Who was Rosie?

"Rosie," an on-line personality also known as an36376, posted to the USENET news group alt.sex.bondage (ASB) from approximately 1993 to 1995. She was one of the first submissives in a long-term absolute-power relationship to speak up aggressively and persistently about her life of slavery with her master, Donald, and her love of helplessness and lack of control. Rosie's messages met with mixed reactions on ASB. Some loved her witty way with words and her ability to describe things that they also thought and felt; others disliked her aggressive "take no flak from no one" style: they did not think it becoming for a submissive to speak in such a direct and strong way, especially to dominants. Whether they liked her or disliked her, most people reading ASB at that time will admit that she changed the tone of the news group: she helped readers to see absolute power exchange as less of a dirty word and more of a serious alternative to the kinky-swinging, playparty world.

Why collect her messages here?

Rosie was an exceptional writer. Her ability to communicate serious personal experiences and emotions about sadomasochism in an entertaining, witty manner was matchless. Many of the things she was saying four years ago are quite relevant to submissives and dominants attempting to make power relationships work today.

What ever became of Rosie?

Rosie no longer posts to alt.sex.bondage, and there are some good reasons for that. As time went on, reactions to her in the news group became increasingly hostile. Rosie wrote messages that were challenging, difficult, that asked hard questions. Many people became defensive. Many more people felt threatened by her insistent message that extreme power exchange is not only OK but is an essential and necessary life choice for some people. Posting to an increasingly hostile news group is hard, it wears down the best of us, and Rosie eventually gave it up and went on to greener pastures. While we don't exactly know what happened to Rosie, we've heard rumors that she became one hell of a Web-page designer.

The Archives

With Rosie's permission, we have collected some of her best messages and reproduced them here. Each message begins with the original title of the message thread and the approximate date upon which it was posted. Very little editing was done, as we wanted to retain the original flavor of the pieces, typos and all (although, in a few cases, where an irrelevant paragraph or two were snipped, this is indicated with ellipses [...]). However, in the change from ASCII text to HTML code, we did notice that most of her angled-bracketed "smiles" and "grins" disappeared. As you read these pieces, try to imagine her laughing and chuckling at herself. We're sure that's how she'd like you to remember her.

Rosie wrote a lot of messages. Sorting through them takes time. We'll add messages to this archive as quickly as we can. When new material is added, we'll change the date, below.