Month: February 2011

Servitor read the message on his Blogger dashboard with interest:

Blogger has determined that your posts reflect a female domination/male submissive outlook. Would you like to turn on Blogger’s femdom features, for a more female-led blogging experience?

A little concerned by the apparent monitoring of his posts, but intrigued, he clicked on the link at the bottom: Activate female domination blogging features now.

A pop-up box appeared:

Blogger has identified that you are male. Please confirm, or press cancel to begin again.

Servitor confirmed, only to be confronted with another message box.

Are you sure you want to activate female domination features as a male blogger?

‘Worse than bloody Microsoft’, he thought, clicking “Yes” irritably.

After a few moments, a further message appeared, this time from his own PC, asking whether he would allow some programme called ‘Femlogger’ to make changes to his programme files and registry. Servitor hesitated, realising a cautious blogger might refuse at this point. But he was intrigued and excited, and thought of the occasions on which similar feelings had led him to the houses of complete strangers to be tied up. He was nothing if not a risk-taker. Although we like to be abused as cowardly worms, there’s actually no one as brave as a submissive feeling lecherous. So he clicked on “Accept” and watched what happened.

The answer, except for some brief whirring and chunking from his hard drive, was nothing. The Blogger dashboard reappeared, and Servitor could see no changes. Nor were there apparent changes to his blog. He tried to find out more about Femlogger on the web, but there seemed to be nothing. Shrugging, Servitor returned to his original intentions, uploading pictures of women too beautiful for him even to imagine speaking to, but with a few choice words he had added in the hope of appearing creative.

For the next couple of days, there was no real change. Servitor noticed that the ‘Audience’ stats for his blog separately recorded visits by males, females and those unregistered as either (and these were the great majority, although Servitor was cheered and excited at the thought that quite a few women did seem to have registered with the new female domination Blogger service).

Then, four days later, Servitor was excited to find that one of his posts had attracted several comments. With the usual trepidation, he opened the tab to read them. The display looked slightly odd, as one of the comments was in larger type than the others. This, the one at the top, turned out to be flagged as from a woman, while the others were from men. Servitor suddenly realised that despite being at the top, the time stamp on the woman’s comment showed it to have been posted in between the other two.

Thus, the software was identifying female comments and placing them first, just as it should be. Servitor felt mildly pleased that his blog should so automatically be honouring the superior sex, as he did genuinely believe in principle in showing due deference and courtesy to females. The picture right at the bottom of every page of his blog, of the divine Anne Hathaway, was to Servitor’s mind genuinely an image of divinity and one to which he occasionally murmured prayers of obeisance. That said, he spent a lot of his time trawling the Internet for pictures of women scantily-clad or even posing naked, solely for the sexual pleasure of men. But like other male ‘submissives’, Servitor happily ignored the hypocrisy of how an industry existed to serve up tasty images of superiors to inferior males like him, rather than the opposite that might be expected in a truly female-led world.

All the comments were reasonably complimentary. Servitor decided to post a quick friendly response to one of the male ones, before addressing himself more formally to the female commenter. Important to get the words and tone right, for that one, he thought to himself.

Still happily mulling over his possible reply to the female, he clicked ‘post comment’ to put up his reply to the first male comment. An error page appeared: There are still unanswered female comments.

Puzzled, Servitor clicked the ‘back’ button and tried again. Again, the message appeared, this time with the addition: This has been logged as a repeated offence.

Servitor sat in silence for a while. Clearly, he was supposed to respond to the female
comment before any males’. Again, feeling a warm glow of submissive joy (and even a slight swelling, although we won’t dwell on this aspect) he returned to the comments page to reply instead to his female commenter.

After some edits, he judged he had the tone just right. He was never quite sure how to respond to female dominant comments. He wanted to reply in submissive mode, but not so much as to be creepy or pervy. The comment had been a simple message of approval and encouragement, so he felt it would be inappropriate to respond as if he were a sub in a ’scene’ with her. That would seem almost to violate her privacy. So after a few goes, he had some text that seemed respectful without being creepy and he hit ‘post comment’.

Again, an error screen appeared. This time the words were much larger. Your reply has been flagged as unacceptably disrespectful, the large words across the top of the screen read.

Please correct the following elements of your post and try again.
1. Insufficient length (more information)
2. Insufficiently grateful (more information)
3. Spelling and grammatical errors (more information)

He clicked on ‘more information’ following the first item, to learn that replies had to be at least one and a half times the length of the original comment, to show due respect and gratitude to the lady who had taken the trouble to write it. Similarly, clicking on the second item he was taken to a list of approved words of gratitude, of which a sufficient number was required in any reply to a female. He thought the spelling mistakes point was self-explanatory.

Returning to his reply, he dutifully filled it out with expressions of gratitude and, to be on the safe side, made sure it was at least twice the length of the comment. He looked carefully through for spelling and grammatical errors, but found nun. Once again he clicked ‘post comment’.

He was disturbed to see the same words appear again: Your reply has been flagged as unacceptably disrespectful, along with (as he was beginning to learn to expect) the rider This has been logged as a repeated offence.

The only problem seemed still to be with spelling and grammar, so he clicked on ‘more information’. The rules for appropriate spelling and grammar appeared to be more complicated than he’d expected. Mostly, he was simply required to conform to ordinary English usage. However, every blogger registered as a female dominant by the software apparently had her own preferred form of address. His commenter liked to be addressed as Ma’am, conventionally enough. She could also register whether she preferred vanilla capitalisation or the You/i formulation that denotes submission. Ma’am liked the latter, it seemed. Finally, she could choose her preferred regional spelling. His commenter, it turned out, was American and so he would be replying to her (or rather, to Her) using American spellings where appropriate. If his reply failed to conform to her (Her) preferences, it would be flagged as incorrect.

Sighing slightly, he went back to his post and edited in the required changes. With relief, he was directed this time to a new page: Your comment has been humbly submitted for Ma’am’s attention. He returned to the male posts, fired off friendly messages of acknowledgement (no funny business about length or style for these – anything went, apparently) and went back to his main page.

He felt he had to admire the spirit behind this new software. He admitted to himself that he found it irritating in practice. But this, it seemed to him, was not really any different from the way he became excited at the thought of housework, only to become bored and frustrated when directed to do menial tasks even for 10 minutes, on the occasions he had visited (and paid) ladies prepared to act out his fantasies. Fantasy and reality were simply different for him, and he wished it were otherwise but knew deep down that he was too lazy ever really to serve.

Anyway, he told himself, now that he knew the rules, replying to comments in the prescribed way was no great burden. He might not be able in reality to enjoy anything resembling a life of drudgery, but this was one small thing he could do.

Ma’am did not respond, and so Servitor continued over the next few days posting captioned images that continued to claim to celebrate male submission but in reality mostly showed underpaid women pandering to the fantasies of wealthy men.

Then one day he opened up Blogger to find himself taken straight to the comments page. A single comment was visible, the others being greyed-out (that’ll be ‘grayed-out’ to Ma’am, of course). A bold headline above it read Your blog has been criticised by a female reader. The posting has been removed, pending apology and corrective action.

The comment above, did indeed have a label “unacceptable”. (Servitor was later to discover that his posts now appeared on female screens with a rating system running from ‘adequate’, through ‘poor’ to ‘unacceptable’). He read the comment with excitement and awe:

Servitor (or whatever your real name is – I imagine you as a nasty little overweight man crouched over his computer in a darkened, smelly room).

I have found the images you post to be increasingly disrespectful of a sex you claim to be superior – my sex! The images are exploitative and the captions – while occasionally mildly amusing – seem to me too frequently to cross the line to a point where you are laughing at female domination, a philosophy and practice I take very seriously.

Your latest post is disgraceful, so I am forced to take action. We see two images of females, which I suppose is the justification for the ‘jokey’ sexist title ‘Oh what a lovely pair’. The first is simply posing in lingerie for male pleasure, and your little caption about chastity does nothing to diminish the exploitation. But the second picture is far more disturbing. Is it not obvious that the lady is in extreme discomfort in that corset and those high heels? Far from being in charge, I would imagine she is close to fainting, the poor thing.

I would like to put you in a corset, tug it so tight you can hardly breathe, force your feet into rigid boots at least a size too small, and post a video of your pathetic wheezing on YouTube. But as you choose to hide behind your hypocritical pseudonym, I cannot. However, I was somewhat mollified to see that you have installed the Fond of Writing gadget on your blog. Accordingly, I have sent you a punitive exercise. I hope it teaches you to show greater respect.

I have disabled replies to this post as I have no wish to hear any more from you.

“Punitor”

Servitor looked down at the bottom of the comment and saw that ‘reply’ had indeed been greyed-out. Furthermore, the name ‘Punitor’ did not seem to be linked to a Google account. Clearly, ladies could comment anonymously.

There were only two options available in the comments tab: accept punishment and dispute punishment. Servitor had little hesitation in selecting the first. How exciting. He had to admit she had a point. He tried to be reasonably respectful – never for example featuring images of topless ladies, or of their private parts – on his blog. But the fact that it was the supposedly dominant side of the equation who dressed to the nines in uncomfortable clothing, for the pleasure of the slobby notionally submissive side did bother him.

A windowed programme opened up, labelled “Fond of Writing”. That was the name that ‘Punitor’ had claimed existed as a gadget on his blog. He had never seen it, but he was beginning to suspect that the female user experience of his blog provided a few more options than were available to him or other males.

Fond of Writing (FoW) was a programme for writing lines. Rather like housework, this was an idea that Servitor liked more in fantasy than in reality. His professional Domme had occasionally set him lines – anything from 200 to, over one tedious night, 500 – and he always hated doing them. He loved appearing before her with his sheaf of papers on his next visit, though, for her to grind under her booted heel. So he examined FoW with interest.

It seemed that a specified line must be typed, a specified number of times. Extras would be added for errors. On completion of the assignment, a report would be sent to the assigning party (that would be ‘Punitor’ presumably). It looked straightforward enough, and Servitor had some time on his hands (it was a Saturday), so with a warm and sexy feeling of submission, he clicked on ‘start’.

The line he had to copy was “I must learn to distinguish between images and concepts that properly reflect the superiority of women over men, from those that merely objectify and exploit the female form, to gratify the squalid desires of perverts like me.” It seemed he would be writing it 100 times.

He blinked. It was long and complicated – but 100 times was not too bad.

He started typing in the text box below the original line. It was harder than he had expected, as his own typing was replaced by asterisks as he typed, like a password. He clicked ‘submit’ and the entry box appeared again, cursor blinking for his next repetition. As he typed, he suddenly realised that the asterisks were no longer progressing along the box. It seemed to have lost the typing focus. He clicked back on it, but no blinking cursor appeared. Looking around the screen, he saw a small dialog box in the corner with the message ‘Click this button!’

‘What button?’ he thought irritably, before noticing a tiny square in the middle of the dialog box. Carefully positioning the mouse, he clicked it, the box disappeared and his cursor reappeared where he had been typing the line.

‘Where was I?’ he thought, staring at the asterisks. There weren’t that many, so he decided to start again, and began hitting backspace. Nothing happened, no asterisks disappeared. Cursing, he carefully counted the asterisks already typed, comparing them to the original line. Then he typed the remainder of the line, interrupted at one point by the random dialog box wanting him to press the microscopic button, this time near the left of the screen. On completion of the line, he clicked ‘submit’, and the text entry box appeared empty again for a third line.

‘Bloody hell, that’s only two’ he thought, unhappily. In fact, he was wrong about this. He had carelessly made an error on his very first line (ironically, the second despite being interrupted twice by distracting dialogs, was correct). The programme had not counted that first line, and awarded him two ‘extras’. So he now had 101 lines to go and in a sense had therefore completed just minus one lines of his original imposition. But he didn’t know that yet.

‘Sod this’ he thought, and clicked on ‘quit’. A dialog box appeared: Quit disabled while lines exercise incomplete. There were two options: OK and Allow temporary use of other programmes.

He clicked OK to return to the Fond of Writing dialog and immediately hit Control-Alt-Delete. Another dialog box appeared. Ctrl-Alt-Del disabled while lines exercise incomplete. Again: OK and Allow temporary use of other programmes.

Servitor pressed the On switch on his PC until all the lights died, then pressed again for a restart. ‘That programme is going’ he told himself determinedly, and thought about whether his various virus and malware programmes would be able to deal with it. He logged on, and was simply stunned to see the Fond of Writing dialog reappear, patiently waiting for his third line just as he had left it.

He double-clicked his anti-virus icon. A familiar image appeared: Access to other programmes disabled while lines exercise incomplete.

This time he tried clicking: Allow temporary use of other programmes

This responded with Do you want to be given access for one hour to your computer, in exchange for 50 additional lines?

‘All right’, he thought, and clicked OK.

Fond of Writing temporarily suspended. Time remaining until resumption of line writing exercise: 59:54. Exercises remaining: 1. Lines remaining in current exercise: 151.

Pausing only briefly to note, firstly, that the evil programme clearly allowed for more than one exercise to be due at any one time, and to puzzle over the mysterious extra line taking the remainder to 151 (‘shouldn’t it be 148?’, he thought vaguely), Servitor went to work to expunge the programme.

Just less than an hour later, all his open windows suddenly closed and the Fond of Writing dialog reappeared, the little cursor gently blinking in the empty text entry box, just as it had been before, patiently awaiting his third line.

Servitor swore and raced through the menu commands again for temporary computer time. He had some other ideas he hadn’t yet tried. This time the price of an hour’s computer time had risen to 100 additional lines. Blithely accepting the 251 he now had yet to do, Servitor frantically opened programmes and searched for hidden and system files, in a bid to shut this evil programme down.

An hour later, he found himself once again staring at the cursor. He resolved to use his next hour to go online, looking for advice and help about this maliciously dominant programme. He wondered bleakly whether the cost this time would be an additional 200, taking him to 451 (he had now worked out what the extra one was for, having read the help files for FoW in his fruitless search for an uninstall option).

But it was not an additional 200. Instead the dialog box read: Maximum temporary suspensions limit reached. Contacting taskmistress for authorization for additional temporary suspension.

The only option was OK so Servitor clicked it and was rewarded with a dialog box reading ‘Punitor’ has now been contacted to authorize suspension of lines programme. No other programmes may be used until authorization has been received.

Once again, Servitor’s only option was to agree, so he returned to the text entry box. For want of anything more constructive to do, he began typing the line. For one thing he needed access to some documents from work that he said he would look at over the weekend.

Servitor typed away. It was repetitive and tedious. He grew to hate the little distracting dialog box, swearing viciously at it and hammering his mouse button down, when he finally managed to position the cursor over the button. He made steady progress, seeing little choice if he was to do any of the things – work-related and personal – for which he had planned to use his computer this weekend.

After about an hour and a half, a message popped up on screen. Reply from ‘Punitor’. Request denied. Punishment doubled.

He swore vigorously, but found himself curiously inhibited from using the words such as ‘bitch’ that came into his mind. In a curious, but totally genuine way, he really was being dominated by this distant woman, and every click of the button labelled ‘submit’ was in its way a genuine submission.

It took him until late that evening before he had completed the assignment. In an unexpected moment of pure joy, the message Task completed. Do you wish to view the report? appeared.

Servitor clicked Yes and noted with grim satisfaction that in the end he had written 612 lines as a result of his 100-line punishment. 500 lines set in all, and presumably 56 errors. And that probably didn’t count the 56 themselves, he realised, so he had actually typed something resembling that stupid line 668 times.

Wearily he switched off his computer – now wonderfully restored to his control – and went to bed.

Servitor did not update his blog for several days after that, fearing even to look into the comments tab.

However, on the Thursday, he was greeted with the dreaded sight of the Fond of Writing programme, informing him that a lady reader called Ayesha was displeased about this, as she enjoyed his material, and was requiring him to write out ”I must update my blog more frequently.” 50 times. 50 was not too bad, and the line was short, and furthermore Servitor discovered with joy that he could see the line as he typed it – no asterisks – and the irritating distraction dialog appeared much less frequently. Clearly, these were options set by the user. This time, it seemed, he was receiving nothing more than a gentle reminder, and he found himself actually enjoying the submission to this mysterious and rather wonderful Ayesha, as he typed them.

Not requiring any temporary suspensions, and making few mistakes, Servitor was finished in less than an hour. Mindful of the warning, though, he resumed blogging, although he was much more careful not to feature images of women in excessively restrictive clothing or in any other way obviously being exploited.

He received punitive impositions from time to time. Few if any were as bad as his first experience, however (most of which was his own fault, the original tally having been 100). One occasional reader of his blog liked to set him lines in Czech, whenever she came across a post that she thought could be improved. She did not set very many, but Servitor had to concentrate hard as he wrote them. She did not supply translations so he had no idea what lesson he was being taught, but accepted it with good grace.

On another occasion, a British lady set him 2000 lines – a horrific surprise that he knew would take him several days. However, it was obvious from her comment that she had intended only 200 and had made an error using the FoW gadget. Servitor had emailed her with great trepidation, gently pointing out the possible error. He had spent a few hours in agonised anticipation, fearing that for questioning her authority he would receive 4000 or 20,000 or any other number (as far as he could tell, Fond of Writing could accept any number of repetitions up to 99999 and more scarily still could impose any number of ‘extras’ up to this limit for each mistake.) But to his relief, she accepted the point with good grace, merely increasing the imposition to 300 to provide – as she so excitingly put it – a little tap on the bottom for the impertinence.

And so it went on, for about eight months. Until one day, Servitor’s dashboard opened with a new message.

Femlogger now updated to 2.0. Click here for details of features. Your Dreamlover kit (more information) has been dispatched and must be installed within 48 hours of this message being displayed, for continued computer access.

Dreamlover? Servitor thought. He clicked the link…

Notes:

Fond of Writing is real. The features described here (asterisks, additional lines for mistakes and – most evil of all – that little distraction dialog) are all real. I understand it also sends reports to the task-setter by email, as here. However, the real programme does NOT (of course!) hijack your computer, render itself impossible to uninstall or in any other way behave like the malware described here.

I thought of making the compulsion element of the story stronger by letting the programme ransack Servitor’s hard drive and threaten to blackmail him or something if he didn’t finish the lines. But I’ve already made this sweet, sexy little programme sound like the worst virus ever, so I didn’t want to malign it further.

I am not sure whether Dreamlover is real or not. The website has been going some years, and contains multiple strong (and truly excellent) fantasy elements. For a long time, I thought it was a delightful fantasy, realised in wonderful detail, but the more recent posts about construction in China do actually start to make it sound like a real product.

Once again, though, I remind readers that in this blog everything is fantasy in essence. The programmes, people and weird sexual practices in my stories are fictional and in some cases impossible. That’s what fiction means: making stuff up.