slavery
What is a slave?
by Brian on Sep.22, 2009, under slavery
Here it is, a post 4 years in the making. No, make that 35 years. I have a feeling that everything I’ve seen, done, and become in my life will inform this post in some way. I admit that the idea of committing this to written form is terrifying. Not because people may think I’m wrong or foolish, but because I know that as much as anything that I have done in the past 4 years this will become a part of the identity I am building in pais.
My views and definitions of what makes a slave are constantly evolving, and I know that isn’t about to stop. However I was rightfully and dutifully called out today on dodging this question for a long time now, and so I will give it my best shot. I hope that this will be the first of many such posts so that I can go back and see how the changes evolve.
So what is a slave? We are all at least a little conversant with the traditional definition of slavery. I like Wikipedia’s take on it:
Slavery is a form of forced labor in which people are considered to be, or treated as, the property of others. Slaves can be held against their will from the time of their capture, purchase or birth, and deprived of the right to leave, to refuse to work, or to receive compensation (such as wages)
I’m a bit less thrilled with their definition of sexual slavery:
Sexual slavery is the organized coercion of unwilling people into different sexual practices. Sexual slavery may include single-owner sexual slavery, ritual slavery sometimes associated with traditional religious practices, slavery for primarily non-sexual purposes where sex is common, or forced prostitution.
I don’t believe that it need be organized to be sexual slavery, but I digress. The key component of traditional slavery is that it involves the coercion of unwilling people. These slaves at no time consented to this.
Naturally when pais asks me what a slave is she is not referring to traditional/historical slavery. I believe that what she’s really asking is some combination of “What do you expect from me?”, “How do you perceive the my role in our relationship?”, and “As Your slave, what should my identity be?”. I suppose to answer that I must first decide in what ways she is a slave.
I did not purchase, inherit, or in any legal way come into possession of her. She chose to become mine after getting to know me and deciding that granting authority to me was a safe and reasonable thing to do. So, easily enough we have eliminated the possibility that she is a traditional/historical slave. In all other ways, however, she does meet that definition.
So, we have narrowed down the scope of the question to consensual slavery. It seems to me that the definition of consensual slavery must match that of traditional slavery- she can be forced to work, coerced when necessary, and could potentially be held against her will. All of these things she agreed to, and some she had to be absolutely assured of before she would consent to be collared. Still, those are only things that can happen to a slave. What of the slaves themselves? The definition rightly leaves out any concept of what a “good” slave is, as such a value judgment is solely the province of their owner.
Hm. I’m wandering again, which undoubtedly means I’m still avoiding the question. Luckily we’re almost to the meat of the issue. What do I think of when I imagine a “good” consensual slave, and how does that play in to what pais means when she asks what a slave is?
For me a consensual slave is an objectified servant. The extent of objectification can vary widely, but I think the objectification is the essential difference between slave and servant. I also think that the concept of this objectification is what causes people, at a gut level, to reject the terms “master” and “slave” as descriptive of their relationships. I’ve recently struggled with this myself as pais is more than a consensual slave to me, I am in love with her. As such I identify her as a pet as well as a slave and have recently taken to calling her a “pup slave”. This has been invaluable to me in keeping the roles clear and maintaining that level of objectification.
I suppose the next logical question is what is the different between a “pup slave” and a “consensual slave”? Well, for me a pup slave is a consensual slave. Just one whose identity is a pet instead of inanimate chattel (by most definitions pets are chattel, so I suppose this is really a sub-set). Pets tend to get more affection, tenderness, and love than household or personal objects, and that is just how I like it. As to how this ties into what pais is really asking, I suppose it breaks down like this:
“What do you expect from me?”
I expect service, loyalty, obedience, affection, flexibility, and the kind of worship a pup gives their owner.
“How do you perceive the my role in our relationship?”
“As Your slave, what should my identity be?”I see you as a treasured, beloved, useful working animal. Often times I still see a lot more than that, but I think that is the ideal, primary role. Of course I need more than that right now, and your ability to fulfill all of the roles I need is not only critical to us being able to live together right now, but also a very necessary part of our path toward a deeper M/s dynamic.
Of course this has all gotten very specific to my relationship with pais. I feel another post brewing about how I feel about non-pais slaves. A long time from now I may even feel qualified to speak to slavery in general, who knows?
Ponderings
by Brian on May.07, 2009, under Mastery, slavery
It’s been a while since I’ve posted here. I’ve actually been writing drafts and letting them linger half-finished due to time or focus issues. Looking over the half-written posts it seems like most of them pertain to either communication or managing others’ perceptions of my lifestyle. Given that those seem to be the big topics among M/s folks that’s hardly surprising, I guess.
What is a little surprising is how honest and open those posts are. I suspect that might be another reason why I’m not finishing them… the only thing worse than baring your soul to the Internet and getting mocked or bashed is baring your soul to the Internet and getting silence. Still, I think I’ll re-double my efforts and put them out there.
On that note I’d like to put down some recently hard earned thoughts on transparency. I’ve had a lot of back-and-forth with pais about transparency and how/when to communicate what she’s feeling. We each have issues around this topic that certainly exascerbate the proble. She has extreme guilt over any kind of negative feeling and that means it takes her a long time to get up the steam to communicate it to me. I almost always immediately notice that there is something up with her and have a nearly pathological need to find out what’s up.
It’s been a long-running issue, stretching back to before I collared her. I’ve tried a few different things including:
- Letting her sort out as much as possible on her own, and only bring to me the things she feels she needs to. The failure here being that she feels like she should never need to bring anything to me, which eventually leads to meltdown on her part or a freakout on mine when I can see that she’s struggling and not bringing it to me.
- Ordering her to bring any issues to me immediately, no matter how small. This worked in that I knew what was up, but failed in that, well, there are a lot of things that can be brought up. I just don’t have time to handle those conversations, and she felt like crap for having to bring tiny things to me that she was completely capable of handling on her own.
- Having a time set aside to discuss any issues from the day. This worked pretty well for her, since she could filter out any small things and only bring me the important ones. Unfortunately, it also meant that if there were no important ones the small things seemed bigger. The timing was also bad, at the end of the day when we’re both tired is bad, and the worst issues tend to happen in the evenings when the kids are around anyway.
- I used to have her journal for me. This particular method of communication went through several revisions and finally ended up pretty balanced. She could write as she needed to, delete small things or things she had dealt with, take the time to express herself well and politely, and append notes when she sent it to me explaining her current state. This was the most successful, I think, but does consume a fair amount of her time which is extremely valuable to me. This fell by the wayside as she ramped up with work (or was it finals?) and time became compressed.
I know that along the way each of those took on different forms and shapes as I changed things that were obviously not working so it feels to both of us like this topic has been beaten to death. As of last night we’re back to journaling, and I think that will work out well if I a) can wait long enough to hear what’s up to actually get to post, and b) can give her enough time to do it effectively.
The One Where Everything Sucked
by Brian on Aug.29, 2008, under Mastery, slavery
Yeah, that was today. I have kept an even temper through a world of shit, tackled several difficult discussions / meetings / happenings better than I would have guessed, and managed to maintain a mostly positive attitude on things. Even so there are still things I would like to do better.
My chief regret for the day is how I handled this morning. My job allows a fair amount of working from home, at least in theory. In reality I often need to make meetings or be in my much more efficient work space there to get things done.
I had planned earlier in the week to take today off, and told pais so. Things changed significantly enough yesterday that it was still in debate whether I could work from home as of this morning. This is never a good thing. Neither of us handles abrupt changes in plans particularly well at the best of times, and a plan change that causes us to be apart can be very upsetting for her. Above and beyond that, last night’s ritual went amazingly well, and with an extremely high level of connection between us. Not exactly the best way to go into a morning where I was going to be away unexpectedly, especially since in my dithering I had failed to even mention the possibility to pais.
Knowing how this goes, she asked if I was staying home a bit into this morning’s routine. I didn’t have an answer for her, strike 1. I tried to justify why I felt I that I needed to to in, strike 2. Then I dithered some more and had a minor freakout about her (really quite minor) negative reaction. Poor form, all around, and not exactly the kind of thing you can remedy in 5 minutes while rushing out the door.
I like to be needed, and get an absurd amount of joy from how much she needs to be with me. While I could certainly change her behavior to be more positive about my being away, I don’t want to. No, the fault here is mine and it’s a problem only I can fix. In truth my major issues dealing with this predate pais, but that is a story for another time.
I think that in the future I will not talk to her about any plans I may have to work from home ahead of time. Let it be a pleasant surprise instead of an expectation that can be bucked. Additionally I will try once again to keep my feelings of responsibility to work in balance with my personal life. I’m not always so good at that. In fact if I don’t work at it I take all of my responsibilities equally seriously, and manage to somehow short them all.
In closing I would like to state for the record that I an very glad this day is over.
Shorty
by Brian on Aug.28, 2008, under Mastery, slavery
Another short post night, due to ritual. There is a lot going on in my brain, as usual. I think a pensieve would be useful about now. Many of my thoughts are consumed by other peoples’ business, things that only affect me peripherally. Aside from that, I’ve also got plans which may or may not turn into Plans sometime soon.
Today was the first day of pais’ new life regimen and it went very well. Future days should involve less locking her out of the house. A couple of folks have asked what the new schedule is like. For the most part it is a formalized version of what was going on before, but with more focus on planning her time when I’m not around. I’ve found that pais generallyl works best when left to her weird way of doing things, which is incomprehensible to me but gets things where I need them so I don’t worry about it. So I plan in detail the things that I care about, or that have hard time limits, then block off a couple of hours here and there for doing cleaning chores, or working on projects for me.
The biggest change in things is probably even more communication. In this case that means communication of exactly which things from my approved lists will be done each day, as well as any special exceptions / impediments / etc that she foresees. Then there is one in the evening detailing what got done when, how long it took, which (if any) things that from the morning list didn’t get done, and why. With a sample size of one I can only say that it feels great having that level of visibility into the day right at my fingertips, and being able to see what she has been up to so that I can be specifically pleased by it. Sometimes I just don’t notice that the bathroom got cleaned or what-have-you.
She’s in a much better mood, as one might expect. I’m pleased, and there is coffee at 10pm. This should be a good night.
The Management
by Brian on Aug.28, 2008, under Mastery, slavery
Aiming for a short post tonight, it’s late already and there are Wednesday Beatings to dish out. I had a lovely, long walk with pais tonight and we talked about many things, as usual. Often there is one big topic that either dominates the discussion or my impression thereof, and the one for tonight was adding more structure and control to her life while she’s job searching.
This has come up before, and I’ve been loathe to unleash my demons on the topic because I know the situation is temporary. What’s the use in getting us both on a yummy structured routine just in time to tear it down in favor of a random work schedule? Well, as it turns out there are a few. Work has not been forthcoming for her, and in the current economy may not be for a bit. This is ok, I can afford to wait for the right job… for now.
For the last few weeks I have been increasingly tossing around ideas as to how I would add more structure to her life, and how I could increase my visibility into what she gets up to when I’m not home. So tonight when it came up it seemed like a good time to engage some of those plans. A couple of hours later and there it is, a much more finely scheduled and transparent day, along with some new tasks, and the flexibility we need at this point.
In hindsight I really should have done this long ago, but in truth I didn’t think finding work would be so difficult. I suspect that if work is too long coming this will be hard to break out of, but at least in the meantime we both get to feel like she is being used closer to her potential.
The Evolution of an APE Relationship
by pais on Aug.06, 2007, under slavery
I had slightly over a year of steadily increasing D/s with Master before He collared me.
I have been a little surprised to hear the opening stages of a budding M/s relationship described as a negotiation. I would hope that most M/s relationships start with a discovery of compatibility, rather than negotiation. To me, that sounds like either one or the other or both parties having to compromise (themselves, their values, their deeply held desires) in order for the dynamic to be mutually acceptable, or the kind of negotiation that precedes a scene between people who don’t know each other well and who both expect to “get something” out of the interaction, and for whom the arrangement is strictly temporary.
Accordingly, I would characterize the first year of our relationship more as exploration than negotiation. We each evaluated, more or less subconsciously, our compatibility on a variety of levels, including sexual chemistry and shared kinks; communication styles, including sense of humor and how we handled conflict; and emotional triggers and hot button issues. We both freely expressed our ideal dynamic, both short- and long-term, as well as acknowledging real-life constraints and the kinds of compromises we expected to have to make. Over the course of the year that these conversations were taking place, it became clear that there wasn’t really any negotiation per se that needed to take place because our desires were well-matched.
I’m stressing here that my ideals were as freely expressed as His. I was still a free person, and I was walking into the situation, and consenting to it, with my eyes open, knowing that I wasn’t always going to get what I wanted once I’d signed on. That first year was my chance to find out what I was getting into as much as I possibly could, so that I would have some idea as to whether or not I could actually handle it.
I would guess that Master evaluated me in many ways of which I am largely unaware, but for myself, during this time I was especially concerned with evaluating His character, so that when He accepted me as His slave I would feel ethically able to offer Him everything. He has a very good understanding of my ethics, and while His are not identical, so far (in the year before He collared me, as well as this year since) He has respected mine completely. He takes his responsibility to Himself and His own ethics very seriously, which I consider far better protection than an obligation felt towards me.
We arrived at an understanding, although it was very basic and still open to some interpretation at the point when He agreed to collar me, and we continued having similar conversations about what we each wanted the dynamic to look like. I continued to have some reservations, what I would call voluntary limits, which He always honored. To clarify, my distinction between voluntary and involuntary limits is basically that if Master were to order me to jump off a roof and fly I could only follow the first part of the order (and I’d try to find a low roof with a trampoline below before following the first part)! We had many conversations–-the crazy, “this would never happen in a million years, but what if . . .” conversations. In fact, these are the kinds of conversations I think people should be having in any committed relationship. If I were going to say I would submit to anything, I wanted to mean anything. What about this? Yes, if it pleased Him. This other thing? Hm, I might have more trouble with that, ethically or emotionally.
I’ve read accounts from individuals online claiming that they had followed a ‘master’s’ orders unhappily until they’d been driven to a mental breakdown. There are orders I would follow that would result in Master having a pretty mentally-dysfunctional slave, no matter how emotionally strong I tried to be. On the other hand, Master has shown time and again that my mental health is important to Him. He constantly monitors my emotional state and takes steps to strengthen me when He feels it is appropriate. Furthermore, in my profession, we talk a lot about “vicarious traumatization.” It’s possible to end up with PTSD from doing the work that I do. If that’s a risk I’m willing to take for a job (chosen before entering into this relationship, but Master-approved), it’s certainly a risk I should be willing to take for the most important person in my life. I recognize that this not a risk that most people feel is safe or sane, but if everybody had the same standard of acceptable risk I think we’d have a lot fewer firefighters, eh? However, when I believe that my ability to serve Him the way that He desires is in danger, I am required to inform Him. I tend to err on the side of not telling Him soon enough, unfortunately, but He’s begun to take that into account.
Within a few months after the collaring, it gradually became more evident that in fact it was possible for us to live closer to our ‘ideal’ than we had thought before we’d tried it. There was no final point when Master said, “All right, from now on this relationship is based on the premise of consensual non-consent.” It was not a flip-the-switch moment to remove the last few limits I brought with me when I was collared. There was a process of building trust, resulting in a dawning realization that I no longer had any voluntary limits, which inspired a commitment. This was not an agreement, a contract with a list of rules, or a specific protocol. This is simply my promise to Him that He owns me completely and absolutely, body and mind. He has the right to change or damage them as He pleases because they belong to Him. I don’t feel damaged, but I’ve certainly been modified, mentally and physically! He manages my risk, He sets my priorities, and He controls, almost completely, how I feel about what He’s doing. I have no safeword. I have no right to end my relationship. Despite my current orders to keep Master informed of any emotional issues I have, even that is not a right that I have.
Our arrangement is as flexible to Him as He wants it to be and as inflexible to me as He wants it to be. He chooses to put certain strictures on Himself, partly because of His own ethical standards and partly out of self-interest and a desire to maintain a slave who is functional in many different ways. I have a great deal of trust in those ethical standards and that enlightened self-interest!
I could say no anytime if I wanted. I can say, and have said, “I don’t want to.” I can even whine about how hard something is, and do that frequently! It’s just that none of these things make any difference to what’s going to happen. I am encouraged to beg for help when I hit an involuntary limit, but even then I accept that He has no obligation to listen to anything I say. I have His promise that He will ignore any protest of mine that does not please Him.
He is not a predator nor a lunatic. While it’s important to both of us that He has the right to remove or overstep any limit of mine however He can, just because He can doesn’t mean He does. Some of my former limits are gone and others will likely follow in time, but He has His own limits as well that He will not overstep. The point for us is that He can.
Because our dynamic was built gradually and with hard work, we are both very aware that it could erode and actively work to maintain and deepen it, in a variety of ways. I am a creature of habit, and the more in the habit I am of not arguing or questioning the easier I hope it will become. So I try to be as graceful and joyful as possible about my obedience. I believe I’m helping build a pattern or habit of obedience within myself. Building on that, there is a concept in the mental health field known as engulfment, which describes the gradual subsuming of patients’ identities into their diagnosis. In other words, they go from being an individual with schizophrenia to being a schizophrenic, completely defined by their disorder. I hope that I can become engulfed by slavery, by constantly thinking of myself as a slave and asking myself, “What would Master’s perfect slave do?”
When these techniques become difficult, when I am faced with what seem to be impossible or distasteful expectations, I maintain an attitude not of “I won’t” or “I can’t” but “I’ll try,” or sometimes, with gritted teeth, “I don’t want to, but I’ll try anyway.” I think this attitude might be one of my most important contributions to my successful enslavement. Master has said that one thing He enjoys about ownership is the opportunity to help me please Him by giving me the support I need to overcome these kinds of situations. This also builds my confidence that He won’t just let me get out of things I don’t like. My fear that my disobedience will somehow destroy our dynamic has faded, but lingers, possibly because as far as I can remember I have never been disobedient on purpose. (If I had been afraid that my forgetfulness or poor time management would destroy our dynamic, that fear would have long since been laid to rest!) Perhaps someday we’ll have a chance to prove my fear ungrounded, which might ease my mind, but I’m not in any hurry to test it.
There are likely a few circumstances that would damage this relationship. For example, one of us could suffer a traumatic brain injury, completely altering our personality and mental capabilities. I’m more concerned about that than just about anything else, since organic damage isn’t the kind of thing to which you can choose your response. Of course it’s easy, right now, for me to say that there are only a few things that could damage our dynamic when I’m not actually faced with any of them. All I can say is that in my experience of myself, I have not tended to let difficult events interfere with my commitments, and leave it at that.
