Who is Elise Sutton and why does it matter?

This is not really about Elise Sutton. She's just a good launching point for a larger subject, one that has become increasingly near and dear to my heart after 22 years of being an out-of-the-closet sadomasochist. That subject is the big fat question of the SM role models people hold up as desirable.

For those of you who never heard of her, Sutton's regarded by many as an expert on the lifestyle, someone who issues important insights into lifestyle relationships from a base of experience. Here's the Wiki entry.

Elise Sutton is believed to be an author of books dealing with female dominance. However, for many readers there is no clear evidence about her real existence or the fact that, as claimed, she has written the works accredited to her and that claim to have been written by her

-- Elise Sutton - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Time and again, in my therapy practice and occasionally in R/L, male submissives will preface a theory or principle about lifestyle relationships by saying something like "Elise Sutton says...."

No one seems to know if she's a real person, much less whether she is what she claims to be. She presents herself as a vastly experienced lifestyler, and renders seemingly authoritative opinions on what it takes to structure a successful D&S relationship. She has a large following, particularly among submissive men trying to coach and encourage into wives and girlfriends into taking on dominant roles. And, of course, she has a ton of material that she sells directly from her site.

Is it pure coincidence that every submissive man I've spoken with who refers to Sutton worshipfully or views her opinions as authoritative seems to be locked in a constant struggle over his own feelings? Perhaps. I confess I've developed an almost knee-jerk reaction to hearing her name. "Oh no, here it comes." And so it does: Elise Sutton said such-and-such and therefore it must be true.

So why is he calling me? Because that truth, more often than not, leaves him frustrated and confused. He cannot transform her words of wisdom into a practical course of action in his own intimate life. He accepts the blame for that: he was not a good enough student. Or it was his wife who, for whatever reason, could not live up to the Elise Sutton ideal of the Superior Female.

One of my favorite mantras over the years has been "know the source." It's my way to filter out as much bullshit as possible. I apply it when reading the news. I apply it to political speeches. I apply it when racists tell me what they think about black people, what anti-Semites say about Jews, and so on. And I apply it when I think someone is trying to sell me something - whether it's merchandise or ideas or beliefs. I'm especially leery when someone's trying to sell him or herself, as in "Look at me! I'm an expert! I know the universal truth! I have the secret to your happiness! You can pay me $19.95 or you can simply spread the news about how I possess such powers and it will all add up in the end!"

To one degree or another, most adults have bullshit filters. We learn that some people's opinions matter because they have a greater wisdom or knowledge base, while other people are just talking out their asses. Indeed, that's part of what "growing up" is all about - learning to separate wheat from chaff, learning to be skeptical until someone proves they know what they're talking about, not taking people at their word until you feel reassured that their word is good.

So how good is your BDSM filter?

The ability to sort through the bullshit and figure out the difference between reality and fantasy is an essential skill for BDSMers. If you play with someone who is only pretending to be an experienced player, he or she could end up pushing you over a precipice, emotionally, physically and psychologically. If you play with someone who claims to respect limits but doesn't know the difference between consent and abuse, you could be risking your life and most certainly your emotional health. If you devote yourself to a sub who claims to be sincere and committed, then find out it was just a temporary sex game or they were just using you for selfish reasons, the betrayal and bitterness can be overwhelming.

SM and gullibility are a toxic mix, to doms as well as subs. That is a given. Yet even as more and more of us are attempting to have permanent, healthy, loving SM lifestyle relationships, folks are hinging their hopes on phonies with absurdly unrealistic models. They obey rules set forth by people who made them up from whole cloth or adapted them from another wanker. They accept the authority of people they don't know and follow mentors and guides and teachers who are, in effect, looking for cult members who will mindlessly accept their opinions as gospel and never question their veracity.

It is pathetically easy to become an authority on the Internet, especially when it comes to the taboo, profoundly emotionally charged subjects of SM and fetishism. I think there are a few reasons for that.

1. The Internet's the kind of place where whoever shouts and advertises the loudest gets the most attention. The more attention someone gets, the more other people believe they deserve the attention. Reasonable voices are drowned out by their noise.

2. Sex, and especially kinky sex, freaks people out. It is the most vulnerable part of human identity. When you find dialogue about stuff you've kept a secret in your heart, and especially when that dialogue engages fantasies you've cherished, you feel you've finally seen the truth and that it has set you free. People who promise you the truth in a box are like crack-dealers. Only worse. At least crack dealers give you the crack.

3. Quantity trumps quality on-line every time. Quick comparison: how many sites have you read which are owned and operated by non-professional femdoms? How many of those non-pro sites tell you how and what you, as a femdom or malesub, should feel, and what makes you or your relationship "true lifestyle"? Now think about all the prodom sites you've seen. They have philosophies. They have rules. They know the truth. They LIVE the truth. And for all too many that truth is that they are better and realer than you. Even when, and maybe especially when, they are 100% bullshit artists.

4. People want answers. People are dying for answers. Worse than that, people believe there ARE answers. Black and white, hard and fast answers. They want answers so desperately they are willing, even eager, to believe they can consult someone to find out exactly how to live, how to think, how to dress, and how to have sex. The Scene's landscape overflows with students in search of teachers. A virtual industry of self-proclaimed mentors and self-invented gurus has emerged to cash in on them.

5. Like it or not, one-wayism has mass appeal. It works for religious institutions and it works for BDSM subcultures too. How many times have you heard people complain they were told (in a chat-room or other on-line group setting) that they weren't "real" submissives or "real" dominants? I wish I'd gotten laid for every time I've heard that one: I'd hold the record for the biggest fucker on the planet.

6. Good SM models are hard to find. Bad ones abound. I'll go back to Ms. Sutton: her site is called "Elise Sutton's Female Superiority Page." Yep, she's a female supremacist. Big surprise. And what kind of people are likely to believe that any one group of people is innately superior to another? Uhhh...fascists! Nazis! Racists! Sexists! And, pardon me...IDIOTS! Female supremacy isn't the answer to patriarchy. It IS patriarchy, with a cunt instead of a cock. It caters to malesubs' horny fantasies. Indeed, IMO, that's what most of the so-called on-line female supremacy is indeed about: male sex fantasies. Seriously. When I've met people, in real life, who've said, "Oh yes, I believe all men are inferior to all women" (or vice versa) I just assumed they were nuts and tried to get as far away from them as possible.

No one can know what submission or dominance should be for everyone. All we can ever know is what these things mean to us as individuals. And yet thousands, if not millions, of BDSMers all over the world daily visit SM sites in search of absolute truths. They read fantasy smut and believe it accurately reflects real life. They memorize "the 9 stages of submission" or "the 12 rules for slaves" or "3 paths to true dominance" and believe these lists are definitive. They are tormented with self-doubt when they fail to live up to them.

Look. If a BDSMer doesn't question authority before surrendering to it, he or she is totally fucked. Meanwhile, if someone has one absolute definition of what a submissive or dominant IS or SHOULD BE, please let me know. Because I've been a hardcore lifestyler for 22 years, married 18 of them to a hardcore lifestyler and, for 6 of them, living with our hardcore slaveygirl. I did my Ph.D. on SM sex, I write books about it, my therapy practice is devoted to it - and I still couldn't DEFINE what makes a submissive submissive or provide a single set of rules that will solve everyone's problems. It would be like trying to define what makes a human being human or telling people that if they don't love the way I think they should love, they aren't feeling true love.

But, hey, the hell with me. Poets, philosophers and scientists have been working on the question of what it means to be human and what it's like to be in love for 5000 years. Thousands of experts have tackled the secrets of successful marriage in the last century. No one's figured any of it out definitively. Everything's still open to debate. Yet the Internet overflows with people who claim they know exactly what subs or doms need and feel. Really? Did they hear it from God? Do they hear other voices too?

One of my more exasperating Internet moments happened last year in a chat room. I was surfing anonymously when I bumped into an SM cultist who began espousing what makes for a "True Femdomme." I don't know if he got all his information from a prodom site (the old, "I am a powerful and true lifestyle domina, and I always wear latex" screed), from Internet porn ("No man dared look Mistress Susan in the eye"), or from someone in the chat-o-sphere ("you must use upper case to refer to Me and lower case to refer to yourself because otherwise I won't know W/who's in charge.")

According to the SM cultist, there were rules all femdoms must follow in order to be "real." We had to dress a certain way. We were supposed to think a certain way and, of course, we had to act a certain way. If we didn't conform, we weren't real.

What's the difference between a submissive man who thinks women should act a certain way and your average clueless cluck who wants to control women? Fuck if I know.

You get my point. Who sets the rules? And why do SMers so readily accept anyone else's rules without questioning them intensively? Why don't SMers bring more skepticism to the Scene and set their bullshit filter to high when encountering people who claim to know it all? How do you know they know it all? What if they don't know a damn thing?

Over the years, I've met any number of people who bill themselves as SM mentors, trainers and minor gods. At clubs, at workshops, in public play spaces, they seem knowledgeable and even impressive. They play the role perfectly. But dig under the surface. Ask a few questions. Are they who they say they are? Are they happy, centered people? Do they have stable, long-term SM relationships? Can they pay their own bills? If they know the truth, and have all the secrets, how come it hasn't worked out for them? Is it possible that their truths and secrets basically amount to a pile of poo and don't work any better for them than they will work for you?

I once knew an SM author who was like that - filled with strong opinions, some of them very intellectually sound and challenging. His rap was fantastic: he could convince almost anyone that he knew the absolute truth about maledom/femsub relationships. He used his SM book as ammunition to convince people he was the most credible authority you could find. But the more he believed his own PR, the less functional he acted in real life. With only a handful of exceptions, everyone who knew him ultimately felt compelled to flee. But there was never a shortage of gullible subs begging for the chance to serve him. Such are the power of words on the Internet.

Some years ago, I met "Bob," who'd made a habit of trying to get out and personally meet SM personalities he admired. Bob told me about visiting the editors of a once-popular (no longer published) magazine that was written and edited by fun-loving femdoms who believed in disciplining and controlling their husbands. It was an upbeat, clever, mischievous publication, and the writing sounded refreshingly real.

One day, "Bob" showed up unannounced at their editorial office and knocked on the door. A very nice transvestite answered and invited him in. He asked to meet the sexy editrices. The transvestite blushed. Behold the "women" behind this magazine. They were him and he was them. He was a nice guy, Bob reported. He clearly had a fertile imagination and knew how to cater to the sex fantasies of submissive men who dream that women like the ones in the magazine are waiting to take control of them. So did it matter that the "women" was a man? The magazine was a fun read. Did it matter that readers were led to believe that his erection-producing fantasies were liveable realities?

Which brings me back to Elise Sutton. Does it matter if Elise Sutton is real or a figment of someone's imagination as long as her advice resonates? Would it make a difference if you knew that she or any of the other gurus of BDSM don't practice what they preach, as long as the preaching gives you something to believe? What if the things they preach have never led to successful BDSM relationships? Do you question the teacher or do you tend to blame yourself for your failure to follow their advice correctly? If the advice resonates with you, or comforts you or gets you excited or makes you think, is that good enough?

I don't think it is. For one, I think dogmatists and One-True-Wayists dumb down the dialogue on SM and destroy genuine debate about it. They take a mechanistic approach to human behavior that leaves little room for normal human variations, including the specifics of what turns people on and what turns them off. More often than not, their models reject diversity and promote an "interchangeable cog" mentality, where all masters and slaves are supposed to feel and act certain ways and can easily be replaced.

I think BDSM is all about the itty bitty individualistic details and differences. It's about knowing people deeply as individuals. It's about embracing the diversity of physical and spiritual and emotional response across a galaxy of human experience. BDSM relationships are all about the process of two complicated kinky adults negotiating power boundaries according to who they are. It's not a cast-iron mold you place over unformed creatures to turn them into other people.

Going back to the basics: consider the source before investing them with authority. People who can't run their own lives, for example, have no business telling others how to run theirs. Meanwhile, if their advice was good, it would work for them, no? Before you're over-impressed by someone who claims to have a pack of slaves, talk to the slaves: are they all happy? intelligent? together? satisfied with their relationship? If you want a quality relationship, you have to prioritize quality over quantity: Mistress X may have whipped 100 different men, but that doesn't mean she knows how to make any one of them feel loved.

Deliberately giving people false hope by cooking up fake models is cynical, even mentally cruel. It creates false expectations. It betrays peoples' trust. It often leaves them poorer. Worse, people feel like failures when the advice doesn't work. Instead of blaming the bullshit artist who just sold them the Brooklyn Bridge of BDSM, people walk around going "maybe I'm not a true sub" or "I guess I'm not a real dom."

And that's the point of this essay. Your mother warned you never to take candy from strangers. I'll add that you shouldn't take advice from them either. You will end up destroying your chances at BDSM happiness if you try to live up to the fantasies that herds of phonies out there are peddling as realities.

Comments

[sushi]

wow.
this is really an amazing and thought provoking piece. i'm going to link to it in my blog and also, if it's okay, copy and paste it onto my alt blog (you can't link there)- crediting you as the author of course. SO many people there need to see this, though.
seriously.

[Shepsl]

Yes, it is a very thought-provoking post. And it points out something important: the Internet is a double-edged sword. Even as it has opened up the world of BDSM and made information about the lifestyle easy and accessible, it has also meant the spread of bad information and pure bullshit. And sometimes, for the uninitiated, it's difficult to tell the difference between the two.

[Trin]

This is a wonderful piece.

I'd like to link to it on one of my blogs, too, please. If it's not ok, please say so and I'll remove it immediately.

[Gloria]

Thanks, folks. Sure, you are more than welcome to link to it or quote it. If anyone wants to re-publish it, I just ask that you drop me an email for permission first.

[Alex]

I think there's a little bit of dissonance here. I mean, on one hand, you're saying that there's no one true way, but your post kinda implies that Elise Eutton is a one true wrong way. And you have a moderately snarky comment about prodoms (or at least their sites).

I like Bitchy Jones a lot. But she made a post ripping into you that I thought was way off base. And she's really judgmental about prodoms too.

I think you imply the existence of a hierarchy, without actually saying it. (Maybe you have said it.) Guys with fantasies, who are alone, are at the bottom. Guys who go out and see pros are probably in the middle. And lifestyle people are at the top.

Which is kind of a "one true way" pov in its own way.

I don't really like elise sutton's stuff either. I agree with you that the odds of a woman being behind those posts is probably pretty slim. But I think there's a difference between saying "it's not for me" and saying she's inauthentic somehow.

[Gloria]

I don't think there is any kind of a hierarchy when it comes to sex fantasies and desires. I don't believe one kind of SM is better than another, either.

But I'm not writing about everyone involved in the SM world here. I'm specifically talking about people who are "attempting to have permanent, healthy, loving SM lifestyle relationships."

I checked out Bitchy Jones. She tears into someone I published on my site many years ago, a prodom who gives her POV on being a prodom. I've got no problem with her critiques of Zan, but I'm not Zan, nor do I come from the same POV. I used to publish a range of opinions on my old website, gay and straight, etc. Check out the DifLove interviews for more diversity and many other opinions I don't personally agree with. If Ms. Jones wanted to know what I myself think about prodoms, all she had to do was use my google boxes to find something I've written.

BTW, thanks for mentioning her. Gonna add her to my blogroll :)

[Anonymous]

Frankly, I find Bitchy Jones more annoying than Elise Sutton. As for Ms. Sutton, its nice masturbation material, but who in their right mind would think that anything but a small percentage of what is on her site is true or widely applicable. Have you read her book? OMG. Again, some nice femdom porn in there if you're into certain kinks, but the book is mostly lol funny.

[Principal Quattrano]

I love the article. I am so tired of being approached uninvited online by random subs who cannot conceive that all dominant women are not exactly the same in all ways. They are convinced that I have a stable of slaves with an opening for them; that what I want is to spend all my waking hours administering verbal humiliation, sadistic beatings, sissification, and forced cocksucking...and of course, collecting limitless online submissives and slaves to dominate in my spare time, asking nothing whatever in return, as they are doing ME a favor by providing me with the opportunity to do all these things that they know I love to do so much. Gag me with a spoon.

I did read one one entry of a Bitchy Jones blog post. It said I was doing it all wrong. You go, girl. Somewhere else. Plzthnx.

[Gloucester]

That's a nice piece, Gloria.
I've been enjoying kinky behaviour for 30 years now and the only solid conclusion I've ever come to is that 'what floats my boat may not float your boat and vice versa'. There are as many aspects to 'alternative sexuality' as there are people who practice it and anyone who preaches that one way is the correct way is clearly misguided. Elise Sutton seems to be a kinky equivalent of anonymous Penthouse Variations letters. Great fun and not lacking in insight by any means but certainly not the B&D bible.
She probably is a transvestite like the writer in your account. Good for him/her. It is a shame tho that people will read him/her and believe every word she says.
Bitchy Jones doesn't claim to be a guru but expresses her own views in a witty and intelligent manner. Like Elise. I agree with her on many points but disagree with her on just as many.
The thing is that each person/couple/group creates their own truth through preference,negotiation and experience etc.
There are no rules (save,of course SSC)