And an excellant opinion it is!

I, too, can't quite understand the term 'slave' in a D/s relationship, as opposed to a 'submissive'. I mean I can; oh,geez, I don't seem to have a grasp of the english language today <sigh>. Let's try this again.

I agree that the terms sub and slave, to me, are a matter of degree. I can see the submissive part, even though I have a hard time understanding it; but then again, I have a hard time understanding 'shy', too - it's just not in my nature.

I have a much harder time understanding the slave concept; I find it a degrading and demeaning term, in it's historical sense. That is, a slave was owned body and soul, had no separate life, owned nothing, could be bought and sold, and was forced into the slavery, often by being kidnapped from their own land, and taken far away from home. To me, giving yourself over to someone to be a slave to him/her is fundamentally opposite the definition of slavery.

I used to believe that it was just a term people used to describe a d/s relationship, but it has become apparent to me that it goes far beyond that; many of these people really do consider the slave as an owned piece of property. Amazing; we have a whole nation of people who worked for 100's of years to free themselves from slavery, only to have a new batch of people go into it voluntarily!

Oh well, obviously we have to allow people the right to do whatever they please with their lives; I just wish I could be sure that some of the ... um ... more opressed slaves were doing this for the right reasons, and not just because they feel they don't deserve anything better.

I'm putting away my soap box now ...