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ORIGINAL: AAkasha

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ORIGINAL: undergroundsea

Incorrect. I speak against those who seek the practice of tribute (1) without consent, or (2) in a manner that comes from disrespectful exploitation. I have been clear about my position and have stated it multiple times.

(1) How does a woman get tribute without consent? Does she use a weapon, brute force? Does she take it from a man's wallet when he is not looking? 

(2) How do you determine if seeking tribute is disrespectful and exploitative?  By whose measures, yours?  One persons exploitation is another person's orgasm in power exchange.   Isn't the issue of "being exploited" resting in the mind of the man, not the woman?  What if one man, for example, feels exploited because a woman expects him to pick up the tab for dinner on the first date. Yet 100 other men think this is just find and like the opportunity to do so. 


Akasha

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ORIGINAL: AAkasha
(1) How does a woman get tribute without consent? Does she use a weapon, brute force? Does she take it from a man's wallet when he is not looking? 

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Sea:

Let's suppose a male dom invites some buddies over to sexually use his sub without asking her how she feels about it, and she then says no. In my opinion, he has not sought consent and it was in poor taste to do what he did even though she stopped it. Thus, it is not simply a question of saying no, but a question of explicitly discussing the matter. If you think such a discussion always occurs [in cases of tribute], you are incorrect.

Also, I can imagine some female subs in this situation who do not wish to be used in that manner but succumb because they are unable to stand up to a dominant, or do not wish to be dismissed. While I lay some responsibility with the sub for not taking a stand, I lay greater responsibility with the dominant who went that route. The psychology to which I object is when a dominant thinks if I ask I might get a no, so I'll do it without asking because they might find it hard to say no if I just assume it.

Do you agree with me or do you think it is alright for a male dominant to act this way? If you think it is fine for a male dom to act that way then we simply have a different perspective about what is fair game and what is not. if you agree with me then I apply the same principle with male submissives.

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Akasha:
(2) How do you determine if seeking tribute is disrespectful and exploitative?  By whose measures, yours?  One persons exploitation is another person's orgasm in power exchange.   Isn't the issue of "being exploited" resting in the mind of the man, not the woman?  What if one man, for example, feels exploited because a woman expects him to pick up the tab for dinner on the first date. Yet 100 other men think this is just find and like the opportunity to do so.

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Sea:

To elaborate, I would not object to the scenario if a white supremacist sought race play with a black submissive for harsh SM as long as the black submissive consented. However, it would not change how I would feel about the white supremacist for his bigoted views. So if you pair up a selfish person with a submissive who gets off on being exploited by a selfish person, I do not object to the situation because it is consensual. However, it does not change how I feel about a person who is selfish and exploits others.

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Sea:
If her practice of tribute is done in a way that I consider objectionable or abusive (as I describe at the beginning of this post), it would impact the friendship or, at least, define a safe distance. Without directing my comments at tribute specifically and speaking in general, I have an easier time trusting or being close with someone whose actions are guided by kindness, compassion, or principles and ethics. I then have greater trust about this person's behavior towards me and those close to me.

To convey my point through an example, suppose I knew someone who I came to know was pocketing money that his roommate was leaving lying around and justified it through some means (for example, his roommate hasn't paid him back for whatever). I would wonder if this person could be trusted given that he had a found a way to rationalize what I consider wrong. Would this person one day screw me and find a way to rationalize it? It is this reasoning that is behind the caution I mention--if someone is treating another person in a way that is unfair, how does it impact my respect for this person, and will this trait one day be directed at me?

I know some people who seek tribute or participate in consensual financial domination about whom I have a good opinion and do not equate seeking tribute to questionable character. However, there are some personality types I consider untrustworthy who might be drawn to this practice, and I direct my caution at them.

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Sea: I recognize that in some cases the harsh persona is an act to feed the fantasy. When I see such a profile, I have no way of knowing whether it is a compassionate person putting on an act, or whether it is a narcissistic person who is dehumanizing others in order to make profit. This type of activity can be attractive to the latter type and I expect there is a good number of the latter type engaging in this activity. Also, if a nice guy begins to act like a jerk to get laid, then he has made a choice about how to act to achieve a particular objective. Women are not going to say, oh he's just doing that to get laid and he is otherwise a sweetheart. So if a person assumes unpopular social traits for an objective, the disapproval these traits might invite are a consequence of that choice.

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ORIGINAL: ShaktiSama

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ORIGINAL: undergroundsea
What percentage of women who engage in tribute do you think are single mothers?

Why do you think that you will earn Argument Points by aggressively re-stating the question that I first asked?  If I already knew the answer to this, Sea, I wouldn't be wondering about it.  What part of this do you NOT understand?

I don't care what you "doubt" or whether your "intuition" and "intelligence" are offended by simple facts.  As was clear from the very beginning of this exchange, I do not KNOW what the proportion of tribute dommes who are single mothers might be.  What I DO know is that the proportion of PROSTITUTES who are single mothers is 50-70% of the total.  Period.  End of story.  Whether your "intuition" and "intellect" are "doubtful" about that reality or not, the fact is that more than half of the women who trade sex for money on the street are supporting at least one child alone by doing so.  And yes, this is the case whether they "look like single moms" or not. 

Will you ever accept that this is a fact?  At this point, I don't know.  Nor do I care.  Reality is what it is.

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Fair enough. I am content to say you pondered a question and I responded with what I thought to be the answer to that question during the course of intellectual discourse about the matter.

Sorry, but I am not content to say this.  The reality is that I posed a question that made you uncomfortable about your lack of empathy and tolerance for a group of people that you enjoy pouring your petty judgments upon in public.  You reacted by accusing me of political manipulation or outright lying to try and make women who you choose to castigate as Evil Whores seem "sympathetic".  You can try to characterize this reaction as "intellectual discourse" if you like, but I have my own point of view on the matter.

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I think the commitment and barrier of entry is greater for the sexually oriented businesses, which might in turn require more pressing circumstances.

If you had responded from the outset with a reasonable speculation like this one, rather than accusations of manipulation or "pulling things out of the air" etc, I might take your claim to reasoned debate more seriously.  Unfortunately, people's first reactions are inevitably their most honest reactions, and yours were emotional.

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Greed is a common human trait.

So are petty narcissism and lack of empathy. 

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Over the last couple of days, in order to further round out my perspective, I have spoken with three women about their difficulty achieving whatever power they have achieved via professional success and so far the data is more along the lines of what I believe: other forms of power and opportunity are available to women.

If you expect me to be impressed that you spoke to three whole women out of the millions that live in North America, and wow, gee, it just so happens that the three women who were willing to discuss their personal and professional lives with you in detail JUST HAPPENED to confirm all your biases and prejudices about economic and social realities for the entire gender?  I'm afraid you're going to be very disappointed.

Personal anecdotes are not science.  Also, your personal beliefs are strong enough on this subject, Sea, that you are VERY unlikely to know any women personally who would substantially disagree with you or be able to tell you a different story than the one you want to hear.  You are incapable of taking an unbiased sample--if you are really an engineer, your knowledge of the science of statistics should be sufficient that I should NOT have to tell you this.

If you actually did know and care about anyone who had been thwarted or had her life destroyed by sexism in her workplace, you wouldn't cop the attitude you do.  I personally have known women who worked very hard to achieve success and were exactly the sort of non-sexual Good Girls that you applaud--and I just watched one of them be absolutely annihilated by a network of entrenched males who banded together to destroy her.  She will never, ever work again in her chosen profession because she dared to say "no" to sex with one of her male peers and questioned the right of other (male) senior professors to use their much younger (female) grad students as a private hunting preserve.

I will not share any more details of these matters, whether they interest you or not, because they are not at all relevant to this discussion.  And quite honestly, because my own life experiences are not what I use to form my views on how the majority of people live.  I prefer to rely on statistical data for that.

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Would you help me round out my perspective? What barriers do you see to exist?

Just to name one?  Female and male academic performance in our society are roughly equal until a generation reaches puberty. Thereafter female academic performance, especially in mathematics and sciences, steadily declines.  Arguably, this is because the majority of males in our society are not socialized to be attracted to women who invest time and energy into their mental attributes, or in women who offer anything substantial in the way of personal achievements.  Instead, men in our society are trained to respond to the appearance of a woman at the expense of all other considerations.  Ergo, at the age when young heterosexual women start to become interested in attracting and enjoying mates, their minds begin to go fallow and their rates of success in the classes that eventually produce an engineer decline--their ability to send appropriate gender signals and their attention to their appearance sharply spike upwards.

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Would you help me understand how these statistical realities tie back to the discussion?

Simple.  Both male and female dominants are inclined to make sure their needs are met by their submissive partners in a D/S dynamic.  The needs of a man are much less likely to be economic than they are to be sexual and domestic, in our society.  But for some reason, sexual and domestic needs in a dominant are sacralized as "correct", while material resources and labor are often demonized as "incorrect" or "morally wrong" contributions from a submissive--not because there is any real harm associated with the fulfillment of these needs, but because they are not as common in men as they are in women, and only the dominant needs of men are "correct" and "ok".

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Against which women do you see me to hold a prejudice which you instead support?

You hold a prejudice against women who want, need and honestly state their desire for a type of submission that does not appeal to you. Rather than accept that they are merely incompatible with you, you insist on characterizing them as immoral and harmful, when in many cases--and possibly the vast majority of cases--they are not.

You use the achievements of feminist activists to create a better world for women to claim that none of the problems of the Bad Old Days still exist, and that these problems do not have to be considered before making sweeping judgments of the entire gender.  Overall, Sea, you see your material wealth as a power which you have earned without any social benefits or privileges associated with being the owner of a penis.  I think that this is impossible to prove, unless you had earned your degree in drag as a woman.  I can see why you would prefer to feel that way, and why any speculation to the contrary would tend to make you uncomfortable.  But the fact of the matter is that if there were no social barriers to women becoming engineers, the numbers would be 50/50.  And if women did not have greater economic and material needs than men, this issue would not be so often raised, and so often raised with the exact same gender dynamic.

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ORIGINAL: PeonForHer

No one can take advantage of me without my consent without subterfuge or a tool of force like a gun and that is not what is being spoken of here.

Isn't that what I just said?   

I don't see this as black and white, Otters.  You're happily partnered; I'm still pretty contentedly single.  We're OK.  It does seem, though, that there are many unhappy men who'll grit their teeth and 'put up with things' if they're half-hoodwinked a certain way along. 

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ORIGINAL: PeonForHer

Ah, Lockit! 

Everybody pays.  In the real world beyond this forum, men and women still have to get on with one another, please each other, otherwise relationships break up. 

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ORIGINAL: OttersSwim
And so, if they choose to be half-hoodwinked, or fully so, it is totally their responsibility.  We are all of us smart enough to recognize the signs of someone who is looking for financial gains.  Even in Sea's example of the lady with the flowers and card.  The demand for them would have been the first warning sign.  The rebuke would have easily sealed where she was in my mind - not because she also wanted cash, but in -how- she treated him - come on, the signs are neon, and 20 foot high blinking "Do Not Touch"!

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ORIGINAL: PeonForHer

Otters!  You can't choose to be hoodwinked.  It doesn't make sense!

I guess the reality is that people half choose to half  get hoodwinked.  I don't know.  Like I say, we all know that people will pretend to be lifestyle dommes at first, then - along comes the demand for some kind of payment.  If it didn't work, how come we never stop getting those cmails?

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ORIGINAL: LadyHibiscus

Sea, I am not going to engage you, because I can tell from your previous posts that there is no point.  It's rather like trying to reason with a Gorean.  You have your views, and I hope you enjoy them.  I am not "irritated" with you, btw, I am APPALLED.

Just as an aside, I do not think that society only allows women to express their power sexually. 

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ORIGINAL: ShaktiSama

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Would you help me round out my perspective? What barriers do you see to exist?

Just to name one?  Female and male academic performance in our society are roughly equal until a generation reaches puberty. Thereafter female academic performance, especially in mathematics and sciences, steadily declines.  Arguably, this is because the majority of males in our society are not socialized to be attracted to women who invest time and energy into their mental attributes, or in women who offer anything substantial in the way of personal achievements.  Instead, men in our society are trained to respond to the appearance of a woman at the expense of all other considerations.  Ergo, at the age when young heterosexual women start to become interested in attracting and enjoying mates, their minds begin to go fallow and their rates of success in the classes that eventually produce an engineer decline--their ability to send appropriate gender signals and their attention to their appearance sharply spike upwards.

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Would you help me understand how these statistical realities tie back to the discussion?

Simple.  Both male and female dominants are inclined to make sure their needs are met by their submissive partners in a D/S dynamic.  The needs of a man are much less likely to be economic than they are to be sexual and domestic, in our society.  But for some reason, sexual and domestic needs in a dominant are sacralized as "correct", while material resources and labor are often demonized as "incorrect" or "morally wrong" contributions from a submissive--not because there is any real harm associated with the fulfillment of these needs, but because they are not as common in men as they are in women, and only the dominant needs of men are "correct" and "ok".