With Great Power...

As I've mentioned before, my first trip off into bondage and kink wasn't as a Dom - it was as a submissive. I learned many things from her, both simple and profound. That is the first time I ever remember being uncomfortable with things around my neck, for example; I can't say for sure it started then, though it's the first time I have a clear memory of it. She introduced me to the idea of BDSM fiction, which I guess goes to show how innocent I was at the time (remember, this was many years before 50 Shades!). She taught me a fair amount about bondage - though not as much as you might think, since I'd been practicing knots and lashings in the Boy Scouts for more than a decade beforehand. She taught me my earliest lessons about sadism, about limits, about pain and about how to avoid injuring people. The most important lesson she taught me, however, was about how not to be a Dom.

My original domme - we'll call her Suzanne - was terrible, and it took me about a year to really figure that out. Suzanne was beautiful, charismatic, fun, energetic... But she was also harsh, selfish, capricious, unpredictable, difficult, moody, and arrogant - and she used people. It's very hard for a lot of people to separate the idea of "use" from the equation, because it's hard for them to imagine a situation where a person may enjoy or encourage treating them as a submissive - that "using a person" isn't the only possible scenario in this area - but even with a willing sub, a bad dom(me) can step over the line. Suzanne had the potential to be a good Domme, but instead, she was selfish.

Suzanne was selfish; she felt entitled to be served. She honestly felt that she was better than her subs, that she was owed service rather than deserving or being given it, and it's a perfect example of what Ash's - my fiance's - biggest problem seems to be with dominants: too many dominants feel entitled, and a sense of entitlement is invariably the sign of a bad dom.

One of the books I'm reading right now, coincidentally, just had a brief discussion related to this: it was a woman trying to explain the meaning of salutes and bowing to a totally alien being. She said they were a sign of respect. The alien responded suggesting they were signs of submission; the woman's reply was that they aren't solely signs of submission towards the person receiving the salute, because they also imply acknowledgement of responsibility. It's a remarkably clear description of how I feel about D/s relationships: they aren't one way.

When it comes down to it, D/s relationships are not about one person being better than the other, they aren't about one person being entitled to the service, they aren't about one person submerging their wants, needs and desires in favour of the other. They're about *both* people getting something. Very different things - one may get service and the other the chance to serve - but still *something*. What the dominant gets is usually very easy to understand, the submissive less so; but it's there in any healthy relationship.

I suppose, when I say "are not about...", what I really mean is "should not be". When they are about one person being better than the other, that's when they slip into use or abuse; that's when you get people like Suzanne. And of course, it's not always that clear-cut; switches are probably more common than purely dominant or purely submissive people. People can fall on both sides of this, depending on what they need.

I personally always insist, with anyone who comes to me for advice, that any dom(me) should try being a submissive first. Not so they can be abused or unhappy; simply to increase the chance that they don't take a sub for granted. There are a lot about "naturally dominant" people, who serially take subs and refuse to ever look closely at the situations they're creating... And it always makes me sad. Too many of them are the problem - too many of them are the cause of society's poor view of BDSM in general. Bad dom(me)s certainly offer a lot to society; but the only positive things they offer are object lessons.

Being a dominant is a responsibility. There are lots of jokes that can be made - the classic Spider Man quote is trite, but still true. A dominant tends to have far more explicit power in the relationship; but with that power comes the obligation to *use it to the benefit of the submissive*. This is a topic I could go off on for hours... And probably will at some point. It is, however, the most important thing to drive home to any new Dom - you're doing it wrong if you don't enjoy it, but if your sub doesn't enjoy it as well, you're doing worse than just making a mistake.

There's a lot of terms for D/s relationships: top/bottom, dominant/submissive, master/slave, power exchange, and various others. I think the best description I've heard, though, is "asymmetric"; because what there is is a difference. Not better, not worse, not more or less important... Just different.

As a closing thought, I'll leave you with this quote:

What separates privilege from entitlement is gratitude.

-Brené Brown