But in most cases we recognize the need to do some buildup.

That’s where protocols come in. They’re the equivalent of the doeskin flogger for control. They are the tool that is available to the Dom when the girl says “tell me what to do, I want to surrender to you,” and you know on a lot of levels that she is not in a headspace where she is ready for that to be a sex order, and wants to be controlled, not just tied up and flogged.

For every new Dom who has ever had a young girl saying “take me, control me, tell me what to do.” That’s the key. There are others of course. Learning how to actually instruct a woman how to have sex or suck cock is also fairly important, because “tell me what to do,” does not mean “expect me to read your mind.” Even if they know part of the control element is being told.

But protocols are the bread and butter. They are the way to ramp up a control/mental scene. They are the way to build a feeling of surrender and control quickly and recall it with a word. They are the water in the soup. I’ve never heard of any woman coming from being ordered to kneel (though I’m sure it’s happened) or assume a standing position. But positions and protocols for behavior are the start to a control scene that ends powerfully with far more emotional release/exchange/reaction than can be as easily obtained in other situations.