Everything Old is New Again

We live in an all or nothing world. If you spend very much time reading here in the cyber universe, it is very easy to become convinced that the ONLY "right" way to do BDSM is to enter into a Master/slave dynamic where one is utterly Dominant and the other is completely submissive without limits or boundaries. Ours is a (self-identified) Master/slave dynamic, and I am one of those who will insist that this particular configuration of BDSM relating is NOT for everyone.





We did not start out as Master and slave. We began as friends. We came to a point in our early relating where we added a mentor/student component to our relationship. That led to our moving into a play partner dynamic, and eventually into an acknowledged Dominant/submissive relationship. We'd known each other for more than two years, and had come to live together full time over a period of months before we came to recognize our pattern of relatedness as Master/slave. Even then, we switched in our "play" for a very long time, and we engaged in mutual discipline dynamics where even Himself was subject to corporal punishment under certain circumstances.

We've never subscribed to the common assumption that all male partners must be Dominant, and that conversely, all female partners must be submissive. We recognize that Dominance and submission are expressions of personal sexual/erotic orientations, and we tend to believe that these roles cannot be successfully or comfortably forced onto persons who are not innately suited for them.



It isn't new knowledge. Way back in 1936, Dorothy Spencer formulated what came to be known as The Spencer Spanking Plan. It was a system of consensual relational discipline that was to be applied systematically and symetrically to and by partners in an intimate relationship. Unlike so many of today's dogmatic and doctrinaire participants in relational spanking, Dorothy didn't see any reason to limit the application of discipline to one side of the equation. She was quite at ease with the notion that it might be possible for either male or female partner to fall short of the appropriate behaviors in a relationship. She preached a doctrine that such short-comings might best be addressed by consensual and carefully negotiated discipline. I think it is amazing that, all these years later, the egalitarian viewpoint proposed by Dorothy Spencer is so often anathema to those who would practice relational discipline dynamics.

We don't switch anymore. He has lost His taste and desire for it. I can picture behaviors that might put Him in line for discipline from T or I. Mostly those would be related to health and safety I imagine. Our relationship has changed and evolved from the practice of switching that we once engaged in. Still, for many who are coming to this "new," who are curious, who are exploring and beginning their journey, I wonder if we don't do a disservice when we portray the pathway as leading, inevitably, to dynamics that are akin to Master/slave. Perhaps, for many, the more egalitarian styles of switching relating might be more appropriate.



swan