Obligations

This was motivated by my thoughts on Spirited Meanderings' post "Slavery Is Not About Abuse". If you haven't read it, I think you should. It's here,

http://spiritedmeanderings.blogspot.com/2009/10/slavery-is-not-about-abuse.html

In the post, she offered the following thoughts (I've edited it for my use, but the idea is still the same).....

It really bothers me when I see other slaves talking about things that their Masters do with them. Things that are neither safe nor sane. Things that can cause potential harm (physically and mentally), which means their Master is not caring for them the way he is obligated to... yes, obligated. When a slave surrenders herself to her Master, it is his "responsibility" to look out for her well being.

What makes it worse is when I hear a slave in those kinds of situations say "He's my Master and I'll do whatever he tells me to"......one was one girl who had said that her life belongs to her Master. If he decided that she should die, then she would........You know what? Fuck that... seriously people! One man (or woman) has no right to play with the lives of people that way.

I have a hard time dealing with stupidity. I hate people who can take a beautiful lifestyle that I find joy in and turn it into something that I wouldn't wish on my worse enemy.

I couldn't agree more with these sentiments! I believe that for every "Bill of Rights" ever created there should also exist a "Writ of Responsibility". This would spell out the rights given AND the responsibilities the possession and exercise of such rights requires in exchange.

It sometimes seems the antithesis of responsible control is modern D/s. The idea that a dom has any obligation whatsoever to the submissive is rejected with the argument that "She agreed to it". This argument seems to me to be plain stupid. The people that make such an argument will inevitably offer two other "Standard rules" about the D/s lifestyle. These are...

1) "The submissive is owned property and therefore has no right to refuse an order given by the dom even in an effort to protect herself from harm." The idea being the dom has every right to harm or even kill the sub, yet somehow has no responsibility for her safety.

2) "If you expect to be accepted by the community you have to accept others in that community." My answer to that was to leave the community. I have no desire to be acceptable to the kind of people I can't, won’t, and don’t accept.

In considering the points made though, I did see one thing I agreed with that Spirited did not. The submissive who claimed her life belonged to her master I suggest was correct. However, this leads us back to the point about responsibility and obligation. No submissive would willingly give her life to a master that would not respect that gift. I simply can not be made to believe that she offers her life to be thoughtlessly wasted or foolishly squandered if he so chooses. She offers the gift with the reasonable expectation that it will be cherished as it deserves to be. In my opinion, the master has an unquestioned and unavoidable responsibility to protect the submissives' life just as he does his own, and in all ways. Her health, her job skills, her ability to operate in society, her peace of mind and level of contentment with her life, all are the masters’ responsibility. If she is failing in any way, it is he who bears the blame. It's a simple if-then situation. If her life is truly his, then any and all life failures are his as well. If he isn’t prepared to accept that level of responsibility, he has no right to any level of control over her life.