The New Topping Book

“ Consensual sadism, dominance and topping are primarily empathic activities.

“ Consensual sadism, dominance and topping are primarily empathic activities. ” e.style.display='none');if(typeof getContentsSections==='function')setTimeout(getContentsSections,50)" /> The stereotype is backwards. The popular image of a BDSM top is someone amoral and unfeeling. Easton and Hardy argue the opposite: the top's primary reward is a "contact high" — surfing the bottom's sensations with empathy so intense it approaches the telepathic. Both authors report enormous orgasms after hours of technically demanding topping, as if pleasure had been building inside them unseen. One top describes it as riding the bottom's experience like a wave. Eight rewards drive topping, and empathy tops nearly everyone's list: 1. Empathy — the vicarious charge from a bottom's response 2. Creativity — being playwright, director, and lead actor at once 3. Bigness — inhabiting a role of overwhelming power 4. Nurturing — cradling someone after inflicting exquisite intensity 5. Self-knowledge — using the bottom's response as a mirror TAKEAWAY 2

“ Playing with power is like playing with fire… there is also enormous potential for constructive heat that warms and heals. ” e.style.display='none');if(typeof getContentsSections==='function')setTimeout(getContentsSections,50)" /> Scene space is your container. The authors compare BDSM to fire — destructive without containment, transformative within a well-built hearth. Scene space is the psychological and physical structure you create through negotiation, limits, safewords, costumes, names, and time boundaries. These elements form a "firewall" separating fantasy from reality, enabling both players to explore extreme roles while ensuring safe return. Structure enables bigger play. Even symbolic bondage (a thread around the thumbs), names like "sir" and "boy," time agreements, and costumes all clarify roles and signal the top's commitment to awareness and control. Wise players study the structures others have developed, like art students studying the Old Masters — building on existing foundations lets you construct taller, stronger fireplaces so flames can leap higher, hotter, and safer. TAKEAWAY 3

“ Needing to be taken care of does not make you less of a top, it makes you more of a human being. ” e.style.display='none');if(typeof getContentsSections==='function')setTimeout(getContentsSections,50)" /> Vulnerability follows intensity. After playing a terrifying street hoodlum who kidnapped and tormented Dossie at a party, Janet sat at Dossie's feet and said, "Could you just pet me for a while, please?" She needed reassurance that Dossie still liked her after witnessing such a dark persona. The authors frame this need as normal and essential — accessing your shadow puts you into tremendous emotional vulnerability. The Top's Bill of Rights explicitly includes the right to nurturance, support, and responsiveness. A bottom who withdraws the moment the whip goes down isn't meeting their obligations. The authors insist: a top pretending to be without vulnerability, compromise, or connection is an unsafe…