https://www.marketplace.org/shows/this-is-uncomfortable-reema-khrais/
(This is a post from my blog at gaybdsmfiction.blog)
A boy contacted me this morning and asked me, "I'm just curious here. What is ethical findom?" The boy has an established presence on Twitter as a cashslave, so he wasn't just wanting information about findom--he already knew what it was. He wanted to know how ethical findom differed from findom as it's commonly practiced on Twitter. And that struck me as a good subject for a blog post.
Findom, for those who aren't familiar with it, is the use of money as a tool for power exchange in an erotic context. A 'cashslave' or 'cashfag' will give money or presents to his 'cashmaster' as a way of expressing his inferiority to his cashmaster. While the practice is ancient--it goes back at least to ancient Greece-- in recent years it's exploded online, and a lot of people who are not particularly kinky have used it as a form of sex work to make money. This has given rise to a wide range of seriously problematic practices, such as findoms pushing their cashslaves to ruin themselves financially, blackmailing their subs into continuing a relationship against the cashslave's consent, encouraging subs to get high so they lose control of their tributing, and intentionally seeking to damage a sub's mental health, for example by making them feel that they're so pathetic that the only way anyone will pay attention to them is if they send money.
As a result, there is a burning need for the establishment of a basic standard of what is and isn't acceptable in findom play, the same way the rest of the kink community has developed standards of play (such as making informed consent the bedrock of kink play). Since I come to findom as a kink, not as a form of sex work (which, to be clear, I am not condemning), it feels absolutely natural to me to approach findom from an ethical perspective, and I'm rather appalled by some of the crap I've seen and heard about in the online findom community.
So what is ethical findom?
Ethical findom is doing findom with ethical standards intended to protect the sub's basic financial well-being and mental health.
It's helpful to look at the basics of ethical kink in general. Take impact play--using crops, canes, floggers, and so on to hurt a boy. The goal of impact play is to create hurt, not harm. I want the boy I'm beating to feel erotic pain, but I don't want to actually injure him. So I only want to beat a boy who consents to be beaten. I only want to hit him in places where it's safe to hit him. I need to provide the boy with safe words or other ways to slow down or stop the play when he feels he needs that. I need to look out for him as I beat him to make sure that I'm not potentially harming him even if he's not telling me to stop (for example, a boy being flogged may go into subspace, a euphoric state where he can no longer feel pain, which means I might be injuring him and he wouldn't use his safe word). When the scene is over, I provide him with aftercare, to help him come back from his submissive headspace (unless he indicates he doesn't want that).
The same basic standards apply to findom play. I only do play with boys who are willing to sent tribute. So things like b*******l are unethical (not to mention highly illegal), unless the boy has requested a b*******l dynamic (consensual b*******l is still legally risky for the dom, but some subs crave it).
I want my cashslave to feel the sexual charge of tributing (that might be humiliation or the thrill of talking to a hot dom or the satisfaction of serving me well), but I don't want him harming himself financially, for example finding himself unable to pay his rent or falling deeply into debt just to tribute. So unless a boy just wants a brief one-off tribute moment, I always discuss the budget he has to work with so I can stop the play when he hits the limits of his budget. If I know that he can only afford to send $100 a month, I'll stretch out the play over the course of the month, maybe only demanding $10-15 at a time. That way he can have the thrill of me pressing him to tribute but knowing he's safe because I won't push him beyond what he can afford. The focus becomes not the amount of money I'm taking but how we get there. Do I seduce it out of him? Do I humiliate and verbally a***e him? Do I use hypnotism so he feels like a literal ATM dispensing money from my "account"?
If my cashslave indicates that he's got an unexpected expense, I adjust my demands instead of trying to f***e him to send what he can't afford. During the Covid lockdown, I reviewed my boys' budgets and adjusted expectations accordingly. And I reassured the ones who had to sharply reduce their tributing that they were still important to me and continued to chat with them without taking tribute, or taking only very nominal tributes. One of my most memorable sessions involved taking half an hour to demand $1; the boy literally got so worked up that he spontaneously orgasmed hands-free when I finally allowed him to send it.
I provide aftercare. Literal aftercare usually involves cuddling and things like that, but obviously that doesn't work very well online. So my version of aftercare is simply talking to the boy after the tribute is over, demonstrating that I care about him as a human being and not simply as a wallet. When my boys are feeling frustrated or scared or angry about something in their lives, I listen to them and offer support and advice. I often ask them about their goals in life and then start pushing them to meet their goals. One of my boys recently expressed interest in setting up his own business--basically taking what he did professionally and doing it more as a freelancer than for a company. So I asked him what the first steps in that process were and then told him that I would be expecting a progress update in a few weeks. I had another boy who wanted to lose weight, so I ordered him to tribute me the cost of the coffee-drinks he said he was consuming too often, helping him reduce his calorie intake. Since subs are generally eager to please their doms, that allows me to help encourage them to achieve their goals.
In other words, I try to build a dynamic that fits my needs and my cashslave's needs and makes him feel valued and cared about. I seek to be more than a financial parasite, helping the boy grow not just as a cashslave but as a human being. Of course, every boy is different in terms of what he wants and, in my opinion, what he needs. One of my boys likes to do 'silent sending', where I don't acknowledge it when he sends money to my account. It makes him feel small and unobtrusive, which feels right for him. But I make sure that every couple weeks I reach out to him and demonstrate that I do see his tribute. When he sends gifts, I always post them on Twitter.
In my mind, ethics are what separates findom for ruthless exploitation of a sub. As a superior man, it's my job to let a sub explore and indulge his desires while protecting them from the more destructive tendencies they can often have. It's common for subs to fantasize about financial ruin, so I'll sometimes incorporate the idea into a scene, boasting about how greedy I am and how badly I'm going to ruin them, but that's the findom equivalent of a sadistic dom boasting about how much pain his masochist is going to be in. I enjoy letting a boy worship my greed, the same way I enjoy letting my cruel urges come out during a humiliation or pain play scene, but as a dom, it's my job to know how to restrain those urges so I don't actually cause harm with them.
I've had a couple of boys who had the resources to tribute very substantially, and we've discussed ways for the sub to sacrifice for me, for example by cooking at home and not going out to an expensive dinner so the boy can send the money he would have spent at the restaurant. But I've always made it clear that there are limits to what I'll allow the boy to send, and when I discuss budgets I always make sure the budget includes money for savings and money to buy friends birthday presents and so on.
Obviously there are ethical grey areas in findom, just as there are in other aspects of the kink scene. Another findom might draw his ethical line a bit more broadly or a bit more tightly than I do. There are ethical questions about the use of intoxicants during play, about things like consensual b*******l, about what sorts of things a cashslave should or shouldn't be willing to sacrifice, about how much he should let his tributing restrict his socializing, and so on. These are issues that each findom has to resolve for himself and on a case-by-case basis with each boy. But I think the broad outlines of ethical findom are fairly easy to discern once the findom starts thinking about them. And I think the parallel with other forms of kink play is extremely important, because it allows us to isolate the ethical issues for consideration.
The discussion about ethical findom is still, I'm afraid, in its early stages. The idea that ethical findom is an actual thing is not as wide-spread as it should be (which is one reason this kink has such a bad reputation among those not in the scene). There isn't a consensus yet among ethical findoms about what the basic standards are, although I know it when I see it. So if you're in this scene, I definitely want to hear from you. Feel free to post in the comments! And look for the #ethicalfindom hashtag on Twitter.
This morning I woke up to a message from Zal letting me know that my slave had reached out and offered to send tribute to him. He wanted to make sure that I understood that he respects my ownership of my property and that he wasn't seeking to have MoneySlave $erve him and hadn't tried to initiate anything with him.
This is what a true classy dominant man does. He respects his fellow masters and their rights over their property and wants to make certain that the master knows and approves of what their slave is doing so there's nothing going on behind backs.
There are a LOT of would-be masters on this site who ignore the site's rules about not contact an owned fag without the owner's permission. I see it in my property's messages quite frequently (not just MoneySlave's messages, all of my active faggots). And it's always a rather obvious, open effort to poach a slave. It's a shitty thing to do. It's disrespectful to both the master and his property, and it's a very good indication that the wannabe dom has no idea what actual dominance is about.
True masters demonstrate their worthiness through their actions. They attract prospective slaves by showing that they have integrity and strength and don't need to resort to craven attempts to steal a slave. A would-be dom who can't be trusted to not steal someone else's property can't be trusted to take care of any boys who might submit to him, so ultimately efforts to poach a slave are self-defeating--they make a would-be dom look weak rather than strong.
Zal, in contrast, regularly demonstrates his strength and integrity and shows the wannabes how you actually do it--lead by example and the boys will submit and serve. His slaves should be proud to serve a quality master like him. There's clearly a reason Zal has a substantial stable here, and I hope he continues to be a pillar of the community.
On Friday June 29th, 1969, a Black trans woman Marsha P. Johnson and a white butch lesbian (probably Marilyn Fowler) triggered the single most important act of LGBT resistance by igniting the Stonewall Riots. The Stonewall Bar on Christopher St in New York City was a shitty Mafia-run bar that lacked a l****r license, but it was one of the few bars that more effeminate gay men (termed ‘queens’ in the language of the period) and butch women could get into, although they rarely let in more than 2-3 males dressed in women’s clothing (termed ‘drags’ at the time) for fear of attracting police attention.
Later in the evening, police showed up to raid the bar on the pretense of looking for “cross-dressing men”, since cross-dressing was a crime, as was any form of gay sex. The police routinely harassed gay bars, raided them, beat up gay men and trans women, and if someone were convicted of a morals offense, it was guaranteed to be published in the newspapers in articles that identified the target by name, thereby outing them at a time when being gay or trans could easily get one fired.
When the cops showed up (led by Seymore Pine), they shut down the bar and f****d those inside to leave, but detained 5 people they suspected might be cross-dressing, f*****g them to undergo humiliating inspections at the hands of policewomen. The policewomen determined that 2 of the 5 were ‘real women’. The remaining three were Marsha P. Johnson, a well-known Black trans woman; ‘Maria’, a young drag on her first-ever night out in women’s clothing, and a third person who’s never been identified.
At some point during the process, Johnson got fed up and threw a shot-glass at the mirror behind the bar (not, as some people have said, a brick). About the same time, the police were dragging out a white butch lesbian wearing men’s clothes (which was as much of a crime as men wearing women’s clothes). Although sometimes identified as popular singer Stormé Darlarverie, this was almost certainly Marilyn Fowler, a much less well-known figure in the community whose name appears in the arrest records. Fowler struggled with police and called for the crowd to help her.
These two moments of resistance ignited the crowd of bar patrons milling around outside to start rioting. They began slowly, shouting and throwing pennies at the cops. As things escalated, Johnson and Maria were f****d into a paddy wagon, but Maria was able to jump out and escape capture, while Johnson wound up handcuffed but also got away. The crowd escalated to throwing bricks from a nearby construction site and the police retreated inside the bar and barricaded the door. When the crowd retaliated by ripping up a parking meter to use as a makeshift battering ram, Pine ordered one of the police women to crawl through a back window and get to a phone to call for back-up.
When more cops showed up, the scene devolved into a running street battle between the street youth and the queens on the one side and the unprepared cops on the other. Furious queers brawled with the police on more than one occasion rescued people the cops were attempting to arrest. The street youth took advantage of the confusing street layout of Christopher Street; they would taunt the cops and when the cops charged them, they would run down the block, around the corner, and then re-appear at the opposite end of the street, mocking the inability of the police to stop them. They formed Rockettes-style kick-lines and taunt the police with an insulting song:
We are the Stonewall girls
We wear our hair in curls
We don’t wear underwear
We show our pubic hairs
We wear our dungarees
Around our nelly knees
Central to the rioting was a strategy of ridicule. The NYPD were icons of masculine power, so the rioters turned the tables on them, making a dramatic show of their own effeminacy and their supposedly- predatory sexuality to invert the normal power dynamic. It was the effeminate ‘failed men’ who were defeating the hyper-masculine police and rendering them impotent.
Friday night was not actually the end of the rioting. Saturday night saw a much larger crowd form; the Friday night crowd was perhaps 500 people at most, but on Saturday night an estimated 2,000 people were involved in fighting the police. The crowd began making explicit declarations of “Gay Power” and some began to kiss each other in public, a truly radical gesture that horrified the more ‘straight-acting’ butches, who were able to pass for straight and therefore tended to advocate for staying in the closet. 150 riot police were able to f***e the crowd out of Christopher Street, but were not able to control the surrounding streets until the crowd finally began to disperse around 3:30am. At one point, Johnson climbed a lamp-post (in a dress) and dropped a handbag containing something very heavy onto a police car, smashing its window and prompting it to drive off immediately.
On Sunday, the Mattachine Society, a ‘homophile’ organization that advocated for respectability and assimilation, posted a sign at the Stonewall Bar calling for peace, and the police turned out in very large numbers, effectively thwarting attempts to orchestrate another riot. But the following Wednesday, when the Village Voice published an insulting article about the riot, a crowd of 500 anger gays formed in front of its offices (which were on the same block as the Stonewall) and debated burning down the building. The Black Panthers sent a contingent, eager to learn how a group of gay men had been able to thwart the police so easily. When the rioting erupted again, it was less festive than on Friday and Saturday. A number of business were vandalized and quite a few people were injured by the police. In the words of Dick Leitsch, then president of New York branch of the Mattachine Society:
“7th Avenue from Christopher to West 10th looked like Vietnam. Young people, many of them queens, were lying on the sidewalk, b******g from the head, face, mouth, and even the eyes. Others were nursing bruised and often b******g arms, legs, backs, and necks….The exploiters had moved in…blacks and students who want a revolution, any kind of revolution …swelled the crowd…but ‘graciously’ let the queens take all the bruises and suffer all the arrests.”
Wednesday night’s riot was brief and intense, lasting only about an hour before the police were able to disperse it, and proved to be the last. But within a few days, the New York LGBT community same an unprecedented explosion of organizing. A few days after the riots, a leaflet began to circulate titled “Are The Homosexuals Revolting? You Bet Your Sweet Ass We Are”. Less than two weeks later, a meeting of the Mattachine Society swelled to more than 200 participants, many of whom loudly rejected its strategy of respectable protesting. The Gay Liberation Front began organizing dances, giving LGBT people a place to congregate that wasn’t controlled by the Mafia; when a bouncer at a Mafia-controlled bar punched a lesbian in the face, the GLF organized a dance-in at the bar and intimidated the Mafia into allowing them to dance there peacefully. The Gay Activists Alliance focused more on building LGBT consciousness and on getting the city to stop harassing LGBT people. Johnson and fellow trans woman Sylvia Rivera organized STAR (Street Transvestites Action Revolutionaries) and managed to set up a brief-lived halfway house for homeless trans people to live in.
A year later, activists led by Craig Rodwell organized the First Annual Christopher Street Liberation Day march, marching from the Stonewall Bar to Central Park. Rodwell cannily recognized that such an event would help further LGBT consciousness and identity-formation, and he was right. Two years later, that parade became the first “Gay Pride” Parade. At the time, ‘gay’ was frequently used as a catch-all term for people who today identify as gays, lesbians, bisexuals, trans people, non-binaries, and queer.
It’s important to remember that Gay Pride events commemorate the Stonewall Riots. The whole principle of Gay Pride is rooted in an act of resistance that ultimately sparked a world-wide movement of liberation. While LGBT people enjoy greater visibility, legal rights, and social acceptance than we did in 1969, I think it’s important to remember that we are not truly accepted. In many ways both large and small, mainstream society still sees us as being a problem. There’s still, for example, a desire to make gay and lesbian relationships conform to monogamous standards instead of acknowledging that our relationships tend to follow different rules. There is obviously a great deal of political pressure being applied to trans people by the GOP, stemming from a refusal to accept that trans people understand their gender identities better than anyone else. One recent study found that bisexual girls tend to have rates of teen pregnancy because they feel pressure to engage in unprotected heterosexual sex as a way to prove they are still women despite their attraction to other women. Pride is still an act of resistance because straight society forces it to be.
And never forget that Stonewall began with acts of resistance by a Black trans woman and a white lesbian, and it grew into a fight driven by effeminate gay men, many of whom were sex workers. These people got the ball rolling on the legal and social struggle for acceptance. White gay men are prone to forget that the rights and the freedom from the closet they currently enjoy are things they owe to some of the most marginalized members of our community. As gay men gain greater access to positions of power and influence, it’s vitally important that we help boost the less fortunate segments of our community up through political action, charitable donations and patronage, social support, and whatever other tools we have at our disposal.
None of us are free until we’re all free, because if we leave room for trans people to be ostracized, that room we leave will eventually be used to ostracize us. If we don’t fight for poor LGBTs to get better access to health care, why should they fight for our rights? If we allow cops to k**l our Black brothers and sisters with impunity, there’s nothing to stop them from killing the rest of us. It took a concerted struggle 52 years ago to defend the repression of the NYPD, and it’s still going to take a concerted struggle to win our equality.
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