Yep, I’m definitly not a real domme :)
Ferns posted a short note recently about her expectations of submissive partners. I have to say, my response surprised me. Logically, I could reason my way into “sure, yes, they want to submit, maybe they should do things you ask for even when they don’t want to.” Hell, I have to assume that sometimes, when a boy who is comfortably sleeping wakes up to my bouncing and makes me coffee, or when my now ex partner waited some 50 odd days for an orgasm in part due to my insistence, at some points that is what someone acting against their wishes looks like.
My gut response though, is a resounding WTF? You are playing with an adult presumably in a country with laws similar to our 13th Amendment. Your play happens in the real world. Anything short of respecting your partner’s boundaries is coercion at best. If you have an issue around trust that’s resulting from your partner breaking commitments, you have an issue around trust. That’s totally valid, I’ve had that issue, it sucks. But it’s not a BDSM issue. Hell, I was going to have less interest in other people’s relationships, so I should walk away.
Personally, I’ve said before and I’ll say again, I’m not your mother. I’m not here to Domme you into your fitness routine or getting to work on time. The power dynamic I bring to my sex is a core part of what I need in my sex life and in my long term relationships, but ultimately, I want to date, and sleep with, an adult. And I’d like to do it in the real world and save the LARPing for the future dystopian swamp lands it belongs in.
Kink in exile 
There is a long distance between a power-exchange that includes doing things that are not first-and-foremost on my gee-I’d-love-to-do-it list and being someone’s mother. Just because I don’t get a thrill from doing the dishes, but will do it when told to by Mistress Delila, doesn’t make it a violation of any boundaries whatsoever. In fact, it affirms those boundaries because we have agreed beforehand that she can do exactly that, and expect me to obey without giving her lip.
I’ve heard people talk about this idea of the other partner not having to do anything they don’t want to do. I honestly have no idea how that would work. I’ve been married twice, in vanilla terms, and there was a great deal of doing things we didn’t like on all sides. I absolutely hate doing car maintenance, but we didn’t have money to take it to a garage and the car has to be taken care of. She didn’t like doing laundry, but it would have been useless to do laundry when my hands were greasy from the car. Part of being an adult is to do things that you don’t necessarily want to do, but need to be done.
When you add a D/s layer on top of that, then of course the /s type is going to be doing things they don’t like. Perhaps they will be doing more of the “I don’t like it” things than the D/ type, but that is within the confines of their relationship and what they each feel comfortable with. When I do something that I don’t like because I know it will please Mistress Delila, I actually end up getting something out of doing something that would otherwise just be a chore – I get to affirm our relationship and show her that I love her. How is that a bad thing?
I wrote about this a while back: http://masculinesubmission.wordpress.com/2012/08/20/to-enjoy-or-not-to-enjoy/
Tomio Hall-Black
October 24, 2013 at 4:55 am
I had to run out this morning, and I forgot to say this:
If you disagree with everything I said, and everything Ferns said, and everything everyone else in the world said about what it means to be a Dominant partner – it’s fine. It doesn’t mean you aren’t “real.” It just means you are different.
Tomio Hall-Black
October 24, 2013 at 12:45 pm
Hey Tomio, honestly, I don’t think we’re disagreeing all that much. Relationships involve compromise on all sides. I just also think that D/s comes after reality (or layered on top) and whatever compromises both partners make. However you solve for living in the real world, you still have to solve for living in the real world if you want a sustainable and healthy relationship.
kinkinexile
October 24, 2013 at 9:33 pm
Oh, actually this is a really good post about not pulling the “but I’m the mistress” card unless it’s the appropriate time for said card: http://maybemaimed.com/2007/09/13/how-not-to-fuck-up-a-ds-relationship/
kinkinexile
October 24, 2013 at 9:46 pm
[…] Domme made an incredible list of her House Rules recently and it brought a tear to my eye; and Kink in Exile and Ferns have also both written about rules and their relationships to […]
My Domme skills need work. Or do they? | A Dissolute Life Means...
October 24, 2013 at 10:16 am
And the fact that people like Ferns, Tomio, et. al. don’t seem to grok or actualize this is what makes them, at their core, no different than rapists.
Just because they wrap their coercion up in a pretty rhetorical framework doesn’t make it magically different.
In the rest of the world, people who don’t agree with what KinkInExile is saying are called rapists. If you call yourself a dominant and you disagree with what KinkInExile is saying, what you are is a rapist who calls yourself a dominant. This doesn’t change depending on how many times you stopped when someone safeworded.
maymay
October 24, 2013 at 10:55 pm
You cheapen the word rape by comparing it to ANY consensual activity, even a consensual activity that I might not enjoy as much as my partner.
You once got pissy with me because I said we were friendly, claiming I didn’t know you well enough to say that. Well, it’s time to wear the shoe you are putting on everyone else’s foot. You don’t know me well enough to say things like this.
I don’t “grok” anything because that’s an entirely made up word without any real meaning. I UNDERSTAND what rape is, and what it isn’t. Rape is NOT doing something for which someone has already obtained consent for.
I challenge you to find one single instance where I said it is okay to continue after someone used a safeword. The examples I used are “car maintenance” and “washing dishes” and “doing laundry.”
If you can’t find me claiming that safewords should be ignored; then I would imagine that an adult would apologize for making such a horrendous and offensive accusation. I hold little hope of that from you.
Tomio Hall-Black
October 25, 2013 at 7:12 am
No, Tomio. You cheapen the word rape by treating consent like a contract. Everything you wrote in your comments makes this blatantly clear. Great example: “already obtained consent for.” You don’t understand rape because you obviously don’t understand consent.
I wrote “this doesn’t change depending on how many times you stopped when someone safeworded.” I didn’t write what you seem to be replying to, which is “this doesn’t change even if you only didn’t stop once.” Are you just angry at me or is your reading comprehension really that piss-poor?
You, and the people like you who believe the way you do, are fundamentally treating consent like contracts people enter into instead of core aspects of how to engage with autonomous human beings, and my point is that this is the same fundamental way rapists behave. Truth hurts, my “friend.”
If that strikes a nerve with you, which it seems to have done, maybe that’s because I’m on to something you’re unwilling to admit. And, by the way, this is one reason we are not friends.
Get it through your fucking skull. ‘Til then, don’t dare assume friendship with me. You are a mental cancer to submissives everywhere.
maymay
October 25, 2013 at 9:55 am
[…] reason I am bringing this up is that I was accused, point blank, of being “no different than rapists” because I defended the F/m dynamic that Mistress Delila and I have. Yes, I said that Mistress […]
Rape | Masculine Submission
October 25, 2013 at 9:44 am
No, Tomio. You cheapen the word rape by treating consent like a contract. Everything you wrote in your comments makes this blatantly clear. Great example: “already obtained consent for.” You don’t understand rape because you obviously>/em> don’t understand consent.
I wrote “this doesn’t change depending on how many times you stopped when someone safeworded.” I didn’t write what you seem to be replying to, which is “this doesn’t change even if you only didn’t stop once.” Are you just angry at me or is your reading comprehension really that piss-poor?
You, and the people like you who believe the way you do, are fundamentally treating consent like contracts people enter into instead of core aspects of how to engage with autonomous human beings, and my point is that this is the same fundamental way rapists behave. Truth hurts, my “friend.”
If that strikes a nerve with you, which it seems to have done, maybe that’s because i’m on to something you’re unwilling to admit. And, by the way, this is one reason we are not friends.
Get it through your fucking skull. ‘Til then, don’t dare assume friendship with me. You are a mental cancer to submissives everywhere.
maymay
October 25, 2013 at 9:53 am
I don’t assume anything with you. It’s become crystal clear to me over the past year or so that you are just a bully, nothing more and nothing less.
When you stumble on some truth, please share it. So far, all you’ve done is make false accusations.
I’ve said what I want to say. The only problem with reading comprehension, on either side, is that you are going to twist anything and everything to make it fit your pre-determined responses. That’s what bullies do, after all.
Tomio Hall-Black
October 25, 2013 at 9:58 am
First, treating consent as a contract, now you’re pulling out the “false accusations” trope—even without having been accused of anything. That’s very telling. You don’t get it, Tomio. And the more you say, the more clear that is. People who don’t understand their own actions are fundamentally dangerous people—but that’s not a surprise for someone who’s hook, line, and sinker brainwashed by the BDSM rape school like you are.
maymay
October 25, 2013 at 10:02 am
Extremists and bullies always have to find victims. If it makes you feel better to victimize me with your baseless accusations; then I can’t stop you. From what I can tell, that’s all you can do anyway.
Tomio Hall-Black
October 25, 2013 at 10:14 am
You keep saying I am “baselessly accusing you” of something. What, exactly, do you think I’m accusing you of?
maymay
October 25, 2013 at 10:22 am
The fact that you can write that, without any sense of irony, amazes me. Perhaps you need to work on comprehending your own words.
Sorry, but I have stuff to do today. I’ll reply to anything else at another time.
Tomio Hall-Black
October 25, 2013 at 10:25 am
So, let me get this straight, Tomio: you can’t name what I’ve accused you of but you do maintain that I’ve been repeatedly accusing you “falsely” of something. And you think it’s my reading comprehension that’s poor? Maybe you should practice reading things like this.
maymay
October 25, 2013 at 10:31 am
[…] in Exile followed this up with her own response, centered around the (also completely correct) statement that “anything short of respecting […]
Submit: (verb, active) | Switch Studies
October 27, 2013 at 9:55 pm
[…] goals and my behavior doesn’t align. Over the weekend, I spent far too much energy engaging in a conversation about consent and submission than I wanted to, all the while spending a lot of my offline time […]
Priorities | Kink in exile
October 29, 2013 at 9:57 pm