I would be more than happy to elaborate softsmiles:

Its simple...my first mentor..was a submissive, my second "mentor"...also a submissive, and an old school one who had earned her stripes the hard way to boot...my owner's first mentor in the lifestyle..again, another submissive. In fact he coined a term I am rather fond of..."My best teachers in the art of dominion have ussually been the very submissive who was at my feet".

In other words it is a myth (one imho proliferated by the inexperienced or dominants who have insecurities in their abilities or who are easily threatened due too an overly sensitive ego or simply misinformed or trainned to think that way) that the dominant has to know more or be smarter than or more experienced than the submissive partner for a D/s arrangment to work and work well.

It is also another myth that one's mentor by defualt does not also engadge in the lifestyle with the person being mentored. Such a considereation isnt a nessesary consideration outside of whatever arrangment is made between all involved partners etc. Though I highly reccomend against any would be submissives coming online to recieve mentorship from someone they simpley cannot know for real no matter how much they chatted with getting suckered in by online "doms" into pm's for the purposes of "mentoring" them.

In my experience any other titular distictions are now days whatever the people involved wish them to be.

For informational purposes however I would add that the people who formaly trainned me made a very clear distinction between Masters (or Mistressess)/slaves and Dominants/submissives in which a submissive may wear a collar but only the slave was actually "collared" (IE: owned). Switches and what not, where not even mentioned in their circles; but one should keep in mind most of these people earned their leathers (or stripes in the case of the submissives) before the advent of politically correct niceties being bothered with in the lifestyle, at least by those so initiated.