"Real;" Topping from the Bottom; and Abuse

I can't sleep.  I have a cold and took pseudoephedrine which I meant to take Benadryl.  

Maxearnest and I had a nice long talk (7 hours total on Skype yesterday!) and one of the things we talked about was "Topping from the bottom."  He had made it very clear that that is not OK with him.  I, on the other hand, have come to view men in 'the scene' here use that as an excuse for abuse.  So I really wanted to get to the bottom of what Maxearnest meant by it.  And I get the sense that Maxearnest is earnest, and that the things he would consider topping from the bottom are things that I wouldn't do.

I read this article and I'm coming to realize how very toxic the local "scene" is.  I think that there are a lot of people who are doing a lot of on-line fantasizing, and then go to munches or the local kink group's educational meetings that are, in my opinion, crazy.  And there is this culture of "your kink is not my kink but your kink is OK" when some things are just not OK.  I first left the local scene after a conversation about whether a Dom had a right to cut off a sub's ear.  Now, 75% of the men were saying "No."  But 25% were saying yes, unless a sub clearly negotiated that as a hard limit, then he would have a right to do that.  And no one was saying "that is crazy and wrong."  No one was saying "wait--isn't this, ultimately, supposed to be really fun for both people?  Isn't this supposed to make us more joyful in the long run?  How on earth is that healthy?"  No, everyone was too scared of being seen as judgmental or too vanilla or not 'real.'

My local scene takes the not-judging way, way too far.  Some things should be judged and found unacceptable.  And when that is the standard, other, 'more vanilla' (i.e. saner) limits become seen as "why are you here? You aren't kinky enough."  

The worst thing a man ever did to me, I've never written about and the reason is that it was so horrible and so easy.  I don't want other men to get the idea and do it to other women, and so I've never written about it and only tell someone when I'm trying to justify my care of my privacy.  (When I meet someone on-line, I give them a fake name--it is pronounced the same as my real name, but it has enough changes that I'm not googleable with it until the 11th page of hits.  They get a google-voice number (and only after I've called them with a blocked number first).  I won't tell them where I work, and I'll only give very general geography of where I live. I have a very large google-footprint.  I'm the only lawyer in my area with my first name.  So with my first name, and "lawyer" you can get where I live, how much money I gave to each Democratic candidate, how much I paid for my house, etc. Google my real phone number, and you get me.  With all the coverage of google's privacy issues, the real one, for me, isn't what google knows about me, but what google tells the world about me.)

I've broken all these rules for Maxearnest.  I didn't want him to call from Europe and get stuck in the google-voice rigmarole, and once I gave him my real phone number, there was no reason not to give him the other info as well.  But I think I'm not being foolish.  

I get the sense, based on a sample of 1 and broad, broad over-generalizations, that maybe 'the scene' in Europe is better than the United States.  Maxearnest was, I think, surprised at my concern about his concern about 'topping from the bottom' but I think if he had been from the U.S., he would have viewed the term differently.  Maxearnest really, clearly, wants me to enjoy myself in the long run.  He sees being the dominant as a responsibility, and recognizes that he can't push me to the point where it is damaging to my soul.  He also, clearly, wants me to have a lot of fun.  It is what I, in my naivete 10 year ago, thought kink would allow. Based on everything I've seen, Maxearnest will cherish me.  

It is funny--I used to think (and with Maxearnest, I'm pretty sure there would be) a meeting in the middle.  I have what a lot of men claim they want: a pretty insatiable sexual appetite (maybe not insatiable, but when work isn't crazy, I'd be very happy having sex twice a day on weekdays and more on weekends--the joy of not having kids at the moment), and I'm game for a lot.  But I'm not masochistic; while I will endure some to please someone I love, it can't be all about that for me.  And for a lot of men here, they would say I'm not a 'real' submissive, because I have limits. But my biggest limit is "does this make me more joyful in the long run?"

That sense of cherishing a submissive, instead of seeing her as a disposable commodity in a materialistic, consumption, disposable culture, is, I think, at the heart of healthy kink.  There's no easy way to measure it and I don't know how one negotiates it.  But without it, kink can be a dangerous and soul-numbing endeavor for me.