I stumbled across this post over at the Masculine Submission blog recently. It’s on the ever thorny topic of the perception of male submission in society. This is a reoccurring theme on many D/s blogs, and I’ve written about it in the past (which resulted in my most heavily commented post ever). I’ve played devils advocate before, and I’m about to do so again, although puzzlement would be a better way to summarize my attitude. I don’t want to be critical or diminish someone’s views, I just have difficulty relating.
Tomio’s whole post is worth reading, but the thrust of it is about the difficulty of being an openly submissive man in common environments that are hostile to that characteristic.
Why don’t submissive men hang out in the gym? That’s like asking why fish don’t hang out in the middle of the Sahara. It isn’t a friendly place for submissive men (let me be clear – I’m talking about guys who are openly submisisve…there are TONS of guys who pass as macho but are submissive when no one is watching)
…
If a man feels insecure about expressing who he is (security is the second level of needs); then he is incapable of achieving higher levels of existence.
Tomio Black
The part that puzzles me here is the idea of being ‘openly submissive’ in this kind of context? What does that really mean?
I don’t go to the gym regularly, a fact that’ll surprise no one who has seen any of my session shots. But the reason isn’t because of hostility, but because I find working out to be incredibly, brain numbingly, shoot-me now, tedious. I’m not really sure how open submission would manifest itself in a gym scenario. Actually, that’s not true, thanks to these kind of posts from Olivia Fitzgerald I do have some pretty good fantasies. But in reality, the daily interactions I have with people and places don’t normally touch on my innate submissive nature.
I find submission, like masochism, is entirely contextual. At work I tend to the forceful and aggressive. That’s not something forced on me by society, but just a natural function of working in a very competitive intellectually demanding area. In social groups I’m normally easy going and a facilitator of conversation, but not at all submissive. Only with the right person to accept my submission does that side of me come out.
I totally understand the potential difficulties in being a D/s couple in society, but that doesn’t seem to be what Tomio is talking about here. So am I just missing something here? Do other male submissives feel the need to openly express their submission in daily life, outside the specific context of a D/s relationship? Is the pressure to act like a ‘real man’ in conflict with how they intrinsically feel?
A black and white version of this image has been floating around a lot of tumblrs (I found it on Red Snapper). I believe it is by the artist Benegesseritt from deviantART, and entitled leave me the way i was before.
