Assumptions About BDSM

I grew up in the 1960's, and survived Catholic school.  Mine was a childhood filled with and defined by a whole lexicon of cliches and catch phrases, and I do find that I can dredge those up for just about any topic in the world...  So today's once-upon-a-time catch phrase comes down to me from a former elementary school teacher -- a Catholic nun, who lived in my child's world complete with a floor length black habit and veils and wimple...  Sister would sometimes look at the room full of us, and lay this old saw on the lot of us:

Remember that when you assume, you make an ass out of U and ME.

I was set off into that bit of pondering, by a recent comment made on my switching post: 

I understand switching for people who play at BDSM. But it always seemed to me that you really believe you are a slave and he really is your Master. No playing around. No games.  So it's hard for me to understand the switching thing in your particular relationship. Can you maybe elaborate on how you struggle to obey him in all things and strive to be his slave, etc., then put him in a submissive position to you, and then go back to being his slave again? 

The commenter was clearly not trying to be provocative or at all disrespectful, but was clearly curious, and I was struck by how much that set of queries reflects a whole range of ideas and assumptions about BDSM and the roles people take on within the lifestyle.
One of the hardest things about addressing an assumption is catching it when it occurs.  After all, our assumptions are our assumptions, and so we just assume that they are accurate -- if we think about them at all...  Since so much of what people know (or think they know) about BDSM comes from media that are purely fictional, or nearly so, much of the publicly held assumption set about the practices encompassed within the lifestyle is grounded in basic information that is simply unreliable and untrue.  So it is that we in the lifestyle continually have to explain that not all women are submissive nor are all men dominant.  Being into BDSM, in whatever form, doesn't mean that any one of us is sexually promiscuous, or sexually available -- even if that is the notion that is held by most of the people in the mainstream.  No matter what you read, there is no "one true way" to do any of this.  The various labels that we use and adopt to describe ourselves and our proclivities help us to talk with one another, but may not mean what anyone else thinks they mean, and they only tell you just a little bit about us, so don't assume that if you meet a Top or a masochist or a switch that you have a clear picture of that individual.

So, take a look at my commenter's assumptions --

1)  I understand switching for people who play at BDSM...  This bit points to a pretty ubiquitous view that is common inside the lifestyle and outside it as well.  Somehow there is this notion that it is either all or nothing.  That you are either "real" or you are a "player," and that to "play at" this makes you somehow "less."  I think its a sad and limiting view that precludes the variations in mood and intensity that are a very normal and lovely part of human relating.  That either / or dichotomy means that there is no room for those who might by times be playfully serious or seriously playful or playfully playful or seriously serious.  Whatever the descriptor that a person might attach to their most intimate relationship, wouldn't all of us point to times when we were in each of those modes?

 2)  Can you maybe elaborate on how you struggle to obey him in all things and strive to be his slave, etc.,...
Struggle and strive.  What a negative valance to put on what is, at its root, a relationship of love and devotion.  I have my struggles, to be sure, but I recall my very vanilla, and very typical mother struggling by times within the boundaries of her traditional marriage.  It is true that I lay my struggles and my doubts out here for the whole world to see, and perhaps to the person who looks in from outside it does seem as if it is all sturm und drang.  That is a function of my tendency toward self-absorption, melodrama, and overblown writing...  I do not struggle to be His slave.  I AM His slave.  The level of accomplishment that I achieve in the living of that chosen life varies from moment to moment and event to event, but it doesn't change the base level truth of who I am.

3) ...then put him in a submissive position to you,...
Ahhhh...  here's the ultimate "gotcha."  The assumption that a Dominant must forever and always maintain the authority of the position, and that if He should ever waiver or ever soften or ever step outside of the stereotype, then He would be not Dominant but submissive, is just silly.  Submissives are human.  Dominants are human.  People are as varied at the flowers, and there is no one right way to do it.  I've probably read at least a thousand accounts that referred to THE LOOK or THE VOICE that submissive women so often attribute to Dominant men, and I've seen THE LOOK and heard THE VOICE myself -- just not all the time.  Sometimes He is quiet, sometimes He is silly, sometimes He is preoccupied, sometimes He is sad, sometimes He is bored.  He doesn't have just one facet to His personality, and neither do I.   When I held Him in my arms and crooned little meaningless assurances into His ear when He wept with grief at the loss of His father, was I putting Him into a submissive position?  When I cleaned up His puke and wiped His ass while He recovered from abdominal surgery, did I place Him into a position of submission?  If I balance the checkbook and pay the bills, am I making Him submissive when I say, "No, we cannot afford to buy that this week...?"  There is no set of behaviors that make someone Dominant, and there are no prescribed behaviors that define submission either.  If He sometimes likes the sensations created by spanking, and if I willingly and competently allow Him to experience those sensations at my hand, who is Dominant and who is submissive? 

4) ...and then go back to being his slave again?
People continue to fall into this fallacy, that "being His slave" is a put on, something that I do and then do not do.  I am always His slave, no matter what I am doing or thinking or feeling.  Sometimes I am right here, at His side, pouring His drinks and fetching His slippers.  At other times, I am away, seemingly independent, working or shopping or performing some other task away from His sight and His immediate and direct control.  I remain His slave.  Sometimes I adore Him and think He is simply the grandest and finest Man it has ever been my privelege to know.  At other times I think He is the meanest, snarliest, foulest bastard on the planet.  I remain His slave.  Sometimes I am completely happy and secure and contented with the life we share.  At other times, I am restless and prickly and disatisfied.  I remain His slave.  That "always and all ways" line that He and I use is not just some cute throw away.  We mean it.  He means it, and so do I.  There is no "going back" to being His slave, because there is no "going away" from being His slave.  I don't think that is unique to our M/s dynamic.  I think there are people who develop vanilla and traditional relationships that exhibit those same kinds of constancy -- I've seen it, and I imagine I'm not the only one. 

Do not assume.  Do not assume you know who I am or who He is.  Do not assume that you know the all and all of any other human person.  Try, if you can, to take others at their word, to give others the benefit of the doubt, to believe that most of the people that you come across are doing the very, very best they possibly can.

swan