Thoughts on the existence of the submissive male

Originally Written: 10/18/17

I’ve been feeling a little bit unnerved the past few days and I had trouble putting my finger on the reason.  After analyzing the feelings that accompanied my past few posts and an observation made by a friend, it finally dawned on me and clarity came rushing in.

You will find quite a bit of writing about submissive men being marginalized, trivialized, and ridiculed within the BDSM community.  There is this perception that submissive men are some form of monstrous aberration as their existence bucks the conventional trends of the past several thousand years.  A man who isn’t strong?  You are not a real man.  You are less than a person.  You are a bother to their existence.

This disturbs me on two levels.  One is that this perspective is common from both dominant men and submissive women.  I can understand the prejudice from dominant men, but it is a bit more worrisome when it comes from submissive women.  Rather than forming a connection, for many they see you as the same kind of violation of the natural order:  men are strong, women are weak.

This is destructive on several levels.  It doesn’t feel good to have your existence denied.  It instills doubt and fear, and saps away courage as you try to be brave enough to show yourself in an environment that is supposed to be open-minded.  My experiences over the years with this have been numerous.  I feel like it almost gives me the empathy to relate to someone that is gay and the challenges that they face in the outside world.  Two seconds later I realize that is an arrogant line of thinking since people who are openly gay are a lot braver than I am.  I struggle to announce myself as a submissive male in kink-friendly environments and would never dream of doing so in the vanilla world for all to see.  It gives me a load of respect for them.

The other destructive aspect is that it steals from the idea that submissives are strong.  It takes a whole lot of strength to dedicate yourself to being someone’s pillar.  Last I checked, pillars are built to be strong.  Burying one’s own desires in order to instill happiness in someone else takes courage.  Actualizing ones own desires to be that of instilling happiness of another is a state of mind that the meek cannot begin to reach.  Submission is not weak.  Submission is not about freeing ourselves from responsibility, judgment, forethought, restraint, and self-control.  It is quite the opposite.  Submission is about taking ultimate responsibility, exercising ultimate judgment, restraint, and self-control.  This takes a lot of strength indeed.

I want to shout this from the rooftops.  I want to wave it on a banner.  But then I remember.  I’m a submissive male.  I’m not a real man.  I can be looked down upon by a submissive woman.  I am the lowest creature on the totem pole and a pitiable existence.  If I was smarter, I would just “man up” and be dominant, right?

I like being gentle.  I like being affectionate.  I like being thoughtful.  I like having all of these “unmanly” traits that make me the lowest of the low.  It fulfills me.  It makes me happy.
Just because I wish the world saw things differently doesn’t make the world see things differently. 

The end result is that I accept my place at the bottom.

These are the feelings swirling around in my heart.