Noah
Posts: 1660
Joined: 7/5/2005
Status: offline
|
quote:
ORIGINAL: fillepink
This topic always confused me. I have listened, tried to see whether i was just being dense, but i simply cannot follow it. i always end up feeling i am listening to two people argue about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.
Maybe i really am just missing The Big Picture, but do proponents of "gift" have different relationships from those who oppose "gift"? It does not even seem to be one of those never-ending protocol issues, since no one is asking to be addressed as a "gift" by the community at large.
*sigh* i am lost. and i keep remembering the scene from "Green Fried Tomatoes" where the woman greets her husband at the door in saran wrap and a bow. i know people take this very much to heart. i feel guilty as hell; it's like farting in church. can't be helped but you still wish the floor would open up and swallow you.
Wow.
I think your post should be required reading. Given that what you say in the bolded text above is true--and it seems plainly true to me--then the gift/not gift dispute as it has been conducted here tends to bring confusion, discord and antagonism to a far greater degree than it brings light.
Conversations about what a thing is are generally fraught with hazard, in my experience, unless either the matter at hand is strictly factual or the people having the discussion are careful and intellectually generous.
Some people have hewn very close to a particular dictionary definition of the word gift, but there are other "official, you can look it up" senses of the word gift that don't have the same requirement of altruistic spirit. Your dictionary may not list these other senses but if you go to one of the dictionaries on my shelf you will see well over a full page of very fine print given over to several well-documented and well-accepted senses of the word gift, not all of which require the crystalline pure motivations described by some posters here.
Technicalities aside, it seems to me that the idea of gift as applied here might be very useful in a sort of metaphorical way. Holding this image before us can help us to see in which ways it does make sense to describe submission as a gift and in which ways it doesn't. In some ways and for some people it seems helpful and in other ways and for other people it seems less so.
For someone to come along and say ".... hogwash. it just isn't that way" seems just as vain and just as in vain as saying the opposite. Do we really imagine that this is the sort of thing where there is a black and white fact of the matter? Some issues are like that, that is they are plainly factual. Other issues aren't. We can evaluate them, assign kinds and degrees of positive or negative value. Beyond that, talking about the "is" behind those issues really does resemble the angels on a pin discussions, in my view.
Those who say that one can't apply the word gift unless there is no expectation of response are making a claim that is opposed to our common experience. There are lots of perfectly common uses of the word gift that don't reflect this. Some are crass examples. There are "gift exchanges" in some settings which would not be present if it weren't for an expectation of gifts in return. It is fine to say that there is an exalted sense of the word gift that this doesn't rise to. It is fine to say that this is a pity and that we shouldn't lose sight of that exalted sense of the word gift because the "True Gift" is a precious and wonderful thing. But the fact is that we do use the word "gift" in describing these particular exchanges and every competent English speaker understands us. It is a bona fide and well accepted sense of the word, whether this pleases you or not.
There are far less crass examples. I have a beloved friend to whom I occasionally give gifts. My giving of a particular gift can be an instance of the True, Exalted Giving, a pure gush of generous recognition and love desiring nothing in return. It can be this even if I happen to know this friend well enough to "expect" in some kind of actuarial way that, yeah, when my birthday rolls around or when I am in need and he has some of that which I need he is indeed likely to "gift" me also. The expectation can be present, it might or might not "taint" the giving in a given case, or so it seems to me.
The mere expectation that something will come back doesn't seem to me to rule anything out automatically and all by itself. I might stop at my friend's house only to find that he isn't home. I might see that a tire is flat on his car, or a shingle loose on his house. I might fix the broken thing without ever telling him, without his ever knowing that anything was wrong in the first place. Does the fact that--given his character--I am aware that he might do something analogous for me some day whether I want him to or not, does this fact turn my tire repair into some greedy mercenary act no longer worth of the name "gift"?
Now let me give you an another example.
There, that sentence was my example.
That sentence was an example of a use of the word "give" which you have probably accepted without argument a hundred times this year alone. Am I failing to truly "give" you an example if I am expecting or even hoping for mutual understanding to result? I can benefit from our mutual understanding so by the rules of some posters here I did not TRUELY GIVE you an example. But that is just silliness, isn't it? Of course I gave you an example. Nothing could be clearer to see. The word give has more than one sense. That is a fact. And in my opinion it isn't the case that one sense is the be-all and end-all while the others are bogus. That said, the differences between the senses are interesting and worth exploring.
So yeah, lets highlight that sublime notion of giving and promote awareness of it. Let's bring out also the senses in which the idea of "giving submission" fails to capture something in the dynamics of BDSM relationships, or in which it may tend to paint in elements that don't appear in the original picture. We can do all of that with more clarity and less rancor without ever saying the words: This IS/IS NOT That; Submission IS/IS NOT a gift.
Posts with the adjectives "true" and "real" (like this one) should be viewed very carefully and critically, I think. Posts that try to make "what is" claims about matters of value rather than matters of fact should be handled in a similarly gingerly way ... as fillepink handled the central question in this thread. You go, honey.
The paragraph you just read has "should" in it. That is a pretty good sign that the point I was making had to do with a matter of evaluation rather than simply with a matter of fact. I was expressing an opinion and as it happened it was preceded with an account meant to sketch the plausibility of that opinion.
My view of submission in general has been illuminated by the talk about it being a gift. This is because it showed me how submission can be seen as a gift. Similarly I'm grateful for what has been brought out in certain posts which reject the notion of submission as a gift. This all works and works well without ever bringing up the topic of whether in some fundamental, real deal, bottom line sense submission is or isn't this or that. In my view that is a question which is about as helpful as "how much would a triangular smell weigh on the moon?" It looks just like a question and indeed the sentence is an interrogative one. But when you lift its skirt you find nothing worth getting into, eh?
I don't think it hogwash to highlight the ways in which submission is or isn't a helpfully seen as a gift. And this has been helpful to me, so sue me, or address me in a desultory manner or whatever you like if you feel the need to utterly reject this picture. I can continue to thrive under those conditions.
I do think it is hogwash, however, to reject the whole area of exploration based on an insistence to focus on one of the several dictionary definitions of the word "gift" at the expense of all others, pathetically so if this arises from mostly your dictionary being crap small. Sometimes size matters, dude.
Now let me offer (offer may be a similarly useful and less contentious term to use than give) another sense in which someone might choose to employ the word gift in this conversation.
One sense of gift which appears in any competent dictionary is the one that has to do with a person "having a gift for" something: music, gardening, torture, what-have-you. So let's think of a person who has recognized or at least suspects that she has a "gift" for submission in this restricted sense of the word. She decides eventually to bestow or offer this "gift" of hers to a particular dominant. Now, if you won't allow me to say "give her submission" will you at least allow me to say "bestow her gift for submission"? And if the answer to that last question is even a qualified yes then maybe we are just splitting hairs to say that this is an okay thing to say but "give one’s submission" isn't.
So:
My answer to the question "Is submission a gift" is not to approve or disapprove of the word "gift" in the topic. Instead my answer is to cast a suspicious eye at the word "is." This word, though small, can be a great irritant to a discussion, often without the source of the irritation ever being recognized. I believe that I am in league with fillepink in taking this position.
I would like to propose a related, alternative inquiry. In what ways is it helpful or unhelpful to conceive of submission as a gift?
Have I wrapped a pearl of wisdom around this grain of irritation? That isn't so much a fact question as an evaluation question. Please proceed accordingly, whether you in fact evaluate this post positively or not.
Noah
|
RE: Gift or not.... - 
Profile
This old argument again? There's no such thing as the "gift" of either submission or domination. A gift means that you're giving something to a person without any expectation of gratitude. To whit; Webster's definition: "something voluntarily transferred by one person to another without compensation". 
New Messages
No New Messages
Hot Topic w/ New Messages
Hot Topic w/o New Messages
Locked w/ New Messages
Locked w/o New Messages
Post New Thread