It sounds way less offensive to those who decry the original terminology’s problematic roots but still keeps its meaning intact.

  • Andrew
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    1743 months ago

    I’ve seen ‘Active / Passive’ used, that seems alright. There’s plenty of alternative terms to use without borrowing terminology from sexual roleplay.

    Anyway, the Sub is supposed to be the one that’s actually in control for this kind of thing (otherwise you’d just be in an abusive relationship), so that confuses things when you start trying to applying it elsewhere.

    • @[email protected]
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      223 months ago

      The issue is acronyms; there’s millions of products, schematics, datasheets, and manuals that refer to them as MISO and MOSI with no further explanation. Any new standard that doesn’t fit runs into the 15-competing-standards problem, and ought to be followed by an “AKA MISO” every time it’s used.

    • @[email protected]
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      123 months ago

      Anyway, the Sub is supposed to be the one that’s actually in control for this kind of thing

      I think there’s a better way to put that. It’s often called a power exchange. Both people involved can rescind consent at any time, and there’s also negotiation that happens before scenes to set up expectations and limits, but I don’t know too many subs that want to be in control of a scene. My experience is they want to give up control in a way that is safe.

      • Andrew
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        43 months ago

        Yeah, you’re right, that was a clumsy word choice. My experience is mostly from watching The Duke of Burgundy tbh

      • @[email protected]
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        73 months ago

        the connotation in that the master is in control and the slave having no control, and ironically is only a racial issue in the US

      • JackFrostNCola
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        53 months ago

        Agreed.
        Also active/passive gets confusing crossing over into electronics where they already mean something.

    • DefederateLemmyMl
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      73 months ago

      I’ve seen ‘Active / Passive’ used, that seems alright

      That’s not always an accurate description though.

      Consider a redundant two node database system where the second node holds a mirrored copy of the first node. Typically, one node, let’s call it node1, will accept reads and writes from clients and the other node, let’s say node2, will only accept reads from clients but will also implement all writes it receives from node2. That’s how they stay in sync.

      In this scenario node2 is not “passive”. It does perform work: it serves reads to clients, and it performs writes, but only the writes received from node1. You could say that node2 slavishly follows what node1 dictates and that node1 is authorative. Master/slave more accurately describes this than active/passive.

      There’s plenty of alternative terms to use without borrowing terminology from sexual roleplay.

      Do I have news for you …

    • cacheson 🏴🔁🍊
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      73 months ago

      the Sub is supposed to be the one that’s actually in control

      This is a myth, presumably meant to be reassuring to subs that are new to BDSM, at the expense of risk awareness. In principle the sub is no more “in control” than the dom is, and in practice they are often significantly less so.