Ah, (another) recurring kink community debate: getting the D-type’s approval to talk to the s-type.
I’ll start with my stance: I am a 24/7 CNC TPE sub (some might call this a slave) and I absolutely detest you doing this.
It’s not that I mind your idea of “proper” protocol, exactly.
It’s that you never do it in a way that’s actually respectful to our dynamic.
See, a dynamic comprises multiple people. That means that respecting our dynamic means respecting multiple people.
And that is never, ever the case.
Example the first:
We are at a convention a few years back. BigNamePhotoBro chats with us briefly trying to sell us something, then asks Owner’s permission to hug me. “Doesn’t bother me,” says Owner. BigNamePhotoBro goes to hug me, and I jump back and pretty much snap at him “you should probably ask my permission too.” Whether from that not occurring to him, or simply it not occurring to him I would say no, PhotoBro looks absolutely shocked. How odd, for a woman to get her own decision!
Example the second:
Every so often when He was more active, my Owner used to get messages that roughly resembled the following:
Hello! I absolutely love your dynamic. I admire vahavta’s subservience and masochism. May I friend you and her?
And then, receiving some semblance of “doesn’t bother me,” they friend me. Just… friend me. Even with a “message me first” in my profile, they just do it, because I guess messaging Him is the same thing somehow. I never get the compliment myself in these cases. Never.
There are others. People have even asked His permission to touch my whip marks on my body post-scene. All these situations make me just an extension of Him, and take something away from me. It shows me you don’t actually see me as a person. He doesn’t have to see me as a person. You do. If you asked both of us it would be one thing, but 99% of the time that definitely doesn’t happen.
And then there’s the case that the fabulous @NookieNotes writes about here, which inspired this.
If I were doing something my Owner didn’t like, talking to someone or in a way that He didn’t approve of, that would be His responsibility to tell *me* and my responsibility to stop. Even if He did reach out to them and tell them to back away—which He has, in the case of my abuser—if they continue, what happens next is on me. And I want it to be.
Because obedience is the cornerstone of this relationship.
Not coddling. Not shaping the outside world.
Shaping me.
And if He tells me to do something like that and I find that I am not comfortable doing it, then that inner struggle to stop, or the decision to ask Him why and maybe work things out differently, or to fess up and receive the consequences that might follow would be important. Those are the things that could teach me, reinforce the dynamic, allow me to do something which makes me feel more secure in my submission. That’s how this sort of thing grows. How people respond to their partner’s feelings on their actions is how any relationship grows.
If you’re trying to do something you think respects my dynamic, respect the whole dynamic. All of it. Obedience is a constant choice. Give me that choice. Let me decide. Trust I will do what I am supposed to. If you were hypothetically told to avoid me and decided to keep talking to me, I wouldn’t begrudge you the slightest, I would just respond how I should or talk to Him about doing things in a different way. And if you feel the need to ask Him about something and He says it’s cool and that makes you more comfortable that’s great, but your next step is to ask me.
Because if you don’t, Lord knows the answer will always be a “nope” on this end.
(And also, if you’re going to be a douche and you message Him with it, you’ve taken an opportunity to mock you and shut you down away from me and that’s totally unfair.)