Mentors?

Is there value to mentors?

Mentors are a controversial topic in power exchange life as there are many possibilities.

In my opinion there are two ways mentors add any value:

1) The common view of a mentor is a person who you can learn, respect and bounce questions and opinions and get an OBJECTIVE opinion back. A mentor like this is NOT going to play with you or want any power given over to them. They are just their as a friend.

2) Many use the word “mentor” as a euphemism for a short term or casual relationship that may or may not have sex involved but will have power of some type and level given over and probably some kink things.

So if one is in the exploring stage and wants to find out what they are attracted to and want in a power exchange relationship before looking for the one often people love the term mentor as it seems more noble and less tainted then fling, short term or words of that nature.

Now the bad things that mentor can really be a bad term.

1) Giving power over, especially decisions or controlled communication, to basically a stranger is seriously fucked up.

First and foremost even calling yourself a slave and in the most total power exchange relationship has any person in a free society abdicated their personal responsibility or their right to pursue being happy. If you want or even think it is a good idea to give someone else power over major decisions in your life that is not your love one but some person who wants to be thought as a mentor you need to step back and get some help.

People do not do things just for the good of their heart. Friends and family who have known you for years care about you. A relatively new person to your life is not caring about you but wants something from you.

People who “enjoy” mentoring another by taken the “broken” submissive and fixing them into someone who flourishes is just as devoid of self esteem as the submissive who agrees to follow them. They are relative strangers and their drug is feeling superior to others and a submissive looking for a mentor to show and protect them from this new strange world is their drug of choice. They will not help that submissive by being independent and getting them the help and support they need in order to work on their self esteem issues but instead feed on it by re-enforcing the thoughts that the submissive cannot make good decisions for themselves.

How is someone going to “fix” someone when they have an absolute need to feel superior to anyone close to them to begin with? Mentors like this are all hot air. Remember someone looking out for another’s best interest is going to only be concerned about trying to get the other person the tools so they can make good decisions for themselves and not shield them from the big bad world.

2) One true way

If interested in having a mentor avoid anyone that has one true way type thoughts whether just being friends with the person or playing with them in some way. If your goal is to explore and find yourself then being told to you have to do this or do that is just a giant waste of time and can give you a bad impression if that one true way is not your way.

3) Fear mongering

There are just too many, even good experienced people, who need to chest thump to make them feel better about themselves and this is often expressed by promoting the classic “every dominant but me is a loser and an abuser”.

It is very simple if you could not make good choices in others in the regular relationship world you will struggle in the power exchange world. Of course there are losers and abusers in this life but they are the same types in the regular world and if you are all there easy to spot.

This life for someone new can be scary and seem more extreme and therefore might feel it is completely different the regular relationships and therefore the people must be completely different. They are not. A friend/mentor would be someone who helps calm your fears and educate you and not someone who hides you from exposure and stokes your fears and hesitations about this life.

Difference from humiliation and degradation play?

I do not think any one can give a distinction that everyone would agree with and falls more into the individual. I really never really made a distinction personally but I read a definition about a year ago I will share as it was a nice clear distinction through my own personal eyes.

Humiliation play is more about suffering embarrassment in some way and degradation play is more about being devalued in some way. For a shout out to the safety police notice the word play and not made to feel permanently.

Of course the feeling of embarrassment or feeling devalued is strictly a personal reaction. For example being made to expose yourself in some way might be humiliating to someone normally but an exhibitionist probably not so much.

Degradation play is not for many or most from my experience and reading from others on the topic. Personally I love it. For those who do not get it, remember I love my Master and would not be with him if I did not believe he loved me and cared about me. When he engages in this type of play it is not any more serious in my mental thought of him or myself then any other type of play or orders.

Slave contracts?

What do you think about slave contracts?

First I cannot believe I am doing this as it seems blatantly obvious but must point out they have zero weight legally for anything! I pray everyone who is reading this knew that already.

I believe they are not remotely necessary but at the same time can be a terrific benefit.

Things to run from if you are a slave in contracts: If a dominant puts in a length. If you are moving to them and/or giving up a job let alone a career to be with them and they put in a length just flip them the finger and leave them. You will be crushed but it is best. The length is not to open up to see what can be changed when it is completed excuse some dominants might use because that can be done anytime. The only real reason a person would put a time frame in a contract like this would be so they have a guilt free get out of the relationship excuse period! You can move to your owners and sign six months and after six months they can go sorry but it did not work out. It is all commitment on the slaves end and expressed zero commitment on the dominants end. I cannot stress this enough, the only real reason to put a length in a contract is so at least one of the person’s doing it WANTS a guilt free get out of the relationship card.

Things I do not like about contracts: Certainly when in a long term relationship how we normally start out and the eventual evolution to how we live a contract will probably become very out dated and have many things missed.

Also contracts tend to cause way too linear of thinking, especially at the stage most of us fill them out, and this can cause wrong assumptions from the contract being too limited in the power given up and more limits then there could be to the dominant thinking they are significantly farther ahead of the arc of a relationship and forget they are still building trust and taking of power.

Things I love about contracts:

They can be great to get all parties on the same page. They can be great as they often generate discussions about things that neither had thought of before. They can be great to see where the other is from an emotional stand point. In general they are great for establishing a quality structure.

My personal experience with my Master:

For us the filling out a contract was a tremendous bonding experience. I was a veteran at being a slave he had never had a slave. We were living in separate states and we drew ours up after we agreed for me to move to him and become his 24/7 slave.

The reason why it was such a bonding experience was because of his lack of experience and our previous limitation of distance and our personalities (neither cared about forcing the dynamic through the telephone) where we stood when going 24/7 everyday without breaks from being away from each other left us wondering what each thought this meant.

My Master had gotten a contract off the Internet and even before we sat down he warned me in a nervous way that is was lengthy and had a lot of cyber theorist in it. But as we went down item by item and my answers, being a TPE slave that I was born to be, yes, that is fine and whatever you desire he realized that all the talk about how we wanted our lives to be and my time with him when we together was not role play on my part moved him deeply and helped him greatly trust my commitment to the life. I got out of filling out a contract was seeing a man who truly needed a slave and was very serious about living this way which was critical to me.

In fact it took us three sittings to get through the contract because my Master got so worked up and took me before we could finish. ;)

I believe it is a very good idea to draw up a contract as it can go a long way to put both people on the same page and provide a strong structure for the dynamics of the relationship. I just think contract is the wrong term and I would use drawing up a guidebook instead.

Why I keep safety talk to the minimum?

I wrote a long post here on this subject but wanted to put a summary of it in this section as I am currently working on some posts that will have the safety police up in open arms.

Why I keep all safety and risk talk to the minimum in my blog is for three reasons:

1) Hypocrisy: Most talking about safety are not really talking about safety. They are using a very important subject as a tool to indulge in the cool factor. The classic “They are doing something I will not do. I now have to trash this thing in order to make me feel cooler then the people who are doing the thing I will not.”

It is the classic hypocrisy people commit everyday. It is the person going I would never do this for health reasons then proceed to get on their motorcycle to go two blocks to McDonalds to have their daily Big Mac and large fries after they finish smoking their twentieth cigarette of the day.

2) Lowest Common Denominator: Most and I do mean most people in this life but really in general when talking about things talk down to people like they are total morons. Sure they might not write that way to the active reader but everything about other people comes off as if they were dumb, ignorant and not capable of common sense.

I refuse to do this as I find it very disrespectful. I write assuming the person reading and the people I may write about have basic intelligence, common sense and look before they leap. I assume the extreme minority of people with issues are not reading anything to filter or will not learn anything anyway.

3) I refuse to write based on worse case scenarios being the norm: I find it pathetic that anytime a topic is mentioned by people in whatever medium that worse case scenarios often based on the theory most people are morons but me frames the discussion. I refuse to do that.

It is the year 2008, people know to use condoms. A new dominant knows not to hang his bottom to the rafters and use a cane severely the first time he tops.

There are risks in pretty much everything we do in life. Many things too many people do not think about the consequences of actions. If anything the kinks done in this life get more safety thoughts then many everyday type things that are inherently more risky.

We all take risks. Just what risks we take are an individual choice. What we all need to do is on the risks we do take to think about what we can do to minimalize those risks. I choose this honest and respectful way when I write. I will leave the people who choose to use safety for self promotion and to promote their coolness and superiority to others.

What is a Definition Dynamo?

This is a person from either gender or role who takes one or several definitions from a dictionary that conveniently back up a point they are trying to make. I have a friend who calls these people vacuum professors as they require suspension of common sense and basic intelligence and a complete lack of grasps of how the real world operates in order for it to have any semblance of practical reality.

The ultimate classic example of this is of course the person who types out a definition of the word slave out of a dictionary. Those people are easy to spot and ignore.

My personal favorite example is people for whatever reason take an outdated clinical definition of the word fetish wanting to preach to all that a fetish can only be someone who is sexually dysfunctional because they can only obtain sexual satisfaction by something that is abnormal.

The reason why these types of definitions are useless is because they ignore the fact that many words have many different definitions and even more then a regular dictionary they might take on different definitions in a specific group of people like power exchange or some occupation. Then there is also the fact that often dictionaries are often behind the pace of the evolution of a word.

Who is a Chest Thumper?

A chest thumper is the opposite approach but has the same goal of a person inflicted with cool factor disease. They want to let people know just how superior they are to others and will insert this practically in any communication.

A chest thumper is a person who inserts judgments or communicates one-way truisms into as much communication as possible to directly communicate that people not like him are losers and they are special.

The typical example of a chest thumper is a dominant who will claim that to be a “true” Master it takes years of experience which he just happens to have. Warns all submissives of the world that dominant less then what they are is dangerous and will probably kill them. These are people typical of wanting to make clear that a dominant should be strictly chosen for their tangible dominant skills. So a submissive should not care so much about all the compatibility factors and just bow to a man who has taught a seminar.