Friday, June 17, 2011

The emerging Way of Cyber-Dominance

By the word "Cyber-Dominance", I mean the art of  consensually dominating submissives in the Cyberspace.

I've searched the net for any conceptualisation of that emerging pratice but couldn't find any  BDSM-relevant use of that word "Cyber-Dominance", so I will claim the invention of that term  should it become the standard one used to design the online practice of Dominance.

At the contrary, the word "Cyber-Dominant" seems to have gained some popularity and is mostly used to scorn the people like me who explore online the Dominant side of D/S without any prior direct experience of RL D/S.

That contempt that many RL lifestylers and kinskters have for Cyber-Dominants is understandable and partially justified, as indeed the anonymous nature of the net allows many users and wannabees to pose themselves as Dominants  just to lure naive newbie submissives, and that situation cause a lot of emotional damages from what I have seen around me in Second Life.

Nevertheless I want to claim back  that "Cyber-Dominant" title in a positive way, by defining a responsable conception of Cyber-Dominance, the same way that sexually free women claimed back positively the word "slut" by defining an ethic of sexual freedom.

Please believe me, not all Cyber-Dominants are fake or uncaring persons, many of them look for a real long-distance D/S connection with all the responsabilities that it implies.

 As far as I know, Cyber-Dominance as a new practice is born during the 90's  in IRC chatrooms and at that time it was only textual interaction.

With the apparition of 3D Virtual Worlds like Second Life, Cyber-Dominance has the opportunity to take a new dimension as you can add avatar interaction to the good old textual interaction, and even voice interaction too if you wish so.

To make an analogy, Cyber-Dominance is to RL Dominance what Cybersex is to physical sex : a new way to practice despise long-distance a specific activity, using the cyberspace as medium.

Cybersex can be practiced two ways : under the form of just the storytelling  and roleplaying of a  fantasy scene, or like a dynamic interaction using  kinky text/voice descriptions and dialogs as support for individual masturbation the other side of the screen  and often concluding  in real orgasms.

My preference goes clearly to the second possibility,  and in that case it can be considered in my view like a form of long-distance sex.

It's the same for Cyber-D/S : ever you just roleplay it and that's fine as long all people involved know it's just roleplay, or you try to do it seriously with the goal of experiencing together real feelings of Dominance and Submission.

Most Cyber-Submissives I have met look for a real experience in submission,  and not for jusr roleplay, so please be honest with them about if you only  want to roleplay Dominance for the thrill of it, or  if at the contrary you aim to establish a real relationship of D/S type with them.

In that  second case only I will speak of Cyber-Dominance rather than of Roleplay.

In my opinion, Cyber-Dominance is a new way to practice D/S, quite similar in many aspects to the much older way called Phone Dominance and seems to be working on the same dynamics than RL Dominance.

D/S is about the mental connection that gets in place between two real people and the Cyberspace is just a medium to etablish that connection.

However I will never insist enough on the many differences that exist between Cyber-Dominance and RL Dominance, those two ways to practice Dominance are akin but have distinct specificities and transitionning from one to another is complex.

For example, all the physical aspect are missing in Cyber-Dominance and the Dominance doesn't go through body langage and eye contact, but through other means.

Cyber-Dominance, at the contrary is focused on the mental, verbal and interpersonal aspects of D/S, as the core of submission is in the soul of the submissive, not in what happens to her RL body.

When I order in SL my submissives to strip down naked, they don't roleplay obeying, they make the volontary choice to remove the clothes of their avatar. Thanks the 3D visual,  I have the immediate proof on my screen of their obedience.

An order is given and followed, that's real Dominance and Submission  even if just for an online scene.

In the end, I believe that the qualities needed to be a good Cyber-Dominant are the same than for a RL Dominant : Honesty, Care, Responsability, Trustworthiness, Self-Control, Strong Personality, Communication skills and the Natural Authority that Wisdom inspires.

Let's us, Cyber-Dominants, behave with ethics and honor to prove  everyone that we ain't all fakes and wannabees, so we gain better acceptation by the rest of the BDSM community.

We have a moral duty to take good care of our subs, like if they were in our care in RL. We're all real persons with real feelings that can be hurt, at the end of the day.

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