Why TPE and I don't get along

Total Power Exchange. I think I kind of get why people want it. I enjoy the Sleeping Beauty books, I've read Exit to Eden (far better than the film, believe me, but still flawed). The idea of being totally under someone else's control is enticing and exciting to those of us who get off on power exchange.

But let me digress a minute here. Why do we call it power exchange? What is being exchanged? I sort of understand it on this level: you cannot have power without responsibility. Many submissives long to give up responsibility. In order to do so, they must also give up control. They gain a type of freedom in exchange for their loss of freedom. And the Dominant must accept the responsibility that comes with control.

Except, I'm not sure if that quite covers it. In the typical D/s arrangement, the submissive gives power to the Dominant. I'm not so sure if the Dominant gives power to the submissive. The submissive retains some power for his/her self - sometimes to be safe and practical, as in safewords, but also in the sense that the submissive always has the right to call it off and walk away. The Dominant does not have the right to enforce a power imbalance without the submissive's consent.

So, just for the sake of argument, let's accept the term power exchange as a way of saying Dominance and submission. What is it that makes a D/s relationship Total? I understand the concept of 24/7. Dr. Faust and I take a mixed approach. There are some things that are in effect all the time. Others can be put into effect for short periods. Others are context-dependent. The extent to which I've consented and made the promise to obey varies depending on what the rule and the situation is.

Do people really promise to obey at all times, and in all circumstances? Do people really give the Dominant blanket consent to control every aspect of their lives? What happens if the Dominant crosses a line they didn't foresee? Do they feel compelled to struggle and accept it? Or do they call a time out and renegotiate?

I guess what I don't understand is, the lovely sexiness of the fantasy notwithstanding, why someone would struggle and accept it. Yes, perhaps you made a promise. But can you really promise to let someone control every aspect of your life? And are you still obligated to fulfill that promise if the other person breaks their end of the deal?

Sometimes I think people do make that effort more because they want to fit in than because it's something they genuinely want. Like there's this idea floating around that you can't do it halfway. If you want D/s you have to do it completely. To me, this sounds like the sort of thing a manipulative shithead would say to get more control than the submissive is comfortable consenting to.

Then again, I have noticed a trend, particularly among submissive females, towards a kind of martyrdom. They struggle and strive to be as submissive as possible, and then do nothing but complain about how hard it is. When I hear this I wonder why they do it at all. I think it's really just a carryover from the conventional gender norms of vanilla society: Women are supposed to be self-sacrificing. Women who aren't are selfish and morally inferior. Sure, we can have jobs and credit cards and mortgages and all the rest, but we still have to be selfless or we're scum. And then they claim the women's movement was a complete success. Right.

I heard on the Savage Lovecast last week from a lady bemoaning the prevalence of misogyny among the local community. My heart goes out to her. I know all too well what she is talking about.

My kinky brothers and sisters, we need not be Total to be kinky. We must do what is in our hearts and our loins. Otherwise I fear we are seeking comfort for our psychic wounds in a way that may feel nice, but ultimately won't fix the problem.

I encountered a Gorean family once that proudly proclaimed, "Master never uses condoms." Master also had a stable of kajiras and, I'm sure, stuck his unwrapped tool wherever he pleased. I do not believe a psychologically healthy person would consent to that, D/s or vanilla. This isn't a mistake made in the heat of the moment, or a statistical anomaly that slipped through despite everyone's best efforts. They accepted it as a condition of the relationship. Let's just reflect on what it is they consented to. A man with known multiple partners spooging in them regularly without protection. Among other nasties, this leads to a high probability of contracting HPV, which can cause cervical cancer. They're willing to risk getting cancer in the most tender part of their bodies for this guy. And as a community, we say that's fine, because they're in a Master/slave dynamic? Would we say the same thing to a vanilla friend or relative? I really, really doubt it.

Why would someone do such a thing? My best guess is rampant insecurity. The need to feel wanted and loved. And the self-importance that comes with belonging to a very exclusive social group. Kind of like a cult. Actually, very much like a cult. And these kinds of remedies are not effective at allaying the person's psychic wounds. They behave much more like self-fulfilling prophecies. Eventually it will come to an end, and the insecure person will have yet another example of human frailty to blame for their lack of trust and self-esteem.

Just as with any relationship, we must accept that our relationships will not make us whole. That's a process we must undertake for ourselves. And I think we have to accept that though someone may give consent, they may give it for poor reasons. And if it negatively impacts other areas of their life, it's really no different from an addiction. I'm not saying I'm the authority on whether other people are in healthy relationships. But if I see my friend going down a destructive path, I'm going to say hey, what are you doing? I'm not going to just look away under the blanket assumption that because it's BDSM it's all ok and consensual. We all want to be accepted in this, but ultimately taking it to that place will harm us rather than help us.