Fetissä oli erinomainen kirjoitus miesten alistumisesta. Vaikka on suunnattu alistuville miehille, tässä on minusta hyviä ajatuksia kaikkien kannalta. Sain kirjoittajalta luvan pastettaa se tänne, koska kaikki eivät ole Fetissä. Alkuperäinen kirjoitus by WhyTrustTomHanks:
https://fetlife.com/users/4832168/posts/4808310-----
For many men—many—discovering your submissive side is terrifying. It requires, not one act of courage, but multiple. Our cultural upbringing actively makes us feel like we will suffer for having such a side, let alone admitting it out loud. It's our horrifying shame, and we have to keep it covered up as much as possible.
I felt like documenting the ways in which discovering, then admitting, your vulnerability and submissive desires, can be insanely frightening for a man.
Every cultural narrative you see depicts women as gorgeous, desirable, and "awarded" only to deserving guys.It fucks women up to see stories in which they only exist to give themselves to heroic (or even just decent) guys. But it fucks men up too.
When I grew up, I was told by most of the stories I encountered that it was normal to find women intimidating and desirable. Normal to respond to desire by basically being a fuckup. I was told that, by behaving like a semi-alright person for a couple of scenes, I'd melt some attractive woman's heart and then she'd throw herself into my arms.
I've heard the princess narrative criticized as being a facile and shitty happily-ever-after, but the guy's happily-ever-after in those stories is lousy too. You perform some token acts of decency and then the Woman Vending Machine spits out a sexually voracious beauty? What an awful story.
This culture can make having desire scary.You've been told that you should desire women. But that doesn't make it okay to express that desire. Because desire is a contest. If you desire a woman, you have to beat out every other man who desires her too. This contest is non-arbitrary, meaning the man who "wins" is obviously the best man.
It's scary to admit your desire when you're around other men, too. Why do men resort to dehumanizing, objectifying language when they talk about women? To make it seem like they don't really care about the intensity of their feelings. To make it seem like their desire is no big deal, really, or not all that important. Because if you admit your desire, and admit that it matters to you, then you may just be revealing that, at some point in your life, you were attracted to a woman, and then nothing happened. Which, by the rules of this culture, means you're a loser.
Over time, both because of your posturing and others', you start to internalize this belief. Your desire is unimportant. Your desire is worthless. To be a real man, you have to be stronger than your desires. And strength, here, means beating that desire to a pulp, and not letting it come out except in brutal, controlling, and dehumanizing ways.
This is how your identity forms. And, in your confusion, you cling to it, because you have nothing else to cling to.
The people you're attracted to have utter control over your identity.Rejection isn't just a matter of not getting what you want. It's a matter of being defined. Because, again, only the "deserving" actually get to have their desires fulfilled. If you don't get that, it's because you didn't deserve it. There's a weird religious mentality that builds up there.
If admitting your attractions to your fellow (purportedly-)straight men is scary, admitting them to women you desire is like staring right into the fucking void. Because it's not about right now. It's not about whether or not somebody goes on a date, or kisses you, let alone does anything more. When you're young, this is about the next eighty years of your life. It's about the future. What if this no is the one that defines everything for you? What if it's just a harbinger of an endless lifetime of nos to come?
So you try goddamn everything you can to get into a woman's life but flat-out tell her how you feel. This leads to awful shenanigans like pretending to like things she likes just to get close to her (which, in turn, gives men their sadly-earned reputation for going to absurd, wretched lengths to get into a woman's pants).
It also results in bad habits like not asking permission before kissing, or doing anything really. Because—and I swear this is the logic I heard when I was younger—by asking permission, you are proving that you want that kiss. And that desire means you're pathetic and therefore haven't earned it. And you know that you're pathetic because, at some point in your life, you wanted to kiss somebody, but they wound up not kissing you.
It's like Schrödinger's Consent. If you ask, you don't deserve it, and if you don't ask, you do. You don't ask, because you don't want to let the woman control the outcome, because if you let her control the outcome, you don't get what you want.
Do you see where this is going?
Vulnerability is equated with weakness, and control is equated with power.It's a weakness to want. It's a weakness to ask. It's a weakness to not be completely in control.
This is the way, again, that our culture and our media tells stories of manliness. So many stories of male redemption involve an uncertain person gaining confidence. Which would be fine, but a shorthand for "confidence" is sometimes just some dude loudly insisting on things, usually while smirking like a jackass. Our idea of what it means to be a confident man is fundamentally broken.
This also plays into our idea of power. Power, we decide, is the ability to get our way. A powerful man gets the girl. An assertive or funny or handsome or competent—pick your poison—will be valued above all the other men, and therefore is permitted to have desire. He is permitted, you see, because the woman will want him back, and therefore is having "acceptable" desire.
This is another pernicious myth that men get taught: that desire can be "acceptable". Look at all the men who are convinced—convinced!—that women only find men "creepy" when they're not attracted to them. That "creepy" male behaviors become "sexy" if it's a sexy man doing them. What's the logic there? That attraction itself is only okay if it's reciprocated.
So: to make a woman want him, a man must have power. Now the fact of the man's attraction is entirely moot. All that matters is whether or not he has power. Whether or not he's attracted to her only matters when it comes to him accepting her—after all, if he's attracted to her and she isn't attracted back, then his attraction is pointless and therefore doesn't fucking matter. Therefore a powerful man must assume that women are attracted to him, and gets to choose amongst the ones he's "earned" willy-nilly.
This is why, I suspect, so many men develop complexes about "rating" women. It's a way of acting like they have the "right" to form these evaluations, and pick and choose from women in such a blatant manner. Men, in other words, "evolve" to the point that they start treating women the way they were terrified women were treating them back all along.
So what happens when you admit to enjoying submission?You admit to not having control. And you admit that you want a partner who gets to choose things for you.
God help you if your interest in submission is in any way tied to your desire for women. Then you're opening yourself up for rejection while admitting all the things that (you think) make you repulsive. Weak. Worthless.
But there's more to it than that. Because, in kink, you aren't just "a submissive", and that's that. You will have fantasies. Desires. Particular interests. There are things you'll like and things you won't. Things you've never tried, but want to. You will have, in short, a lot on your submissive plate.
And you are going to have to articulate those desires to your partner. You are going to have to admit that, no, you don't just want her to take control, end of story. You actually have a lot of opinions and preferences, on exactly the thing you want that makes you a loser to begin with. You're trying to negotiate, you feel, from a point of absolute, horrifying weakness.
And as you're doing that... you are opening yourself up to rejection yet again. Genuine rejection. Because even if your partner is dominant, she gets to say no to you if she wants. And sometimes she will.
When you're this far down the rabbit hole, rejection gets triply scary. If you admit you desire someone and she shoots you down, at some point—I hope—you will try again. Though some men do give up at the age of, like, fourteen, which is tragic. If you admit you're submissive and your partner doesn't like it, okay, the kink community has a nomenclature that lets you go, "Maybe now I need to find a domme!" Although many men are too ashamed or too clueless to find the kink community to begin with.
If you get into kink, meet a woman, confirm that she's dominant, and then ask if you can try something with her and she says no, you might be scared off that thing for a long, long time, especially if she kinkshames you for it. And the more you get rejected in these conversations—which should be the norm for kink, but aren't always—the more you feel like you're "doing it wrong", and like you shouldn't be trying to begin with.
A lot of mainstream femdom sells an awful message about male submission.At some point, men with these inclinations may look for erotica, porn, or sex workers who specialize in female domination. But they're likely to find that femdom performers aren't always what you'd call the most responsible in giving their partners a safe space to explore their urges.
All too often, femdom consists of denying men the right to have a say for things. It consists of denying men the right to negotiate their own kinks.
Femdom frequently defaults to shaming men. It can be heavy in humiliation—humiliating men for being ugly, or having small penises, or for being attracted to women in the first place. It's common to make men eat their own cum, or suck dicks, or dress up like women, as "punishment" for their submissive urges: forcing men to act like they're gay or women, because no real straight man could ever want these things.
"Findom" consisting of making men pay for access to a woman, which often (though not always) is a form of sex work masquerading itself as domination, further reinforces the notion that male submission is in some form pathetic or unworthy. That, to be a submissive, you are somehow "lesser".
I'd like to be clear about something right now: femdom can fucking rule. Humiliation can be goddamn hot. I've never encountered a form of findom I like, but I've been told by people I love and respect that it can be phenomenal, when it's done right. I know people who enjoy forced feminization or bisexuality, and would never deny them their kink.
I'm not talking about healthy kink, in other words. I'm talking about non-consensual kink. Oftentimes, kink that doesn't realize it ought to be consensual. I'm talking about the kind of kink you find far away from the kink community—cesspit as the kink community itself can sometimes be, it still vastly beats the alternative, which is kinky ideas practiced without any rules, regulations, or self-awareness. The sort of kink that, as often as not, is less "kink" than it is an exploitation of confused submissive men, who don't know how to express their desires and don't even have the words to articulate what they're feeling.
Men are vulnerable to predation, too—submissive men even more so. If they're told by somebody that there's a "way" femdom works, they won't know better than to dispute it. So they fall, haphazardly, into whichever parts of femdom they discover. Some put up with unwanted humiliation. Some throw themselves financially at a relationship, because they know no other choice. Some—and I know these men—wind up with women who genuinely treat them abusively, and insist it's part of the domination. These, thank goodness, are the minority, at least as far as I can tell. But they do exist. This does happen.
Why is it so easy to take advantage of straight men just starting to explore their submissive urges? Because they've spent their whole life being told that feeling this way, wanting these things, makes them weak. Pathetic. Worthless. Undeserving. They've been told this, not just on one level, but on a handful of them. It's shame all the way down.
A lot of men, I'm sure, hit some snag along this way and decide: "Fuck it, I'm out." Sometimes it feels like not exploring your own urges is a kind of self-respect, because you can find no respectable way to explore them. I've been there plenty of times before. Trying to explore your submissive-leaning urges can make you feel fucking disgusting—not because submission is disgusting, but because male submission is too-often treated in disgusting ways.
Other men paper it up. They wall their submission up within a shell of outward-facing dominance. Some of them only let those vulnerabilities out piecemeal, and with "submissive" women they genuinely trust. Others convince themselves to scorn those parts of them, and pride themselves on managing to keep them so under wraps.
We do a bad job of separating self-discovery from partner-finding.I do a lot of writing for no particular audience here. I do it because I have things I want to express, and no one person to express them to. My partners love me, but they don't want to listen to me as much as I want to talk. And that's fine.
So I share things here, and I meet lovely people who either enjoy the things I'm writing about, or want to tell me why they don't like those particular things. Either response is fine.
But sharing in public can be scary, if you don't have a lot of experience doing it. Some men only share their desires in private, with the people they feel those desires for. And a lot of the time, they don't bother checking to see if those people want to hear those desires.
Femme doms on FetLife receive loads of unwanted messages from subby guys. Their responses... aren't the politest, most of the time. I'm not saying they ought to be polite, either. They don't owe random subby guys their politeness.
But I don't think we have a great place for guys who are struggling to express their submission to go ahead and do so. That's a serious problem with the community as it exists today.
Some guys luck out, find a dominant partner, explore with them, and develop the knowledge they need to be self-sufficient. Other guys flounder endlessly, creeping out women and femmes as they do so. Some give up. Some turn bitter and scary.
There needs to be a system for this. That's all.
Quick disclaimer:I am not talking about all male submissive desires here. You might be a straight man and not identify with these points at all. But for many straight guys, these points may ring true.
I am not suggesting that things aren't difficult for people who aren't straight and male. I'm not suggesting that people who put up with a lot of bullshit from straight men should suddenly owe us their time or energy, or even their caring. Look, if you don't give even a flake of a shit for the poor sad submissive men of the world, that's totally fine. You don't owe us anything.
I'm writing about this because I want to understand it better. I do think that this phenomenon is part of the endless gross cycle of what makes men so frequently shitty, and what makes them unable to behave responsibly around others. Understanding it helps me understand the bigger picture, bit by bit. But that's my thing. You can be as interested or as disinterested as you want to be.
What do we do about this?There honestly ought to be a community to help submissive men work their shit out. It should not be contained within the kink community; it should be pitched in a way that's more accessible to men in general. Hell, pitching it as a "helping men understand their own desires" would probably suffice. But that's a long-term answer. It doesn't help men out who are reading this now, or people who have men like this in their life.
For now, all I can think is that there are a few simple thoughts that might bring some men a lot of piece of mind. Those thoughts are as follows:
- Attraction is beautiful whether or not it is reciprocated. It is a beautiful thing, to feel desire. The person you desire may not feel the same way back, and may not want you to talk with them about that desire, but that's okay. Your desires aren't theirs to judge. They're yours.
- Own your desires. Don't force them on anyone, but don't hide them either. They're a part of who you are, and you are lovely.
- Confidence is not "getting your way". Confidence is not caring whether or not you get your way, so long as you're honest and true to yourself.
- Vulnerability takes an extraordinary amount of confidence. To admit things you're scared to admit takes courage.
- Confidence doesn't earn you anything in life. It often makes you a more pleasant person to be around, but that's not the point of confidence. Being confident makes you like you, and that's enough.
- You don't have to "earn" other people. What you have to do is harder, but better: coexist with them.
- Power and force are not the same things. Many forceful people are shockingly powerless. Many powerful people are extremely gentle.
- Power and victory are not the same things. You can be powerful in submission, just as you can be weak in dominance.
- Your desire to submit is as beautiful a part of you as any other, and you deserve someone who cherishes it. Rest assured: it is cherishable.
- Just because you want to explore submission doesn't mean you don't get to have a say. You are allowed to like what you like, and dislike what you dislike.
- Nobody is obliged to fulfill all your dreams, but the partner who's right for you is the one who wants to learn your dreams and fulfill as many of them as they can.
- Everybody else's view of "how things work" is at least partly fucked up. Take their delusions into account.
Is "submission" the right term to use here?For me, personally, it is not. I found the terms "submission" and "submissive" to get in the way of what I genuinely wanted to explore, which I'll be more general and refer to as "bottoming". I think "dominance" and "submission" are loaded terms in general, and try to use them only when they seem genuinely appropriate.
A part of my issue with them is that they help shape our understanding of power exchange in terms of control. Power exchange is not about control, not entirely. Power is subtler than that, and more colorful. It deserves terms that do it justice, without influencing our understanding of it in ways that might be hurtful.
This isn't to knock on dominance and submission themselves. Both are great! D/s relationships can be phenomenally exciting, and acts of both domination and submission are all kinds of fun. But the phenomenon I'm writing about here extends beyond the binary. I want to keep that in mind.
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Sivustoa kannattaa
