Female archetypes: the Mother. And how on earth did I miss this one?

Disclaimer: there is a loose discussion of age play in this post, a topic which is troubling to some. Play of any kind absent enthusiastic consent is abuse. Involving children in any sexual or sexualised activity is reprehensible and merits the strongest legal and judicial response. There can be no justice swift enough for those who toy with the innocence of others. Age play refers to practices between consenting adults which involves one or more people taking on the role of a child and another taking on the role of a caregiver.

Is that an elephant in the room? What kind of self-denial is going on that in all my thinking and writing?

I mean, that has to be the most colossal refusal to look in the mirror I have ever done.  I have been opining, sitting on my throne, using this pulpit to expound all the archetypes of women, the pretentious sounding “female archetype” series, and wrote down all the ones I was planning to right about, a list of completeness that I felt covered all of the bases and then some.  And somehow I forgot the most important one.  The Mother.  How?

What is a mother…

People who are drifting into my life are commenting on my “Mommy” energy.  That I put out a vibe of calm and care, that is nurturing and trust building.  How I even do that on Twitter is a mystery, but it seems that any “stranger” I meet, and others, end up saying the same thing…I get the same thing as a Domme…people just assume because of my size that I am a Domme.  Here is an instance where size does not matter.  I have played with a “tiny” domme—it’s the attitude that counts.

When we were little, the kids in the neighbourhood played a game we called “family”.  It was a game rigidly divided up by age bands, with the oldest two kids being Mommy and Daddy, the rest of us kids, and only one of us, the ‘baby’.  Well, it won’t come as much surprise to you that I wanted to be the baby in this game.  As the youngest amongst are friend group, you might even say that I was “entitled” to that position.  Yuck, what a nasty word.  Well, it didn’t fall to me…it fell to a neighbour boy who was older but physically smaller.  He wasn’t the smallest, that was another boy who was his age, but he was the cutest.  I was not cute.  I was gangly and tall and awkward.  A bean pole.

Even if I asked,  or noted that I wanted to be the baby, it never worked out that way.  We were all just random siblings, the rest of us.  What does any of this have to do with the central question?  What is a mother?  By way of saying that motherhood, like any -hood, is defined as much or more by those around us as we do ourselves through our actions.

What people are feeding back to me about my mommy energy is a reflection of that.  They see “Mommy” in me, and whether they project it onto me, or whether we all have everything inside of us, and they are just looking at that facet, or whether they are seeing a truth hardly matters.  Other than how we resonate with the words people give to us, the labels they put on us.

I recognise this.  I also recognise truth in the words.  You see, I have been meeting people, and I will say they are universally women between the ages of 25 and 65, and all of them are seeing this in me.  They are also asking for, and getting, spankings, or cuddles, or both.  Don’t ask.  Apps are kind of amazing.

How is it that someone who meets me for the first time and goes for a walk with me or sits for a coffee with me and falls into wanting me in their lives as a dominatrix.  Not necessarily in the way you might think, but that has happened to.  I am thinking simply more that my presence is giving that.  And when they “sit” with me, what they are doing is handing a part of themselves over to me, a kind of ‘you hold my burdens for a while’.  Only I don’t.  I listen, and depending on what was discussed, I caress, hold, pull onto my lap, spank, caress, whisper to…For just a little while they have left their troubles at the door.

And there is something to be said for women’s flexibility in this regard.  Women do not live within the same emotional straight-jacket that men do, so are able to tap into this emotional, child-like state, much more easily than men are.  It is all social conditioning.  And I think that doing this helps women become more fluent in their daily lives.  Showing vulnerability, letting it out, means it doesn’t stagnate, and they can free up that energy for other things.

It isn’t that I rule out this kind of “play” with men.  I find myself surprisingly nurturing in session with men.  But even the genderqueer AMAB, living 99% as men, who describe themselves as female, ultimately struggle with the social burden of manhood just as a man who wears his masculinity so naturally that he doesn’t even notice it.  What I am saying is that this kind of childlike vulnerability does not get expressed.  Instead, I get, “I’m a bit of a pain slut.”  Or, “I like it rough.”  Or, “However hard you want to hit me, I’ve been hit harder.”  As a budding domme, I don’t know if I should take them at their word and respond by feeling as if a challenge has been thrown down, or whether I should amp up the mommy vibe.

The first “woman” I ever administered corporal punishment to was a man in a dress.  I am not being critical or judgemental, simply contextual.  I tread lightly, for what was I but a man in a dress (something I never wanted to be, and now, thankfully, can say that come what may, I am now resolutely across the line into womanhood).  He was one of the ‘pain sluts’.  It didn’t take me long to find out his (her) limits.  I was just getting warmed up.  Word up, don’t tell a domme who has you in fetters strapped to a St. Andrews cross that you can take more than she can dish out.  I used a strap.

With someone coming from “man”, accessing the same fragile flame inside us that a woman who simply crawls into my lap to be held is accessing, there seems to be a need to come at this through a macho process.  Socially acceptable.  And I think of the parallels to my own journey.  I knew that what lay ahead of me was going to have to be born through fire, and that is what brought me into the world of BDSM in a formal way.  I asked the first woman who hit me, “I don’t know what it is inside of me, but it needs to be beaten out of me.”  And she did.  Over a period of months, with a variety of tools.  It certainly is true that this is a great way to establish a dynamic.

The first woman I struck was a trans woman.  She came up to me at a party and said, “watcha doin’,” as she twirled her hair and put 1,000% cute on me as she tilted her head and smiled.  I held up the strap.

“I saw what you did to that boy,” she flirted.

“Is that what you like?” I asked.  She nodded her head.

“Will you do that to me?” she asked.

“But I don’t hit girls,” I said.

“It’s okay,” she said, “plus I really want it.”  I don’t remember what she said to me other than that we talked a long time finding a way for me to wrap my head around making an exception for her.  She was there with her girlfriend who was even more of a ballerina giraffe than me.  They were both super cute.  The tall one wanted to watch.  I finally agreed.

I won’t lie.  I have never had more fun beating someone as I did this trans woman.  She positively writhed in ecstasy and kept shouting to me “harder” as I went.  Here was a true pain slut.  And it got me thinking to watch out for those who boast of what they can take.  This one just said, “don’t be afraid to use your strength.”  The sound of the slap of the leather strap on the backs of her legs, ass, and shoulders was so drawing, that we soon had a crowd.  Those who watched were glassy-eyed.  Aroused.

As I hit her I also talked to her, whispered in her ear, teased her, and also caressed her.  It felt good to give her pleasure, softness, along with the pain.  After, when her backside was absolutely covered with pink, we stopped and undid her fetters.  Her eyes sparkled with excitement and she just melted into my arms, feeling all rubbery desire and femininity.  There is something about a woman’s touch that is like huggling a bunch of slinkies, those toys from the last millennium…not literally, but energetically.  And you know, I get this from a ”man” who is on female hormones.  Call it what you like, but the hormones so utterly change a person’s energy, that if you are on oestrogen, no matter the plumbing, then you have female energy.  I have felt it now too often, and felt it change as someone goes from being man to woman.

This little vignette also shows me something else.  Woman can take more of a beating than men can.  Women can take physical pain better.  It should be obvious, for what is more painful than child birth?  So, why aren’t women the ones who need to prove how tough or strong they are?  Why do we place that burden on men?  What kind of society makes the truly strong ones, the ones who can take a beating and who can take the emotional strain of life much more, have to adopt a meek and submissive pose?  Is it even conscious?

And it has something to do with oestrogen.  In my own submissive life, I am not a pain slut.  I am not a masochist.  I don’t like or crave whippings, beatings or spankings.  And yet, I seek them out.  I think I like the moment of falling into her arms after, of finding an emotional release.  And this gets me to the question at hand…what is a mother?

She is the recipient of these moments of catharsis, the midwife of the watersheds within all of us, the nurturer, the boundary-setter, the holder of space, the forgiver, the absolver, the one in whose arms all worries disappear.  The mother is the confessional, the person to whom our sinful lives can pour from our lips and we are still accepted, loved as we are.  She is at once the universal receiver, but also the giver of absolution.  The mother brings into the world this concept of unconditional love, the closest thing to the truly divine that any of us ever experience on earth.

A mother, in this sense, is the portal to God, to life and death, to all meaning.  She is where we all want to go, want to be, what we all need.  And whether she is dressed as a dominatrix, commanding your attention, or is a siren who lures you in, it is this energy that the ‘Mother’ embodies which is both the lure and the prize.

How the patriarchy has co-opted the role

It isn’t much of a leap for us to recognise that motherhood is the most powerful energetic force that exists amongst human archetypes, not just female ones.  Powerful because nobody can live without it…and we are utterly and completely defined by it.

And in the same way that the masculine within the social context has been co-opted, and turned into a demonstration of cowardice—for what else is hiding behind macho posturing?—so too here we have the patriarchal system proscribing and constraining the expression of the female archetype that represents motherhood.  Female shame, the ‘slut’, women’s reproductive rights, unequal pay for equal work, general discrimination…all these things are byproducts of a society where a man cannot acknowledge his weakness.  That he has to hide behind a façade, pretend he can take it, when the world would be a better place if he just admitted he can’t.

Motherhood should be the highest paid profession on the planet.  There is no way around it.  If we want to evolve as a society, then we need the courage to raise good children.  And that takes the best among us.  And it should not be a thankless task, but the one which not only receives the love of the child and partner, but also a level of gratitude from society…we have a road still to travel.

Mommy energy is divine.  It is the most powerful force for good and healing that exists in society.  And yet, we often struggle to accept this.  What happens to me when I see a dominatrix who specialises in this particular dynamic?  She sees me at my most vulnerable, my weakest, my ugliest, least desirable, holds me, cuddles me, and tells me that everything is going to be all right.  She might also give me one hell of a spanking, but that is just symbolic of the knocks and challenges of life…the point is that her warm arms are there to hold me after.  And the sweet nothings she whispers in my ear, “mommy loves you.  I’m here.  There, there, let it out,” are all the sweet everythings we all need to thrive.

Why did I have this blind spot?

The oversight of leaving the mother out of my collection of female archetypes is embarrassing.  So obviously the operation of my psyche denying something deep.  I must still be angry with my own mother.  I don’t doubt that she loved me.  “Are you kidding me,” she said, “you are my favourite, always have been.  You caused me so much pain.  It couldn’t be any other way.”  A lot to unpack there.

First, could I even believe her?  ‘I bet you say that to all of us,’ I couldn’t help but think.  Plus, there is the reality of observation.  Words are one thing, but a lifetime of observed action can tell a very different story.  On that basis, it was clear who the favourite was.  Certainly not me.

If it is anger that I still feel for her that led to this blind spot, it comes from a birth-age wound…the one that leads me to seek refuge in the arms of the Mommy-domme…who pushes me and coddles me until I let go…catharsis.  Never mind how we get there.  The preferred method seems to be pain (not mine, theirs, but it almost always works).  I remember quipping to my then-domme, “maybe we could just skip the whipping part and go straight to after-care.”  She laughed, as if to say ‘you silly boy,’ because that’s what I was back then, and then she just said, “no.”  She didn’t need to explain herself, it’s a pretty clear word, but I revelled in the explanation…and from that moment after, I never questioned her use of whatever implement she chose to get me ‘there’.

Anger is a tough nut to crack.

But it might be something more primordial than that.  Anger, in this case, is just a derivative of that.  What sits before it is a baby’s raw need to be held, to be made to feel safe, and to be nourished.  That was not what our relationship was about.  I may or may not overcome that, but knowing it is a big step…and it makes me feel much more okay about seeing someone who taps into this absence with me.  And why it feels so freakin’ good.  Kindly note that this is a therapeutic use of BDSM/kink…not a sexual one…though I admit that arousal is a very powerful tool to bring about behavioural modification.

Baby has a hole in her heart.  How does it get filled.  Touch.  I crave touch.  Which is crazy because for so long I resisted touch.  I hated people to touch me.  It started with my mother, and was the first and only powerful way I had to assert a boundary with her…and I screamed when she touched me, “get off”, which must have been a nightmare for her, but it was all I had.

Let’s leave out the ritual spankings with a hairbrush.  Let’s leave out being locked in her closet, the pain of her heels and other hard objects digging into my little legs, or the very real terror I had of the dark, or of suffocating, which in a child’s imagination becomes real when the bags of my mother’s dry cleaning stuck to my face or ‘oh God, not that’ touched my lips and made me afraid that I would be suffocated. 

And she left me in there to break me.  Would wait until I went past crying, and then past plaintive begging, until I was silent.  And she knew I had been silent long enough that my behaviour was modified.  When she let me out I just felt cold hate.

And what I don’t know is if you can feel cold hate for your mother without also hating a part of yourself.  Why?  Because the mother-child relationship cannot be broken.  We never stop needing her.  In babyhood, childhood, in adulthood.

When she died I felt as if the roof of my house was torn off.  There was nobody who mattered who could say ‘I’m so proud of you’ and have it matter, who could ‘good boy’ me in a way that counted.  And I discounted what I did get, never quite believing, because there was also so much criticism.  So, I couldn’t but think, ‘that’s what you’re saying now,’ and therein lies the damage of an abusive parent.

When I thought of what kind of parent I wanted to be, and how parenting would be in my life, this was the core…to never give my children a feeling that the ‘truth’ was something less than my full pride.  It was the core of my parenting style…to tell them and show them that I believed in them…and in this sense, I escaped the toxic pattern left by my mother.

But what’s up with this?  Is the parent-child relationship a guarantee for Stockholm syndrome?  Is that what I am playing out with the Domme…finding a way to get affection from someone who hurts me?  To be explored further.  The self-hate must come from needing someone who hurts you.

In my practical life the emergence of a philosophy of self-preservation was that everyone in your life has to treat you well.  There can be no free rides.  Family doesn’t get a free ride just because they are family.  I had to push my mother and father out of my heart, both of them, because to keep them in would have meant an ever-intensifying death spiral of self-doubt, self-hate, self-diminishment.  But even pushing them out, you know it’s still there.

I told my little sister about this a few years ago, before I came out to her, and she cried real tears for me…that I had nobody.  I hadn’t thought of it that way.  It was a question of survival for me.  A question of my own sense of self.  The cost of hanging on for her was bulimia, and relentless self-doubt about her body.  She is beautiful, nothing to fear, but such is the corrosive nature of abuse, that the truth doesn’t even matter, what matters is what your parents told you.

Much of my wounds with my Mother came from when I was too small to even speak.  But these were not her fault…they were circumstantial.  She was going through hell and just had nothing left for her newborn baby.  It was what came after that constituted abuse.

The things I have related are mild compared to what followed.  Starting at the age of 6/7 she began taking me to a series of psychiatrists.  Not therapists.  The intent was to drug me.  I am learning more about this just now, a little from my father, but more from his younger brother, who was a concerned relative in those days, and privy to the major war going on between my parents over whether I should be medicated or not.

My mother wanted me on drugs so that I would be more docile, more obedient, less of a rebel.  She just said, “I want you to be happier.”  This was the same kind of thing that she said when she would spank me, “it’s for your own good.”  That’s a lie.  She won for a while.  After taking me to four psychiatrists who wouldn’t prescribe, she find a “nice” older man who obliged…and I was put on Ritalin.  This lasted for a year, until I moved to live with my Father…who took me off the day I got there.  His motives were not pure, but I am grateful to him for doing it, because he showed my mother that there was nothing wrong with me (also to me). The ‘problem’ lay [with her].

And yet, here I am, revering the ‘mother’.  Just not mine.  And so, any discussion of the mother archetype is going to have to be a voyage of discovery for me—and what it means to me to be a mother to myself, and to be a little bit of a mother to my children…even while I continue to be their father.

Are women’s bodies a social good?

I’m not being serious, but I am also being very serious.  Social good in a purely homo-economicus sense of the word…is a woman’s body public property?  The answer should be ‘of course not’ but our lived reality shows this to be different.  Rather than ask ‘why’, I am curious to ask, ‘how did this come about in the first place?’.

A woman’s body carries symbols that relate to her fundamental qualities, this essence of the divine feminine.  There is nothing sexual about “mercy” and yet, those aspects of womanhood that most directly represent her sex, are also the source, the fountains of her feminine essence, or at least symbols thereof.  The breast is about nourishment.  The incredible beauty of the breast is magnified a thousandfold by its utility as the way all of us experienced nourishment in life.  It is a symbol of comfort.  It is also a sex organ, as any woman (and some men) will know.

The vagina, vulva, the entire ovarian complex, is the gateway to the divine.  Giver of life.  Passage of conception, locus of manifestation.  It is profoundly spiritual.  It is also the seat of female sexual energy, with its clitoral structures, and other sources of pleasure.  Leaving aside the politics of pleasure, and gosh, should women even be allowed to have pleasure, we can see how easy it is for the concept, the desire, the reality of control might come to be associated with female sexuality.

We call it the reproductive system, thereby reducing a woman to her “biological imperative”.  A baby-making machine.  We ask her to cover her breasts for they are holy feeders.  We deny their role in sexual pleasure.  By regulating them from a morality standpoint, we reinforce the message that women exist as baby machines, not as people.  We rob her of agency.  We do this because a woman who owns her body, who takes sexual pleasure, is a threat to the social order.

Why is there no parallel to a man’s body?  And sorry boys, the pleasure stick doesn’t cut it.  A man’s body, neither in small or large part has anything to do with his masculine divine essence, “Justice”.  Whereas, the entire fertility system in a female body is so deeply intertwined with the quality of “Mercy” as to be at once its source and sustenance.  I ask you, what part of a man’s body might ever “need” to be regulated as an element of social “good”?  Well, I can think of plenty, but the men who are into male chastity are not the problem—they’re the good ones—it’s the others…And I can well understand that men drawn to chastity are the bleeding edge of men who have taken on “men’s burden” and are carrying the guilt that should be evenly distributed across the shoulders of all men.  Guilt for toxicity, guilt for a sense of entitlement.

There is no equivalent in the woman’s body, in her world, in her experience.  Patriarchal society robs women of agency because it reinforces the system upon which it is based…to deny her agency is to reinforce a system which at its core requires the slave labour of women as mothers, caregivers, mommy’s, and ‘all-around good-eggs-who-people please-and put up with male shit’.  And yes, ladies, that is what it is.  Slave labour.  And they want us to feel guilty about it.  Why did I become a woman?  Because I already felt this way…Why did I become a woman?  Because I wanted to fight.  Why did I become a woman?  Because I want to wield that power too.  What’s my purpose?  To fight for female agency.  And I like that it is even harder to do this as a trans-woman—I embrace it, because any man, woman, or it who says a trans woman is not a woman is missing the point.  And they don’t understand the determination it takes to get here.  There is no sacrifice I wouldn’t have made in relation to myself that would have denied me a sex change.

The relationship to baby me…

It makes sense…I know why I am like this.  I know where it came from.  Even though I thought it might have disappeared forever, I now understand that I am more able to express it.  I feel less shame.  Maybe none, even if it isn’t something I tell a random stranger.  And weirdly, being able to express it, to own it, makes it less of a need.  And it is when a need becomes an obsession that a tendency becomes a fetish.  And in this sense, becoming a woman has allowed for the de-fetishization of much my sexuality.  I don’t ‘need’ anything anymore, just a rich human connection.  

Some days I might wish to hold you, others I may need to be held.  And in the meantime, I am happy to explore doing this for money.  And that feels really good.

How can I heal this wound…and how am I coming to terms with my own femininity, my own motherhood…

I refer to the wound of an unfinished babyhood.  It may never be healed.  But finding a safe way to express it is very uplifting.  I am definitely spelunking in the dark recesses of my own sexuality.  

My tendency is to live in the mind, not in the body.  My therapist explained to me that the essence of being a baby is presence, of being fully in the body.  For someone who struggles with this in general, whether I am ‘meditating’, doing yoga, or just trying to live, I have to conclude that a practice which includes feeling like a baby, is potentially very therapeutic.  I know several grown women who have admitted their fondness for drinking from a baby bottle—and will prepare themselves a soothing blend of chamomile or lavender, a touch of honey, and a warm milk alternative.  They are not “babies” in the sense that I am, or ever indulge in age play.

I am seeing a provider soon who specialises in adult babies, age play, regression.  I have often wondered about this, and about seeing someone who deals with people like me as the core of her practice.  I had never really done this because it doesn’t align so directly with my submission.  And anyway, it always felt too vulnerable.  And the more I get to know someone, the less I want to show of myself…that’s counter-intuitive, but we have less to lose with complete strangers.

Whenever I have met a provider for the first time, I have always said, meet first, then play.  It’s a safety thing—for me, but even more, for her.  As in, I want her to know and feel my energy, so that she will know in her bones that she is safe and can play with me, as it will bring out the best in her.  And in a way, that is my essence.  When I think back about Ex-Mistress and what was the pebble in my shoe with her, it was a nagging feeling of not being trusted by her.  It was implicit in her approach, but I felt it explicitly, and that runs against my character.  I couldn’t take it.  It’s like being forced to confront an ugliness you don’t even have, and then finding you are resentful (a corrosive feeling) for someone putting something on you that really only has to deal with their own shit, not yours.  That was the same thing I had with one of my early online dates…not being trusted.  I don’t want to be anywhere near that feeling.

This provider utterly rejected the idea of meeting first.  She also did not want me to send screening info of any kind.  She said, “I’ve already taken measure of you.  I also don’t feel that any kind of ‘social’ interaction is conducive to our play.  While you are with me, you will be a baby and I will be your Mommy.  That’s all.”  I felt good about accepting her terms even though I have never done it this way.  Wouldn’t you?

What do I need to learn by seeing her?  To get completely into role.  Completely out of my head.  Completely in my body.  Completely present.  I look forward to it.

The character of Mercy comes from this essence of womanhood.

The essence of a woman is the creation of and carrying of life.  For those who cannot do it, choose to not do it, and for those of us who would wish to do it but for facts of birth have other hurdles to cross, the character of Mercy is still there.  It comes from the chemical cocktail which is oestrogen.  I have felt my brain change.  I have felt my body change.  I no longer feel myself in the world at a cellular level as a man feels the world. More of me listens.  All of me listens.  I can feel people in my skin in ways that I never did before.

This is not a form of talent…or me falling into that world of putting myself in a box—for example those who like to call themselves “empaths”.  I am nothing of that.  What I think is happening is that I am listening more.  Not consciously.  That my body listens.  It just happens.  And when we listen, when our bodies listen, we feel more broadly.  It is not a conscious process.  And when we feel more, we empathise more.  Listening is a muscle awareness that has an emotional-psychic-spiritual dimension to it.

The wiring of a woman, her essence, comes from her hormones.  If you ask me, what makes a woman is oestrogen.  And progesterone…and the delicate and wondrous hormonal responses that flow through the body when conductor and orchestra are guided by these two divine substances, the yin and yang of female energy, oestrogen and progesterone, respectively.

In society’s haste to define what a woman is, thereby excluding far too many cis women and others who are universally accepted as woman out of a rash desire to exclude women like me, trans women, intersex women, or heaven forbid, the vast swathes of gender queer, non-binary people who demonstrate that gender is a social construct which lives as a spectrum.

It is just a matter of time before a trans woman receives a uterine transplant, or that stem cells are used to grow a uterus which can be implanted…this is coming and has already happened with vaginal canals.  And I can tell you that a lot of trans women will be eager to sign up, eager to have babies, eager to step as far into being a woman as they possibly can, including dying from breast cancer or uterine cancer.  I have a strange relationship with death, in the sense that I know that should it come for me slowly, I will be ready for it, even though I love life dearly.

In the meantime, I sit here with this comfort of knowing what it means to me to be a woman.  It is to feel like a woman.  In my skin.  Down to my bones.  Between my ears.  Between my legs.  As I touch.  As I am touched.

To think that Mercy came to me in the form of a little blue pill which is almost the shame shape as a Viagra pill, is the same colour, is the same size…there is real poetry in that.  Viagra, giver to men of a symbolic power, oestrogen, giver to women of their real power…

Does a man with a chemically-induced hard-on embody the male essence of Justice?  No.  But does this woman feel the Mercy flowing through her post dose of oestrogen.  Come into my arms and find out.