I realize lately that I’ve been feeling an uncomfortable internal conflict over two major lines of thought I’ve been reading in the blogrolls.
One: the argument that those of us who are kinky and whole have been having with the radical feminists over whether submission is okay for women (In case you’ve been sleeping: the kinkyfeminists say yes, the radfems say you must be brainwashed by the patriarchy).
The other: why is the general image of male submission, and for that matter, female dominance, so fucked up that both truly dominant women and truly submissive males almost don’t want to identify as such and feel that their sexualities are being hijacked?
Now, it’s certainly true that one of the reasons I stopped doing professional domination is because I wanted to stop contributing to the mainstream image of what female dominance and male submission is. With a few lovely exceptions, it was hurting me to be involved in a business that consistently objectified both the client and me, without allowing for true sexual fulfillment for either of us.
I made a post recently about the wacky ignore lines that are available on Niteflirt. I came to the conclusion that ignore lines, along with financial domination, have the same ethical problems for me as heavy humiliation play, only with the added bonus that I would feel like a schmuck for taking their money for doing nothing. Ignoring seems like the end result of the kind of humiliation play I don’t like to engage in: the “you are a worthless disgusting pathetic small-penised worm beneath my queenly notice” variety. It hurts me that this type of request is so popular for certain submissive men, particularly those that seek professionals. Especially since many of the men who want financial domination include a very scary real-life aspect of wanting me to financially destroy them, which I could definitely never do. It’s not too large a distance between “i’m a worthless piece of shit beneath your heel” and “I want to be actually destroyed,” and so I was never comfortable going down that road with my clients.
Yet the thing that keeps itching at my brain is this: if we decide that (as Tom Allen puts it) “sissified sissy maids who insist on talking about their sissy clitty,” men who want to be treated like dirt, and even men who want to have their money taken from them and to be ignored by the object of their worship are all suffering from the delusion that their sexuality is not okay and so they are punishing themselves for it, then are we not invalidating what may be their true desires just as cavalierly as the radfems invalidate the desires and agency of submissive women?
It’s a stretch, I know. And I think the answer lies in how one separates a kink from a pathology. If you are, say, an insensitive prick at work and you treat women like shit, and you go to a dominatrix who treats you like shit for an hour, and then you go back to work and at least for a while you’re a little nicer…well, maybe that kind of domination is doing some good in the world, and maybe those desires are healing. If instead, however, you’re that same prick and you pay a dominatrix to expunge your prickitude so you can go back and be a prick some more, then that seems control-freaky and pathological to me. By the same token: if you enjoy buying a dominatrix gifts and sending her money because you have a lot of money and enjoy showing your admiration in that way without asking anything in return, then that’s cool (these, I must advise those who are considering pro domination, are definitely the unicorns of the paying male submissive world). If instead you send a dominatrix gifts without clearing it with her and then start demanding a bunch of her attention in obsessive ways, or if you send your entire paycheck to a dominatrix each week and are therefore living in a cardboard box, there might be something wrong with you.
But what about the place of the desire for being made to feel less-than in a non-monetary D/s relationship? I don’t want to play make-fun-of-the-small-willy, but I’m sure there are people who truly do. While I find the entire sissy-maid thing distasteful and sexist, I know that there are dominant women out there who do not find it so, and believe it is their prerogative to play with sissy maids. And while I got sick of wearing corsets and heels all the time, I used to get a lot of enjoyment out of decking myself out in traditional fetishwear (until I was obligated to, which is the issue, of course). After all, there are sexist dynamics reflected in male dom/female sub SM play as well, and while I think it’s important to beware of abuse, I also will fight tooth and nail to defend the right of healthy submissive women to do their thing.
I want to reclaim the masculinity and power of the submissive man as much as anyone. But might there also be room for the stereotypical submissive man in there, a way to reframe his desires without destroying them? That is: I’m sick and tired, too, of there being only one idea of what a female dominant is, of what a male submissive is, and that being representative of those entire sexualities. It’s a huge and monolithic image to do battle with, and I want to do my part to encourage greater diversity. But I also think it’s dangerous to decide that the people who really want those things can only be either pathological or participating in a monetized script.
Your comments wanted.
Two things:
First, in regard to the desires of submissive men. I usually tell people that I will bottom, but I don’t submit. The reason for this is that being on the edge of submission is like being on the edge of annihilation. Like some part of me is about to die, and it won’t be coming back.
The point of that is this: the few times I have wanted to submit have been so that someone else would hold the emotional safety for me so that I could go to that place of ego-destruction; and that someone would be there on the other side to help me put myself back together again.
This is also why hiring a pro dom hasn’t really appealed to me. What I would want is very intimate, and requires a very high level of trust.
In pushing me to the brink of ego death and beyond, I can see using all kinds of play, pain and humiliation are just the most obvious tactics. But they are a means to the end, not the end themselves, and that’s what makes them (to me) not abusive.
So perhaps what some of these men want isn’t the humilitaion itself, but the place the humiliation pushes them into. But that part doesn’t get spoken of, because its such a vulnerable place that talking about it is more painful and frightening than the beatings and insults.
The second thing has to do with the photos to which you linked, early in the article. The blogger who posted them pointed out that the focus in the (bad) female domination porn is on the women, not the men. On the dominatrix, rather than the submissive.
This doesn’t surprise me too much. In such shots, the aim is not to encourage identification with the sub, but desire for the dom. This has the effect of a POV angle, allowing the (assumed) male viewer to insert himself and his own feelings into the scene, rather than calling him to match himself to the man in the scene.
It occurs to me that this is a common thing in porn produced for a straight male audience. The male in the porn is a placeholder, meant to be invisible, to facilitate audience insertion (pun intended). Porn produced for a female audience seems to be much more about empathy with the people (male or female) on screen, and less about overt insertion.
None of which undoes the basic critique of “hey, it’s not about what the pictures make it seem like.” Maybe it helps figure out how and why it happens, though, and how to do it better?
In any case, all porn should come with a warning label: “CAUTION: Real sex bears only circumstantial resemblance to the contents of this box.”
Thanks for this, Lon.
I agree with you about the ego-death thing; I’m familiar with the feeling myself. It’s a purification by fire, this allowing oneself to be beaten, brought down, and for me especially, scared half to death.
What I’m concerned about is people who seem to want not just part of their ego destroyed or purified, but people who want part of their *life* destroyed.
In my professional practice, I always drew the line between “I’m going to dress you up in panties, make you kneel and beg, beat your ass and call you my cute little girl” and “I’m going to participate in and reinforce your idea that you are a worthless creature beyond any kind of gender or sexuality and you exist to be my simpering little servant.” Mostly this was due to my own boundaries; it was a habit of sissies to be looking for a mistress who would basically do whatever they wanted, though they framed it in this icky, backhanded way where they wanted to serve me. But it was also partly because I saw this kind of behavior as a problematic departure from reality, a kink so developed that it impaired their ability to function in the world.
I also drew the line between “I will take a bunch of your money in exchange for my time and effort with you” and “I will allow you to empty you bank account in my direction without regard to whether you can afford it.” I’m sure there are plenty of findoms who don’t think it’s their responsibility to mind the solvency of their clients, but it’s not in my nature to take that kind of advantage of people.
Your point about porn is well-taken, though the poster of those pictures (his April Fools series) is a submissive male who runs that site for the purposes of seeing more of his side of the story. There is a great hunger out there for images in porn that don’t just showcase the usual object – i.e., sexily clad or nude female, regardless of her place in the action – but instead focus on the human interaction taking place.
I’m all for greater diversity in porn, and I’m glad to hear that the blog in question exists. On a pracitcal level, we start running into the question of who has the disposable income and internet presence to pay for quality porn, which starts revealing the biases that go into making porn for money…
Labors of love can post what they please, and that’s why I love them. People trying to grab a chunk of profitable bandwith, though, face different issues.
then are we not invalidating what may be their true desires just as cavalierly as the radfems invalidate the desires and agency of submissive women?
I’ve blogged quite a bit (in my mind) about individual choices v. societal programming. I wouldn’t harsh on the radfems for how they roll – they are weighted more on the “societal programming” side, and I can totally see that. I want to offer an example of those in support of the other side – those who are convinced that all choices are individual choices, because otherwise we’re just programmed by the patriarchy, maaan – but I can’t come up with one right now.
So it’s bothersome in the extreme to find that balance between “You have made your choice in the fullness of your mind and your will and cetera” and “Doesn’t it seem strange to you that you’re doing what an awful lot of people in your situation do, and yet you’re calling it individual, society-free choice…?”.
(I think about this a lot.)
The rest of commenting will have to wait until I can read the posts about reluctance to ID as certain types of folk. (I personally do not much ID as anything in the kinkosphere, because there are whole bushelsful of assumptions in “submissive woman” and “dominant woman”, and “switch” is still too binary for me.)
I liked your post a lot.
I don’t think any choice we make is made in a vacuum; that’s why capital-L Libertarians tend to get my back up so much. It’s pointless to pretend that human beings exist solely as individuals and not in relationship to one another, or that societies do not include within their structures biases for or against certain groups of people.
(I personally do not much ID as anything in the kinkosphere, because there are whole bushelsful of assumptions in āsubmissive womanā and ādominant womanā, and āswitchā is still too binary for me.)
(I like “kinky fucker” myself. š )
I think the key to discussing those predominant representations of the dominant female or submissive male is to distinguish between the way the media or defining social order use them, and how they effect the power dynamic between individuals, and those for whom those roles have genuine sexual resonance. Like you said — there is a difference between someone who uses the forced feminization as an act of self-hatred or as fuel in his cycle of misogyny and someone for whom this power exchange is an expression of sexuality and includes trust and respect, not the destruction of them.
In addition to an analysis of why these two images are beaten into us as the defining molds of female dominant and male submissive, it is probably most constructive to focus on promoting alternatives. I’m not saying everyone needs to become a pornographer, per se, but alternate sexualities can be expressed in many different ways that are not totally exhibitionist. Maybe this is an idea that is too close to a current project of mine, as I’m batting around ideas of masculine imagery, male power, and iconic male sexuality in a film project that decidedly not “about” sex.
In addition to an analysis of why these two images are beaten into us as the defining molds of female dominant and male submissive, it is probably most constructive to focus on promoting alternatives.
I think this is a great point, and it’s why I link to Male Submission Art and Bitchy Jones so often, even though I disagree with the latter quite frequently. I love MayMay because he looks at the subject with such a nuanced eye, and, as you say, seeks to promote alternatives. Bitchy occasionally rubs me the wrong way in the same way the radfems do: they look at what’s out there and say “this is wrong, wrong, wrong” and they try to explain why, rather than saying “look, this is the dominant paradigm” and trying to add some diversity to the discourse.
Then again, I’ve always said that rage is the first step in revolution; while I believe more in what Dr. King was doing in the long term, I could never blame Malcolm X for the anger and separatism.
At first I was completely relieved to see that I wasn’t the only one with this different sexuality. However as I got to know what the stereotypical picture was of a submissive male I quickly found disappointment.
Naturally as a novice I went on a tirade of what I thought was right and wrong and every time Jerry Springer featured submissive men I was ashamed to be associated with them.
Years have passed and I’ve learned a lot about my own sexuality although I’ve probably not come through it unjaded. Even my nickname here in the blogosphere reflects my need to separate myself from the typical.
Financial domination has always left a sour taste in my mouth because it seems to leave room for a blatant abuse of power. Although before I get too angry I try to remember that these men are usually coughing up their dough out of choice. It would be like saying boxing should be banned because one of the men involved is getting hurt.
So there is a world of D/s out there that doesn’t really agree with me but I won’t go as far to say that it doesn’t agree with others. For me I’ve learned that my sexuality is searching for compatibility and resisting the labels and stereotypes along the way takes a lot of patience and persistence.
The satisfaction that comes from the dynamic of a D/s relationship containing two people who love each other very much is what I seek. A void that can’t be filled by the professional scene. That doesn’t mean I think Pro-Dommes are wrong… they certainly provide a service to those who seek it. It just means they are not for me.
Thanks, Strongsubmissive,
I don’t think pro dommes are wrong, either, though I found over time that being one was wrong for me. I do notice, though, that what male submission looks like in porn and in the pro world is a lot different from what it looks like in the private scene in which I move. The male submission I see at parties I go to and among my friends is often noble, even beautiful. The total devotion of a 24/7 male slave often reminds me of the ancient knights and the code of chivalry: not the perversion of that code that sought to diminish women, but the dedication to and honoring of women – or rather, a particular woman – that knighthood often involved.
The male submission I saw at work was often, though not always, selfish, twisted, and disturbing. And I think that the pro scene encourages this, in the sense that paying to fulfill one’s sexual desires is a way of alienating yourself from them. If you’re paying for it, well, you can have whatever you want, right? It’s not about mutual respect and mutual pleasure. And it doesn’t require the submissive to truly submit, because the power imbalance is mitigated by money. Finally, and this is the biggest reason I quit: paying for it allows the client to distance himself from his true sexuality, to compartmentalize it. And compartmentalization, in my experience, almost always results in a conflicted person, a less-whole person.
I wish you luck in your journey.
Yep, I think you’ve hit the nail on the head. I tend to disagree with Bitchy a fair bit, since I often am the things that she slams. I understand entirely that no one wants to be painted with the brush of another’s sexuality, or to have her choices reduced to a set of things that they find unsexy and unappealing. But the backlash can alienate women who can be allies; there is no need for some of the antagonism.
I like Bitchy a lot, in part because she just really makes me laugh, and in part because it was reading her that really put me on the road to quitting. I disagree with her a fair bit as well – I find most of what she says entirely too categorical – but I also can understand the need, when bucking the dominant system, for an outlet for anger. Not everyone is an agent for slow social change; some people just need to agitate.
That said: while I got sick of wearing the stuff for work, I’m looking forward to the time when I again experience the pure sensual enjoyment of wearing PVC, rubber, and leather. And corsets. And high heels. I used to love to dress up, and now I avoid it.
Luckily I never used my strap-on at work, so I never lost the joy of that. š
Ultimately, while I think you make good points and are basically right about wanting to increase diversity instead of excluding people just because their kinks are stereotypical and often linked with certain sets of problems, it comes down to this – that is not my priority.
If someone who was really into sissy play or financial domination or whichever wanted to start a blog, talk about how it works for them or should work for them in a healthy way, I would cheer them on. But I don’t really understand it myself, and can’t carry that banner for them.
Bitchy, for all her one-true-way-ism and blatant dismissal of even some things that I am into, was a relief and a delight to discover, because she was the first person I found saying things that I needed to hear outside of my own head.
Honestly, this is sort of reminiscent to me of men who argue with feminists by raising men’s problems in life and suggesting that the feminists use a nicer tone and try to seduce men into wanting to help them instead of getting angry. Sometimes it’s okay to get angry. Sometimes we have to perform triage on the problems out there to be solved.
Bitchy, for all her one-true-way-ism and blatant dismissal of even some things that I am into, was a relief and a delight to discover, because she was the first person I found saying things that I needed to hear outside of my own head.
Amen to that. I just finished a post where I talk about why I quit, and she was definitely a big part of helping me think, in actual words, about what I found fucked up about the whole pro dom/paying sub world.
Honestly, this is sort of reminiscent to me of men who argue with feminists by raising menās problems in life and suggesting that the feminists use a nicer tone and try to seduce men into wanting to help them instead of getting angry.
This was actually something I worried about as I wrote this post. š I don’t want to be an apologist for, as Bitchy would have it, asshattery. I’m not nearly as angry about the whole thing as Bitchy is, mainly because now that I’m out of the pro world, I don’t really feel the impact of those images on my own sexuality and feel free to explore the complexities of it on my own terms.
But I’m also reluctant to dismiss what may be true desires in people by suggesting that those desires can only be a product of misogyny. Just as enacted rape fantasies are separated from actual rape by the presence of consent, so I believe forced feminization can be separated from misogyny by the intent of the partners involved. The problem, of course, is that it rarely is, at least in the places we most commonly see it. Just as the most common images we see of rape are images of violence and nonconsent.
I guess my trip is: how do we protect what I consider the sacredness of desire, in whatever form it takes (so long as it’s consensual), from the dictates of political correctness? Some desires seem more indefensible than others, for sure. But are there any consensually performed acts out there that we can truly condemn as wrong?
Having not even really been aware that there was a “kink scene,” let alone pro-dommes, for most of my life, I read posts like this feel kind of relieved that I didn’t have an opportunity to fall into what seems like…a pretty dead emotional space.
But the kind of male subs that we’re talking about….well, sometimes I read MayMay, who I love, and I feel like he’s walking a fine line between critiquing a set of tropes and bashing other people’s sexuality.
For myself, there is always going to be a difference between what we do out of love and what we pay for and what we do for money. Not just in sex. I’ve been paid to write, and I write for pleasure, and it’s a very fucking different kind of writing. No matter how closely sex work approximates a non-commercial relationship (and often it doesn’t try to do that at all) it is never the same thing, the motives and negotiations are entirely distinct.
Oh, I couldn’t agree more, and as I pointed out in a comment above, “what male submission looks like in porn and in the pro world is a lot different from what it looks like in the private scene in which I move.” I don’t know if the motivation is necessarily different – I think all of these people are simply seeking a particular type of experience – it’s the method that’s different, and when you add money into the mix it definitely shifts perception, entitlement, and so on. The correlation that I see, and which bothers me a lot, is how often the seemingly self-hating types of male subs show up in the pro scene and in porn, and how infrequently I run into those types in the rest of my life. In my non-pro experience, male submission is a beautiful, even noble, thing, tied to devotion and pure desire. Why in the pro world is it almost always concerned with being made to feel less-than?
Maymay pinged back to this post recently and made some really good points about how he relates to kink stereotypes.
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This was a fantastic post, and a wonderful subject matter. Thank you also for bringing this discussion to your own blog, which is precisely what MaleSubmissionArt.com is intended to incite.
I want to be clear that while I personally despise the societal tropes of male submissive imagery as discussed on my own blog, I proudly support anyone, especially submissive men, who make a self-aware choice to do what they love, even if that which they love is the most personally distasteful form of “sissification” for me. That is precisely why I am constantly speaking about creating diversity and new spaces where more than just the mainstreamāor even just the subculture’s dominant paradigmācan exist. How frustrating it is to be a minority within a minorityā¦.
Furthermore, I’ll admit that I kink on being “financially dominated”. I also love kneeling at the feet of women wearing leather boots. Devoid of emotional context, both of these are pretty distasteful things for me. My anger comes from the fact that it is difficult for me to enjoy these things because, and I face this daily, while some may have painted me as the poster-boy for railing against stereotypical male submissive iconography (and hey, I helped them do that), I am not free of “societal programming,” just as no one else is, either.
However, it does me only so much good to question my desires, regardless of where they come from. I would much rather question my reactions to such desires, rather than the desires themselves because (“despite” my submission) I’m actually all about getting what I want.
I have been tempted to go to pro-dommes and ask for sessions. I have been friends with more than I can count, and even close to several, yet I never participated in the commerce. I even had a number of pro-domme friends who offered to include me in sessions. I would be inhuman if I said I never thought twice to reject them. It is unspeakably painful to feel so alone, as I often did, and to be offered such things and yet to force oneself to say no to them because of how grating saying yes would have been. Despite the temptation for something, for anything that might resemble the activities I so wholeheartedly desire, I knew then as I do now that saying yes to that disingenuous action would have been even more painful in the end.
It is, frankly, incredibly difficult to distinguish between the lesser of these pains in a society that provides absolutely no preparation for dealing with one’s sexual desires. No where in our lives, and especially not when such desires are forming as we are young, is this sort of emotional awareness taught by the world at large. People, submissive men included, end up having to stumble through their own realizations of all of this on their own. And frankly, much of the time they get it wrong.
Anyway, basically I am writing to say thank you for this post. It was a pleasure to read others’ ideas on all of this for a change. š
[…] the Internet sends me alerts of things I’ve told it I might find interesting. Tonight, Delilah Wood’s post, Questioning Desires: A place for sissies and worms? splashed onto my radar. Reading the post, I found it heartening to find that there are people, like […]
Hmm. I don’t want to give the impression that I think that the stereotypical version is *not* okay. I’m the last person — okay, maybe not alphabetically — who should be making any such statement. But as someone who is not immersed in the kink world, I do distance myself from those with sissification / humiliation kinks. I don’t “get” them, and in some ways I agree with Bitchy Jones in that the paradigm points to how femdom is, on some level, fucked. But that’s not why I put distance there. I have begun backing away from those models because it is so completely different from who I am and how I feel.
On a recent discussion in a chastity-related group, somebody posted a comment to the effect that wearing a device should make one feel “emasculated”. Unfortunately, this stereotype is pretty much the first thing that most vanilla-ish people run into, and it turns them off.
The worthless worm model is certainly a kink that some people enjoy, and more power to them. But most vanilla people find it very difficult to accept that as a kink without them thinking that you have some other deep-seated security issues. Sub/bottom males are portrayed in in the media as whiney, weak, worthless cross-dressers, and generally it’s done for laughs.
Perhaps *I’m* the one with the security issues, because I cringe whenever I hear one of my vanilla friends make some disparaging remark about such a character in some movie or tv show. But such negative attitudes affect us, the kinksters. Like many men, I’m not out cruising fetish clubs, and I don’t have a wide variety of partners to choose from — I’m married and trying work out something that both my wife and I can live with. Trying to explain what I like or feel to her gets lost when she does an internet search and the first (and the majority of!) images she sees are Mistress Cruella and her sissified sissy slut. Totally not her — nor her idea of who she wants to be, nor of who she wants *me* to be.
Similarly, one of the reasons that she kinks on chastity is that she sees it as having power (control) over a part of me that in itself is powerful. Mrs. Edge does not lock up my worthless little dickie (or worse, my “sissy clitty”… ugh, sorry, just the term grates on me). Rather she locks up my raging, turgid, veiny, purple, manly hard-on. She does it because she’s asserting herself over something that needs to be controlled.
And this ties into what Bitchy Jones writes. Is BJ correct? Well, she is for her, and she is not for some other people. But the larger point is that she has at least pointed up another paradigm that has been long overdue: that of the strong, attractive sub/bottom.
Thanks, Tom.
For a while I’ve been on the fence about whether this particular submissive male stereotype is as harmless as some have made it out to be, but the more I look at it, the more I realize that it falls into a similar category as the “screaming queen” for gay rights, or the “angry harridan feminist” for feminists. Stereotypes aren’t harmful because they’re not true: screaming queens, angry feminists, and submissive sissy clitty sluts certainly do exist. But if we hold these up as the one and only example of a particular, already marginalized group, then that harms the entire group.
Sorry, that’s probably totally obvious 101 shit, but it just kind of coalesced in my head for me reading your comment.
I guess my question then becomes: how to we bring the sissy sluts of the world to greater acceptance as part of a larger dialogue of what it means to be a submissive male?
I am one of those freaks who really does like men in drag, but… there’s a really important point here. I want my men in drag to be beautiful and brave and sexy, not pathetic and ugly. I also kind of want to be powerful and worth restraining myself, even though I’m not a man. (If you ever need to kill my libido, just tell how small and soft and pretty I am.)
I guess I’d like to see an erotic language where submissive people and feminine people (even submissive, feminine people) are powerful. This is compatible with a lot of the outward stuff Bitchy Jones hates. The problem isn’t really drag or strap-ons so much as the way those things are used to negate the dignity of both women and submissive men.
Is there a way to do heavy humiliation that is ultimately compatible with the dignity of everyone involved? Probably; human creativity is so infinite that I wouldn’t rule anything out as impossible. I’d really like to hear from someone who tried to do those things in a thoughtful, aware way.
The problem isnāt really drag or strap-ons so much as the way those things are used to negate the dignity of both women and submissive men.
And there we have it.
I recently found a strap-on group in which the context was not femdommy so much as just men enjoying being penetrated. The women on the group don’t seem to write about “making him take it”, but in terms of enjoying the power that they have, and also enjoying seeing their partners get pleasure from it.
I’ve also found a few blogs in which, like Venus Infers, the women enjoy dressing up their men, not for the humiliation aspect but for the contrast of seeing men wearing soft, femme clothes.
Unfortunately, these are small minorities of what appears to be out there.
This is precisely what (Sara) Eileen and I tried so hard to do when we were together. You might enjoy reading her blog post, “Fuck Him”, which talks a lot about this subject as related to strap-on sex.
The women on the group donāt seem to write about āmaking him take itā, but in terms of enjoying the power that they have, and also enjoying seeing their partners get pleasure from it.
Yes, yes! I actually don’t feel like the obnoxious image of strap-on play has been so overwhelming, though. But that may be because I’ve come to avoid the more typical femdommy spaces.
I love using my strap-on with my partner. Love it. But it’s never about humiliation. It’s because it’s fun to be the penetrating partner at times, and because it gets me off and it gets him off and hey, good times all around. Because it lets me revel in his softness. Because sometimes all I want it to rip him to shreds and then come inside him.
Do you have links to those other blogs that talk about forced fem in a non-misogynistic way? Because I still find that hard to understand, and I’d rather learn more than just be a jerk about it.
@Myth – try Shadowlady. We found each other on a chastity group, but her main kink seems to be cross dressing.
how to we bring the sissy sluts of the world to greater acceptance as part of a larger dialogue of what it means to be a submissive male?
Ah, you’re approaching this from a different angle. Instead of promoting other images of male submission, you’re trying to change entire cultural memes which tend to see feminization in a negative light.
Good luck with that.
Years ago (80s, I think), I read a great article written by a gay man who tried to explain that ACT UP and other gay activists were doing a disservice to the community if they believed that by appearing in public in leather gear they (the gay community) would be more accepted by the straights. He pointed out that the way things typically work is that gays needed to be seen not as outrageous (which would only serve to keep them marginalized) but as “normal”; i.e., have a job, keep regular hours, buy a house, make the car payments, etc. IOW, don’t hide it, but let people know that you are in every respect just like them. I think that to some degree this worked.
Similarly, I don’t see fem sissies, etc., being more accepted until the public begins to accept *other* versions of male submission. The ones that are more easy for them to live with. For example, as people see more men in Female Led Relationships who are in all other respects living a traditional lifestyle, they will be more accepting of the idea of non-dominant males.