A fellow slave's journal entry prompted this stream of consciousness, I decided to journal about it so maybe I could stop thinking about it when I should be sleeping.
The entry listed things that I consider to be part and parcel of consensual slavery. But she looked at these things as making one a doormat. I had to stop and think, does slave behavior make me appear to be a doormat to others? Does giving up so much control to my Master make me appear to be a doormat? If so, then it's no wonder that so many folks have a hard time with acceptance from families and the Leather community in general.
I backed up a bit and I remembered how the idea of slavery squicked me beyond reason. I was never going to be one of those people; I wasn't going to give that kind of control to another person. I thought of slaves as doormats, taking whatever was dished out without making a peep of dissent.
The thing, with the articles we read online, is they're one dimensional. They don't talk about day to day life. A lot of the informational sites I've visited over the years focus only on the technical aspects of M/s, totally skipping the human factor.
Reading some of these things I can see how it might seem that, to be a good slave, one must become an automaton. However, it isn't true in my experience.
My Master loves and cherishes me as I do him. We tease and joke, that hasn't changed. The collar doesn't change who we are as people. Of course he's made some arbitrary decisions and he will continue to do so, that's his right. But he does let me voice my opinion and he often takes my opinion into consideration. We don't have a lot of rituals; actually I'm not sure we have any. His main expectations for my behavior are that I treat him with respect, that I obey, and that I serve him happily. Who wants an unhappy slave?
He doesn't expect that I'm going to like every decision he makes but he's not going to ask anything of me that will harm me. He takes good care of his property and that care extends to mental as well as physical health.
I think of these lists of slave behavior as goals. Most of us aren't going to achieve everything on these lists perfectly every day. I certainly don't but I continue to try.
