Responsibility in O&P

Posted by Tanos on Tue 17 Nov 09, 12:16 AM

I've now posted last week's (delayed) threads about Responsibility on the O&P groups on Informed Consent, on The Slave Register, and on Fetlife.

For reference, here is the first post of those threads:

Tanos wrote: The O&P Manifesto tries to strike a balance between the power acquired by dominants and the responsibility they must possess. I've made a deliberate attempt here to provoke more discussion about more "hardline" types of D/s (along with M/s) where the submissive is there for the dominant's agenda in an unequal relationship. The concepts already discussed which embody desirable (or essential!) qualities of competent dominants in O&P, of dignity, authenticity, consent, and respect are there to provide necessary counterweights to that power. Responsibility is the most important of these within this kind of relationship. In fact, I believe that almost all competent dominants enjoy responsibility anyway, since it's intrinsically connected to power and authority, and being the one who makes the ultimate decisions and deals with the consequences. However, the sense of responsibility that is a requirement in O&P focuses on the needs that the submissive has, since needs cannot be left unaddressed over time, by the definition of "needs" themselves. The cold, hard justification is that with all property, if it is not looked after over time, the ability to use or own it is lost. But in practice, I would include all sorts of things in "needs", including social contact and even the kind of purposefulness provided by a career in some cases.