Friday, July 15, 2016
A Sea of Thoughts: Submissive Types
This post is in reference to this blog post:
https://emdimensional.wordpress.com/2016/07/13/submissive-types/
I recently read a blog posting on types of submissives. It was a thorough list and well-written. Reading it brought me back to my early days in the lifestyle... when everything felt new and like a discovery and also to my early blogging days when a lot of my attempts at understanding my place in this world was rooted in definitions, classifications, and putting things in order.
It's safe to say that early on in the lifestyle I more closely related to a specific sub type. I also found in some ways there was a small divide between the submissive that I wanted to be and the submissive that I actually was.
As time has passed and my experiences have grown, I realize now that I don't even know what I would classify myself as anymore. I can associate with many types but I tend to flow between them fairly easily, but it's not so much a hybrid of multiple roles, more like identifying with one role at a time at any given time. It's almost like I have a primary type and a bunch of secondary types underneath that. e.g. I would relate most closely to the slave but be able to resemble many of the other types depending upon the dynamics going on in any given situation.
When thinking about it I've noticed a bit of a divide in how/when/where this type of situation happens. I'm not sure if it's something unique to F/m as I don't tend to see it as often in M/f relationships. I'm not sure if there's an inherent difference on dominance... but sometimes it feels that way.
I state these things as observations. They are not meant to be hard conclusions or stereotypes. I will say they are generalizations but I do not mean them to be done in a negative way, they are simply a reflection of my experiences and the people I have known over the years both on the web and in life.
-Lifestyle Femdom seems to have a tendency to reach a point of consensual non-consent over the course of several years. A sub may have entered as a bondage enthusiast or someone who enjoys domestic discipline... but after a while, a good number of male subs end up as some fluctuating mix of types where you fill many different roles. Another oddity is that male subs who have gone through this process often start to identify with some roles mostly due to the D/s dynamic. e.g. They hate scrubbing the toilet but love the idea of being forced/ordered/expected to scrub the toilet.
-To be fair, I have only known a handful of M/f couples that have been together for say 4-5+ years. The ones that I have known (or read about) it often seems that there is a lot more common ground in the relationship. e.g. He likes activity X, she likes activity X, their relationship was built around their shared love of activity X, and to this day they still most closely identify with X. Basically, it seems like the Maledoms and femsubs I have known tend to relate more strongly to a certain identity over a span of years. They may delve and explore into other activities but it doesn't seem to change the core quite as often as I see in Femdom. To summarize the main point, I feel like it is more common in M/f relationships for a sub to retain the submissive identity they most closely relate to. If I am completely wrong here, please let me know.
As a contrast, it just seems very different for a couple to start with a shared enjoyment of X but to later go into Y and Z regardless of how the submissive feels about them. That trend of compromise seems to change a submissive's thought process to where it seems natural to be completely at the mercy of the Domme. Looking back at the submissive types, it seems natural in Femdom for a Domme to push a sub to the slave state. If this is common in M/f relationships, I don't see it documented very much and I know in groups following common BDSM rules, the idea of this is rather frowned upon.
I'm not saying that either of these is more correct than the other, I just find it a bit interesting to think about.
Any thoughts?
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Hmm....interesting....
ReplyDeleteYou've brought up something I've never directly thought about. I have often sensed a different dynamic in the power structure between M/f and F/m though until now I dismissed it as my not connecting to the dom (male) side of the power exchange since I'm a straight male.
My intuition says you're probably right but I don't have enough insight, my sense of M/f vs F/m dynamics its too limited or I just don't grasp the subtleties on the M/f side, other than to intuit that there is some underlying difference, that I can't articulate.
As we've discussed a little it may be the greater tendency of the male to be more fluid or more prone to develop sexual associations with a wider spectrum of activities than are females.
If so, that kind of goes to a chicken-egg problem; does the top initiate and push where the sub is vulnerable (i.e. quickly giving up on a new activity if the sub refuses to embrace it) or does the malleability of the sub encourage the dom(me) to push things further and further afield. Of course the answer is "both" but I suspect there is greater momentum from one side than the other.
Also there is the nature of feminine power. I realize I am engaging in dangerous stereotyping, but as unPC as it currently is, I do believe there are significant differences (in general, certainly with many exceptions) in how each gender exerts power.
I think it is a more emotional and internal type of power play to shift someone from a shared to a non-shared interest. I don't mean to use biased words, but within myself I see Dommes as often having more subtle and in my view sophisticated ways of exerting their power. Having said that, I do fully realize I'm too tightly locked into an F/m view of things to have any hope of being objective about this. ;)
Interest stuff, wish I had a better handle on it.
Or that you did, so that you could explain it to me more. {grin}
Thanks for another very intriguing topic.
Thank you Watson.
DeleteThe author of the original post gave me a reply. She informed me that in the BDSM community (where I have most of my M/f frame of reference) there is a lot less variance in relationships but that there are M/f relationships that do push things in similar ways.
She also stated from her experiences as a Domme she did have a tendency to push male subs harder and faster than what she thought was normal.
My best assessment is that many of the differences may be rooted sexually, namely the ease for a male to develop a fetish or respond to sexual conditioning. Eg. Maledom may be fine repeating certain activities since they turn him on and post-orgasm things tone down. Women seem to get more dominant after successive orgasms and respond more to thematic/environmental/symbolic stimuli. In these cases pushes dominance further along with the same symbolism seems natural.
I could be wrong but I have never talked to a post-orgasm maledom to know what is going through their head.