TravisTJustice
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"It was much pleasanter at home," thought poor Alice, "when one wasn't always growing larger and smaller, and being ordered around by mice and rabbits. I almost wish I hadn't gone down that rabbit-hole--and yet--and yet--it's rather curious, you know, this sort of life?!" -- from Alice In Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
I love to think of BDSM as like that rabbit-hole. Entering it is, as Alice observes, a challenge to all her perceptions of the world she knows and feels comfortable with at home. In many respects, online BDSM is a world in which one could find themself "ordered around by mice and rabbits". In Alice's case she found it all curious at first and this curiosity led her deeper down the rabbit hole. At its most basic level, it isn't Alice's dealings with the mice and rabbits that matter but rather her own beliefs about everything and, not insignificantly, her conviction to those beliefs.
Our "beliefs" are fundamental to our natures and extend far beyond our religious or political convictions regardless of what they might be. They are in a sense at the core of our being and they drive our every thought and action from the habitual things we think or do with varying levels of conviction or certainty to instincts to habits acquired through experience and learning. Alice thought things were much pleasanter at home because she knew what things meant there. Her beliefs (instincts, habits, learned experiences, etc.) endured comfortably until she headed off down the rabbit hole.
Alice In Wonderland and Through The Looking Glass obviously weren't intended to be metaphors for online BDSM (or RT BDSM for that matter) but it is interesting how many BDSM discussion groups around the world will call themselves names such as "Looking Glass" or "Reflections" or some other similar group title that bespeaks of mirrors, particularly insofar as they might be a portal into some kind of parallel world where things don't always mean what you think they mean. Carroll himself (IIRC) challenged the real life Alice to question whether an orange he once gave her to hold was held in her left or right hand. I forget which she said, but he then told her to look at herself in a mirror and answer again and, of course, the orange then appeared as if it was held in the opposite hand.
If we want to get all introspective and "reflective" about our own natures, then Carroll's stories provide a wealth of metaphor and analogy we can use. I realize this thread is about "words" and the problem of semantics with various titles and labels used in BDSM, but I think the problem isn't so much with what other people use to communicate their "beliefs" but rather our interpretation of and subsequent effect on own own set of beliefs and convictions. Simple logic (an underlying theme of Carroll's works) says our interpretations of any communication are dependant on the way we deal with facts and then the inferences drawn from them. When Alice first meets the Duchess she finds her in the kitchen and in a very bad mood. That's a fact. The next time Alice again meets up with the Duchess, the Duchess is now in a very pleasant mood, which is also a fact:
"You can't think how glad I am to see you again, you dear old thing!" said the Duchess, as she tucked her arm affectionately into Alice's and they walked off together.
Alice was very glad to find her in such a pleasant temper and thought to herself that it was only the pepper that had made her so savage when they met in the kitchen.
"When I'm a Duchess," she said to herself (not in a very hopeful tone, though), "I won't have any pepper in my kitchen at all. Soup does very well without--Maybe it's always pepper that makes people hot-tempered," she went on, very much pleased at having found out a new kind of rule, "and vinegar that makes them sour--and chamomile that makes them bitter--and--and barley-sugar and such things that make children sweet-tempered. I only wish people knew that: then they wouldn't be so stingy about it, you know----"
Alice took the two facts she'd experienced to draw a whole series of inferences which in turn led to her conclusion ("a new kind of rule") to help shape her perception of the Duchess.
If somebody presents themself as a "Master" online, even before any semantic games are played with the word itself, people will by nature draw all manner of inferences from it. An inference is a mental judgement, not just about what something is, but what it means and what it implies. If experience has created a belief that "people who call themselves Master are usually posuers and wannabes" then the inference will be drawn again, thus reinforcing an existing belief for the observer. If however it's taken as a fact at face value, inferences will still be drawn and assumptions made, but they are more likely to be based on other observations with that particular person rather than closing off the decision making process about that person. Perhaps what I'm trying to say is when a person affirms their belief based on an assumption, it says more about the person making that assumption than it does about the person presenting themself by that self-proclaimed title. If it's also true that the Master character presents themself this way in order to validate a belief of their own, by rejecting it out of hand such as is done when no further interaction occurs, does nothing to confirm or deny that person's belief of themself. It may not even confirm or deny the observer's own beliefs and convictions about themself, in the same way as Alice could just as easily have continued living blissfully unaware in the more pleasanter world she knew before she went down the rabbit hole.
The jury scene between the King and the Knave is one which has parallels in online judgements of people:
The king turned pale, and shut his note-book hastily. "Consider your verdict," he said to the jury in a low trembling voice.
"There's more evidence to come yet, please your Majesty," said the White Rabbit, jumping up in a great hurry: "this paper has just been picked up."
"What is in it?" said the Queen.
"I haven't opened it yet," said the White Rabbit: "in fact, there's nothing written on the outside." He unfolded the paper as he spoke, and added "It isn't a letter, after all: it's a set of verses."
"Are they in the prisoner's handwriting?" asked another of the jurymen.
"No, they're not," said the White Rabbit, "and that's the queerest thing about it." (The jury all looked puzzled.)
He must have imitated somebody else's hand," said the King. (The jury all brightened up again.)
"Please your Majesty," said the Knave. "I didn't write it, and they can't prove that I did: there's no name signed at the end."
"If you didn't sign it," said the King, "that only makes the matter worse. You must have meant some mischief, or else you'd have signed your name like an honest man."
There was a general clapping of hands at this: it was the first really clever thing that the King had said that day.
The King believes the Knave is guilty of "something" and he already has made up his mind how the case should turn out. The "facts" here, none of which appear to provide any evidence against the Knave, are used not to determine the guilt or innocence of the Knave, but to explain and validate the pre-existing beliefs of the King.
In this sense and relating it to BDSM online (or elsewhere), the Knave could be anybody, but let's say for the sake of argument it's somebody who presents themself as a Master and that the King in this case is a slave whose attentions are sought by that Master. The jury could be the rest of us here on the boards who are brought into things after the "King" posts a message about "all Knaves have assumptions about me." The King's (slave's) statement, made as fact, is based on a whole bunch of prior experiences that were all happy ones in which Knaves ("Masters") followed a routine and predictable set of protocols in making contact. In other words, the King ("slave") has, based on experience, already established for themself the belief that all Master/slave situations are entered into with expectations of things being or proceeding in certain established ways. Let's say the Knave ("Master") has merely made an approach that doesn't meet pre-conceived expectations. It is unreasonable by all but the craziest of standards (The King in Alice In Wonderland) to condemn the Knave ("Master") by selectively using information that fits with their pre-conceived beliefs and excluding or explaining away that which doesn't.
This is a great thread and thanks to the OP for suggesting it.
"It just keeps getting curiouser and curiouser..."
Travis T.
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"It's a travesty, I tell ya! A travesty!" -- Foghorn Leghorn (Loony Tunes)
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RE: The Trouble with Words - 
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