The Ethics of Inequality

Last month's "Dynamics of Power deep dive" discussion group hosted by Precipice left me chewing for days... nope, weeks. So much nuance within this topic that we mostly arrived at good questions people in a dynamic should be asking themselves, rather than clear answers. I think some of the questions matter a lot, so I will try to dissect them in subsequent posts. Please make an effort to find community where you can discuss these and other topics. It makes our community better.

As always, the rules of privacy that governed the discussion mean I can't relay what others said, so these are my own reflections on the topic, and how it lands in my life. Some background for newer readers: I have multiple D/s relationships, one of which is a 24x7 TPE, so this is not academic for me; these questions impact my life directly.

Initially, the scene was set by describing two major camps of thought, and if you want to read further, Peter Masters and Raven Kaldera are two authors who have written thoughtfully from different ends of this. It is also worth noting that we are talking about ethics, which can be somewhat subjective and change over time, but the goal is to minimise harm.

The first camp holds that no matter how deep the power exchange, both people must always be able to take their hats off and talk as equals. The power is real, but underneath it sit two humans who can step out of role, look each other in the eye, and renegotiate, with consent being revocable at any moment.

The second camp holds that a dominant is hobbled if the submissive always has an exit button. If the power handed over can be taken back at any moment, was it ever really handed over? For this camp, the depth and the transformation come precisely from consent that, once given, stays given.

My thoughts on the matter started with having problems with both of those options.

I don't believe two people can ever truly be equal.

There will always be something that slants the power towards one or the other participant, whether that be age and experience, social standing, money, position of authority, or simply that the one person is extremely submissive and automatically defers to a dominant even if they "take their hat off". One of the participants mentioned that an imbalance of desire, which is often encountered and can skew the power towards the person with a deficit in desire. So we have to deal with power imbalances, and I'll circle back on that. These imbalances certainly undermine the first camp.

The second camp is arguably undermined by the definition of consent and most frameworks (insert any of the acronyms here) often include revocability specifically, so that's pretty important when it comes to consensual power exchange. There are people who think they know best, and their submissive does not, and therefore they should make all the decisions without needing consultation. I think it's delusional if you believe you hold ALL the context for any decision (but that itself brings forward some interesting nuance...). No matter how transparent your submissive is, no matter how thorough your negotiation, you do not have all of their context. You cannot. Some of it they don't have words for. Some of it they don't know themselves. I would argue that the higher the risk of harm in the decision, the greater the breadth of context required to make the right decision that will minimise harm.

We tried holding this up against a concrete example: something happens in the dynamic, goes wrong or sits badly, and has high risk for harm. In camp one, we take our hats off and discuss it as equals. In camp two, best case scenario, the submissive tells the dominant what went wrong, and the dominant will consider that information. We duly agreed that in both cases it's important that the submissive is heard.

I want to be fair to camp two, because the strongest version of their argument gave me pause. It goes like this: not even the submissive can ever know their own context perfectly. So allowing equal talk makes no real difference to the actual risk of harm. The risk is there either way. And if two people look at that risk with clear eyes and accept it, they are free to enjoy the benefits of a consent that does not get taken back. If there's a massive power imbalance in say, knowledge, it may be paramount for the person with more knowledge to be in absolute control. One counterpoint: if one person is at a deficit of knowledge, can they make an ethically sound decision to hand that matter over in the first place? And if you decide for them that they can't, have you just undermined the very autonomy you were trying to protect? The biggest problem is that it so easily lends itself to abuse. How can you be certain that the dominant is making decisions in the best interests of the submissive?

This is what I mean with the discussion raising more questions than answers. It's just not simple. We say that consent should be informed. Can consent that is deliberately not informed be ethical?

We even looked at some vanilla scenarios where these questions also come into play: Medical consent - because most of us clearly don't know what is medically best for us in all scenarios, and sometimes we have to let the medical professionals decide, an extreme being if we are unconscious in an emergency... there's just no opportunity to talk as equals if you are unconscious! Power of attorney Living will Managed investment funds And if we want to be stirring up conversation, politics.

What the room did agree on, and what I think both camps need tattooed somewhere visible, is this: we can overly rely on the submissive to safeword, and give safety less consideration than it is due. And we can just as easily overly rely on the "wisdom" of the dominant.

Both are ways of outsourcing vigilance to a single point of failure.

And if you feel that doing something with someone due to an imbalance is going to result in harm, you can decline. There is a difference between declining play or power exchange because you feel the other person cannot make that decision with you, and undermining their autonomy. Declining is a choice about what you will carry. They remain free to choose that thing with someone else.

But it opens the harder question underneath all of this: how do you know what the other person needs to know? How do you know what they don't know? This is the gap between consent and informed consent, and I don't think anyone closes it completely. Ever. In the end, we can just hope that we are all consenting (as much as we can) adults, and that we are honestly trying to not harm each other.

As I mentioned at the start, we barely even covered the tip of this iceberg. There's so much nuance left to uncover. I'm grateful for this discussion sharpening my perspective even though I'll likely be working through it for the next year at least!

Some questions to ponder over as I leave you:

If your dynamic has an exit button, does it weaken what you have built, or is it the thing holding it up?

What power imbalances are you aware of in your dynamic?

How do you manage power imbalances and how they impact consent and your dynamic?

Which are the scenarios, whether vanilla or kinky, where it would be better for you if someone else made the decision?