Service

What is service?

Service is the scene word for acts you carry out because someone else wants them, inside an agreed power relationship. It is about the direction: from you to the other person. Service says nothing about where you stand in the hierarchy, because someone who hits, ties, or steers can do it too.

The origin

From Latin, and with a weight far heavier than the smooth English word lets on.

The Etymologisch Woordenboek van het Nederlands traces the line through French servir to Latin servīre, “to be a slave, to serve, to devote oneself”, which is probably derived from servus, “servant, slave”. Two early French attestations are telling: servir first meant “to serve, to devote oneself”, and then in particular toward God, at the end of the tenth century, or toward the devil, in 880. Only much later does the table come in, in servir à table, around 1165.

That is the whole semantic arc in three steps: to be a slave, to devote yourself to something larger, to wait on someone. In the BDSM sense all three are still in there, and that is why service is not a cold word for the people who do it.

What service looks like in practice

As an act that is nothing special in itself, but happens on request and is noticed afterward.

A common picture: someone pours a drink without being asked, lays out clothes for the next day, or polishes shoes. Nothing gets hit and nobody undresses. What gives the act meaning is that the other person ordered or accepted it, and that something comes back afterward: a look, a word, a hand in the hair.

The numbers show how lopsided that direction runs. In Jennifer Rehor’s study of 1,580 kinky women, the category “service-oriented submission/domestic service” scored 24.18 percent in the column “doing activity to others” against 37.22 percent in the column “activity done to you”. A category named after submission, and still more women were waited on than waited on others.

Why service is not a role

Because someone who is in charge can give service too, and that has its own name.

The encyclopedia entry on top, bottom, and switch describes the service top as “a person who applies sensation or control to a bottom, but does so at the bottom’s explicit instructions”. The service top hits, ties, or steers, and does so following the directions of the person who takes it. The act runs one way, the direction the other.

That same entry adds the wider rule: top and bottom refer to giving and receiving, not to who is on top physically and not to who holds the power. Service works exactly like that. It is the answer to the question “who are you doing this for”, not to the question “who is in charge here”.

Why people look for service

Because it is the simplest way to give something real.

• For the one giving, the deliberating falls away. The instruction comes from outside, and whether it was done well you hear within a minute.
• For the one receiving, the hesitation to ask disappears, because asking is now exactly the agreement.
• For a couple, a habit becomes a choice: the same pour, but now with a reason and an end time.

It sits in the feedback. An act nobody notices turns back into a chore within a few weeks, and then the arrangement stops on its own. That holds just as hard for the service top: following directions with nothing coming back is not a scene but an errand.

How people fill service in

Almost always within one of these four forms, rising in how much of the ordinary week gets pulled into it.

1. Evening service. Two or three acts that only exist while you are in the same room: pouring, laying out, waiting.
2. Domestic service. Tasks that run on through ordinary days, with a moment of feedback built in.
3. Protocol service. Fixed down to the posture and the form of address; see protocol and high protocol.
4. Service as a craft. Bootblacking is the best-known form: serving with your own tools and your own tradition.

The difference between careful and sloppy sits in who judges and when. Anyone who agrees on tasks without agreeing on that has made a chore list.

Misconceptions about service

“Service means the same thing as on this site.” No, and that is the biggest stumbling block of the word. In everyday use service is something a business delivers to a customer. In the scene it is something someone gives to another person inside an agreed relationship, and no money changes hands.

“Service is for submissives.” The service top shows that this is not true. A switch or a dominant can shape a whole evening around what the other person wants too.

“Service is free housework.” What you do is the carrier, not the point. Without someone who orders it and has an opinion about it, all you have is a clean kitchen.

What I see myself

I’m Victor, a gigolo, twenty-five years active in BDSM and trained as a psychotherapist. I sit in the odd position that “service” on my own site means something I deliver to you, while in the scene it is about what you give to someone else. That difference is one I often have to straighten out first in conversations.

Women who look for this almost never start with the word. They start with a question: may I do something for you? Big tasks work worse there than small ones, because those turn into work instead of attention.

What you can do yourself

• Say the direction out loud before you agree on anything. “I want to do something for you” is usable; “I want to give service” leaves too much open.
• Pick three acts that survive a busy work week. Agreeing on ten means zero are left in a fortnight.
• Set down who notices it and when. With nothing coming back, there is nothing left within two weeks.
• Ask for directions if you take the giving side and the other person keeps the reins. That is not weakness but exactly what a service top does.
• Do not tie service to correction if you live together; otherwise every chore becomes a verdict.
• Pin a date to look at it all again, and cut whatever only still happens out of duty.

More reading on service

On this site, service-oriented submission sets out the submissive version with the research alongside it, domestic service covers the form that runs on through ordinary days, and service sub describes the role in which serving carries the whole surrender. The article on the Wheel of Consent sharpens this difference with four boxes: who is doing something, and who is it for.

Beyond this site, the encyclopedia entry on top, bottom, and switch gives the shortest explanation of why giving and obeying are two different things, and Etymologiebank shows everything that sits inside the word.

Where this fits on this site

If you want to try out what it is like to do something for someone inside an agreement instead of out of habit, an evening with a few fixed acts is the smallest step. The page on the BDSM date sets out how that gets discussed beforehand.

Sources

• serveren. Etymologisch Woordenboek van het Nederlands (Philippa, Debrabandere, Quak, Schoonheim & Van der Sijs, 2003–2009) via Etymologiebank. Gives the derivation through French servir from Latin servīre “to be a slave, to serve, to devote oneself”, the probable origin of that verb from servus “servant, slave”, and the French datings “to serve, to devote oneself” toward God (end of the tenth century) and toward the devil (880) against servir à table (around 1165).
• Sensual, Erotic, and Sexual Behaviors of Women from the “Kink” Community. Jennifer Eve Rehor, Archives of Sexual Behavior 44(4), 825–836, 2015. Questionnaire study among 1,580 women from the kink community. Gives from table 2 for “Service-oriented submission/domestic service” the column values 24.18 percent for “doing activity to others”, 37.22 percent for “activity done to you”, and 51.39 percent for either role.
• Top, bottom, switch. Wikipedia. Gives the description of the service top as “a person who applies sensation or control to a bottom, but does so at the bottom’s explicit instructions”, and the point that top and bottom refer to giving and receiving roles and not to who is physically on top. The article carries its own request for more citations; it is used here only for terminology.

Related terms

• Service-oriented submission. The submissive version, with the interview research alongside it.
• Domestic service. The form that runs on through a Tuesday morning, with the figures on how tasks get shared.
• Service sub. The word for someone whose surrender lies in exactly this direction.
• Submissive. The role that serving is one possible way of filling.
• D/s. The relationship within which service is ordered and judged.
• Protocol. The agreed way of behaving that service usually gets cast in.
• High protocol. The formal setting, in which service is prescribed down to the gesture.
• Position training. The other part of the same agreement: the postures.
• Rope top. The rope version of the same question: who gives, and who decides.
• Bottom. The receiving side, and where the service top gets its directions.
• Top. The role the service top is a form of, and why it is still called top.
• Topping from the bottom. The same steering without an agreement, and so the mirror image of a service top.
• Contract. Where acts, times, and consequences go down on paper.
• Topping. The act itself, apart from the question of who decides how hard and how long.