Posts Tagged ‘sexuality’

“Slave Fire” continued….

December 31, 2008

Oh! This is toooo good to bury in the comments. From Phil in Wales, who raises some very interesting things here.

Lady Nyo, but Teela when she dances…

Why the negative statement, I paraphrase; ‘a prisoner of one’s sexuality’?

(was it That negative?  I think of the word ‘prisoner’ and the quote should have been ‘helpless prisoner’ to express what I was feeling when I wrote this last night….the word prisoner is more to affect a feeling of tightly bound up, or without choice…which I think we are about our basic sexuality….)

Surely the sensual pleasures of one’s sexuality is liberating?

(Yes, Phil…and I spent a long time last year trying to argue that bellydancing was only a gender thing for women, that it was birth movements, it was not a dance of seduction…(hah!) and this to a Dom who had his own ideas about the issue.  I, of course, lost the argument and should have.  I was being stupid on purpose.)

It is only the late Victorian mores as applied to the Western Civilisations that regards sex as ‘something just a little dirty, to be practiced strictly in private and between only those santioned by the mumblings of a representative of some established state recognised religion.’

Sex and sexuality is glorious, it is the driving force behind most of our interactions, whether we like to admit it or not.

Jane describes the upwellings of sensual and deeply sexual feelings she experiences from the dance that she practices. The movements of her hips and breasts and the deliberate seductive flexing of muscles both external and internal are all redolent of the movements of the sex act itself.

(you got that right….hmmmmm)
It is no coincidence that when a woman is aroused her hips move, tummy undulates and her pelvis flexes; just as Jane’s will as she dances. The belly dance is the dance of Salome, the movements less about giving birth and far more to do with that of mating and conception. So just as arousal causes the movement, the movement will impact on the dancer in a similar way. I would say most especially during practice and those times of meditation that come to us when excercising. The belly dance is a turn on for the dancer as well as the audience. Quelle surprise! (sp.)

The only Natural Order that has any validity here is simply that the act of receiving the phallus into one’s body is arguably more passive and hence submissive, (oh Phil…I don’t know about THAT) than the act of penetration itself, which is possibly more active and therefore dominant. This analogy breaks down of course, when the female is taking the active role in straddling her partner and controlling the activities. However, I would still argue that it is the fundamental issue behind the ’emotions’ men and women feel and then ‘interpret’ as dominance and submission.

The basic, very basic sensual ecstasy in spreading one’s thighs wide, feeling the tendons in the tops of the leg stretch and one’s sex open to one’s mate is the ultimate in submission. I am not presupposing the sexual position in this, as I believe most coital positions can be referenced in this view. The opposite feeling, that of the male who has the urge to push and penetrate as his goal, is clearly that of control and dominance. I am of course taking this back down to the very simplest issue but I believe it to be valid.

(I think about now I need a cold shower..thanks, Phil.)

The psychological manifestations that we see played out in the very broad spectrum of human behaviour and the relatively small band of activity that we reference as D/s or BDSM have at their core, these basic issues of femal acceptance and male imposition during the sex act.

Now before there are howls of challenge discussing the rich variety and wide variation of sexual orientation and practice, in defence I am boiling what is an endlessly fascinating and complex topic down to the most basic that I can.

The female is inherrantly submissive in that she has to passively accept into her body the penetrating male who dominates the act by usually being the active partner.

Beyond that, all else is psychology and the unlimited capacity of the human mind to spin webs of fantasy, philosophy and interaction.

In the word of the song Jane, ‘My hips don’t lie!’  More power to yours and your dancing friends who bring joy and erotic pleasure to every man who watches you. So what if you get a little turned on as well?

(yep…you have convinced me that I am very ‘normal’.  LOL!)

Happy New Year

My regards

P.

And my regards to you as well, Phil.

Lady Nyo…but in this case…Teela

“Slave Fire in the Belly” Part II

December 31, 2008

Oh, this is not going to be popular.

How can one hold to the scientific basis of Athene’s argument

and at the same time feel this:

“A woman is a helpless prisoner of her sexuality.”

But there it is. Is this an argument for Natural Order??

I don’t think so…but who knows. I just feel…or know somehow deep in my belly…or lower thereabouts…that most of us do recognize our desire to be acknowledged as deeply female…and do things, naturally without consciously thinking, or perhaps consciously doing so…

That we bend Heaven and Hell, to express that feminine nature…when we find a man opposite ourselves, who is strong and attractive enough and intelligent. We sent out ‘signals’…perhaps challenging them to ‘prove it to us’ that they ARE strong, will protect us from pitbulls and flying glass, etc. Perhaps we constantly test them…because we must have this security. This assurance that they really are worthy of our submission or service or whatever you call it.

Our power, as women….lies in part in our ability to seduce…to utilize our feminine power to impact with our beauty, wit and intelligence.

Lately I have been feeling this sentiment very strongly as a dancer.  I realized recently that I was not just learning bellydance for the pure ‘joy’ of sore muscles and a strained back, but because I realized these movements reached something very deep in me…something dark and primal and sexual.  It reached into a core of femininity that I hadn’t understood before.  It is not just for myself that I dance, but to express the essence of me.  I am a woman in full power when I dance.

And that power opens me sexually.  I am strong and totally female when I dance.

Also recently I wondered if it was ‘proper’ to dance with such ‘openness’…even to thinking of these objectives?  Well, belly dance is a dance of seduction, and we can call it ‘birth movements’ all we want, but in the beginning… and the end, it is all about our seductive feminine power.  The beauty of expressing the essential female.

Perhaps we aren’t so helpless after all. Perhaps we are more powerful than we imagine. Perhaps with our seductive abilities, hell the essence of our femininity…we make prisoners of men.

Lady Nyo

OBEDIENCE

You,
scowl deeply,
I,
continue to
dance around
aware
of annoying.

La, La,
silly, silly
woman,
whirling
around
a dervish,
arms touching
your territory
mindful
of grimace.
pushing the
boundaries
of your nature.

Oh! such
a witless tease,
provoking
your anger
I continue
my revolving.

Enough!
You growl,
forcing
me still
within
the corral
of your arms
and

slyly I smile

wanting
my orbit
dissolved
into your own.

janekohutbartels
Copyrighted, 2008

“Devil’s Revenge”…used to be “Another Story”

December 12, 2008

Two years ago this month I started a novel. I was a new writer and didn’t know squat about writing….still struggle with it, but I have learned much in those two years.

I also ‘fell’ into an interest that I had no idea existed. Well, a couple of them actually. What I was told later was BDSM, and also the mythology of Demons and Devils.

This book wrote itself…not an especially ‘good’ thing, but I realized that after a long time, I was suddenly getting in touch with some latent sexual issues, and even the issue of sex itself. There was a long dead period for me.

I have decided to rewrite this book, as it has caught my interest again, and I can do better now. In this book , I explored the issues of ass-rape, time warps, bondage, all these sexual things I didn’t know had names or were part of someone’s life. Apparently, many people.

Betsy is a 21st. century writer, who is trapped in a time warp, with a Devil who insists on living (for now) in the early 19th century. Garrett Cortelyou is actually a very old devil, and has his hooves in early Celtic times, in Wales. He is a produce of a powerful union between a mortal woman and a seriously potent Demon, but who his parentage was, is not known. However, he has the ‘respect’ and patronage of Abigor, close to the throne in Hell. Betsy has been raped by Obadiah (another devil) in previous chapters and she is in the middle of a tug of war between Garrett and Obadiah. Each devil strikes at the other through Betsy.

Lady Nyo

ANOTHER STORY, Part 14

Oh! I am writing at a furious pace! I am trying to finish this book. Actually, I am trying to kill off a character, Obadiah, but today, I could kill them all, especially Garrett Cortelyou.. Now I’m told what has just happened has nothing to do with me. But! Had I not delayed, procrastinated, and plain farted around, perhaps things would be different.

It is a pretty morning and I am sitting at the little table before a bright fire. It is winter, an endless winter, and I have been told to stay in this house. Perhaps I am a prisoner of this room. Fearful enough, I stay indoors. I can see the distant fields from my window and I see a hawk fly high up in the sky. I have watched this bird for a while now. It’s questionable that this hawk is only a bird of prey. Garrett, the resident Demon, thinks it might be another, the Demon Arachula, an evil spirit of the air. It watches the lay of the land, and hunts its prey in the woods by the house.

I am writing fast, with frequent pauses to read what I scribble. I hear a very faint sound of bells, a tinkling of brass somewhere in the distance. It could be outside, like the clinking together of milk cans, or the sound of sleigh bells, but there is no snow on the ground. It grows closer, and suddenly, the Demon appears in the room. He is grinning like a Cheshire cat, and has something behind his back.

“Goedemorgen to you”, he says grinning broadly. He speaks excellent Dutch. He sits down in his usual chair and I hear the sound of something clinking together. He pulls up his hand, and there are my zils.

“How did you get my zils? My Turkish zils?” He’s wearing my finger cymbals on four fingers of one hand. Suddenly I know where he’s been!

“You Bastard! Still up to your old tricks! What else have you stolen from my bedside?” I can’t believe the nerve of this demon!

“You know demons are thieves. It’s a failing among us. We are like magpies and crows. Can’t resist the shine.” He sounds my zils with a clap of his hand, and holds them out of my reach.

He tells me he visits in the night and apparently last night he was there. He claims he is bored and appears at my bedside, where he watches me snore. I think he is lonely. I have already told him my husband keeps a shotgun in the corner, but he doesn’t care.

“I have found something else”, he says, pulling out my coin scarf from his sleeve.

“Insufferable monster!” I can’t believe this, but then, what should I expect? .

“I like your underclothes, too, but only the silk ones. I will bring some for you here, though I think you will freeze. I like the sweet smell of woman in them.” He grins at me, detestable devil!.

So he goes through my drawers and clothes…

“Oh, I do much more, sweetheart. Helps me know who I’m consorting with.”

“Devil! Is their any decency left in your nature?”

He laughs, his voice sounding like a bass fiddle tuned low. “Ah, darling! The short answer is — “no”. And before you go at me for my nature, how come this is the first time I find you dance in a harem. Makes a devil wonder what he has bought.”

I sit there and think. Since he reads my mind when he wants, I have learned to parse my thoughts when near him. At times it works but he has a way of getting what he wants for he’s tricky…

“Oh you ignorant devil! What would you know about such things? They are two worlds apart. Nothing alike.”

“Well, dance for me, and let me judge.”

Hah! That is one thing that I would not do. I’m not married to him, it’s part of a code, but I won’t tell him ‘the rules’.

“Tell me what? Think of me as a Pasha, and let me tie this scarf around your pretty hips.”

I sit there wondering how I am going to avoid dancing for him. He gets what he pleases, but I am learning ways around his whims. Perhaps I can interest him the in the history of this dance and he—

“No, you can come here now and dance. I know more than you think.”

He usually achieves what he wants. Through persuasion or magic, he gets what he’s after.

In a twinkling of an eye, I was parked between his legs, the coin scarf around my hips. He pulled my skirt low and patiently placed my zils on my fingers like I was a child.

“How can I dance? I need music for that.” He snapped his fingers, and faintly I heard the sound of a slow piece of music. I recognized the song, it was Turkish. Hynotic with its Karsilama scales, I hear it and my body couldn’t stay still. I sigh, he has played me again.

“Then put your hands around me and you can feel the movements of my hips.” Most men would like that…

Dancing in such a constricted space was very much like the Eygptian style. Such dancers made very little rotations with hips and torso. In fact, the torso remains above the pelvis, barely moving. The arms are more pronounced, but the shimmies were generally the same. Just more restricted. The Turkish style, the one that I studied and loved the most, was danced with broader and more joyous movements. The torso leans back and tilts the pelvis forward. Turkish dancing is based on the Romany, or gypsy styles, and since I am half Hungarian, this style suits my blood. The music is developed from the Ottoman rakkas, similar to the raggis of India. The drumming feels like the beat of blood coursing through my veins.

The music swells with a beat that follows a rhythm of 9/8, and other pieces of the body come into motion. Where he is holding me, I can only move slightly, with hips in figure eights and a kick of the hip on the upbeat. I can do the ‘snake arms’ movement, which is lovely viewed from the back, as it is led by the elbows upward and a flip of the hand at the apex of the movement above the head.

Ah! The music swells, and I have to step out of his arms. I have just learned to use the zils, and it gives such structure to the arms. It was hard at first to isolate the different parts of the torso, all in movement at different parts of the beats, and then to gracefully, with beautiful, lyrical movements, try to move the arms as a frame for the body. The zils helped because they extended the flow of the beat.

I am dancing to myself, not a dance of seduction for he who watches me silently, carried as I am by the music. I am seducing myself, making love only to me. I make the birth movements of the downward hip fling, with the pelvis flung to the sky, and I make the ‘habibi’ movement, which is a rotation of the torso forward and around, with the pelvis straight. It is a movement to be made on the head of a cock by a woman deeply aroused. I am fully possessed, my eyes closed, my blood beats a counterbeat to the rakka. He has somehow picked the music used by the Turkish badladi, the form I love best. I can drop to my feet, not on my toes now, and can use my heels in another counter rhythm. Ah, primal, sensual movements that bring forth the evening wind in the desert, the sounds of hunting hawks above, hooded hawks on dark arms below, the trickle of precious water, and the smell of woodsmoke!

Somehow I make my way back to him, drawn by the pulse of the dance, the piercing, haunting sound of the desert flute. Finding myself between his legs I place my hands on his chest, palms gently on his warm skin like a blessing of love.

The music stops and I am glossy with sweat. My hair is in tangles over my breasts, my breath drawn in pants. He is silent, more silent than I have ever known him to be, and stone-still. Dazed, he pulls me to him, breaking he spell of the music. He breathes my scent deeply and picks me up in his arms. He moves to the window with me as his prize.

I am exhausted and limp in his arms and we look out over the landscape. He is smiling at something and there is an expression I have not seen before. He is looking at the hawk, the hawk who hovers over the field and his face is defiant!. Ah! He is challenging the shade of Obadiah out there in the trees. He is showing what he now possesses. Obadiah will have to kill him to take me.

Nothing can match the intensity of his expression. Here in its fierceness is the stare of the lion. He will fight for what is now his and he will kill with an appetite honed through the ages. All the gloss of the 21th century drops from my mind as I see his rapture in his challenge. Men or Demons, like wolves, have a heart beat that stretches back to the hunt. They glory in its primitive urges. They glory in the gore they will spill.

Jane Kohut-Bartels
Copyrighted, 2006, 2008

Dance and Sexuality

December 5, 2008

This new blog setup is horrible.  There are intruding

screens and WordPress.com is going to lose bloggers with this latest crap.

Dance and Sexuality.  Well I am formulating an entry this week on this subject, to go with some opinions on Belly Dance in general, and that “Luscious–The Belly Dance Workout” dvd that I recommended.

Sexuality and dance share the same instrument.  The human body.  Dance evokes, reinforces fantasies and desires. Dance is an eye-catching way for humans to reinvent themselves or to entice, or go to the essentials– to identify oneself through grace, extension, placement, motion.

Dance also opens the doors to sex and sexual attraction.

These are some of the main points I want to expand upon this week..or next week it looks like now.

I just think that dance in of itself, is one of the most powerful engines for personal transformation.  I want to start a discussion with those women who are dancers, whether they are in bellydance or other disciplines…and also with women that are just exploring this potent topic.

However, back to “Luscious”.  Ok, I recommended it.  It is a very powerful dvd..and technique.  AND, It Is Hard.

Pro: It is one of the few dvds/videos..that I have seen that doesn’t do movements in isolation.  It is beautifully flowing, and lyrical…and you immediately see the benefits of an ‘isolation’ moving into dance patterns and becoming a ‘whole’ dance.  It is luscious, gives an idea of the possibilities of belly dance, even with some very simple (hah!) movements.

After all, we want to DANCE…not just practice isolated movements.  They, apart from the overall purpose…are dry and sterile.  Muscle memory, but for what purpose.

CON:  Ok…the dvd goes very fast…the different parts need particular attention.  You just can’t get them in a few viewings.

I RECOMMEND:  I have been dancing for 5 years this April…and I groaned when I saw this dvd.  It’s very challenging for the speed and the quick changes.

Therefore….a number of women have already contacted me and complained that the dvd is very …advanced.  Broken down, it’s perfect…and IF we all learn these different combinations, you got enough ‘dance’ there to perform easily.  I found the movements to be beautiful, the extensions fluid and graceful, and the three dancers superb.

Here’s what I suggest.  Dont be daunted.  Watch the entire dvd on your butt.  Watch it three times before you attempt.  I thought it also overwhelming until I did this.  In fact, I have had the dvd over a month now, and haven’t done much at all with it.  It looked..daunting.

However, muscle memory needs to have the pathways cleared..opened.  Just watching it three times demystified it for me.

Then…the first combination?  I believe it’s circle of hips….watch. stop the action. Reverse.  and attempt.  Go slow.  Break it down, but have an eye out for how it fits into the top part of the body…how the arms are used, how the legs are placed….WATCH.  Then imitate.

I also got more comfortable by just going through the entire dvd and parrotting the combinations.  They were not easy to do, or keep up, but after a while….they get to be..well, muscle memory kicks in.

BUT IT TAKES EVERY DAY…PERHAPS A HALF HOUR…of fiddling with this dvd.  Perhaps for a couple of months of dedicated usage.

The hardest part to me was right in the beginning.  Ah, god~! The full rotational hip movement from left to back to right to front.  That was tricky to me, and I finally realized I was looking at a mirror image from what I was trying to do.  Once I broke it down..and it frustrated me for a couple of days…I got it.

Feel the curves, the grace, lean INTO the rounding of the movements, dont’ throw your back out, but really exaggerate the movements…

AND SLOW THEM DOWN WHERE YOU CAN.

I thought…ugh…oof!  I can’t keep up..and in the beginning you can’t…but it comes….muscle memory will develop with enough repetition….and suddenly you will be able to fly through the 7 combinations….

Teela….(Lady Nyo  bows to her authority on this issue)

Empowerment Through Belly Dance!

October 11, 2008

Quite a thought but it’s part of an ongoing discussion I have been having with other belly dancers and with women outside this particular dance form.

One woman wrote just this morning quoting something I wrote in an entry:

I think of my own practice, and I know that dancing transforms my thinking, my moods and in some very fundamental way, grounds me. It also transforms me, my body over a period of time, but my head. too. I think my head even more fundamentally.

this is the heart of it for you. You are lucky you can feel this way about something. It really is good for you, Jane.”

Sometimes I have led myself astray. I have tested the waters of different things, disciplines I was either not prepared for, was seriously lost, was a detour, or I should have stayed on the porch. There are a lot of ways I can sum up a number of recent experiences.

Recently this came home to me and I had to take considerable stock of what I was doing and where I was going.

When in “trouble” it is sometimes best to fall back on the very things that have brought us forth and have proved to be valuable in that progress.

My friends and family know that I am both a writer of erotica (mostly) and a belly dancer. Sometimes I am primarly one thing, and other times….I am the other. The trick is not to discard one for the other, because both are now integral in my being. I pull from both for life and creativity.

Actually I am more than just those two, I am a wife, mother, environmentalist, a painter, a seeker, and sometimes a royal pain in the ass.

But I want to pose some questions to my friends who are joining me in this “dance of life” which I see belly dance.

What are our aims in coming into this particular dance? I know that I have struggled with many issues over the past 5 years, but it varies for every woman. Is it ego identity as to who and what we are, or is it to ‘heal’ deep wounds brought about by a lifetime of abuse and self-abuse, do we just see it as a ‘creative’ outlet?

Do we come from a place of self-loathing? Do we feel non-sensual or lacking in our beauty? Do we give so much to others that we have nothing, or little for ourselves? Have we become disembodied where we live in our heads and our bodies are just….there?

All this above will be present if it exists and we will bring that into the dance. And that’s ok. We work those issues out within the movement.

We can work these issues out piece by piece by being ‘present and mindful’ in the movement. And the movement will transform us, slowly at first, and then, one day, you look back and you shake your head in wonder. How much you’ve grown!

And this issue of self-loathing? Over and over I hear from women who ‘hate their bellies’. I can totally relate! I went through a long stretch of hating my belly, too. Then I suddenly made ‘peace’ it it. I will never be flat bellied, but then again…

Belly dance isn’t ‘long hair’ dance, or ‘arm dance’ or ‘hidden feet’ dance….it’s BELLY dance…and for a reason.

The belly is the seat of our femininity. It’s not the hidden vagina, it’s the outward expression of our bellies, as they grow with children, shrink back with stretch marks, and we seem all to define ourselves by trying to make it disappear. We hold our stomachs in tightly until we can’t move….

Or breath!

Well, along comes Tribal Fusion and here is presented the BELLY in all it’s glory! Those stomach movements that Rachel Brice, Zoe Jakes, all of them, are very liberating…Snakes in the belly! Undulations that express the very essence of our femininity, our being women. As generators and cradles of life.

We are not flat assed/bellied/titted men…We are full blown women with dangerous curves and belly dance gives us a dangerous attitude, too.

Given enough time, it’s called Empowerment. A realization of our Femininity, a fulfillment of our innate Sexuality.

And we should have fun dancing….it’s not all sweat, sore muscles (but it is in the beginning…) and serious attitude.

This is a very funny video….I screamed with laughter, because that is good for life. Laughter.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AwK2NTt-MBc&NR=1
More later….
Teela (cause she’s in charge today)

Sometimes people don’t read the comments,

September 16, 2008

Subject: Service.

So, avatara! this is such a good comment you get front and center now…

“My dear sister shia, you are so right in all that you said. Knowing that you grew up in such a household explains why you understand your nature so well. It is a part of you, and a part that too many women today never will understand, or will fight against. For all that it may have hurt emotionally at times, you were blessed to have that example of natural order in your life.

Your father was only equipped to deal with life as he was taught, and he didn’t know how to be more loving or more forgiving of what he perceived to be your rebellion in leaving his home. It just wasn’t something he understood, and I hope you can forgive him for being ill prepared to act otherwise. You know in your heart that he loved you, but he just couldn’t show it. Being able to come to terms with that makes a world of difference to you personally, trust me on that

Service is, honestly, just doing your best to make sure the world around you is a better place for everyone who comes in contact with you (us), and it is simplistic, but true. The catch 22 is that unless you spend some time pleasing and loving yourself, you can’t give the 110% to others that our nature dictates is good. Sexuality has nothing to do with “service”. That is hard for some to understand, but it is perhaps the most important place to start.

Thank you for sharing your heart and your story, shia, you are a blessing and a beautiful, loving, deeply submissive woman. Any man would be grateful to have such a one at his feet!”

avatara

I have been struggling with this issue for a while…and what both shia and avatara write here makes a lot of sense. Later I will repost some of the writings I have received on ‘service’ and my own thoughts, but I didn’t want this go by the wayside.

Lady Nyo


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