People have very different reasons for seeking submission and surrender but there is always a selfish motivation. There is almost always a search for permission to be someone other than their everyday selves. The one who can grant this permission is the dominant. The roleplay, power dynamic, and polarity are excuses 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 shared fantasy in which we choose to believe. Submission and surrender only actually ‘work’ when we trust the story – trying to pretend will not work. Yes, one can submit on an intellectual level, doing what they are told because they want to try. I think it’s easier to believe when we randomly discover sadomasochism 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 thereby keep the magic.
But why is this belief so alluring? Part of the answer, I think, can be found in the question: Are you a slave or a slut? One longs for restriction, the other for permission. One could stretch a bit and link the slave and the slut with submission and surrender, but I’ll consciously leave that connection undone.
Slaves
Slaves often experience the world as overflowing with choices and responsibilities. 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 help this process when the ego struggles to keep control. But ultimately, the longing 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. Like when Severin, in Leopold von Sacher-Masoch’s book Venus in Furs (1870), finally manages to convince young Wanda to fully step into her selfish perversion, Wanda lets her other lover, the Turkish officer, beat Severin. Only then does Severin realise that his fantasy of slavehood has been pushed far beyond his ideal of the cruel marble Greek goddess wearing furs.
Sluts
Sluts, on the other hand, are 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 – that is the guiding principle. Intellectually forcing them to risk trying 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 along the lines of 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. However the limitless freedom is not entirely free, but held inside a boundary by the dominant. And when another holds them the submissive can let go further into the illusion of freedom and lose themselves to desire even deeper.
If Sacher Maso, the author of Venus in Fur, bends towards slavehood, I think de Sade is more into promiscuity in this fever-like description of hedonism. In his books, everyone penetrates everyone in all kinds of ways, and the perversions are stacked upon each other.
How Perverted Are Your Dreams?
So how far do these perverted, deviant and decadent desires reach? The simple answer I prefer to give in retreats is; this ritual is not more kinky than you are. Referring to the collaborative fantasy that everyone narrates together. Another, more mind-spinning spin on the same theme comes from hippie philosopher Alan Watts, and I’ll try to paraphrase it in the way I see it through the spectrum of sadomasochism.
Imagine, just for a second, that every night before going to bed, you could precisely decide your upcoming dreams. That way, in the safety of your bed, you could experience all your wildest fantasies. At first, I think you would dream of every imaginable pleasure. Oh, so selfishly. However, eventually, you might grow bored or maybe braver. So you start adding things to the dreams you aren’t entirely sure about. Adding a bit of insecurity and doubt. Some nights become awe striking god-like experiences, while others are rather disappointing. But they invite a mystique into your nightly life, a belief that maybe everything isn’t up to you to decide how it plays out. You surrender. Somehow this otherness takes care of you, never adding more than precisely what you are ready to handle. And maybe this is the point where you wake up. Or realise that this is the dream we call life, where you are at right now. So perhaps, just perhaps, your sadomasochistic fantasies are just as deviant as you can handle. Or – your kink is never more perverted than you already are.
