How serious is collaring?

[serijules]

They are not like the wedding rings my wife and I wear...I wonder what there is about a circular thing that makes it more important than other gifts and marks?

Because they symbolize eternity

One of my first gifts to Dawnie after she collared me was two tiny eternity rings...one in garnet, one in amythest (our birthstones). I have a matching set.

 

[Evil_Geoff]

One thing I notice about the "collaring" thread is that there seem to be two very distinct feelings about a "collar".

There is the "collar as a tool/implement/clothing/accessory" school of thought. In otherwords, the physical collar is just an item, with no more emotional or spiritual value than a hammer or toaster or t-shirt. For these folks, "collaring" means "putting on the collar for..." whatever scene/play/event/costume you would want to wear the collar for. That's all well and great and I would say that this is the category 95% of the kids I see at Hot Topic would fall into.

Then there is the "collar as symbol of Ownership/commitment/relationship status" school of thought. Here "collaring" is a ceremony or process denoting the special relationship between the One placing the collar around the neck, and the one recieving the collar. It can be "love" or "ownership" or whatever... Regardless of the specific meaning in that relationship, to the rest of us who are from this particular school, it shows some kind of close bond between them.

</side note: Frequently, I think those of us in the "collar as symbol" school want to smack the Goth kids at Hot Topic who are wearing collars and ask them, "Does your Owner know you go out looking like this?" *grin*
</side note off>

There is, in fact, a THIRD school regarding "collaring"... the "collar as a way of getting cyber/phone/or real nookie in a hurry" school. In this school, the collar is seen as a way of getting someone who won't give it up without being "collared" to give it up. These collars last about a week, sometimes longer, and these folkss are the ones who led us to develop the term "velcro collars".

The Giver (or recipient) of the "collar" could be from ANY of these three schools.... Make bloody damn sure which school you are in and which school your partner is from before offering or accepting a collar. And look out for liars!

 

[Joe Schmoe]

There is the "collar as a tool/implement/clothing/accessory" school of thought. In otherwords, the physical collar is just an item, with no more emotional or spiritual value than a hammer or toaster or t-shirt. For these folks, "collaring" means "putting on the collar for..." whatever scene/play/event/costume you would want to wear the collar for. That's all well and great and I would say that this is the category 95% of the kids I see at Hot Topic would fall into.

I feel this should be two categories instead of all lumped into one. I am one that sees a collar as a tool...not as an accessory.

There is a difference.

 

[shy slave]

I am not collared, nor have I ever been.

I am owned. I feel owned and refer to him, at times, as 'my owner.'

I wear a black collar with D rings certain times when we are together. During my last visit he bought me a black leather collar with chain links falling from in a waterfall effect. Its beautiful but it is not a collar I would be able to wear all the time.

He has also bought me a chainmail necklace which I wear most of the time, but that is my choice not his demand.

To me, collaring, like branding is deeply personal and the significance only relevant to the people involved.

Anelize I have always loved the collar you show in your AV, and I really like the idea its screwed down.
Your comment on marriage was also interesting and ties into Geoffs third school of collaring. Having been married twice already maybe I should have had a velcro weding ring LOL.

At the present time I don't want to get married again, I am not sure I would want a full 'collaring cermony' either.
Not because I have lesser feelings for Andante than I had for my husbands but because of the exact opposite.

I 'feel' owned.

I did not 'feel' married. I never wore my wedding ring after the cermony and still feel uncomfortable using my married name.
This may make little sense but if I married Andante or had a formal collaring cermony. it would change things for me. If at some point in our live we had an arguement I would mentally and emotionally feel we had to sort it out due to previous cermony.
At present when we argue its sorted out because we want to achieve that.

I can show him that I want to be with him, and choose to be with him. Even when we are both cross with each other. I am not with him because of a collar or wedding cermony, but because I look up to, respect and love him. For me personally, my continual wish, consent and agreement to his ownership of me cannot be enhanced by a collar; its an internal mental process.

That said, I have to have good reason to take the necklace off that he gave me.
If my current thoughts on collaring change I will want a collar as beautiful as Anelize has

 

[AnelizeDarkEyes]

How wonderful to hear from you! I hope you are doing well.

Your post got me wondering - what are your thoughts on gay marriage? What about civil unions? What do you think about same-sex couples getting rings? My partner and I - I often call her my wife - have "wedding" bands, and I feel that they have equal meaning to yours and JM's, even though we can't sign a piece of paper as you did.

I am sorry if my post gave the impression that I think that marriage is a hetero only institution. My feelings on the subject are far from that. It's the commitment that I support, the willingness to take on the legal and civil ramifications of what an institution such as marriage implies.

Let me use an example that I run across daily in my chose career...health care decision making. A collar doesn't get you shit when your dom is lying in an ICU bed on a ventilator, with a massive head injury. He might have made his wishes to not have any heroic measures clear to YOU, but if his brother, who he hasn't spoken to in 10 years decides to let him be a vegetable for the next 30 years, you, and unfortunately, your dom, are screwed.

It's an unfortunate situation, that was played out painfully in the early '90s, when so many men were dying of AIDS. Parents were forbidding long-standing partners access to their dying sons. Today, health care proxies, durable medical power of attorneys, living wills and other instruments allow non-traditional partners access and decision making regarding their health care.

If you find your fulfillment in a collar, great. But my point is that BDSM isn't all there is, and a collar doesn't fulfill all those life things that a marriage or a more planned commitment does.

It was great to see you, Etoile, hope all is well in your world

 

[catalina_francisco]

I think it depends on the people involved as to what a collar means. For us it is as meaningful as our wearing wedding rings as a symbol of our relationship, possibly even more so because we are D/s and married, but the D/s is the foundation of who and what we are, and of our marriage. Our marriage is just as committed as others, more so in many instances, but without the D/s we would not have met or come to this relationship purely because of circumstances. I have had marriage before, complete with rings etc., but it never had the depth or commitment this relationship has so marriage on it's own does not overly spell committment for us in today's world where the percentage of divorce is so high, and approached so easily by many. D/s on the otherhand is often approached much more seriously, much more in depth, and at least for us with a higher degree of commitment than many marriages we have seen. Bottom line was in my last marriage, my rights were not respected or upheld by the legal system, so the marriage licence or rings had no magical protection for me or my children, nor did they bring commitment. This time around there was no doubt about the commitment from both of us, and F married me out of love as well as a desire to legally protect me in the event of something happening to him, but if we had not been D/s, it would not have come to that point.

It brings him pleasure to see me wearing his collar, and while we are so far apart right now, it brings me some comfort to be wearing it despite the discomfort in this climate. We don't have different collars for different times/occasions, just the one which symbolises who we are and what we live. It also is not for the benefit of others, just us, but is very noticeably a collar being double layer, wide black leather, and very unlike anything else I wear in style....and often just wearing it and enduring the difficulty certain conditions brings serves to reinforce for me often what my status is, even though in my heart and mind I already know. It isn't a matter that without it we don't feel committed and M/s, but it does serve just as a wedding or engagement ring does, that there is pride and commitment in the type relationship it symbolises. I basically feel naked without it, even guilty I notice, so wearing it may sometimes make me uncomfortable physically, but not wearing it makes me feel something is missing.

Catalina

 

[chris9]

How wonderful to hear from you! I hope you are doing well.

Your post got me wondering - what are your thoughts on gay marriage? What about civil unions? What do you think about same-sex couples getting rings? My partner and I - I often call her my wife - have "wedding" bands, and I feel that they have equal meaning to yours and JM's, even though we can't sign a piece of paper as you did.

I actually thought you were legally married... Never assume anything, I know... My uncle moved to the Netherlands 2 years or so ago. And last november he married his boyfriend of like 15 years. Even years before I considered them as basically married, talked of his husband as my uncle and such.

 

[Etoile]

I actually thought you were legally married... Never assume anything, I know... My uncle moved to the Netherlands 2 years or so ago. And last november he married his boyfriend of like 15 years. Even years before I considered them as basically married, talked of his husband as my uncle and such.

I wish we were! I would love to get married; I think the closest place to do it would be Canada - I'm pretty sure Massachusetts won't marry out-of-state couples, but I might be wrong.

 

[Lord Crimson]

While most Masters will name a girl, the act of collaring her is considered quite permanent. Of course there are differnet types of collars.

One being the training collar, this is used while training or a temporary collar - maybe They just aren't sure yet.

The second is a "show" collar - one to be worn out to a nice dinner or a "dress up" munch.

And thirdly - the permanent collar. This is for life - as in a wedding ring - she is totally committed to His care, custody and control - she basically has no Safe word any longer to say.

AND, if He has trained you a certain way - then it is of no ones concern how you type, walk, talk or anything else - you do as you are trained.

Good evening

Lord Crimson

 

[Etoile]

*picks her jaw up off the floor*

Okay, wow. I'm not sure where to start, so I'm just going to sit here and gawk.

 

[h_i_s]

I wish we were! I would love to get married; I think the closest place to do it would be Canada - I'm pretty sure Massachusetts won't marry out-of-state couples, but I might be wrong.

MASS MARRIAGE FAQs

Can I get married if I live outside Massachusetts?
No state has a residency requirement for marriage, including Massachusetts. However, whoever travels to Massachusetts to marry must follow all local laws.

One old, local law -- dating from 1913 and never mentioned or relied upon in any published Massachusetts court opinion -- says that non-residents may not marry in Massachusetts if they are prohibited from marrying in their home state. Because some states have enacted discriminatory laws denying same-sex couples access to marriage, we expect some in the Massachusetts government to seize upon those laws as an excuse to deny marriage licenses to out-of-state couples. They may even maintain that no out-of-state same-sex couples from any state (or foreign countries) may marry in Massachusetts because of this law.

There are strong legal and constitutional arguments that Massachusetts must allow all qualified same-sex couples to marry in Massachusetts. Especially where Massachusetts has rejected this discrimination itself, it has a strong basis for disregarding the discriminatory laws of other states. But the fact is that the 1913 law exists and the political reality may not be so simple. What is legally justified and what may actually happen when the 180-day stay expires in May 2004 may well not be the same.

We assume we will know more about the state’s intentions to either block or allow out-of-state couples’ access to marriage licenses as we get closer to the expiration of the stay in May 2004. As we learn more, we will be able to assess more accurately what situations will be faced by couples from various other states and countries. So please stay tuned. But the bottom line is that it is going to take some time to sort out these issues, and non-Massachusetts couples should, for the moment, adopt a wait-and-see attitude and not commit to any Massachusetts marriage plans contingent solely on the expiration of the 180-day stay.

i have not yet heard of any clerks or JPs standing in the way of a same sex marriage. MOST seem to be happy to marry a couple regardless of whether they are same sex or not. --If you decide to stop in MASS to get hitched Etoile ... drop me a PM and i'll pass on the name of the JP we used. She was an older woman, a total fruitcake, and an awesome JP, none the less. i'd be very surprised if she wouldn't marry you.

 

[Milambus]

MASS MARRIAGE FAQs

When I first saw the word "Mass" in the link above I thought it was about Marriages of large groups of people, not people in Massachusetts

 

[chris9]

I wish we were! I would love to get married; I think the closest place to do it would be Canada - I'm pretty sure Massachusetts won't marry out-of-state couples, but I might be wrong.

My uncles didn't marry until they started living in the Netherlands again, one of them working there. I don't know if they could have been married there while living in Germany.
In Germany we have a sort of privileged partnership that legally binds same-sex couples. It's not really marriage though, and my uncles never wanted to do this.

 

[chris9]

AND, if He has trained you a certain way - then it is of no ones concern how you type, walk, talk or anything else - you do as you are trained.

If someone trains someone else to treat me with less respect, writing to me in small letters while using capitals for someone else, only because I like to submit sexually, yes, it is my concern. If everybody is capitalized, fine. If no one is capitalized, fine. But if a certain group is talked to that way for no real reason, yes, I care, yes, I *think* that it's a very impolite way to behave.
If someone is told to write of themselves in small letters, and of their dom in capital letters, fine. Many here do so, I don't really care.

Maybe this has to do with the German language. In German if you talk to someone or to a group directly (as in 'you do/don't whatever') you have to capitalize this 'you'. Many don't do so anymore, especially online, but that's laziness. But picking some out to do this for, and some to not do this IS impolite to those 'left out'.

 

[chris9]

*picks her jaw up off the floor*

Okay, wow. I'm not sure where to start, so I'm just going to sit here and gawk.

After following your example for a short while I just picked out a small part to start...

 

[Etoile]

i have not yet heard of any clerks or JPs standing in the way of a same sex marriage. MOST seem to be happy to marry a couple regardless of whether they are same sex or not. --If you decide to stop in MASS to get hitched Etoile ... drop me a PM and i'll pass on the name of the JP we used. She was an older woman, a total fruitcake, and an awesome JP, none the less. i'd be very surprised if she wouldn't marry you.

Thank you! That 1913 law is the one I was thinking of, but I didn't realize JPs were marrying people in spite of it. I think my wife still won't want to until we've been together 10 years (which is how long her previous marriage lasted), but perhaps after that point we can head up to Boston. Good knowledge to be armed with!

 

[Etoile]

After following your example for a short while I just picked out a small part to start...

And a very good job you did, too. If I were going to try it, I'd probably start with the heterocentric and maledom-focused attitude of the post. That's the easiest part for me to choose, anyway...and yet there is so much else to address there.

Okay, gonna go back to gawking.

 

[shy slave]

Okay, gonna go back to gawking.

Can I join you?

Please feel free to lay back and rest your broken foot on my lap

 

[chris9]

Can I join you?

Please feel free to lay back and rest your broken foot on my lap

Etoile, why is your foot broken? Or did I just miss a joke or something...

 

[chris9]

And a very good job you did, too. If I were going to try it, I'd probably start with the heterocentric and maledom-focused attitude of the post. That's the easiest part for me to choose, anyway...and yet there is so much else to address there.

Okay, gonna go back to gawking.

Thanks. I decided to do what appeared easiest for me, waiting for someone else to take up the harder parts.

 

[Etoile]

Etoile, why is your foot broken? Or did I just miss a joke or something...

I fell on Saturday morning! It really is injured, it wasn't an inside joke.

 

[h_i_s]

I fell on Saturday morning! It really is injured, it wasn't an inside joke.

Hope your foot is feeling better Etoile.
i'm gonna just sit over in the gawk corner, too, now.

 

[chris9]

I fell on Saturday morning! It really is injured, it wasn't an inside joke.

Get it to heal FAST!!!

 

[Etoile]

I am feeling much better, thank you. I went to work today and everything!

/hijack

 

[jadefirefly]

Dang. Etoile, I think you were just told what's what, and not really all that nicely, either.


On subject for a brief moment... perhaps it's because I'm sort of a 'newbie', for me at the moment I consider a collar to be both an accessory and a tool. They really haven't got any further meaning to me, personally, right now. Maybe that will change in the future, I can't really say.

Though I can say that I think the pictures linked here of ones posters have are beautiful.

I hope your foot feels better soon, Etoile. That's got to be all the wrong kinds of painful.