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hopelesslyInvo -> RE: -=RL Slavery vs Role-play Slavery=- (4/8/2008 9:39:17 PM)
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i don't guess this is to argue or add, but just to touch on my own thoughts, and keep in mind as i make little effort to remain politically correct or worried what might piss people off to read, they're just opinions i felt like sharing. it's more of how i came to my current standpoint than me professing "this is what it is".
in some sense i see real slavery as simply being an impossibility, if for no other reason at least that where i live there's a law where one person cannot own another even if both parties were in agreement. let alone the word ownership, "responsibility" is a word that is hit and miss in this line of thinking. in context of calling oneself a slave, they cannot be a slave without an owner, and a person cannot claim to be an owner without property, so i often think they need something better to identify "themselves", such as the sense a submissive and a dominant do not need one another to continue to hold their titles. it seems enough people find that it makes sense to call yourself something like a mistress, master, dom/me, sadist, etc rather than to say or address yourself as "owner", instead of saying as a mistress i am "an" owner, but the word slave ended up not being a definition of human property, but instead became a title for that property.
other thoughts i've had are in line that you can offer your services willingly without even so much as being related to a slave in the least, especially since that person made the choice to, something slaves aren't exactly afforded by standard definitions. the biggest reason i used to scoff at the word was a slave acts because they are made to or have no choice, where someone simply in service of another has motivations for carrying things that isn't simply self preservation, but when i look around in a setting like bdsm "these slaves" can simply walk away any time they want because they have no obligations and are not property of anyone else, and in most sense of truth never will or can be. so i was always thinking "these people are delusional or simply idiots living in a fantasy, this isn't being a slave", i could imagine the old woman from the wendy's commercials yelling "where's the slavery?!".
that was the mindset i had when, although i was more than aware that i was submissive as can nearly be defined, decided to as well label myself as a submissive rather than a slave, and the mindset that made me have an initial unappealing viewpoint of people that called themselves a slave.
now the fantasy can be intriguing and powerful, and there are plenty of people who like the fantasy of things like rape, or being forced into servitude, but eventually the word being "forced" being used enough eventually hit me with what felt like an obvious epiphany; they're not talking about "forced slavery" they're talking about "consentual slavery". while maybe it might not have a legal stamp of approval, this was a concept that didn't seem like an impossibility, and sort of seemed agreeable and not very different from what i was identifying with in my views of submission, in the desire that i wanted to feel like "i'm yours".
but the whole consensual slavery idea, pretty much says pffft to the whole legalities and standard viewpoints of all it, and now the difference between a submissive and a slave started seeming like it isn't what they do, or why they do it, but just in how they view themselves. surely the difference between a slave and a submissive can't be what they do, or what they are asked to do, as these are things governed by who will task them and the person's devotion to whatever their cause is will be the deciding factor in what they will find that they are allowing themsevles to be subjected to, and it could only be further credited to the fact a submissive is just as likely to have less limits and be more willing than a slave is. when the word consensual is put in, i found you can also no longer simply try to pinpoint what a slave's reasons for doing something may be, as their desire to please could be just as high or higher than a submissives. over time i just started seeing more and more similarities and feeling like i was shedding some naivety.
the word consensual also blows apart and pisses on any legality issues in concept, since although they can't legally be property, they are free to live under whatever jurisdiction and abide by whoever's rules they choose to. it doesn't have to be legally acknowledged by the government or anyone else; if i'm free, then i'm free to surrender that freedom and oblige to my own choices in giving control to someone else without the approval of any 3rd party, and if my consent is retracted, the slavery is abolished but only the owner or the slave could make that call. in some degree the consent still heavily makes it related to roleplay, but i think the larger degree is that it doesn't matter what it is called, it's how you feel about it. you can't rape the willing, but can't you willingly be a slave? of course, but still in the definition that i've come to know of slavery, even though you could willingly become one, the ability to back out didn't seem any definition of a slave. even in the case of forced slavery, if the slave tried to escape this and attempted running away, regardless if they were caught or not, they were still someone's slave.
i still at times kept looking at things perhaps too literally, that slaves have no rights, no right to opinion, to vote, or despite being put to work, no right to have a job as the money they earned would be their own, yet property cannot own property. in times when i would still look at slavery being just a bit too much of purely fantasy, other concepts i gathered from people such as "consentual non-consent" only helped to make me less closed minded, and help me understand different viewpoints and why someone would choose the title slave over submissive.
currently i live with the viewpoint that a slave and a submissive basically consist of the same makeup, but that the individual looks upon themselves and doesn't see the same reflection as one another, and the biggest reason for the difference in names has probably simply been because of how they see themselves, and how they wish to be seen by others.
i look at myself as a submissive open to the idea, and possibility of slavery, where before i would have though it might be something that could only exist in a dream, though as you can tell i have my own viewpoints as to what it would mean and what it would require. namely i look at the slave as the laborer, and the owner as the provider. but a slave and submissive is not differentiated by what they do, what is done to them, what they allow, or the reason for why or what they partake in, let alone their motivations in doing so, it is simply one of two words that a person will feel more association with. where people go from there will probably and hopefully never cease to surprise.
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