Mistress Strangelove: Chapter 7 : One Woman's Porn Is Another Woman's Research

Mistress Strangelove or : How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love My Kinks

The (Mis)Adventures Of A Reluctant Mistress

Chapter 1 : A Shopping Addict Is Born
Chapter 2 : My Inner Bimbo
Chapter 3 : If The Nuns From My Catholic Grade School Only Knew
Chapter 4 : With Bells On
Chapter 5 : Would You Dance With Me?
Chapter 6 : Its Harder Than Walking And Chewing Gum
Chapter 7 : One Woman's Porn Is Another Woman's Research
Chapter 8 : 'With Bells On' In Real Life

After my introductory weekend in Second Life, I was eager to return. I was astonished at how much I learned during my first weekend and wanted to learn and see more - I was addicted to it already. In a number of places I encountered the word Gor referring to some sort of group, I was curious as to what it was. My "performance" during my first cybersex frustrated me; I knew I wasn't that good. Not being good at something annoys me.

Another key to my personality is that I am very self-competitive. I dislike doing things at less than my potential best. Sometimes this translates into competitiveness with others, and some of my friends may quibble with what I am about to say, but I am rarely, truly competitive with others. I will play at being competitive, joke about it, and do my best, but I don't really take it as seriously as to whether I thought I did my best. Losing to others in a fair (or not so fair) competition doesn't irk me too much at all. No, my only true competitor is my own expectations. Its far more devilish a rival than anyone else could be.

Like many people, while I'm at work, I browse the web periodically; it's one of my stress relievers and I often find that a small break from a task allows me to come back to it and approach it in a new and better way. During one of these times, I remembered my curiosity as to what Gor was. As I write this, I recall I was wrong in my previous chapter, I hadn't learned about the word kajira or Gor's relationship to slavery from that man I met who had a slave, I had merely read it in a few places.

Imagine my surprise when I turned to the Wikipedia article and finally read what Gor was. It was a fantasy world that glorified the enslavement of women. I read the whole article about Gor - it was a series of fantasy novels set in a world called Gor. One of its central features was women as slaves, it talked extensively about the proper behavior of slaves, it had names for slave positions, and it had a small, but devoted following of people who practiced its "tenants". I find that as absurd as the people who learn to speak Klingon.

I was angry about slavery. I disliked the abasement of one person to another, the whole concept of domination and submission mystified me, and the fact people would willingly do all that astonished me. Realizing that in Second Life, it was all shared fantasy similar to cybersex made it easier to tolerate. However, I still thought it very unhealthy that someone would sublimate their own will and I thought it would just reinforce emotional instability and prevent people from taking responsibility for their own life and becoming better.

Then, I reached the part of the Wikipedia article that talked about Gor in Real Life. Evidently, some people live the Gorean lifestyle, with slaves who do their bidding, practicing all the mandated positions, and subjugating themselves on a permanent basis to a master. The Gorean masters prey upon emotionally disturbed women and keep them as slaves by breaking their wills. Through links off that page and other articles, I read stories of women rescued from those situations and how mentally crippled they were by the experience. I had read about the Stockholm Syndrome and the proclivity of institutionalized people to be unable to function outside of that environment and knew how evil enslavement and captivity could truly be. Now, I was truly angry, fantasy is one thing, but taking advantage of people in Real Life was intolerable. I couldn't do anything about it in Real Life, but I didn't have to tolerate the Goreans in Second Life - their mimicking of the Gorean practices seemed to trivialize the Real Life problems.

The final revelation about Gor that surprised me was that the concept of silks, those pretty, flowing clothes I liked in Second Life, originated as the clothing of the slaves. Darn, my favorite outfit was a set of silks. I realized I had been walking around in an outfit that broadcast, "I am a slave" and right now writing this, I realize that not only did the Gorean guy walk into Paradise Lost probably looking for an escort and saw me but that he also saw someone who he thought to be an escort who was also wearing silks.

During that week, at other times during my web browsing activities, I looked for blogs and other sites dedicated to Second Life. I discovered a number of them, but what really grabbed my attention were slboutique.com and slexchange.com. Now, I was even more dangerous, I could shop while at work. My wish lists instantly grew to gargantuan proportions and I spent far too much time and far too much money browsing those sites. In Second Life there were things to distract me from shopping, offline; the only change I could effect in Second Life was the purchase of things. Which I did while at work and then excitedly logged in that evening to try out.

One thing I still immensely dislike about Second Life shopping is the inability to try things on before I buy them. In Real Life, part of the fun of shopping is trying on all sorts of clothing to see which ones you like the best, in Second Life you had to go on the pictures provided. I never liked shopping for clothing on the web before for similar reasons, but now, with Second Life's prices being so cheap; I could afford to buy things just to try them on.

While at work, there was one thing I was not going to try to improve and that was my cybersex skills :) I hit upon the idea of looking for online sex stories to see what the characters said and how they said them. Swallowing my pride, I did something I had never done before, except by accident, I went looking for porn. Those spam messages describing all sorts of sexual activities, I quickly found out, were only the tip of the iceberg. Website after website of porn existed to cater to every conceivable type of proclivity; while I intellectually knew before that time that they existed, I had never experienced them except through a mislabeled or deceptive link on a webpage.

It took me many tries to get over my embarrassment long enough to do, what I like to call, research. With the offer of being an escort hanging over my head and my own disappointment at my virginal performance, I was seeing what it took to be better. Eventually, via the suggestions of a few folks at Paradise Lost who must have thought I was obsessive, I also began to look at online porn movies.

My god! The dialog was execrable in the ones that had dialog more sophisticated than, "Oh god! Oh. Give me that cock. Oh. *moan* *mumble* *slurp*." Is this what guys liked, I wondered? These women, in my opinion, were acting like trashy whores, had they no pride? No dignity? People didn't act like that in Real Life, did they?

Slowly, realization dawned on me that *this* was the dirty talk people had referred to all along and my few attempts in the past, I now realized, had been pitiful to say the least. In Real Life, I've always enjoyed sex and I began to wonder if trying this out would improve things. My personal goal of doing my best at anything I try kicked in and I knew I had to try out these ideas in Real Life. However, I didn't want to make a fool of myself, thankfully, Second Life came to the rescue and I had a handy place to practice before my Real Life dirty talk debut.

Not only was Second Life accelerating my learning and discovery of new things while I was connected to it and wandering around, it was also doing so while I was offline.

Chapter 8 : 'With Bells On' In Real Life

My Voluntarily Released, Linden Labs Verified, Real Life Information

I was reading an article in Pixel Pulse Magazine about age and gender verification in SL and a comment in it raised a particularly trenchant point:

Chew on this... what if it's a guy using his girlfriend's account? Not so sure now, are we? Even with this verification in place, it's STILL possible for you to run into this type of thing that you are so afraid of.

Given a recent ruling from the courts that if a service provider attempts to restrict content on their site, they lose the protections against third party content that grew out of the "common carrier" exception, how does the age verification help Linden Labs protect against someone using another's account? Linden Lab cannot guarantee that a "child" will not use an already verified account or that the "child" will not use a flaw in the verification system to age verify themselves to an "acceptable" age. Given that "children" have nothing but time and given the nature of the Internet, I'm certain moments after the verification system goes into place, there will be lots of information available on how to circumvent the process. And since Linden Labs *attempted* to restrict access, will they now be liable for every instance in which it is circumvented?

Another comment struck me as funny:

Since when did LL become the arbiter of truth and trust?
Why are they adding these useless features when people can simply ask?
Do you need third party verification that my favorite flavor of ice cream is Chocolate?

Following on from that comment, the concerns over leaked information, and a post elsewhere that I can't find about the choices for the verification process being too limited to actually reflect reality, I give you my "Voluntarily Released, Linden Labs Verified, Real Life Information":

Age: Age of the universe less six days (Yes, I am really Lilith, the first woman. I am the very picture of insalubrious carnality and the incarnation of lust.)

Gender: weiblich (That's feminine to you non-German speakers - gender is a *language* term and a *word* has a gender not the actual person, place, or thing, the correct word for what you puritanical types are trying to refer to but are too squeamish to *type* is 'SEX'; please get it right in the future. Which leads us inevitably to...)

Sex: Lots (I had to submit numerous pictures of me in flagrante delicto. The pictures were purely for verification purposes, I was assured, and none of that information will be leaked on the Internet or available to satisfy the prurient interests of the sex-starved geeks responsible for writing the verification software.)

Social Security Number: 123-45-6789 (Have fun ruining my credit rating, I'll never need to buy a house.)

Address:
69 Oh God Plc
Fuck, ME 77777
(Now that you know my sex and all the other information about me, I'll leave a light on in the window every night for all you stalkers to get a good look at me undressing.)

Favorite Ice Cream Flavor: I don't like any of the choices, but I must pick one, so, I'll stick with salad. (Considering the choices are: raw horseflesh, shrimp [with whole prawns], and a variety of other un-appealing flavors.)

I suggest we all start to "voluntarily" release all our information, because, what harm could it do? Does this post need the "mature" flag do you think?

Now, please pass the blue cheese dressing and let's eat. (No, I'm *not* referring to using the dressing on the salad ice cream, that would be gross, I have better uses for it :)

Submissive Jesus

Have problems with your prayers not being answered? Watch the "Submissive Jesus" video for one solution.

Which Barbie Are You?

While you wait for the next installment of my memoirs, you can find out which Barbie you are.

Mine is....

Which Barbie Are You? (pics)
Slut Barbie You're that naked barbie that you always see discarded on someone's bedroom floor........and you like it. (Atleast you aren't the beheaded barbie, whew!) Anyway, you have long since gave up on that Ken. You need that hot plastic injection and you need it now!
Take The Quiz Now!	Quizzes by myYearbook.com

Mistress Strangelove: Chapter 6: Its Harder Than Walking And Chewing Gum

Mistress Strangelove or : How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love My Kinks

The (Mis)Adventures Of A Reluctant Mistress

Chapter 1 : A Shopping Addict Is Born
Chapter 2 : My Inner Bimbo
Chapter 3 : If The Nuns From My Catholic Grade School Only Knew
Chapter 4 : With Bells On
Chapter 5 : Would You Dance With Me?
Chapter 6 : Its Harder Than Walking And Chewing Gum
Chapter 7 : One Woman's Porn Is Another Woman's Research
Chapter 8 : 'With Bells On' In Real Life
The third day dawned and I was excited to talk to my friend and tell her I was asked to be an escort at a club, especially since we had just talked about it the night before. I hadn't even had cybersex yet, how could I become an escort? Dancing made no sense to me either, why would anyone watch someone's avatar maneuver through the same set of repetitive motions over and over - let alone pay money for it?

I spent most of the day wandering around Second Life doing a little shopping, but my major spending orgy had subsided and I was merely window shopping in most cases. Also, my credit card was threatening to kill me if I didn't slow down. As it was, buyer's remorse had set in a few times, but I kept getting compliments on my appearance, which helped to mollify the tiny, fiscally responsible Tiessa inside. Poor thing, it was always outnumbered and ineffectual, I sympathized with it, but not enough to listen to it and stop spending money.

Each day in Second Life had resulted in numerous discoveries; little did I know that today would be no different in that regard. Second Life brought out more learning in a shorter period of time than I could have ever expected.

Eventually, my friend logged in and I told her all that had happened, including the fateful offer of employment as a dancer and escort at Paradise Lost. We both rejected doing that but we talked about it for a while. She eventually made some comments that egregiously generalized the people I had met, lumping them in with the same general class of people I originally thought worked in the sex trade. As you can tell from my previous writings, I am horrible at detecting prejudice and bigotry in myself, but I think I am still decent at seeing it in others. Being fairly hypocritical, I couldn't let her misconceptions continue, so I told her in greater depth about the conversation I had with the wonderful folks at Paradise Lost. We had discussed literature, philosophy, and science; they weren't unintelligent people who couldn't do anything but spread their legs and moan.

She had to leave and I wandered off to Paradise Lost to dance and talk. That was when I found out how dead Sunday nights in Second Life can be. This was still when there were frequently less than 10,000 concurrent users of Second Life.

I was alone, when a man walked into Paradise Lost. I thought, "Yay! Someone to talk to." I invited him to join me in the really nice dance animation I shared with Helena the previous night. We talked about lots of different things, what he liked about Second Life, how I was a newbie and was still learning a lot about Second Life, and, in general, just learning about each other.

It isn't until now, when I am writing this, that I realize he was probably showing up to Paradise Lost to find a dancer or an escort and I was the only one there, dressed as I was. I'm blushing in retrospect for what he thought I was. Does my cluelessness know no bounds?

He eventually told me about the house he was building. It was a rustic cottage among trees he was proud of and had been working on. I hadn't built a thing in Second Life yet and was impressed that someone could build a house - I thought it would require a lot of effort, technical knowledge, artistic skill, and special tools. He offered to show it to me and I accepted while making the prescient comment, "Is this the Second Life equivalent of asking me back to your place to show me your etchings?" We both laughed at my clever bon mot and teleported back to his place.

Second Life is incredible in that I could go back to a complete stranger's place within minutes of meeting him and feel perfectly safe - thank you Linden Labs for introducing me to a world I never knew existed, a world of safety. I have numerous friends who've been raped in Real Life and I have been in some situations that I thought were creepy and dangerous; one thing I am always cognizant of is the potential for being overpowered. It takes a while for me to feel comfortable enough with a guy to be completely alone with him. Meeting a guy in a club and minutes later going back to his home all alone is something that never would occur to me in Real Life. Second Life has introduced me to a feeling of safety and security that is unachievable in Real Life, thank you again Linden Labs - that experience alone is worth every penny I have given you.

He showed me around the cottage, it was very nice and he had spent time and thought into making it very cozy. This is the first time I saw sex pose balls in someplace other than a display at a shop and I also saw pictures of an attractive avatar in a collar and silks. I innocently went around asking questions about everything.

To reinforce with you how I act, I'd like to point out that I flirt constantly, with nothing more on my mind then enjoying a good laugh. I make frequent double entendres, fascinating myself with my own clever word-play and seeing if I can make better, more subtle, or more amusing ones all the time. It's a game I constantly play with myself and others just happen to be in the room providing the raw material for my fun; the world is my straight-man. Consequently, I have been accused on numerous occasions of being a tease. Not necessarily in such nice words either. Get used to it guys, just because I make a ribald comment or pun does not mean I immediately want to hop onto a sex pose ball with you.

I mentioned how it was nearly impossible for men to not hit on women, especially when they were alone together. He demurred, stating that he was happy with the love of his Second Life. Considering all the pictures of her around, curiosity got the better of me and I asked him how he met her.

"I met her in a rape room."

Startled and uncertain what to say for once, I floundered while all sorts of thoughts streamed through my head. Eventually the story all came out. He went to a place where people pretend rape scenes. She wanted to be raped and was turned on by it, he was turned on by raping women, and he reassured me he would never do that in Real Life. Yeah, right guy, I've been to the Brooklyn Bridge and I didn't see any 'for sale' signs on it. I may be blonde, a bimbo, and a ditz but I am not stupid. Now she was his kajira and he was thoroughly in love with her. Not knowing what a kajira was I asked further and that was when Gor was introduced to me.

So many things about this situation offended me on so many levels - rape, slavery, and the total abasement of one person to another. Here was a person who seemed very nice, perhaps a little strong and forceful, but confidence is a sexy trait, and he was telling me that he was turned on by raping women and owning them as slaves. So very matter of fact as if it was something the local church group would approve of. Visions of mousey men in dull suits sitting around talking about where to rape women, the best rape positions, and the correct whipping techniques crossed my mind. Ward Cleaver coming home from a hard day in the rape rooms to find June chained in her silks to a post in the kitchen where he gives her a light whipping and a kiss hello.

Normally, I'm pretty much "whatever floats your boat", but some things are just patently offensive. This situation started to creep me out, but the guy still seemed completely normal. And then, despite all his protestations to the contrary he did the thing I expected all along, "May I kiss you?" came the query.

As I predicted earlier and which he denied vehemently, he ended up hitting on me. I told him I was still new and had no idea how to kiss someone - I was still reeling from the whole rape and slavery thing and was just stalling while thinking. He showed me his kiss pose balls and we kissed briefly, mainly because I was curious and knew I was safe. I wanted to get out of there quickly. Finishing the kiss, I complimented him on his building skills and his choice of such a beautiful slave, but stated I had to get up early the next day and had to go.

I teleported back to Paradise Lost, the closest thing I had to a sanctuary and home at that point. There were a few people around I had never met and I started to talk to them. Eventually, they all left and I was left alone in Paradise Lost when another man entered.

We started up a conversation and began to dance the nice dance animation; I figured he couldn't be worse than the previous guy. Boy was I wrong :) [Edit: I know he will be reading this :P] Carl was a thin guy with a beard and, interestingly enough, a collar. This was the first time I'd seen a collar on someone besides the picture of that slave, so I asked him about it, why he wore if, if he too was a slave, etc. He stated he wasn't owned, but had been for a while, and deftly deflected most of my other questions about the subject.

Carl was far better at verbal banter, and far more interesting than the previous guy. We started by talking about chess, since he just lost a match to someone from Paradise Lost and seemed miffed by it. He was far more my type of guy, articulate, slightly geeky, but in a cute and adorable way. We talked about me being a newbie and, as in most conversations with guys, the subject eventually turned to sex.

After I expressed my lack of knowledge of cybersex and why it would be interesting, Carl tried to demonstrate a few lines he would type. I still didn't get it, I found it very hard to "get into" the head of the avatar and pretend like those things were happening to me. I laughed a lot, I giggled, and many times I unconsciously changed the subject to something besides sex. However, the subject always quickly returned to sex because of my continued joking about it.

At some point in this conversation with Carl, I made the decision to have cybersex if I could figure out how to do it properly. Carl was going to be my guinea pig. Further talking with Carl came up with an analogy to dirty talking, something I had always been too embarrassed to do in Real Life, but finally, I hit upon the idea that seemed to work for me, the shared creation of a fantasy. Using the descriptions of actions like a play direction for actors or writing a story about the characters from a first person perspective. It still seemed pretty pointless, but at least I had an idea of the verbal mechanics. If I got it out of the way now, I could put a checkmark next to it on my constantly growing list of things to do in Second Life, then, I could proceed on with more productive ways to spend time.

My intentions established, it still required Carl to be as patient as a saint and a Herculean effort on my part to remain serious for more than twenty seconds at a time for anything to happen. After a few hours of this (I never said I was rapidly successful in my effort, did I?), Carl finally mentioned which time zone it was for him and I realized he was three hours ahead of me and it was getting close to midnight for me. That sobered me up enough and I told him I wanted to try it but had no idea where to go. He had a place and we teleported back there.

One of the things Carl and I kept returning to in our conversation was high heeled shoes. I was wearing my color changing stripper heels I purchased the previous day and Carl liked the look of them. One of Carl's turn-ons was women in high heels and we talked about it for a while. When we got back to his place, he wrote lines about what he wanted to do with my high heeled feet, meanwhile I made observations about his room and was joking about non-related topics for a while before I settled in and realized I was going to have to do something "appropriate". I wrote back lines about how sore my feet were from dancing in those high heels all night and how I appreciated the massage and the toe sucking. It felt very unreal and my attempts were not that good - I had no experience with online sex and it showed.

Eager to show off my new purchases from Xcite and thinking that was "the way it is done in Second Life", I put them on and told Carl about them. Knowing Carl he probably made some remark about how "good girls like you pretend to be, don't immediately purchase that much Xcite gear." If he didn't say it, he probably thought it.

Carl also removed his clothes and "put on" his cock. He showed me the "up" and the "down" positions. It felt like we were both showing off our genitals as if they were fashion statements and discussing their features as if they were cars or computers. I was about to make a joke here about cocks and measuring their performance in horsepower, but that would be tasteless. And besides, a man's cock just can't measure up - okay, let me take that back, I have now seen cocks in Second Life that are nearly as big as their owner. If they had that in Real Life, the first time it got hard, they would die due to lack of blood to their other brain.

One of my "good girl" purchases at Xcite had been a blow job animation that I had installed in my "clit". I wanted to try it out, so I activated it and my avatar went down on her knees, grabbed an invisible cock in mid-air, and began to bob her head and stroke this non-existent penis. To say the least, I was disappointed, Carl was half-way across the room and my avatar was no where near him. Yet, there she was giving some ghost the blow job of his afterlife. It took a while to maneuver both avatars into place so that it looked nearly right.

The little green text that kept displaying was nice, but it quickly got repetitive. It took me forever to describe the actions I would do in Real Life without thinking, but now I had to translate them into words. This was definitely unlike Real Life sex; I'm not a big 'thinking sex' person :) It was like learning to write good descriptive text in a story - I have problems in writing descriptive text because, after all, *I* can picture it perfectly in my head, so, I unconsciously concentrated on the action and dialog, devoid of the setting. No one wants to read a story like that, this was the same, I automatically pictured it in my head but failed to translate a lot of that into useful text.

Around this time, my avatar had an orgasm, followed shortly by his avatar having an orgasm. Was I done? Was he done? How did this work? I'm used to more warning of an impending orgasm. In Real Life it would be time for him to roll over and go to sleep, but how did this work in Second Life? Still not quite getting the purpose of cybersex, I asked Carl if this was the end. We talked some more and discussed the problems of the animations, the Xcite gear, and I learned that the "arousal levels" were controllable. Carl had to go to bed; it was very late in the morning for me as well, so off to our respective Real Life beds we went.

I've contemplated this question some over the ensuing months, what is the ultimate purpose of cybersex and what is the ending point? In Real Life, the shared experience, the physical demonstration of an emotional bond, the mutual pleasure, and the culmination in orgasm by one or both partners all contribute to the purpose and "when it's done". I've since had many cybersex experiences where my partner had Real Life orgasms and that seems a natural ending point for them and their avatar. However, I have also had numerous experiences where it became almost a competition to create more and more inventive text. In the end, only through "out of band" communications via IM were we able to agree on an ending point.

This ended my introductory weekend to Second Life. I learned *a lot* about myself and this new virtual world that I was already addicted to. Thankfully, Real Life work was at a low point allowing me to plan more nights in the upcoming week that I could spend in Second Life. I already wanted to spend as much time there as possible, the exploration, the shopping, and the people were all major draws for me.

In the end cybersex was an interesting experience. Trying to coordinate typing creative text, activating animations, fiddling with Xcite attachments, and removing clothes was a far more complex and involved process than I thought. It was even more difficult than walking and chewing gum, which as a blonde ditz, can be pretty trying at times. I'm not joking; this simple activity has caused numerous problems in my life. I'll be walking along, my mind will wander, and the next thing I know I've walked straight into a brick wall. I have had the scraped nose and headache to prove it.

Next Chapter: One Woman's Porn Is Another Woman's Research

Don't Stand So Close To Me

NPR has a video interviewing a researcher from Stanford who studies Second Life social phenomena, the video, "Don't Stand So Close To Me", talks about proximity and staring and how the avatars in Second Life conform to Real Life societal norms about personal space. I don't buy all the conclusions discussed in the video, a lot of it was anecdotal without any statistics to confirm them, maybe the researcher has them, but they weren't talked about in the video.

(Via The Click Heard Round The World)