Slaves

In corresponding with some of the submissives who send me e-mails, I have noticed a disturbing pattern - the number of women who are getting emotionally wounded by prematurely attempting to become “slaves”.

Now it’s important to get the terminology right, and I don’t know what other Doms and subs mean precisely when they talk about Master / slave relationships. For me becoming a “slave” represents an extremely intense and challenging form of D/s relationship, one in which the slave surrenders a significant proportion of her freedom, independence, rights and control to the Master. To me, this is something which should only be attempted by someone who has been thoroughly trained as a submissive by a Dom who knows what he is doing, and who has spent a considerable period of time exploring her submissiveness.

Some of those who I hear from haven’t even reached the point where I would regard them as submissive, let alone ready to become slaves. Some are surprised to learn that training is even required – surely it is enough just to want to obey a Dominant? To make matters clearer, I have started using a new term – “compliant” – to describe someone who has discovered within herself the desire to be submissive, but has not yet been trained to the point where I would describe her as “a submissive”. Between discovering you are compliant and becoming a submissive there has to be a period of training.

There also seem to be many misconceptions about this, as if training is nothing more than learning a few sexual tricks and how many sugars the Dom likes in his tea. So let me set out my view of training. Training for what? If I distil out the qualities that define a submissive for me, they would include obedience, truthfulness and openness. There could be others, but these three seem to subsume the rest. Obedience, truthfulness and openness – easy words to write, but amazingly difficult to achieve in practice.

Let me illustrate this with an example around obedience. A Dom wants to be able to give an instruction, hear the sub say “Yes, Sir”, and have it carried out. So far so good. Suppose my instruction is for the sub to collect a book from my favourite bookshop in Manchester. This might involve her making several train journeys, getting the appropriate buses or trams, finding the shop, buying the book, and returning the way she came, What if she’s afraid of trains, shops, getting lost or getting mugged in Manchester? If that fear is too intense she will be totally incapable of carrying out the instruction.

Even if a sub has no trouble carrying out the book-buying task, the chances are there will be another one she will baulk at. It might involve a social fear, a body image problem, an addiction, a fear of heights, animals, open spaces, being alone, or even being silent. Becoming obedient involves confronting edges – something I have written about in a previous post. Until she deals with her edges a compliant woman cannot be really submissive.

A similar problem occurs with truthfulness – a remarkably difficult thing to achieve consistently. Lying to cheat, defraud or gain advantage is relatively rare, but deceiving in order to avoid hurting someone, to avoid being disliked, to avoid conflict or rejection – these forms of untruthfulness are extremely common and difficult to stop.

Openness about feelings is another essential characteristic in a sub, because it allows a Dom to gauge what she needs and treat her accordingly. If a sub is out of touch with her feelings, or insists on putting a brave face on, smiling when she’s angry, saying she’s “fine” when she’s actually upset – these may deceive the Dom into believing that all is well when it’s not. Yet achieving openness requires a lot of hard work – overcoming shame, developing self-knowledge, letting go of the need to look good and being willing to reveal disliked aspects of her personality.

In my definition of submissive training, a Dom constantly pushes a compliant woman to confront her edges until she overcomes them, making it possible for her to become obedient, truthful and open. So, if a “compliant” gives herself as a slave to a Master, she’s very quickly going to come up against her edges and fail to be obedient, truthful; or open. It’s not that she isn’t willing – she just can’t do it. Punishment won’t make it any better – she needs training. After several attempts, either she gives up or the Master sends her away. She feels a failure, or worse, because she can’t understand why she can’t fulfil the demands of the Master – she feels that she’s a “bad” slave.

The Master-slave dynamic doesn’t suit everyone. It is one possible way of living a D/s lifestyle, but it isn’t the only way. Nor is it the ultimate pinnacle of submissive achievement, the “gold standard” by which all other D/s relationships are to be measured. I would suggest that it is possible for a woman to be independent and self-sufficient and still be submissive. If such a woman entered into a Master/slave relationship she might find the conflicts intolerable. There is enormous satisfaction and intensity to be found in being submissive, without necessarily having to be a slave.

To summarise, if you are compliant and new to D/s, take your time understanding your own submissive needs first, find a good Dom to train you to become properly submissive (not an easy task in itself), and only then think about whether being a slave is right for you.