This page sponsored by Mr. S Leather, San Francisco    [other banners]

	SD! : Web boards : Service : "Daily service and gender" Daily service and gender (5) Mon 21 Apr 08, 5:31 PM ravenkaldera US(MA), 3 yrs I'm moving this to a new thread! Thank you, Mistress Tiara, for starting it. Mistress_Tiara wrote: I had a conversation about service with My boy this morning which has led to this question - how much time do the slaves here ACTIVELY spend serving their Owners each day. I realise that many will instantly go to reply, 'Im thinking about him all day'/ 'everything I do is for him' etc but Im thinking about more analytical answers. For example do you work away from the home? If so for how long? How much of your time is spent actively engaged in service specific to your Owner as opposed to doing the other mundane routine things most peoples lives contain, companionship etc? How much free time do you have? I am genuinely interested in how much time and effort other slaves are giving their Owners as service, and how much energy they expend on such service. I am also interested to hear if there are any big divides along gender lines. Joshua's been ill for a while lately, and it's been all he can do to keep up with school on top of that (which is why no one's seen him around here), so I've had him cut back on personal service while he recovers. He is recovering, and I hope to be able to bring him up to workload soon. But during a more "ordinary" time ... Right now, as I said, he's in school plus working part-time. This means that his first service to me is to do well in school, do his homework, get to his massage clients, and collect a paycheck to bring home. This isn't a very personal service, but it is done at my arranging. I'm the one who made the decisions about what he would study and what career he'd have. So that's all indirect service to me anyway. He also works one morning a week at a local CSA for a free share of things we don't grow ourselves. Personal service, done of a daily basis (unless there's something taking up the whole day): He brushes my hair for me, which is calming and I enjoy it a great deal. He cleans out the tub for me before baths - we have 3 other housemates who don't want to clean the tub, and rust-heavy water, and a slow drain, and the tub is often scungy. He usually bathes with me, scrubs my back, perhaps kneels and washes me entirely if I'm not feeling well or just feeling like being pampered, and provides a cute bod to grope whilst bathing. He finds my shoes for me, and puts them back wherever I've dropped them. He polishes my boots. He gets lint off my clothing. If we are going somewhere, he gets my things ready to go (guitar and songbooks for church choir, wallet and keys for outings, etc). He lifts, totes, and carries things for me. He is my chauffeur and drives me everywhere, as my arthritic knees and ankles sometimes give out when driving. He brings me up to the front of stores and drops me off so that I don't have to walk far, and pulls up the car afterwards. He stands in checkout lines so that I can go back to the car and sit down. If I'm not up to shopping, he runs the errands and picks things up. He accompanies me to my acupuncture, and rubs my head and neck while I'm stuck on the table full of needles. If he's in a good space, he is to be a charming and articulate companion on long trips. He makes me food if he's around, and makes sure that there is easily fixable food in the fridge if he's not (a big bowl of salad for me to eat out of, etc). He makes sure that there is a pitcher of cold herbal tea around for me, and usually makes homemade mayonnaise. He constantly works to improve his cooking, and find tasty ways to cook healthy food for me. He bakes homemade bread. He formats my manuscripts, scans my artwork, gives me computer aid, maintains my websites, and does all geek-things so that I don't have to know much at all about computers. He pays the bills from our joint account, so that I don't have to bother with it. He keeps track of mail and is generally my secretary. If there's anything on the net that I want to know about, he does the searches and finds it for me. He maintains the car, helps me with gardening, and does the late-night animal feedings. He sings in the choir with me, because I want him to. He went to school for beekeeping because I wanted him to. He is the Clerk for our church, because I made him take it on. He formats manuscripts for our church's small press, ditto. He helps me with my shamanic work, getting my equipment ready, dealing with the client while I'm preparing myself, dealing with their aftercare if it's needed, running up astrological charts in the middle of the reading if I call for it. he gives classes on things where I think his knowledge ought to be shared. He co-teaches workshops with me at gatherings and conferences. When we're at such events, he is my full-time shadow and assistant, making sure that I have my papers, props, schedule, correct food, and anything else I need. He is my personal care attendant, helping me when I'm sick - massage, acupressure, meds, injections, cleaning up, blowjobs, snuggling, whatever it takes to make me physically feel better. He is my sounding board when I need to rant. And, of course, sexual service of whatever perverted type I might want. His favorite compliment is "Oh, Resourceful Boy!" when he's miraculously made some wanted thing appear or some problem disappear as soon as I start fretting about it. I am really quite grateful for his presence, and I know just how good I have it. So the upshot is that he spends most of his day doing service of some kind for me, directly or indirectly. I make sure to give him an hour or two of his own time a day, but sometimes that gets shoved aside. In terms of gender stuff: I tend towards boys of various sorts, so I can't comment too much on girls. I have one woman who I play with as a submissive periodically because she's a heavy masochist and it's fun, but she does not belong to me (she belongs to someone else and it's negotiated). The other women that I've had relationships with, like my wife, tend to be quite androgynous or masculine or butch, and not really like girls. (I'm just not very sexually attracted to feminine women. Too queer.) I've got a woman in nonsexual service to me right now (her religious vows mean she's celibate), but she is very service-oriented and it's a limited contract. However, guys ... Men can be more service-oriented or more control-oriented too, just like women. I strongly prefer someone who is heavily service-oriented, but I've had no trouble finding that with males once you weed out the "fetish" subs who are mostly into being dominated by their own dicks. I have had especially good luck with that among female-to-male transsexuals and transgendered individuals (some people refer to the non-transitioning ones as "bois"), because for some reason 75% of the FTM subs I've met are very service-oriented. But among "real" male subs, the percentage is very high as well. I think that for the biomales this may have something to do with the way that men are raised, which is to believe that the appropriate response to anything is "what can I do about it? Problem? How can I fix it?" whereas women are often raised to think that someone else should be fixing the problem and doing the doing. Gay male culture hammers home the service aspect for male bottoms. Most of the (gay/bi) FTMs I've met are copying that (usually having fetishized it), plus they know that they need to have extra "selling" points, lacking penises. Hope this is helpful, -Raven Kaldera -If you're in charge, it's all on your head. If it's not all on your head, then you're not really in charge. Edited Mon 21 Apr 08, 5:33 PM by ravenkaldera 21 Apr 08, 6:55 PM Mistress_Tiara UK, 2 yrs Thanks Raven, very interesting! We were talking about service this morning and My boy said he felt I thought he lacked in this area because he didnt do what a lot of the other slaves on TSR we hear about do for their Owners. I was not sure I did (as I was actually making a point about him working too hard) but delved further and he said (to paraphrase) that as he doesnt know any other real male slaves, as opposed to submissives, he couldnt validate this, but that in essence although his service is very different to that which we hear most of on this board he thinks he possibly works harder in tangible *physical* terms, than many other slaves he hears about, and that maybe thats simply because he is male. I made a counterpoint about girl slaves who serve in other ways but he said (again I paraphrase) that maybe a large percentage of what a lot of females provide as service is actually done by a lot of wives in old fashioned/ traditional vanilla relationships ie cooking, cleaning, shoppping etc- the motivation may be slave-service led and it may be very very useful, just that it may not be necessarily unusual. I should add that he was in no way devaluing it, emphasising that if thats what their Owners wanted that was fine and dandy, he was just saying that he didnt have time to necessarily do the 'nice' things many female slaves revel in doing as service. As he is strong and by nature hardworking he tends to do a lot of hard work type tasks ie today he has broken up concrete from our new backgarden, along with other less heavy jobs, so using today again as a sample he has done some gardening, been to the shops, generally had a tidy round, and dried the laundry and other things I may selfishly not have noticed, along with making himself useful in the bedroom. So by the end of the day he is tired. A sample quote was 'I dont have time to paint your toenails and break the concrete' his logic being as Im not exactly a dab hand with concrete smashing but can paint My own toeails that priorities come into play. An undoutedly fair point. This was all part of a larger conversation about how I dont want him getting too tired by doing too much ie sometimes I think the concrete can wait so he doesnt overdo it, but I was interested by his thoughts on gender and service. I wondered if anyone had any input they'd like to share. Raven's insights have been very useful. If any of the other lesser spotted male slaves out there fancy contributing I'd be interested to hear how they serve too. Thanks to Raven for moving this into its own thread - I didnt mean to hijack his! Mistress Tiara (toenail painter extraordinaire). ~*Mistress Tiara*~ 22 Apr 08, 12:28 AM ravenkaldera US(MA), 3 yrs Hey, I'd say that concrete-smashing is an extremely useful service. Damn straight. And if you only have one slave, you have to make the best of their time and resources. I've certainly been in that situation - in the next two hours, the dishes have to get washed, and this critical piece of computering has to happen to this document I just finished so that it can be emailed to my co-author of the moment. I can't do the computer thing, but Joshua is a whiz. Guess who will be washing the dishes? Me. There's also the matter of physical strength. Joshua is fit, but lean and fine-boned rather than bulky, like a whippet - sometimes I call him My Nasty Little Weasel. He can't break up concrete. If he was larger and could, would I have him do it? You betcha. In this culture, men are encouraged to push themselves physically (unless they come from a class where that's considered degrading) and use the fullest amount of their strength in work. And why waste that? Women, on the other hand, are encouraged to think of themselves as physically weak (especially if they are submissives) and never figure out the limits of their strength. With the exception of some butch dyke bottoms I know. Also, being a grunt will often interfere with being a particular aesthetic type of ornament. (Notice that I said "particular aesthetic type" - I enjoy watching a sweat-glistening bare-skinned muscled body labor in the sun myself. But it does get in the way of long nails and lipstick and heels and big hair.) I was discussing this thread with Joshua in the car, and he mentioned that while I'd said men are culturally trained to default to "what can I do?" women are trained to default to "who can I be?" We also talked about the younger generation of pervs (the 18-21 range) and how many of them have been raised with different looser mores and have less gender-obvious responses. There's also the issue of what dominants want of their submissives, which is going to de facto determine much of what those subs will offer. I've commented before that the expectations of subs in gay male leather culture, once you take out all the sex (and there's a lot of sex to be taken out, grin) has very strong expectations of service. Of course the boy carries the luggage and serves the drinks and rips up the thornbushes. Whereas heterosexual male leather doms (at least anecdotally, I have no "community" to examine here) seem to be much more interested in control. The difference here is primarily in the gender of the sub, but I would do some eyebrow-raising at the idea that the sub is the one who sets the dom's desires and priorities. The secondary difference is cultural, of course. I can't comment on the place of service, and the sort of services rendered, in leatherdyke circles - perhaps others on this forum might help out here? And, of course, Mistress Tiara and others could comment on the expectations of female dominants and male subs further. Not that I'm telling anyone what to do or anything, of course. Just suggesting. (grin) -Raven Kaldera -If you're in charge, it's all on your head. If it's not all on your head, then you're not really in charge. 22 Apr 08, 9:16 AM anjuli UK, 18 mths Fascinating discussion... and one I can't get fully involved in for obvious reasons but I have a couple of nudges to throw in if I may? On the matter of female slaves 'doing the nice things' (and yeah, it got a reaction at gut level of 'only a guy could think like that!) <laughs>. We do all the housework for the same reason Mistress Tiara's boy does the concrete smashing - because it's what we can do and perhaps are expected to do. And as Raven pointed out, Master will step in push the hoover or wash dishes if there is something more important he wants me to do. Or in fact, if he wants to help get chores out of the way so we have more 'nice' time together for other things. He clearly doesn't feel that any of these things are beneath him. I don't know how unusual it is but I also help with grunt jobs altho it is clearly within the boundaries of my physical limitations. I agree with Raven (again) that we girls are often never encouraged or allowed to find our what those limits are but I had a father who let me work with him on all sorts of jobs around the house and garden (altho it included of course the most important 'workman's mate's' job of making a good cup of tea!) and I rode horses and worked at the stables every day of my holidays which knocked plenty of edges off. I helped with rebuilding a kitchen and helped Master shift enormous rocks for a garden waterfall feature (in our old home last spring). Perhaps I'm bonkers but I'd love Raven's farm and the work. I'm still hoping to find a friendly farmer who will let me help with lambing one year - yeah I really want to sit up all night in some freezing barn and end up with my hand up a sheep! I wonder about me too sometimes. I should probably point out that I'm not exactly big and butch at 5'2" and as a British army officer's daughter I am absolutely at home being the lady and letting the escort open the doors and get the mud from the carriages. Actually, thinking it over - perhaps that's the way we breed em over here. Not that many of the women I have known from really 'nice' families (read old, moneied, etc) were exactly swooning ninnies. They are quite happy to rough-house it doesn't mean they don't know how to behave like the duchess their aunt probably is. Last thing - Raven's eyebrow raising regarding the subs setting the Doms' desires and needs somehow. I don't think so! Could this not be a corollary of the fact that just as subs are influenced by their upbringing and largely unphysical, that male Doms too are programmed to 'take care' of their female subs? We're both to a lesser or greater degree playing the roles we are expected to by society and family? I am still chewing on Joshua's idea of 'who can I be' but haven't got any sensible conclusions yet altho the idea intrigues me. anjuli ps. Still giggling at 'I don't have time to paint your toenails and break the concrete.' We ought to have Dom and slave halls of fame for little gems like that. ~~~ “I, with a deeper instinct, choose a man who compels my strength, who makes enormous demands on me, who does not doubt my courage or my toughness, who does not believe me naive or innocent, who has the courage to treat me like a woman.” - Anais Nin ~~~ 22 Apr 08, 2:26 PM Mistress_Tiara UK, 2 yrs Great input from you both Raven and anjuli, thanks! Which part to address first....? I absolutely value the concrete smashing (which he is doing again now actually). I spent years doing lots of very manual household jobs and frankly at the moment I dont want to anymore if I can help it. Maybe I will again one day but if I can help it now, hell no. If its necessary I get stuck in but by choice its delegated. his input in this way was always understood - we bought the house and moved in in February of this year. We loved its location, right on the edge of the forest and it offered a good space, but it was spectacularly unloved and unmaintained and needed a lot of work. Had My boy not been able to do heavy jobs we wouldn't have touched it with a barge pole. Since we bought the house three rooms have been stripped, partially replastered in some cases and painted, the same three rooms have had wooden flooring laid, a summer house has been erected and painted, tons of concrete has been removed, two terraces laid, a hillock built (!), the gardens have been planted up, a side house has had a new roof on and is being renovated to form a sort of sunroom/ workshop, a motorbike shed erected, a large cage has been built (well, one must keep a sense of priority) and endless other jobs like sorting out defunct window locks, dealing with sewer problems, ripping up carpets etc etc. Im sure Ive forgotten lots too. My poor boy has been working his butt off and done the majority of this, certainly the heavier stuff. I actually think he is going at it too hard and am insisting he slows down. Obviously he does not work outside the home, as he is retired. If he did work none of this would be possible. he is naturally hard working, and gets bored very easily now he doesnt work so a lot of the schemes and projects above are of his own devising (I never said for example 'build Me a hill slave') he makes much higher demands on himself in this area than I ever would. I would expect all that he has done in three months to have taken a year or two and been perfectly content with that. I think he has a sort of old fashioned idea/l of masculinity and looking after one's 'lady' that has gone a bit hyper since becoming a slave. Another factor is that he suffers from ill health and at times cant do much at all. When he can he therefore wants to do everything he can. I am greatly enjoying the benefits of having this industrious hard working man slaving away as Im sure you can imagine. I am trying to get him to slow down a bit however as I dont want him overdoing it. The best way to do this is to offer him motorbike rides as a break in the day - I think he deserves some enjoyment while he is doing all this and there is little he likes better than zooming round on his beloved Ducati. The service I want from My boy is vastly different at different times. I have in many ways a very male approach to life and a male way of thinking and this perhaps shows in My requirements. Having someone 'kiss My boots' or any of that 'FemDom' stuff is of no interest to Me at all. I most definately do not fit into the FemDom set, Im simply dominant and female. I want My life making easier, I want a fucktoy, I want support for My projects and the things I decide to do, I want someone to do heavy things, I want to be adored and fussed (oh how I love to be fussed) and I want someone to use for My pervy desires, which it must be said are more depraved than many I suspect. And I want someone who I *NEVER* have to have a wanky conversation with where I have to argue for equality because Im female - I simply cant countenance that stuff anymore and see it as a waste of My time and energy. So having a male slave fits My requirements nicely. With your analytical mind Raven you will probably find it interesting that although I am bisexual, before I met My boy I was much more inclined towards women, so that when I paired up with My boy, My teenage daughter and friends were rather shocked I'd picked a male - and more to the point so was I. This is not a relationship which I ever imagined I would pick, but although it is occasionally very hard work, it suits Me. Right, now to Anjuli's comments. What I think he meant is that lots of female slaves on here say things like 'I like to arrange Master's food attractively', or 'I make sure Sir always has a drink by his side', and that as he is off demolishing the garden or whatever, he cant do such things. he has got it into his head that I want him to do things like this in addition to his big-strong-man duties which is not the case at all. I have been suggesting that he could ease of the He-Man stuff for a while now to give him a bit of a break and during the newly freed up time 'paint My toenails' so to speak. The thought of not smashing so much concrete is proving a tricky one for him to comprehend atm....maybe its a new form of Stockholm Syndrome Im with you on the 'nice' female duties btw. he occasionally references the fact that I 'dont clean' which leaves Me just incensed! I do flippin' clean for a start, I just see My main job while at home as looking after My little one as thats what I am actually off work for. I suppose its all a matter of perspective. This is the longest post I have ever made by a very long way. I do hope I havent sent you to sleep, Mistress Tiara, sitting in the sunshine by the trees thinking how nice living here is. ~*Mistress Tiara*~ 22 Apr 08, 3:21 PM KamsIris 15 mths How do i compete with Raven and anjuli? i am most certainly going to try to write something that is of use and forgive me if i repeat anything that was touched on in either of their posts. Daily routines differ for me because of two reasons: i am a college student and my Master is 2200 miles away from me. i do not have the pleasure of being with my Master physically to serve, but when i am away i have tasks to complete and a routine Master has given to me. In the mornings when i awaken, i am to exercise and i usually do so in the form of belly dance. Once i have finished, i am to bathe, fix myself up, apply makeup, lay out clothes, gather my things for class, actually go to class because Master grows extremely angry if i miss class, work if i am employed, which at the moment i am not, and return home to him at the end of the day. Once i am home, i am to exercise again, complete homework and studying i may have, journalize, and finally lie down for an evening of talking with my Master or making sure he is awake for his late night shift at work. On evenings when he works, i make myself available via telephone during the late night hours so that he has a sounding board or a lovely voice to hear to keep him from murdering his bosses. Those conversations are the ones i cherish. To keep myself in constant service to my Master during the class hours and such, i maintain my diet he has asked me to keep to. He wants me to improve my body not just for him, but for me because of my low self-esteem. i also make sure that i text or call if i wish to leave campus or spend time with friends so that he knows where i am at all times (i have had stalkers and he worries). Employment is not my decision, but his. i hold a job because he does not want me suffering through financial troubles and i do eventually want to save up enough money to make another trip to visit him once again. i work out because he asks me to and i ask myself if what i am doing would be pleasing to him before i do anything. When i am with my Master physically, things are definitely a bit different. First off, i am never to leave his side, whether in the privacy of our room or in public. i clean our room, since we stay in a hotel during his visits with me, make the bed so he does not have to fight with the sheets when we return home from an outing, lay out choices of my clothing and give him the ultimate decision, bathe him, service him by any means he wishes, chauffer him, and i make sure to keep up with my exercising and such when he is with me. i do not get a break from that my routine is not that interesting, but i enjoy it and i have learned to love it. i hope this helps a bit. Collared to the most wonderful Master God could ever bless me with. I will forever be devoted to you, Master Kam <3