Agency is an important aspect of any relationship. Together with consent, it forms the basis of WIITWD.


Agency is defined as:
. 'Your ability to take action, be effective, influence your own life, and assume responsibility for your behavior are important elements in what you bring to a relationship.'
-Psychology Today

It worries me that practitioners of BDSM place so much emphasis on consent (which is good) but when speaking to Dom and sub alike and you mention agency, they have no idea what you are talking about.

Please let me explain: Agency is the basis of consent. It is the core of ethical kink.

Consent is agreeing to things. Agreeing that you may be spanked or touched.

For kink to be ethical, a person 'must have free will, must be able to determine what is best for him, must be able to make his own choices.'
This is agency.

This brings me to the reason for this thread: When submissives tell me that they need a push from a Dominant partner to do things they don't actually know they actually want to do, I disagree vehemently. Because they are saying they don't have agency. And without agency, consent is void.

Is this not the reason for the confusion i see more and more on sites such as this? Is this not, at the heart, what is wrong with online hypnosis abuse that is becoming more and more rampant?

Subbies don't want to put their big boy and girl panties on and exercise their agency to give consent. It's so much easier to imagine that submission means being told what to do and doing it.

Obedience is important. But that happens only after agency and consent. If obedience is asked for or demanded before agency and consent, run!

We call that abuse.




I'd love to hear further thoughts.