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1981 bettie_x's birthday. Spoil her.
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Theories: Artificial Vanilla Flavor Added |
Posted by
pixel on Tuesday, March 23, 2004 - 07:52 AM PST
You can pour as much artificial vanilla flavor on it as you want to, social interactions are all about Dominance and submission. Every time that two or more human beings interact, someone takes the lead and someone is led. The roles shift back and forth under normal circumstances, but there is always a necessary amount of domination and submission going on. If it were not so, nothing would ever get done.
Either nobody would be able to get a word in, or people would stare at one another waiting for someone else to initiate a simple coversation. This is the normal dynamic of being a social animal. It should come as a surprise then that so many people have issues about these necessary and natural interactions in their most intimate moments together. Almost nobody needs to read a book or become educated in D/s etiquette when they learn to speak with one another, but when their clothes come off they suddenly feel under-equipped to deal with the same issues that they never even think about any other time.
A lot of this stems from the fact that everyday D/s is understood perfectly well as the way things have to work. There is a tacit understanding that we can't all speak at once, that whomever is speaking has the floor, that this or that anecdote is "mine" and anything that can be added to it is done so with my approval and consent. Even when we disagree, we do so with the understanding that there will be a "winner" and a "loser", and that those roles are going to switch back and forth in the future the way they always have in the past. So the question becomes: what changes when you add a sexual context to topping and bottoming? Why are we suddenly concerned about how our interactions affect our "identities" when this happens? The answer might have to do with some very irrational attitudes we maintain regarding the terms we are using.
In public, we are often told to "master our emotions" (I have always preferred to mistress mine). By "mastering", we do not mean that we discipline or train ourselves. What is generally understood by everyone, is that to master one's emotions, one has to deny having any at all. You do not display your emotions, because you have in theory stopped experiencing them. If a person is caught having any kind of public emotional display, they are regarded as "weak". In this way, we have come to view Dominants as unfeeling but strong, and submissives as needy and weak. This is nonsense. An emotional cripple is poorly equipped to Dom(me) anyone, and some of the strongest and most noble people I know are lifestyle submissives. The problem is that it is one thing to acknowledge these misperceptions when we are fully dressed and Masters and Mistresses of our emotions, and as long as we are speaking hypothetically and about a third party, but it is quite another to confront our own natural and necessary natures when we are on our knees or administering the stern kisses of discipline to another.
We do not become different people in our sexual lives than we are in our social lives; it is merely that our perceptions of ourselves are that much more explicit in the former case. If you use the terms "Dominant" or "submissive" pejoratively in a social setting, it is clear that you do not yet grasp what it means to be a social animal. In practice, we are all switches regardless of how we prefer to identify ourselves. It does not diminish us in any way to acknowledge our submissive sides any more than it empowers us to face the fact that we are often called upon to Dominate. It is simply the way we are.
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Average Rating : 4.3
Total ratings : 3
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Artificial Vanilla Flavor Added | Login/Create an account | 18 Comments |
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Re: Artificial Vanilla Flavor Added
by Britva (britva1066@yahoo.com)
on Mar 23, 2004 - 11:20 AM
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Maybe it's just me, but I find the assertion that "social interactions are all about Dominance and submission" to be a little over-reaching. Your point that few people recognize the social power plays going on around them is well taken, and I'm not going to deny that many social interactions have a D/s flavor, but I think it's a stretch to extend this to situations like initiating a conversation or listening quietly while someone else is speaking. It seems like most of these social interactions are more about maintaining a power balance than exploring a power imbalance. Even if you did want to see these interacions in the context of D/s, though, it would be such a mild form as to be completely unrelated to most people's idea of Dominance and submission. I just saw the movie Secretary recently, and it strikes me that if you really want to see what a D/s interaction would look like in a social/professional setting, that's a pretty good example.
The main reason people are uncomfortable with D/s sexual relationships isn't necessarily because they have some kind of disconnect between their social and sexual selves (alliteration?) or because certain words have negative connotations. It's because most D/s play involves taking those D/s tendencies which, even if you experience them in your daily life, are pretty benign, and pushing them to their emotional and behavioral extreme. Like any other kind of extreme behavior, this turns some people way on and it turns others way off.
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Re: Artificial Vanilla Flavor Added
by feralucce (Iwouldliketokillyou@gofuckyourself.com)
on Mar 23, 2004 - 12:31 PM
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I agree to a certain extent... but I beleive that you are missing out onf the fact, that while we are animals, we have ego...
animals, being completely id, are all about dominance and submission. And we are primates, as such everything we do is Flavored with Dominance and submission... but you cannot genearalise that all of them are... some interactions are about comfort, joy, sorrow, or pleasure...
most people, being either dominant or submissive in nature do fall into those catagories, but know of at least 3 people that are niether...
Also... There are some people who do not submit, in any situation... there may be compliance, but that is not a form of submission...
You have outlined a purely instinctual form of interaction... but we are human... we have intellect that tempers all things...
Feral
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Re: Artificial Vanilla Flavor Added
by Squire-of-Gothos (Brian0049@hotmail.com)
on Mar 23, 2004 - 01:07 PM
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I'm going to have to agree. It seems that a power balance would be a more logical way of looking at social interaction. This coming from a self proclaimed dom, I really believe the best way to study a socialy mainstream use of sub and dom relations would be to look at religion and politcs, the oldest form of domination and submission.
It is this indirect form of domination that most people have come to be comfortable with, as a more direct form leads to uncomfortability. Most people are unwilling to acept an individual as these dominant, as they feel this is a violation of there social liberties, and that it is too intrusive and emotional.
But a domination in the form of a political party or stance, or a major polito/theocratic theme, or a deity, is far more indirect, and apeals to the broad nature most people prefer to govern their lives by.
Domination and submission on a smaller scale, in my opinion, only makes itself known in two situaions: Sex, i.e. BDSM relationships, and rare situations in which a two or more people, a clich one might say, has a central domiant person.
The former is a pure and emotioanlly (in a good situation) expression of the dom/sub dynamic. Whereas the former is often caused by the inherent lack of confidence, drive, or assertiveness of the sub/s in the clich, and the inhernt drive, need, or sadistic pleasure of the dom/s in said clich.
This lack of confidence, in the subs of the afromentioned clich, are often deeper and more direct, so they acept a dom that, though not sexual, will assume a leadership role of there conscious and subconscious. The insecurities of the subs is simialar, but less direct, to the inherent insecurities of those that give themselves, (in an extreme and full manner) freely to a domiannt religion or political party.
Of course being a sub to a christian god may not be bad; in fact, it may be just just what said Christian needs his or her life. But I am merely demonstrating on the Dom/Sub dynamic, as I see, in the nonsexual aspect of the term, as it aplies to our social structure.
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Re: Artificial Vanilla Flavor Added
by Geist (tattooedslacker@yahoo.com)
on Mar 23, 2004 - 02:34 PM
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I think the problem here is you're trying to take something much more complicated and boil it down to a nice little tidbit and it doesn't quite work that way. Humans, human emotions, and human behavior is a much more complicated subject.
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Re: Artificial Vanilla Flavor Added
by Abbadon on Mar 30, 2004 - 06:17 AM
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How many times do people have to tell you life isn't black and white before theories like this die out? It would be nice if life we're this simple, but it ain't. Fascists.
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