Meanderings

Today was a frustrating day dealing with bureaucracy. Fortunately I was kept buoyed up by mitda's current euthymia (general mood of well being) and the road trip we had to take to file some paperwork was much easier with her company.

I have decided to put more effort into the Masters' Workhaus group (see sidebar on left for info) and also on a local group called Explorations, where a group of local M/s practitioners get together with specific exercises in mind. The next planned event is a protocol dinner with post dinner erotic entertainment by the slaves. While emmie plans to dance for the group mitda is looking at an erotic reading.

I was sad to find out that the person who penned Married Man's Fucktoy has deleted her blog without explanation, obviously anything personal could happen that would lead to such an action, but it would have been nice to know the reason, and nicer for it to not have happened.

BDSM as M/s Praxis

“Any form of skillful coping in which you can become an expert, in which you get into a kind of flow in which you don't have to think at all, your mind is out of it and the skills in your body are doing it, we've done all of that and we've done it taking a risk too, that when you do that: you end up lost or you may end up saying things you regret having said, and if you aren't ready to take that risk you'll never become an expert in that. So, I could predict that you have taken the risk and done it and felt bad about it, and you've done it and felt good about it, and when you've got that, you've got a kind of mastery. “ - Hubert Dreyfus.

Merleau-Ponty had an important insight. When we look at certain types of expertise (and I'm betraying less philosophical interests of mine, lol) such as the expertise of an athlete, we see embodied expertise, the expertise that is not simply “unthinking” in its operation but is required to be unthinking, such that the athlete wouldn't be able to do what he/she in fact does if he/she had to think about it while doing it. In this context we have to look at such things as “muscle memory” etc. where the brain simply doesn't contain the whole representation of what is going on. Merleau-Ponty recognized, in his idea of intercorporeality, that our usual and normal interactions with the World were bodily in nature, that we don't in fact keep a mental representation of the World, the World is immediate to us through our bodying forth into it. The skill of an athlete is an extension of our normal bodying forth, not an unusual or fundamentally different manner of relating to the World, or meaning-context, in which we exist.

The “play” aspect of bdsm is related to this, as part of the praxis of M/s relationships. Most M/s relationships do in fact incorporate aspects of bdsm play, and this is not an accidental relation. Dominating someone is not, fundamentally, simply a mental thing, and as a result purely psychological or psychosocial theories of M/s fall down when it comes to praxis. The physical aspects, bodily aspects of domination and submission come to the fore in bdsm “play”, and the scare quotes are there because in an M/s context “play” is in fact very serious and very much a part of the real dynamic between the people involved. That bdsm involves skilled play, mastery of technique in a more limited sense of the word mastery than I usually use it, is part of the way that M/s is embodied and brought to a fullness beyond its psychological expression.

When mitda and I first became involved it was in both a romantic (in the old fashioned sense) and practical manner. We were not an M/s couple in any sense, in fact neither of us understood the M/s dynamic as a real possibility. But the combination of a psychological bond together with a penchant for bdsm play resulted in a very tight relationship with one another, and an unplanned but powerful tendency towards M/s within the relationship. After getting together in a physical sense, living together as a couple, and engaging in such play our relationship dynamic inevitably tended not just to M/s, but M/s in its absolute form. Without having any conceptual transparency, we lived together, played together, and developed a total power transfer dynamic. As we became more aware of the tendencies that were expressing themselves within the dynamic and attempted to achieve some sort of conceptual transparency for what we were in fact doing, ideas such as TPE/IE suddenly made sense to two people who had run across and essentially written off such ideas. One of the things this made me aware of as a person who writes on the subject, is that while I can provide a framework for thinking about such relationships, I can't justify its existence or prove anything of what I am saying, and viewing it as a framework for my reality is something that could be accepted or rejected by the reader, but probably not really understood by the reader unless they themselves had experienced a similar dynamic. And this dynamic cannot be experienced purely mentally, it requires a bodily expression, it requires the bdsm practice aspect that from a conceptual point of view seems extrinsic.

In the relationship that developed with emmie that this praxis was intrinsic came more to the fore, in that she was not, is not a masochist in the conventional sense. She doesn't engage in bdsm praxis for the sake of the physical pleasure that a conventional masochist derives from it. She engages in it, and it has felt and become necessary to both of us to engage in such practices, from a purely dominance/submission aspect. As a result it is impossible to make the error of viewing the bodily aspect as essentially separate and different from the psychological. Her enjoyment of s & m play is purely the enjoyment a submissive derives from being submissive, palpably, physically. It is the bodying forth of her submission and the bodying forth of my mastery. Our play doesn't, as a result, have the comfortable and easy feel that mitda and I attain, where mastery and submission is bodied forth in concert with deep mutual pleasure and satisfaction. Instead it results in a tension of necessity, an expression of dominance and submission with our bodies that we cannot choose to forego simply because it isn't a fundamentally pleasurable activity.

My Little Girl

Today emmie and I went probably the furthest into age play that we have so far allowed ourselves. She coloured in a colouring book while wearing a cute little girl dress, then pleasured her daddy in multiple ways. It's a fantasy I've never really gone to before – having a personal history there it was something very odd to think of doing at first. But it is working out rather well with emmie being my little girl and she seems to really enjoy having a daddy. E and mitda have been very encouraging as well as far as this aspect of our relationship goes, even as far as to prod us to actively go further in exploring it. I adore emmie and want to do everything I can to ensure it's safe for her to explore this fantasy, and I adore all of my family for being open to what can seem like a very strange kink at first to non-initiates.

Xmas and Migraines

I took emmie to a wine cheese and widgets party Saturday afternoon, where the point was to objectify (or de-subjectify as I prefer) one's slave by not addressing them and simply using them as whatever tool one needed at the moment. It was interesting to see her reaction and the reaction of the other slaves at the event, and also to have some conversation with other Masters. More events are planned that will be different than the more common bdsm style get togethers, the first being a protocol dinner with entertainment by the slaves in the group. While mitda wasn't quite recovered enough to attend the event she did make it to the xmas party that followed (at a different ranch) and we had quite a lot of good conversation and good times. I played emmie for only the second time publicly, (the first was a very private sort of publicness at a small party) and she did very well, given that I played her rather hard, if only for a short time. She did well with being publicly nude during the playtime as well.

There are a few more xmas events in our community but this party was the big one as far as I was concerned, with a huge white elephant gift exchange (which our family did rather well at) and various other holiday attributes :).

I am definitely planning on switching jobs in the near future. One company has interviewed me but there is some distance between their offer salary wise and my expectations. Two more opportunities came up today (I am taking the day off due to a migraine and the resulting dozyness from migraine meds).

Back to it

I haven't had much time to keep up with my blog lately, what with working an 8 hr day and spending 4 hours in the car in total to get there and back. Not that I don't want to keep it up, but it gets grinding and I was definitely looking forward to the weekend.

Keeping up an M/s relationship in these conditions poses its challenges as well. The girls need direction and I'm often not as available as I would like to provide it. I have ideas as to making the task of setting tasks and reviewing them more efficient but that in itself takes energy and time to implement. So we're all getting by.

Preparations for mitda's surgery are not as far along as I would like, as a family we have to realize that the person primarily responsible for meals, shopping and a host of other things will be completely out of commission for some time, and everyone has to pick up the slack no matter what their personal schedules look like.

We went to a dinner party mostly made up of M/s couples, triads etc. tonight and it was a welcome social relief from the draconian world where I work, and the current pressures of home life. It made me remember why we do these things. Not, obviously so that when we go out we have M/s people to go out with, lol, but watching the interaction and feeling so at ease because these people understand how we are and how we choose to live confirms me again in following our hearts and minds and living as we want to.

Busy Weekend

One of the big local BDSM groups held its annual voting munch last night. Although we had a party to go to we dropped by the munch and passed our ballots. Mostly the same people won as last year, which is ok in most ways but a couple of our favourites didn't get the ballot.

Afterwards we went to a very intimate gathering of a BDSM group that, while inclusive, specifically tries to reach out to the black BDSM community, which is fledgling at best apparently. While emmie and I had some sexy S&M playtime Jubal warmed up mitda. I don't play emmie very often but when I do it means a lot to me because she submits for my enjoyment purely. Once she had had more than enough I did a “scene” with mitda that garnered a very unusual comment on its beauty from someone else at the party. We also enjoyed some great conversation. It's unusual for us to be able to spend significant time with other Absolute Enslavement couplse/triads etc. but we talked to a couple at the munch and then another couple that we have a great deal of respect for hosted the party. The slave of that couple mentors emmie and mitda on their enslavement and it seems to help them a lot, particularly emmie.

This morning we dragged ourselves from bed and went to brunch with the same people from the party. Again we had some great conversation and more than a little good food at a pancake house.

All in all an enjoyable M/s oriented weekend.

New Munch

We attended a munch for a group we hadn't been to prior to last night. It was a bit of an ego boost for me, as I discovered, partly due to somebody from another group reading it and being offended, that certain people I have great respect for in the community had been reading my wiki ( http://www.absoluteenslavement.com) and enjoying the writing on TPE/IE and absolute enslavement. Sometimes when you write something like a Wiki you're never sure if anyone reads it, certainly not if anyone enjoys it. It turned out that the person who disparaged it in another forum was also not particularly welcome at the munch last night for various reasons. He did however provide me with some fine advertising for the wiki and I have to be appreciative of that. As Oscar Wilde famously said "the only thing worse than being talked about, is not being talked about."

Discipline and Punishment

In one of my earliest posts to this blog I talked about the conundrum of how to punish a masochist.  As it happens this worked itself out over the period during which I didn't post much to the blog, and I never got around to explicating any of it.

There's a "mode" one has to get into in order to punish, it's a mode
that involves "knowing" that you know better than the person you're
punishing, people find that easier with children, obviously, than with
adults   If you look at Tanos' site, the focus on "Internal
Enslavement" seems to focus on the slave's mindset, which is of course
important.  When mitda or emmie are being punished they are in a
different headspace than when they're being played.  But my
introduction of the term "Absolute" or "Total" Subjugation is important
because it deals with the mindset and headspace of the Master.  (Tanos does include this of course, it's only the term that seems to focus on the slave's doing, not the site or his thoughts on the matter)  In
order for the slave to get into her mindset, the Master has to be in
his, and it's a difficult thing at first to accomplish.  If you look at
my earliest blog entries there was the conundrum of how to punish a
masochist, and it took time to solve, but it has to do with getting
into a certain zone and making that felt to the slave.



First, as I said, you have to "know" that you're right, or that you
know better, than the slave.  This is difficult to do with someone that
you love and respect as an adult on the same level as your own.  You
have to know you know better because, simply, you are the Master in the
situation and it is your world and your set of meanings that are the
crucial ones.  The slave, in her enslavement, has given up the set of
meanings she had, what she accepted previously as her truth, and
accepted your reality as hers.  As a result, although she might be as
intelligent and capable as you are, she doesn't know the terrain as
well as you do, and within the dynamic in any disagreement she is
always in the wrong, because you are the arbiter of what is right and
wrong to begin with.  She needs this grounding by you as much as you
need to ground things in this way.  

Second, you need to get this world, this set of meanings, across to her
and put her in the situation where she knows that no matter what she
believed prior to her enslavement, she is now completely in the wrong
and needs to be punished to set her straight and remind her of where
her ground and truth are.  Partly I talk to emmie and mitda constantly
about the way I view things and the way things are for me, and must be
for them.  But truth lies in manifestation, and having things manifest
to the slave in the way they manifest to you is the key.  Human beings
share a world and share the way things manifest to a greater or lesser
degree depending on how close they are - and this phenomenon is what
people mean when they refer to "relating" to someone.  Physical contact
I've found is a key - standing at a distance and touching the slave
only when you hit them doesn't bring them into your space, you need to
break the slave's personal space by being as close to them as possible,
touching them with your free hand, and letting them feel the punishment
implement prior to and between hits, so that they know it's an
extension of your hand and your will.

TPE Dinner

After a local munch yesterday evening we invited another TPE couple out for dinner.  In one of our first public M/s situations we had gone to a conference/party that included a talk on TPE given by this particular couple.  They are an impressive study in such a relationship, both relaxed and studious in protocol, skilled in play and knowledgeable in the psychodynamics of M/s, and sensitive to both the spirituality and the science involved in absolute mastery and total submission.

As a result mitda was nervous, emmie less so although her general shyness kept her very quiet for much of the evening.  E. was very well mannered, as is his wont, and did a lot to smooth the flow of conversation in a situation where he was, although married to emmie, the only person not involved in TPE at the table.  He showed his interest in the subject and his respect for the other gentleman's experience and knowledge of these matters. 

It was a real relief for me to spend time with them.  Even in the bdsm scene TPE is an oddity, and it's not unusual to hear, for instance as emmie and mitda did at a submissive's meeting, that "TPE is a fantasy".  mitda of course countered with a solid argument, but one that was probably understandable to less than half of those present at that meeting, and to a degree if one hasn't experienced the absolute as it manifests one can find it impossible to relate to.  Speaking with this couple, discussing similar experiences and our reactions to them, and discussing experiences they have had throughout an extensive history that are new and unknown to me, but from a perspective I relate to, was both satisfying and refreshing.  I feel that much more confident in my mastery, and find that much more enjoyment in my slaves' submission, in sharing it with people who understand that mastery is not just being a 2 year old and having one's every want and desire met (although that is a nice bonus :) ), and that "exquisite enslavement" is not just a masochistic need to be used, but a path of self development within the encircling comfort of the Master's world and the unlimited responsibility he takes on.

Pleasant Evening Out

Tonight emmie, mitda and I went to the local kinky happy hour, which happens every couple of weeks. Unfortunately Jubal couldn't make it as he has night school now, going back to grad school to get his Masters in Counselling.

It was a really pleasant event. Getting to deal with the people we see at play parties in a more vanilla setting helps place them better in one's mind as fully rounded people, not just "bdsm'ers" or some such label.

I'm now unfortunately stuck with a nasty headache having had the nerve to try a local Texas beer on draft. Actually the beer was quite good, but it was a dark, bittersweet brew that was destined to kick my migraines into gear.

Punishment by Proxy

Last night I allowed Jubal to mete out mitda's punishment for disrespect. He did a nice job with the strop, leaving her pretty much in tears, and a pretty nice job of aftercare.

Not that I want to give up either of my slaves to Jubal or anyone else. It's fine with me if mitda subs to him, after all he is her lover, as well as being emmie's husband. But I don't think I'd like her being "his" sub, which is something mitda seems to want. It just seems that there's a contradiction inherent in being "my" slave and "his" sub, something that doesn't show up in a vanilla sexual situation, where sharing is somewhat easier. One can enjoy more than one lover, certainly, but can one serve two Masters? It definitely seems problematic to me. And how I would reconcile sharing with my concept of ultimate responsibility is another complex and uncharted area.

Domspace part 2

emmie and I engaged in some SM sex last night after the Subway experience, and it led to the Domspace feeling of control, and also led to some other fantastically wonderful feelings.  I love the state of mind it engenders and even love the drop into exhaustion afterwards, as it's a satisfied, contented exhaustion far different from the depressive exhaustion sometimes suffered under subdrop.

This morning, very early, mitda and I decided to engage in needle play, I pierced her back and ass, which I then fucked, and then scratched lines down her back and across her ass, just deep enough for blood to well up in the scratch.  mitda went directly to subspace, do not pass go, do not collect your wits.  I was in a wonderful space myself that was hard to let go of for the rest of the morning, although the exhausted contentment that followed made it impossible to do anything but work from home.  Which turned out to be ok given it was the Friday of a long weekend and I had just turned in an important project on time.

Collaring

I thought I would post some thoughts on the subject, since although the girls have been collared for some time, mitda for a fair length of time, last weekend we did a collaring ceremony for them together, and as a result it is closer to top of mind than it has been for a while.

Firstly, I love that they are collared.  Their beauty seems that much more radiant wearing their collars, and now that they can both wear their collars 24/7 they are a constant reminder to me of my luck and joy at mastering them.  They are also a constant reminder of my responsibilities in mastering them, and the standard which I have to try to live to.  I am currently studying the concept of unlimited responsibility, something that I think is particularly apropos and necessary in a TPE relationship.

Not that things are always perfect at House Daedalus.  The fact that the collars are identical reminds me of the occasional rivalry between slaves, the envy or jealousy that can poison any poly household.  And treating two very different people differently, as they require, but still equally, as they desire, is a difficult balancing act at times, and one  I don't always succeed at.

mitda and I, as a former vanilla married couple, had the easiest transition to a TPE lifestyle.  emmie and I have a few more hurdles to climb.  We are in a poly married situation as far as our vanilla sex lives go, but it is new and like any newlyweds we are still learning each other's tastes, wants and predilections.  And we have our pre-existing, comfortable relationships with our legal spouses to fall back on when things become tense for any reason.  That my spouse is also her sister slave makes her feel insecure.   That her spouse is a "top" sexually, and beginning to dominate in a bedroom bdsm sense, is an additional element and tension for me.  Don't get me wrong - I wouldn't trade any aspect of my family for any other in the world, but it's only by being honest about the tensions that they will be resolved, as I always trust that they will.  The love I have for emmie, Jubal and mitda, and the love between all of us, makes all the tensions worth it, all the difficulties a temporary thing, and my overall life satisfying and full of joy.

Nature vs Nurture (sic)

Jubal just had to raise the spectre of the nature vs nurture argument viz BDSM in his post.  Now you should know Jubal and I have very different intellectual backgrounds and very different ideas about most things.  Luckily it creates a healthy, fun argumentative situation and not a nasty type of thing.

In this particular case Jubal states very definitively that all BDSM is a learned thing.  I'm assuming that by "all BDSM" Jubal intends to include M/s and D/s as well as the more playful types of BDSM that interest him more at the moment.  Now I don't fall, this time, on the complete opposite side of his argument.  With just basic knowledge of information theory it seems unlikely that the number of bits required to produce the quantity of memes in a developed human brain could be found in the human genome pool.  At the same time evolutionary psychology has a foothold in demonstrability in the identical twins raised apart studies, which show striking and sometimes unbelievable correlations between the developed behavioural patterns of people with shared genes and different development histories.

Of course neither IT or EP are really close to my own background and methodology for analysing a question, but in order to satisfy Jubal that I am paying some attention to Science and not all my attention to Philosophy I mention them, and what I feel they do bring to the argument.

So what does phenomenology have to say about the situation?  Since here we are discussing psychology in a broad sense, without agreeing with the DSM-IV that these things are deviant in the sense of being a psychiatric issue, I will bring in the most phenomenological of the psychological schools, Daseinsanalysis.

 Daseinsanalysis prescribes a phenomenological approach of paying attention to the things themselves, and not immediately subsuming the concrete phenomena under a already available set of abstractions, such as specific development theories (Freud) or specific meaning theories (Jung).

The phenomenon of personal domination, in my history, is one where it was something I simply did.  It was only later that I realized how much I exerted control in my early relationships, without being overt or, really, honest about it, even with myself.  Partly due to my ex's being a dominatrix, but mostly due to mitda's need for submission and the immediate way I responded to it, I became open to the idea of being dominant in a thoughtful, proactive sense.  And this has continued since, as we've developed from playing at BDSM to entering a TPE triad, myself, mitda and emmie.  So the practice of domination is something I have definitely learned, but it seems to have been learned from a strong pre-existing tendency. 

This feeling I have seen talked about on the BDSM boards when the question comes up by dominants and submissives alike, who can trace their immediate responsiveness to BDSM situations, whether real or portrayed, as far back into their childhood as they can remember.  And while I am sure there are people into BDSM that can trace their interest back to specific events, such as childhood abuse or trauma, when asked on the boards it doesn't seem to have that strong a correlation for most of the participants.

I am asking mitda and emmie to put in their opinions as to how they experience and first experienced the submissive traits they have developed.  How much came in the development and how much (if any) do you feel was a priori present?  My own feeling about M/s, at least, as a subset of BDSM, is that it is learned, but learned out of strong pre-existing traits.  That I happen to share my dominant traits with my mother (who I am similar to in many ways) shows a possibility of a genetic connection also, but since my parents raised me, it being developmentally acquired from her is not out of the question.

Total Power Exchange and the Limit Situation - 1

An oddity, but one that often surfaces when pro and con arguments are vetted out, is that they take the same form, and essentially become two moments of one argument. This is the root of the form of thought known as dialectic, particularly the way that Hegel uses the term.

This turns out to be the case in the pro and con TPE argument, so let's take it apart a little. I will provide one of the original formulations of the argument for TPE and talk a little about the argument con, just to set the stage.
"When you "submit" to or "dominate" someone in a situation where safe words are used and when limitations are negotiated, you are not actually submitting or dominating at all - you are playing at it." - Jon Jacobs

The con argument also talks about limits. (In TPE) "The relationship is subject to the physical and the emotional limitations of the participants and therefore cannot genuinely be total or absolute." - From TPE, Wikipedia.

Odd isn't it that the arguments are so similar. What is it about TPE that immediately points towards limits as the crux of its own possibility? Karl Jaspers, in "The Psychology of Worldviews", a book unfortunately difficult to obtain, originated the idea of the "limit-situation", a peculiar existential condition where something unconditioned obtrudes and causes the self to come before itself in a unique way.

"...Jaspers claims that the self-disclosure of the possibilities of human existence depends on the capacity of the individual human life to open itself to the experience of the unconditioned (das Unbedingte). When it experiences the unconditioned, human life’s knows itself drawn by a motive (idea), which extends it beyond the forms, both subjective and objective, in which it customarily exists."

On a personal level, then, the limit situation unique discloses our possibilities, which gives us a better ground for actualizing them. On a philosophical level, if the limit is something unconditioned, and the unconditioned results in transcendence beyond the human's customary existence, being in a limit situation is an especially valuable situation for understanding what that customary existence is grounded upon, as well as experiencing a transcendence from it. And in fact the two things are the same, the subject-object split turns out to be based on an originary transcendence. What does transcendence mean here then? "Beyond" the customary, beyond the subject-object split, is in any case not a very well defined location, as far as we can immediately see. Before we can understand transcendence though, we need a horizon against which to view this new location, which does not admit of either subjectivity or objectivity.

So in order to develop a sense of what this horizon might be I'm going to look closer at the limit situation in general, and the limit situation I believe the TPE relationship to be in particular. In any limit situation Jaspers says that "existence directs itself from its own origin against and beyond its experience of normal subjective and objective reality". Direction then is important, and direction seems promising for understanding something like horizon. But what specifically happens in TPE? In the TPE situation there is an unconditioned demand, that the slave surrender all will, all freedoms, to the Master. Does this surrender equal surrendering all possibilities for the slave? By no means, but the slave's possibilities now all involve those inherent in enslavement, a situation where rather than being an "existence for itself", self consciousness becomes an "existence for another". Of course this act simultaneously creates the Master, who for his part was merely an undeveloped self consciousness as well. This part is well documented by Hegel in his lord/bondsman dialectic, so I will not further pursue it here, though a link might be useful to those not familiar with the argument.

So in the master/slave relationship there involves a complex dialectical process at work, at least according to Hegel. In TPE we attempt to make the enslavement total, or absolute. What does this do to the resolution?

Obviously the easy happy resolution of Hegel's "cooperation" isn't what we have here. We have in lieu of that a permanent tension, a permanent dialectic without resolution, unless you consider the passing of the participants a kind of resolution. It isn't a resolution as far as my thinking goes because the participants are precisely no longer there, but mortality is its own limit situation.

This post has become long and rather than lose the thread I will end for now and bring up the next element in the argument in a further post.

What a strange world of work

I work in an odd situation, for most people, in that I don't stay very long with companies. I don't work permanently, I work contracts. This is partly due to my nature - but mostly due to the nature of my job. Since I work as a software architect/developer, I'm in need of new projects on a consistent basis, but most companies don't start new projects all the time in IT, so they don't keep architects and developers on-staff, they hire contractors. Of course most of you probably know someone in IT, so you know this. But this is not the oddest thing by any means at the moment.

I am working a contract right now with a large, rather well known computer hardware OEM and services company, in their services division. They do, unlike many of my former clients, write software on an ongoing basis, but they hired me contract to write a market trial, which is close to starting.

Now emmie and mitda are not the most subtle slaves in the bdsm world, they both wear collars in virtually all situations, mitda wears cuffs most of the time, and they make no bones about the fact that they are my wife and girlfriend, which is noticeable even to those who don't know what collars and cuffs indicate. They have been around my work enough times that the people on my project, other than the ones who are absolutely clueless, know what the situation is at my household.

Well, surprise, noone seems to take much offense. In fact one of the members of my very small team turned out to be a TPE/IE Master with a live in slave. We went together to the recent GWNN conference (group with no name - a local bdsm group).

And this is what this meandering post is finally getting to. My colleague is very much a dom. He is ex military, very much into controlling himself and his surroundings, and confident in his ability to do so. He and I get along extremely well. However there is another member of the team who doesn't share that attribute of easy going self confidence. He tends to be at turns blustery or sulky, or tries to be easygoing with a rather undeveloped sense of humour that can be either quaint or irritating, depending upon one's mood. Because this fellow, although also a contractor, has been with the client for a good long period of time, while my other colleague and I joined for this project only, he is generally the lead on one of the main aspects of the product development.

Suffice it to say I openly have issues with him. And vice versa. But that isn't the story here either. He, let's refer to him as "J", has major issues with my other colleague "B". And vice versa there too. So here we go to a little vignette.

The project has been an extremely rushed affair. This is not that unusual in software development, and is part of the reason we were hired. There simply wasn't the turnaround time to reallocate permanent employees to the project, so contractors were brought in. However as a result normal process methods have been somewhat lax as we rushed past checkpoints and approval items to simply get something done and working. Now B is the requirements engineer for the project, and as we move precariously closer to QA he has become more and more aware that there are major differences between the product we have in hand and any requirements documentation that may have existed for the project. As a result, and mainly with other business-side members in view, he sent out an email, strongly worded as is his style, asking that from this point on any changes be vetted through him. After all this is his job. And he wants to get these changes, however minor, documented so that QA can perform their jobs. If they don't know what the current program is meant to do, it becomes a worthless task to test it. But the wording of the email put our friend J's back out of joint. And in response he went into bluster mode, came over to where B and I sit, and began yelling. It's not a big office and almost right away the entire project team was at B's desk getting involved in the "discussion".

B responded pretty calmly, repeated a couple of times "J., you need to calm down". Eventually this advice did reasonably sink in and the crowd dispersed. However B. wasn't happy with the situation. Once most people had disappeared for the day he took J. aside and to a meeting room. And proceeded to "rip him a new one" as it were for his unprofessionalism and poor behaviour. J. became extremely upset, to the point of tears, and told B. that he had an anger management problem. B. was nonplussed, telling J. that if he couldn't control his a. m. problem at work, he simply shouldn't be working.

Why have I wasted your time with this rather long vignette as part of an even longer post? Because it illustrates well, along with another comment J. had made as one of his rather quaint jokes, shortly after I had met him, something I started to talk about in a post earlier on this blog regarding bdsm and abuse. J. had said to me and others in the group when asked about his weekend "after you marry, one night when you're fast asleep, your wife rips your spine out and you don't make a decision after that".

I'm not implying J. is into spousal abuse. I wouldn't know and wouldn't want to know. But with an anger management problem such as he has it wouldn't be unthinkable. At least many actual wife abusers have anger management problems, that much would be accepted, I think, by most authorities on the subject. Yet it is B., who doesn't comprehend or accept lack of self control even when caused by such a problem, that is into bdsm Mastery, and keeps a live in slave to that end. I have no doubt either that B. can be quite sadistic with his consensual partner. But he is not an anger management class candidate nor is he a danger to his partner, while J., whose comment on his wife spoke (non-bdsm style) submission, that is a real danger when it comes to spousal abuse.

Does this mean that Dominants are never spouse abusers and submissives are? No. Does it mean that most spousal abusers are not vanilla? No. But it does show the difference I had been trying to express between a Dominant and an abuser. Abuse comes from lack of control, over the self, over others. And this lack is what makes abusers pick helpless targets. A Dominant first chooses someone who wants to be dominated, and someone who is worth dominating. If for any reason you find out that your next door neighbour whose kids are on your kids' basketball team and whose wife runs the PTA is secretly into bondage and discipline, domination and submission, and sado-masochism, remember that it doesn't mean anyone there is in danger, physically or psychologically. It may be the nervous churchgoer across the street that is hurting his wife and marring his kids, in a way that is permanent and difficult to reverse.

Slave Mentoring

Something that mitda and emelina have brought to my attention over the last couple of days, after discussing it with a slave in our acquaintance who is well versed in the etiquettes and protocols, as well as well known in the scene, is the existence of slave mentoring programs.  While I have been aware of offhand Master mentoring programs this is the first time I have heard of organized slave mentoring programs offered by other slaves.

Essentially the new(er) slave chooses from a list of mentors that have different specialties to their service regimen, and spends time online or in person (depending on location) to enhance his/her skills in these areas.  These areas might include household duties to sexual duties.  Masters are definitely not welcome for the mentoring itself, but mitda had me review the mentors available in order to recommend one to her.  

It's an interesting, and I think worthwhile idea.  Since the slave who organizes this locally has a Master who is also well known in the scene, and known to me, I may pursue any Master mentoring they may have set up as well.  Of course Masters tend to want to do things their own way - it's part of the dominance thing - but pointers can always be useful ; ).

Mitdasein

TPE, Poly and other Alt. Marriages, less coercive or more?

If the outcome of coercive power is the reduction of the human to human resources, and the reduction of the tradition to resource
allocations, we can begin to take a closer look at the various options open in the field of relationships. Quickly we can note the alignment of marriage with tax structures, religious power centres and family-values style politicking. 

At first glance TPE, total power exchange, a.k.a. internal enslavement, is the most forceful of the marriage options open. Polyamory possibly the least forceful. Traditional marriage falls somewhere in between. But glances are dissembling here as in many areas. There are also the areas of gay and transgender marriages.

So how about polyamory? Poised as it is against the traditional marriage and the upholding of "family values", and convoluted as it makes marriage from an ownership and taxation point of view, polyamory is in many ways the most radical option for a newly relationshipped adult. The many flavours of polyamory, whether the poly group is in a V, W, quad or other, leads to a delay between expectations and realizations from the moment the group sets foot in society. There are no easy societal labels within the group - husband, lover, partner etc. all seem equally inappropriate. This facet poly shares with gay and transgender marriage. As a result polyamory as well as gay/transgender marriage finds a common element with the proponents of traditional marriage

But since the seat of coercive power in the home is usually occupied by the heterosexual male, doesn't all this argue the more that TPE is the most outrageously coercive form of relationship dreamt up in the west so far?

The missing element here, is mastery. Were TPE simply a matter of domination, and were the domination available in an exterior form, it would be nothing more than a 24/7 form of the imposed drudgery of Hegel's bondsman. A marxist BDSM'er might argue that since the relationship is at least explicit, there is the possibility of reclamation, which seems impossible for the wage slave in his battle with the amorphous and mostly unempowered bourgeois. More than this, however, is the internal form of the "slavery" envisioned, where the slave gladly enters the relationship and would not leave it for a moment. And the willing acceptance of that gift by the Master, returning a solid sense of responsibility that traditional marriage and traditional divorce simply leave to the courts. Mastery is not coercion, it in fact abhors coercion, and will only admit of its own existence if that mastery is provided to it by those it masters. Coercion looks for the weak and the subduable, Mastery only finds value in the mastery of equals.

Mitdasein

A Family that Blogs Together ...

Blogging together can be an odd sort of
family activity. In our case, with our little BDSM D/s TPE family it
can often be the easiest way of getting things that are difficult to
say face to face onto the record. Since all of our blogs are
blogrolled on each blog it also gives the outside reader a chance to
see the dynamic from all three angles. Unfortunately E isn't
represented. He doesn't blog. And he's not truly part of the TPE
trio, he prefers to just top in bed and be an equal during the day.

It struck me especially seeing each of
our reactions to the BDSM bash over the weekend. My rather slurry
response (blame the lack of adderall) was much different from mitda's
or emelina's reactions.

Today's blog by emelina, where she
talks about how much she appreciates her collar, was a nice suprise
and a push, if one were needed, for me to provide this family with the love
and appreciation that it provides me.

Exquisite Enslavement

One of the presenters over the weekend of the seminar on 24/7 D/s, also known as internal enslavemnt or total power exchange, managed to get some time to chat to mitda and emmie.  They hit it off and have been IM'ing since, and went for coffee earlier today.  I think it's great for both of them to have someone outside the relationship but involved in a similar one to talk to and discuss things.  Of course it also makes me a bit nervous as I could easily have the finger pointed back at me for not doing things right ... This girl runs a board called Exquisite Enslavement, open to members only.  It allows slaves to exchange ideas on everything from home necessities to the philosophy of enslavement.  I think it will be very good for both mitda and emmie, with their very different views on enslavement to begin with.

So E's oldest moved in, temporarily occupying my office/refuge/saneplace.  Oh I can go there during the day when he's up to work on the computers but when he's in bed, I can't sleep, and want to be anywhere but the bedroom, I have the choice of staying put in the bedroom or getting eaten alive by mosquitoes outside.  We shall have the living room soon, it's just currently full of emergency plumber equipment trying to discover the root of a water leak.  Hopefully that will help although for some reason I've never been able to sit in the living room.  Not to mention  my Sun workstation isn't there.

Mitdasein