Friday, April 12, 2013

The Value of Advice is Dependent on its Source

I think that there are a fair amount of new submissives (can someone please tell me why Blogger insists that "submissives" is not a valid word when I intend it to be in the plural form?) who reach out and ask for advice from bloggers.
I'll admit that I often feel a moment of stress when asked for advice. Because well, what makes them think that I know what I'm talking about, I think I'm pretty clueless most of the time...And no one wants to fuck up that kind of advice right?
But I like to think that they could do worse, so I always try to provide them with thoughtful responses which I hope they find helpful.

One thing I have noticed though, is the tendency of many new Dominants to not appreciate advice from submissives. Indeed, they occasionally seem to take serious offense at it on the grounds that they are Dominant and subs are...Submissive.

Now, I can totally understand the value of getting advice from an experienced Dominant, and I'm not knocking it in the least; however, I wonder at the validity of a thought process wherein someone believes that a submissive lacks the ability to offer thoughts that may be helpful to a Dominant.

After all, it would be ludicrous to assume that one learns the best way to Dominate their partner from some omnipotent and ethereal entity in the sky, right?
I will admit that sometimes a good portion of it is innate character; however, while we do learn from them, they also learn from us.

In my opinion, if we are to categorically state that a Dominant cannot learn from a submissive, we are then saying that he is entirely to dense to be in charge of anyone, or that the Dominant can never really know his submissive--because knowing requires learning.

It is true that the value of advice is dependent on its source. But people's thoughts and suggestions should not be discounted simply because of which side of the D/s slash they reside on.

Alpha runs my life to the extent he wishes to. No more and no less. Yet, when he wants advice, I am the person he asks. This is due in no small part to the fact that he knows I will always have his/our best interests in mind. But it's also because I have a brain that, for the most part, works quite well.

Really, we aren't much different from the rest of the world--some people are worth listening to, and some are not.
I have always believed that it is a person's mind and experience that give their advice value, not their status.

17 comments:

  1. "Alpha runs my life to the extent he wishes to. No more and no less. Yet, when he wants advice, I am the person he asks"

    Yep! The same is true here. We all 'teach' just as we all 'learn' and mouse likes that.

    Great post!

    Hiugs,
    mouse

    ReplyDelete
  2. Of course you are right as you often are which is why they ask you by the way. A good Dominant like a good submissive learns from every source they can. So if I have never said it before Thank You for all you have taught me I sincerely appreciate it.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Sir J,
      does it negate the whole post if I admit that it never occurred to me that there was anything You could possibly learn from me?

      Delete
    2. well there you go now we have both learned something

      Delete
  3. I believe that Big Bad learned a lot from a more experienced submissive. And he does still seem to want to learn from whatever sources are available.

    -sin

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. sin,
      I think that is very much what life is about--never stopping that learning.
      I would make a career out of it if I could figure out how...

      Delete
  4. We are never to old to learn and only the foolish think they know enough. We all have something to offer, one way or the other.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. sunnygirl,
      You keep showing up with absolutely quote-worthy comments!

      Delete
  5. We can all learn something from each other and it's always valuable to receive input from the other side of the fence. Just as we can learn from experienced Dominants there is much they can learn from experienced submissives.

    Hugs,
    Roz

    ReplyDelete
  6. You are quite right to say that it is a bit naive to disregard the experiences of a submissive while one is coming to terms with Dominance. As someone who has Dominant times myself, I would argue that the tendency could be downright dangerous. A Dominant has a great deal of power in a submissive's life, whether it is just a bed room thing or a 24/7 thing, and to not understand what that power can do is... worrying.

    This is actually something that is brought up by others as well. Some of the more academic minded among us have taken to calling in Domism. If you are up for it, here is a fairly long post about it: http://yesmeansyesblog.wordpress.com/2011/05/02/domism-role-essentialism-and-sexism-intersectionality-in-the-bdsm-scene/

    Morwen

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. sissymorwen,
      You make a very good point.

      Thanks for the link, it was an interesting post.

      Delete
  7. Holy moley, lil, do I ever agree that Dominants can learn from submissives! Of course they can! This is certainly true about experienced submissives who write their own blogs, but it's even more true about their own partners! Joy has taught me far more about Dominance than I have learned anywhere else.

    And I probably ought to acknowledge as well that a certain coffee-loving, frequently self-deprecating submissive blogstress with a wonderful sense of humor has taught me a thing or two with her posts and comments...

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Jake,
      I do think that we learn most from our partners because that is the person we are on this journey with.

      Ooh, blogstress--I like that! lol.

      Delete
  8. Lil,

    Sorry for the late response...been away for a few days. But awesome post! I could not agree more that we can always learn from each other, regardless of the title. It's why it's called a journey that we take together :)

    ReplyDelete

Play nice.