"Neutered"! Male Chastity as Customisation
Male Chastity and Emily Nagoski's Brakes and Accelerators
“Would you like to make a ritual out of installing it?”
It’s nearly 20 months ago, and my permanent chastity device is prepped and ready.
“Why should I?” asks my wife, genuinely puzzled.
That felt like a rejection. “But you want me to?”
“Yes. Just go and get on with it. Don’t involve me.”
Later, I prodded her with an old fantasy, and she admitted that she'd love it if male chastity devices were like the coil/IUD. I'd make an appointment and go off to an NHS clinic to get one installed. It would stay in place, subject to — say — five-yearly reviews and no input from her (though perhaps a veto on reversal).
Great fantasy, but that’s pretty much where I’m at. Our marriage works with me chaste, less so when I’m not. Also, no permanent chastity, no Femdom.
This Summer, I joked about having brought along my escape kit in case she wanted holiday sex. Sometimes the banter gets a kinky response. However, the "holiday sex" line fell flat.
That was the point when I realised Xena enjoys telling me what I can't do, but not why. It's "you can't" rather than "you're locked" or "I won't unlock you." Being a good submissive, I reeled off some alternatives. When I said, "neutered" she said a very firm "yes" and that was that.
And now I understand why Xena is maddeningly inconsistent in her engagement with my chastity.
This is where it gets interesting.
In her excellent science-based book Come as You Are, the brilliant Emily Nagoski, PhD, shows how turn-offs and turn-ons work on different systems, which she calls respectively, “Brakes and Accelerator”:
Turn-offs hit the brakes. Everything from cold feet through contraception needs, to money worries.
Turn-ons hit the accelerator and are whatever gets you hard and/or wet.
The important thing for kink is that you can keep piling on the turn-ons, but turn-offs are just things you remove. The only question is “How reliably?” and that hits diminishing returns really quickly; a condom is good, the pill is better, the snip is perfect.
Some things like alcohol, a hotel room, sexy underwear are disinhibitors because they loosen the brakes in general. However, for kinks that address very specific turn-offs, let’s use the term customisation, because the malesub is customised in order to avoid triggering the domme’s turn-offs, which don’t however go away. (In my now-venerable book, The Vanilla Dominatrix, I used the term workarounds.)
Now back to Male Chastity.
For some women, Male Chastity is all a turn-on. They love their dripping, leaking, pleading (it’s usually) husbands. It’s almost impossible to have too much of a turn-on. The leakier the squirtier the better.
My wife, Xena, however, does like the suffering my chastity causes — I know from lurid experience that she’s very much a sadist — but otherwise, chastity is a customisation: no sticky leakings (she’s fastidious), no pressure to do penetration (which she went off as she got older), no loss of control (she dislikes loss of control).
Unfortunately, chastity presents two new turn-offs: focus on my genitals, and the emotional labour of keeping me locked.
Permanent chastity, as in me being notionally “neutered”, is therefore a further customisation. My genitals are irrelevant. There’s no question of me being unlocked, because there is no lock.
This is why my banter about holiday sex fell flat, why chastity milestones and obvious chastity sex talk don’t push her buttons.
You don’t turn somebody on by continually remarking on the absence of their turn-offs. (“This is great, you can’t get pregnant and there’s no leaky sewer.”)
From now on, I’m going to talk about my chastity very differently. I’m no longer “desperate to come” or “horny” or even “aroused”, because they all imply something actionable on my part.
Nor am I going to talk about being “hard” or “leaky”.
Instead, I’m going to cut to the chase and call most of what goes on inside my permanent cage, “suffering”.
Pressing against my cage nice stories!