View From The Top: Raffila Millgrove

photos by Kim Dench

When I was asked to describe the “view from the top,” my first life house popped into my mind’s eye. The house sits on top of a hill with spectacular views.  It took a moment to recognize that “top” referred to a word in the kinkster’s dictionary.

Although I know the meanings of the words in the BDSM lexicon as currently defined, I am an old lady. I understand how tenuous these words are, how the concepts behind them will be redefined or affected by changes in society. An American sex educator and BDSM expert, Midori is working on a book that redefines top and bottom. She charts a complex division of identities that include as many as sixteen different types of tops and bottoms.

When you are thirty years older, hobbling into the dungeon on your cane, many of the words we use today will be archaic to the youngsters you encounter.  Who knows if “top” will make sense to them?  How about the word, “real”? Are we real in Second Life?  Do we view others with no real life experience as less real?  Or do we fear our Second Life confidence won’t transfer into first life?

Why do tops or bottoms, active in real-time BDSM, remain in SL even though they cannot wield or feel the kiss of the whip?  Newcomers with first-life experience often laugh at the SL Femdom scene. They ruffle the feathers of SL-only dommes. Eventually they secure a niche and build relationships.   First life Dommes and subs appreciate benefits that SL-only residents take for granted. In SL femdom sims, male subs are treated with respect. Sissies, transgenders, or shemales take their share of grief, but it’s far less than what they encounter off screen.  There is safety in SL Femdom-led groups. Safety from fear, from injury, from the macho, homophobic egos of some male Doms.  In SL, we have uninterrupted, focused time to explore the nature of submission-dominance. We connect through our hearts and minds. We find soul mates. That may be why the real-time experienced subs and dommes stay here.

The large femdom communities we’ve built in SL don’t exist off screen. Only a few clubs or groups organize play parties restricted to female-led scene. Munches or support groups for Femdoms and their subs are held only once a month.  There is no clubhouse where you can find another Femdom any time of day or night.

In SL femdom groups, subs and Dommes connect and establish d/s relationships in weeks or months, not years. In my first life community, one Domme, a local celebrity with her own internet television show, searched for five years for a sub.  If she’d been searching in SL, it probably would have taken her less than two months to find a worthy candidate. I fear we take these amazing luxuries in SL for granted, building rarified societies with our own rules and prejudices, hiding inside them, afraid to venture into the unknown, the world outside our computer screen.

Sometimes I ask my associates, “Why don’t you try a munch, or go to an educational event in your local community?”

Often the answer is “I am fat. I am older. I don’t look this way in real life, Raffi.”

I can’t convince them that heavy, older, hugely popular,  real- time dommes exist. But they do exist; many are my friends.

I arrived in SL three years ago with a background in matriarchy, a lifetime of kinky play, and experience in D/s relationships. Unaware of the words that described the concepts and actions of my life — I didn’t have the bdsm dictionary. The first person I met, a Help Island mentor, friended me. He introduced me to the capture role-play sim, where he worked. Eventually, with his mentorship, I began to learn and grow as an SL Domme.

Within my first year, I built a D/s family, explored femdom groups, assumed leadership positions and was ready to venture into my local bdsm community. The support given by friends, who are real-time dommes, my sis Catz, Vidor, BeeQueen, my best friend A.B., and my beloved sub Mylene, smoothed the path.

Over the past two years, it’s been my agenda to smooth the path for SL dommes and subs, if they, too, venture into first life.  A few months ago, an SL Domme joined a support group of Femdoms at my local dungeon. She did not face the dismissive waves that were common, when I first arrived. As our experience in D/s dynamics, ethics and protocol, gained in SL, becomes more apparent to first lifers, dismissals disappear, replaced by nods of respect.

Time now, to take a last look at the view from my hill, before the long climb down. It stretches out in all directions, from mountains in the past to the distant horizon of the future. From the chilly vista point up here, where the winds blow fiercely, I capture a few words, heard above the wind.

“Define yourself by your actions. Search with your heart, investigate with your mind and live inside your own body. Listen to your soul. Whisper its secrets to your soul mate.”

Whether you use that wisdom only in SL, or you take it to first life, too, I wish you well on the journey.