Stephann
Posts: 4214
Joined: 12/27/2006
From: Portland, OR
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quote:
ORIGINAL: MasterMike04103
Stephann,
I hate to say this but you don't understand the intent or meaning of anything I have penned. It is the close minded people on CM that choose to flame me for having a grasped an consept and created writings to fully support what it is I feel. Since you don't know me, you cannot begin to tell me what I ment in any way shape or form. The rather long essay that I posted here, was posted after meeting aproval of a body of educated people living within the bounds of the BDSM lifestyle. These same people gave me the highest marks for the way I presented the subject matter.
If I were able to make a wager with you, I would say that you and the others who have blasted me with your rather lame comments are simply afraid of the smarter younger sect of kinksters that are filling the ranks of the BDSM world. Since I never said that my way was the only way, and if you actully read what I wrote word for word, you would find that I stated that each person or coupling of people live their lives to beat of their own drummer.
In closing, please think before you try to flame a person. You do not know how long I have been doing whatever I do, nor do you know my strenths and weaknesses...
Blessings,
Mike
Hi Mike,
Truthfully, I believe I do understand what your essay said. I'll boil it down to the basics if you like, in a moment. First off, I'd like to point out that we're about the same age (I have about three years on you) and my issues aren't related to depth or breadth of experience in any regard. My agenda wasn't to flame you, but rather make a clear statement that your essay simply illustrates a type of D/s that is unrelated to actual dominance or submission. It represents your romanticized version of BDSM, which obviously is fine for you; it's why you posted it in a public forum. I don't know you, personally, so my statements are directed at the content of your posting and are completely unrelated to you as a person. What is most aggravating is your frustration at those who have responded against you, as somehow being closeminded when your response depicts the same.
With that, lets get to brass tacks.
The Ultimate Submission
The title alone suggests "this is the best way. Period."
I know by the title some of you might think you know what I am about to say, but I assure you, unless you are sitting here with me as I compose this essay, you surely do not. As I have gotten to know quite a few members of the BDSM community around my home state, as well as some from around the world, I have learned one important lesson: the greatest gift of submission is not when a person who identifies as a sub kneels and accepts a collar, nor is it the extreme maso-slave who is has a "leather ass;" what it truly is,
Right here. "what it truly is." This asserts that anything anything that falls outside of what you define, somehow pales in comparison to the 'one true way.'
is the Dominant person of the relationship accepting the submissive person in whatever his or her state of mental, emotional and physical conditioning.
Why is the dominant accepting the submissive 'as is' especially important? I agree that when people enter into relationships, they should accept their partner 'as they are' though this is hardly unique to either dominants, or indeed BDSM relationships. This suggests that we shouldn't really engage in power exchange at all, but rather simply emulate some form of vanillaesque "we're all love each other for who we are" romance. The fact is, I wouldn't have gotten involved in any of my relationships, if I didn't already like the person I was involving myself with. I think that's just one of many components of a healthy relationship.
Ask a thousand people the same question and you will get a thousand different answers. I say this because in our lifestyle it is what the couple or "family" makes it. Families in this lifestyle, however, are a totally different story which I might attempt to touch on in the future, but for now, I am going to break down the roles of Dominant and Submissive for the masses.
Why are you asserting the rules for the masses? Are you suggesting we're incapable of engaging in our own healthy relationships with our own rules? It's the high handed tone of many of your statements that is the source of many of the people flaming you, by the way.
To do this I am going to simply take what is common knowledge about our lifestyle and mix it with a bit of psychology, shake it over ice and strain into a martini glass, for what I like to call... Dominants are submissive too.
And submissives have to dominate occasionally. I'll just briefly state, that dominance is a trait, submissiveness is a trait, and all people possess both in one degree or another. This is very different from 'a Dominant', a person who may or may not be talented at dominating others, but enjoys having authority in a power exchange relationship.
For some people in our lifestyle, being a Dominant is purely for their own self gain. We call these ego-driven people "Dominates," because they have a way of taking anything from our lifestyle and twisting it in such a way that it is to the point of cartoon humor
We who? Again, this is something you might want to consider in your future essays. Were I to make the same claim, I'd have written. "Let us call these people ego-driven people "Dominants" (be sure to use the noun, not the adjective) because...etc etc. It's unwise to assume your reader agrees with you, until after they've read your entire work.
Having said that, all relationships have a measure of ego. Love is not a selfless thing; ideally one can love another to be willing to sacrifice for them, sure, but we wouldn't love them in the first place if they didn't offer us something, or bring some joy into our lives of their own accord. Those who love others who don't desire that love, rest more firmly in the 'obsessed' category.
. Take your average online-only Dominate, Lord High Grand Master Zeus: he is the ruler of all he sees, and on his home planet he is king of all he can put his pecker against. Once this person finds that he has picked through all the new meat, he changes his name to something equally as ridiculous and repeats the cycle. As comical as these people are, you truly can find them at munches as well as online cyber rooms. They make up a small percentage of the true ranks.
Why even mention online roleplayers? They're as related to our lifestyle as video gamers are to genuine Marines.
Other people perceive a Dominant person as a person who has a ton of experience and toys, judging the Dominance by the number of floggers in their toy bag rather than by the skill of which they use them.
Lots of masochists have no interested in power exchange activities. For them, the size of the toybag reflects the enthusiasm with which a top or sadist has for his trade. Such experienced bottoms/masos will have a good idea of the type of top they are looking for, and have plenty of experience to judge a newcomer by.
I like to call these the compensationalists, as they try to overcompensate for their lack of skills with flashy talk and large quantities of toys.
This really does sound more like you have a chip on your shoulder against a particular person or people simply because they own more toys than you.
These are often the ones who show up to an event stag and prey on the younger fresh meat, and we lovingly call them chicken hawkers. More experienced lifestylers will see these people as a threat and make it known that a person of their nature is not safe to any and all newcomers at the event.
If such a person happened to be as female submissive who has her own toy bag, would you be so eager to reject her? Face it, this is a male/female standard. Your riling against your male competition, and it angers you to see someone respected for skills or toys you don't yet possess. To boot, who are you to judge who should or shouldn't be permitted to play with consenting adults? Young submissives aren't 'meat'; they're adults who have chosen to play with whom they wish. Someone truly confident wouldn't worry about who their competition was; I've attended a play party with no more toys than my belt, and had zero trouble attracting interest.
Now that I have covered the nastiness of our lifestyle, at least as far as Dominates are concerned, I would like to look at your everyday lifestyle Dom -- the natural dominant. This person feels as comfortable being a companion as they do being the controller of power and all decisions.
Here, we propagate the reverse myth; that 'everyday' dominants are without fears or insecurities. The truth is, most dominants don't desire all power, or to control all decisions. That much authority is a LOT of time and work, something your average lifestyler simply isn't interested in.
With that said, I would like to take a quick moment to go back to a statement I made in a previous paragraph. Dominants are submissive...
This is your thesis. We'll await the proof
Yup, I said it, and I stand by it with all the fibers in my body. A person like me who identifies as a Dominant and is respected as one, not only by my partner but by members and peers in the greater kink community, is truly submissive to our partner. No, it is not the typical role you think of when you think of Dom and sub couples, but trust me... it is true.
Think about this for a moment: as a Dominant, I am responsible for the safety of my submissive, for making all the final decisions in both of our lives. That is just the tip of the ice berg, in my opinion. To get my submissive to the point that I was able to offer a collar of any kind took a lot of work from me, which I hate to tell you Doms, is an act of service and submission.
I'll only briefly interject; I never 'offered' my slave a collar. She begged it. I personally find it to be an act of submission to 'offer' a collar in fact. I believe the only 'final' choices the slave has is to beg to be owned, and to revoke consent.
Going out and finding all the info and double checking that you agree with what the authors touch on is a huge job. You don't ask yourself to do this do you, Doms? No, the submissive asks it of you and without thinking you jump and get on it. See what I am saying, gang? They have us by the balls and they don't even know it most of the time.
Being responsible for your submissive, hardly implies that the submissive has any control. It means that the D asserts control over the situation. Having knowledge increases that control. It hardly suggests that they 'have us by the balls.'
Really, though, Doms, we are in control of a lot of power, which affects not only the sub but the Dom and the community as well.
Why should any 'community' besides the one at large that we all live in have to do with what my slave and I do?
I firmly believe that, as much as we love being in control and being Dominant in their lives, without them and their gift,
That gift word comes up a lot in our discussions here. Neither my slave, nor my submissive ever 'gifted' herself to me. They chose to be what they are, in response to who I am. There's no gift, as the slave is (in fact) in my possession; she is now property, desires to be property, and is treated as such. My submissive, on the other hand, is my companion. I don't view her companionship as a gift, I see it as an exchange; her companionship for mine. There's nothing selfless involved with this exchange, or with my ownership of the slave.
we are nothing but a bunch of kinky people with a huge investment in metals and leather.
That's partly right. We are kinky people, with a healthy investment in the toys we possess. We're a lot more than that though; we're a loving unit, one where our personality dynamics mesh beautifully.
It was once said, "Behind every good man is a great woman."
Proverbs and anecdotes aren't proof....
I think that behind every good Dominant person there is a even greater submissive partner allowing them to be who and what they are.
My s-types are behind me, because I also allow them to be who they are. Without an owner, my slave is 'just' a woman. Without a dominant, my submissive is also a woman. If I didn't positively impact their lives in a way that drives them to be better people than they already were, I wouldn't have much purpose in their lives. They don't 'enable' my dominance, nor do I enable their submission. We enable each other to be better people than we would be. We push each other to live and enjoy life in a way we simply could not do alone.
At any moment, the sub in your life, assuming you have one, could turn to you and say, "I'm done being your submissive. Go find someone else."
And I would. I could do the same to them. We're all healthy enough people to be capable of withstanding that.
For whatever reasons the submissive gives, it all boils down to the Dominant not succumbing to the true needs of the submissive. This again shows how the Dominant is really the one who must bow at times to the needs of another.
No; there's no must. Dominants choose to meet their partners needs the same way their partners must choose to meet our needs. This isn't a one way street, and there's no submission involved.
If you don't believe what I am saying here as gospel, just go to any of the fetish dating sites like Collarme and Alt dot com, look at all the single Doms out there, and then compare that number to single submissives.
Try this with male submissives and female dominants; I think you'll find the shocking truth to be that men simply are more aggressive about seeking out companionship on the internet than women are.
In short, it is our job to take care of the needs, wants and desires of the submissive so that we as Doms can get all that we want out of our relationship with them.
This is fuzzy. I believe it is, indeed, the responsibility of a good dominant to care for the needs of their s-type. None of this suggests that doing so makes the dominant beholden or submissive.
I know by now if you are still reading this, you are saying, "Mike, you are a nut job. How can you expect me to believe all this bull crap you have just written?" Well, it is quite simple. When you find a submissive, try doing whatever you want with them and after a while, if you disregard their needs, you will be sitting on Alt dot com trolling for a new one because the submissive holds the power. Without the magical gift, Dominants are nothing. End of story. I know it is a hard pill to swallow at times but we are not talking anything more than a give and take. Even Doms, I am afraid, have to follow this rule and give a lot before they are able to take anything.
This is a summary, and already addressed.
A D/s relationship on an intimate level is nothing more than a partnership. My girlfriend is also my submissive, and in all honesty, there are nights when we are together that I don't want to be Daddy Mike, the Dom. No, I want to be Boyfriend Mike, her lover and best friend. I have, on occasion, told my sub to take off her collar for this very reason and I am not ashamed to say so.
Great, that works for you. If I took the collar off my slave, I think I'd have a nightmare of tears, sobbing, and fear to face. Her slavery is her blanket, her teddy bear, and her warm glass of milk. It also tells her "I'm not strong enough to hold you as my slave." That makes her compatible with me; and probably not compatible with you. This is why your essay doesn't ring true; because it applies to how you see life, without any regard to how others might see their lives.
I am a human, not some war machine that the lit-erotica crowd has conjured up in their fiction. I am sure that by now some of you out there are searching for a way to kill me because I am being honest and truthful. I am not making the typical stand that Dominates make. Hell, I challenge any one of the people reading this to prove me wrong.
I invite you to spend a half hour on castlerealm.com; your comments are far more typical than you might believe.
Go for it, I dare you, because deep down we all know that it is human nature to help and be helped, to love and to be loved. We in the lifestyle have just added in the sado-masochistic side to the dice of life.
At least we can agree on something.
So; I stand by my original statements. You seem to have a chip on your shoulder, against people who have been doing this in a way that makes them happy for a lot longer than we are. You also seem to have a fear of people who engage in a form of dominance and submission, where the dominant actively enslaves, or actively dominates the submissive. I believe this is why you make such a point of trying to assert that the dominant is the 'real' submissive. You don't talk about how the actual act of domination comes into play, at all. That suggests to me, you either fear, or don't understand how dominance works (since this was, in fact, an essay on dominance and submission.)
At any rate, you failed to support your thesis.
On a personal note, I love my girls fiercely. The ways I express my love would shock their friends and family and probably land me in jail. They, however, love the way I express that love.
That would make me a 'Dominate' by your definition. That you don't understand how men can dominate, suggests you to me that you simply don't understand dominance to begin with. It's fine for you to hold your opinion on how to live life with your girl; I don't pass judgment on that. I don't take kindly to your passing judgment on those of us who do enjoy dominance willingly, consensually, fully aware of the risks we take.
Stephan
< Message edited by Stephann -- 11/20/2007 4:53:02 PM >
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RE: Dominant because you say so? - 
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Does that make me submissive too, Sir? 
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