![[PukiWiki]](image/pukiwiki.png "[PukiWiki]")
https://bit.ly/3JaD0It https://bit.ly/3GuGzI1 https://bit.ly/3Hx1M5g https://bit.ly/3GHFUTK https://bit.ly/3st3MVQ https://bit.ly/3rAyBsE https://bit.ly/34o5yj7 https://bit.ly/3JaD377 https://bit.ly/34vdQFM https://bit.ly/3uDRiNR Warmth and spontaneity, certainly. But depth? BDSM, by its very nature, provides a coccoon of protection in order to prevent depth. The idea of BDSM is to play but to have specific boundaries in order to provide a level of safety. Those boundaries allow people to go farther than they would otherwise be able to because it isn't real. The notion that authority is only 'real' if the person in charge has no rules governing his behaviour strikes me as very odd. In most other hierarchal relationships - parent/child, employer/employee - there is a system in place to insure that the commanding party doesn't abuse his position; this doesn't mean that the authority that they do wield isn't real. In fact, we want very strict limits on the kind of authority that parents have over children, and employers have over employees. We do not want that authority to extend beyond what is absolutely necessary. The line of abuse is the point at which the authority becomes real: when an employee no longer has a meaningful choice in the matter or when the child is fully subject to the parent without the tightest of strictures. In both of those relationships, the person in authority is the servant. "Employer" roles, i.e. managers, supervisors etc, exist only for the purpose of enabling the employee. Supervisors serve no other useful purpose. "They toil not nor do they sow." (Yes, some supervisors do toil and sow, but those are people in blended roles: both supervisor and worker.) Parents, likewise, have authority only to serve the needs of the child. If there is a question of abuse, that question is: "Did the parent's actions serve the needs (or best interests) of the child?" The difference between real authority and the subservient authority exercised by parents and employers is the same as the difference between BDSM and Taken In Hand. The dominant in a BDSM relationship is subservient to the submissive. In a Taken In Hand relationship, the submissive has surrendered authority to the leader, thus making them, paradoxically, more equal.
