An Owner's Responsibility: Identity
Mood:  on fire
Topic: Words of Wisdom
Identity is the one thing we each rely most upon from day to day. It?s your identity which allows you to be unique and recognizable; utterly individual from even the ones you love the utmost in your life. It?s something we protect and defend, even as much as we like role play in our lives.
I?ve mentioned often how real life dominance is far different than online dominance. I?ve had long discussions with some of you about taking the role play into reality and playing safely in the ?real? world of SM. And I almost had it, but I was slightly off in one important way; the ?online? world is real too.
An Owner?s responsibility is to protect one?s slaves, including their identities. This also includes protecting them and their families from Oneself too. It means being willing to ?own? an online identity because someone doesn?t trust me enough to give me more personal information. The reality is that it?s reasonable to expect someone to protect their loved ones and families while they?re out and about online. And especially of even the ones we expect absolute truth from?which for me is everyone including myself.
I have a certain amount of reality I tell folks about myself, you know my age and some of you know my real name and that I have at least one kid. I?ve never posted my real name or that of my kid?s anywhere, not even in yahoo messenger in conversation with the exception of my writer?s Advocates who need to know where to send the checks eventually. Meliora Volens is my legal ?pen name? and Au Contraire is my official online alias. I will not lie to you; there are identity thieves and predators lurking on the internet and we need to protect ourselves, our loved ones and our online relationships from them. Even if that means that I never see a recent photo of my online slave or know *any* of its reality beyond what it is willing to share with me.
My public and online identity is important to me and it?s reasonable to expect others to feel similarly. It?s more than keeping someone?s real name and information secret; it?s expecting to earn the trust it takes for a reasonable human to share that much of themselves with me in the first place. Because the truth is, you may never get an invitation to read my blog or chat with me in The Sims Online if I don?t trust you either.
A warning signal to online submissives wanting to get into online D/s relationships is when a Dom/me insists on knowing your personal information before you?re ready. A person like that is already mistrustful. S/he expects you to prove yourself with your personal information on the faith that s/he is a dominant and all that s/he claims to be. These folks often have good intentions while having higher expectations of the end results of the relationship than is healthy.
Think about that for a minute. You?re meeting someone online, and in the back of your mind you are working toward your goals of taking your dominance (or servitude) into your daily (away from the computer) living. So, you?ve had some practice and you can get a sim into cyber faster than you could get introduced in your glory days and everything seems so much easier and faster online. It?s reasonable to conclude from all this speed and intimacy that the human behind the avatar you just romped is equally willing and able to take things to the ?real? world too.
Except, in virtually all cases, this is not true. Online relationships are fast and easy because we are someone else and if we were ourselves we wouldn?t do any of it and we wouldn?t have met and it wouldn?t have been easy or fast if we attempted to do half the things we do online.
If you want an online relationship, accept the online person you like as ?real? and sit in your own persona and have a good time; we?re all friends here. If you want a physical relationship; find your best friend or your favorite neighbor or the buxom brunette you met at the last local Munch and find fun things to do together online as well as in bed. That?s the actual difference between an Online Dom/me and a ?real? one.
Thank you for assisting me to see it. :D