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NihilusZero -> The Manipulation Manifesto (11/17/2009 8:22:38 PM)
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Manipulation: An Assistive Guide for the Dominant
In this narrative I'll be going into the inherent dangers that choosing a D/s or BDSM lifestyle or kink or facet can bring for the dominant partner. The focus on extensive responsibility (even to overrule that of others) is obviously pervasive, but the primary concern here lies in the potential for demonization after a bad break-up with a sub and the ever-prevalent accusation of being a "manipulator" and a "user". I will, throughout this writing, refer to this process as M.A. (manipulation accusation).
This is based in part on mentalities I have seen supported in this thread and in other places, privately and publicly. And while the continuing straw man brought forth against these points is one of suggesting that these views amount to no more than the view of 'Dom infallibility', this has nothing to do with whether a dominant can be wrong. Obviously any party in a relationship can be "wrong", but the context of what defines "wrong" in a relationship (especially in a D/s and/or WIITWD relationship) is consent. Not moral norms, not legal support, not popularity contests or votes, but consent and, from that concept, the presumption that all adult parties are capable of it (whether they want to absolve themselves of it later or not).
While the underlying tone of this piece may be slightly tongue in cheek at times, the points behind it are absolutely serious and are something that dominants (particularly new dominants) should know and understand about the predominant state and tone of the community we inhabit. This does not mean everyone views D/s in this manner...only that enough people do to make it a concern for any person desiring to be at the D pole of a relationship.
The Beginning:
To start with, we should clarify the main concern: manipulation. Specifically, the fact that "manipulation" is a phantom accusation when used post-break-up. It is the twisting of past events to put responsibility for the actions that happened on one individual, presumably because a) the other had a compromised mental state, and b) the D-type should have known about that status and chosen to nullify the s-type's consent.
Essentially, when we boil down M.A., it is a rewording of two things:
1) "Someone made me do something I agreed to do but then decided was not good after having done it or chosen it."
2) "I did the things I did and chose to do them because my ability to maturely consent was compromised."
Manipulation is willingly choosing do so something for someone and then deciding at a later date that you wish you hadn't. Furthermore, it is manipulation because the person you did this for should have presumably known better than to trust that you could actually consent to what you were doing and should have instead forbidden you from doing the very thing you chose to do.
While I'm sure there may be some rare occasions where manipulation is a sensible label (though, those instances would usually be called something else: like coercion, or drugging, or something beginning with 'non-consensual'...), I have yet to think of any that would realistically qualify unless there is a definitive clinical biological issue with the person. The drugging part is a particularly interesting parallel as the core argument from those would support M.A. is that natural emotional (and perhaps subtle biological) occurrences in us can act as the equivalent of drugs; that an emotional trauma one may have suffered in the past can absolve someone of clarity of thought in the very same way that being given a date rape drug can. The important thing to realize is that, as the dominant, the presumption of M.A. will treat you as if you had mixed said chemical into an s-type's drink if you are/were not acutely able to discern if the s-type is or is not compromised before you engage in interactions with hir.
Because of this, the prevailing mindset is that the onus is on the dominant, not the submissive, to avoid M.A. by understanding the mental and emotional state of the s-type before even beginning to assume that "yes means yes".
Consent:
I am proposing (based on the concern over M.A.) that, as a dominant, the general assumption you should adopt (particularly in the case of newer s-types) is that they cannot consent and/or cannot understand what it is they are consenting to. It's your responsibility, as the dominant, not to just take an s-type's assurance of ability to consent at face value, but you must also scrutinize and analyze whether that admission is true or false as well as whether it will be true or false in the future.
This introduces us to one of the key parts of this debacle: the "doormat syndrome". While you will more commonly find the term "doormat" used as a means by which certain s-types can decry how they do not want their humanity threatened, it is much more subtly potent in terms of M.A. This refers specifically to the phenomenon upon which new s-types (or even more experienced ones) check their brains at the door of D/s because it is unfamiliar emotional territory and therefore (it's argued) they lose all ability to make informed decisions. Self-understanding is substituted by naiveté as an alibi.
The peer pressure of playing the role of a "good submissive" is often cited as reason for the occurrence of this syndrome as if D/s relationships are emotionally any different in potency or variety than normal ones. I'm not sure how accepted and coddled the notion of a woman staying married to her continually cheating husband would be as supported by the idea that she was confused (manipulated) into trying to be a "good wife", but clearly this is an issue where the apparent novelty of something...anything in an s-type's life not only potentially renders hir incompetent in the decision-making arena for that issue, but can retro-actively absolve hir of being responsible since xhe had a compromised set of critical thinking skills and, therefore, a compromised ability to consent. Unfortunately, there is no table by which we can tally up the bad events a person has experienced in order to see if it shows they've crossed the threshold of non-sensible consent, but it seems any element is worth noting: bad relationships in the past, rough family upbringing, being picked on at school, previous sexual assault, history of drug use and abuse (just to name a few). It's one thing to understand that bad events happen to everyone and that such means we should be understanding of how personal baggage affects each of us, but these are situations where it is proposed that sufficient bad things eliminate the logical capacity to consent.
It appears to be presumed that all submissive are at least prone to the "doormat syndrome": an affliction that (as we discussed), in this specific niche of relationships, renders their critical thinking null. You should proceed with the presumption that the submissive has checked hir brain at the door of WIITWD because xhe is incapable of differentiating between what xhe actually wants and what the BDSM community peer pressure phenomenon requires of hir. To presume that a submissive actually knows what xhe wants and can divine those things irrelevant of personally-imposed fantasy projections of what xhe thinks xhe should be is actually its own form of naiveté and, unfortunately, dominants are not afforded the ability to be the victims of manipulation to the degree s-types are. We're about to see why and why it is of major importance to be vigilant of falling prey to that presumption.
Manipulation is a One-Way Street:
One of the more logically perplexing innuendos wrought from this all is the mindset that M.A. is a role-specific issue. This means that, as the dominant, you are entirely responsible for every action that takes place between both parties. This is a byproduct of the "doormat syndrome". You have to be able to understand that when dealing with a submissive who views D/s like this, you are essentially being handed over ethical control of their ability to consent...meaning, the s-type's consent dissolves and disappears into your decision and it then becomes your responsibility to predict if the s-type will at one day in the future regret relinquishing that to you based on the decisions you make. The reason this becomes difficult to handle is because it is possible that the consent you think has been surrendered to you is actually illusory, because if the s-type was suffering from the "doormat syndrome", then xhe never actually had consent to give you, effectively putting you in the spotlight for the M.A. if you took the s-type's acts/words at face value. As dominants are considered to be empowered by their role in the relationship, only s-types will usually qualify as being seen to suffer manipulation at the hands of another.
Consider the following example:
A dominant demands things of a hypothetical s-type presuming that the s-type wants Hir to show such an authority dynamic because the D-type thinks the s-type loves Hir and wants Hir as the s-type's precious controller and then, once they are no longer together, the s-type actually says xhe never wanted to do any of those things.
Was the dominant in this scenario manipulated or was the submissive?
The fact you'll have to get used to is that the predominant view is that the dominant was the manipulator and it won't matter if you, as the dominant, genuinely thought the sub wanted to give you the things you demanded because it was an indication of the s-type's devotion and/or because it might be the kind of thing xhe was in to.
Preferences and Consequences:
A dominant should advance upon the courtship of a submissive (particularly new ones) with the presumption that xhe does not actually know herself or what she wants. At least, it would appears that case is more common than the converse, so the onus will still be on you, as the dominant, to seek out only those s-types who can more articulately and clearly voice what they want. Otherwise, you run the risk of making requests or pushing boundaries that will be subjectively labeled as "too far" when the relationship is over.
Forget for a moment that every individual gets to determine for himself or herself which things they like and which they don't. You have to be keenly aware that, even in a community that is built on doing socially unacceptable things, there are things you may want that could be a further level of 'badness' below the rest.
There are ways to avoid possible repercussions of M.A. based on where you fall in the spectrum of extreme kinks and wants. Keep in mind that the more uncommon a kink of yours is, the less safe you will be post-breakup. As many s-types appear prone to the "doormat syndrome", you cannot actually be sure of which acts an s-type is consenting to happily or which xhe is consenting to unhappily. To further compound the problem, you have to be able to have clairvoyance to gauge if the s-type, once the relationship is over, will regret any of the acts that xhe had previously consented to.
Unfortunately, there is no universal chart to distinguish which extreme acts/kinks/wants are likely to cause you troubles and which will pass over normally. Although there is by no means a definite list, be wary of relationships with s-types if you happen to be in to any of the following:
* Sexually sharing your partner with others.
* Micromanagement of the s-type's interaction with friends and family
* Body modifications that are irreversible (yes, that will sometimes even include tattoos)
* Pain play to a heavy threshold and daring to push that perimeter.
* Requiring change of anything considered a "core value".
- These things are often, but not limited to: ability to vote, philosophical views, religious views, moral rewiring, weight adjustments (reducing or increasing).
The reason these types of acts are more likely to bring you M.A, consequences is because as humans, we naturally categorize some thing as more socially acceptable and other things as not. You'll find that many people who have been in the WIITWD community, even for a good while, still have a dichotomy view of things that are "acceptable" and things that are not based on their own personal moralities. The hypocrisy of this, however, is that they themselves are engaging in acts that many others would categorize as "unacceptable" while still morally castigating someone for having a deviant wish, even if they are doing it mutually consensually, that lies outside of their comfort bubble.
A good place to see examples of this is in discussions surrounding M/s relationships or total authority transfers or, as the more common acronym describes it, TPE (total power exchange) relationships, because those dynamics are much more pervasive and (depending on the viewer) invasive, based on how protective someone is of certain parts of themselves.
So, keep in mind that most people, simply by virtue of them being involved in BDSM and D/s and wanting to test the waters, are not actually entirely open-minded about the experiences they will encounter or choose. To use the adage, some people just like to complain about the heat they endured when they chose to enter the kitchen. And, if both you (as the dominant) and they were equally new or if you had more D/s or BDSM experience, M.A. will fall on your shoulders because of the notion of the s-type not being able to say for themselves when things were going beyond their figurative safeword.
Closure:
All people do it but, compounded M.A., the "villainy syndrome" becomes multiplied. By villainy syndrome I speak of the inherent predisposition of most humans to gain closure from bad breakups by demonizing the former partner. Getting over someone is much easier when you can convince yourself that they were evil all along and that your awareness of such was clouded by emotional fluffiness. Psychologically, it serves a useful function when it happens, but we also need to understand how this contributes to M.A.
With s-types, this is precisely where the "doormat syndrome" and the subsequent M.A. get magnified, as they both transition into default pillars for the "villainy syndrome". The "doormat syndrome" places the s-type in a place where xhe is the victim because hir role was supposed to be as subservient to the D-type and because xhe'd apparently checked hir scruples at the door when entering the dynamic. The nature of the D/s dynamic inherently shows off the D-type as the rein-holder, which is a symbolically easy picture to parallel, in transition, that that of Hir being the big, bad D-type once things have gone south.
Reiterating a point from my earlier prologue, this isn't about blame or error. We again have to keenly understand what we dealt with in the 'Preferences' section. Another hypothetical example:
There are two separate couples in D/s relationships. On one night, each couple decides to take their private play into a new territory where they try action X. Both D-type and s-type of Couple A end up performing action X in mutually expressed consent/enjoyment and, for years after, end up performing it over and over. Both D-type and s-type of Couple B end up performing action X in mutually expressed consent/enjoyment and, for years after, end up performing it over and over. At a certain date down the line, both Couple A and B break up.
The s-type of Couple A decides she still actually enjoys action X and keeps it as a part of herself she wants to transition into further relationships.
The s-type of Couple B, however, looks back in shame upon having engaged in action X and declares it as indicative of the fact that M.A. occurred.
As we can see, there is nothing universally and inherently wrong with action X. What makes it "good" or "bad" is based on how perennially positive and consented to it is within the relationship. As participants in WIITWD, it behooves us to realize that this is the foundation of what we do: the understanding that YKINMK (your kink is not my kink) and that consent trumps all. If we call every instance of having done something we regret where our partner didn't dissuade us from doing it "manipulation", then we may as well each be M.A. perpetrators.
Again, though, as a dominant, it comes back to being able to magically divine which acts may be cause for M.A. in the future based on every possible emotional event, some of which were listed earlier.
Wrap Up:
The important thing here is to understand M.A., as a dominant. As mentioned earlier, perhaps you could point out this thread to your prospective sub and find out hir views on things. Because if a submissive can consent to doing what you want and still paint you as a manipulator if the ending doesn't go the way xhe would have liked, then you can't really genuinely trust the capacity for consent of anyone. At very least, you will need to isolate the characteristics that show you that a person actively takes responsibility for the choices they make and demonstrates a clear divergence from habitually using M.A.
Or you could get really lucky and happen to find someone you just mesh with near-ideally to where these issues never come up because you don't have any kinks/wants/requests that fall out of the s-type's threshold or you ,as the dominant, actually succumb enough to the subtle TFTB (topping from the bottom) that would keep you from asking things you may really want but which you know would drive your s-type away and possibly to M.A.
We are creatures of polarity. We create for ourselves heroes and villains, instead of people with wants that happen to conflict with ours. Those who have more extreme wants gets pushed into discriminatory bins: the D-types into the box of M.A. and usury if Xhe dares to demand/request the things Xhe wants, and the s-types (the ones who actually want the extreme things without the interest in M.A.) into the box of mental incompetence for wanting the things most others would find abhorrent.
So, in the end, M.A. is not an issue of blame...but an issue of missed compatibility in which one party tries to find a scapegoat for why things went horribly wrong. Every one of us seeks to get out of relationships the things we desire...we are all inevitably hedonistic in that sense, even if our hedonism travels in an altruistic vehicle.Yet, if we are to be at all true to the standards we appear to want for ourselves, then we should, at all costs, encourage and demand the understanding from each individual here that self-understanding and self-responsibility are flatly expected. There are hardly any real test-runs for parenthood, but it is expected that the event of becoming soon a parent makes one responsible for making mature and sensible choices based on it if one is an adult. D/s is no different. Not being ready for the figurative baby and/or not understanding the responsibilities you should have understood when choosing that path are no excuse for acting foolishly. Not taking the time to understand yourself enough to know what you want is not grounds to blame someone else for the audacity to think you were mature enough to know it.
Nosce te ipsum.
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