The battle over the terms submissive and slave is an ongoing and never-ending one in the BDSM space; it gets even worse when people from the vanilla world attempt to get involved and subject us to their interpretations and biases. I am not going to offer a definitive answer, nor am I capable of doing so, and even if I were, pretty much no one would accept it – and that is okay. The BDSM community is a very individualistic, very libertarian, space, and I for one have no desire to force my views on anyone else. But, I do have an opinion on the subject, I do have my own ways of using the terms submissive and slave, and I would like to share that here.
The word submissive has it’s roots in the late 1500’s most likely. It means “inclined to submit, yielding to authority,” from the Latin submiss-, which is a stem of submittere, submission. It’s use, in the sense we find it today as a term relating to sexuality and specifically BDSM, has it’s earliest known usage in the late 1960’s and as a noun, possibly as late as the mid-1980’s. If we consider the term submissive strictly as a derivative of the word submission, we find the meaning of “humble obedience” around the mid 16th century.
The English word slave, which literally means “person who is the chattel or property of another,” has its origin in the late 13th century and is derived from the Latin sclavus. One of it’s earliest meanings, stemming from the 1500’s was, “one who has lost the power of resistance to some habit or vice.” In the Old English the more common words for slave were þeow (related to þeowian “to serve”) and þræl (thrall – which carried the meanings of bondman, serf, servant, or slave), all of which referred to serving, or service in some manner. For example, a King’s thrall was a man sworn to serve the King alone.
Slave is often used in various colloquial forms. The Italian ciao, a parting salutation, is a dialectal variant of the Italian schiavo “(your obedient) servant,” or literally a “slave.” In Arabic we see the word abd which means slave or servant used in common names such as Abdullah, which means “slave of god.” In French, the word concierge, which is a doorkeeper or caretaker, comes from the old Latin word conservius which means “fellow slave.”
In Western nations and Western society at large, the word slave is generally considered a very bad word and rightfully so. It is closely associated with the atrocious history of American antebellum slavery, perhaps less so with other forms of slavery that were marked primarily by economic differences, and with the ongoing evil of human trafficking that results in forced prostitution and forced labor usually, though not always, of women and children. Therefore, as soon as we hear the word slave used, we tend to automatically associate it with those preconceived ideas. But it also has other uses. One can be a slave to ones desires. You may slave away at your job or a chore. or work like a slave When connecting devices one part may be a slave to its master. In these circumstances, while there is a relationship between the various meanings, we don’t automatically associate the meanings. That is to say, we don’t think of ourselves as literal slaves at work, rather we use the term in such as way to indicate the external pressures (paying bills, paying rent, buying food, clothes, necessities) that force us to continue working even though it is all voluntary.
Which brings us directly into exploring the BDSM meaning and use of the words, submissive and slave. For those of us in the BDSM world, a submissive is any woman (or person) who has voluntarily, with full consent, given up a greater degree of her personal power to a Dominant person, who assumes the degree of control given Him, for a period of time. For most people, this means a couple of hours (if she is lucky) of bedroom play on Saturday nights after watching something steamy on Netflix. The power given to the Dominant is very temporary and very transient and ends at the end of play, at which time the couple assume their normal vanilla roles. And there is nothing wrong with this. It is a wonderful way to spice up any relationship – go do a little role play, or play with some handcuffs, or maybe she’s been a naughty girl and needs a spanking and some hair pulling. It is a very temporary exchange of power dynamics.
As we move deeper into the BDSM world we begin to find people who have really embraced an understanding of power play and will regularly engage in Dominant and submissive (D/s) role-play, sometimes for entire weekends or longer. This is where truly serious BDSM begins to take shape but even here, the woman is actively submissive to a Dominant for limited periods of time. The real difference is that most people at this level actively embrace their role as Dominant or submissive, not so much as just playing around, but with an actual appreciation that this is a significant part of who they are as a person. The woman who knows that she is a submissive, even though she only plays that role on a part-time basis, is going to be far happier falling into that play, than the woman who does not know and has to figure it out each time she fools around with her partner. Moreover, the woman who actively embraces who she is as a submissive will find it easier to use that role in every aspect of her life to be more successful in both career and relationships, than the woman who is still trying to find herself. And yes, I am stereotyping in my writing, as this applies equally to submissive men or Dominant people as well.
Finally we begin to reach the pinnacle of the D/s world. An increasing number of people are learning to embrace BDSM as a full-time, 24/7, relationship tool- what we call Lifestyle BDSM. In a 24/7 relationship one person has, again fully voluntarily and with full consent, decided to give up a significant degree of power in her life to the Dominant man she has agreed to partner with. At this point we begin to blur the lines with our understanding of what it is to be submissive with becoming a slave. The slave is the woman who wants her man to assume the majority of power (and in some very rare cases, all of the power) in their relationship. Note, that I said “in their relationship” and not in her life, there is a difference. In my opinion, when any Dominant begins to push his control past the consensual bounds of their relationship and begins to play with trying to control the submissive at work, at school, etc., we begin to cross into potentially abusive territory and we need to tread very carefully. Not that there isn’t a place for that, but it can be a murky gray area that quickly goes bad. And the submissive and the Dominant need to exercise caution.
Regardless of the exact degree of power exchange that goes on, as soon as the D/s relationship becomes a permanent, 24/7, structured arrangement we move past the idea of a woman being just a submissive and toward her being a slave. Let’s briefly consider why. As we noted above in the definitions, as a submissive we might consider the woman ‘humbly obedient’, but as someone who is wanting to be in a 24/7 relationship she is accepting that she is now the ‘property of another’ and that she has ‘lost the power of resistance’ to her partner. She loves Him so much, she honors His Dominant position so much, that she no longer wishes to try to match up to Him in power play, but is very happy to yield her power in the relationship to Him and allow Him to lovingly lead her through life.
The slave is the penultimate submissive. She has stopped being a part-time player, she has embraced the fullness and the power of who she is. She has gone from trying to be something, to actually embodying the beauty of submission to her Dominant and now lives to please her Master, all of the time. And of course, this is all a sliding scale. There are degrees of slavery in the BDSM world, there are differences. No two couples, no two partners, are ever going to be identical to another couple, therefore the power exchange dynamic, how it works out, how it looks from both inside and outside, will be different for every single couple in BDSM land.
As a quick aside, let me also just very briefly touch on the word Master as used by the Dominant. I believe that the word Master is used two different ways in the BDSM community. First, there is the Master who is basically a very successful professional Dominant. He is almost always a teacher, certainly an accomplished Dominant. Consider him (as one of my teachers has said) to be like a Karate Sensei, not just a Black Belt in Karate, but a teacher as well. They have taken what they love, mastered a significant portion of the material, and then had the grace to share with others. The Master is someone with extensive experience, has climbed the ladder of success and probably has a lot of stories about failure as well. The other type of Master is the Dominant, usually just as successful (but probably far more private) who has gone from role-play, being a Dominant part-time, to a 24/7 relationship. Once one enters that territory, the Dominant becomes the Master. He has taken on responsibility and ownership of the submissive/slave and is now her everything.
So how do we wrap this up. Let me begin by saying this: Not all submissives are slaves, but all slaves are submissives. There simply is no hard and fast rule, and everyone tends to disagree with how we use these words in the BDSM communities. Some people are strongly opposed to the use of the word slave and they have legitimate reasons, African-American women in particular have a very real reason to object to the use of the word (and some have take on alternate terminology, stuck with the term submissive, or simply embraced the word slave – it is entirely an individual choice that we have no right to interfere in). But I digress, put simply, I use the word submissive as a verb to indicate a voluntary choice to hand the reigns of power to another and I use submissive as a noun to indicate any person who gives up power to a Dominant on a part-time basis (be it hours, days, even weeks). The slave is a submissive who gives up power, (again it is always consensual) permanently, with no desire to have an end to the total power exchange with her Dominant.
There is absolutely nothing more beautiful than a successful Master/slave relationship. And you will almost never find happier people than those who have found their place in this type of relationship.