Preaching To There’s a lot of religion in what we do. It’s unavoidable; worship,

Preaching To There’s a lot of religion in what we do. It’s unavoidable; worship, reverence, gestures that would otherwise be hollow having meaning thrust upon them in an almost arbitrary manner. Fetishising the consumption of bodily matter…  But more than that, it’s adopting the puritan zealousness, the disciplinarians and Victorian attitudes that we can look back on with the tinge of nostalgia and misinterpretation and think: “Golly, those old dudes really had the right idea.” Except, well, they didn’t. I sometimes excuse the lack of D/s in the world until the recent past as a matter of convenience; it didn’t pop up because it wasn’t needed, because it was ingrained into the society. Men had power over women, and so dominant and submissive needs were met. But that’s just a convenient lie, something I can flourish to sound like it makes sense, without having to delve into the deeper issue. Which is that freedom, especially sexual, wasn’t anything even promoting an accepted right until recently, and still isn’t for the vast majority. Women couldn’t be submissive in the way that we recognise it because that is fundamentally built on consent, and without that it’s just bullying and slavery, harnessing social norms and fear to have things the way you want them.  We can adopt their practices, and I’m more than happy that we do, but we should bear in mind that they’re practices born out of inequality, and as much as that might resemble this, they are not the same. They are not to be idolised, revered, or worshipped in any way, because they did not have it right. More than that, what they had was plagued by the fallacy of inherited power; it can never be as sweet, or as fulfilling, as that which is willingly granted. Just because I’m a man doesn’t mean I should have the things I want, any less than just because you’re a woman you should be at your feet. Without an equal footing, there can be no power exchange, and no D/s.  -- source link

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