Wednesday, March 5, 2014
There is No Box...
I'm a pretty open-minded person. I think it safe to say that anyone who knows me can attest to that. I'm not given to quick or rash judgments; I very readily acknowledge that I don't know everything, that I never will, and that I will ALWAYS have something to learn. And not only that, but I freely realize that I can learn (and HAVE learned) from those younger or with less time in the community than me just as much as from those older or with longer experience.
And it's also pretty safe to say I'm an easy-going person. It takes an awful lot to get under my skin, much less get me riled up.
But one of the things that constantly yanks my tail is the misinformed generalization of pups, not just as subs, but as wild-minded players in need of discipline and control. To me, it's both disrespectful and closed-minded. Not all pups are subs! Let me re-state that, in case it didn't sink in the first time: Not All Pups Are Submissives! We do not all need to be locked up in chastity (although it can be fun for those who do!). That's something between each individual pup and his/her trainer or partner. It's not for anyone else to determine that it's needed. It's certainly not for someone else to assume it's required just because someone is a pup (or even a boy or slave).
And we are not a bunch of boys acting wild an in need of discipline. Are there individuals that fit that description? Yes. But is it grossly unfair to judge ALL of us by that. Many of us are well-respected (and respectful) members of the community. A good number of us are within stable relationships, D/s or otherwise. When flash judgments are made, our value as individuals within the community is eclipsed by misconceptions born of narrow-mindedness.
To know the pup community is to know that we are a very diverse and multi-faceted community, one that embraces a wide array of styles, personalities, and expressions. Take the time to see us as we are. If you want to enjoy being inside kennel with us, you have to first to think outside the box!
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Interesting. Why don't we subject the origins of this assumption to theory?
ReplyDeleteI'm not going to speculate on the origins of the pup community. There's enough scholarship behind that already, thank you. And as the post points out there are as many varieties of practice as there are practitioners. Instead I'm going to give a personalized account as to what I see are general commonalities within practice and from there, engage with the erroneous assumptions based from them.
Pup play is employed because instincts are fun. Sure we have them, but we don't often get to engage with them in our everyday life because the ability to ignore them has arguably been the building block for 'society' or 'civilazation' or whatever you want to call it. Since instincts are seen as the domain of animals, animal roleplay was born. Of course because people often like to engage with animals and since human roleplay practitioners like to engage with one another, dogs were the ideal choice. Social, engaging, and in symbiosis with humans due to years of domestication by humans.
This last point is the problematizing one I think. People tend to send dogs as lower because of our historical interdependence. Adorable, friendly, kind, but lower nonetheless. And a man who occupies a dog mental state is implicitly and not even consciously assumed to be 'lowering' himself. Of course this is bullshit. A man is still a man even if he consents to give himself over to the instinctual and there is no such thing as species hierarchy (at least not in that way). However we've been trained to engage with dogs with that assumption, just as they've trained to engage with us following it.
Let's look at training. Ostensibly in this relationship only Doms (Masters, Sirs, Handlers, Owners) do that. It's conditioned speciesism that's grafted onto one's own species. Humans are not trained by their dogs, or so their assumption goes. But aren't they? How many bio-dogs have radically altered the lifestyle of those who own them. You literally have to pick up their shit. In this liminal space of discursive bodies I think the Pup-As-Dom narrative can and should be explored.
Of course that's not the only way to do things. I'm just looking at the assumption, trying to find out why it exists, and maybe offer alternate scenes as scenes are primarily mental. Practice as thou wilt, and subvert expectations.