I’ve been thinking about how to talk to people who are not involved in this lifestyle about what it is that we do. Trying to distill some thoughts that made sense to me, and might make sense to others. This is what I’ve got so far.
If you ask:What is the foundation of a BDSM relationship?
You will probably get as many answers to this question as people you ask. My answer is that a BDSM relationship always contains an element of power-lending. This is exactly what it sounds like, one person lends some control over themselves to someone else.
The person giving the power is submitting themselves to the will of another. They may be called a submissive or a slave or a bottom. These terms are not interchangeable. They are loaded with nuanced meaning that, like most things in this community, are not set in stone. It’s like the term blond. There are a great many shades of blond hair: platinum, strawberry, dirty, … It’s all blond … except when it’s red or brown instead. Even with hair shade, there are gray areas. As far as I know, there isn’t an umbrella term for submissive / slave / bottom. Some people might be satisfied with using submissive for this, but I’m sure I’d get objection from others. I’m going to using the term lender. I hope you can forgive me for it.
The person who receives the loan of power, who takes over some extra control of the lender, may be called a dominant or a master or a top. Again, we have shades of gray and un-agreed on nuance, and, no umbrella term. What could we call this side of the equation? Some people might be happy with the use of dominant, but others would not. I considered using the term lucky, it’s how I feel to be the recipient of the loan I get from my lover, but that’s not going to do. Since I used lender above, I will use the term, borrower here.
So the borrower accepts an extra level of control over the lender. The terms of this loan are highly variable, and I’ll argue that it’s exactly these terms that define submissive / slave / bottom and dominant / master / top.
For example, if the terms are: “You can do X, Y, and Z to me, but not A, B, and C just for the duration of this scene,” I would call that a bottom/top relationship.
If the terms were: “You can do most anything to me, or order me to do pretty much anything, except I have these hard limits you should not cross. This will go on twenty-four / seven — until one of us ends it,” I would call that a slave/master relationship.
This is maximally over-simplified. There are any number of options that can be applied. Also, because of my own limitations, I’ve implicitly couched this as an exchange of sexual power. It would not have to be, and, at times and for some people, it isn’t. It’s just that for me — and I want to be clear that this is simply my opinion — I don’t see the point of BDSM completely outside of a sexual context.
The really important thing here is that there was a negotiation and both parties agreed to the terms (consent). Obviously, negotiation and consent are both easier where there is already trust.
In short, a BDSM relationship is a consensual brokering of power between two or more people, and works optimally in the presence of trust.