This is the fourth essay of my series about "Internal Enslavement". This time I picked the subject "Finding Enslavement" and I am going to adress some of the issues involved in finding a dominant or submissive with which to build an Internal Enslavement (IE) relationship. In the following You can read about the Dominance Economy, statistical data and its consequences for submissives. In the second article om "Findind Enslavement" You can read about places to use for partner search and myths used to deceive submissives online. Most of what i am going to present here was inspired by the website http://www.enslavement.org.uk that provides many interesting essays, a huge part of them was written by the RL Master Tanos who runs a poly D/s household in the UK.
1. Introduction
The concept of "Internal Enslavement" deals with the question if a radical consensual slavery is possible in an M/s context that is based on the pillars of safety, sanity, consensual and mutual trust, respect and commitment, in the physical, emotional and mental area of relationship. According to Tanos the answer is yes. Radical consensual slavery is possible (-> TPE = Total Power Exchange). It is a goal you can work towards to step by step, and you can make more and more achievements towards this goal. Tanos also believes that there are certain techniques derived from psychological knowledge that help with the "examination of a female slave's thoughts, emotions and past experiences to establish and maintain a solid and inescapable state of ownership". When we speak of a "Natural Slave" we mean someone who is a slave by nature ... someone who has an innate or inborn character trait which predisposes them to slavery in some way. This means that while some people are predisposed to feeling comfortable under conditions of consentual slavery in D/s context, others are not. So not every submissive is going to feel comfortable and "at home" in a Master-slave-relationship.
Let us assume a submissive feels that he/she might be a "natural slave" or already knows that he/she is and desires to live in an M/s relationship with a responsible Master/Mistress. Or let us assume the submissive wants to find out if living as slave and property of a Master/Mistress is something that fits with his/her nature and helps him/her to find comfort and fulfillment in life. One might think that finding enslevement is easy as there seem to be so many people out there who embrace this concept, at least by what they say or write in profiles throughout the internet. Yet it is not ... at least it is not easy for a submissive who is interested in Internal Enslavement to find a responsible Master/Mistress that matches well with his/her personality and needs. And this has to do with "The Dominance Economy". Let's read more about this in the following.
2. "The Dominance Economy"
People who have participated in the mainstream BDSM Scene will have noticed that there are far more men than women - online in chatrooms, forums and mailinglists, but also at real-life events like munches and club nights. Tanos collected statistical data on this phenomenon, by doing a survey via the general UK BDSM website "Informed Consent". Over 1200 people participated in the survey that every site member was offered, and 887 of them were male, but only 384 females. By the survey, they also explored the interest of people in dominance and submission. Surprisingly, 50 out of 384 women responded by "ultimate interest" in submission (scale 0-5, 0 no interest at all to 5 very high interest, and together with the ones who said "high interest" in submission they found out that 168 of the 384 female participants in the survey describe themselves as extremely submissive women. While only very few females described themselves as "extremely dominant", around 170 of the participating males saw themselves as "extremely dominant". This is statistically equivalent to the 168 women with the complementary bias towards extreme submission. Consequently, the numbers of males and females who would be seeking relationships between male Masters and female slaves, should at best be roughly equal.
Now, if a man is highly interested in being "extremely dominant" and finding the complementary female to take her as his slave, this does not mean he will be successful with the search and relationship performance. Tanos writes:
"Due to the Master's leading role in the relationship, his competence in managing his and his slave's life plays a central role in its success or failure. Attributes such as experience, responsibility, reliability and knowledge of techniques of Enslavement and aspects of BDSM are highly sought after by submissives looking for Masters." (http://www.enslavement.org.uk/finding)
Corresponding traits are valuable (and indeed common) among female submissives, but they do not seem to be as essential to their desirability as the traits of dominants are. Let us again read Tanos:
"In particular, whereas a totally inexperienced would-be Master would find it difficult to improvise the techniques necessary to establish an M/s relationship; the corresponding inexperienced female submissive can be led and moulded by a competent Master, with her lack of prior knowledge no impediment to learning." (http://www.enslavement.org.uk/finding)
In this context, it also needs to be said that some self.proclaimed male dominants are not seeking long term relationships, despite their claims to the contrary, and are merely manipulating submissives with false promises and fake self-descriptions. If we look at the meaning of all this statistical data that Tanos and colleagues found, we can put it in this nutshell: There are more available female submissives than male dominants with whom a genuine M/s relationship could be started. Tanos sums it up like this:
"This observation leads to the concept of the Dominance Economy, in which real-life, competent dominance is a scarce resource, and this scarcity has negative consequences for both women and men." (http://www.enslavement.org.uk/finding)
3. Consequences of "The Dominance Economy" (according to Tanos - compare http://www.enslavement.org.uk/finding)
a) Female submissives need to invest extra effort to weed out dominants who exaggerate or blatantly lie about their desirability in terms of experience, knowledge, responsibility and even social status and employment.
b) In consequence to a), female submissives may not be able to rely on conventional female social norms of "waiting to be asked", and may need to make the first contact with a desirable dominant. This is something which many female submissives find very hard to do directly, as part of their general reluctance to risk rejection by asking for things. And i may add: It may be even harder towards a Dom who presents his many many years of RL experience ... might make a sub even more reluctant.
c) Not few submissives with a great need to be dominated might likely accept short-term, unhealthy or even abusive D/s relationships.
d) Male dominants must make extra effort to differentiate themselves from the large number of less than honest or clueless competitors. I think many of the dominants reading this can sing a song of this :-).
I hope to have presented a few valuable insights and ideas to You by this short essay, and I am looking forward to writing the second part on "Finding Enslavement" for You soon which will be about various places to use for partner search and myths used to deceive submissives online,
written by Mirjam Munro, October 2011
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