Hey MacGuffin,

On the issue of training, it reminds me of "child rearing books" Where supposedly there are "proper ways" to raise children. While most people will agree they shouldn't be allowed to just run in the street or you shouldn't beat them bloody and lock them in closets, that's mostly common sense and any decent human being knows that.

Parents don't learn how to "raise children" they learn how to raise the child or children that they have. Because each child is a unique personality and this or that "technique" won't work for everyone. And if it works on the surface, it might not produce the proper response.

For example, spanking. Some kids are spanked and it makes them more obedient. As a child I was spanked and it just made me more sneaky and less capable to be honest with my parents about my feelings about things.

I became MORE resistant. Now they could have just started beating on me I suppose, and if their need to dominate me was so great they would have had to break me to do it, then that would have been that. But IMO it wouldn't have been a "proper way" to raise a child. Or more specifically not the proper way to raise me.

Speaking of training a submissive as if there are these special "secrets" treats submissives/slaves/pets as if we are a "category" as opposed to individual human beings. One learns how to deal with someone by interacting with that specific person, not trying to find sneaky ways to dominate them or something that LordMasterStupendous determined was the "best way."

On the lifestyle thing, I don't really know what to do with that. You bring up good points. I'm still stuck on the issues I have with the novels themselves and the writer of said novels.

Hey orchidsoul,

You make very good points, and I don't think that Goreans are running around behaving like that. I don't think that you'd be expected to behave in any certain way at their house either.

There are many fictional erotic novels that I've found very hot, or that spoke to me in some deeper way, but I didn't decide that who I was was in some way tied up in them. I'm not saying that doing such a thing is "wrong" I just don't "understand" it. It's even harder for me to understand it when there are things in the source text which I find personally morally disturbing. This may be why I don't follow any religions.

While I may pick and choose from various sources around me to help me to determine my views/beliefs/etc, I don't think I ever could again take any one book or philosophy completely wholesale as a system.

I guess I have a hard time understanding why people must have SYSTEMS. Is it part of humans being pack animals? Or does it run deeper than that? Does something feel more real or valid if someone else wrote about it first?