|
Noah -> RE: A Good Dom... (2/9/2007 10:39:54 PM)
|
quote:
ORIGINAL: losttreasure
Okay... since you deigned to give a serious reason, I'll bite.
This was written on the presumption that the "wife" described in the other thread would be considered desirable.
Hence the "complimentary" thing.
You know, good wife... as in "yes, I like".
Ergo, were the desired sub like the "good wife" - the dom described here would be a suitable match for her.
"Ergo"?
Do you actually think that your conclusion follows logically from your premisses? How about if we go way out on a limb here and consider the possibility that a whole bunch of very different women, with very different backgrounds and motivations, might fit that description of Good Wife? How about if we consider that, based on these differences, your "Good Dom" might be a good match for some of them, without drawing "Ergo" conclusions for a vast class of people you have never met?
quote:
Obviously, you're feel you aren't. That's okay. You might not be one to want a "good wife" sub.
However, please note that nowhere in the above is there the requirement for rigidity. It is merely a call for consistency and courtesy. If as a dominant you require flexibility, I see nothing that would prevent you from being consistent or courteous in that requirement.
And I see nothing that would prevent you from going around on tiptoe all day. That nothing obviously prevents a thing is perhaps the weakest of all possible recommendations in favor of it.
But okay, lost, we get it. You call the tune and he dances divinely. If that works for you guys, great. The minute the courtesy and consistency and graciousness are interrupted, you're out the door. Good for you. Not everyone works that way.
You value a certain notion of consistency and a certain notion of courteousness. Not everyone shares your values (that has to be at least the bronze medal for understatement as I'm sure you will hurry to agree.)You value a whole range of things and again that's all great. But you try to kid us and perhaps yourself that you aren't making broad normative claims, while in fact, you are.
quote:
There is no insistence that you talk at the time that she wants to... merely an encouragement that you be gracious when she requests it. Hopefully, you've allowed her to know you well enough that she will understand when you simply don't feel like talking. The point is, that it's wise for you to make time to talk. Otherwise, there is no communication and quite frankly, not much point to the relationship.
First of all the conclusion that unless one "makes time to talk" there is NO communication in the relationship is patent bullshit, as Ron has already carefully shown by pointing to the fact that if even an explicit refusal to talk communicates a message, then everything in the long continuum between that and hours of relationship de-briefing can also serve as communication. As can, by the way, an infinite range of things outside of this continuum.
The one and only form of communication you are capable of recognizing is talk that happens after the dom has "made time to talk". If that's how you choose to see your teeny little world, that's cool.
But to go from there to insist that in any relationship where the dom doesn't "make time to talk" there is NO communication, well that's inane at best, given the way that native speakers conventionally use words like "communication."
And by the way, in that snippet too we see one of the broad normative claims you try to deny that you are making. You claim that there isn't much point to a relationship in which the dominant doesn't make time to talk. This is either true in a vacuously trivial sense, or bullshit.
If you will admit any talking that happens to happen as "the dom making time to talk" then what you offer is trivially true.
In a given relationship the very "point" you fail to see in the relationship may be the central point for the participants. The Dominant may want to experience a relationship in which he doesn't "make time to talk" and his partner may want to experience a relationship in which, guess what? her partner doesn't "make time to talk" In your view, the very dynamic they have chosen to explore is disqualified, but then I've come to expect from you that sort of thinly-masked disqualification of alternative approaches to WIITWD.
Alternatives to yours, that is.
Maybe these two people have had it up to here with "make time to talk" relationships. Maybe these two people are well equipped to communicate all that needs communicating between them without recourse to the sort of conversation which ensues when one party "makes time to talk" And maybe they aren't good at relationship "talk" and don't enjoy it and don't want it. What a shame, then that their relationship can't have much of a point.
A great thing for you to work on memorizing would be: "Not all couples are just like my partner and I."
It just doesn't wash when you say quite disingenuously with one breath that you don't mean to speak for others, and then accidentally let fly in your next breath that anyone whose relationships varies from yours in a certain way is in a pointless relationship.
Or do you really not even appreciate the implications and entailments of these broad generalizations of yours?
quote:
As far as expecting that "the thing for a sub or slave" is that they will anticipate, or meld with your needs and desires of the moment... the answer is no, it does not need to be rigid.
I do not disagree with your idea that a submissive should anticipate and meld with the immediate needs and desires of a dominant, however, allow me to be controversial... see my sig line?
Just because it isn't "all about me", doesn't make it "all about you".
Once again we are presented with what is at best a trivial truth, nonetheless trivial for appearing in italics.
What your little aphorism misses is that there are all sorts of things that can make it "all about me". The fact that it is not "all about you" doesn't have to be operative at all, there.
In fact if it not being "all about you" was what made it "all about me" then it wouldn't be all about me after all. Can you see how that would work? Your sig line is logically vacant.
quote:
Of course, the following is merely my interpretation and I'm in no way saying this is how it should be for everyone.
Oh. Right, except that those relationships which don't meet the standards you set for relationship communication are pointless. But other than that you aren't saying how it should be for everyone. You're just saying how it must be for that subset of us who want to have non-pointless relationships. Please.
quote:
But you see... I view D/s as a relationship. A relationship of whatever kind you like; it's still two people relating to one another. However, despite the dominant having control and the submissive relinquishing control, they are both still equal partners in the relationship.
That doesn't mean the control in the relationship is equal, it means that the dom is one of two (assuming a monogamous arrangement) and the submissive is one of two... they are each one-half of the relationship. And as you can't have fractions of a viable human being, there can be no other equation.
As humans, both dominant and submissive have needs... and as equal partners in the relationship, both have the right to have those needs fulfilled within the relationship.
Did you read this before you posted it?
1. The dom and sub are equal partners in the relationship
2. The proof of this? There are two people in the relationship, and you can't have fractional people, and so they must therefore be equal partners ... just like the junior and senior partners in a two-person law firm are equal partners, I suppose. (embarrassing enough already to anyone who cares about critical thinking, but you don't stop there)
3. So since they are human beings with needs, and since they are equal partners in the relationship, it follows that they have equal rights to have their needs met.
What a load of horse balls.
So any time two people relate they relate on an equal basis, since there are no fractional human beings? Can you actually look around the world and not find uncountable numbers of relationships which people enter into unequally? Hell, there are uncountable numbers of types of such relationships, never mind uncountable numbers of such relationships.
If it followed that in any relationship between two people, they have equal rights to have their needs met under the "No Fractional Humans" rule, I think that the typical relationship between drill sargeants and new recruits would play a differently than it does in this universe. In fact, when you sign the papers you accept an inferior position in respect to getting your needs met. I hope you can get your hairdo around the analogy here to the person who commits to the bottom half of a D/s relationship.
Consider the slave-holder of pre-civil war days in the US. He was in a relationship with each of his slaves. It was already the case that there were no fractional human beings but no one was so idiotic as to say that simply because it was a relationship between two non-fractional human beings, it follows that each one had an equal right to have his needs met.
Go to traffic court some day, on business, and tell the judge with whom you are relating there that you and she have equal rights to have your respective needs met within the relationship. Press your point hard enough and you may get to meet a jailer with whom you can have the same argument for quite a while.
The fact is that there are countless sorts of relationships in which two people can interact with gross asymmetries in terms of expectations of having needs met.
Some of them, interestingly, are called master/slave.
I sure hope you never reproduce and see your offspring suffer a debilitating accident, because you would presumably walk away from your comatose child owing to his inability to fulfill your equal right to have your needs met in the relationship.
There may be an argument that could be made for some necessity for equal expectations of needs-meeting in D/s relationships (though I doubt it.) What is certain is that your little syllogism is bunk. Your conclusions don't follow from your premises. Using one invalid conclusion as a premiss for yet another conclusion doesn't help your campaign.
quote:
Now a submissive may give up control of her rights to her dominant, but she still has them and it becomes the dominant's responsibility to protect those rights.
Now we just drift off into incoherence.
So if a submissive surrenders her right to decide what to wear today, her dominant has a responsibility to protect her right to decide what to wear today? What the fuck are you attempting to talk about?
quote:
He might decide when and how those needs of hers are fulfilled, but if he ignores them he will most likely soon find himself without a submissive.
Just here you go from a paragraph where the subject is rights to one where the subject is needs, blathering on as if you hadn't just changed the subject. "Rights" and "needs" are not conventionally taken to be two ways to refer to the same things, irrespective of the fact that we may have rights to some things we need and that we made need some things we have a right to.
You may need a heart transplant. You don't have the right to one. You may have the right to purchase an ocean liner. It doesn't follow from that that you need one.
And yes, once again you announce for us that under your notion of "submission", if the dominant asks anything in an inconsistent or discourteous way then she should be expected to leave. That obviously works like a charm for you and God bless you both for it.
What you might want to keep in mind is that when some submissives talk about submitting, it actually has to do with yielding to the will of their partner and the whole interaction isn't structured as one big walking, talking ultimatum with "...or else I'll leave," as its punch line.
In short (I hope you're sitting down) ...some people who describe themselves as submissives actually submit, rather than evaluate, maybe approve of, and if they're in the mood go along with until the next round of evaluations of consistency and tenor.
quote:
While the relationship may not be all about her, that doesn't automatically mean that it is all about him. It's not about one to the exclusion of the other... it's about both together.
"The" relationship. Which relationship, exactly? Since you disavow any intention to say what should apply to other people in their relationships, just which relationship is "the" relationship you're talking about here?
quote:
So... the submissive who anticipates and melds with the immediate needs and desires of her dominant is a good submissive, but the dominant who has consideration for his submissives needs is a great dom.
... and the dominant who doesn't "make time to talk" is in a relationship with NO communication, and one "without much point" at that. But all that should not be taken to indicate anything negative, or anything normative.
I'm amazed that anyone takes you seriously, lost. I mean I have no way of telling whether it is that you are incapable of proceeding rationally or instead whether this is just intellectual dishonesty wandering amuck. Either way, though....
|
|
|
|
