The big, beautiful shiny rainbow of kink (A.K.A. there's no One True Way)

[emanix]

Copied essentially verbatim from a Fetlife conversation thread about 'service tops' - this is not quite the essay I'd been intending to write on this topic, but I've had it on my mind for a while, so I'm going to preserve the best attempt I've made at it yet for posterity.

Much musing about kink, logic, diversity, and all of the gorgeous colours of

Comments

Service Top

[edm]

Blatently crossing the threads, your description of a "service" top versus a "classic" top looks to me very similar to the difference between Ask Culture versus Guess Culture. Complicated, I think, by the area being one that touches on people's inherited taboos which makes them, at least initially, even more reluctant to ask for what they want -- even if they were mostly of "Ask Culture". If this analysis is correct, then one might expect people to "grow into" working with a Service Top as they become more aware of what they want, and more comfortable with asking for it. (I have insufficient information to know if that's true, but my guess is that it probably is.)

Ewen

Re: Service Top

[haggis]

I disagree. I think it's important to distinguish between someone's behaviour is a scene and outside it, which can be complete opposites. I'm a very Ask person and I will communicate my kinks/likes/limits very clearly outside the scene. However, in a scene, I want my partner to lead and I *want* to follow. A service top wouldn't work for me.

(I find the Ask/Guess culture idea very useful though.)

Re: Service Top

[syllopsium]

Only insofar as much as both are basically inadequately defined concepts. The world is clearly [1] not defined into 'ask' vs 'guess' - there is a distinct grey area between the two.

Likewise, whilst Maxine's post is a good one, it still only works in a narrowly defined scene.

There's nothing preventing a somewhat more organic arrangement of a scene - aside from rigid thinking from the participants, of course.

Still, it's a much better scale than reducing everything to D/s.

[1] To anyone with any experience. Even Julian Sanchez misses the point - not only are people negotiating where on the relationship gradient they lie[2], but they're also implicitly deciding how far they're willing to commit.

[2] I suppose you could also define relationships in two dimensions rather than one. Involvement vs commitment, perhaps. These things are complicated already though.

Re: Service Top

[emanix]

Hm, no, I don't think so. I think the categories I use are more about the motivation for being in the scene that the way in which these things are communicated (which is my understanding of what ask vs. guess refers to) - the 'classic' top feels a sense of their own satisfaction from doing x, y or z to other people, which if they're a good top they will play out consensually with someone who enjoys that... whereas the service top is motivated less by their own pleasure and more by that of the recipient (and more likely to vary their repertoire depending on the wants of the receiver, also).
And yes, as syllopsium points out, these are binary categories imposed on an analogue world, and thus imperfect (and occasionally confusing the issue more than clarifying it) - but since we're creatures of analysis, one has to begin somewhere!

[lovewithoutfear]

Thank you for this. Anything that clarifies and celebrates diversity seems good to me!

[azekeil]

Ah, that helps, a lot! I'm going to borrow your categories to help me (and others) think about things to make it easier to understand each other :)

[comfy_chair]

Yep, I'm going to borrow the categories too - that should make my life much much easier, thank you!

[jon_from_shef]

I'm not really in the world of kink, just the poly world, but these look like good clarifying dimensions to me. I'd be interested to see what kinky folk make of them.

[emanix]

Ooh, that is something I left out of this, and I hadn't put my finger on the lack. The 'naughty sub' or the 'Dom is a better person whose wishes are more important' things just don't work for me either, and it seems to be the only image a lot of folks have of kink. I have had to work for years to train toppy partners out of the 'you've been a bad girl so I have to punish you' shit when it really was not appropriate to me. I *hate* bratting, and a spanking is a reward to me, not a punishment - and making something I love into a punishment feels like abuse to me. YMMV

I have no problem with the folks it works for, I just wish the image of kink included more variety.

[blazingrowan]

Seconded! Neat.