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MissBabydoll -> RE: The Main Site (7/7/2006 1:42:06 PM)
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Tributing a Dominant is so NOT about "paying Her way" as in some traditional dating relationship--at least, not the way I work. I have paid the way of lovers before in non-Pro relationships, when I was the one with more money. I regard tribute to Me as a Pro as a form of power exchange (I prefer the term "power transfer" since it's not power My sub gets in the exchange, but submission) as well as, at some level, compensation for skilled attention of a certain kind. I refuse the term "service" because it comes from the Latin *servus*, which means slave, and because, while I negotiate with any sub I'm going to play with, I do what I want within the limits established once we start. I don't provide a "service," I provide an experience, on the erotic, emotional, and hopefully spiritual levels. A truism of capitalist society: TIME IS MONEY. More precisely, work performed through time generates value. I am good at what I do and I took time learning to do it. For the same reason, while I think janitors and clerks should be decently paid, if I make more money once I become a professor (as I intend to be), there's nothing wrong with that, because I will have invested tens of thousands in My professional formation. The bulk of what I went through to become a skilled Dominant did not cost money--though those workshops get expensive!--but it sure cost time and attention and effort and a good deal of pain (including the beatings I took learning impact play!).
Now I'll repeat here something I have said any various forums and that a lot of BDSM people seem to have a hard time with, another truism of capitalist society: MONEY IS POWER. In this society, it is the single most important form of power, because it can buy all the others. BDSM is about playing with power in a serious way, where "play" means "open-ended consensual activity whose goal is the satisfaction of those involved rather than a product." Therefore, involving money as a form of power in sustained BDSM relationships is entirely legitimate. In fact, as anyone paying attention to online Pro BDSM knows, paying as submission is a major fetish. I discovered this back when I was a dancer in men's clubs and enjoyed playing with it, though I learned to be ethical about it. There are predatory "dommes" who exploit this fetish in a non-SSC way when it gets into its extreme (and to Me pathological) form of a serious will to self-destruction. I am not one of them. I despise them. They're like casinos who let gambling addicts spend themselves dry, or any other kind of exploiter of human frailty.
Finally, on whores and ProDommes, here's a quote from Myself on My Yahoo forum, Fem Dom Heresy 2:
"Being a whore (which I have been) is in some ways like being, say, a photographer or a writer or a carpenter or a seamstress. All these occupations have at least two interwoven but distinct hierarchies within them: degree of vocation, and degree of remuneration. At the high end of the vocation hierarchy, whoring is an art, done with passion and commitment as well as imagination. In the middle, it is a skilled trade. At the bottom it is a miserable and hated job or forced labor. On the remuneration
scale, the top is the professional mistress (with a small m), the pampered concubine or hetaira of the wealthy man. In the middle are the upper layers of call-girls and escorts (and girls in high-end houses in countries where prostitution is regulated). Nearer the bottom are the low-end call girls, streetwalkers, and so-called masseuses, and at the very bottom are the indentured sex slaves here and in the developing world (these are overlapping categories). These scales in prostitution are wider than for other occupations because of the universality of sex; because any woman or girl will spread her legs if she is threatened with violence and hunger; because many, many men will fuck any female offered them for a price they can pay,without conscience or care; because even in America women *on average* make 73 cents for every dollar men make, a gap much wider in many parts of the world; and because the planet is still dominated by men. But they are essentially similar.
"That point about prostitution made: male dominants (and some 'lifestyle only' dommes) are prone to call Pro Dommes 'whores' because they regard paid-for Domination as a sexual service, which somehow in their minds makes it dirty. In fact most Pro Dommes do not have sex with their clients, nor even touch the client's genitals in such a way as to induce orgasm. Some Pros therefore get indignant when male doms or lifestyle purists say this. I don't, particularly, except in resenting the intended slur, not to mention the sexism. I mean, any woman ought to know better than to use the word "whore" as an insult! (From most self-proclaimed dominant males, I expect no better, I am sorry to say.) And the male doms should note that in the gay male world there are *plenty* of Pro Doms. Personally I have no problem being thought of as a whore, except for one
crucial distinction: I only engage in activities I personally find arousing, and so I never have to fake it--whereas faking it, even when you are enjoying yourself quite a bit
as an artist of male arousal, is absolutely integral to being a whore."
I am saddened but not surprised to see some of the really backward attitudes on this thread, and the general lack of wider social or historical perspective. But hey, this is the country where the president thinks the jury is still out on evolution and 40% of the population believe he's right and that "the Bible" (i.e., the Christianized reading of the Torah) is literally true--and where the Southern Baptist Convention, the single largest Christian denomination in the country, recently voted that in society and the family, men should lead and women should follow. Why would I expect any different?
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