Ever since I became active in the public scene I’ve encountered, on an almost continual basis, what is undoubtedly the biggest piece of utter bullcrap one can hear.
“The best doms were first subs.”
What utter, total, complete nonsense!!
And I never cease to be amazed at the numbers of normally rational people who are willing to buy into it.
The reasoning behind this is the mistaken belief that by experiencing being a sub or a bottom the dom will learn what it feels like and be better able to relate to the experiences of the subs he is involved with. But the idea does not work. It does not work on either the physical or psychological levels.
Ok, let’s deal with the physical first because that is the one most folks think of in this.
The underlying, but never admitted, assumption is that everyone is built the same way. We all have the same pain tolerance levels. Our muscles all knit the same. Our nervous systems respond alike to stimulus, be it pleasure or pain. Now, anyone who has played for any length of time knows this to be utter foolishness. One sub may enjoy being hogtied for hours on end. Another one may find five minutes to be unbearable torture. The flogger that one may find totally sensual may be horribly painful for another. And we don’t have to go into the cattle prod!
All the novice dom would learn from experiencing any of the physical activities of bdsm would be his own responses to them. And that is ALL he would learn! And if he is stupid enough to buy into the underlying assumption he is likely to be a damn dangerous top because he will play with his subs the way he liked to be played with and that may be downright stupid. If he has a high pain tolerance, he may think that just because the sub thinks she doesn’t she really can stand more and will keep flogging away. After all, he survived it! And when the sub really gets it through to him that, no, she actually can’t handle that level of pain, his reaction is not one of “whoops,” it’s more likely to be, “Well, you’re just a whimpy sub!”
Now admittedly, that is the sort of moronic response one would expect from someone in the Old Guard with the one brain cell per city that they passed around, but we are supposed to know better!
The psychological error is even more pernicious being less obvious. We come into this with a set of experiences which have nothing whatever to do with BDSM but have a profound influence on our activities in it. For example, I have a definite and thorough contempt for authority. It makes me choleric. On those rare occasions when I have encountered it my only thought was of revenge. And if you are familiar with my other work you can pretty much guess what that means! Not for nothing is the motto of the mind-control community “Enforcement=Death.” Now, if I were to extrapolate from my own reactions to authority to a sub who is really into it and responds to that sort of thing, all I would accomplish would be to lose a sub. Now, let us say that when I was young I encountered this philosophy and were foolish enough to believe it. The very first time someone used a tone of command on me I would have been out the door and out of the scene, probably forever and hopefully not leaving a battered corpse behind me with it’s throat cut.
But again, the system takes no account of the differences in psychological makeup, no account of the differences in culture or background. We think alike, we play alike, our nerves respond the same, our conditioned responses are the same.
And it is all utter baloney!
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