{Estragon} Letters to Jane (femdom)

[Ole Joe]

Letters to Jane, part one
By Estragon
(adults only)

A few years ago, Jane, the woman I worship, who is almost twenty years
my junior, admitted that I was not the first man she had brought to his
knees. She told me that the subjugation of men had been her fantasy for
as long as she could remember, that she had played at it with various
boyfriends and a few near-strangers, but had only really understood how
deep women's power over men could go after confiding in one of her
professors, a well-known writer with whom she'd formed a friendship. Jane
said that this woman's matter-of-fact assurance that she herself had
always lived in total confidence of her ability to rule men had brought
her enormous relief and courage with respect to her own desires. She then
showed me a packet of letters from this woman, written in the year after
Jane's graduation, offering her guidance and reflection in the matter of
woman's domination of man. I think they are quite extraordinary. Jane has
received the author's permission to publish parts of them (omitting any
personally revealing elements, including their singular mode of
salutation and other tics of style), provided they remain anonymous.
Their author has set them up as numbered "rules," though she has not
always kept close to this scheme, sometimes offering very terse
instructions, sometimes seeming to wander far from the subject of the
rule in question. But we have kept her numerical scheme, since we have
found that there is usually some logic to her digressions. We intend to
release these letters in several chapters. This is the first.

Before the rules, some generalities.

Knowing themselves vulnerable to women, men become narcissistic;
knowing the penis the particular instrument of your power over him, a man
will instinctively attempt to impress you with his. The paradox may not
even be lost on him, but his behavior will still to some degree follow
this pattern. His own curiosity and fascination with each and every woman
as though she were a species unto herself makes him hope, against his
actual intuition of the contrary, that in some way he too might appear
exceptional to you. He will have trouble, in other words, distinguishing
the pleasure you might take in your own sexual power from some idea of
HIS having won your favor (and if he is in fact attractive to you, the
additional pleasure you derive from this will further confuse him,
although in a way perfectly useful to YOU). What is remarkable about this
more or less inevitable male confusion is that it easily becomes in
itself a further means for your assertion of power, since the need to be
your favorite and to draw your seemingly unique attention to his
exceptional potency will compel a man to serve you faithfully for the
reward of your mere acknowledgement of his response to you. Men may at
different moments dream of different pleasures with women, but the most
basic, the most primitive, taking precedence over any hope of intercourse
and sexual equality, is, crudely, that of having their penis noticed -
merely noticed, even where the more extravagant fantasy of genuine
admiration and power of attraction has been quelled. This is why you
should not be afraid to press a man out onto a sexual limb, even when you
have no intention of joining him there.

1. Never labor to have your effect on a man: the ease, the
nonchalance, with which you play with his feelings and sensations can
only increase their clarity and certainty. Do only what you like to him,
and as much or as little as you like. He must strain for you, but you
must never for a moment reciprocate. Strictly speaking, you need never
touch a man (and, it goes without saying, you need never show yourself to
him or let him touch you) in order to overpower him. Women discomfit men
all the time simply by crossing their paths, and what you are doing now
is only an extension of that effect. Your glance, your word are enough;
if you are reluctant to caress him, use an implement of some kind and
coax and prod him with it: this will have the further welcome effect of
objectifying him and making him a mere abstraction of all maleness. Or
have him touch himself according to your instructions while you observe
him: this is a very powerful instrument for undoing his defenses, a most
humbling invasion of his privacy. You may enjoy at the same time
investigating some part of his body remote from his sexual organs: this
emphasizes to him his complete accessibility and vulnerability, the fact
that his entire nature is subject to your pleasure. Once again, do not
strain or labor. Always be comfortable: if you need to reach some part of
his body, have him assume a suitable position, or extend your reach, and
your ability to abstract him, with something that can serve as a pointer
- an appropriate accessory in any case because you are always teaching
him (no matter who he is, no matter how much older than you, or how much
more "experienced"; it is never a small thing to be reminding a man of
the truth he already professes, since no man ever believes that he grasps
it as fully as he should).

2. Be patient with yourself. The longer he is "kept under,"
stirred and taunted and, of course, kept from climax, the more deeply
enchanted he will be. Allow yourself any distractions you like, but
impress upon him that he must await you without allowing his own thoughts
to wander.

3. Do not be distracted by any thought of his wishes, or fear
that you are not suiting his peculiar predilections. He exists for you,
and his fundamental yearning is to have you know it. Anything you do for
your own pleasure, or even your own convenience, reassures him of your
knowledge and adds to his pleasure.
4. Do not be afraid of your own power or of the ways that occur
to you to indulge it. No matter how much your heart is in this adventure,
it is likely that you are still to some degree apprehensive about it,
ambivalent, at the very least, about the revision of your image of
yourself which it may require. Tolerate your misgivings, but don't be too
quick to give in to them. Some of the deepest and most permanent lessons
to be had from this entire experience have to do with those forces within
you which have led you, despite your better knowledge, to concede to the
myth of masculinity. Now, with aiving human male in your hands, those
forces will attempt to shame and unnerve you with the vision of your own
boldness, to make you feel that confidence is only temerity, exploit
danger. But if, in the face of this temptation to return to "safety," you
remain audacious, your very soul will be transformed and strength become
a habit to it.

Remember that a man's ego is protected by concentric walls of
pride, the more inward, the more ingeniously constructed. Essentially you
are demolishing these walls. The first is down when the man is naked
before you, the second when he is aroused by your glance or command or
touch. These are, however, his weakest defenses, although when they break
he already knows that he is defeated. An intermediate wall defends the
man by establishing a barrier between publishable weakness and a more
fiercely hidden kind, between sex as a precinct of life and sex as its
sole dominion. Most men would admit to "a weakness for the ladies," but
few without conditioning are at ease truly revealing this weakness as it
spreads throughout their emotional systems. To break down this
intermediate wall, you must invade a man's deeper privacy, his memories
and his fantasies, his techniques for masturbation, and also all the
behavior of his "private parts" even when they are not sexually active.
You must have him recount his experiences and fantasies, have him touch
himself as he would if he were alone, and also according to your
instructions; you might put him through exercises so that you can observe
while he is naked the effects of all kinds of movement on his genitals.
It doesn't matter whether, during these activities, he remains erect: the
very fact that he is exerting himself for you proves his ardor. You might
watch him pee, even hold his penis for him when he does. Let even this
bodily process, which supposedly preempts his organ away from sex, become
an instrument of your power OVER his sex.

The inner walls of a man's defenses are both less massive and
more resilient than these I've mentioned. You, and the man himself
perhaps, are very likely to think the last of them down when it is still
standing. If he thinks this, it is because the final defense of his ego
is the preservation of a pride so tenuous in substance as to be barely
conscious; it is a light and translucent thing, but as a last defense it
is also strangely tenacious, and when it shatters the effect is by no
means subtle. Just as, at the earliest stages of this process, when you
are still merely undressing the man, although his exposure and
vulnerability are foregone conclusions, there is still enormous symbolic
power in removing his last frail covering (he will always indicate the
power of the event with a sigh of recognition and gratitude), so in this
very last stage the disintegration of the final, light resistance creates
a massive effect. The man is plunged into the most profound and
instinctual submission - the word may seem frightening in its
absoluteness, but it is accurate and inescapable; he feels wholly
possessed and the only fear left him is that he will be unable to
demonstrate the full identification of his will with that of the woman who
has subjugated him. To him (and, he hopes, to her) there is a mystical
dimension to this, and it is no longer figurative if he calls himself her
worshipper.

This final state is usually reached slowly, and not always by a
direct route. But (as in all mystical experiences) it is important not to
imagine prematurely that it has been reached. A man can be intensely
enchanted, to all appearances mesmerized, and still not be all the way
there. In any case, it never hurts raw him further into your power, and
there is no question that by protracting this process of assault and
titillation you will eventually bring on his absolute capitulation and then
be able, with the most careless tap, to knock him from the precipice. (I
will have more to say about this tap later.) If you have been pleasing
yourself and only yourself, if you have been satisfying your every
whimsical curiosity, this effect will inevitably occur and you will have
no doubt of it when you see it. Exploit it, preserve it; don't let its
intensity deter you.

But let it linger as a quiet intensity. Ironically, this
interlude of exquisitely honest emotions will make you feel your
artistry. At the moment of pure truth you will see your own instinctive
gifts, your female genius. The man is your instrument, beautifully tuned
now, every key of his body hungrily alert to the nuances of your touch,
the dance of your will. You must restrain his eagerness lest it overwhelm
him. With care, you can keep him in this state of grace indefinitely (and
perhaps, unless you are particularly interested in observing his
ejaculation, you should terminate at any rate your early encounters with
him before orgasm occurs). One way to control the zeal of a man's body
is, of course, to remain indifferent to its eagerness, as you have been,
in a sense, all along: to be slow when he would hurry, to be light when
he wants force, to be brisk when he tries to detain you. Always oppose
the momentum of a man's body: it does not represent his heart. Especially
do so now, when his heart is entirely yours. Slow your pace to a crawl,
withhold your touch now more than ever, create a perfect stillness in
which the most flickering stroke anywhere on his body will be equivalent
to a resounding shock. The slow motion you induce will simply confirm
his impression that he has entered permanently into a state of adoration.

There is a second way to still a man's body, and one which will
at the same time help him to feel that he is indeed doing everything to
demonstrate his will to please: this is to subject him to some discomfort
or pain. Ofourse, you may do this at any point along the way, and to some
small extent you probably cannot avoid doing so and still feel, and be
certain hat he feels, that you are in command. Even when you direct a
man's posture, or instruct him to move a certain way or exercise
vigorously,ou are of course discomforting him and even "punishing" him a
little. But women tend to fear taking the initiative in such acts, and
most women have been educated to regard them as perverse (as indeed they
are when the cruelty becomes a pleasure in its own right, and sex a mere
theater of cruelty). But the fact remains that there is no better way to
demonstrate devotion to another than to show one's willingness to suffer
in some way for her, and a woman's eye will not see more convincing
evidence of a man's steadfastness than his unabashed acceptance of
distress. Here, again, it is the willingness that counts, not the measure
of the pain itself.

But, of course, there is no willingness without a way to display
it. How you evoke it is your own choice entirely, and you have done
enough simly by being satisfied that you have. But try not to shrink from
this enlightening gesture; press yourself even a little beyond what you
feel comfortable doing. There is no question that, especally when he is
in full surrender, the man will be grateful for the opportunity you give
him to demonstrate his sincerity, and when he is in such a condition it is
far more cruel to refuse him. You may feel hesitant to begin with, even
"unnatural," but to his eyes you are generous and kind. And you will
certainly discver, f you practice this after all quite moderate
ruthlessness a while, that it becomes exhilarating. From the time they
are girls, omen are taught to be gingerly and tender toward the bodies of
men, and with this lesson women learn to accept a great part f their
unnatural subordination. If a woman wishes to recover her supremacy, she
must learn to show men her knowledge of their fragility. A man will
recover without physical harm from a slap to his face or his penis, from
meticulously applied scratches, from the quick thrusts, or the gradually
intensified pressure, of a finger or pointer to any part of his body,
including his famously delicate groin, or from any intrusion into his
anus. But he will never recover psychologically, for he will have known
love.

end of part one

Letters to Jane, part two
(adults only)

I have lived with Jane, a much younger woman than I, for several years.
She has me completely under her thumb, and she has taught me how glorious
humility before a woman can be. She attributes her skill at conveying this
lesson to conversations with, and letters from, a well-known writer who
had been a teacher of hers and later became a confidante. In Jane and my
last post, we gave the first numbered "rules" this woman set down in her
letters. What follows is the second part of our selection from these
remarkable writings.

Do you remember my saying that, when a man is fully enthralled, a
mere tap from you to any part of his body will have the effect of a
gigantic assault upon his will. The sweet thing about the tap is that it
is almost effortless for you, but earth-shaking to him. It will make him
believe his most basic intuitions about the divinity of women confirmed.
Once a man has felt the tap, he will live for it, he will lose the world
for it. The metaphor of orgasm as a kind of electrical discharge is
misleading, at any rate in the case of males: it is more a short-circuit
(which is why men do not recover from it as rapidly as women do), always
abrupt, a truncation of pleasure, even if long delayed. The powerful
relief it furnishes nonetheless partly lies in the rescue it offers from
the submissive plunge of male desire, and it is always compromised by an
intuition of the bliss that it has abridged. If a man can be brought to
the point where a mere tap can seem to be delivering the entire force of
a woman's will, it will be more precious to him than any orgasm, deeper
and truer, because in being toppled by it he is pleasing a woman, not
merely finding relief for himself. If he was in awe of women before, he
will certainly be so now, and nearly every woman will seem capable of
subduing him just in passing with an easy flick. The tap is more than a
figurative expression, because when a man has reached the state of full
submission, his entire body is exquisitely sexualized and the most
glancing stroke anywhere on it is in effect delivered to his penis. He
can even feel your gaze in this way: it becomes almost indistinguishable
from actual touch. At this point a little touch - a tap, in other words -
goes a long way, and the lingering touch, though the poor man thinks he
wants it, can be too much for him to bear. Do not fear the language a man
is apt to use at this time: it is unequivocal and totally sincere, and it
implies no demand upon you. The man is not exaggerating when he calls
himself your servant, your slave, when he professes to worship you, when
he insists (as though not getting the point across would result in
unbearable pain to him) that he belongs to you.

As a woman, you may not be able to understand how it comes about
that ecstasy must extort such humility from males, but the mystery is no
deeper than that of sexual attraction itself, and your own reciprocal
ecstasy will in any case be purer and more enduring if you take the man
at his word and make the most of what you have caused him to deliver up
to you. A man's words may sound wild at such moments, but he is
beautifully tame. He will do anything for you: have him do it. Nothing
now moves him more than your own serenity. Once again, it is imtant to
show your indifference to his needs and your dedication to your ownIf you
are to take any measure at all of his immediate wishes - which, recall,
are often contrary to his real interests - it should only be for the sake
of determining the most efficient way to thwart them. Is he immobilized
by desire? Then have him dress and send him on an errand. Is he trembling
with fervor? Then send him to the showers and let him tremble with chill.
If you wish to reward him or bolster his courage, you can always do this
with a tender word and a caress of his hand; if you have been sparing
with your touch, a moment's pressure on his penis before you send him
packing will be enough to consume his memory for hours.

[A certain woman used to like to distress her men by requiring
that they sit in an empty bath-tub, which she would slowly fill with cold
water. She would eain her intentions perfectly beforehand, and she would
encourage the man by explaining how convincing a show of devotion he
would be making. She would be tender to him during the test, but never
interrupt it. She would hold his hand as the water rose, pleased to see
him wince at moments and to feel his grip tighten around her hand. She
would repeat that he must try to be still, not wince or shiver, be manly,
and he would attempt to comply, although, of course, this was not fully
possible. His shrunken organs caused him great embarrassment, a vestige
of his pride and narcissism, but it also did much to undermine those
purposeless emotions.]

When he first falls into this condition, test him. Establish a
great stillness, and explain to him that you are going to test his word
by subjecting him to some distress. Be very deliberate and unhurried, but
don't be shy. You might tell him exactly what you intend to do, what sort
of little suffering you intend to cause, and then wait a moment or two to
let him anticipate it quietly. The more clinical you are, the better:
abstract him, isolate some part of him, whether sexually central or
remote, and draw his concentration toward it as you gradually intensify
the sensation you are creating. But don't be gingerly; discover the moves
that please you and make them without solicitude for the man's response.
As always, when you push yourself to exercise some of the inquisitive
ruthlessness you knew as a girl (before you were taught to be men's
caretaker), both your mind and your man's will alter with the alchemy.
Men are easily pained, but not so easily injured: you will be doing no
lasting damage, but in his present condition the man would not wish to
protest if you were.

There is no contradiction between the inexorable manner
recommended here and a certain tenderness: you are to be a benevolent
tyrant, insistent on your own will, but kind enough to remind him of your
superior knowledge of his needs (which are, in any case, what you define
them to be). If you wish to do something to him, or have him do
something, at which he seems to balk (he isn't likely to protest
outright), reassure him in some way, remind him that he is no longer
relying on his courage alone, that you are at his side, steeling him for
whatever feat of prowess or endurance you are requiring. Remind him that
your impulses toward him are loving, and that you know his own happiness
depends upon his not disappointing you. The fact is that, except in cases
of uncontrolled brutality, the real object of a man's fear (and perhaps
of your own) is the meaning of the act in question, not its execution. If
you are quietly firm in insisting that you have your way, the man will
foresee your pleasure and imagine an accompanying indulgence toward him,
and he will outdo himself to meet your requirements.

5. Remember that even the most resistant man ultimately wants to
acknowledge female power, and, at the same time, that even the most
willing and accustomed man returns to the experience with some of his
resistance replenished. It can't be avoidd, since every return to the
ordinary world gives some berth to his ambivalence. Of course, after even
a single experience of surrender to a woman, a man's will and the
preponderance of his habits are forever changed. What relapse he does
undergo is negligible by comparison, and in any case it leaves you the
pleasant prospect of breaking him down a bit each time you meet.

6. All of these effects are multiplied tenfold simply by inviting a
second woman to the ceremony. The early awkwardness most people will feel
in such a situation does allow the man's own initial reserve more
opportunity to protect him. He will be embarrassed, attempt to make light
of the situation, even put on a brave, "masculine" front at first,
perhaps representing the whole occasion as a bit of libertinism on his
part. He is all the more nervous because he knows that from the earliest
moment, once begins to disrobe, it will be impossible to doubt the
meaning of what is happening. The presence of a woman collaborator or two
not only helps do away with your own gingerliness, it absolutely
eliminates any possibility of the man's taking refuge in ambiguity.
Though he shifts about maladroitly for a while, inhibited in speech and
movement, when his resistance does break - which anyhow must occur even
before he is quite naked - it will do so with a greater than normal
crack, undermining more decisively the remaining walls of his pride,
which you will be able to dispatch in record time. To reach this point,
there is nothing to do but work your way through the initial
embarrassment, performing the necessary acts clumsily if need be. Here is
a case in which deliberate behavior may induce spontaneity. No matter how
self-conscious you or your friend may feel at the outset, a sense of
superb freedom as well as sisterly intimacy will soon replace it. It
would be a pity to withdraw before savoring these things.

The emotional effect of sharing his submission on both you and
the man is much the same whether your relationship to him is fresh or
whether it is an established one which you are simply divulging to a
friend. In the latter case, her joining you, even if only in the role of
audience, provides the man with a powerful opportunity to prove his
loyalty to you. As long as a relationship is purely private, there is
always some little room for a man to "reinterpret" it. When it is once
witnessed it is ratified forever.

An effective exposure of a man's relation to you and to woman may
nonetheless be achieved far short of this full sexual scenario. Anything,
in fact, that opens a window upon him before other women will have a
power to undermine his privacy well in excess of the literal significance
of the thing exposed. Find ways to make him serviceable in their
presence, even directly to them; make his willingness to work for you and
them unambiguous and abuse it a bit (if there is any such thing as
abusing what is yours to use as you like) before them. If there is some
way, some pretext, to have the man remove some clothing, exploit it -
off-handedly, without making a point of it, as though nothing were more
natural, more routine. Remember, that it is not a man's narcissism, or
even his exhibitionism, that you are indulging here, but his ever
imminent submission. If his greedy body appears to relish the surplus of
feminine attention, do something to remind it that his pleasure in this
is vain: discomfit him, exact some penalty, put him to work. His full or
partial nakedness is never a celebration of the exuberance of his body
but of the quieting of his will. (If, by chance, you do find the man
aesthetically pleasing, and do care to express this, you should do so in
the most categorically aesthetic terms, disinterested and formal,
objectifying and abstrating him, an ac of careless connoisseurship that
will create no suggestion that you have a bona fide weakness for him. A
man can know that you have fond and tender feelings for him and still
feel that, as man, he is a trifle.)

7. A man's worship, his need to see women as a higher species, may seem
absurd to you, when you observe it from inside your skin. It is absurd,
and men are absurd: they will deify you, and you will find it absurd, and
in doing so you will justify their worship. It is by no means the same
thing as deifying yourself - and thereby making yourself absurd. Men may
go to preposterous lengths to prove thei sacrificial qualifcations: let
them go, and find it diverting if you like, but never think it trivial.
Like every form of worship, theirs coerces ceremony from the most idle deeds.

8. Remember that, throughout this experience, you are re-educating your
imagination and even your reflexes (most of which have been conditioned
to begin with). However emancipated your views, it is still a feat to see
differently, and some conscious effort will probably help. Experiment
with your perceptions, willfully replacing weary ones with others more
accurate if more startling. Oblige yourself to see a man's erection, for
instance, as evidence of your power and his humility, a gesture not of
aggression, let alone of defiance, but of attentiveness and
accommodation. But see his loss of erection in the same way; it is no
paradox: a man hardens in the hope of pleasing you and softens in the
fear that he will fail. Your pleasure is the common element. Whatever the
state of his organ, it is a reflection of your power alone. The penis
cannot conceivably acquire a meaning independent of it. In this respect,
uniquely, it is more like an accessory than a bodily part, more attire
than nakedness; it cannot escape an instrumental significance (unlike,
for instance, the features of a woman's body, which always reiterate the
priority of her womanhood).

9. Expect your man to be manly. His recognition of your power is
fundamental to his nature, a kind of weakness built into him, perhaps,
but one in an case specific to his relation to women. If it were anything
shallower and more general than that, a flaw in his development, an
impairment of his social character, its expression in relation to you
would be of no importance and he would not be worth enthralling. He would
be weak from fear, not from instinctive desire, and he would be a sexual
dullard. A man loses only his affectations when he succumbs to female
force, and by discarding these he of course relieves himself of an
enormous burden. He should be more robust as a result, more vigorous,
prompt and resilient in his responses to you, capable of limber exertion
and spirited endurance. Having taken the facts
of life full in the face, he should, if anything, find himself strong and
authoritative in the world of men, and the power he derives from honesty
is in any case enlarged by the power he has absorbed - or, frankly,
arrogated - from you. A man goes in a relatively short time from feeling
too proud to bend his knee to a woman to regretting that he will ever
have to rise. Knowing that no man could ever harm him as a woman can,
your man will feel a liberating courage before all other men.

Remember, too, that the quiescence, even the "passivity," of the
man in thrall is full of potential energy; the stillness you coax him
into is, of course, pregnant, an antidote, in fact, to his excited and
all too volatile yearning. Once again, it is an expression of his desire
- which is to conform wholly to your desire - and not of his character.
There is, in other words, nothing abject about his humility. Indeed, it
infuses him with just those sensations of courage and exceptional might
that we normally attribute to pride, except that now he is convinced that
this valiant energy is entirely the gift of your inspiration.

the end