CallaFirestormBW
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Joined: 6/29/2008
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quote:
Were your literary mentor suggest you sleep with him to get your book published, you'd have legal recourse. Convinced by a self labeled "community" mentor that to be a 'submissive' you have to be "broken in" by submitting a night of walking the streets of LA and bringing him/her back $1000. - where do you go?
Where you see insecurity, and fragile egos, I see pragmatism. Many/most/some (take you pick) do use the guise of mentor-ship for a personal agenda.
And that is true in -any- community, Merc. No, it's highly unlikely that the author who is mentoring me in my writing would ask me to sleep with her to get my book published, but then again, that isn't something I'd go to a -publisher- for. I might go to a publisher for advice if I wanted to open a publishing company, but to find out how to get a book that sells, you go to an -author- who has been able to sell hir stuff... and that, right there, sets aside the issue of abuse. See, an author has no reason to set up that abuse angle, because the author gets nothing from the relationship except the satisfaction or some financial remuneration. If I get published, my mentor gets to claim some of the credit (rightfully), but she has no vested interest in my work, and I won't be depending on her for a job.
In the same way, in the professional world, I don't go to someone who would be -hiring- me for mentorship. I go to someone who does what I do and is successful at it. My mentor can't use "If you sleep with me, I'll hire you" as a threat/enticement, because he isn't in that kind of relationship to me. Yes, he has some authority/supervisory role towards me, because I've set myself up to have him look over what I'm doing and let me know where I'm off-track -- but he isn't in my chain of command, nor is he someone to whom I might someday answer... we're close enough in roles that he can help me make the transition, but too close to ever be in a superior/subordinate position to one another, which is why mentorship -works-.
This is why I've said, over and over again, that the biggest problem that I see with the whole issue of BDSM "mentorship" is that mentor and mentee should be from the -SAME- side of the kneel. That way, though there is still that supervisory aspect of assuring that everything is moving smoothly towards the mentee's goals, there is limited risk of abuse like you've mentioned. A submissive individual would get no benefit from saying "if you want to be a good submissive, you'll let me screw you, because how can you know if you can be dominated unless you let me screw you (or 'unless you obey me and go out and streetwalk to earn me money', or whatever).
It sounds to me like the problem isn't -mentorship-, per se, but using mentorship as an excuse to justify inappropriate behaviors or just not knowning what mentorship IS and how it works well enough to be able to say "Excuse me, but that -isn't- how mentorship operates." In a functional mentorship situation, the scope of the relationship itself, and the goals of that relationship (including the inculcated safeguards such as the mentor not being in a position to get anything aside from satisfaction or a designated and agreed-upon fee for providing hir resources) should be sufficient to minimize, if not completely prevent, abuse (which is how it works in just about every other community).
Dame Calla
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Said to me recently: "Look, I know you're the "voice of reason"... but dammit, I LIKE being unreasonable!!!!"
"Your mind is more interested in the challenge of becoming than the challenge of doing." Jon Benson, Bodybuilder/Trainer
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RE: The concept of mentoring - 
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