This is my last post (for a while at least) on the topic of the alpha submissive (previous posts are available here, here and here). I’m afraid I’m finishing with a bit of a rant.
You can guarantee that whenever this topic comes up somebody will start talking about powerful people having stressful jobs. They’ll talk about difficult decisions, the responsibility of power and how BDSM and submission is a way to temporarily escape from that. For example, here’s an Alternet article and a Psychology Today article making exactly that argument. This is, in my not particularly humble opinion, complete bullshit. Not the part about submission as escape, just all the rest of it.
You know what’s stressful? Juggling two minimum wage jobs to try and cover your rent. What’s a difficult decision? Trying to decide if you should wipe out your savings on a hospital visit. Responsibility is bringing up your children in a not so great neighborhood while your deadbeat ex stiffs you on child support payments. Forget the guy investing $100M for Goldman Sachs. Give him $100 in his personal checking account and see how he feels about that.
I’m lucky enough to have a well paid job now, but I grew up in a family with very little money. I remember the stress that any unexpected expense could generate. There was always an underlying anxiety that something would go wrong and we wouldn’t be able to deal with it. Money might not buy happiness, but it sure as hell takes the edge off unhappiness. It turns problems into inconveniences. And nobody needs a good beating to take their mind off an inconvenience.
I think society prefers to think about executive and finance jobs as being particularly stressful and responsible in order to justify their incredible salaries. In some cases they may well be worth those salaries. Steve Jobs probably was. Jeffrey Skilling probably wasn’t. But whatever their worth, when the biggest downside to a decision is that you might have to settle for a new Ferrari rather than that yacht you had your eye on, that’s not a stressful decision. If anyone needs BDSM to take a ‘breather from the growing burden on selfhood’ (to quote the Psychology Today article), it’s the guy trying to cheaply fix the transmission on the 13 year old Ford that he needs to get to work tomorrow.
This is Miss Davenshaw, a London based pro-domme. She specializes in roleplaying corporate scenarios. So if you fancy being taken in hand by a strict female executive, I suggest dropping her a line.
Hi Paltego:
The notion that all submissive and masochistic urges can be traced back to rich men needing stress relief is (of course) ridiculous. It seems folks can’t imagine a man wanting to submit unless there is something wrong with him. As you said in your previous post we are too invested in stereotypical gender roles to accept such a notion gracefully.
I agree that very little could be as stressful as struggling to stay above the poverty line. The thought that only the rich experience stress harks back to our patriarchal thinking where the captains of industry are father figures and the rest of us only children. I recall a certain quote about 47% of our society being “takers”.
Can we imagine Christian Grey working at WalMart? Many fantasy scenarios are set in mansions with servants. We rarely hear about couples worrying that neighbors will hear a beating through the walls of a semi detached. The public imagination seems to have concluded that BDSM is a pastime relegated to the naughty rich. A certain movie currently receiving a lot of attention is doing nothing to dispel that impression.
Hey hmp,
Thanks for stopping by. Glad to hear you’re with me on this :). I actually do think that BDSM can have some (temporary) positive effects to relieve tension and distract from stress. It just bugs the hell out of me when it’s implied that only rich successful types such from that. It’s quite the opposite in my opinion. And, as you, submissive or masochistic desires certainly don’t start there.
I’d like to imagine Christian Grey working at WalMart. That way the book would have sold zero copies and I wouldn’t have had to put up with so many damn articles on it!
-paltego
Thank you.
As an overpaid executive type I completely agree with your assessment. When ‘stress’ can be relieved by a moment of fantasy kink, it is not stress.
Thanks for the comment Pat. As I mentioned in my reply to hmp, I do think that kink can have some positive effects on someone’s mental state. For me it can relieve tension and temporarily reduce stress. But that kind of stress is not the kind of thing that a lot of people have to deal with day to day just to survive.
For me it’s not so much the idea that BDSM can help that annoys me. It’s always the inbuilt assumption that it applies to a certain class of people, and in particular a group that in my opinion have it pretty damn good already.
-paltego
Wow. Not sure where to start on this. Personally, I had a career as a Navy submarine officer. I have been rich, poor, and everywhere in between. I consider myself an alpha male because I am a leader. People depend on me to make the right decisions. It has nothing to do with money. It has nothing to do with being a finance executive. I personally despise bankers, who I consider being motivated by money. They might think themselves are alpha males but I would not.
I’m actually not a fan of the whole alpha/beta categorization (as I wrote about here http://www.femdom-resource.com/2014/05/07/its-all-greek-to-me/ ), as I find it incredibly reductive. Personally I’m a leader in some contexts (my job for example) but a facilitator in others. In this case I found it a useful label for these posts as it’s often used in this context. That aside, I’m not really sure if you’re agreeing or disagreeing with me.
The idea I was attacking wasn’t specific to leaders, although often that’s either stated or implied when this comes up. It’s the idea that rich men in positions of power and high profile jobs have some special need for BDSM to escape and lose control. That seems like bullshit to me. A CEO may be a leader of a company, but I think it’s offensive to me to suggest that he’s somehow more in need of a chance to let go via kink than some blue collar guy struggling to make ends meet. Both have to make important decisions relevant to their situation, but only one has the security of a 7 figure salary to fall back on.
-paltego
I quite enjoyed this rant and invite you to rant more whenever you feel so inclined.
You strike me as a lovely person.
Thanks Miss Margo. That’s quite possible the nicest comment I’ve ever had here.
I’m tempted to say blogs can be deceiving, but I’ll take the compliment š
-paltego
I am trying hard not to disagree with you so that confusion is deliberate. I am not trying to win an argument. I am trying to figure this out for myself and maybe help some other people along the way.
Since you have experience both struggling with poverty and being in a leadership position, like me, you might understand this. I find leadership decisions more stressful. I have had to choose between eating potatoes again so I had money to by books for school. While stressful, these decisions do not compare in stress to having to make a judgement call that will help some people while hurting others. It is a very different kind of stress. One situation benefits by taking selfish interests out of the equation, the other does not. That’s where the pro-domme session stress relief comes in. It is a ritualistic annihilation of the self.
I have been following your blog for awhile and really enjoy it. Thanks. Makes me think.
And bankers suck.
I’m actually fine with someone disagreeing. I was just confused in this particular case :).
My acid test for decisions is normally – What’s the worst thing that can happen? When I play out the various possible scenarios, if the likely worst case isn’t too bad, then it’s not a stressful decision. If there are a lot of bad situations than unfold, then it’s a tough decision.
I typically think that for many of the jobs that people cite for the high powered successful submissives (CEO, lawyer, banker, politician, Wall Street guy, etc.), there is no huge downside. If they thought about the people they were affecting then there would be, but I’m far too cynical to believe that happens. They’re primarily concerned with what happens to them. And when you’re rich and insulated for failure, then nothing particular bad happens to you.
When you’re poor and taking care of a family, making decisions that may help some and hurt others (as you suggest), then there are many tough decisions. There’s no safety net or golden parachute. If you’re managing a company and sales are down, there are many factors to possibly point at. If you’re a blue collar worker and can’t pay your bills, you don’t get to fudge the situation via a cleverly crafted earning report.
The situation you mentioned of food v’s books for schools is a particularly interesting and unique one. I generally wasn’t stressed as a college student because I had so few dependencies. I could borrow books off friends, eat crappy food, sleep on couches. It didn’t really matter. But my parents had to try and make a mortgage payment, keep a vehicle running, buy my school uniform, pay their bills. There were many worst case scenarios for them to worry about.
I definitely believe that there are some leadership positions that are potentially highly stressful. Military command for one. There the worst case scenario is dead people. Running a small company (which isn’t a tech start-up) could be another in some cases. It’s no doubt possible to come up with scenarios for all the professions I previously listed where conscientious people would have to deal with very stressful circumstances. But that’s not what generally people are thinking about IMO when they talk about high powered successful types needing to let go. Then they’re just talking about social success and monetary success and translating that automatically to stress and pressure. And that bugs the hell out of me :).
This comment might have ended up longer than the post, so I should stop here. Glad you enjoy the blog. If I can sometimes make people think and sometimes make people smile then I consider it a job well done!
-paltego