Sins of the past

[Note: this is not a piece of fiction]

One of the ugliest characteristics of past sins is that they often come back, to bite one's ass.

Of course, "come back" may already be a question of luck: some of us can hardly leave the bastards alone, and spend far too many idly moments revisiting past mistakes, with the depressing belief that even if we manage to learn a lesson from any of them, we will just make new, worse  errors going forward.

They do not always come back directly, sometimes they arrive in a very tangential way.

The last "sin" to bite my ass is my tendency to consider that, in a BDSM interaction, all the responsibility for preventable mishaps that still happen goes to the top/dom/master.

Due to an unfortunate choice of examples in a munch, the question poisoned the last peer rope I was in and, because of said sin of mines, I did not contribute much - at all, really - in quashing the turmoil.

I didn't add gasoline to the fire either, but that is not much of a consolation.

I had a couple of days to sleep on the issue, and came to the conclusion that that day's reunion organizer - a woman with a metric ton of character, that also happen to be a rope model - opinion, on it, was ultimately correct.

And her opinion was, in one word: "Poppycock".

The bottom/sub/masochists share some responsibilities with their partners (and vice-versa), though the law of the land may differ quite vigorously on it (but after all, laws, justice and ethics are often only vaguely related to each other).

Even in a Total Power Exchange play, not only the limits of the game must be agreed before, but the play will always relay on an honest communication between the players.

This can break down either because the "top" fails to care for the clues given by the "bottom", either because this latter is so engulfed in the sub-space that it can hardly report what is happening to its body.

When this happen, though, I think that it is only natural for the "dom" to feel completely responsible of the shit that happens, because when the "bottom" flies away, it should be brought back to Earth, if there is any possible danger.

On the other hand, if the millisecond the "dom" distracts to get the next strand of rope, the "hogtied" model unexpectedly  - they had never discussed the possibility - starts jumping around because it likes to play the escapist... it is a bit hard to assign to the top more than a token of responsibility.

The turmoil in my much beloved backyard started after a guy used the "If you go dressed as a whore in the Bronx, you may well expect that they rape you", used as a  set-up to justify for an equally maddening "If a slave choose an inexpert master, it is also hir fault when shit happens".

Both assertions  manages to irritate me on a strictly utilitarian level (no need to invoke my progressive, libertarian nature, here - if women won't feel safe going around scantily dressed, they won't do it - clue a certain frustration on my part; similarly, if submissive women feel that scarcely experienced doms cannot be trusted, they won't give them any chance, and I happen to be one of them). 

Personally, I'd like to live in a world where a woman could fell asleep in a subway station, dressed only with leather collar and cuffs, and the only thing that could happen would be her catching a bit of a cold.

In fact , I like to think that I try to bring on such a world with my art... even though, I fear, no amount of my art will ever be enough to change the idiotic mores of our societies.

So, yes, sub/bottom/slaves may be responsible of mishaps - when they do violate the"contract" at the base of the session.

But, no, they are not responsible just for choosing an inexperienced companion, that tries too fancy a move and fucks-up (among the other things, because there are very few top

In the end, it is like for everything else - there is no such things as fixed or reliable rule, not even a rule-of-thumb, and the devil (or god) is in the details.