Thursday, March 5, 2009

Never thought of it from your point of view

Along the lines of the conversation in comments with Wilfried, I read this post by Graydancer explaining an aspect of an event he'd organized. Fascinating to think about what point of view others have that I don't (can't).

"My Fishbowl discussion is a perennial part of the GRUE, a chance for tops, bottoms, and switches to ask frank questions of each other and hear the responses from an insulated pool - where the people asking the question just listen, and the people answering discuss it amongst themselves. Here's the questions each group asked:

The subs asked:

For Tops:

1. Are you ok with silent sub space?
2. What aftercare do you want?
3. How obedient is too obedient?

For Switches

1. Is it a 50/50 Split?
2. What do we need to do to get you into Top Space?
3. Is it more difficult to play with another switch?

The doms asked:

For Subs:

1. What is the most annoying thing I do to you?
2. What is often missing from a scene that you need to get where you need to go?
3. What thing do you wish we would carry in our toy bag?

For Switches

1. Since you have needs as both top & bottom, can any one scene fulfill you?
2. When you switch, do you go from one side to the other completely?
3. Do you feel persecuted?

The switches asked:

For Tops:

1. Why don't you switch?
2. What bottoming experiences have you had?
3. Do you think switches are aliens?

For Bottoms:

1. Why don't you switch?
2. What topping experiences have you had?
3. Do you bottom for someone who bottoms for someone else?

&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&

Frankly, I found it very interesting to see the questions. I would have never thought that doms were curious about their annoying behavior or that they saw switches as possibly unfulfill-able. Or that switches thought that tops viewed them as aliens, or were curious about the connection for subs between topping experiences and switching. While the sub questions to tops are easily relatable and understandable for me: we want to be allowed to have silent subspace (is that ok with you?), we undeniably still want to care for you, we also don't want to be too annoying! And to switches: we would see you as tops if we heard you fell to a 51%top/49%bottom and we'd want to encourage you to go there, and how does it work to encompass both?

Not just a cool way to engage in discussion that might not always happen, but a really neat sociological exercise. ... Although, maybe it's just because I've been out of the loop for a long time and am peeking back in.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

DEEPLY enlightening...