Friday, September 30, 2011

Leather Bear Tails: The eroticization of Breaking

So as my brain is fried, and I mean totally toast. So I am going to post an excerpt of my AEL presentation that I did last Monday. The part is called the eroticization of breaking, and it is about the concept of breaking the slaves will within the leather, BDSM, fetish, and kink community. Enjoy!!



Queue light and movie:


The Master (of whatever gender) is standing in the dungeon. At the Masters feet a crumpled mess of a slave (of whatever gender). The slave s heaves and trembles and gives. As the Master looks up across the dungeon the Master sees the one. The slave that the Master has been looking for. The Master steps over the sweaty lump on the floor and strides over to the slave in their eye sight. The Master grabs the slave roughly; the master beats, torments, fucks, and dominates the slave. While the slave takes it all giving every inch of themselves. And in the end the Maser knows that this one was the one worthy of the Master’s hands. The Master’s dominance, the Master’s collar. And so the slave is whisked away to become the Masters one and only. Having earned the Master’s love and eternal devotion though suffering.



End Movie.



In reality there are three parts to the process of breaking the will, and they are the intent, process, and outcome.



Masters generally tend to eroticize the intent and the process. They fantasize about the intent in terms of being able to punish and dominate without limitations. They carry out these fantasies in real time during the process and then are either unprepared or uninterested in the outcome.


For these Masters the broken slave holds no challenge or sexual excitement. So once the outcome is achieved they have a tendency to move on to their next challenge.



The slave tends to eroticize the outcome, the thought that if they allow their will to be broken; if they give up the most intimate parts of themselves then they have earned the reward of the Masters love and care. The slave may not see themselves as the one destroyed laying on the floor, and passed over, instead they see themselves as the one the Master sees across the dungeon.



When it comes to the breaking of the will, here are some real time questions to ask about the realities of this act.


1) What does being broken mean? Does it mean that the person will not be able to make even basic decisions? Like dressing, bathing, or eating? Does it mean that the Master feels powerful no matter what the slave actually thinks or feels?



2) Can someone who has no will technically consent? To be able to consent you have to be of sound mind, and free from duress and or coercion. So what if the Master has an intent that they purposefully do not tell the slave, is what happens in the end still consent? If it is the Master’s intent to break the will of the slave to get access to the slaves bank account and then leave. Is it still consent? If it is the Master’s intent to break the will of the slave to force them away from their other relationships, is it still consent? If the Master breaks the will of that particular slave to get access to their children, is it still consent?



3) What is the Masters responsibility to someone they have broken, if and or when they leave the relationship? Are they responsible to help reestablish the sense of self? Give back the funds? Pay for therapy?



4) And finally what happens when it all goes wrong? Since breaking someone is all about the Master’s interpretation as to whether or not the slave is broken, what if the Master goes too far? What is the slave has a significant mental or emotional breakdown from the experience? What if the slave wasn’t exactly honest about their emotional state to begin with and this experience pushed them over the edge? Or the slave was honest in what they thought that they wanted and what they thought they could handle and the breakdown happens anyway?



What if after the whole process the slave is legitimately not ok and the experience pushes them to the point where they retaliate or become a danger to the Master or themselves? It is not out of the realm for unstable people pushed to the edge self harm, stalk, or threaten others.



What is the Master thought that they could do this, and in the end the Master is not ok?




I guess by now you can all tell what my personal opinion of breaking is. I pose these questions, not because I have answers but because I don’t have answers and they need to be asked.



I am not saying that a certain amount of breaking doesn’t happen throughout the lifetime of the relationship. What I am saying is that when the intent is to break someone the Master has to be prepared for the outcome, even if the outcome isn’t pretty.






If you are interested in play parties, hands on workshops or power munches in the Albuquerque area please contact the 20 year organization of AEL at:

aelmailing@gmail.com

If you are interested in an active online community please find:

Fetlife.com

Group Name:

New Mexico Fetlifers

4 comments:

Shana said...

I loved this part of your talk, especially the observation that tops eroticize different parts of the process than bottoms do--I had never thought about it that way, but vanilla relationships go down the exact same road so often I can't believe I never noticed it before. Thanks for posting it again.

Squishy Brown Chick said...
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Squishy Brown Chick said...
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Squishy Brown Chick said...

What my tired wife was trying to say before realizing that she signed in as (hence the deleted posts) me is that she is very honored that you read her post and attended her presentation :)