quote:

ORIGINAL: leadership527

And, aside from that, there is also the fact that I'm now suspicious that the ability for carol & I to just call it quits if we wanted to is more a theoretical option than actual. We may well have done too much internal shifting of worldviews for that to work out.

quote:

ORIGINAL: ncbabe

Lucienne, this is obviously a very emotional issue for you. As far as I can tell, everyone seems happy with their own definition of TPE 24/7 and what that means to them, and they have responded so to the OP. You might want to take some time out to think about this instead of persistently arguing and deliberately trying to provoke and offend people.

quote:

ORIGINAL: daddysprop24

the point you insist on ignoring, Lucienne, is that one can be "literally" a slave without being forced or coerced into bondage against their will. i am a very literal-minded person myself, and am not one to redefine or twist the meaning of words in order to suit a whim. i am a slave "literally" because my life is completely controlled by my Owner, my future is his to shape, and if he wills it he can decide i have no future at all. that is not romance or internet fairytalk, that is the reality of my life. does that make me "the same" as a teenage girl forced into the sex trade, or for that matter, my very own great great grandparents, who were slaves in Spotsylvania County, Virginia? no, it is not the same. but it is all slavery, "literal" slavery.

quote:

ORIGINAL: lovingpet


There does reach that point for many where there is a real point of no return.  It is not that there isn't some construct that is "consent".  There just is no value in it anymore and, in some cases, a sense of it being an inaccessible path even if it did somehow become valuable.  It is difficult to explain except that if the correct set of physical, mental, social, and emotional switches are flipped, an automatic sense of captivity occurs regardless of how one feels about being the one captured.

Many cases have made the news over the years of individuals who remained with kidnappers/abusers even when they had all kinds of opportunities to escape.  In some cases, they even lived in such a state that the doors to their residence were left unlocked all day long and the captors were away at work or other activities 8-12 hours a day and yet no attempts to free themselves were made.  It is the mindset and the sense that there is no real way out that kept them there.  This is true whether they came to stay willingly, were still nonconsentually held, or if they were "freed" by authorities.  It changed nothing.  Some actually could not handle being "free" and became mentally unstable or even commited suicide.

Internal enslavement has many detractors for these and other reasons.  It can lead to a person becoming completely non functional on their own or lacking the ability to leave a situation that has tipped over into abuse.  The question then becomes whether or not it is actually abuse.  The person is still "consenting" by remaining, but is also unable to leave and stand alone.  It is an edge of sorts (though I am not interested in started up the debate of what is edgeplay again).  There are bound to be the kinds of strong reactions we have seen in this thread because of that.


lovingpet  

quote:

ORIGINAL: happylittlepet



Do you mean to say that he can decide to kill you or that your relationship with him can be terminated?

quote:

ORIGINAL: happylittlepet

I don't get from this thread that this is 'obviously a very emotional issue' for Lucienne, neither do I see that she was 'persistently arguing and deliberatly trying to provoke and offend people'. I would have to put a lot into this thread (perception) to reach those same conclusions.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Lucienne

I thought I was pretty explicit in asking that people not deny the ugly and sad reality of the sex slave trade by equating it to their mutually satisfactory and consensual intimate relationships.

quote:

ORIGINAL: NihilusZero

quote:

ORIGINAL: happylittlepet

I don't get from this thread that this is 'obviously a very emotional issue' for Lucienne, neither do I see that she was 'persistently arguing and deliberatly trying to provoke and offend people'. I would have to put a lot into this thread (perception) to reach those same conclusions.

Really? How about his words on the top post of page 3?

quote:

ORIGINAL: Lucienne

I thought I was pretty explicit in asking that people not deny the ugly and sad reality of the sex slave trade by equating it to their mutually satisfactory and consensual intimate relationships.

Taking a polar, non-consensual and negative example of slavery and getting uncomfortable enough to presume other people are belittling those instances of slavery because they use the term (in proper context) to describe a more amicable interaction dynamic that has the same control elements is emotional overreaction.

quote:

ORIGINAL: leadership527

quote:

ORIGINAL: Lucienne
I thought I was pretty explicit in asking that people not deny the ugly and sad reality of the sex slave trade by equating it to their mutually satisfactory and consensual intimate relationships. I'm not hiding the ball here. When you're defining your relationship in general terms that push semantic drift, you're not just talking about yourself, you're implicating the lives of others.

Ahhhhh, so you object to the word "slave" in general because, in your opinion, using it in the consensual sense somehow ellevates it's traditional and usually non-consenual meaning. I disagree that that's the case. Nor do I think playing video games causes people to grow up into mass murderers. And now that I understand that what we have here is a political argument, I'm wondering why it's on this board and not the appropriate Politics and Religion forum. Seriously... all of this name calling and mud slinging was in an attempt to rid the BDSM community of the word "slave"?

quote:

ORIGINAL: lovingpet

I am glad if I was able to bring some further understanding to you.  I am no expert on all things BDSM and especially not the topic at hand, but I have a lot of educational and clinical background when it comes to these kinds of things in the trauma sense.  Turning it around in one's head and seeing how the exact same things can happen in a consentual setting is a bit of a mental exercise for me, but I am also sort of in mid process of it too, so that helps some.

I understand you pursuing the matter helped you gain further understanding for yourself, but people are pretty open here and would have been willing to elaborate without so much confrontation.  I appreciate you passion.  As one who fights human rights violations in one form or another on a regular basis, I know how hard it is if it seems like those atrocities are being downplayed in any way.  I don't think that was anyone's intent.  My hope is that this can be a more diplomatic exchange that will be to the benefit of everyone on the thread.  Welcome to the firey side of life on the board!  LOL

lovingpet

quote:

ORIGINAL: Amaros

And I'm sorry - w/regard to the "literal" meaning, believing you cannot leave a relationship is not the same as being tracked down and killed if you do, and that, I think is a cogent distinction.

So yeah, you're still a slave - if you think you are one, and no less a slave for it being consensual, but if we are talking about literal meanings, one should stick to the objective definitions, and slavery, by historical definition, is inseparable from non-consensual control through brute force.

I'm pissing up a rope I'm quite sure, but that is being literal.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Amaros

The objective distinction when it comes to the word slave, is force, period.

I entirely agree with you that the shackles of the mind are often stronger than any chain, but coercion, manipulation, etc., are not technically physical force - thus, it may be a crude distinction, but again, it is the distinction in any objective definition of the word slave.

Force is the legal distinction - a common tactic in human trafficking is not to threaten the abductee, but to threaten her family with death or severe bodily harm if she does not comply - threatening to expose her to her family if she does not comply is a bit more of a gray area, more of a mindfuck - the explicit threat of force is unambiguously in the Black and White area.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Lucienne

No, sir, it's an intellectual disagreement. I disagree that Jeff's usage of the term literally was proper or accepted. Although someone (a strict descriptivist) accounting for every manner in which the term "slave" is used might honor the literal usage of the tiny subset of literal slavers within the tiny subset of BDSM folk, I don't think your numbers are significant enough to guarantee that. And since I believe it is a bad idea to go along with that semantic drift, I, as someone who cares about language, feel free to point out exactly what that semantic drift entails.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Lucienne

You may find that odd or incurably dorky, but it isn't something driven by me me me and my feelings any more than any human action beyond reflexes could be asserted to be. It isn't a particularly emotional reaction, and it very much isn't an emotional over-reaction. The charge of emotional over-reaction is particularly strange in the context of some of the negative responses to my comments.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Lucienne

I'm making an intellectual point and some people are freaking out because my point is taken as attacking their very identity. And maybe it is. I didn't intend or anticipate it as such.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Lucienne

But having apparently done so (challenged some people's identity), I'm not going to apologize because I strongly disagree with their literal usage of "slave" and I value my educational experience more than I value preserving their comfort or, really, my own. Just backing off at the first sign of resistance and saying "my bad!" means that I don't get all the additional information I gained by pursuing the issue.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Lucienne

Lastly, I don't know if the continued inability of some people, yourself included, to use the correct (female) pronoun in reference to me should be attributed to bad reading comprehension or an attempt to irritate me. I can only state that every time someone does it, it makes me giggle imagining a poster with little familiarity with french names whose only encounter with a similar sounding name (Lucian) is the movie Underworld. You guys are fucking hardcore, man.

quote:

ORIGINAL: daddysprop247

this is just plain incorrect. "brute force" or lack of consent does NOT have to be a part of literal slavery. please consult a dictionary as opposed to a law book, there is a difference.

also, your post above completely ignores the plight of the many millions of modern day non-consensual slaves who are not held by physical force or by any threat of physical force against them or a loved one, but by the psychological shackles which cut much deeper and far more powerful. so are these people not slaves in your eyes, but simply the weak and pitiful?

lovingpet also does well to point out the fact that "physical force" can be a factor in consensual slavery relationships as well.