Well, I don’t know about every sub. Just me!

Ack! Forgot to say that verbal praise sort of bypasses my pleasure centres. Of course it makes me happy, but I think my ‘on’ switch is quite literally sensory proof that a sadist is enjoying himself.

That’s practical, though not quite the kind of thing I was thinking of when I said I love protocol!

Saliency works well. Also groans, convulsive movements, completely gratuitous cruelty, laughter, and a certain facial expression which might be kindly described as totally inwardly directed.

I feel I have painted too rosy a picture of jelly biophysics. The thing is that the jelly ceases to exist after inputs of disappointment or anger. The threshold is fun to play with, but the window is so narrow that it’s very inconvenient for all concerned. But it does seem to regenerate in no time with enough forgiveness/approval, so maybe things are not so bad!

Someday I will get to experience ginger …

I’m fond of using both the stick and the carrot, though I’m more likely to use a piece of ginger root than a carrot. But they’re both good. Never use a boiled carrot, though.

I like “jelly biophysics”. Everything to do with it.

Absolutely you need both subtle and unsubtle communication in a scene, for both mental and physical pleasure during the scene and afterwards.

Each dom’s style is different (and I guess most doms know less than submissives about what other doms do), but I’d have thought most doms, male or female, would be pretty good at communicating happiness and pleasure in a submissive’s performance.

I use praise, but my main non-verbal signal tends to be pretty obvious. Also salient, outstanding and I’ll get off the page now before it gets all Benny Hill here.

You have made me realise that my post was all about the stick and not the carrot! Thank you for remedying the deficiency! And also pointing out that my argument about protocol and hotness was something of a straw man.

I’m glad you brought up mutual awareness of the other party’s state of mind. This is actually what gives me my kicks – not my submissive acts, but the realisation that they are being enjoyed. On the bright side this means that I get the most wonderful jolts of arousal after the scene, but the disadvantage is that if there are no obvious signals, then the rewards are more mental than physical during the scene itself.

I am curious how unusual this quirk is. But it is completely consistent with my jelly biophysics, so I think it’s all part of the same kink. Does it work that way for you, or is it a bit different?

“How are you feeling” is a great one, and can be applied through protocol as well.

I had a sub who enjoyed gags, blindfolds and hoods, so communication was a concern of note; after all, how would she tell me if something wasn’t right?

What we worked out was a protocol: when I would ask her (usually just by tapping on her forehead,) she would ensure that there were no concerns with the bondage, no numbness or tingling and would respond by nodding or shaking her head for “yes” and “no”. The context was set that I asked for the purpose of maintaining my property, and preventing unneeded damage to it. By setting this protocol we were able to maintain that line of communication and ensure a safe scene, without removing ourselves.

One thing that protocols do is stretch out D/s awareness and time. When the dom demands service or disciplines the sub, their mutual awareness of being dominant and submissive is intense, and so’s the pleasure they get from that awareness.

It’s like the way that presentation postures are hot in themselves, or else comic book artists wouldn’t draw Wonder Woman, Spider Woman, etc, just happening to find themselves in presentations postures whenever they’re fighting someone or climbing a roof.

But I don’t think anyone gets as much pleasure from presentation postures as:
(1) a dom watching his or her submissive assume the position because they do as they’re told, or
(2) the submissive who puts herself or himself into position, knowing that this is something they’re doing as a display of their surrender and submission.

The pleasure we get is a kind of awareness. I’m not a switch, but I think I have a good imaginative idea of what submissive presentation feels like to the submissive. I like making a submissive feel like that. And I also know how it feels to me, as the dom of that submissive, to be obeyed, to have that display, and to choose among the sexual possibilities that that posture offers.

Similarly, I’m pretty sure that submissives not only experience their own pleasures, but have some idea of how much pleasure they give a dominant when they submit, and perhaps some idea of what that pleasure feels like.

So we have a kind of self-reflective awareness of our own dominance or submission. That awareness is a key part of the pleasure of D/s, especially (or maybe only) when the awareness is reciprocated.

I hope that makes sense.

But scenes end, and then that self-reflective awareness drifts away, because their attention shifts to working, or doing the dishes or watching Dr Who.

Protocols can be in effect during a scene, and then stay in effect permanently. For example I like to be called “Master”, even though – or because – it can sound comical or cheesy or whatever to the submissive the first few times. After which it sounds natural and true.

But there’s something wonderful when that protocol bleeds into ordinary life, as in, “Master, where the fuck have I left my keys?” It’s not as intensely hot as something more obviously sexual, but it still keeps the contact and awareness alive.

So protocols are hot in a scene. They provide lots of opportunities to wind up the tension by making the submissive have to try harder to please, and creating new reasons to give correction and eventually praise.

But they also give the submissive a way of being obedient and submissive and good even when there’s no scene, and the dom isn’t even there. They stretch out D/s awareness over longer periods of time.

As a dom, I love the thought of helping her to feel that on-going connection by imposing protocols, and I know that it keeps her thinking of me, and me thinking of her.

(Hey, I managed to use inclusive language all the way up to the penultimate sentence!)

Although, as you also point out, not all the communication is explicit. Guy Baldwin’s book Ties That Bind says that while tops do a lot of explicit verbal communication, bottoms give a lot of non-verbal feedback. He gave the example of an experienced bottom getting a top to adjust a restraint simply by looking at it. He was writing about scening, but I think the same is also true to some extent for long-term D/s.

I was very much struck by Eric Pride’s solution to this feedback problem when I attended his class “Anatomy of a Play Scene”. He asked “How are you feeling?” very frequently, but with totally neutral intonation. I don’t know if it would work for everyone, but to me it conveyed his concern for the sub very clearly without signalling any wish to give up control.

That makes so much sense! Of course it’s a way for the sub to say “your preferences mean more to me than my own” and of course that is a way of saying “I love you.” And of course that would feel good from the receiving end. Thank you!

It’s interesting that making rules can also be liberating from social anxiety. I would spend all my time worrying whether I had made the right rules. But then I suppose it should not be news to me that doms have to trust their subs quite a lot!

Protocols are, in a way, an extension of the open and honest communication that makes a D/s relationship viable. In many ways, communication can easily be stunted by the very nature of D/s: the Dom issues an order that the sub truly feels against, how is the sub to respond? If it’s not a hard limit, is the sub to simply comply and be unhappy?

A functional relationship is about both sides being happy, and while that’s not always possible, it should always be something worded toward. So what is the sub to do?

The “Red Folder” technique is great (in which there is a red folder that messages can be passed back and forth through, without breaking the power dynamic.) but only works outside of the moment.

Having a clearly defined set of protocols means both sides know the rules of engagement. Note how I said “both sides.”

While it can be a challenge for a sub to know how to address a concern with the Dom, so too can it be a challenge for the Dom to ensure the happiness of the sub. If the Dom continually asks after the sub’s happiness, this inherently breaks the nature of D/s, in which the Dom is, by definition, the one in control.

A great read from both sides of the fence.

I think it’s a language of affection and attraction, like other people have their ways of showing caring, for people like (us?) it’s most clearly communicated and understood, by these means. “You follow/give the rules, it shows you care” – where follow isn’t negated by slipping up, because the correction/acceptance cycle is a part of following/giving the rules.

The odd thing for me was recognising:

I really, really want to know what I’m supposed to do.

…

If I’m not sure how you’d like your coffee, I will stand paralysed between visions of your gustatory disgust and terrors of absorbing precious seconds of your time if I ask.

I feel like that almost as my default social setting, so as a Dom I find having some set rules of which I am arbiter (regardless of what they are, but I prefer to have designed the protocol with the assent of a partner) to be equally liberating for the same reasons. I want to know that it’s okay, that you know it’s okay, and so on.

I tend not to develop deep, convoluted protocol, but whatever I do apply within a relationship is there for all these reasons.