In Service: Service Tops, Subs, and Serving the Kink Community
If you've been around a few kink discussions, you may have heard the term "service" tossed around. Commonly, you'll hear "service submissive" or "service top", but “service”, in general, is a kink concept that sticks around.
What is Service?
Service is when someone provides a desired activity or outcome to another person through the use of the service provider's time. Time is an important factor here; most of us don't consider giving $20 to someone to be a "service" (though you could!), but we'd consider unloading the dishwasher to be a service.
Other examples of service within kink contexts could include:
- Cleaning someone's home
- Providing a spanking
- Driving someone to an event
- Attending an event with someone as their servant
- Providing oral sex
- Giving a backrub
- Doing the laundry
- Running errands
- Attending an educational class to provide the notes to the service recipient
It's really important to note that service must include a desire for the activity or outcome from the recipient. If you go around gifting peanut butter cupcakes to a dominant who didn't want them (and has a peanut allergy), you haven't provided a service. Service requires the recipient to want for (and generally, in kink contexts, ask for) the thing the person provides or completes.
This also may include doing the service in the way that the recipient would prefer. This can be another facet to service within a kink framework. If the service provider generally wears shoes while vacuuming, but the service recipient prefers their vacuuming to be done when someone is shoeless, modifying how the task is completed can also become part of the service itself.
What is a Service Top?
A "service top" is a person who takes the leading role within a dynamic or scene with the sole intention of providing a service to the bottom/submissive within the scene.
In general, when we think of a dominant, we like to think that the dominant is getting their way, doing the things that the dominant wants to do. After all, that's part of the point of making all of the decisions and deciding what is going to be done.
A service top, however, is simply taking the leading role in order to provide a scene or activity to another person.
This may look like a submissive who agrees to "service top" their owner because their owners wants to receive the catharsis of a spanking to help them process some of the stress they're dealing with at work.
This may look like a dominant who's skilled at fireplay offering mini scenes to anyone at a local dungeon who'd like to try out receiving fire play.
This may look like a submissive who used to be an experienced rope top agreeing to tie up their dominant partner to help them understand the ties and how they feel.
This may look like a dominant agreeing to do a scene with activities they don't really feel like doing, just so their bottom, who's a good friend, can get to experience some of the activities they've really been craving.
What is a Service Submissive?
A "service submissive" is a person who has placed service as the forefront of their submission. This may be a core identity that they use throughout all of their kink interactions, or this may be a dynamic-specific role that they take with one single dominant.
An important facet of service submission for many (but not all!) who identify that way is recognition. A service submissive likes to receive recognition - in whatever form it takes in your dynamic - for their time, work, and energy. This can look as simple as praise and gratitude, but within a kink dynamic, it can also look like humiliation or an intentional ignore kink scene. Within an established dynamic, it can also look like a dominant's relaxed state directly caused by the submissive's work in handling the tasks.
Like all kink activities, service submissives also require some sort of energy exchange in order to feel fulfilled. They aren't simply turned on by scrubbing the floor and doing the dishes for any person who happens to ask.
Service submission doesn't just exist within one-on-one settings, either. Especially at group events, you'll likely see service submissives offering their services up to the crowd at large. This may look like topping off water, serving drinks or food, providing foot massages, or offering to carry bags or help someone dress.
What is a Service Relationship?
While "Service Relationship" is the least common of these three terms, you still might hear it. A service relationship is a dynamic where the two participants have placed service at the forefront of their relationship.
This can differ from a standard power exchange relationship where sexual activities or romance may become the focus of a relationship. In fact, some service relationships explicitly don't include any sexual interaction!
A service relationship may look like a submissive who agrees to come over on Mondays and clean the dominant's home. Occasionally, the dominant may offer play afterwards if they're in the mood, or they may simply praise and brag about their submissive's efforts to their friends.
Why Would Someone Be in a Service Relationship?
Service feels good.
If you're on the receiving end of service, it can feel fantastic to receive someone's focused time and attention on something you specifically want. It also can complete tasks that you may not have the time (or interest or skill!) in doing.
If you're on the giving end of service, it can feel fantastic to make someone else happy and feel appreciated. Most of us like making someone else smile, and service can be a fantastic way to do that. Whether they're a close friend, a romantic partner, or a stranger, it's human nature to find joy in making someone else happy.
Some people also like to provide service for sexual and kink reasons. For some, being the service provider can be a turn-on because it reaffirms their "place" as a servant or "lesser" person within the dynamic. An example of this might look like the phrase: "My dominant's time is valuable, and mine is not. I should be doing everything possible to make their life easier. I exist to please them."
For others, a service relationship may be a way to arrange a quid-pro-quo play dynamic that may not otherwise fit into a busy lifestyle. A dominant partner may find the time they need to arrange and plan a scene because a submissive provides services that free up their time. In exchange, in this quid-pro-quo arrangement, the dominant agrees to put together scenes that the two of them can enjoy together.
Service to a Community? What?
You might also hear kinksters talking about "service to their community". This is a phrase popularized by the leather community, and it essentially means "giving back to your community".
Kink and BDSM communities don't exist without volunteers. There simply isn't enough "profit" to be made within a social group to make it a high-paying job that can have multiple "employees".
This means that most Kink, BDSM, fetish, and leather communities exist because people volunteer their time and energy to make them happen.
Within specific kink communities, this "service" is considered a valued currency on its own, and it's difficult to achieve group recognition without a track record of supporting, serving, and helping the local community. (You'll see this often in the leather community where leather titles are bestowed to those who have dedicated their time to furthering the kink community.)
Even outside of leather communities, though, service to your favorite kink community is vital to keep it running. That's true here on The Cage too! If no one chatted on the forums, there'd be no one here to chat with. If no one had any experience to share, there'd be no one to offer advice for people who needed it.
Keep that in mind the next time you're thinking about how service fits into your kink life. ;)
Mistress Kay lives in the world of sexuality and kink. With a house that's quickly running out of space for things that aren't sex books and sex toys, she spends what free time she has writing femdom help articles (http://kinky-world.net/category/bdsm-advice/femdom-advice/), trying the latest and greatest in sex toys, and exploring the sexual universe with her partners. She can be reached at Kinky World (http://kinky-world.net/).