I recently received an inquiry on the definition of Power Exchange.
Before we visit Merriam Webster and Friends for some etymology, history, and a side-order of semantics, I’d like to revisit a philosophical ramble I had not too long ago:
Life is Submission. We submit to the elements, to the weather, to the day and the night, and we fight it. We stay up late at night in artificially illuminated rooms and we sleep in during the day with the curtains drawn. Our defiance defines us. Perhaps it is due to our fundamental powerlessness that we enact exchanges of power here on the human level.
The presence of power exchange is everywhere. Every oppressor is in turn the oppressed. This ladder of subjugation extends all the way to and through existence itself; is itself existence. There is a spiritual principle being enacted on this stage of human power exchange: Humiliation is a forced feeding of the much needed spiritual principle of humility.
Power Exchange is about Transformation.
Transformation is an obsession of mine; one of the wonders of the world which provides a gateway for my meditations on the human experience. We change and exchange: a constant fluxus of property, partners, identities, and ideas.
The Power Exchange describes the concept of their namesake as “…balanced fantasy, the consensual transfer of control…”
Miss Blondage puts it this way, Power Exchange means different things to different people, but generally speaking it refers to one person willfully transferring or giving up their own power over themselves to one or more other people who then use it to guide that person on a spiritual, sexual, or sadomasochistic journey that is outside the realm of their control, either literally or figuratively.
As with all things of this nature, there is (or should be!) plenty of room for variation within this concept. This exchange/transfer need only be to a degree that both partners are comfortable with. Power Exchange can also be used to describe a continually shifting position of power within a certain scene, which includes anything from basic “switching”, to Tantric style energy play, to just the ebbs and flows that take place within any sexual interaction.
drop me a line, anytime.
