Real Service Read online

  The appropriate response to felonies is for the master to take a hard look at whether the relationship should continue at all. We’ve spoken to quite a few masters who have tolerated repeated “felony”-type behaviors from unstable s-types because they felt they were partially responsible, because the servant blamed the master for causing the behavior, or because the master felt an obligation to “fix” the servant. Except in very rare circumstances, these are problems that are well beyond the ability of even an extremely good master to solve. If there is a valued long-term relationship with the s-type in question, the best course of action is to focus on the non-service aspects of the relationship, and get them some kind of professional help, if they will accept it.

  Misdemeanors

   Not taking the master’s orders or corrections seriously.

   Misrepresenting their skills and experience level.

   Continually arguing with orders, apparently for the joy of winning an argument.

   Rules-lawyering (attempting to find loopholes in the master’s orders).

   Disobeying in the hope of getting “funishment”.

   Disobeying in order to see if the rules still stand.

   Disobeying in order to manipulate the master into giving them a takedown and emotional catharsis.

   Disobeying because they have issues with authority figures in general.

   Disobeying due to poor self-control.

   Picking fights with other members of the household, or attempting to get other s-types in trouble.

   Repeatedly misinterpreting or misremembering orders to their own benefit.

   Creative Applied Incompetence (feigning incompetence at any task they dislike in the hopes of avoiding it in the future).

   Continually avoiding work, or meeting only the bare minimum standards for their performance with no interest in doing better.

   Publicly complaining about the master in order to get sympathy from others, and concealing this behavior from their master.

   Breaking or losing valuable items due to carelessness.

   Stealing, destroying, or intentionally disposing of small items of negligible value.

   Refusing to acknowledge their behavior is problematic.

   Consistent pattern of looking for excuses, repeated preventable mistakes, or a general unwillingness to take responsibility for their own behavior.

  Felonies

   Repeated or elaborate lying about any substantial issue.

   Breaking rules regarding their sexual activities with other people.

   Being sexually inappropriate around the master’s children or with their belongings.

   Stealing, destroying, or intentionally disposing of valuable items.

   Secretly looking for a new master to replace the one they are currently serving.

   Threats or acts of physical aggression against the master or other members of the household, or uncontrolled displays of anger which result in damage to the master’s belongings.

   Drug or alcohol abuse, or uncontrolled mental illness.

   Threatening to report the master to the police for abusive behavior, or expose the master’s private life to family members, work, or the public.

  Questioning Orders and Disagreeing With Respect

  In anything more than the most superficial relationship, the servant will eventually have to come to terms with their master’s various flaws and shortcomings. The servant will find areas where their own knowledge and skill exceeds that of the master, and they will occasionally notice things the master has overlooked. The servant will inevitably have strong opinions that differ from their master’s, because that’s the way it is with any two people who live with one close to the other’s business.

  In a mature and healthy relationship, the servant is able to offer advice and contrary opinions respectfully, in a manner appropriate to their role and acceptable to their master, without either person feeling that this is a challenge to the master’s authority. However, offering opinions and advice is frequently a privilege granted only to experienced and trusted servants, and it is not at all unhealthy for a master to restrict a servant’s right to voice their opinion until the servant has earned it.

  For an inexperienced and insecure servant, offering advice to the master can put the master in a no-win situation. If the master accepts the advice, the servant may see the master as unsure of themselves, but if the master rejects it, the servant may be upset at having their advice disregarded. If the master accepts the advice and the situation goes badly, the servant may feel like they are responsible for the master’s decisions and cannot trust the master to protect them. If the master rejects the advice and it goes badly, the servant is rarely able to resist an “I told you so!” Unfortunately, an inexperienced servant may be equally distressed if prohibited from offering advice, deciding the master is insecure or even abusive. It is a difficult issue, and a master may need to do a good deal of communication in order to make the servant understand and appreciate their reasoning.

  Almost all reasonable and sensible masters allow a certain amount of questioning, if only so the servant can make sure that they fully understand the order. Any master who doesn’t even allow that had better be giving extremely explicit orders, followed up by a “Do you understand?” That’s rare, though, and an awful lot of work for the master. In general, asking for clarification of orders in a reasonably respectful tone of voice will work fine. Where it gets tricky is when the servant feels that the order has serious flaws, and feels the need to point these out to the master in the hopes that they will alter the order. Some masters claim not to care how the question is phrased, but in our experience they all tend to be generally happier when questioning of orders is done in a respectful way. Certainly it cuts down on arguments, in dynamics where arguing is permitted.

  One simple way to start is to assume that the master lacks specific information, and to deliver that information as a flat statement. If you are told to take out the trash, saying, “The trash man already came earlier today,” and leaving it at that, is more helpful and less challenging than “Don’t you know that the trash man already came?” or “You want me to take the trash out and let it sit by the curb for a week?” Phrasing the problem as a statement of information allows the master to integrate it at will, and change orders if necessary.

  Another possibility is “May I suggest an alternate solution?” The hard part with this, however, is that the servant must not take it personally or become upset if the master rejects their wonderful solution – or even more difficult, says, “No” to the initial request, and doesn’t even want to hear the wonderful solution. It’s important that the master feels they have the right to say no to the servant’s suggestions. If it’s been negotiated that the servant’s perspective is considered a valuable tool, or the master is clear that the servant is more skilled than them at something, a wise master will probably listen if only to have the information. However, they are not obligated to do so, and the servant should not be attempting to push that obligation on them, however much they would like it to be so. The master’s right to refuse the servant is one of the underpinnings of any power dynamic.

  Another way in which this problem can manifest is in asking for help. For some power dynamics, it’s acceptable for the servant to ask the master to help with a task if it looks a bit overwhelming. This is especially the case for live-in relationships with a very informal dynamic where people share chores. Ours is one of those, but we quickly ran into trouble with Joshua asking for Raven’s help with random jobs. Raven was willing to help if a job was going to fail without aid, and he was sometimes willing to help even if Joshua could handle the job himself but knew it would go faster and more pleasantly with help. However, Raven couldn’t always tell which situation it was without further questioning, and in an emergency situation there wasn’t time for that. Also, we both agreed that it felt right for us to have the rule that Raven
could always say “No” to Joshua if he felt it was appropriate, no matter what the issue. In order to always have the option of saying “No” to non-emergency assistance, in-the-moment phrasing changes were in order. We settled, again, on statements versus questions. A question – “Could you help me with this?” was a non-emergency situation where help might be nice but wasn’t necessary. Emergency situations – where the job was going to fail if aid was not quickly rendered – are phrased as statements. “I need your help. That top piece is about to fall off, and I don’t have a free hand to grab it.”

  Voicing emotional discomfort with an order is different from voicing a disagreement with that order, especially in relationships where the servant has explicitly agreed to obey any order that does not cause them serious physical or psychological harm. One M/s couple worked out a series of responses for the s-type to use that worked even in very formal circumstances. If there was no problem with the order, the response was “Yes, sir.” In order to communicate “I don’t like this order, but I’ll do it,” the response was, “If it pleases you, sir.” In order to communicate “I really don’t like this order, and I am registering an objection, but if you don’t rescind it I will do it anyway,” the response was, “Only if it pleases you, sir.”

  Sometimes it can be difficult for the servant to figure out if the master’s mumbled comment is an actual order or simply vague musings. Raven is especially prone to thinking out loud around Joshua, and Joshua is a rather literal person. We’ve also found that the phrase “Is that an order?” has too many negative connotations from its general use as a term of defiance. It’s very hard for most servants to ask that question without sounding somewhat disgruntled, especially if they are disgruntled, so instead we instituted the rule that Joshua must answer “Yes, sir,” to acknowledge all orders. That policy works well on its own, if only because it means that Raven knows that he heard the order, but it also means that if Joshua misinterprets random musings as an order, Raven can quickly correct him before he attempts to follow through. If “Yes, sir,” or “Yes, ma’am,” is used throughout the day as a general response, perhaps a more specific version for acknowledging unclear potential orders would be to repeat it back or paraphrase it: “Yes, ma’am. Throw the cat out of the house now before you kill it.”

  Gender and Service

  Talking about gender inevitably involves stereotypes and generalities, cultural biases, and a wide variety of opinions. It is difficult, if not impossible, to say anything definitively about gender roles that will be applicable to everyone in every situation. But regardless of your gender or sexual orientation, it can be useful to look at the ways that gender roles influence your expectations of service.

  Some M-types prefer their servants to only provide services that are congruent with the gendered labor assigned to them by “traditional” social roles – for example, only requiring “women’s work” of a female servant, and vice-versa. On the other hand, some require services outside of – or even opposed to – those roles. Asking for “gender inappropriate” services can be simply pragmatic – the master just wants the task done – or it can be a deliberate challenge to the servant’s gender identity. Upsetting a few of the props holding up a servant’s social gender (and their assumptions therein) can be another way in which the M-type redefines the s-type’s identity as “whatever I want it to be, not what you’ve been taught all your life that it should be.” It’s also another way to show their control – “You’ll do the things I tell you to do, not just the ones that make you feel manly or womanly.”

  Ironically, when we see M-types inflicting this on a s-type, it’s the traditionally-feminine female servants who tend to get the most upset. Because accepting the cultural definition of cooking, cleaning, child care, etc. as “women’s work” is associated with the assumption of female submission, some female servants have extremely strong emotional attachments to it. They may have eroticized it to a certain extent. They may have conflated their femininity – not just their female gender, but their performance of that gender in a stereotypically feminine way – with their submission itself, and women’s work is a badge of both for them. They may have sought out a power dynamic because they idealized the “traditional” housewife role, and they expect that they’ll never have to do the kind of labor that represents “independent female doing men’s work” again. For them to be forced to do heavy labor, home or car repair, yard work, and especially the chores that require them to get sweaty and filthy often triggers a barrage of complaints and rebellion.

  Still, while it’s a matter of preference, some M-types have learned that to tell their femme s-types, “Yes, my pretty princess, you are going to learn to change the oil in the car,” is a power play that can have surprising results – if the servant doesn’t flee in shock. In more all-encompassing power dynamics, this can also be a way of saying, “I own all of you, not just your persona.”

  Masculine male servants, in contrast, generally expect that they will be made to perform general housework and cleaning regardless of their gender. Because of that association of “women’s work” with submission, it’s usually the first nonsexual services that an M-type of either gender expects of their servant. This makes it easier for some to think of it as “service work” rather than gendered work, and male servants may not have a problem with it unless it is specifically assigned by a M-type in order to be humiliating.

  Yet while they may easily assign their male servants dishes and floor-scrubbing, it may not occur to female masters to have their male servant learn to provide pampering services such as pedicures and massage. Some male submissives, especially of the “sissy maid” type, are very enthusiastic about providing this type of service, but a more conventionally masculine servant may be taken aback by the idea (which may amuse the master, depending on their inclinations). While female masters are often reluctant to assign child care to a male servant, especially if he has no experience being the primary caregiver for children, once a certain level of trust is established, this can be a very valuable service.

  In same-sex relationships, the gender of chores may not be nearly as big a deal. Same-sex couples generally have a lot of experience with negotiating chores outside of social roles. Since households generally require the same basic types of chores regardless of the genders of the people living in them and regardless of whether the people involved consider a certain task to be “men’s work” or “women’s” work, someone is going to wind up doing it. As that would happen anyway, it’s easier to make the division in a power dynamic less about gendered work and more about s-type’s work versus Master’s work (the latter being whatever the M-type decides that they don’t want to do).

  Some same-sex couples eroticize (usually a somewhat queered version of) traditional heterosexual roles, such as butch/femme lesbianism or the gay male equivalent. If there is a power dynamic present, they face the same issues that M/f and F/m couples do – occasionally with a bit of extra guilt over “giving in” to straight memes, or a certain satisfaction in “subverting” them. If the roles aren’t that clear-cut, the couple will have to sift out all the connotations together.

  However, if a person doesn’t identify with their traditional assigned gender role, for whatever reason, they may be very uncomfortable if they are expected to render services they closely associate with their originally assigned role. An example might be ordering a butch-identified woman to take on a housewife role, or ordering a “sissy maid” cross-dressing man to do car work. For some of them, their service relationship is the only place where their nontraditional gender identity can be fully expressed, respected, or valued. Transsexuals of either direction are harder to classify. Some maintain a knee-jerk dislike of work associated with their original assigned gender for their entire lives, while others transition, settle into their new genders, and become much more comfortable with a wide range of skills and activities not limited to any social gender.

  What the master needs to keep in mind is tha
t a servant with a nontraditional gender role may have struggled for much of their life with shame or rejection because of their inability or aversion to performing a socially defined gender role. When they put themselves in a vulnerable position to someone who they hope respects and values them for who they are, being told to do tasks closely associated with that rejected gender role is likely to bring up a lot of difficult emotions. If it is approached mindfully, it can be a real opportunity for growth, but for this to work, the servant usually needs to know that the master deeply understands and respects both their preferred gender role and their struggle with their originally assigned role. While a strong identification with traditional gender roles is frequently just habitual, non-traditional gender roles are much more likely to be seen as essential to the core self.

  For a servant with a traditional gender role, work that challenges that role often offers the servant a previously unexplored area. It might be scary, and it might be hard to adjust to, but it is usually new ground for the servant. Challenging a non-traditional gender role, on the other hand, likely brings the servant back to a familiar battleground, confronting painful issues they have struggled with for much of their life. This isn’t to say it can’t be done, or that it ought not to be done, but it should be approached with caution.

  Qualities of a Good Master

  Joshua wrote this list for someone who wished to be a master and wanted to know what qualities to cultivate, but it serves equally well as qualities for a submissive to look for when seeking a master. Being a good master is more than just being a good person; it is being a good person when in control of someone else.

  Obviously, different people hold different standards, but here are some qualities Joshua personally would expect of a good master. These are in no particular order, with the genders arbitrarily alternated throughout: