Slave or Submissive - An Exploration

A woman asked a BDSM community on a blog, “How can you be owned when at the end of the day the power to submit is yours?”
This is an interesting question especially in light of the fact that an oft repeated definition of a slave “is a person who does not choose to submit”. Labels can be confusing and erroneous and yet the BDSM world has numerous labels and numerous words that define an individual, a group, an act or a state of mind. Thus, labels can also be instructive and liberating. Slave and submissive are two words that are used interchangeably and yet are also distinctly defined.
The definition often depends on the individual agenda. I would argue that slaves and submissives are two distinct groups and that what separates the groups are the psychological goals and perspectives of each. I would also argue that slaves and submissives choose their role and that their level of commitment to their ‘label’ and the BDSM community hugely varies.

Slave is a charged word. The word ‘slave’ has political connotations as well as sexual connotations. Let me begin with the political connotations because many of the descriptions and conclusions drift into the sexual sphere. Hegel delved deeply into the status of slaves. Hegel summed up his thoughts on the matter in the Master-Slave dialectic. Hegel is a challenging philosopher and I am not about to attempt to sum up his thoughts but I will present a few highlights. Hegel saw the master and the slave as two selves or beings that are forced to interact with each other. When a master and slave meet the two selves are neither master nor slave. Eventually conflict ensues and one outcome is battle and death or surrender and enslavement. Hegel did not deny that a slave can be an object of sexual desire. At first glance we assume a master has complete and total power. But Hegel argues that a master only has power if the slave obeys. In obeying the slave must suppress its own desires. But in suppressing its desires the slave becomes more aware of its own feelings and desires. As a result, the master/slave relationship is an unstable configuration that lends to a constant shifting of power. This is often summed up in the BDSM community as ‘push-pull’. The master/slave relationship, despite being a part of political institutions and social ills, is a stunningly psychological relationship. One can imagine a scenario in which a government deems slavery an economic necessity but if the master and slave do not exchange power then the requirement fails. Of course, history has not demonstrated this possibility. Exploitation easily occurs. But Hegel was correct in pointing out the precariousness of the master/slave relationship. Melville’s enigmatic story, Benito Cereno, deftly demonstrates the complicated dimensions of power in the master/slave relationship. “Follow your leader” writes Melville but when we meet the captain of the slave ship, Benito Cereno, we wonder “who is the leader and who is the follower?”. In Benito Cereno we confront slaves who do not want to be slaves and masters who do not want to be masters. Obviously, the situation on board the ship is unstable. But what if a slave wants to be a slave and a master wants to be a master? The conflict does not dissolve. Jean-Paul Sartre wrote, “…the world ceases to be centered on me, it flows away to a new, different center, and I become something existing at the periphery”. This was Sartre’s interpretation of a slave’s perspective. This is why Sartre believed some slaves desire to be slaves. It is the very human desire for non-being that drives slaves to relinquish power. And masters seize power out of a fear of non-being.
Slaves in the BDSM world are distinctly separate from political slaves. Slaves in the BDSM world choose to be slaves. They have the power to submit. They desire to serve. But even in peeling away the element of force, it is obvious that the ‘sexual’ master/slave relationship is in constant flux. A master may choose a slave but the slave must recognize the power of the master in order for the relationship to thrive. A master only has power if the slave obeys. A master with a disobedient slave is not a master at all.

But what about a submissive? A submissive recognizes and enjoys the power exchange in the same way a slave does. But a submissive does not submit at the same level as a slave. Submissives dabble and slaves commit. For instance, a submissive may want to explore spanking but may not strive for non-being as a slave and may not recognize the power of the person giving the spanking.

I was following a discussion on a BDSM website where a group of submissive women were debating their level of commitment to their partner. It seemed that the women that labeled themselves as slaves had far less boundaries than the submissives. Most of the submissives in the group recognized that they had numerous boundaries although some recognized that the boundaries could be pushed. From a sexual perspective, a slave seems to hand over both their mind and body to their master whereas a submissive hands over only their body for a limited time.

The BDSM world is diverse and there are so many variations on sexuality that it causes one to catch their breath. One cannot deny that there is a power exchange in the vanilla world as well. But that exchange is not as extreme or magnified and because it is not the conflict is less interesting and certainly less unstable. When Hegel wrote of the master/slave dialectic women were still considered chattel and marriage was not an institution based on equality. But, once again, the majority of women did not choose to submit to their husbands and thus marriage had political connotations. If a woman enters marriage to be a slave in our time then she is choosing a scenario with purely sexual connotations despite the fact that her service may extend beyond sex.

So how does one go about choosing to be a slave or a submissive? Some women who are slaves claim the role was chosen for them. This may be true but in a Hegelian sense the woman had to have recognized the psychological and even physical power of the master at some point. Thus, even though a slave may be chosen initially a slave chooses during the interim. Of course, submissives also choose and a dominant may even guide them down the path of submission. But submissives rarely reach that level of non-being that Sartre was so fond of describing. There is this mental state that slaves and submissives write about. It is called ‘subspace’ and when a slave or submissive leaves ‘subspace’ they enter ‘subdrop’. I would argue that subspace is a state of non-being where the self dissolves into the master’s wants and desires and that subdrop is where the state of being crashes back into the self of the slave or submissive. Subspace and subdrop are extreme states and it seems, at least from the plethora of postings on the internet and from personal experience, that slaves enter these states more frequently than submissives. Thus, focusing on the consensual nature (or supposed lack thereof) of a slave or submissive seems misguided. Choice does not separate a slave from a submissive but the dissolving of the self or the psychological state does. Many slaves most likely began as submissives and many submissives never become slaves. One must be willing to let the protective edges of the self mesh into a masters more prominent self. I don’t think this requires confidence or assurance but a willingness to let one’s self blur into another self. A submissive allows a dominant to guide her. But a slave has a distinctly higher level of willingness. A slave wants to serve and a slave needs to serve.

It is not the accessories that define a submissive or a slave. Both can be tethered and collared. But the psychological state separates a slave from a submissive. There are obviously gradations between the two but a slave relinquishes significantly more control to the master than a submissive relinquishes to a dominant.

I realize that in discussing slaves and submissives that I have referred only to females. I do not mean to suggest in any way that slaves or submissives are mostly women. However, I have noticed that female slaves and submissives seem considerably more vocal in discussing their experiences and their mental states. As such I have addressed the female perspective of slavedom and submission more directly than the male experience. But the male experience closely follows the female experience. In fact, when Hegel described the master/slave dialectic he used two males for his paradigm. Likewise, Sartre was most likely not thinking in purely female terms when describing the non-being of a slave.

Choosing to be a slave or a submissive has little to do with gender, experience or even sex drive. But choosing to be a slave or submissive has a great deal to do with one’s desired mental state. The more willing a person is to relinquish power the more likely a person is going to be a slave. Submissives hold back. Slaves give all.