Lots of women like the feeling of being “swept off their feet” — but only by someone who they actually want to do that. It’s like I said in my story about flirting, it’s a dialogue and not a monologue. If you haven’t gone through the steps to create a kind of conversation, paying attention to the cues along the way, you have no business essentially pouncing on someone.

I recently re-read something I wrote a while back about my first experience being the initiator with a woman. I read body language and non-verbal cues really well, but I still asked her if I could kiss her, and then later on if I could touch her breasts. By the time I had my hands in her pants, I was going really slowly, giving her plenty of time to stop me, which she eventually did. But that was fine because it meant that everything was entirely consensual, including how far to take things.

I’ve had some submissions to Sensual Enchantment lately, written by women, where I’ve had to ask them to edit or have outright rejected them because of issues related to consent and body autonomy. Media/society has deeply ingrained in our psyches that disregarding someone else’s body autonomy can be hot in the right circumstances. We need to change that notion for both men and women. It’s not sexy to trick someone into having sex with you. It’s not OK to drug someone (even if you are in a relationship with them) so that they are not in full control of their body so that you can have sex with them, or anything remotely like this.

Patriarchal society says that men must always be in control, dominant, taking the lead, etc. This makes it seem unmanly to ask for and obtain consent, but in a Dominant/submissive relationship, the Dominant is the one who is upholding the boundaries and parameters set forth by the submissive. The Vanilla world could learn a lot from the world of kink.