Does Everything Have Hierarchy?

[ErosWired]

2 hours ago, tallslenderguy said:

Do you perceive your self as masochist along with/as well as submissive?  To me that seems part of the mix that makes you who and how you are?  Or do you see what you describe as solely an expression of your submissive need/desire/tendency/_________?  While you say your "former Master required" of you, at the same time, you were in control.  It seems that the dynamic you experienced with Him was an alignment of desire/need?  In other places i recall you writing of being hypnotized, was that with this same Master?  my sense and recall of your hypnotism experience is that person crossed a boundary with you and thus did you harm?

I am not a masochist. I do not enjoy pain, and do not seek it, but I started out as a bondage submissive, which put me in the position of having to develop a tolerance for the pain resulting from the practices Dominants would perform on me while restrained. This resulted in a conditioning to entry into subspace in response to certain types of pain, but that is not the same as masochism, which fetishizes the pain itself. I had an unusual experience at IML in which a very talented Dominant pinned me down and began biting my nipples. Normally, nipple pain shuts me right down like a kill switch, and it did in this case, but he persisted, and intensified the pain - he perceived my reaction and, maintaining direct eye contact, continued in an overt display intended to show me that he was in control of me and that I would be responding as he dictated. I suddenly plunged into subspace in a way I hadn’t for a long time, and from that point every impulse through my nipples became an irresistible call compelling ever deeper submission. I hated every moment of that pain from start to finish, but after crossing that threshold, the pain was irrelevant.

The dynamic with my former Master was indeed an alignment of desire and need, though he had made it his purpose to take some small kernel of desire and need that otherwise might have lain dormant and unexpressed my whole life, and fan the ember of it until it became a conflagration that he then channeled to his own uses. He achieved this not simply by the application of pain - something any brute could do - but rather by its subtle manipulation, directing pain into the channels of pleasure until the boundary between the two became fundamentally blurred by forcing repeated serial orgasms until ecstasy became agony. Even now, the orgasm I feel when I ejaculate is more like being tortured than pleasured, and this may have something to do with why I now have no drive whatsoever to Top.

My Master employed several techniques, both psychological and physical conditioning, but did not himself attempt hypnosis, as he had no experience with it. I consider that unfortunate - I believe we could have made substantial progress and possibly gone much further had he had that as a tool in his arsenal. The Dominants who have used hypnosis on me all identified an aptitude in me as a hypnotic subject. Possibly by virtue of my Autistic mental wiring, I can hyper-focus in a way highly conducive to trance, and this might have made me particularly vulnerable to abuse except that that same wiring also lets me disconnect from emotional states and be less influenced by them. Thus, although I have run afoul of unethical hypnotists who sought to do me harm, none of them ultimately succeeded. Even the one who figuratively came into contact with my soul and then attempted to rape it - possibly the most obscene act imaginable - caused no lasting hurt. (I do now stress to others the great need for caution in dealing with hypnotists in this way, as defense requires extensive time invested in mental discipline.)

Edited August 8, 2023 by ErosWired

[tallslenderguy]

A few more thoughts (not conclusions).

"Superiority" seems to be a (the?) qualifying factor in hierarchy? 

If control is deemed the superior position in hierarchy, and the sub is ultimately in control. do some mis-perceive/label the roles in a D/s dynamic by concluding the alpha superior and the sub inferior?

Though there is overlap/blending, to me there is physical and psychological dominance.  Is one 'superior' to the other?  Personally, i perceive one who solely uses physical dominance as a bully. Physical force does not elicit a submissive response in me, but the opposite. Even if someone manages to dominate me physically, they still do not have my psychological submission. To me, the Man Who manages to elicit my psychological submission, engaging my need and desire ends up leading the dance with me. But to me, that approaches symbiosis because it involves His need/desire to be in control.  Though this kind of symbiosis has opposite sides that attract, if an actual state of symbiosis is achieved, it seems to me that balanced state/blend/result  sort of changes to neutral?  Relational homeostasis? 

[ErosWired]

13 hours ago, tallslenderguy said:

"Superiority" seems to be a (the?) qualifying factor in hierarchy? 

If control is deemed the superior position in hierarchy, and the sub is ultimately in control. do some mis-perceive/label the roles in a D/s dynamic by concluding the alpha superior and the sub inferior?

I don’t think control is usually the determining factor when the concept of ‘superiority’ is invoked. Superior is a judgment of relative value, whereas control is generally viewed as an either/or question, of who has it and who does not. Rather, I think superior is applied, either directly or indirectly, to an assessment of maculinity - not who is the superior male, but who is the superior male.

This is readily applied to a hierarchy when various masculine qualities are evaluated both on a scale and as yes-or-no. A preponderance of opinion seems to hold that the more aggressive and dominant a man is, the more superior he is as a male, because those are strongly masculine traits. If a man is submissive, he is generally considered to be an inferior male because the conventional wisdom holds that superior men do not submit.

That a man is able to exercise control over another man is not the determining factor of his superiority, but the natural expression of it…if one subscribes to the idea that dominant masculinity equates to superiority.

Superior in what sense? Superior for what purpose? Is a brute who can physically overwhelm a man of towering intellect the superior specimen? Not if you’re trying to build a civilization. The genetic traits that make an individual a superior candidate for survival in one environment may make it an inferior candidate in another. The ring of my anus may yield to the penetration of a more aggressive man - his greater force might even be successful in forcing its way past any resistance my flesh is capable of mounting in order to bury his semen deep inside me - but my my pain tolerance, my resilience, my sheer physical ability to endure his brutal assault may make me the superior specimen from a certain point of view. I’m the survivor, not him.

But we’re talking about a sexualized arena here, and in any reproductive context in the natural world, the superior male is the one who is successful in dominating, penetrating, and inseminating. We may be human, but we are still in animal bodies, and we are not exempt from the animal rules in this regard.

So, yes, I’ve been cunted and seeded by over a thousand men, and by one measure that would suggest that I’m an inferior male. But I’ve also successfully fathered two children, something that many a gay Alpha Top will never accomplish. In that sense, I, the cunt he considers himself superior to, is actually by the reproductive measure by far the superior male.

Not that I feel superior to him when he’s destroying my cunt with his cock and telling me what a faggot like me deserves.

Bit of a head-twister.

[hntnhole]

On 8/5/2023 at 2:41 PM, viking8x6 said:

It's the idea that the power dynamic and specifically a dominant/submissive or leader/follower interaction is necessarily central to this that rings false to me.

Agreed. 

The term "hierarchy" is a construct to define a specific entity.  For example, pertaining to a business, with the owner at the apex, descending in importance (to the company, I mean) to mid and lower echelons of importance (to the company).  This has no connotation to the value of any of the folks populating any given level within the hierarchy (other than their value to the entity).  

While it's probably true that the higher on the construct an individual is placed, the more likely he/she is to have the capacity for Dominance, or put another way, the ability to project well-reasoned business plans, ability to set attainable goals, etc, and inspiring the population of the lower levels to work towards achieving X goals as laid out for them by the primary member at the top.    

If, however, this thread is about how any given person is perceived by others on a scale of Dominance/submission, either unconsciously expressed or purposefully cultivated, it seems to be drifting away from hierarchy, and inching more towards the inborn nature of a given individual, which is obvious in every facet of his/her life.  In this case, the lowliest "go-fer" person in the hierarchical construct can be almost palpably Dominant, or similarly submissive.  

I've read and re-read this most interesting thread lately, and I don't see what "hierarchy" has to do with it.  What am I missing?

[ErosWired]

On 8/11/2023 at 2:00 PM, hntnhole said:

Agreed. 

The term "hierarchy" is a construct to define a specific entity.  For example, pertaining to a business, with the owner at the apex, descending in importance (to the company, I mean) to mid and lower echelons of importance (to the company).  This has no connotation to the value of any of the folks populating any given level within the hierarchy (other than their value to the entity).  

While it's probably true that the higher on the construct an individual is placed, the more likely he/she is to have the capacity for Dominance, or put another way, the ability to project well-reasoned business plans, ability to set attainable goals, etc, and inspiring the population of the lower levels to work towards achieving X goals as laid out for them by the primary member at the top.    

If, however, this thread is about how any given person is perceived by others on a scale of Dominance/submission, either unconsciously expressed or purposefully cultivated, it seems to be drifting away from hierarchy, and inching more towards the inborn nature of a given individual, which is obvious in every facet of his/her life.  In this case, the lowliest "go-fer" person in the hierarchical construct can be almost palpably Dominant, or similarly submissive.  

I've read and re-read this most interesting thread lately, and I don't see what "hierarchy" has to do with it.  What am I missing?

Hierarchy can refer to the classification of a group of people according to ability or social standing, but also can be generally used as a word for a graded or ranked series of values, which can be evaluated as a vertical high-to-low stratification. It’s true that the valuation by which individuals are viewed may not apply to them outside the construct of the hierarchy of which they are members, that is irrelevant - the hierarchy is self-referencing.

An example might be a matter of penis size: Cocks observably differ in length and girth, and conventionally, it is most widely accepted that longer, thicker penises are more desirable. Any number of attempts are made to spuriously conflate other metrics with cock size - big cocks have been claimed to occur more often on men who are Black, or ginger, or long-nosed, or big-footed, etc., without a shred of actual basis, and therefore the relative standing of those same men in a comparison of cock size has no bearing on a comparison of them to other men in terms of the unrelated metrics.

But their cocks are what they are, and each of them does occupy his place in the given hierarchy of size. Quantifiable metrics may establish the most simply identifiable hierarchies, but again, hierarchy can also apply to social constructs, which are much more fluid and subjective. The “inborn nature” of an individual you refer to may be an amalgam of personal traits as interpreted by observers within the construct, and thus given a definition relevant to the hierarchy. My former Master observed inborn traits in me and interpreted them to mean that I ought to be occupying a very low place on the male sexual hierarchy. He set out to demonstrate this, and succeeded (dramatically). That I have other natures inborn to me is beside the point - I’m not being compared to other men for purposes of this hierarchy on the basis of my intellectual acumen, I’m being evaluated on whether my more natural role is as a breeder or the cunt that gets bred. I’m being placed in the dogpile of other men in order of who gets to fuck who, and I end up pretty damn close to the bottom. That’s the physical definition of a hierarchy.