2010 Keynote: slave caroline

Unconscious Lifecycle of Master slave Dynamics: A Philosophy of Shit

Keynote address delivered at The Master slave Conference, September 2010

Thank you Master Taino for that gracious introduction and welcome all – thank you. Yes, I have only missed one year, sadly the year Mr. McGeorge gave this keynote in 2007, God rest his soul. Indeed, apart from Master Taino and his family, I first met Vi Johnson, Glynda Ryder, Master J, Daddy Don and many familiar faces present here tonight at that conference.

Indeed it was there I met my entire leather family: Master Jim and slave Marsha, Master Skip and his family, Master Z and his family, slave Pug, and others who are absent; Master Bert and slave Nadine, Master Steve aka Kozan, Master Scott and Slavette, and of course slave Robert who threaded us together like a string of pearls. My family of choice, each in their own unique and precious ways has been important to my journey.

This evening I am also deeply humbled and honored to have present two members of my vanilla bio family, my two lovely cousins, Nelly and Sally who wanted to hear me speak. Please join me in thanking them for their courage to step into our bewildering midst to support me and this kinky collective.

Finding My Topic

It was a deep honor to accept the invitation to give this keynote, and you can image, immediately after accepting I fell into a deep questioning. In giving a keynote one attempts to be relevant, set a tone, bring an issue into focus and hopefully be entertaining. But what is there left to say when following in the footsteps of some of the most revered speakers we have amongst us:

I vividly remember the first keynote well when Master Steve called us all home to family
Vi Johnson who asked us What we were doing to protect what we love?
Jack Rinella in his impassioned tirade
Master Skip calling out incivility
Laura Antoniou last year whose You Must Be This Tall to Ride This Ride was a powerful rejoinder to take responsibility for our choices

You can imagine I threw out idea after idea as too pretentious, already done, too ho hum when inspiration came out of the blue. It occurred on a nature walk in the magical grounds of the Ojai Foundation as part of an ecopsychology class for my PhD program in Depth Psychology. The oak trees whispered speak to them through a metaphor of shit.

Being obedient to any call from the universe, shit is the topic of my talk tonight... namely, The unconscious lifecycle of Master slave dynamics: A metaphorical philosophy of shit.

Now, since this inspiration to talk about shit came over me, I was overwhelmed with my own shit. Anxious not to offend anyone, I rang Master Taino to check whether I can use the word shit in public. After all, this is America, not Australia where shit is a common adjective before and after any noun. He said slave Caroline, I trust you completely, you can say anything you like. So, with that, I offer you my metaphorical philosophy of shit and its implications for our individual development in Master slave dynamics as well as the development of relationships within our leather tribe.

What is Depth Psychology?

What the hell, you may well ask... is depth psychology or its relevance to Master slave dynamics? The long answer would bore you (and me), the short answer is it is delving into what is hidden, buried, underground; in other words the unconscious aspects of who we are and what motivates us. Depth psychologists have a passion for bringing up our shit.

The pioneers in depth psychology are well known names like Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung.

Freud (or ziggy as we Depth students affectionately call him) was convinced that the primary human motivation comes from our sex drive; that when we repress, bury, suppress our sexual desires and drives shit happen. Namely, we get stuck in various developmental stages; which according to Freud, is what leads us to flawed psychological pathologies. Indeed Freud called sadomasochism the worst perversion of them all.

Jung too had a fascination with shit. His theory about the shadow came from his famous feces dream. He dreamt he produced a giant turd in which he found a nugget of gold. (It's true! He was also poly for those of you interested).

To sum up it is fair to say depth psychologists analyze how we get stuck in our shit and ways to work through it or get out of it. So Shit is metaphorically central and what inspired the essence of this keynote.

The Four Stages of Shit

Existentially, Shit Is. I propose there are four distinct stages of shit in my model for the unconscious Master slave dynamics. These four stages roughly correspond to the four elements, the four shields, the four seasons and childhood, adolescence, adulthood and old age.

Stage 1: Awe Shit (A-W-E)

The first of these stages has to do with a sort of Master slave childhood in which we have an innocent, carefree, fascination with our shit. In a word, we are in Awe shit. Who hasn't experienced fascination with Shit...? I recall my two year old son, his head half way down the toilet bowl waving goodbye to his turd treating it as part of himself (which in all honesty it really is). At this stage our experience of shit is attachment because it is our creation.

So it is with the earliest experiences of Master slave dynamics. I invite you to be nostalgic for a moment, remember the start of our journey, the exciting newness of when we first step off the vanilla platform and onto the kinky train... it's where we are most playful, carefree, and able to laugh. Wow, look at all the shit I can do and get away with now. We playfully explore our shit; trying out every fetish, shiny new stuff, toys, new ideas, imaginations, fantasies... enjoying our awe moments of seriously twisted sensuality.

But eventually we grow tired with our shit. I mean, it is the nature of shit, to let's face it, become boring. We plateau in our fascination and that is when we come to the second stage.

Stage 2: Oh Shit (O-H)

After fascination with shit comes suppression of shit – usually from external sources like mum and dad, and just like potty training it's deemed a success when it is internalized. At this stage we have what I call the oh shit experiences of Master slave dynamics.

You know – Oh shit! I am not perfect because (substitute whatever the equivalent is of accidentally shitting in your pants). Or worse, Oohh shhit, MASTER is not perfect!

Or, oh shit, this thing (obedience, being ethically responsible all the time) is HARD; or the oh shit associated with the dross that comes up, our shadow is revealed: things we didn't want to know or see about ourselves, our shame, guilt, confusion, vulnerability, we can't hide our flaws. Our woundedness is exposed. NOT to hurt us, rather to give us an opportunity to grow whole.

We come face to face with our stuff at this stage and, ultimately when we are willing to eat our shit, we discover humility and realize we are strong enough to handle anything.

Stage 3: Giving a Shit

If we stay long enough in the oh shit stage something else happens in the unconscious Master slave dynamics. We realize that there are others out there with similar oh shit, it's not just me. Folks, shit magically begins to transmute from rugged individualism to collectivism. Oh shit moves into Giving a Shit. We start coming to these types of conferences and bonding with others in a collective oh shit thing.

In the giving a shit stage we form groups, we create forums, we educate, we conference, we workshop, we encourage each other to give a shit for this and that and sometimes great things happen. People are acknowledged recognized for their contributions, they are given leather as symbols, rituals are enacted to anoint Masters, sometimes slaves, and more than that we start to see that we need to give a shit to protect us from social or political persecution.

As the years go by, we realize by gosh we have a photo of this event or of so and so hanging permanently in the Leather Archives Museum. We develop stories and myths about the old days, Laura-middle-guard-Antoniou becomes old guard – why? Because we gave a shit.

Stage 4: Holy Shit

Then, shit enters the fourth stage, a new realization breaks through; that in embracing our shit, working through our shit, and giving a shit we have been in service to something bigger than our own egos, something beyond our will put us in this place at this time – we recognize holy shit. This holy shit stage is transcendent and transpersonal.

In depth psychological terms the holy shit experience is about individuation – by being in integrity and authentic to who we are, we find ourselves with a capital S. We can no longer hide or remain closeted. As we slip into a flow of being who we are we find a sense of contended peacefulness.

The holy shit experience includes feeling like our relationships are blessed, therapeutic healings take place, redemptive encounters happen, what was once lost is regained, egos dissolve, we forgive hurts. We walk through these experiences in deep gratitude, appreciation, wonder, awe. Guess what, we circle right back to where we started in the awe of shit, but on a different level.

Getting Stuck in Our Shit

However, as Freud poignantly pointed out, we humans have a tendency to get stuck in shit. Remarkably, we always find it easier to identify precisely where everyone else is stuck in their shit because our shit doesn't smell – right?

Stuck in Awe Shit

The shadow aspect of this stage is an obsession with the body, sensuality and pleasure which can give rise to narcissistic fundamentalism; me, my way or the highway and, superficiality. Asking 'why am I here', 'what do I want' are helpful depth questions that could help us get unstuck.

Stuck in Oh Shit

When we are stuck in the Oh Shit stage the key question to ask is who am I, and particularly what am I afraid of? What am I not accepting/seeing?

Stuck in Giving a Shit

However, potentially we do the most damage when we are stuck in the giving a shit stage because we can become dogmatic, fundamental, evangelical, even rigid. We give so much we create piles of shit everywhere – erecting rules, demanding standards; interpersonal conflicts arise: factions, cliques, incivility, community politics, power struggles, people leaving clubs, associations, gossip, smearing, slandering – and it is never me, always them.

This compulsion to give a shit comes from a deep place, because no man is an island. We humans are primarily social beings seeking affirmation for being; products of our immediate culture and society. In our evolving Master slave collective we have a somewhat loose series of sub cultures: an intersecting set of Venn diagrams, not a community. Using the term community is comforting, but it is an illusion; a bed time story we tell ourselves to feel safe.

Stuck in Holy Shit

However, the scariest place for me to be stuck is the Holy Shit stage because it can be delusional. When we run away from giving a shit, we rationalize avoiding conflict with a pseudo Master slave Zen attitude which goes something like this: your kink is ok, my kink is ok.

In my opinion, by avoiding the underlying conflicts amongst us, we wrap ourselves in a false delusional sense of community and we reinforce inauthenticity. We rob ourselves of developing real understanding and possible resolution for our differences.

Community means the hard stuff of learning to love each other's shit – it is about acceptance of differences, unconditional love. After all, don't we feel the most affirmed, accepted and loved when we find someone who loves us and our shit unconditionally.

The key question to ask ourselves when we are stuck in Holy Shit is this: can we respond to each other's shit with unconditional love and acceptance? If we can, that is the gold in all this shit.

Finding the Gold in Shit

Allow me to leave you with an image, we Depth Psychologists love images... a lit stick of incense. There are plenty of cows in India, they are holy creatures, so there are always piles of cow shit everywhere. Instead of stepping into shit, Indians have found a way to make gold out of shit; incense is made of cow shit. Next time you are enjoying the fragrant scents of a stick of incense remember, this is a creative example of how to find the gold in shit by not getting stuck in it. It's the Hindu version of understanding that, yes, there's a pony in here someplace! And there can be one for each of you, too.

In Closing

These four cycles of shit are depth psychological processes for evolving more consciously:

Awe Shit – Immersing ourselves in our mind, body and soul in synch; experiencing a state of innocence and awe
Oh Shit – The shadow is exposed, forcing us to be authentic
Giving a Shit – Making connection and being of service to the whole
Holy Shit – Surrendering to the sacredness of it all, finding unconditional acceptance and love

Enjoy your weekend, go to as many classes as you can, have a quiet smoko out front with Guy Baldwin, buy Master Skip a cosmo and he might tell you some of his stories, visit Vi in her library and put on her white cotton gloves for a bit of kinky one handed Victorian erotica reading, buy something from the vendors, say hi to my beautiful vanilla cousins (don't scare them).

Above all else, wherever you are in your journey, be present, fully immerse yourself in this shit and, know by doing so, you too are part of the wonderful tapestry of the history and culture of this organically evolving, collectively courageous, marginalized sexual minority.

Thank you.

This keynote address was delivered at the Master/slave Conference in 2010 by slave caroline, using depth psychology and metaphor to explore the developmental stages of individuals and community within M/s dynamics.