Learning Submission

Learning

Submission

Joshua Tenpenny

Alfred Press

12 Simonds Hill Road

Hubbardston, MA 01452

Learning Submission

© 2022 Joshua Tenpenny

ISBN 978-1-387-44174-7

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any

form or by any means without the permission of

the author.

Printed in cooperation with

Lulu Enterprises, Inc.

Morrisville, NC 27560

Dedicated to the s-types of MAsT Massachusetts, the organizers of MsC, and (of course) to my master.

Introduction: The Rocky Road of Submission

A few years ago, at a Master/slave event (a gathering for people to discuss having a mutually fulfilling power imbalance in intimate relationships) I went to a slave-only discussion group. The room was packed with people from all over the country, some very new to this and some with decades of experience. At one point, one of the slaves said that she feared she was the wrong type of person to be a slave, because she was too assertive and opinionated, and she knew real slaves were supposed to be quiet and deferential.

A slave sitting next to her nervously raised her hand, and said, "Well, I am quiet and deferential, and I worry I’m doing it wrong, because I hear people saying that slaves should be powerful and assertive people, not passive doormats. I am pretty passive. Maybe I am a doormat?"

The facilitator then asked the group, How many of you have felt like you are the wrong type of person to be a good slave, or that you don’t fit the ‘real slave’ model? He raised his own hand, and so did about three-quarters of the slaves in the room. Some hesitantly, some confidently. Nearly all of the more experienced people raised their hands.

For many of us, Master/slave relationships bring out some of the most vulnerable parts of ourselves—and that goes for masters as well as slaves—and most of us spent years ashamed of (or afraid of) our desires. So when a few of us have the willingness to stand up and say I have these desires, and here is how I express them in a healthy, mutually fulfilling way, then they can become an inspiration to a whole lot of people who are relieved to have any remotely reasonable model.

It is not surprising that the model takes on so much power with us. But since we are looking to the model for reassurance that who we are and what we want is OK, when we see those parts of ourselves which fall outside of that model, that can bring back the feelings of shame and doubt. So, we redefine ourselves to fit the model, or we hide the parts that don’t fit.

In an ideal world, when we are brave enough to share our concerns, we get the reassurance that our struggles and insecurities are part of the process, and then by sharing our own path, we are that model and inspiration for others like us.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t always work out like that.

Sometimes when we are brave enough to be open about these things that fall outside the model, we are told that we are Doing It Wrong. Maybe that message is subtle, maybe it is explicit. Maybe it isn’t you who has been singled out, but it’s someone like you, and that is enough.

In travelling around the country and teaching about M/s, my master Raven and I have met a lot of people with strong (and often differing) opinions on how to do M/s right. I believe they, like us, genuinely want other people’s Master/slave relationships to succeed and want our communities to thrive.

These relationships aren’t easy. Even under the best circumstances, with the best intentions, this is dangerous territory we walk. When people have fought their way through this jungle and mapped the hazardous terrain, they want to share what they have learned—and when they see people veering off the marked trail, careening recklessly towards quicksand, they are likely to say, What the hell are you doing? That’s not the right way!

In their eagerness to help, they may forget that there is more than one path through this jungle, and that some obstacles we need to face for ourselves. But for each person who is mindfully and intentionally heading for the quicksand, aware of and prepared for the risks, there are probably a hundred who are blindly heading that way because they read Fifty Shades of Gray or something like that, and only ten of them have any idea of the challenges ahead. While the advice is not universally applicable, in most cases it is solid advice.

This is the second reason to speak up when we fear we are doing things the wrong way. Maybe we are. Maybe there are hazards in our path we aren’t aware of, and even if we are pretty sure this is the right choice for us, we can at least try to find out why our chosen path is considered such a bad idea.

Our communities should be places where we can feel comfortable saying Hey, I’m not sure if I’m doing this right. Can you help? rather than being shamed or remaining silent. They should also be places where we can—kindly, compassionately, and effectively—talk to people who seem to be heading the wrong way.

So, when you notice that someone does things in a way that breaks the rules you know of how to be Master and slave, or when you feel like you are failing to live up to the standards of your community, let that be the start of a conversation, not the end of the conversation.  We’ve only been mapping this territory for a short time in the grand scheme of things, and we can use all the field reports we can get.

Learning Submission was created by many hands. The people who wrote for it and were interviewed for it are real people, dealing with real lives while following, in part or wholly, the guiding orders of another person whom they trust. The style of relationship varies as much as the terms they use. Some are part-time and some are full-time. I tend to refer to anyone on my side of the slash as an s-type, short for submissive or slave, but there are so many terms used, and we know that people have differing definitions of all those terms, and there’s no central authority to tell anyone that they can’t use a certain word unless they do or don’t do this set of things. We have let the various contributors use whatever terminology they use for themselves and for their M-type (whether Master, Mistress, Dominant, Daddy, Leader, Owner, or some other title). We were more interested in the reality of their situation than in their choice of terminology. We’ve also retained the capitalization preferences of our authors.

Every one of our contributors admits that the way to mastering submission wasn’t easy, wasn’t at all like an erotic novel. They struggled, they fell, but they got back up again—and they learned. Now we are passing at least some of their accumulated wisdom to you. If you’ve dreamed of being the follower to a strong and trustworthy leader, regardless of what others might say, this is our gift to your future. If you are already the s-type in a relationship, this is our gift to your present, to let you know that you’re not alone.

This book is divided into two sections. The first section is for s-types who are seeking the right M-type, and it’s all about how to prepare yourself and what to watch out for. The second section is all about the bumps in the road once you’re ensconced as the follower in the relationship, because the difficulties don’t all stop once the collar is on. Submission is hard work, and there’s no shame in struggling with it—every follower does at some point.

This book contains a wide range of advice, opinions, and personal experiences. Any contradictions between the pieces are a reflection of the varied perspectives. It is our hope that among these essays, you will find advice relevant to you, and some reflection of your own joys and struggles.

Good luck,

Joshua Tenpenny

July 2022

Joshua Tenpenny (a.k.a. Raven’s Boy) is a wholly owned subsidiary of the vast enterprise that is Raven Kaldera. He has spent 18 years as Raven’s devoted assistant, partner, and slave for life. With Raven, he travels worldwide to talk about how to have healthy and mutually fulfilling authority-based relationships. Formerly a computer engineer and sex worker, in Raven’s service Joshua has become a massage therapist, Shiatsu practitioner, and yoga teacher; an all-purpose farm hand and handyman; a devout polytheist and church secretary; and the computer tech behind Raven’s various projects. Joshua is proud to have served as the 2014 Northeast Slave titleholder, and is a loyal member of MAsT Massachusetts. Joshua is the author of Real Service and the creator of the Service Notebook. He is polymorphously perverse, and strives to find spiritual fulfillment through any act of worthy service.

Part 1

Preparations

Myths, Lies, and Stupidities About Submission and Slavery

Raven Kaldera and Joshua Tenpenny

People often come into the world of power dynamic relationships with stars in their eyes, engorged genitals, and pornography spinning in their heads. (Or perhaps romantic bodice-ripper fantasies.) If they manage to find a partner, their dreams of how it should be get quickly smashed, and they may blame it on the partner and keep looking for the dream instead of adapting to reality. We’ve made a list of the most common assumptions people have about this role in power exchange, and we’re here to throw cold water on those fantasies … and maybe, just maybe, some real flowers will grow from that soil. If you read nothing else in this book, at least read this article. It will give you a basic idea of the different kinds of submission and slavery, and help you to figure out where you are on the map.

Myth #1: Being a submissive or (especially) a slave means that you live every day as if it were a porn fantasy—beatings, bondage, depraved sex acts, rubber clothing, etc.

Here’s where we must throw our first bucket of cold water, and it’s a big one. Most people find that managing the equivalent of a full-on BDSM scene every day is too much work, and it doesn’t make room for all the necessary parts of life such as working, making a living, dealing with family members and friends, raising children, having hobbies, caring for elderly parents, doing paperwork, negotiating with roommates, etc. In the porn, masters are usually independently wealthy and never seem to do anything but play with their slaves and have dinner parties, and thus the slaves have a few domestic duties and are mostly playthings. In real life, only the tiniest percentage of humans would be able to live in that world.

Instead, relationships must compromise with reality. Some couples choose to have ordinary relationships with the occasional long weekend of fun and depraved BDSM play—and may not actually see each other in between—and some simply have an authority exchange where the dominant partner can tell the submissive partner what to do in their real, ordinary life, but that part isn’t particularly sexy. Instead, it gives the s-types in question a sense of being cared for and a good leader to follow.

That doesn’t mean that a more extensive power exchange relationship can’t be kinky. It’s possible to salt everyday life with small and subtly hot reminder of unequal roles. But in general, with very few exceptions, the sort of activities that go on in porn and in a scene can only be kept up for short periods of time. This means that the more full-time the power exchange may be—or the relationship itself, for that matter—the more time is spent doing reality, if perhaps with a constant awareness that you’re not the one making the decisions, and you have agreed to do it the way your dominant partner wants.

Some would-be slaves search desperately for the perfect permanent porn scene, over and over, only to find multiple failures. It might be more useful for them to just have an ongoing relationship where they have intense scenes with someone who enjoys their kink, and then go back to real life in between those periods.

This myth has a corollary, which we’ll refer to as Myth # 1A, which says, Full-time Master/slave relationships are actually impossible. The trumpeters of this myth are assuming, just like the porn-soaked searchers, that it means a daily BDSM scene which takes over your whole life. Yes, they are correct that it isn’t sustainable. But no, that isn’t what Master/slave relationships are generally about. Taking the unrealistic assumptions out of the picture shows that these relationships are quite feasible, when they are centered around a particular choice of relationship structure rather than a particular choice of kinks.

Myth #2: These relationships are centered around sex and kink; nobody chooses this except for reasons of fetish.

It’s true that many (although not all) D/s and M/s couples do come out of the BDSM demographic, but we generally find that most long-term power dynamic relationships are far less about sex and far more about feeling that this is just a comfortable structure for the two (or more) of you to navigate the world together. While there are many happy kinky relationships between BDSM practitioners that last until both parties are old and gray, the relationships which are centered entirely around kinky sex, with little room for anything else, tend not to last very long (unless they consist only of part-time liaisons over a long period, with little to no contact in between). We’ve found that the less they are centered on kink (although matching sexual kinks can be an important part of compatibility) the more likely they are to work long-term.

Some couples who have a full-time complete authority transfer aren’t even kinky (gasp!) and may not show up to BDSM events much, because they feel that they don’t belong there. Vocabulary has sprung up around power exchange relationships for the non-kinky, including the terms Leader/follower and Leading/supporting.

Myth #3: Real power exchange relationships are full-time, 24/7, live-in situations.

Not at all. These are custom-built relationships, and the boundaries can be drawn anywhere. Some dominant partners hold sway part-time—such as when the s-type is in their presence—but not when the s-type goes home. Some have been given authority over some areas of the s-type’s life, but not others—such as career, finances, voting, political views, friendships, family connection, religion, and children from former marriages. That does not make their relationship any less valid a power exchange. As we’ve said before, to claim that every power dynamic should go to the furthest extreme is the equivalent of saying that every believing Catholic should become a monk or a nun. Owner/property relationships, however sexy-looking from a distance, are not the cool kids’ club.

Your relationship can be created any way that you want, and you don’t have to follow someone else’s template, be that the porn writer, the community you stumble into, or the couple you met last week. Designing a relationship that will work for both parties plus reality takes some time and thought and communication, but it’s worth every minute you spend on planning it out and working it through.

Myth #4: People want to become submissives or slaves because they have low self-esteem or are mentally damaged.

Most of the slaves we know don’t fit that mold at all—they are competent, worthy people who just want to be in these sorts of relationships. Some have figured out that they are better at being followers than leaders. Some want a venue for personal service, with someone trustworthy who will value them and their efforts. Some find that riding someone else’s will helps them to motivate better. Some enjoy a highly structured relationship where they know exactly what to do and never have to guess because the rules are laid out. Some are highly assertive Type A people with hard-driving careers who want a safe place to relax and be carried along by someone else.

A percentage of s-types, of course, do come into these relationships with self-esteem problems, or any number of other mental diagnoses. Some have found that having the right M-type definitely helped their self-esteem over time if the M-type made a concerted effort to build it up. Many who have long-term relationships say that they are much saner in their power dynamic than they were out of it. Studies of couples in power exchange do not show a higher ratio of mental ill health than that of the general population.

This isn’t to deny that some people with mental health problems do seek out power dynamics, hoping they will fix their problems, but most s-types we’ve met in relationships aren’t those people.

Myth #5: You should jump straight into a total power dynamic, handing over authority for everything in your life, from Day 1.

We know some people who learned to drive a car by stealing their parents’ vehicle in the middle of the night at the age of 14 and careening about town, desperately trying not to wreck up or get arrested. They survived it, but I doubt that anyone would ever recommend this as a reasonable way to learn to handle a car. Similarly, we know a small number of M/s couples who leaped straight into a dynamic without having known each other for very long, or negotiated particularly well. Every one of those couples has said to beginners, Don’t do it the way we did it. Take your time.

The surer way to handle it is to start slow. Give over a few areas of your life which won’t ruin your life if they are mismanaged, and see how it goes for some weeks. If you can bring yourself to obey, and the M-type is able to manage those areas effectively and in a way that doesn’t give you qualms, hand over another area and get used to that. Over time, trust will be built, and you can hand over more serious areas. If you want a list of suggestions, broken down by life area, we recommend the book Negotiating Your Power Dynamic Relationship, available at Alfred Press. It’s good for both parties to look at, and for the cautious s-type, the potential M-type’s willingness to go through the (rather slim) book with them can be a sign that they are willing to negotiate from a place of reality.

Myth #6: Slaves have no limits.

First, we want to make a distinction between limits and limitations. Limitations are things you can’t physically or emotionally do, like flap your arms and fly, or stab someone on the street to get money for your master. Limits are I will not do that. It’s perfectly OK to start out with lots of limits—and indeed, being able to say No shows that your Yes actually means something. Beware the dominant who pushes you to abandon your limits. A good one will respect them, and either be OK with you keeping those forever, or be willing to wait and earn your trust before working with you to let go of ones you could ditch if you really trusted the person.

For nearly all the slaves we know in long-term, healthy relationships, I have no limits is shorthand for I inspected my M-type’s limits and found them as good or better than mine, and I agreed to live under those. That process of really seeing someone’s values and honor takes time, and cannot be rushed. If the above isn’t true for you, keep your limits.

The corollary to this is Slaves have no rights, or perhaps that ought to be phrased Slaves should have no rights. Except as we’ve said before, there is no should here. Any given consensual slave has as many rights as has been comfortably negotiated with their Authority. The majority of consensual slaves are going to be able to walk out if the relationship becomes too problematic, even if it is sad and painful and hard to break their promises.

Myth#7: Slaves are not allowed to question orders.

It would be great if masters were all perfect people who never gave a confusing order, or forgot to include important details, or made mistakes, or did not have all the information needed to make a good decision. We hate to tell you this, but that master doesn’t exist in the world of human beings. The master you will end up with (assuming that you find the right person) will be a fallible human who will probably evidence all of the above—plus their own unique set of mental boners—at various points in the relationship. If you are to follow orders correctly, sometimes you will need to ask for clarification.

Beware the M-type who can’t deal with you asking for that clarification. That’s often a sign of insecurity. They may believe that questioning them is a sign of disrespect, and they haven’t thought through how they will handle all the above-listed imperfections in their communications … and they are not self-aware or sensible enough to want to look at the gaps in their thought process, so they shut you down and cover it up. Then, of course, when you make the inevitable error which they set you up for, it will all be your fault. Hopefully that’s a red flag you’ll only need to go through once, if at all.

If you are dealing with an inexperienced dominant partner who lacks leadership skills but is willing to listen and communicate, you can point out that giving you maximum rather than minimum information will get them a better result, and that respect can be shown by the way you ask for information, rather than not asking at all. This can be followed up by suggesting that they think about how they would want you to ask for more information, in a way that will make them feel good about giving it rather than challenged or threatened. It’s their job to tell you how to respectfully ask in a way they like. It’s your job to learn to do it that way.

Some inexperienced M-types worry that too much questioning is a way of arguing with the order, or showing your dislike of the order. It’s your job to search yourself and your motivations and honestly check to see if you’re doing that. If you tend to be argumentative in the rest of your life, it may take a while to get over that habit, but the more you do it, the less you M-type can trust you to not be wasting their time or challenging their authority. If you can talk to them about it, and tell them that you’re trying your best not to do that (or that you’ve examined your interactions and you’re honestly sure that’s not what you’re doing) then they may feel better about you asking questions.

Also, unless the M-type has a great deal of experience giving (or at least receiving) orders in a context where the subordinate is not allowed to speak freely—such as military service—they are extremely unlikely to be skilled at giving clear orders and establishing that the subordinate understands them. In a power exchange context, many M-types find this to be more trouble than it’s worth. 

Regardless, don’t let the flow of information be cut off, and don’t put up with a partner who requires that.

Myth #8: The master sets the rules at the beginning of the relationship, and the slave gets no say. If there is a contract, the master writes it, and the slave must obey it.

Another unrealistic porn rule! All the good, long-lasting power dynamics we know involved mutual negotiation, over a period of time. Every s-type is different and has different needs, and the M-type can’t just trot out a boilerplate system and expect it to apply to any random s-type indiscriminately. Instead, a good master will get to know you well, even getting into your head, and create the structure to fit both your needs and desires, with your aid and collusion. Beware of dominants who buy the porn rules. The two of you both need to have a say in how the system will work, or at the very least the M-type needs to take everything you are into consideration, or this bird won’t fly for long.

Of course, a dominant has the right to say, My way or the highway. And the s-type has the right to say, No, we’re not compatible. The right person would take the person I am into account. (Or, possibly, Actually, I like everything about your way. Sounds like a plan.) The problem is when would-be masters try to fool inexperienced would-be slaves into believing that this is the way it should be done, or even the way it’s usually done. It’s not. Mutual negotiation is the more usual routine for the relationships which last.

Another version of this one is:

Myth #9: If you are looking for an M-type, you can’t set limits around what sort of M-type you want, because that would be unslavey. You must adapt to whatever M-type you talk to who is even vaguely not a psycho, and they get to say how the relationship goes from the beginning, without your input.

Absolutely wrong.