What do submissive gestures actually mean to you?

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What do submissive gestures actually mean to you? - 4/9/2010 6:22:20 AM

OrpheusAgonistes

Posts: 253
Joined: 3/29/2010
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Apologies if this is going over old ground--I spent half an hour or so with the search feature and couldn't find a previous thread that covered exactly what I want to ask. I've been thinking lately about traditions and conventions like kneeling, addressing Dominants by titles like Master/Mistress, saying "Yes Sir/Ma'am," and the like. I have absolutely no problem doing any of these things, but I do wonder what it means to other people out there. For me, much of the time, it's really just an issue of etiquette and tradition.

Years ago, when I was about 20, I was in what became a highly enjoyable sadomasochistic relationship with a girl roughly my age. I'd already been part of a "scene" and "served" a couple of women, so I was pretty aware of protocol and procedure. The first time we ever started to play together, we were at her place. The scenario was beginning to kick into full fabulous swing, and I knelt down and called her "Mistress." At that point, she slapped my face roughly, glared at me, and said "I. Do. Not. Want. Fucking. Call. And. Response." The slap was a gift. It really startled me out of my complacency and, for the first time since I had become involved in "the scene" with its customs and mores, I started to think about what the hell it even meant to me when I called someone by a title or proffered a submissive gesture with my body language.

For me, a title, a gesture, a pose, only has meaning within the context of a dynamic. There have been relationships where every time I said "Mistress" (or Princess, or, in one particularly eccentric case, Czaress) and every time I've knelt down or averted eye contact it has felt thrilling, sexy, slightly humiliating. But in general, just following the normal conventions of the lifestyle for the sake of tradition feels like gesture without force or urgency. Like call and response. Like an imaginary tea party. I'm willing to hum the tune I've been taught and play along, just out of politeness, just to keep the game going.

I guess I'm wondering for other submissives (and particularly for masochists who are not terribly submissive, like me) do you feel any innate value in the traditions and etiquette of the lifestyle, or do you agree that they only really have value as part of a vibrant dynamic? And when there is that dynamic, and things are fab and really clicking, then what do you feel?

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What I cannot create, I do not understand.--Feynman

Every sentence I have written here is the product of some disease.-- Wittgenstein