One of the things that has seriously bugged me for a very long time is how lots of people think about submissiveness, particularly but not necessarily as it relates to male sexuality. It bugs me because for all the lip service paid to respecting submission, very little about the way it’s discussed actually seems to be respectful of submissive desires.
I, unlike many submissive young men in their teens, surrounded myself with the culture and ritual of dominant/submissive relationships through the very fortunate circumstances in which I found myself. Yet, despite my incredible access to such resources, it was indescribably difficult (not to mention painful) for me to get to a point where I felt like I can enjoy my sexual submission as a valid part of my masculinity.
Why was it so hard for to me feel validated in my submission? Why does it continue to be a struggle for many people, as the overwhelming response to my subversive writings at MaleSubmissionArt.com show? This question, at once both simple and unspeakably intricate, is what I want to address in this post.
Imagine for a moment you’re a young guy (or a guy of any age, really) trying to understand your sexual desires. You know you want a relationship with (in the name of simplicity) a woman who will “take charge in the bedroom,” but you don’t really know what that looks like. You come across porn and sex blogs and, like a second (or third, or fourth) erotic awakening, all sorts of fantasy imagery involving either getting butt-fucked or not being allowed to orgasm, or both of those, starts bubbling in your brain, since—let’s face it—that’s most of the erotic material out there for such guys. You finally get a girlfriend and, remarkably, she’s good, giving and game, so you get butt-fucked and she doesn’t let you come. “Wonderful,” you’re likely to think, “now I’ve been submissive.”
If you’re lucky, maybe it was really wonderful. More power to you. But what if it’s not? Moreover, and I suspect this is most common, what if that wonderfulness is just the tip of the iceberg? What if the new experience was amazing and novel but you want more? What is that “more” that you want? More butt-fucking? More bondage? More sexual service? More orgasm denial? What are you yearning for, really?
This, sadly, is where many of us get stuck. I’ve read countless words from hundreds if not thousands of men, all of whom seem to be trying to answer these very questions. I’m one of these men, trying to figure out what the fuck all this desiring is, trying to make it “more” and “better” as though I’m following some kind of primal programming. I want to be more passionate. More intimate. More connected. More devoted. More focused. More meaningful. More submissive.
Obviously, this is a very big topic, and I often feel overwhelmed just thinking about how submission relates to my life, influences my relationships, or shapes my desires. As I often struggle with articulating these thoughts, I figured that even if I don’t get it quite right, it’s worth sharing some of where I’ve gotten to because I no longer enjoy sex despite being a submissive man. I finally enjoy sex because I am—and want to be—a sexually submissive man.
Hopefully, I’ll clarify the imprecise language we currently have available to explore gendered power and submissive masculinity in particular, and I’ll address how such feeble language may cause egregious ambiguity in communication as well as misconceptions about fundamental desires that hamper our understanding of consensual sexual submission.
Hot or not? Submission isn’t arousal.
This submission stuff is hard, and I’m not the only one who’s struggled, or is struggling, with it. One reason it’s so goddamn hard is because the way I so often see it conceptualized feels polluted by imprecision, absolutism, and sexism.
Most of the time, I ignore a great deal of the polluted chatter because it comes from people I don’t hold in high regard to begin with. Recently, however, some of the men who blog that I respect a lot have hit some of the same notes while singing submissive masculinity’s tunes as the people I ignore, and that is something I cannot ignore.
More specifically, Thumper, whose blog I read almost religiously, inspired a debate between MyKey and myself. In a comment on one of Thumper’s posts, MyKey said:
The denial after [lots of orgasms] is much harder and much sweeter for it, and the submission deeper and more fun. Of course during those periods [after orgasm] its hard to be as submissive[…].
Although I’ve read this opinion expressed in about a bazillion different ways, it’s a sentiment I’ve never felt completely comfortable with. Indeed, the more I dissect my own submissiveness and explore what submission means to me, the more upset I get by its prevalence. I get even more upset when bloggers perpetuate this, because they are currently the most influential source of education about submissive masculinity.
But before I get too far into what I find so upsetting about the way this is framed, let’s make one thing clear: what I’m about to say has nothing to do with espousing a submissive ideology, a One True Way® for being a “real submissive.” It’s irrational to, for instance, call a self-identified switch “a submissive” when that person is feeling submissive by sole virtue of their feelings; they are no more or less “a submissive” than they say they are, despite how desirous of submissive feelings they are at any given time. Insofar as identity politics are involved, they stop at the point of acknowledging that your identity is a part in your personal experience of the world.
This post, however, is not about your experience of the world. It’s about finding a way to convey your experience in a manner that is reconcilable with the different experiences of others. This is important because, lacking this ability, all conversation about submission starts with “for me,” repeats the caveat, and then ends with “Your Mileage May Vary.” To date, every way I’ve heard anyone talk about submission breaks down when someone else introduces their own, differing, experience, and I’m afraid those conversations are no longer useful for me.
Anyway, the short debate between MyKey and I ultimately lead to a post in which Thumper put forth the following equation:
Denial + arousal = submission.
In the comments—worth reading despite veering into predictably unhelpful tangents at points—Thumper later amended this to read Denial + arousal = submissive energy.
That’s better, thanks in part to the focus on “energy” (I think more precisely termed desire) over the intrinsic nature of the outcome. Nevertheless, I want to challenge both statements because I think the premise underlying them is simply not true.
Both statements feed into a dangerous, wide-spread stereotype: the cock-centric notion that if you control a man’s penis, you control the man. Is that true? Of course it’s not. These activities could certainly be an expression of dominance or submission and they might trigger dominant or submissive feelings in oneself or one’s partner(s), but Thumper, MyKey and I already seem to agree that the acts are not, themselves, the root cause of submission or dominance.
To wit, and to Thumper’s credit, one of his next sentences is the following:
That’s not saying I’m in no way submissive when my sexual appetite has been totally sated. I think I would be accepting of domination even then. [And later, in the comments:] I wasn’t trying to suggest it’s just that simple […] but they are strongly related.
Indeed, I can think of no realm less suited to the beautiful simplicity of mathematics than human desire, so it’s obvious that Thumper’s equation is an oversimplification. Since we can all see that things are not “just that simple,” I presume that what Thumper, MyKey, and other submissive men perpetuating this simplistic formulation are trying to get at is that they feel submissive more acutely when the fact of their orgasm denial is at the fore of their thoughts. Thumper says he feels his “sub mojo” lessen after he has come. MyKey calls this sensation “sub drop” and, since I disagree with the premise of their statements, questions whether I’m “wired differently”.
At least in this regard, however, I am not wired differently. I do understand the sudden, often startling change in desires post-orgasm. During relationships with keyholders, the degree with which my interest in, say, getting my penis locked away waned after having an orgasm was (and still is) totally remarkable to me. Nevertheless, similar to the experiences of others, when my keyholder wanted me locked, I got locked. Why? Because that’s hot! It wasn’t quite as hot right then, but it was super-hot shortly thereafter, when I was once again unable to masturbate freely.
This simple after-the-fact observation points to a crucial distinction I fear is missing from the conversation about submission: just because an activity is less pleasant at some moments than it is during others doesn’t mean I won’t do or enjoy those activities. Moreover, the drive to perform those activities independent of one’s immediate motivations is a distinct, separate pleasure, from the pleasure one gets from desiring the activity directly.
I think Tom Allen illustrated this in the sexiest way ever in his erotic story, Ahead of Time. Portions of this story are so apropos to this discussion that I just have to quote it:
“And I want you to come really hard for me. I want you to remember this for a long time.”
“Oooh,” I moaned aloud.
“That’s why I’m going to make you eat my pussy right after you come.”
I gasped. It was like an electric shock to my groin. I’ve long had this fantasy, but could never bring myself to do it. The idea of being forced to clean her, to lick my still-hot come from her, to hear her demanding that I make her clean, to make her come with my tongue… I’ve only mentioned to her a handful of times over the years, but I’ve never been able to ask for this, let alone to try it. She was right, there’s something about the first ten or fifteen minutes after coming that puts all that desire right out of my head. I was excited, but at the same time a bit fearful. I knew that I wouldn’t want to do it afterward…and so did she.
She sensed my hesitation. “I know the idea turns you on,” she said.
Thinking fast, I said “But, I, um, thought that you were satisfied. You told me that you had come enough for tonight.”
“Oh, you’re not going to do it for my pleasure,” she said, “at least, not for my sexual pleasure. You’re going to do it because in a few days, you’re going to think about it, and you’re going to remember this evening as the hottest thing we’ve ever done.”
[…]
I was still partially dazed as she inched her knees alongside my body. When she finally rested her legs over my arms and braced her other hand against the headboard, though, things…changed somehow. Her pussy, which just minutes ago was a beautiful, warm cave, suddenly now seemed like a hairy tube of flesh that was filled with something that I didn’t want. Ugh, how could I ever have asked for this? I pursed my lips, but it was too late—I felt the drips onto my cheeks and chin. Seconds later, her slick lips were pressed tightly against my mouth, and I could hear her encouraging me to clean her, to keep sucking and licking until everything was gone.
(Emphasis mine.)
What Tom’s story and our many similar experiences show us is that not even the men who purport to quantify submission based on sexual arousal or orgasm denial actually do that. Although our awareness of submissive feelings may be intensified by specific, often fetishistic triggers (e.g., being horny and prevented from coming), those two concepts are not causally related.
For men like Thumper and I, who clearly dig orgasm denial pretty hard, it makes sense that this desire is a core aspect of how we want to fuck. But we do ourselves and our readers a terrible disservice by perpetuating the idea that our fetish is the cause of our submissive desire rather than a manifestation of it. Submission does not come about through someone else’s control—that is mere restriction in the best case, and abuse in the worst case—it comes about through our active desire to submit. Consensual submission is not about how someone else controls me, it’s about the opportunities I create for myself to be vulnerable to that person.
When I hear people discussing submission as though it is the result of the thing they want instead of discussing submission itself as the thing they want, it’s like listening to people talk while putting the emphasis on the wrong syllable. Such an awkward conceptualization of submission is not merely incorrect, it’s very dangerous because it restricts any submissive desire into a necessarily coercive paradigm.
In this instance, with teasing and denial as the addends, it constructs mens’ submission as totally dependent on the myth of male lust (the idea that men are controlled by their penises because they are men). It states that submissive energy is itself induced by a woman (or, more generally, “keyholder”) by accessing that man’s sexual potency in a strictly prescribed, time-release fashion, like a pill.
This is the same misconception that says blowjobs are inherently submissive, or that pain is inherently bad, or even that blogging about sex is inherently submissive (srsly)! Sadly, these ideas are the prevailing view of what “submission” is, and I think they totally miss the point about the validity of submission itself as a core motivation.
Framing submission as a second-class thing, a byproduct of some other, first-class particle, is incorrect. Submission is it’s own distinct facet of sexual desire.
Reductionist Submission Is Dangerous To Your Sex Life
There’s absolutely nothing wrong about getting off on stereotypes. While the reasons for why many submissive men, including myself, fetishize orgasm denial are debatable, that obvious fact does not make orgasm denial a component of submission. Akin to the way desiring anal sex does not make someone gay, abstaining from orgasm does not make someone a submissive. Abstaining longer doesn’t make them “more submissive.”
Sexual “teasing” is really pleasurable and fun for many people, regardless of their interest in submission. For a huge population, that kind of sex is all about improving their orgasms, whether “vanilla” or not; I’ve read of self-identified dominant men who enjoy the practice, too. For other people, like certain religious sects, some portions of asexual populations, and anorgasmic women, living (or trying to live) an orgasm-less existence isn’t even kinky. On the flip side, there are certainly some submissive men who simply aren’t into orgasm denial at all.
In other words, even though sex acts obviously influence one’s mental or physical state at any given moment, conceptually coupling a sexual activity to what an activity means is going to cut you off from the pleasure of diverse sexual experience. Teasing and denial (the “denial+arousal” part of Thumper’s equation) are not ingredients for submission, they’re just toys I play with because I, like many others, enjoy expressing submission with them some of the time. Sometimes we enjoy it more than other times, but sometimes we express that same submission in completely unrelated ways.
Regardless of your personal experience, I’d urge you to avoid linking any sex act to any intention, even “for you,” even if it’s your fetish. The stereotypical view of orgasm denial as requisite for or even directly “enhancing” submission, even for those of us who fetishize it, simply doesn’t account for our own diverse expressions of submission. To assert that it does is fundamentally miscommunicative. It’d be like saying getting flogged is submission and that the harder you get flogged the more submissive you are, and although people often make the “harder=submissivier” false assertion as well, that doesn’t make it sensible, that makes it dangerous!
That definition of submission, coercive at best and abusive at worst, invalidates submission itself as a potential motivation for healthy sex by undermining a submissive person’s power to choose exactly what they do or do not want—a power that’s required to make healthy sexual choices for one’s self, even “as a submissive.” It tricks us into believing all the false dichotomies embedded in hegemonic culture that tell us BDSM is obscene, and that to be submissive is to necessarily be unassertive, passive, self-effacing, receptive, or acquiescent. These are not ambiguous, wishy-washy obstacles to people’s health. For many people, particularly men who are deeply immersed in heteronormative culture, these are real factors that contribute to sexual anxiety and a horrible depreciation of self-image.
Defining the degree of one’s sexual submission as the summation of a period of orgasm denial and current sexual arousal is not only reductionist, I believe it’s actively damaging. The equation perpetuates the myth of male lust and disavows the validity of submission as a sexual self-expression that can be actively chosen, rather than induced coercively.
In the post that spawned all this theorizing, Thumper wrote:
I had cruised all through my adolescence with no inkling I was what I was (though I can see some signs that were there all along).
Like Thumper, I was certainly submissive before I had a dominant partner in my life. So while this rant may sound like meaningless semantics to some, it’s crucial that we amplify these distinctions and move the prevailing understanding of submissive masculinity away from the limiting, misrepresentative, and downright sexist bullshit so often spewed by exploitative pro-dommes and the likes of Elise Sutton (no link because I hate what she says; Google it instead actually, Gloria Brame’s essay on Elise Sutton is totally worth reading). That’s precisely the kind of bullshit that kept “what we are” hidden from men like Thumper and I for so long.
As an adamantly submissive man myself, I’m sure my personal experience is going to be different from, say, a switch’s orgasm denial experience. And that’s the point: submission is not about creating a ruleset of Things To Do To Be Submissive for anyone, yourself least of all. Very simply, it’s about sexual self-expression in order to be happy and healthy.
So please, all of us who blog about such things, stop insisting that keeping a man from his orgasms somehow turns him more submissive. You’re just fooling yourselves, your readers, and arguably worst of all, your lovers.
by Froth
06 Mar 2010 at 03:19
I really like that image. It reflects some things I’ve actually done, being masochistic even when I’m dominant. “I’m in charge. Any questions? No? Good. Start scratching.” It comes back to what you’re saying about decoupling activity from meaning. Being in pain is not necessarily submisiive either.
by Colorless
06 Mar 2010 at 10:07
This “theorizing” opens an important window into a realm which is typically associated with either a great deal of “stuff” which is not only extreme to many, in the sense of questing to envelope pushing, and thus is in levels of experience in which language itself falls short in providing a verbal framework (talking and even thinking) but mostly because there are so few with such keen ability to articulate the mechanics of which is so elusive and non-standard (as in individual) experience.
I remember one specific description of you which embodies a very important aspect of who you are: submissive who will tear anyone who is not clever enough to realize how powerful you are apart. Like: submissive, but don’t mess with him. For me, the dominant sense of who you are in this post is primarily radiating strength and control. Go figure? Not really, as your clarity of awareness and thought, and especially your fearless and bluntly uncompromized honesty, and more than all of the above your command of the language is nothing short of inspiring. You do an important service to anyone who wants to consider being validated internally.
by Aida Manduley
06 Mar 2010 at 10:45
Yay! Finally posted!
by maymay
06 Mar 2010 at 10:57
:) Thanks for all the proofreading help, Aida.
by Tom Allen
06 Mar 2010 at 12:36
Oy, where to begin?
I’ve often said that the chastity subculture has not developed the syntax to make clear what we mean when we say things like “I went two months without a release.” Does that mean no orgasm? No milking? No ejaculation? No fluid dripping? Not removing the device? What?
Similarly, I think that part of the problem in discussing submission is that there really isn’t a syntax, a language that makes it clear for the reader or listener. And part of that is because the concept, I think, involves such a large emotional component relative to, say, bottoming. You can be a pain slut but not necessarily feel submissive. Likewise, you can be a denial junkie without specifically feeling submissive to whoever it is with whom you are playing.
Personally, I have long since given up trying to explain how I feel because I can’t express adequately what I want to get — or enjoy getting — from being denied. Mrs. Edge (who is free from the issues of self-contemplation) simply explains that she kinks on holding the power that I have given her. Does that make me submissive? I’m not sure. In essence, I allow her to take this power (it was mine to hand over, naturally). I feel good when she exercises that control. In part, it’s because I valued that power within myself, and I appreciate that she values it as well. But having reached that conclusion, I see that it simply doesn’t jive with what I see many/most submissives describing about themselves.
So, again: are we all even talking about the same thing?
by maymay
06 Mar 2010 at 13:49
Right, Tom. So, uh, let’s fix that. Without it, we can’t answer your question: , not to mention all the intra-personal and intra-relationship problems that arise from this missing component of understanding. That’s why I say that semantics are not trivial.
by Billus
07 Mar 2010 at 04:01
Boy, and I thought Thumper over-analyzed!
This huge rambling post tries to stress that everybody has their own internal ideas about sexuality, with submission being the main focus of this particular discussion. It goes on at great length about what submission really means, with emphasis on overturning stereotypes, etc., and yet adds the typical caviats about “for me” and “your mileage may vary”. Then at the very end, we read:
[i]stop insisting that keeping a man from his orgasms somehow turns him more submissive. You’re just fooling yourselves[/i]
It sure sounds to me like a warning not to deviate from “the one true way” we were just told not to follow. Are we fooling ourselves when we refuse to head out into the garage to snip off a CB-XXXX with the first handy tool that comes to hand? Are we fooling ourselves when we participate in submission in the bedroom, yet maintain (or even demand) a more level equality outside of it? I greatly resent someone counting angels on their own pin and pronouncing judgments so sweeping on other people because they are now the self-appointed (or is it ‘anointed’) arbitrator of what is, and what should be?
Sorry Maymay, I reject your whole argument. If some people believe being denied makes them more submissive, who are you to rain on their parade? Tom made the point a few posts ago on his site that “it’s a game”. It’s a game where nobody, not me, not Tom, and certainly not you, can make rules for other people. I will go as far as agreeing that many people may be confused by what the rules are (which was I think the origin of Thumper’s post about the subject that started all this), but that is an unfortunate side effect when the only rule is, “You make up your own rules”.
Sexuality is one of the great human activities that cannot be defined in a generic way, unless it impinges upon criminal or public anti-social behavour. It shares this trait with the other huge areas of personal choice – food preferences and fashion taste. These are totally individual choices, right or wrong. Any illusions are mine to believe, not yours to belittle.
by maymay
07 Mar 2010 at 10:30
That’s fine with me, Billus, although I’m pretty unconvinced you’ve actually read much of this post, especially since you ask “are we fooling ourselves when we…maintain equality outside of the bedroom” as though you expect me to disagree with you. ;)
I do wonder, however, what you actually disagree with, since you do seem rather pissed off at me. Nevertheless, you also seem to be making all my points for me without realizing it, with the one exception being that I believe the way submission is discussed by many bloggers, especially men, does very little to empower other people, particularly men, to navigate their own sexuality, a point which you seem to have missed or maybe just haven’t gotten around to yet. :)
You say,
That’s a lovely sentiment, and I completely agree that those things, particularly sex, should always be actively chosen by the individual in order to enable that person to feel fully self-expressed, to shamelessly enjoy the experience, and so on.
But do you actually believe that any of those choices are totally individual, always absolutely uninformed by one’s environment, social circle, past experience, or cultural pressures? Really? Overwhelming anecdotal evidence has shown me otherwise.
So, I wonder, would you rather see the way we talk about sex and submission remain with the status quo as it is now, with your “illusions” fed by stereotypes the majority resource for submissively-inclined individuals? If so, why? What value does that provide to you?
by Tom Allen
08 Mar 2010 at 08:41
Well, what I really said is that chastity devices are simply another sex toy, but I agree that OD *is* a game — as is virtually all of the delights in the D/S – BDSM spectrum. Power exchange is, at it’s heart, role playing.
Kurt Vonnegut wrote “We are who we pretend to be, so we must be careful who we pretend to be.” It would be easy, therefore, to argue that if somebody feels more/less submissive after/before an orgasm, then they *must* be more/less submissive. But are we defined by our feelings? I don’t know – our feelings are ephemeral and easily altered by chemistry (alcohol, chocolate, bacon, endorphins, hormones, etc. ).
But are we defined by our actions? Well, if a few hours after Thumper (for example) releases or orgasms he’s not quite as physically attentive, does that make him less submissive? Well, perhaps… for a few hours or days.
Know what? The more I think about this, the less I even enjoy using the terms sub or dom. What the hell do they even mean? Unless you’re using them in a *very* specifically defined context, they’re essentially worthless to describe what’s actually going on.
Mrs. Edge doesn’t even like the idea of being “dominant” because it conjures up visions of cruel, humiliating, leather-clad, whip-wielding vixens (yum!). And if you suggested that I was submissive, she’d laugh, because, again, it brings up an image of a trussed man, pathetically groveling “worthless worm”. Yet, she enjoys locking me up, enjoys denying me for long periods of time, enjoys the attention when I’m feeling randy, and enjoys the control over deciding when, where, and how often. And we both enjoy that, even after I’ve orgasmed. Her enjoying the control does not make her feel like a dominatrix, she simply just enjoys the control. And I’ve decided that my enjoying her control does not make me submissive, it just means that I enjoy her control.
Again, we really need a different syntax for this because the words tat we use really don’t describe what seems to be happening.
by Kage
08 Mar 2010 at 19:29
What is sexy for me about D/s play is power exchange. One person willingly gives up control to the other. If people think the sub is a “worthless worm,” who somehow inherently deserves to be controlled, or if they think the sub is a woman who, as a female, is inherently inferior, that takes away most of the appeal for me. God how I hate “domestic discipline” sites which argue that women are born to submit because they are receivers during sex and men, givers. Stupid, boring, ugh.
I think this is why I often like slash D/s stories about two men, which are often written by straight women. Both men are strong and sexy…one of them gives up power to the other during a scene or for large parts of the time. Now THAT’s exciting.
by Required
08 Mar 2010 at 20:42
Thank you so much for being May. I don’t think you’re over-analytical in the least. You’re sufficiently inclusive in your musings, a virtue that couldn’t be more important when talking about kink.
by Onyx
10 Mar 2010 at 00:11
This exactly. Just because the act sends people to a happy place where they feel ‘more submissive’ doesn’t mean that it’s an inherent part of being submissive. It is not part of a checklist of criteria where X of Y items must be marked off for you to be able to call yourself a sexual submissive.
I’ve been reading your back entries and in one you link to BitchyJones and her post makes the point ‘if she’s doing it, it’s dominant’ and tries to explain that ‘if she’s doing it, it makes her dominant’ is false. I want to flail, point, and spread the message to every corner of the web I visit.
I describe myself as dominant. I am not, however, defined by the description. I resist traditional feminine submission because I’m dominant; resisting doesn’t MAKE me dominant. It’s the effect, not the cause. Your desire for orgasm control does not MAKE you submissive.
I am flat-out opposed to letting the label dictate behavior, which is what most of this conversation sounds like. The label you describe here being used in your debates includes OC, which is then used to be able to point and say, “See? See? I’m submissive because I like OC! Woo! I have an identity!” I don’t, personally, think that’s healthy at all. Like the Fight-Clubbish sentiment ‘you are not your orientation’.
by mykey
15 Mar 2010 at 14:53
Ok time to wade in.
Its a wonderfully well thought out and complete post. I am impressed by how much ground you have covered. I think it also points to me where some of the apparent difference between you and I have its source.
Denial makes you submissive. Its a simple statement that you refute. Why? Because it devalues your self identity, demeans the psychology of people like us, and turns the gift of submission into a mere sex game. It adds fuel to the fire of those who think that a man must be locked up to be made a better man, and a domme must ‘take’ what is hers…
I think where the disagreement comes from, is that many of the posts I read on those groups (e.g cb3000) and the post thumper and I made is not intended to mean that. I agree some people mean exactly what you say, but others are saying something different, but in similar enough words that either you think they mean the same, or you fear others will take them that way.
Denial does add to submission, it adds a piquancy that is lacking without it. For me at least. Why? Because submission for me has a sexual component, sexuality led me to it. The hormones flow through me and make me love my wife, my self, and people around me more. I am hyper alert to passion in the world around me when I am horny. Passion is a key to my enjoyment of life. But be careful, ‘denial makes me love my wife more’, dangerous words no? Similar to saying denial makes me submissive.
Thats not what those words are intended to mean when I write them. I suspect when many others write them too. I love my wife already. We have been together 14 years of which 10 were tough as hell. For a long long period nothing got us through that but love, its all we had. Not liking, not even friendship. So I know I love her, but I love her more when I am denied. I love her more because she is dominating me, that means a lot to me. Active dominance helps me feel cared for. I also love her more because when I see her my heart beats, my hormones flow, my cock twitches, my body is crying out its reaction to her, making me more AWARE of my love. The more hormones, the more my body reacts, the more it reminds me, screaming to me that the woman I see, she is my world. A very similar thing happens with my submission. Just as active dominance draws out my submission, so being horny will draw it out. Its there anyway for sure, without denial other things can bring it to the fore. But denial does it well. Combine any two of these three, inner submission (wanting to serve), active dominance, denial, any two bring the d/s dynamic to life, all three supercharge it.
That is what I think most people mean, only as a shorthand they say denial makes me submissive. Maybe they arent even aware of their own subconscious drives.
—
‘we do ourselves and our readers a terrible disservice by perpetuating the idea that our fetish is the cause of our submissive desire rather than a manifestation of it. Submission does not come about through someone else’s control—that is mere restriction in the best case, and abuse in the worst case—it comes about through our active desire to submit.’
—
Absolutely. I can see that the way its written about can seem to say that denial causes submission. What is really meant, and what is true, is that orgasm denial can draw out submission if it submission is already there. Just as active dominance can draw it out. Its no different. To someone who was unaware of their submissive tendancies it may even seem that its causal, but we know its not. It is however causal in that it enhances what is there already.
As to active submission. Thats a tricky one. With an active dominant active submission is the other half of the equation. But as so many unhappily married men know, active submission to an uninterested partner does not work. It neither enhances the submissive’s submissiveness, nor draws out the partners dominance. It is of great value only when its in the context of a relationship with an interested partner.
Therefore submission does not come about ‘through our active desire to submit’ in all cases. It is a necessary for submission but not enough in itself.
—
‘stop insisting that keeping a man from his orgasms somehow turns him more submissive’
—
lose the more and I agree with you. But leave it in place and I dont. I become more submissive when horny, when dominated, when actively submitting. They all do the job. They dont make you submissive though, that is a much deeper thing.
by maymay
15 Mar 2010 at 15:47
Thanks, mykey. This post was a challenge to write.
Respectfully, mykey, can you then answer the challenge of this post: why do you use those words? Are you and/or the “many others” who do just too lazy to use language other than this particular brand of shorthand? You don’t seem to be unaware of your “own subconscious drives,” as you imply many others might be when they use such shorthand. But then the question is, if you are aware of your own desire and you suspect others aren’t, why do you routinely succumb to the language of the people who are less self-aware than you?
Do you just not care about ensuring comprehension? I’m not going to put you on trial for not caring about things that I care about, but it does seem damningly irresponsible of you, not to mention unsympathetic to the “unhappily married men,” especially as you’re a generally high quality blogger.
Sure, and salt adds flavor to a pasta dish, but would you call salt “pasta” or would you call pasta “salt”? I know we don’t have a mature vocabulary for discussing these topics, but why not try to be clear in your language? If ever more people than just the handful like me try, maybe we will have a mature vocabulary for these things in the future. I think that would be an invaluable thing.
Can you love someone who does not love you back? If so, can you “be submissive”/”experience submission to” someone who does not reciprocate with dominance? I think the answer in both cases is yes, so I respectfully disagree with you again.
While unrequited love, like unrequited submission, is painful and unlikely to result in a happy relationship of the kind one might have hoped for, I find suggesting that one’s submission requires the presence of a dominant partner, as you have in your comment, is simply ludicrous. Moreover, if you find value in your submission (as I do), are you suggesting that this value is inaccessible to oneself when one is single? That’s a rather stereotypically obsequious formulation of submission, isn’t it?
Unless, of course, that’s not what you “intended” to say, in which case I urge you to consider using less ambiguous language to make your point. ;)
by James
15 Mar 2010 at 16:31
So, I´m going to add my two cents because it seems that part of this conversation is “how people talk about being submissive” which is important for explaining the topic to those of us who are not part of D/s culture.
Right. I´m not one of ya´ll in that I´m not a dom and I´m not a sub. I´m just a shmuck who has regular old not kinky sex. I stop in here on occasion because Maymay provides an intelligent dialogue that I enjoy engaging with. I´m not personally invested in the topic, I just enjoy intelligent discourse.
So, one of the themes here is that being able to explain “being submissive” to folks who are not from this culture is important. I´ll agree with that. Minorities which can´t articulate themselves well in a context of cultural discussion tend not to have access to the benefits of inclusion and acceptance in the larger society. (I´m hoping we can agree that D/s practicioners are a minority in modern society.) From that viewpoint, my perspective as an outsider becomes worthwhile. The way Maymay explains the stuff ya´ll basically agree about (I´m excluding the guy who didn´t make much sense.) is easier to follow in a positive light, pushes against the prevailing stereotype more effectively, and is more enlightening for an outsider. (The stuff ya´ll genuinely disagree about I don´t think I´m informed enough to have an opinion on.) Now, from an activst viewpoint (which is part of the perspective here, right?) Maymay´s rant needs to be pared down and purified to say all the important things in 30 seconds, but that´s another year or so of work.
Anyhow, I don´t want to rant too much at ya´ll. I just want to say that, when and if you´re trying to explain this stuff to mom, the boss, or Aunt Petunia, (and assuming they´re already a tolerably open minded person) Maymay´s system is probably going to be more effective.
by Tom Allen
16 Mar 2010 at 06:43
Because it’s all he has; i.e., we really dont’ have a language that can express the differences in emotional states.
Remember how much fun BASIC was when you first discovered it? And how stilted and limiting it was a year later when you tried to do something *really* interesting?
When people see some things as beautiful,
other things become ugly.
When people see some things as good,
other things become bad.
Being and non-being create each other.
Difficult and easy support each other.
Long and short define each other.
High and low depend on each other.
Before and after follow each other.
Therefore the Master
acts without doing anything
and teaches without saying anything.
Things arise and she lets them come;
things disappear and she lets them go.
She has but doesn’t possess,
acts but doesn’t expect.
When her work is done, she forgets it.
That is why it lasts forever.
— Tao Teh Ching, Verse 2
by maymay
16 Mar 2010 at 11:01
We have first principles, Tom, so we have a place to start, as I believe I’ve begun to. I think ignoring that fact is stupid, lazy, or both.
To wash one’s hair, make one’s toilet, and put on scented robes; even if not a soul sees one, these preparations still produce an inner pleasure.
—Sei ShÅnagon
by Tom Allen
16 Mar 2010 at 13:17
Sorry, May, but *we* don’t have first principles, although perhaps *you* have them. Most people have given little or no thought to their kink, aside from what it is, and how it got there. Most of us – and I include myself in this group – really don’t know how to communicate about kink in an overall perspective (meta-kink?) because most of us rarely or never get an opportunity in which we can exchange and explore those ideas.
I’ve been fortunate to have discovered the internet early, but I’m still from an age – a culture, if you will – whence I still feel insecure discussing alternative sexuality (specifically mine) in an open, albeit anonymous forum.
Even this exchange shows some mis-communication. Does your “inner pleasure” indicate that you *are* submissive, or that you *think of yourself* as such? Does Thumper’s (for example) denial make him more submissive, or does it simply heighten a pre-existing condition?
Personally, I see so many variations on how people perceive themselves vis a vis submissiveness, that I’m about to totally absolve myself from that term because what most of them are describing seems be little relations to how I think of myself.
:gnashes teeth:
by Ranai
18 Mar 2010 at 02:35
So I’m trying out this notion the other way round. (Imagining something the other way round can sometimes help in conundrums.)
‘As we did X, I felt how I became more dominant.’
Er.
That sounds rather off.
‘We did X, expressing our potential for dominance and submission. I felt my dominant feelings rise and course through me.’
That’s a description I might use.
Doing X does not cause the dominant potential. That potential is already there in me as a human trait. The effects of doing X are feelings which arise from acting on this existing potential.
I also agree that it’s perfectly possible to do activity X without causing any such feelings. Dominant feelings wouldn’t show up in me if activity X were not my thing, or if somehow circumstances were unfavourable. Dominant feelings wouldn’t show up in me ever, regardless of what activities we did, if the potential (inclination for DS) weren’t there at all.
And totally off-topic on the cartoon: Did anyone else notice the shoes? I don’t mean the woman’s generic Miss Orthopaedics torture shoes. The man’s shoes have hooks! Wow! Is he from inside Terry Pratchett’s Wyrmberg?
by lalouve
19 Mar 2010 at 17:14
My submissive partner enjoys denial; I do not. Ergo, we don’t do a lot of it when we’re together – when we’re geographically apart, we can do it as it doesn’t directly affect me. This would, if denial made him submissive, mean that he is more submissive at certain times, which is not my experience.
The discourse of male submission as requiring or even being created by denial also phrases submission which does not involve denial as not genuine or less submissive. I do not hold with that.
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by maymay
25 Mar 2010 at 01:12
Hey Tom, sorry it’s taken me a while to get back to this thread.
If I have first principles, everyone will have them soon if they don’t already. This entire blog is about giving away what I know. And we’ve all already enumerated many if not all of them in this thread: personal agency, self-empowered joy, and mutual satisfaction, each something that is not unique to anyone’s idea of submissiveness or submission here. So to say you don’t have first principles strikes me as a glaring oversight.
More to the point, I remain unconvinced that the state of having given little or no thought to one’s own sexuality means one doesn’t have access to first principles. That’s a pretty hopeless situation you’re describing and I simply don’t believe it’s reflective of reality, or I would never have been able to get to where I am today.
There was once a time when I, too, hadn’t given much thought to my own sexuality. I just started thinking about it earlier than most men, but I did start somewhere. So can anyone else.
Let’s not forget that this segment of our exchange began when you started quoting ancient Chinese philosophers to me without adding your own words. In response, I quoted ancient Japanese philosophers back to you. :)
I’d like to make the somewhat obvious observation that, if this exchange is to be carefully considered, it certainly seems that not developing one’s own language for the things one is trying to communicate about can hinder understanding between oneself and others, doesn’t it? ;)
That’s exactly what I did for a very long time because I also felt so little of what people were calling “submissiveness” related to me at all. Interestingly, I felt the very same way about “manliness.” Yet with both manliness and submissiveness, I’ve come to a place where I value my self-identity as a submissive man.
Somehow, to find what I wanted, I first had to completely reject everything I had seen, learned, and heard about what it would be. I’m pretty bitter that the culture I found myself in was so poisonous to developing a healthy sexual understanding of myself and the things I wanted. I aim to find an anecdote to that poison. A language for developing that anecdote is key for such work.
That’s probably why, when I say “submission,” traditionally-minded submissive men get uppity with me and others, like Billus, seem to be hearing me say something I’m not. (Sadly, I have no idea what they’re hearing. Voices, maybe?)
by Billus
25 Mar 2010 at 03:01
My only point is that you seem to have conceived an idea of what submission is, how it works, doesn’t work, etc. based on your own experiences. That’s fine for you, and I’m happy to let you wander off and do whatever you want with it. But when you take other people to task for not living up to those ideas, as you did with Thumper when this all started, I have to evoke Ben Franklin: “Your rights end where my nose begins”.
I’m not interested enough in how you see the world to wade through this entire blog, or even this entire thread. Your musings are not that important. But do not tar all of us with the same brush, whatever you think. My personal thoughts and feelings on submission, desire, etc. are probably not worth anyone else’s time, so I won’t bore the gentle reader with them. But I do not dare to presume that my thoughts and feelings are a prototype for others. If someone reads your posts and agrees, then fine. I have no truck with that. But if someone stands up and says, “I have a different point of view”, then they are accused of being ‘uppity’ or hearing voices. There’s a hint of “holier than thou” at work here.
I agree that the current prevailing culture surrounding submission and its cohort chastity is suffocating and too narrow-minded. But replacing one dogma with another is not much better. Notice I make no judgment about whatever your personal feelings are towards submission; But don’t put down people who may be happy with whatever is playing out in their own minds. You are not the arbiter of their fantasies.
by maymay
25 Mar 2010 at 11:53
@Billus,
Maybe if you did, you’d see that we’re actually saying the same thing. But since you seem way more interested in, well, let’s just say not, then I don’t think I have more to say to or about you. Perhaps soon I’ll get to a point where I can say what I feel in a way that doesn’t trigger your Stand Up And Point At Dogma reflex so quickly, or perhaps not. (It’s a hard one to avoid, I know.) Either way, good day to you. :)
by Ficklefey
26 Mar 2010 at 02:14
“Submission” and “submissive” are such vague words, even (especially?) in the specific context of sex. I’d love it if someone could define those more clearly. When I try to define it I end up with hazy thoughts like “valuing someone else’s wants/needs/feelings/decisions more than your own” or something about “finding a lack of gratification to be very gratifying.”
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