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| Malesubs are confusing |
Malesubs are confusing! We're confusing to ourselves, and we're confusing to other people.
What I'll call "Deep Malesubs" like me are confusing because... why? But we're easy to deal with because our primary aim is to embrace a sexualised submission. We have some hard limits, yes, and some fetishes you can use on us, but we're mostly unfussy.
However, the more typical malesub doesn't know whether he's coming or going. He overcommits, under delivers. He tops from the bottom, or has such narrow limits, it's the same thing. And he's often uncomfortable and ultimately unreliable in a D/s relationship.
Partly, this is just patriarchy at work. It's a hell of a journey from culturally mandated manly masculinity, to meek malesub.
However, it's also because humans are both complicated and malleable.
Recently, people are mooting the term "submission fetishist" to describe the man who wants something specific and only wants that.
I think that only goes some of the way.
For those who've just tuned in to kink, a fetish is a specific experience that through repetition - mostly fantasising and masturbating - becomes utterly erotically compelling. For example, Xena only has to say, "There's no key to your device," and I get horribly turned on. I even get turned on thinking about her saying that. I feel the same way about stockings. It's a fetish.
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| Specific Fetish |
Call this the Specific Fetish.
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| Submission Fetish |
Beneath that, I think there's a Submission Fetish. It's really a fetish for the mental experience of submitting, the discordance between expectation, enthusiasm and enjoyment.
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| Submission Trait |
Then at the bottom, there has to be a Submission Trait something about us, e.g. perhaps we score highly on Agreeability. The Trait on its own produces helpers and champions, good soldiers and company men. However, it exists with other traits as well, and it's what makes us feel good about our Submission Fetish.
And these three layers are why malesubs are so confused and confusing: Specific Fetishes expressing Submission Fetish expressing Submission Trait.
I mean, just having three layers is bound to cause confusion!
But specifically, the top two layers are fetishes, and fetishes take on a life of their own.
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| A Crush on the White Queen |
So, for example, you could have a comparatively weak Submissive Trait, but, at a formative age, watched The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe and, crushing on the White Queen, developed a generalised Submission Fetish. The more you get off over it, the stronger the fetish.
Even so, your underlying Submission Trait remains weak. You could spend an entire weekend being a slave, and it would turn you on, but you wouldn't necessarily think it was a good use of your time, and you certainly wouldn't be happy in a power exchange relationship however - and here's the kicker - the idea of a power exchange relationship still turns you on horribly.
Now imagine if, just as you were acquiring the Submission Fetish, you watched a something you probably shouldn't and became fixated on, say, being pegged. Now whenever your Submission Trait gives you a nudge, your fantasies pass quickly through some Submission Fetish scene setting, and onto a Specific Fetish, which you jerk off over lots.
The thing is, the Specific Fetish - in this case, pegging - only really makes sense in the context of the other two layers. Because pegging occupies such a big chunk of your sexual headspace, it's easy to assume that this says something about the other two layers... but it need not. You could honestly believe the submission in general turns you on and makes you happy, only to discover that it doesn't.
This then is my explanation for why malesubs are so confused and confusing: There are three linked but independent layers to submission:
- Specific Fetish
- Submission Fetish
- Submission Trait.
I am honestly not sure how to fix this, but having some way to talk about the layers has to be a start...
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This is one of the best descriptions I’ve seen. Dominant women are always complaining about “do-me” subs, who would generally fall under your Specific Fetish category. I get that. These guys call themselves subs but really just want specific acts done to them, and the women are rightfully annoyed at it.
ReplyDeleteOn the other hand, there is a contingent of dominant women who don’t consider a man submissive unless his heart’s desire is to serve, without respect to kink or fetish. They want a service submissive who is willingly subservient, whose gratification comes completely from taking care of the woman’s needs and desires. The women call themselves dominant, but they don’t want the trouble of dominating, they just want a servant, one who would fall under your Submissive Trait category, with no overlap with fetish. One wonders why they search on fetish sites for such a submissive instead of the household servant want-ads.
I like very much your description of Submission Fetish, because it falls right in the middle, and I can identify with it easily. I have always been willing to do what I can to please a woman partner and to make her life easier and more pleasant, but I am not a servant by nature, and I am intelligent and independent, with career and personal interests that preclude being completely servile. I am happy to serve, but not exclusively as an end in and of itself. However, the idea of being controlled and coerced to serve, dominated and subjugated, is extremely erotically charged. A touch of asthenolagnia. The sexual excitement from that is a great inducement to serve.
At both ends there seems to be imbalance in numbers as well as in the general exchange of benefit. There seem to be a lot of Specific Fetish “do-me” male subs, but few dominant women who want that. The subs want specific acts, but offer little or nothing that most women want; subs want to take without really giving. And there are very few Submissive Trait absolute service subs willing to serve dominant women in return for nothing. The middle area of Submissive Fetish seems to be where the greatest balance exists, where both parties contribute and benefit more equally in the power exchange. Of course, the more a woman enjoys dominating, and the more the man enjoys serving, the less effort and downside there is for each of them.
Thanks! Yes, it is complicated. I didn't address the issue of Malesub as Orientation, which I think is a combination of Submissive Trait and Submissive Fetish, where the latter frames the love language. That's certainly where we're at.
DeleteAnd of course, the submissive trait doesn't make people like me doormats, it just means we get our certainty from outside ourselves. I suspect it goes with a certain stoicism; I can certainly imagine Maximus from Gladiator fitting this category.
There's two other observations I'll try to cover in future entries.
First, is that some kind of Submissive Trait runs through both SubFet and SpecFet. Sometimes the fetish is out of proportion to the underlying trait, because fetishes snowball. Other times, the trait is powerful but the sub uses the fetishes as a kind of firewall. Having a strong submissive trait is scary, so it's a logical defence to emphasise the fetish.
Finally, there definitely is a slippery slope, but probably only for people with a strong underlying trait.
Excellent observations.
ReplyDelete