Principles and foundations

Greetings all,

One of my girls recently sent me an academic article which investigated the role of power in sexual motivation. IOW - to what extent did power figure into a desire, or lack of desire, to have sex.

What made this study of interest to me was the fact that it attempted to classify sex into two broad categories. The first was called "usual sex" and the second was called "unusual sex". Unusual sex being those activities that most people do not usual do when they are having sex.

For example, playing Scrabble or cleaning the silverware?

Not content with this rather artificial division, the study's authors went further by describing certain of these unusual activities as being either dominant or submissive. Dominant behaviours were either spanking someone or tying them up, and submissive behaviours were either being spanked or being tied up.

I have some problems with these definitions and labels.

Part of the problem that D/s people have is a lack of understanding by others when they try to describe what it means to be in a D/s relationship. This led me to think that before I write very much more here, it makes sense for me to develop some definitions for the terms I will be using in the future.

So here we go:

Power - power is complex because it refers to the ability to get things done the way one wants, but it also refers to the energy that is felt by both the Submissive and the Dominant when they interact. So on one hand, power is something that the dominant has, but it is also something both the Dominant and Submissive feel. How can this difference be reconciled? Simply by understanding that one is derived from the other. If there is no energy felt in the couple, then the Dominant has no power to control. One might ask what the value of the power is to the Submissive, since unlike with the Dominant, the power gives her no real control, if anything it takes control away. Again the answer is simple, for her, power is the energy she requires to perform the tasks, rituals, and disciplines she is assigned. The power energizes her behaviour.

Dominance - Dominance is a state of mind and behaviour. It is about control, manipulation, and possession. To dominate another is about having the power to control and modify their actions and behaviours. Strictly speaking, it has very little to do with sex, though perhaps not surprisingly people outsiders see it from this viewpoint.

Submission - Like dominance this is a state of mind. It is about service, structure, and dedication. To be submissive to gain satisfaction in the performance of tasks, rituals and disciplines for another. Again many confuse this with sex, but it really should be kept seperate. Many feel that to be submissive implies being passive, a doormat. Nothing could be further from the truth. The well-trained and developed submissive is vital, energized, capable of working on her own, and has strong opinions (and even stronger needs).

The D/s continuum - It is my belief that every person is disposed to being either submissive or dominant. It is also my belief that, in general, males tend to be more pre-disposed to dominance while females tend to seem to be genetically encoded to be submissive. Not all men and women fall into this category, but many do.

However, as with many other things, not everyone feels their dominant or submissive nature to the same extent. Simply put, some feel it much more deeply and intensely than others. This implies that there is a continuum of feeling here, from extremely submissive to extremely dominant. If we could assign a numerical value to this degree, I suspect the results would follow a normal curve, which is to say that the majority of the population would fall somewhere in the middle of the line (being mildly dominant or submissive) and that we would find fewer people near the extreme ends.

In my coming posts I will often refer back to this model.

BDSM - Many people are not aware that BDSM does not simply stand for Bondage, Discipline, Sado-Masochism. In fact, it refers to three different forms of interact 1) B&D, 2)D/s, 3)S&M. It is important to remember that these are very different things, even though many people will engage in all three at the same time. In particular it is important to remember that B&D, and S&M, are primarily sexual in nature. IOW - people do these things to arouse themselves and their partners. D/s, otoh, is much more about a lifestyle in which poeple live on a day to day basis.

IOW - do not confuse sexual fetish with ones lifestyle. I know many D/s couples who have rather vanilla sex lives, and I know many people who engage in S&M play who rarely display any sort of D/s behaviour outside of the playroom.

This is also something I will explore in the future.

BTW - the study I referred to concluded that power seemed to play a role for only a single partner in vanilla relationships (male - give me sex, female - you can't have sex), but in a D/s environment both partners felt they had power. Interesting, neh?

Be seeing you,