Leading with their Chins...In their own Words

We begin with excerpts from the fiery, sarcastic open letter of a "Consensual Slave Owner" to "ordinary" (One might almost say, in Our Slave Master's view, "Vanilla") Dominant/submissives (who aren't into, and as the author scathingly notes, just don't "get" Consensual Slavery). One notices that our mad author's English, grammar, spelling, and syntax, as well as the general layout of his letter are intellibly conventional, which lends considerable pith and bite to his argument. But it's well to remember that it's not the vanillas he's mad at--They're simply hopeless--but those many D/s types who have proved false friends.

What the vanilla and "D/s types" just don't get.

Silly Question: Are there really people out there who want to give up "everything", even 'basic' human rights?

Serious Answer: Yes, there are.

"But doesn't a slave at least deserve respect...honesty...love..."humanity"?

"Slavery has nothing to do with what a person may or may not deserve. Slavery has to do with Ownership....As an aside: I, personally would never "respect" an Owner who did not (at least in their own way) respect and care for/about their slave.

"Fear and (more to the point) denial are HUGE elements of Real Consensual Slavery. Will an Owner ever deny their slave so-called 'basic human rights'?

Maybe; it depends. An Owner must have much more than just a basic understanding of psychology....a slave simply has no rights - period. Everything a slave experiences, enjoys, or suffers, is directly controlled by their Owner - including those philosophical intangible abstracts commonly known as 'rights'.

"The vanilla: Is someone who is 'mainstream'; and is either ignorant of D/s and O/s relationships or has little or personal interest in either culture, and who does not and would not choose to enter any 'alternate lifestyle.' Those vanillas who know, at least peripherally, about S&M and D/s practices, find them 'wrong' or 'unhealthy.'

"A vanilla cannot comprehend why a submissive would choose to be restricted, controlled, restrained; allowing themselves to be inferior. "Why would anyone willingly allow themselves to be robbed of power?" they would ask. A vanilla cannot comprehend why a dominant enjoys oppressing, inflicting pain and humiliation, acting superior. "How sick and twisted do you have to be before you relish control over another person?" And the vanilla do not get sadism and masochism: "Kinky is one thing, but real whips? Real chains? That's just sick!"

"....A vanilla person assumes no one would ever really, willingly want to be tied up hanging from the ceiling and caned until welts are raised....

"You, however (and you know who you are), are intolerant elitist bigots; so self righteous that you assume no one could possibly want a lifestyle, or hold a philosophy, that does not match the one(s) you like."

And now, less furious, but equally mad, a few selected quotes from Allen Megill's Prophets of Extremity--Nietzsche, Heidegger, Foucault, Derrida. It was a tough read. The New Criticism has managed to make even Nietzsche unpleasantly obscure--and grows positively mephitic and Stygian in treating of lesser lights than his. I think one ought to bear in mind, as one wades through our Postmodernists, one other quote from the world of kink: "The purpose of vanilla sex is pleasure. The purpose of BDSM is ecstasy." To begin at the end, Megill says summarily, "..simply to reject these thinkers [!] is to deprive oneself of what is valuable in their work....These writers [better!] are tying to encourage in us our capacity for ekstasis--that imaginative ability that we possess to transcend our own situations, to get outside ourselves in time and space. This is a highly important project, for it is precisely our capacity for ekstasis that enables us to function as moral beings, allowing us to see ourselves in the guise of those upon whom we act [whatever it is, ecstasy is certainly not that]. Yet, it is a project that for all practical purposes has been excluded from the domain of the social sciences, and has been repressed within the humanities...They aim [like a madwoman urinating] to bring back to thought [oh, sacred name of thought profaned!] a concern [no longer a project?] that in the Enlightenment view [How dare these dimwits lay bold hands on the Enlightenment?!] finds its place, if it finds any place at all, in art and religion."

Does no one but me see the connection between reading Heidegger, Foucault, Derrida and being hung from the ceiling and flogged?

Well, we shall return anon to the bad sense and bad faith of Postmodernism, but before we do we must tie up some loose ends with our Real Consensual Slave Owner, who, though he has spoken truer than he quite realizes, has missed a couple of points, and made a few unintentional errors that I need to clarify. In order of occurrence:

(1) Whether he must do so or not, I think that our Slave Owner [or, should I say, slave Owner] cannot have so much as a basic understanding of [human] psychology. This becomes evident in his discussion of what [he supposes] the Vanilla Man thinks.

(2) Our slave Owner is right enough, that normally constituted, "vanilla," human beings, with a normal degree of respect for themselves and others, find it difficult to understand why a "submissive" would choose to be restricted, controlled, restrained; allowing themselves to be "inferior." But he's got it just slightly, significantly, wrong, that they would ask, "Why anyone would willingly allow themselves to be robbed of power?" This vanilla, at any rate, wouldn't ask that at all, because I don't believe that any such power exists--except as a degraded, and degrading, delusion. Nor is it so much that a vanilla cannot comprehend why a "dominant" enjoys oppressing, inflicting pain and humiliation, acting superior, as: (a) I don't see the direct connection between domination and sadism; (b) I don't see why you would want to do this to someone you cared about; (c) if you did want to to do it, why you would not be so ashamed and disgusted with yourself--and with anybody wanting to have it done to them--that suicide (for this vanilla) would be preferable to any actualization of so degraded, and degrading (so sub-human), a delusional preoccupation. "Sick and twisted" is by no means the full extent of my negative judgement of anyone who relishes control over another person, as well as of the mutual dolorous delights of sadomasochism--try "vicious and abominable," and "vile and disgusting."

And as for being tied up, hung from the ceiling and caned until welts were raised, I know that I would not in the least enjoy it; and all the depictions I have seen of it I find sickening. So, yes, even the testimony of those who say they do enjoy it does not persuade me that anyone can enjoy it--or that I want to hear about it if he does.