Silken Claws

‘Submission is a gift’ is quite a long-standing trope which makes me prickle every time it comes up, so I've been writing in an attempt to pin down exactly why I don't like it.

I do get what it's trying to express – namely, that submission is valuable and freely given – and as far as that goes, I agree. In fact, the idea of ‘submission as gift’ existed purely as a metaphor, just a poetic way of expressing a trite romantic notion, I’d happily consign it to my personal compost heap of sundry cliches and move on.

The problem is, it’s been kicking around so long that it's become ingrained as an analogy – a more pragmatic comparison drawn to facilitate understanding. And as an analogy, I think it does quite a poor job.

Why submission as a gift is a poor analogy
There are quite a lot of holes I can pick in this, but no analogy is perfect, so I’ll stick to three points I think actually throw up misconceptions.

1. A gift is given without compensation or expectations

A gift by definition is something which is given without any expectation of something in exchange. While gift giving often eventually ends up being reciprocal, the general idea is that a ‘true’ gift is broadly altruistic.

By contrast, submission must be given with some expectations in order to be healthy. So, the analogy creates something of a misleading picture, especially as only submission is framed as a gift and dominance is not.

2. Giving a gift is one sided, whereas you can’t ‘give’ submission without ‘receiving’ dominance

As it’s supposed to be altruistic, a gift is basically one-sided – when giving something, you don’t generally receive something in exchange. Dominance and submission however require each other to really exist – power exchange is inherent in the connection and not any act.

So, you can’t ‘give’ submission without simultaneously ‘receiving’ dominance in exchange. I think submission is a ‘gift’ like going on a date with someone is - that is conditional on the presence or involvement.

3. Framing it as a ‘gift’ doesn’t express that submission is continual and reactionary

Framing submission as a gift misrepresents it as something static, which can be figuratively speaking packaged and gifted. Whereas submission, much like dominance, is a fluid set of instincts, feelings, and behaviours that evolve with time and trust.

That is to say, submission and dominance are reactionary – they’re responses to each other, with a strong emotional component. A dom makes a sub *feel* submissive and vice versa. Which I think is really a key to understanding power exchange – that a dynamic has to be based on reciprocal effort and engagement, because it’s fundamentally about two people bring out in each other.

##So, it’s a poor analogy. Why do I think it matters?
Popular analogies often form the building blocks for popular understanding. And analogies are a great way of making ideas easier to understand - they're basically a form of thought auto-fill, auto-populating a bunch of things we’d otherwise need to consciously think about.

Which is not to say that I think analogies should be perfect, just that a useful analogy should be a shortcut to understanding, not throw up additional obstacles.

And in my opinion, submission as a gift is not just an imperfect analogy – it’s so inaccurate that it creates common misconceptions about how D/s works.

I’ve spoken to plenty of people over the years who have run into this analogy, incorporated it into their understanding, and struggled with it: subs who based their expectations on the idea that ‘true submission’ receives nothing in return; doms who received ‘the gift of submission’ and bent over backwards to ‘honour’ it, burning out because they had all of the responsibility with none of their needs met; and variants on the annoying trope of ‘why won’t anyone dominate me, I am GivInG tHe giFt oF sUbmISsiOn’, which frequently pop up on Reddit. 

That’s not to say the analogy was solely to blame – obviously, everyone is responsible for their own actions and understanding. But equally, the analogy played some part in perpetuating the misconceptions involved.

So, what about a better analogy?
If I were to take a stab at an analogy for power exchange, I’d probably pick dancing. Say, a ballroom waltz.

I’m sure it has plenty of imperfections as an analogy, but it conveys the fact that power exchange dynamics are the product of the effort, skill and care of two people, moving in tandem, responding to each other. It also covers the idea that there’s a leader and a follower, but to follow doesn’t mean to be passive. Following takes the same level of skill and competence as leading, it’s just a different set of steps, the inverse to those of the leader.

But I am by no means saying there’s a ‘correct’ analogy, just that there are better analogies out there than ‘submission as a gift’.

Conclusion
'Submission is a gift' is a pleasant enough sentiment and I have no bone to pick with anyone in particular who wants to use 'submission as a gift' as a metaphor if it resonates with them. I appreciate the language we use to describe our dynamics can be deeply personal and subjective.

But I think it's worth considering as part of a bigger picture and having a discussion about, because I for one have certainly met people for whom it's made for a conceptual stumbling block. So, I think it's a topic worth having a think about - maybe there's a better way to convey the value / freedom of submission which would resonate equally well. And I mean, even if there isn't, having this kind of discussions draws attention to the misconceptions anyways. 

2023 © SilkenClaws.com. All Rights Reserved.

I often get asked what a 24/7 TPE dynamic looks like. While there are, of course, times I subject my sub to various brilliantly sadistic torments, the majority of time we spend in space does not look like that that at all.

For one thing, inflicting pain on someone is tiring.

For another, being brilliantly sadistic requires creativity and quite frankly, who is inspired to sadism on a rainy Sunday afternoon. In my book, rainy Sunday afternoons should be reserved for a warm sort of domesticity. A quiet and contented time to read and not feel obliged to do anything in particular.

I have also been asked how I don’t get burned out sustaining a 24/7 dynamic. In short, it’s because I’m not the only person sustaining it. Dynamics can’t be imposed unilaterally, and I think this post illustrates that quite well too.

As I often say, submission is not passive. Without my sub occasionally offering and putting in effort to get me into space, like on this occasion, I would have gotten burned out a long time ago.

So, what follows is a description of a fairly average rainy Sunday afternoon, complete with random emotions, scraps of conversation, and thoughts.

Sunday Afternoon
As befits a Sunday afternoon, we had just finished watching the football. The football is something I generally don’t interfere with. It would be entirely within my right, but I think it’s important to have hobbies and all that and more importantly, I find the noises he makes while watching the football incredibly entertaining. In fact, as a rule, he will watch the football and I will watch him.

‘Are you watching that?’ I said, as the next match began.

‘Only because it’s on,’ he said. ‘You can put something else on. Or I shall I mute it?’

‘Yes, mute.’ I was focused on fiddling with my embroidery and the noise was making me feel tense.

We talked about the prospect of reading something together, which I had brought up the evening before, and what we should do with the rest of the day.

He said felt like there was something he ought to be doing, but he didn’t know exactly what. I put an arm around him. The conversation meandered through the possible reasons, finally arriving at the conclusion that what we both needed was time in space.

I will just clarify here for those who are not familiar with the concept – space (as in dom and sub space respectively) is something that I have always thought is best understood as akin to a swimming pool. It has a shallow end and a deep end.

The little rituals and routines which are woven into our daily life amount to dipping our feet in the water or maybe having a quick splash in the shallows. The kind of quick dip which doesn’t require getting all the chlorine out of your hair afterwards.

But that kind of thing is never a substitute for a proper swim, let alone a deep dive to the bottom. You know, at the very end of the pool, where the water gets darker. That place where all the noise fades and you are just immersed in a vast expanse of water and, just for a moment, things slow down.

So, when I say we needed time in space, I mean to say that we needed something more than the shallows. The middle depth, where your feet can’t quite touch the floor, if you like.

Now, don’t get me wrong – I needed that just as much as he did.

But nonetheless I felt a prickle of reticence. It was after all a Sunday evening and getting into deeper space takes work, particularly as the dominant. That is not at all a complaint – it’s effort that you generally don’t notice and quite enthusiastically and naturally put in. Nonetheless, from the perspective of a sleepy Sunday afternoon, it seemed like… effort.

Have you ever had some horribly enthusiastic person of your acquaintance materialise for the sole purpose of dragging you out to a [insert social event / restaurant / or other place which isn’t currently your sofa here]? And you don’t exactly want to at that moment, but you don’t not want to, and you know that you’ll enjoy it once you start moving? Well, it’s a bit like that feeling.

I felt a slightly irritated tiredness at the prospect of doing anything at all really, and I had said the previous day that I wanted to read together and grimbly grimbly bim *grumpy dom noises*.

He cuddled into me and asked me what I wanted. ‘I can make bread, or I can be under your feet and read, or get some sort of impact play instrument…?’

I felt myself tense up slightly and he added ‘I just want to make you happy. What can I do for you?’

The tension melted away. I hugged him closer, feeling his breath on my neck.

I considered a moment.

‘I’ll take the reading,’ I said, ‘but with some… accessories’, as I traced a finger under the unzipped part of his hoodie.

‘You’re not wearing a shirt,’ I said half in surprise and half in satisfaction as my fingers found a nipple. He bit his lip slightly as my fingers brushed over it.

I told him to clear the table and clear the floor space we would need, while I relocated our dog to the other room. We laughed when I picked her up complete with her bed and she much resembled a Shiba hot dog.

I told him to get cuffs. He pointed out the rash on his wrist probably prevented that and we opted for the metal ones. Our kink equipment lives in two, heavy, grey velvet trunks. He helped me lift them down and hunt down what we would need.

He smiled when I pulled out the chains, his eyes widening as he slid slightly more towards space. I attached the metal cuffs in the bedroom, returning the pin to its little tin box. I always have the idle thought as to what would happen if I lost it. One of those idle half-fantasies, which would be extremely irritating in practice.

I told him to go back to the living room, while I rifled through the conglomerate of padlocks and keys to find a matching set. It’s much like trying to find a pair of matching socks in a laundry basket, only the socks all look very similar and won’t function if you don’t find a matching pair.

When I joined him, he had already shut the blinds and was kneeling neatly on the mat. I asked him to move closer and swung the metal bracket of the collar around his neck. ‘It’s been a while since we have used this’. I had anchored the chain to the leg of the sofa earlier, while he was in the bathroom. With a smile, I locked it to the O-ring on his collar.

‘Woah, that’s heavy,’ he said, as I let go and the weight of it yanked him forward.

‘I know,’ I said, with a grin.

It was why we had bought it, once upon a particularly entertaining trip to B&Q.

I attached the chain, linking his proffered wrists. He then swung his feet up on the couch for me to repeat the treatment with his ankles.

‘That’s the middle, I think,’ I said, connecting the two chains with a spare link. He wouldn’t be able to straighten entirely like that. He was sliding deeper into space. I could see he was enjoying the weight, pulling against the chains to feel the resistance.

I clipped the chains shorter for good measure and fetched the dildo gag from the other room, much to his pleased surprise. It slid effortlessly all the way to the back of his throat. When we talked later, he said that when we bought the gag, he couldn’t have it in all the way for a few minutes, let alone for a few hours.

We both found that a satisfying reflection. In part, because I have had aspirations of doing away with his gag reflex altogether for quite some time and progress to that end is satisfying. And in part because it means I can relax into my enjoyment, without being as vigilant as I once had to be.

I stepped on the taunt length of thick chain which ran from his collar, yanking him to the floor. He wasn’t expecting it and toppled forward. It took a rather awkward scramble for him to rearrange himself onto his side like I wanted. I added a pillow under his head and scrutinised the result of my efforts.

He was trying to twist his hips, evidently attempting to hump the mat. ‘Do you want a cushion? To hump?’ I asked. He nodded vigorously. With the pillow lodged between his legs, I handed him his phone, book already selected. I proceeded to use him as a footrest, while I opened up the same book on my own phone.

‘I’ll leave you gagged for… Well, as long as I feel like,’ I told him, ‘and then we can discuss the book’.

He nodded again.

We passed a very contented few hours. At first, I alternated between resting my feet on his face and letting him hump them – the pillow didn’t quite offer sufficient pressure. I fetched the Doxy wand when that got uncomfortable for me. I told him to position it as he wanted and he humped it happily.

Retrieving my laptop, I began making notes for our discussion later and highlighting passages I found interesting. In what was possibly my peak of hedonism, I grabbed a chocolate finger or two a few times, and groped him on my way back while eating it. He moaned and arched into the touch.

The chains rattled whenever he moved slightly. When I pressed on the wand, he would close his eyes, not able to really think about anything other than the pleasure. I sporadically put my feet on his face, or used a foot to idly stroke over his ear, or leaned down and petted his hair. I felt as contented as I imagine anyone could feel on a relaxed Sunday afternoon.

It had occurred to me that the wand might become too much and at one point, I thought it had, because he switched it off and put it aside. I went to remove the gag, but he shook his head and used the search bar on the Kindle app to type ‘it was just too hot. I remove it so it cools down. Then more’, followed by a series of smiley faces.

More Than Fun
I pulled him up onto the sofa after a few hours, still chained and shackled, and tangled my fingers in his hair. We talked, still in space, about the book and our thoughts and the vague prospect of dinner. I wanted him to cook for me, so we ordered groceries from one of those ‘takeaway but from a supermarket’ services. The perks of London living.

We both felt profoundly content. D/s is rather wrapped up in both of our idea of romantic love. We are not connected in quite the same if we don’t spend time in space regularly and often.

A lot of people ask me what I find fun or enjoyable about 24/7 D/s, but really, the fun is incidental. For us, it’s a means of being fulfilled, content, and connected.

2023 © SilkenClaws.com. All Rights Reserved.

Here’s a psychological experiment from fairly early on in our dynamic.

‘Turn your head,’ I said. He stared at me, side eyed and unmoving. I eyed him with mounting disapproval. ‘I’ll give you one more chance. Turn. Your. Head.’ Nothing.

He was afraid I would bite him, leaving those blotchy purple marks that the word ‘hickey’ was woefully under-equipped to describe. (Fun fact: on a previous occasion, a friend asked him if he had been punched in the neck).

Funnily enough, I had no intention of biting him, after seeing the discomfort the previous marks had caused. He wasn’t to know that though. He was staring at me, wide-eyed and apprehensive.

I picked up the heavy metal rod I had picked up at LAM the day before, trailing it over his skin. My tests of assorted impact play tools had (by sheer and utter coincidence, naturally) all hit the same places, leaving a smattering of deep purple bruises over his thighs.

He shifted in discomfort. I took the opportunity to settle down next to him, trapping him against the back of the sofa. I pinned his legs flat with one of mine and began tapping his thighs with the rod, just letting gravity do the work.

I considered what I was going to do. The week previously he had resisted me throughout a vicious punishment caning. There was no space, no surrender then, and to be fair, I hadn’t cared. I had taken what I wanted and enjoyed it.

Afterwards, however, he had told me he felt annoyed at me, defiant, and that wouldn’t do. ‘You know,’ I said, ‘I don’t know why I bother.’

He looked away from the rod for a moment. He was scared and in space. More often than not, the two went hand in hand.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said,

‘I don’t know why I bother correcting you, when it evidently has no effect.’ The metal rod kept bouncing against his bruises, but he was no longer paying it much attention.

He swallowed. ‘What do you mean?’ I put down the rod, and folded my arms across my chest.

‘Well, I just punished you for not letting me kiss your neck a few weeks ago. Evidently, it’s had no effect.’

‘I’m sorry.’ He meant it. He always meant it, and it was rarely sufficient.

‘I don’t know why I bother,’ I repeated, looking away. A part of me felt genuinely disappointed in him. A part of me felt glee at the little plan which was beginning to form. I sensed his anxiety, and steadfastly stared at the ceiling, reveling in it.

‘Maybe I’ve been unfair to you. Maybe I’ve expected too much of you.’ He looked in equal measure apprehensive and confused.

‘Perhaps I have wasted my time trying to correct you. It’s evidently had no effect. Perhaps you are just a toy. ‘

My nails traced across the half-moon marks on his hip left from where I had dug them in earlier.

‘Perhaps I should give up on correcting you altogether. Just hurt you, as I please. Until I get tired.’ That sharp intake of breath. The wide eyes. The fear. I felt my face smile the smile.

‘No, please.’ The confusion melted into pure fear. ‘Please no.’

‘No? And why not?’

‘Because I don’t want that.’

‘And since when does what you want matter?’

‘It doesn’t.’

‘So, why no then?’ I could see him trying to think.

‘You said you saw something worth training in me?’

‘Well, that was then. Now, you’ve done something I just corrected you for last week. Again. I’m starting to think that there’s no point.’

‘No, please. I’ll do whatever you want.’

‘But if you are just a toy, I can take what I want, how I want, with no regard for you.’

‘But I want to be more than that, I am more then that…’

‘Evidently not.’
There was a moment of silence, and we went through that exchange in slightly varying words a few times before finally, approaching what I was aiming for.

‘Why should I put any effort into correcting you if it’s not going to have any effect?’ I said.

‘Why should I put any effort into correcting you if it’s not going to have any effect?’ I said.

‘Please let me prove that it does.’

‘How? You can’t seem to even follow simple commands.’

‘Please, let me show you…’

‘How?’

‘Whatever you want…’

I half laughed. ‘If I have to do all your thinking for you, you’re evidently nothing more than a toy.’

‘Please…’

‘And if that’s the case, I really shouldn’t waste my time correcting you, given it has no effect, and you’ll just make the same mistake next week…’

‘No! Please, it does have an effect. I can be better, please. I will be better, please. Please let me show you.’

‘How?’ I pressed. Later, he told me he knew exactly the corner I had pushed him into. A part of him just didn’t want to give me the satisfaction.

‘Because this time will be different.’

‘How so?’

‘Because… because… I want you to correct me. I’m sorry. Please… please… punish me.’

Finally. I smiled. And then I made him say it again.