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LadyNTrainer -> RE: Is the Female Domination Lifestyle a Failure? (8/19/2009 12:55:21 PM)
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ORIGINAL: cloudboy
But she also has a record of denying her professional status, and setting herself out as only a lifestyle Domme.
Well duuuh, she is one. And I challenge you to quote anything she has ever said that was not true about herself or her website. It used to be free, paid for out of her own pocket. In order to make it pay for itself, it eventually went to a membership model. Nor has she ever denied doing phone sessions. But my guess is that she has probably spent significantly more on her submissives, possibly by a factor of ten or more, than she has ever made in such work.
You seem to believe that being involved in the pro business *on any level* totally excludes being a lifestyler. The fact is that the majority of pro dommes are also lifestylers. Not all of them by any means, but it is nice work for someone who happens to like what they do a whole lot. Your attitude reminds me of a snooty artiste complaining that a fellow artiste has sold out and is therefore tainted and unworthy because they painted an advertising poster instead of sticking strictly to pure Art For Art's Sake.
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If I were a professional sub -- say serving or interacting with 10-15 ladies a year -- and I were also married with a day job, that does not make me just a lifestyle sub. In addition to that, if I began to generalize about women and BDSM -- many if not most of my insights would come from my professional status wherein I'm engaged with several ladies. In the end, my professional status would be a heavy component of all things BDSM.
That's hard to say. If 95% of your time and emotional energy was in your day to day relationship with your domme wife, and every few months she also rented you out at play parties for a light nonsexual session with strangers, where would the majority of your perspective come from? This would be a very different perspective from someone whose sole income and 95% of their time and energy in BDSM was focused on pro sessions. Knowing Akasha (and yes, that would be in real life), her head is definitely in the lifestyle and in her at-home relationship, as well as in her vanilla job. The website and occasional fun with phone sessions is not a whole lot of her perspective, and it just isn't that significant to her life in general.
My own percentages are somewhere in the same neighborhood, as I spend a whole lot more play-for-fun time than I do in pro sessions. But since I have spent time where pro sessions have been most of my income (owned a pro dungeon in California for awhile), my perspective has been shaped to a greater extent by that industry. But it is a broadening of perspective, not a narrowing. Fundamentally, I see people as human beings first, and whether they end up as clients or friends and potential play partners is very much up to them and the choices they make. Emailing me with sexually explicit or kink related suggestions right off the bat puts them in the client category. Emailing me to chat about gaming or workout techniques or other vanilla subjects in a polite and friendly way puts them in the latter category. I'm quite clear about this from the get-go, and I don't lead anyone on about the differences between what I'm looking for in my personal life and my professional services as a kinky personal trainer.
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The relevance here is that it goes to the issue of the commingling of professional services and the CM web site. That's what has the OP all up-in-arms.
I'm afraid that this *is* a very pro-oriented site by its very nature. I used to have a strictly social, friends-only profile here over the years when I was not doing any pro work at all (too busy with the vanilla job), but I got so many rude solicitations that I closed it. I'm back in a professional incarnation now that I've gotten re-certified as a professional trainer and decided that it would be more fun to work only with lifestylers in my private gym. I use this site for business - in a courteous and non exploitative way within this site's TOS, I should add - and Fetlife for socializing. The lack of ASL-targeted search ability over there means that dommes don't get bombarded by horny single subs (and doms who can't read). CM is very much a "meat market" site, and this format works ideally for pros and not very nicely at all for ladies who mainly want to make friends who may or may not become play partners down the road. In my personal life that is my aim, and frankly I think that CM is the wrong place for that. A lot of the non-pro ladies have been run off by the plethora of "wanna" emails we get on this site. I was. I would not keep a social or friendly profile here; it's not a good place for that at all in my opinion.
I'd recommend that folks actively searching for "encounters" keep a profile here on CM, and folks seeking friendship, socialization, meeting local folks at events and getting to know them in a more laid-back way head to Fetlife. I shut down my personal profile here because of the meat market aspect, but as a professional, the meat market is basically what I need. So it's no surprise that the pro percentage is going to be higher here.
Hopefully this bit of perspective has been helpful. You don't know Akasha, and I'm unsure as to why you feel the need to follow her around and proclaim that everything she says is tainted because she's dabbled lightly in pro work. You may well choose to dismiss what I have to say as well because I've done considerably more than dabble, but I don't think that's really a rational view.
I appreciate the perspective that both pro domme work and being in the lifestyle have given me, and I don't feel that either one is a bad thing - or necessarily a separate thing. Who I am and how I see people hasn't changed no matter what business I'm in at the time. The main difference is that in a professional incarnation, I will respond politely to random kink related inquiries from strangers rather than blocking and deleting them, as I had to spend an inordinate amount of time doing here when I was not seeking any pro work.
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