Ancilla L
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The Fabric of Slavery.
🕑 Added 2023-07-28 15:49:32 +0000 UTCI'm ashamed of the fact that I identify as a slave. Hear me out, before you react, I am very comfortable with my affinity for pain and more importantly, I understand it. Pain, to me, feels like the worn fabric of the blanket I held between my fingers as I fell asleep in my childhood bed, dreaming of liberation. From the moment I first felt pain, I understood that I wanted it, there were no moments of fraught conflict. There may have been stages in which the association between pain and sexuality was less clear to me than it is now, owing mostly to not having a bodily understanding of sexual expression and manifestation, but even in those stages, I was never suspect of pain, it never felt like I didn't comprehend this desire, but the desire to be *slavish*, I still don't really understand it.
Oh, I feel it. I know I feel it and I have for a very, very long time, but right from that time, I've been loathe to answer the question — What is this feeling?
It is a *large* feeling, and it's not entirely divorced from the socio-political history of the *ownership* of people. I don't condone that, of course, quite the opposite, I struggle most with the symbols of slavery that associate with the history of forced servitude, bonded labour and the ownership of people. Elements like changing a person's name to enable the erasure of identity, to disallowing the use of furniture, to branding and garb meant to distinguish a person as property and such, they all come from a particular legacy which may have played out differently in different countries and areas, but is contained within all of our histories. Either as the oppressor or as the oppressed. Of course, I have agency, I was born into the legacy of colonialism and casteism, but with the privilege to emancipate myself from that legacy by way of being a citizen of a free country, and any choices I make with regard to my sexuality are *my choices*. However, even with that, the awareness of the roots of these acts and the phenomenon itself, which to me may play out only as a fetish, is not unimportant. I see these roots, I wonder about them and I wonder how they play into my sexual desires, I wonder about myself wanting to participate in the pornography of the theatre of exploitation, and despite decades of thinking about the ethics of my sexuality, I still have no clear answers. I don't know what answers I am supposed to have, maybe none, sometimes it feels like the awareness of the roots leads to a more ethical and informed practise of the concept, other times it feels like the sexualisation could be a form of subversion, but it's hard to tell and my feelings about it change routinely. It's hard to know. It's hard not to have days when all of it just feels *wrong*. No amount of self-actualisation in terms of sexual acceptance is enough to answer this question for the conscience of an *individual*, or a society. Far be it for me to label it wrong for someone else, but I will admit, it feels wrong to me on some days.
However, the desire and practise continues to prevail. What good is sexuality if it doesn't worship at the altar of cognitive dissonance? Even in the desire, bereft of the political connotations, I cannot fully understand it. I cannot quite do a complete autopsy on what it *feels* like to be a slave and why it isn't the same as submitting to someone. One could argue it's not necessary to perform this analysis, I sort of agree, how you apply a role to your own sexuality is really not monolithic, so let me state now, for the entirety of this piece (and probably, life), that everything I say is based on my understanding of this role, for myself, and it does not have to apply in any way to literally even one other person. I have insisted, and probably will continue to insist, that submission and slavery feel very different to me. I do not feel submissive, I do not identify as such, there is no pleasure to me in obeying another person. I don't enjoy pliance. My pleasure lies in having to accept a condition. It's the difference between "*I want to please you*" and "*I have to please you because by virture of the role appointed to me, it is my duty*". I see submission as the desire and the choice to subvert yourself, perhaps to accept guidance, it's really not about what you do as the submissive, but where your pleasure lies that defines it for me, and the pleasure of submitting seems to lie in the act of obedience and the desire to do so. The pleasure of slavery lies in the act of compliance. It's not necessarily that you don't *want to* do something, it's that whether or not you want to is sort of irrelevant. (And yes, I will happily accept the argument that my version of slavery is more CNC than slavery, and I do concede that the two are linked in my conception of identifying as a slave, in the way that CNC does not necessarily mean slavery, but slavery necessarily contains CNC, but you know, it's consensual *non-consent* and what I am talking about is more irrelevance of consent, within a negotiated construct, of couse).
I see submission as a renegade's free-form interpretation of power exchange, in a very good way, and I see slavery as a rigid and heavily role-focused interpretation of power-dynamics, in a just as good way, but they do both seem very different to me. And it means that the definition of the role is everything to me, and there is, well, more than one aspect to the definition (and again, I am defining these terms for myself, I don't mean any of this to be prescriptive). There is the conceptual definition that slavery is the act of accepting the constraints of a role as duty regardless of personal feelings and adhering to them with an expectation of non-fallibility whether you want to or not, and in that accepting the lack of ownership over your will. Then there is the definition by the locus of pleasure, I find slavery pleasurable because it enables, strife. Strife is not the same thing as pain nor really, suffering, it's about..circumstance. You know how when terrible things happen in life some people possess the ability to accept it as "god's plan" and perhaps even derive some sense of purpose from the endurance of their circumstances? It's that. It's about living with a condition over which you have no control.
Let me explain that in the context of my relationship with my husband. He only fucks me in one position, it's very ritualistic and very cold, detached and objectifying. As an act, it's..whatever. It's sometimes hot and sometimes fine and it's sometimes, just (penetrative) sex, but as a practise it means that all other methods of having him inside me are disallowed to me, forever. At first this was just hot, but then the desire to taken or seen in different ways began to rear its head, and in that desire, came the circumstance that I have no choice but to endure and accept as my reality. It is like being the mistress of a man who will never leave his wife. That is what is hot to me about it. That's where the locus of the pleasure of slavery lies for me, it's in that kind of creation of circumstances that define the nature of our interactions within a certain role. There is also the pleasure of the mindset enabled by this role in how I see my partner in the counterpart of this role. Man, that sentence was muddlesome. Allow me to un-muddle it. My approach to *my master* is a bit similar to what the concept of god represents. I know, all the red-flags, and fine I totally get why, but let me clarify that I am not a proponent of delusion with regard to the fallible nature of human beings, I am a proponent of the possibility of the creation of roles in which I am allowed to view a person as unknowable but always correct, because that role is hot to me (and them). He is a complete human being, and I do not view him as god, as a person, but within the role of my master, yeah, I do (and can you see why I am ashamed of these things I do?). Just like I am a complete human being and he does not view me only as his subject, but within my role as his slave, he does. The thing is, the pleasure of serving a bulwark is what works for me and roles can be that, people cannot. God is a role, not a person.
There's also the most vast definition of slavery — in terms of the method of expression — and that is, perhaps, more telling than any other definition. How do I express my slavery? Is it by kneeling? No, but it is by prostration. I cannot tell you why the sentiment governing those two things is different, but I feel it when I do them. I express it by wearing various collars, not because I am prone to object-sentimentality, but because he is, and since it is his will to ascribe such meaning to the symbolist trinkets with which I am laden, I must necessarily borrow that meaning and have as much faith in it as he has belief. I express it by suppressing my reflexes in pain and suffering. I express it by holding my tongue when I want to speak. I express it by referring to the room in which I live as *his* room, to the bed in which I sleep as *his* bed, to the clothes I wear as *his* clothes. I express it through mindless worship. I express it through service. All of it makes slavery feel like a faith-based form of devotion, honestly, that's truly what I yearn for. I suspect, sometimes, that I would drop all of this in a heartbeat if I had enough faith in God or something like it to be able to be a monk, it often feels like that is the sentiment I am attempting to create with this.
And that.
That is where lies the shame.
Well, it's clear, why I am ashamed, right? It's because of the oodles of damn sentimentality that govern this aspect of my sexuality. I'm not ashamed of having emotions or being a sentimental person, I oscillate between mighty sensible and ravenously sentimental, but I oscillate in a very controlled manner. I am just too regimented to be able to do sentimentality in spaces outside of art. Sentiments are for writing, for music, for drawing, for creativity, not..sex? Life? Power exchange? It's not just that there is sentimentality, it's also that it's..so much. It's intense, ill-advised by any modern prescription of healthy love, it fritters too close to delusional at times, it is unreasonable and impractical, and so idealistically simplistic and sincere that it makes you feel sorry for the person who harbours such emotion. There is nothing harder than being seen in sincerity, is there? Slavery feels like wearing sincerity on my skin all the time. It's also part of why it is so appealing. It removes the constraints of being myself, from an expression of myself. It is a space in which intensity, delusion, sincerity, wretchedness are all things that you are *allowed* to demonstrate and feel. It is much like writing in the way that I don't control it, it controls me, so long as I make the decision to surrender. It also enables a placebo of purpose. I struggle with purpose, I know, who doesn't? However, even when I can make a list of things that define my purpose, and feel like I am achieving the things on that list, I do not have the stillness to feel the comfort of serving my purpose. I feel it when I am acting within the role of slave. It's a very exact definition of who you are supposed to be, the kind you just cannot get from life. It's very gratifying to be secure in your knowledge of your place. It's very *Lucky* from *Waiting for Godot* (with all its ethical concerns, even).
It *means* a lot to me to identify as a slave, but I could never adequately convey *all* or even *what* it means. I'm just a little bit ashamed of it, though. I probably like the shame and that's why I keep it.
Comments
Rain DeGrey
I love reading your journey and exploration and thoughts.
Robert Gross
My understanding of shame is through the psychological/spiritual lenses. It is, at the basic animal level, the action of the breaking of an important, if not life-threatenng relationship. As infant humans, we are utterly dependent on a caregiver for our survival. That may be true for many higher species who are ill equipped to survive at birth, but we are speaking as humans. For the newborn, there is no awareness of extenuating circumstances, only the survival drives of hunger, thirst, avoidance of discomfort/pain, not much else. Little recognition of any distinction between self & environment. So when it makes a distress sound or movement, the caregiver comes to "fix the problem." Without a clear distinction between self & environment, the only reaction is What is wrong that I am abandoned in my pain? The only awareness is of self, so that must be the source of the wrongness. None of that analysis is possible, it takes place at the biological reaction level, like an amoeba pulling away from any threatening stimulus.
