You can listen to this musing here, or read it below.
People I meet in retreats and sessions have very different reasons to search for submission and surrender. There is almost always a search for permission to be someone other than their everyday selves. And this permission is found in the dominant. The roleplay, power dynamic, and polarity is an excuse to pretend that the world is different. That different rules apply. To pretend that the master is both the primal wilderness, the impossibly divine and the collaborative civilization simultaneously. Giving them this imaginary power enables them to change everything. To change all the conditions and circumstances that made us who we are.
It is ultimately a lie that we choose to believe in. And submission and surrender only actually “work” when we trust the story. Trying to pretend doesn’t work. But, of course, one can submit on an intellectual level, doing what they are told because they want to try. I think it’s easier to believe if we randomly discover BDSM for the first time because the lie feels so real. But as time goes on, the art becomes maintaining this belief. To keep telling the story of the dominant and the submissive together. And keep the magic.
But why is the belief so alluring? Part of the answer, I think, can be found in the question, are you a slave or a slut. One is longing for restriction, and the other for permission.
Slaves often experience the world as overwhelming with choices and responsibility. So they long for something simpler; intellectually following orders, emotionally submitting their will, and spiritually putting their belief in the dominant. Bondage, rules and punishment can aid this when it’s hard to give up an ego struggling to keep control. But ultimately, the strive is both conscious, consensual and shared between the dominant and the submissive. Many kinks meet here, like forniphilia (objectification taking the form of furniture), slave service training, corporal punishment etc. But it all exists inside the lie that acts as a safe frame keeping the imaginary world of slavehood different from everyday life.
Just like when Severin in the book Venus in Furs finally manages to convince young Wanda to fully step into her selfish perversion, and she lets the Turkish officer beat him. Then he realizes that her desire has been pushed far outside his fantasy of the marble greek goddess and that slavehood is not so great anymore.
Sluts, on the other hand, is seeking permission to be more. They feel limited by the world and ashamed of their sexuality. Being greedy for more, the last thing they want is bondage, except to tease them into even more pleasure. More more more is the keyword. Intellectually forcing them to dare things they never did before, emotionally allowing the flow of feelings, and spiritually dedicating themselves as the master’s sex kitten or monster of desire. The kinks are like being messy and drooling (Saliromania), gangbangs (Nymphomania), bimbofication, tease and denial, and getting so very high on the endorphin rush of pain. It’s about feeling more as life becomes more vivid. It also exists inside the lie that is the boundaries to not spin out of control. And when another holds them, the dominant, in this case, the submissive, can let go further and lose themselves to desire.
If Sacher Maso (the author of Venus in Fur) is more towards slavehood, I think De Sade is more into promiscuity in this fever-like description of hedonism. In his books, everyone is penetrating everyone in all kinds of ways, and the perversions are stacked upon each other.
So how big are these dream-like beliefs? I like to think about it along with this narrative of Allan Watts. He suggests imagining if just for a second, that every night when going to bed, that we could precisely decide what we wanted to dream. At first, we would make all our wishes come true, safely and selfishly imagining every kind of pleasure. Eventually, we would grow braver and start adding in things that we aren’t entirely sure about—adding a bit of doubt and insecurity. But only so much that we could handle until we would get to the precise point where we are right now. A kink is never more perverted than you are.
This theme connects strongly to safety and bravery, insecurity, and the privilege of not knowing that I’ve written about so many times before. So I guess these musings eventually will start looping around just like my mind. And, of course, the slave and the slut are just archetypes. Maybe they are even the same as the madonna and the whore; I realize as I write this.