Wrestling with Social Conventions

I am still very new to this world. Sure, I've been fantasizing about it since I was a kid. Yes, I have written all kinds of erotic fiction, some of which taps into pretty extreme areas of psychological or physical play. But when you are standing there, face to face, with a real live, flesh and blood human being, things get a little weird. And you have to, in that moment, wrap your head around two very different sets of facts.

Fact One: This is who you are. The things you want to do to this person are real. They are not fantasies anymore; they are needs. They are desires about to be made flesh. You are not going to write about hurting someone, you are going to hit them. And it is going to hurt. And you are going to fucking love it.

You don't need to say please and thank you anymore, because you are the fucking Dom. She is going to do what you tell her to, or she is going to face the consequences. Her job is to obey you, to endure what you give her, to accept her place. And at the end, she is going to thank you for it. For making her a second class citizen who is there to be a submissive, little, obedient slut.

You aren't equals. She is your inferior. She is bending to your will. She is there to please you. And she is there because putting you first is exactly what she wants to be doing. Her need is as deep as yours.

You are doing these terrible things to who because of who you are. But she is taking it, accepting it, and embracing it because of who she is.

Fact Two: You grew up in a household where the cardinal rule was "You never hit a woman." You don't lay a finger on your sister, no matter how much of an asshole she is being because you never hit a woman.

You grow up in a household, attend a school, and enter a profession where you are expected to treat everyone as an equal, as a human being deserving of respect. All voices should be heard and given equal weight.

You spend a huge amount of time and energy committing yourself to issues of social justice and women's rights. You decry things like patriarchy, male oppression, and inequality. You protect the powerless, you care about the suffering of others, and you strive to make the world a better place than how you found it.

Fact Two is no less and no more true than Fact One. It is no less the story of who I am.

Like everything else in life, the trick to figuring this all out is balance. A life out of balance is always crazy and usually dangerous. It looks like more fun than it is and it generally ends badly.

So is there a fundamental conflict between these two facts? Is there a way they can be brought into balance and even strengthen each other?

Inquiring minds want to know.