Submissive Explosion
I was IM’ing with a Dom friend today while at work. At one point I said how exciting it is to feel I’m at a place in my life where I can let my sub energy out, that I have fifteen years of this energy to catch up on exploring. That’s pretty awesome. It’s also pretty daunting. It’s like starting a nuclear reaction without the benefit of “control rods” (ahem…) and a cement dome. It’s this bright flash of light and a giant explosion that I cannot help but look at, even if I occasionally feel it’s going to burn out my retinas.
There’s an article in the New York Times today about an artist who did a series of “leather clad heads” which “most immediately evoke S-and-M bondage wear.” Basically they are heads in leather hoods. The article goes on to say “displayed in a high-end shop for the sexually adventurous, they would fit right in.” I frequent shops like that, but my first reaction was “I’m not sexually adventurous.” Then of course I had to stop and think about what that means, because clearly being into bdsm and d/s isn’t what most people do for sex. But I stand by that feeling – I’m not ‘adventurous.’ I am expressing my truest self through forms that are available in our contemporary culture. D/s and bdsm for me are not about trying something new or novel. It’s about exploring inner reaches, places I’ve never allowed myself to go before, and going there with someone else. I am trying to let the light from the submissive nuclear blast shine on all deep corners of my soul.
I am curious about how this energy is expressed in our culture. Take, for instance, the ball gag. A friend once wondered aloud what it is about ball gags that we find so hot, and why that particular item has such a cult following today. Would bdsm folk who lived in the 1700s think a ball gag was hot and useful, or would they have completely different ideas of what a good sex toy is? To generalize, what is it about the leather culture that engages this part of my being? What energy is it which finds its expression in kissing someone who then I allow to bite me until I bruise? How was that energy expressed in 1722?
This past Saturday night, after I was allowed to cum and then got cleaned up, I went back to bed and was immediately directed to give a blow job. I was in heaven. He was dressed, I was naked. I had a muzzle around my neck which I had to work around to be successful at my task. Sexually I enjoy nothing more than knowing my purpose is to make someone else feel good and to let him express his Dominance. The next morning we woke up and, after a bit of snoozing, he directed me to go get in the shower and get ready for church. Once we were both dressed he unzipped and pushed me to my knees to give him head. I love that no-questions-asked energy, that “do-this-now” energy, that place where it is his prerogative to take and my responsibility to give.
This isn’t how things are expected to work in our society of equal relationships. But this isn’t the norm throughout history. There have always been power differentials in relationships. Mostly that has expressed itself in patriarchy and male dominance over women. Clearly that model isn’t ideal for many. What is clear to me is that there is no place for me to express this energy in day-to-day life. There is no place, in general, for men who have submissive feelings to express this in our culture. I wonder what affect that has on our society? Where does that energy go? How does it get subverted? Does it come out in harmful ways?
Submissive energy would be nothing without Dominant energy to compliment it. Food for additional thought: how does what I offer compliment a Dominant’s energy? How can I take what I offer (being submissive) and give it in such a way which ignites that nuclear reaction of D/s energy with a Dominant? How do we find the right control rods to make the explosion work?
Because I’m a nerd, I’m more fascinated by the questions you raise about 1722 than the (super hot!) action of late-July 2011. This idea, of how BDSM fits into the history of human sexuality, and how its forms and conventions developed greatly fascinates me. As I supsect we’ve discussed, I love being called Sir. And yet, when I take a step back and examine this, I think it’s ridiculously hilarious. This strikes me most when subs want to use variants on this theme — Master, obviously, is common, but then there was the “My Lord” guy . . . these immediately seem absurd to me, but Sir is hot. All of these things are not, obviously, innate in sexuality. They arise out of cultural conventions. As regards ball-gags and 1722, I have two semi-theories. The first is that these particular toys, gags in general at least and other forms of kinky toys, have probably existed as long as BDSM has. So much of what we recognize as BDSM is derived from midieval torture. We do know that brothels began hiring dominatrices in the early 1700s, though I don’t know how much we know about their practices beyond flagellation, itself an old midieval spiritual standby. (Susan Sontag suggests, in an essay that’s actually mostly about Leni Riefenstahl called “Fascinating Fascism”, that the sexual fad for leather, the color black and uniforms is derived from the aesthetic impact of Nazism.) But I also wonder to what extent BDSM “existed” before roughly 1700. This is perhaps too far afield, but I read a science fiction novel in which a man from a culture of absolute liberty visited a culture of rigorously enforced hierarchy and he is shocked to find TV channels devoted to torture videos, which is unknown in his culture. This struck me, as a purveyor of BDSM, as exactly backward. BDSM, to me, is deeply related to a desire for structure and order in our lives. It is, therefore, much more likely to flourish in cultures where freedom is exalted. When people had ACTUAL SLAVES the desire for BDSM was probably a great deal less predominant. It’s also more likely to flourish in times of unease and cultural changes — as Europe began to experience in the 18th century in the move away from the pastoral past and into the very complicated future, in which social roles were very much in flux. And in our age of great spiritual unease and tirumphant equality and rationalism, this ancient desire for order and understanding and hierarchy (something I will note, despite my aversion to “evolutionary psychology” we share with all the apes) has an even greater scope and power.
23 July 2011 at 9:35 pm
I agree that bdsm is a way to find structure and order in a life which is increasingly flux. You say that bdsm was “probably a great deal less predominant” in cultures that had slavery. That makes sense from a Dominant point of view. Living in a society with a legal, legitimized oppression of certain men and women could/would satiate a Dominant’s need to express power and control. But what about someone from the “ownership” class who was submissive?
24 July 2011 at 1:16 pm
Am I being Dominocentric? (did I just invent that word? I hope I did!) You make a good point. I imagine that certain people have always “crossed over” the lines between the classes in a BDSM sort of way. My point is not that these desires didn’t exist at all, but that in a stable society with stable social roles there’d be much less opportunity to act on them — and very little community in which to explore them. I also still believe, although it would be difficult or impossible to prove, that these desires would be less likely to be felt at all in such a society, even for would-be submissives in positions of power. My philosophical position would be that we may be, in some sense, innately Dominant or submissive, but that this identity nonetheless has to develop as a result of our disparate responses to the vertigo brought on by freedom and equality. If this is true, then if you were a 14th century landowning nobleman (Sam, Baron of Montana), the social order would be so ingrained in you that subbing out might not even occur to you as a possibility! I was perhaps too broad in my assertion that BDSM “didn’t exist” befofe 1700 — it clearly emerges and submerges throughout history. Certainly, late Roman culture was full of sadomasochism and likely in any culture where either freedom becomes widespread or social roles begin to disintegrate will have a rise in sexy BDSM action.
25 July 2011 at 12:26 am
Oh, also: I don’t think that your desire to reach inner places precludes being describes as adventurous. Great adventurers are the explorers of places unknown, dangerous and possibly glorious in their rewards. The least known place on Earth is our own soul. To explore those depths and learn to express them is adventurous indeed! Though, I greatly like the point you make — which I think is about the cultural perception that kinky sex is, for most people, a matter of play and not an expression of “real” feelings.
23 July 2011 at 9:36 pm
Yeah, that was my point – for me this isn’t about some wild party and I’m doing my best to be cool or live outside the box, it’s the best expression I’ve been able to find of how I feel. It’s fine to ‘be adventurous’ if you want to, and I suppose in trying new things a Dom wants me to I am having an adventure. But, like you said, the point for me is I guess an irritation at that cultural perception.
24 July 2011 at 1:11 pm