The Chaste Manifesto and Femdom and Female Led Relationships

How the Manifesto's philosophy applies to Femdom

Photo by Cord Allman on Unsplash

Over on the Chastity Training subreddit, “Newbie-Sub” posted a detailed response to my Chaste Manifesto. He found it “sustainable” with caveats, but wanted to know how it fitted with a Femdom lifestyle:

I don’t understand why the Manifesto draws the line at the penis. It feels like it stops short of what it’s truly advocating for: male selflessness. I want to be spanked. Jenn can take it or leave it and she only does it for me.

While the Manifesto seems silent on something like this, I feel if taken to its conclusion, it would advocate for me just shutting up about it. But for me, that’s too far.

In our dynamic, I strive to give her a 50s country-club wife lifestyle where she has few day to day worries. Few things give me more pleasure than coming home after work and seeing the tell-tales that she’s done nothing but watch TV, talk to her sister, and do her nails. I think the spankings, nuzzling, and the like are part and parcel with that.

Do I need to separate the chastity aspect of our dynamic in my mind from the gentle femdom dynamic? Where chastity is something where I just give and expect nothing in return but the other kink aspects of our marriage is a partnership and even a somewhat transactional one (I clean, you spank)?

(Quoted with permission)

The short answer is “no”, but a longer answer might be more helpful.

What the Chaste Manifesto is and isn’t

The Chaste Manifesto is very specifically about making Male Chastity work in a het relationship with the low bar of not pissing off the wife or girlfriend.

As Newbie-Sub put it:

It’s really that simple, isn’t it? I just need to shut up and let my wife do what she wants.

That is a low bar, but it’s horrifying how many men fail to clear it!

This is a pity because, if you can manage the trick of making your chastity fetish not actually annoying, some good things may follow.

If she’s neutral or uninterested, she may discover that she enjoys some of the benefits of your chastity, even if it’s just a break from you being “always on” sexually.

If she already privately or even unconsciously enjoys those aspects, then now is her chance to secretly embrace them without the spotlight of your obsession making them evaporate like snowflakes.

And, if she’s actually kinky, then this is a way of enabling her to enjoy your chastity on her terms without it all becoming too much fuss or overhead.

That’s why the Manifesto is so stark and extreme. It’s also why the chastity isn’t tied to anything else, especially including a Female Led Relationship. (In theory, at least, you could be Sir Toppy Alpha Wolf Master Husband and still be a Chaste.)

Even so, the Virgo-Chaste relationship is not actually non-reciprocal.

You get to wear a chastity cage and experience various exquisite frustrations and masochistic adventures. In return, she puts up with you wearing it at times when sexual things aren’t on her mind and maybe enjoys some of the benefits of you being chaste.

The reciprocity is masked because it’s self-contained. You get chastity in return for your chastity. She gets your chastity in return for permitting your chastity.

However, what’s really going on is to do with roles.

(Unlocks Sunday.)

Roles: The hidden premise of the Chaste Manifesto

As I discovered in my article series How Kinky Power Exchange Becomes Real, roles become real if you do them in earnest.

I was exploring the workings of “power exchange” — an odd term when you think about it… what gets exchanged? — but I think the same phenomenon applies to Chastes and Virgos.

My definition is usually something like:

A Chaste is a man who treats his chastity cage as a non-negotiable body modification.

That’s coherent enough to be an identity of a sort.

Chaste only makes sense with the cage, and the cage is a signal and a seal and also a tripwire; a cross between a wedding ring and elastic bands around a cigarette packet (do you remember that advice?) or putting the chocolate in a tin in the garden shed.

So, if you follow the Chaste Manifesto, then you embrace the role of a Chaste and thus become one in your relationship and Chaste and chastity are indivisible.

This is pretty much the philosophy behind my now somewhat antiquated book The Vanilla Dominatrix.

Femdom and FLR Chaste Manifesto Style

If I were to do a “Consensual Slave Manifesto” follow up to the Chaste Manifesto, then the whips and chains — the kinky aspects of the power exchange — would be part of that because whips and chains are indivisible from the role of “Slave”.

I’m using slave not because I have any romantic illusions — or weird political delusions! — about historical slavery, but because the term most accurately describes the role, whereas malesub merely explains the motivation for embracing that role.

My definition would be:

A Consensual Slave is a submissive who acts the role of a historical slave, meekly taking orders and equally meekly submitting to discipline.

The upside of the Consensual Slave project is that “Slave” is a well known archetype. It’s there in the Spartacus TV series and in the old Ben Hur movie, but also in ancient times. We can look most comfortably for inspiration to the non-racialised slavery of Rome and Greece, and also to that of the Old Testament.

The downside of Consensual Slave is initially that it references a dark corner of the human experience— real slavery is evil (but we know that, so enough said). However, long term, the real problem is that Slave only works if there is an Owner to give the orders and wield the whip and mandate the chains. That’s quite different from Chaste, which you can pretty much just be with mininal buy-in from your partner.

There’s thus a danger of a Slave/Owner dynamic becoming an unsustainable trade of mismatched favours: chores for spanks.

The snag is that people are generally uncomfortable with mismatched exchanges. You don’t offer money to a friend who cooked you a meal, nor friendship in recompense to a waiter who served you one.

However, what you’re really offering is to take on the role of your partner’s Slave. Just as dogs need feeding and walking, plants need watering and slaves need disciplining.

And the discipline makes sense by being actual discipline that’s a means to an end.

So the core points of the Consensual Slavery Manifesto would be something like:

• We act as if our slavery was 100% legally enforceable (“He’s my slave. That’s it.”)

• You don’t have to act dominant, you just are. (“I’m the boss.”)

• We obey your orders in good faith. (“He does as he’s told.”)

• We will follow agreed rituals and routines to maintain the dynamic. (“He knows his place.”)

• You are responsible for quality control through discipline. (“He’s accountable.”)

• We like being subject to discipline, but don’t expect to enjoy it at the time. (“This is going to hurt.”)

I’d add two pieces of advice:

• Have a low-effort ritual as part of your routine. This could be as simple as Slave doesn’t come to bed without Owner’s permission.

• Have a “demerit system” so the Owner can hand out punishments in the normal flow of life but without having to remember what they were for later on when it’s whipping time.

Do that long enough, and the slavery will just feel real, which might pose other difficulties. For more on that, see my series How Kinky Power Exchange Becomes Real.

---