The New Bottoming Book

Who would think that being tied up and beaten could be the most pleasurable and empowering experience of one's life? Easton and Hardy's persuasive enthusiasm convinced me.

Concise chapters map out a sensible and intuitive path to bring a novice from fantasy to reality. The warm, personal style is unmistakably the hallmark of Greenery Press as is the focus on ethics and infinite possiblities. I was especially moved by the underlying message that rather than recklessly throwing yourself at someone's feet to be an informed and thoughtful submissive is a rare and valuable gift to a lucky dominant.

For anyone who has nervously surpressed their fantasies of being swept away by a Powerful Creature or used mercilessly by a Stern Master, this book simultaneously reassures, encourages and inspires.

This is an excellent book for anyone interested in the bottoming part of BDSM. It encourages, informs, and empowers bottoms. The authors make it plain that: No, you are not crazy. No, bottoming does not mean that you are powerless or weak. No, you are not alone. Yes, it is ok to want this!

This is not a book on how to play, per se, but rather a book on how to be a strong, powerful bottom who can enjoy exploring that part of themselves. I recommend reading this book along with a book that explains how to get started, such as SM 101, by Jay Wiseman.

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The original Bottoming book gave a lot of good information and advice to "bottoms" everywhere. This "new version" contains much of the original "advice," like "connecting" and negotiation, but also has new and much-needed information, such as a big section on meeting someone online via chat rooms, mailing lists and/or Internet newsgroups and how to convert from "cyber" to "real-time," and dealing with the fact that their "reality" may not match yours.

There are also chapters describing different "scenes" (and their 'rewards' and also tips on beginning and ending them)and role play, with short subsections about bondage and submission.

I've always enjoyed Ms Hardy's (formerly under the "Lady Green" pseudonym) and Easton's writing style: informative and at the same time informal enough that you sense they've been through virtually all of the same questions a bottom might ask of themselves or their partners. This truly is an excellent update to a classic SM instructional book.

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This book reads like a reassuring letter from a close friend. Oh dearest reader, what you've been fantasizing about isn't as weird as you think. In fact, my love, I think it's wonderful and I'm so proud you're finally admitting it to yourself!

This book doesn't have much to offer someone who is already comfortable with the thought that his/her sexual desires involve submission.

The authors describe what goes on in the minds of bottoms (like to submit) and tops (like to control). They offer a lot of commonsensey stuff about negotiating your limits before a scene (the authors suggest using email, for instance) or negotiating, more carefully, when you're in-role together. The authors discuss some of the decisions you'll have to make as a bottom (like to what extent you'll want to maintain your role out of the bedroom) but the authors tend to throw out a cursory list of possible options, offering little depth and experience.

Even as someone with little experience, I was still disappointed with this read. It was too superficial, too "supportive" (I am not ashamed!), too obvious (i.e., communication is very important).

I think this book is best suited for people who've fantasized about bottoming but aren't sure whether it's what they really want or how they can get started doing it carefully. If you don't fit this description, and you've found a better book, please post is a comment here so that we can all read that one instead! Sorry, authors.

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Every now and then, over the course of the year and a quarter that I've been exploring BDSM, I've stumbled across a perfect gem: an author who voices my own unspoken thoughts more clearly than I ever thought possible. Having spent over two decades ashamed of my own need and ultimately isolated from my sexuality, I cannot overstate the value of these little glimpses into other minds that think like mine. Polly Peachum's lovely essay "The Fragrant Dust" leaves me exhilarated and stunned with recognition. Miria Hunter and Yaldah Tovah have written some of the finest essays you'll ever read on the dynamics of consensual Master/slave relationships and the psychology of submission.

Perhaps it was a mistake to pick up "The New Bottoming Book" looking for more of the same. After all, such a perfect meeting of the minds is a rare thing. I've learned from and enjoyed plenty of articles that weren't entirely on my wavelength. But here was a whole book on the experience of bottoming, a book that professes on page 1 to be "a celebration of sensational submissives and marvelous masochists . . . of those who love to struggle and serve and scream and submit . . . of bottoms, submissives, captives, slaves, pets and all the beautiful recipients who ever peopled a kinky imagination." I hoped that here was a book that would help me understand my own sometimes mystifying needs and desires.

And there were some passages in the book that did exactly that. There's a list in Chapter 2 of emotions that a person might wish to experience in-scene, and along with such expected items as "helplessness," "lust," "humiliation," and "being nurtured," I was pleasantly astonished to discover "martyrdom," "pathos," "resentment," "sadness." Rarely, if ever, had I seen such emotions treated as potentially normal and desirable parts of the BDSM experience, and yet they figured often in my fantasies as part of an essentially cathartic psychodrama. Obviously, seeing as how Easton and Hardy saw fit to include them in the list, there are other people who have the same needs I do to venture into the realm of quiet, dark emotions.

Unfortunately, such moments of joyous connection were rare. Through most of the book I had the disconcerting feeling that I was waiting for something that was just out of reach, promised and even sampled, but never actually attained. I wanted to read about the psychology of submission, while the authors seemed more focused on the erotic thrills of play. Easton and Hardy seem to expect their readers to engage in scenes of limited duration, with a variety of partners, for the purpose of mutual erotic gratification. If you're involved in, or looking for, a relationship based on total power exchange, internal enslavement, and/or consensual nonconsent, you won't find much of use in these pages beyond what you'd get in any general-interest BDSM book (there are a handful of references to 24/7 D/s in these pages, but ultimately nothing of substance). If you enjoy playing at being a slave, you'll love this book. If you really want to BE a slave, the constant focus on YOUR rights, YOUR power, YOUR gratification, may be more than a little disconcerting.

I could easily have given this book four stars, in spite of its flaws. After all, it is presented, according to the title at least, as a guide to bottoming, not to submission or enslavement. There are far more play bottoms or part-timers out there than there are dedicated 24/7 lifestylers, and Easton and Hardy might well be commended for sticking to what they know rather than trying to tackle a topic with which neither has any particular experience (both authors are switches, and Hardy actually leans more to the "top" end of the spectrum). However, since one of the purposes of this book is to help novice bottoms accept themselves, I couldn't quite forgive a couple of brief passages that actually seem to disparage 24/7 relationships. On page 30, Easton and Hardy tell us that "[t]he desire you may have to be utterly bottom, to be operated by and operated on by another, to be very small, to be owned . . . is not reasonable." I found this very disturbing, as did several of my friends. After struggling for years with this strange and shameful desire to be truly and profoundly owned, the last thing we need is to be told by our fellow BDSM'ers that we're irrational and unreasonable. I read this sentence with only a twinge of uncertainty and a great deal of annoyance, but if I had picked up this book a year earlier, I likely would have come away from it in despair that I was disturbingly deviant even by the standards of folks who like to wear leather and hang out in dungeons.

If you are a play bottom, this might be the most useful book you'll ever read. If you're a slave at heart, however, although you may find a few valuable nuggets scattered among these pages, I definitely recommend that you begin your literary explorations elsewhere.

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