The Shaping of Human Tools: Part 2: The Debate

Welcome to part 3 of this series. If you are looking for a way back to the beginning you can go to the Introduction which has a table of contents or just to the the previous section .

In this section we will examine the debate within the BDSM community on the topic of whether training (and by extension punishment) is needed at all. The opposition to training solidifies around several lines of argument that come up over and over. Below I present them, and my responses.

Proposal: “perfect obedience”: The idea is that the submissive in a relationship naturally has as their goal obedience to their dominants wants and desires. Thus, they will always endeavor to obey and if at any time they fail in that task it is an innocent mistake or momentary weakness. Such a submissive does not, they may claim, need to be “treated like a child” to achieve the goals of the dominant.

Response: For many relationships this will be true. The requirements of the dominant are not such that reflexes need to be created or any specific discipline achieved. The requirements all fall within the realm of volitional responses that do not need to happen quickly or with any high degree of consistency. If that is the case then punishment and for that matter training have little place in the relationship.

Proposal: “Self Punishment”: This is the idea that a submissive who has knowingly failed their dominant will feel remorse about that failing and that this is “punishment enough”.

Response: While the self punishment of the submissive is a real phenomena and the submissive in question will no doubt feel significant anguish in their failure this is not always a useful means of correcting the response. It is fairly common for humans to misinterpret the cause of their own failure or the exact nature of that failure. Any change in the responses of the submissive resulting from a mistaken or misplaced self punishment would then not be in line with the desired response.

Let’s face it – many humans do things every day they feel bad about later. Feelings of later remorse are lousy motivators most of the time.

Proposal “My dominant should want me as I am and not change me!”: This is another common refrain that shows up in several forms.

Response: It is clear that in the majority of relationships there is no training desired or required. The reasons for this may simply be that the dominant has no specific responses in mind or that they are in line with the responses already present in the submissive.

In either case this is a perfectly acceptable relationship dynamic. It does not however negate that there are other possible valid relationship dynamics that may require the substantial alteration of the responses of the submissive.

One common rebuttal when this is pointed out is to question why the dominant would have entered a relationship with a submissive that required substantial alteration. The answer is simple and clear; this submissive offered value that exceeded the cost of their training (not speaking specifically monetarily, though that may be one situation).

In short not everyone does need to introduce training, punishment or conditioning to their relationship. The majority of folks never have a set of needs and standards that require this level of response. However those of us that do are not treating our people as morons, children or weaklings.

On to part 3, The debate!

Image note: The associated image is used under the Creative Commons license at this link, and was taken by Alex Lines and posted on Flickr.