Why Be A Slave?
Mistress Matisse has written a great column on the distinction between wanting hot BDSM sex and “being a slave”. When people tell her they want to be someone’s slave, she asks them why:
The word “slave” is not just a generic term for any kinky person who likes to be the one wearing the handcuffs. But the answers I often get indicate to me that this is not well understood. Most of the time, people respond to my question by telling me about their desire for sex and intense stimulation. It’s the erotic fantasy of the bondage, of beautiful, threatening people in sexy outfits wielding nipple clamps and dildos.
Those are all hot things. I like them myself. But wanting to experience those things doesn’t make you a slave. I do BDSM with lots of people, but I would not call any of them “my slave.” (Nor would most of them want me to.)
To BDSM people, being a slave means undertaking an ongoing relationship of voluntary servitude to another person—a master or a mistress. The key word here is “relationship.” Saying you want to be a slave so you can do BDSM all the time is like saying you want to get married so you can have hot sex all the time. It’s not that it never works that way, but just as marriage is about much more than just sex, being a slave is about more than just doing BDSM scenes. And just as not everyone who has sex wants to get married, not everyone who wants to get tied up and spanked really wants to be a slave—no matter how hot the idea seems right before an orgasm.
Read the whole thing, it’s worth your time.
I don’t know that I agree with everything she said but it’s a good post overall. :)
I live in CT. I will be moving to FL to be nearer to my Master this year. It can be hard for me at times now to be so far away from him. On a night when I was feeling the distance from my Master a lot, I posted the vows I took to my Master as I knelt at his feet and he placed his training collar around my neck when I was in FL with him earlier this year. Nowhere in those vows were the words sex or bondage even mentioned. Nor were they mentioned in the promises that my Master made to me during my collaring ceremony. My Master’s words to me were of love and commitment and taking responsibility for my well being and my training.
Does that mean bondage and sex have no part in our relationship? No. It means they are not the basis for our relationship. The basis of our relationship is love, trust and his domination of me and my submission to him. When times get rough in our relationship, I don’t think about sex or bondage, I think about love, trust and submission and that is what gives me the strength I need to get through. That, for this slave, is what it is all about.