I hope it is OK to do this. This is a repost of something I wrote for and posted on The Comfy Chair group. But after I finished it I realized that it is after all a piece of critical theory, which actually isn't that surprising considering that's a lot of what I do for a living. Anyway I think it will be of interest to members of this group too.
Something I've noticed recently is that a number, I'd say a disproportionately large number, of Dommes on line adopt an attitude, and presumably behave in a manner, that can give kink a bad name, essentially announcing that, as they see it, It's All About Me, and they don't have to take into account the needs, interests, or well being of their subs.
Actually a lot of sub men on line in their different way play into this by making clear that they are just looking to be dominated by some Mistress, any Mistress at all. Thus you get arrogance and lack of consideration on one side and acceptance of what amounts to abuse on the other -- and mutual exploitation.
This too-common Domme view that You Subs Don't Count is often expressly stated from the Domme side along with the true sociological observation that there are a lot more male subs than there are Dommes, so the market allows the Dommes to demand what they please. (Look at the personals for Dommes on, e.g., collarme.com.)
And apparently what they please, or some of them please, is to be utterly self-centered. In the normal world you call people like that narcissistic assholes. I'm not sure the fact that we are kinky makes any difference in the accuracy of that description.
Perhaps I should explain that I am emerging from a five year, extremely intense 24/7 D/s BDSM relationship. She had to leave town for personal health-related reasons unconnected to us. We remain on friendly terms and communicate occasionally by email about what's going on in our lives and the world.
The relationship was was fairly, well, extremely, rocky at times, but she certainly took my well-being into account most of the time, or it wouldn't have lasted five years. I may be a sub, but I'm not a doormat, and I don't know why I would want to devote myself to the service of someone who didn't care about me and who regarded me as utterly fungible, someone (something?) whose value to her was entirely one-sided. And yet too many Dommes actually advertize that this is their view, as even superficial on-line research will show.
Am I wrong to say it's "too many" if it's acceptable to the sub men who crave domination by someone -- and for whom, symmetrically, it doesn't really matter by whom as long as she will maked them submit? On one hand I'm fairly libertarian, I don't care whatever floats your boat, as long as it doesn't harm me. (This actually does harm me -- I will explain in a minute.) But on the other hand . . . .
No, I think I am not wrong. we're not talking about a preference for leather or a distaste for scat play that some people might have or not the way they might like Picasso but not Mondrian.
De gustibus non disputandum est. But this isn't taste, it's ethics and the kind of aesthetics that matter. It's just wrong to treat others as mere means only, even if the others "consent" to it -- if you believe Kant that is the definition of what "wrong" is -- and it's an ugly and unpleasant attitude that makes you a nasty and debased person who is, in fact, unworthy to be served. It gives this thing that we do a bad name.
And (this is how it harms me) it makes it much harder to find a caring relationship of any sort if the bar is set by women who are basically often self-described bitches and acceded to by men who think that submission means they don't count.
It's unethical and ugly for the men too -- to treat a Domme as mere means to dominating them, to treat women as essentially interchangeable givers of orders and beatings. Dommes might reflect that men who serve them in this way don't care about them as people any more than they care about the men they use as people. Is that really how you want your slaves to see you?
There's a lot of discussion about the topic of false consent to exploitative domination, but if you transpose it into the context of race you immediately see the problem. Justice Taney, in the the Dredd Scott case, wrote that blacks had no interests that whites need take into consideration. That wasn't one of the high points of our nation's legal and social history. And no doubt Taney thought that the slaves (real, chattel slaves, human property) were happy with that arrangement -- he was wrong, but if he was right doesn't that make it worse, not better? Do we want to make the Taney rule the basis for D/s relations among kinky people?
I disagree with a lot of Catherine MacKinnon's ideas, but she's got this nailed dead on in her discussion in Feminism Unmodified of the (more usual in our society) "voluntary" submission to patriarchy. In her world economic and psychological dependence of women on men makes them adapt their prefences to desire to be treated like doormats.
In our world, where the power relations are reversed by the economies of desire, this leads to some (too many) dominant women to just take advantage of a favorable market to act like jerks, hell, to be jerks; and to too many submissive men not merely putting up with but actively desiring such treatment, and in both cases without concern for the other as a person as a person.
I know that identifying the problem won't make it go away; the incentives created by the imbalance of numbers just brings out the worst in many people. But I haven't seen the issue discussed frankly, apart from some fairly mechanical lip service to the way loving dominants (ought to) care for their submissives.
And it can't hurt (in a bad way) to identify and explain the problem and say why it's wrong. Most people who aren't narcissistic sociopaths (in plain English, assholes) really do want to do good and don't want to be exploitative, so maybe making the point often and loudly in many different ways will diminish the temptation to take advantage of others or their willingness to be taken advantage of.
Wanting to -- insisting on -- being treated as a person, as an end in yourself -- is completely consistent with total submission, complete obedience, voluntary servitude. It is really the basis for the real thing because it's grounded in the trust that's built when you know that Mistress actually cares about you and would never knowingly and intentionally direct you to do something that would be harmful to you physically, psychologically, or otherwise.
Isn't that better than the sort of submission that one associates with a bad employment situation of the sort that one finds at creepy corporations, large law firms, or in the minimum wage world of unskilled labor -- obedience enforced by the knowledge that you can be immediately replaced -- rule, essentially, by fear?
And if you would prefer to be feared than loved, if you embrace being the sort of person who doesn't think she has to concern herself with the well-being of the people who willingly (in some sense of willingly) try to make your life better, what kind of person are you? What, indeed, are you? (Same question, necessary changes being made, for sub men.)
