Control Tower

Legal Fiction

by Mistress Matisse

Ring ring!

Me: Hello?

Caller: (female voice) Hello, I have a question.

Me: Okay, go ahead.

Caller: I want to know how to write up a legal slave contract.

Oh, I have a feeling this conversation isn’t going to go well. Maybe it’s the clipped, impatient tone of her voice. When someone calls me up to ask for free advice and then sort of verbally snaps their fingers at me while they do it, my reaction is to reach back to my Georgia roots and slow the conversation down with a molasses-coated drawl. If you’re going to treat me like a kinky tech support desk, you’ll do it at my leisure.

Me: So… What’s your name?

Caller: Mistress Jessica.

Me: All right, Jessica, I’m afraid I’m not sure what you mean. (I ignore a small huff of displeasure from her at my dropping the honorific.) Do you mean a written agreement between you and another person about how your dominant/submissive relationship is going to work?

Caller: No, I mean a legal contract that my slave can sign acknowledging that I own him, and that he has no say over anything I want to do to him, and that everything he has belongs to me, including anything he gets in the future.

Jessica seems to have been out sick the day her elementary school class studied about Abraham Lincoln, and I get the impression she’s not the sharpest tool in the shed anyway. Still, one does try to be respectful of other people’s way of expressing their kink—even if it doesn’t line up with how I do things. But damn, that’s not easy when she comes across as so bitchy and predatory.

Me: You know, I don’t think there is any such thing. Actually, I’m quite sure there isn’t any such thing.

Caller: Oh, yes, there is. I saw one on a website once. Now I can’t find it anymore. But I know it said it was a legal and binding slave contract.

Oh, she saw it on a website! Well, then, obviously it’s true, and I’m just sadly misinformed. Give me strength.

Me: (Speaking slowly and gently) Jessica, there are no legal slave contracts, because slavery was abolished by the 13th Amendment.

Caller: I know that kind of slavery is illegal, but I mean the kind where someone wants to be a slave. My slave wants me to own him completely, so it’s consensual.

Me: That’s real nice for you two. But there is no legal difference between consensual slavery and non-consensual slavery. You cannot legally own another person in America, even if they want you to. Look, why don’t you and your slave just write up a contract that says what you want it to say, and the two of you sign it, and let it be a private thing between you two?

Caller: I’m sure you deal with a lot of people who are just fooling around with this, but I’m not talking about just some little role-playing thing here. I am a true mistress and he is my true slave, and I want to legally own him.

Whenever someone feels compelled to describe themselves as a “true” anything in BDSM, my opinion of them drops like a rock—it’s such a transparent fumble for unearned credibility. I also don’t appreciate the snippy tone she’s taking with me, so I allow an edge to peek through my drawl, like a shark’s fin appearing in calm blue water.

Me: Well, Jessica, you can’t. He can give you all his money and everything else he owns if he wants to, that’s easy. And he can turn over all his paychecks to you when he gets them—but you cannot legally compel him to do so. He’ll also have the right to revoke his consent, and possibly charge you with assault, if you go too far in your physical play.

Caller: Hey, don’t get, like, an attitude with me. I read your column and all, and I think you should be supportive of other Mistresses.

Me: Look, I’m totally supportive of other Mistresses. But this isn’t my decision. Ask a lawyer if you don’t believe me; you just can’t legally own another person. So no matter what anyone says or does, all dominant/submissive relationships are role-playing. There’s nothing wrong with that, because it’s meaningful to the people who do it. But the submissive always has the right to withdraw consent.

Caller: (Angrily) Oh… you just don’t get it, do you?

(Hangs up.)

Well, what the fuck ever with that. You can’t tell someone something she doesn’t want to hear. But with my luck, her slave will be calling me in six months asking me how to get in touch with the Underground Railroad.