I think we’ve all probably encountered the do me!!! practitioner in multitudinous areas of our lives. I personally first encountered the name of the species in descriptions of the do me!!! submissive in the context of the BDSM community. However, many of you (including myself whilst I was constructing this post) may be surprised to recognise elements of do me!!! practitioners from a diverse variety of social and business environments.
I mostly describe the do me!!! practitioner in the social context of seeking a partner. But with a little imagination, I’m sure you’ll be able to identify the do me!!! practitioner in all sorts of other areas of your life.
I was trying very hard to do an encyclopaedic or dictionary type definition (such as I did for hypocrism and One True Way), but it became crystal clear very early on that this approach was never going to work for me.
When I started doing this post I had a very specific idea of what I was going to come up with, and that happened to bear no resemblance at all to how this post ended up turning out. Whilst I was constructing it, I was as surprised as any of you will be to discover that there is quite a bit more to the do me!!! practitioner than simply being a one-track-minded dictating and demanding attention whore.
So instead I have put together my observations of the do me!!! practitioner, and my conclusions (which are based on and drawn from my observations) about what drives them.
A Note About Pronoun Usage
For my own personal convenience, in this post I will be primarily referring to the do me!!! practitioners as “he”, and the people he solicits as “she”. This is because those pronouns reflect the bulk of my experience on this topic.
As a dominant woman I am seldom targeted by do me!!! women, so my experience with them is limited (although by no means absent). I am quite well aware that women can totally be do me!!! practitioners, and I am equally well aware that men can be solicited by those practitioners. In this post I use “he” for the the do me!!! practitioners and “she” for the people they seek unless I specifically state otherwise, simply so that I do not have to type “she/he” every single time.
- I’m not lazy thank you – I’m energy efficient. Yay me, go me. :D
So please be gentle with me if my pronouns don’t fit you, k? :)
(I’d just love to see disclaimers like that on some other sites I could mention)
A Note About My Conclusions
In this post, I do sometimes phrase some of my experiences as if they were factual, instead of strictly as my experience. This is because I have drawn my conclusions from experiences which were sufficiently frequent and/or numerous that I have come to regard those conclusions as generally factual for me. Some of you may recognise some or all of my experiences as accurately reflecting your own experiences, and so they may be factual for you too.
The point I’m trying to make here is that these are only my experiences, and my own experiences are the only evidence I have for my conclusions. I am perfectly well aware that my experiences don’t represent proven facts which are categorically true for all time and for all people, ok? Just so that’s clear. :)
- (although they might very well turn out to be true, y’know, just by accident)
Ok, so first – a general picture.
Lady Lubyanka 
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Dear Lady Lubyanka,
You have covered a lot of ground here. I will try to comment on only one: the worthless worm. He is not necessarily misogynic. Selfish perhaps, but well meaning in general.
Being selfish is a survival trait. I grant that if he insists on gratifying his sexual urges against his object of amour then he is just another sexually primitive member of home sapiens. Let’s keep in mind, however, that the willing subservient male is a perfect representation of a dichotomy. One self is ready to serve totally and without reservation. The other gets a mindful and sexual thrill from the service. So, when he serves, who is gratified by the result? The target of his attention, or he, himself? There is no way to separate the two.
Aside from weeding out hurtful and unintelligent low-lives, I think that power exchange is a two-way relationship. When the requirements between two people match, regardless of how absurd they may be, then the relationship is workable. There are things that I would not do, that others have done and are willing to do. It is a matter of limits.
So, when a man claims to be worthless and tries to sell that to a susceptable female, he may be simply marketing the wrong features that he posesses. All of these relationships are stylized to be able to categorize one’s standing, and are not necessarily well defined. But we get the idea.
I think you might possibly have missed the significance of the context in which I was describing Worthless Worm. The context in which I intended to describe Worthless Worm was in his inexperience with successful social relationships, and in his primarily unsuccessful efforts to either attract a partner, or otherwise solicit some desired behaviour, act, or favour from another person.
In my definition of Worthless Worm, I personally do not include, nor did I intend to describe all people who are attracted to humiliation. Nor was I intending to include those who bottom in consensual social (i.e. not financially based) relationships which include humiliation as a negotiated, consensual, eroticised element.
Just to be clear, I do not in any way regard a predilection for humiliation by itself to be by definition unacceptable. When I describe Worthless Worm, I am talking about people who solicit unconsenting strangers to participate in their predilection, and who respond disrespectfully when those strangers decline. In that context, my experience is that Worthless Worm frequently demonstrates misogyny.
I regret if I hadn’t sufficiently clarified that element. I hope I have done so now.
To address some of the other points you raise:
I think I did explicitly agree that Worthless Worm was not at all ill-intentioned. I remember reiterating on more than one occasion that my experience leads me to conclude that Worthless Worm isn’t aware of what he is doing in terms of how it is affecting others, as his ability to empathise is impaired.
I disagree that “the willing subservient male is a perfect representation of a dichotomy”. In my experience, a willingness, readiness, and desire to serve, and the expected, anticipated thrill from serving, are not unrelated. Is a readiness to eat unrelated to the expected and anticipated resolution of hunger? Did Pavlov’s dogs not salivate when hearing the bell which told them that food was on its way? The bottoms who associate positive experiences and sensations with their serving will of course desire to serve in order to experience those. That seems utterly and completely logical and sensible to me. I disagree that sincere desires to serve must necessarily be a reflection of altruism. I cannot find any dichotomy in that logic at all.
I regard the gratification of the dominant’s desires in that situation to be an incidental (happy) bonus, but hardly the sole purpose or driving force behind the bottom’s desires or motivations.
I disagree that there is no way to separate the two. I’ve written about these motivations before.
I do not accept that one person’s sincere desire to serve is in any way related to another persons’s desire to be served. The two desires are delightfully compatible of course, but I wouldn’t say their existences are dependent on each other. In a power exchange relationship between two people, if one participant feels that their desire to be served has faded away, will the other participant’s desire to serve automatically vanish as a result? I don’t think that’s possible.
I’m glad you raised these points here, as I felt they were worth clarifying and emphasising. I hadn’t appreciated which parts I hadn’t made as clear as I intended.
Thank you. :)
Dear Lady,
I am gratified by you response. This is not saying that I am a wortless worm, etc. Just that it is seldom that I find a mind out there that is worthy of consideration. In a way I am humbled, for you have pointed out some of my faulty assumptions.
As before, there are too many to address, but I assure you that this is fun. I will respond to one or two again.
With respect to the Worthless Worm, I think that I am beginning to understand. There are some who are either unintelligent, or just, sadly, uneducated. The former is the one who will do some bad things, but it may be easy for the rest of us to recognize his intent and stay out of his reach. The uneducated may have redeeming qualities, and I don’t hold his lack of it against him.
The other subject is as you say, “I do not accept that one person’s sincere desire to serve is in any way related to another persons’s desire to be served. The two desires are delightfully compatible of course, but I wouldn’t say their existences are dependent on each other. In a power exchange relationship between two people, if one participant feels that their desire to be served has faded away, will the other participant’s desire to serve automatically vanish as a result? I don’t think that’s possible.”
The context needs to be explained. It takes two to have a relationship. If one exits, it does not negate the feelings of the other. Those feelings are indeed independent, but will be unsatisfied if one remains alone. My meaning was that entering a relationship means agreeing to mutual satisfaction. When one partner becomes unsatisfied, the relationship is no longer viable. The needs don’t go away, but the satisfaction does.
I think it’s very easy to minimise, dismiss, and invalidate people and their shortcomings by minimising, dismissing, and invalidating their intellect or their education. I see lots of people do that all the time. It’s just too easy to write somebody off by saying they’re an idiot or under privileged. I do it myself often enough. However, nowhere in the do me!!! or Worthless Worm description did I ever make one mention of intellect or education. I never said that do me!!! practitioners were by definition stupid or uneducated. That omission was not by accident.
I strongly believe that intellect and education are totally irrelevant in this context, and are not elements which contribute to creating the do me!!! practitioner. In my experience, the do me!!! practitioner can be found in all walks of life, in all professions, in all levels of education and intellect, in all cultures, and in all age groups. So you may be asking, if it isn’t intellect or education, what is it?
My opinion is that the existence of the do me!!! practitioner depends on the presence of certain emotional deficits. And I consider those to be exactly the same emotional deficits which contribute to exactly the same social and emotional difficulties experienced by every human being on this planet (including both of us). I think that the only reason some individuals turn out to be do me!!! and others do not, is a combination of degree of impairment and personal style. In my experience, intellect or education cannot limit or affect emotional deficits in any way. I’ve met many genuine emotional fuckwits who have post-doctoral level education and/or IQs measured in the top 2% of the population. So I completely dispute your conclusion that do me!!! and Worthless Worm can be written off to poor intellect or inadequate education.
Besides which, there are large numbers of people who have below average intellects and education, and who did not become do me!!!s or Worthless Worms. So that premise really doesn’t hold water for me.
So I hope you won’t be finding me looking down my nose anytime soon at do me!!!, or Worthless Worm, or the One True Way-er, or the hypocrismer, because I could easily have been any of those. If my personal style hadn’t led me to becoming whatever variant of neurotic personality I am, I’m sure I could easily have turned out a lot less functional than I am now. In fact, just like most other people, I’m sure I think I’m more functional than I actually am.
I don’t know if you noticed, but I wasn’t actually discussing relationships in this post. Was there a specific reason you brought them up?
Best regards,
Lubyanka.
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A superlative piece of insight. This is going to save me an awful lot of typing ;-) :: runs off to add link to every profile she has ::
Thank you!
Cru x
I’m delighted you liked it, you’re very welcome. :)