Self-care as submission

Last month, I joined a gym. I go five days a week, and I’m already seeing some results in that my muscle tone is better and my stamina is increasing from the cardio work. I’m very proud of this accomplishment because, only a few years ago, I would not have done it.

One reason is that I held to a stereotypical view of what a gym is. I figured it was a bunch of lunkheads walking around shooting steroids or women in leotards sweatin’ to the oldies…or something. Despite the fact that I continually talk about how wrong stereotypes are, I actually relied on them to excuse myself from taking care of myself.

The other reason is that I held onto a false image of what a man is and what a man does – in other words, I was clinging to a stereotype of what masculinity means. That is what I want to talk about today.

The image comes from my childhood. I grew up in New Mexico where most of the men were involved in the oil field industry. Not all of them climbed derricks, but they were all big – heavily muscled and tough as nails. For example: an uncle cut his finger off when he was working – which means he was welding something at the top of a derrick. He tied a rag around the stub of his finger, put the tip in his cigarette pack, finished his job, carried his eighty or ninety pounds of tools down a fifty foot ladder, then drove himself to the hospital (ninety miles away).

The overarching lesson about manhood from my childhood was that a man endured. Not only did he get up every morning and go to a job that took a heavy toll on his health, and his life, but he didn’t even bother to complain about it. Whatever needed to be done; a man did it.

Part of buying into this worldview was believing that a man really didn’t need to do anything to take care of himself. He didn’t need exercise or dietary counseling or advice from anyone about how to live his life.

Do I need to say that these same men – the ones I looked up to as a child and based my idea of manhood on – died young? My father was barely past forty. His father made it to retirement by a few months. My maternal grandfather was forced to retire early because of a war injury and died a few years later. My eldest brother died in his early forties – less than a week before his twin nephews were born.

The first evolution in my thinking took place when my kids were born. I decided I wanted to be around for them in a way my old man wasn’t. I needed to be alive, and that meant I needed to get healthy. I started eating healthier foods and began exercising. I dropped forty pounds. My cardiologist told me I could make it to ninety if I kept doing what I was doing.

As great as a motivator as it was to see my kids grow up, I found an even greater one. One day I watched Mistress Delila as she watched me doing push-ups. I saw the joy She felt in watching my body moving. Not only did I see it, but I decided that I wanted to see a lot more of it.

I wrote earlier that I never actually saw myself as an object of beauty. Not only that, but I never saw that I deserved to be taken care of – not by anyone else, and not even by myself. I saw myself as being just tough enough to endure whatever health issues arose to make sure I was around for my kids.

I saw that as being a man. I saw that as being masculine.

The part of the story that is missing from my childish view of manhood is that the things that were endured by the men around me were necessary. If my uncle hadn’t had pushed himself through the shock and pain of his injury; then he might have died before anyone found him. They endured because, when it came down to it, endurance was all they had. They didn’t know about prevention and there simply was no other way of life. They didn’t have a choice.

I do.

A man must still endure much. Life is far from perfect for us all. But a man must also do everything that he can to overcome the problems he encounters. He must stand strong and resolute in his effort to provide for and protect the ones he loves. Even if that means tearing down the stereotypes that have held him back, and redefining what it means to be a man.

I do this because I love Her, and Her love has redefined me.

Getting back in the saddle

I was a bit shocked when I realized how long it has been since I’ve written anything. So I’m going to post a quick round-up of posts I’ve enjoyed as a way to get started again.

One of my favorite bloggers, Dumb Domme, takes down the idea of tricking someone into your kinks.

Another favorite, Fern at Domme Chronicles, shares a happy femdom story.

The question of humiliation is answered at femdom 101.

Then there is the question of Dominant vs. Superior.

A guest post about not coming out.

So you want to date a dominant woman?

Ah, the wonder of a good snuggle.

So you think women aren’t visual? Any other less-than-human tags you’d like to throw around, too?

Since we are on the topic of senses, what about scent as a turn-on? Surely all those perfumers can’t be wrong…(except they are chasing the wrong scent, I think)

Hey, do your homework!

Oh yeah….use me!

Peroxide is trying to break a bad habit. And he took a big step. (Perhaps THAT is when “YEHAW!” is appropriate?)

A new secret worth sharing.

Happy fucking Friday!

Where I officially become an author

You can find my author’s page on Amazon and see that my first (very short) collection of short stories is available. It’s only $3 – and it makes a dandy gift for Christmas.

Even that part

I have been taking welbutrin for about three years. The only truly positive result of a bout of marriage counseling came with the arm-twisting necessary to get me to a psychiatrist, who promptly diagnosed me with clinical depression and I began taking little white pills. It doesn’t keep me from having ups and downs, but it keeps me from getting to that scary dark place where I spent far too many years.

One of the triggers for my depression is unemployment. It isn’t the problem of being alone (which I like), but that I feel unnecessary. I don’t feel like I contribute. Yes, I do a lot of things that no one else does and if I wasn’t doing them then several people’s lives would suffer. I know I contribute. I know I’m necessary. This is why my depression is clinical – it isn’t built on the facts of my life (though they can make it better or worse).

So I’ve been out of work since May. It gets harder and harder to fight off the downward pull. I do everything that helps – I exercise, manage my diet, don’t let myself dwell on the bad things that happen (present and past – which isn’t as easy as it sounds). I do the best I can to seek out joy and beauty and goodness, whenever and wherever I can.

For the most part, then, my depression doesn’t manifest itself as me sitting around and doing nothing, wiping my eyes with a tissue. It manifests itself as anger. I walk around on edge, almost like I’m looking for a reason to blow up. I tend to clench my teeth, as if I’m holding things in. And very often I am.

It is in times like this that I need, more than ever, to have my Goddess in control. I need Her control, because every bit of my control is used up in just getting through the day (it’s exhausting). When I am with Her, I can release that grip on everything and just…be.

I once saw a woman tell Richard Simmons, “I am food, and I have a problem with Wanda.” It was heartbreaking to hear, but sometimes I feel that is my relationship with depression. But I never feel like that when I am with Mistress Delila. I am me, and I don’t even have a problem with depression, because it is just a part of me. And She loves even that part.

To enjoy, or not to enjoy?

On Twitter Ferns asked:

Why is the idea of a submissive wanting to do something he doesn’t enjoy *for his dominant* such a hard concept to grasp? Baffling!

I interpreted this as being directed at submissives – why can’t malesubs understand that sometimes their Dominant is going to want them to do something they don’t enjoy. So my reply was: “One reason: Dominant Women saying they don’t like ‘doormats.’” She replied:

Actually, I see more *dominant women* than men who don’t understand this, I assume it reflects their experiences.

It seems to me that Ferns, like me, sees no problem in a malesub doing something for his Dominant that he doesn’t enjoy. For me, it seems pretty much self-explanatory, but I’ll give it a shot because…well, maybe it isn’t.

I’ll try a Venn Diagram (of sorts):

 

Explanation:

Everything is section A are things I enjoy – which implies that I both want them and give consent (it isn’t always that simple, but this is a simplification of reality). Section B defines things I do not enjoy and, in the absence of other designations, I do not consent to things in this box. Section 1 is an area of things I don’t enjoy, but want – like having the riding crop falling on my shoulders during cunnilingus (I’ll call this the Masochist’s Paradox – you want things that you don’t enjoy because they hurt). Section 2 defines things that I do not enjoy and don’t want; however, She has my consent to do these things. To me, Section 2 behaviors are where my submission is really tested because I do not derive any primary reward for that behavior – the only reward I have is pleasing Her (that, to me, is a BIG reward, though).

It is the existence of Section 2 that Ferns’ question addresses. There are a couple of ways to address that question, though

From one perspective, why is it that malesubs won’t let FemDoms operate in Section 2?

One answer is that the person in question isn’t operating as a submissive, but rather as a bottom. As a bottom, there is a much lower expectation on their part about moving into behavioral areas in which they are not comfortable. My experience is that there are a lot of bottoms who think of themselves as submissive because the difference isn’t really clear to them. The thinking may be something like, “I like to be pegged – and that is submissive – so I am submissive.” In reality, pegging can be submissive, but it isn’t always (and pegging can be replaced with practically any activity).

I think it’s easy to see why, if a Dominant Woman experienced several guys like this – saying they are submissive and then not willing to get into Section 2 – they would start to think, “Section 2 just doesn’t exist, so I’m not going to ask about it.”

I want to stress, however, that I’m not calling anyone out as being “not truly submissive.” Because, while this is one reason why a guy might not get into Section 2, it isn’t the only one. A guy can be as submissive as can be and not be willing to go into Section 2 simply because there isn’t a sufficient level of trust built between the players. If someone is going to do something he doesn’t like to a guy; then he has to trust that they are not going to stretch beyond Section 2 and get stuck in Section B.

Of course, it just may be bad timing, too. The boundaries for Section 1 and Section 2 are not hard and fast – the same action may be wanted or not depending on all sorts of things. A bad day or a passing mood can turn things on a dime. This is where the onus of communication lies with the guy – he needs to tell the Woman whatever is going on to make that behavioral area shrink temporarily.

Sometimes the problem is just cultural conditioning. In “traditional” gender roles, women are raised to take care of men. For women, this can come to mean that they do not push their men into doing anything that is too uncomfortable – or anything they simply don’t want to do. Men, conversely, are taught that women will take care of them and therefore they do not need to go into Section 2. In fact, Section 2 does not exist…at least for men. There is a reason why movies like Spanglish make money – it shows a regular guy who isn’t happy with his corporate wife, but is drawn irresistibly towards the maid that takes care of him (even though they have nothing in common). This is the personification of the traditional memes exercised against the modern woman trying to have it all (and failing).

You would think that this problem disappears with FemDom, what with the idea that woman have power and men don’t, but it doesn’t. BDSM doesn’t exist separate from culture, but rather as a microcosm of it. The same problems seen in the larger culture will be displayed in BDSM sub-cultures, as well. So some – not all – guys go into it believing that women are really fulfilled when they give a man exactly what he wants. To this view, the negotiation of limits turns into a laundry list of how the woman (who tends to become a faceless entity) can become fulfilled by giving him what he wants – what is known as the Do-Me-Sub™.

The problem is exacerbated when Dominant Women say things like, “I like men who fight back. I don’t like doormats.” Obviously, they have every right to want whatever kind of person they enjoy and to say so (I do take umbrage to calling someone who submits with a glad heart “a doormat,” but that’s another issue). The issue, for the problem at hand, is that it provides cover for Mr. Do-Me to look at any attempt to discuss things as being an attempt to ignore his limits.

Of course, there are also women who just don’t want to have men, submissive or not, do things against their will. Perhaps it is for cultural reasons and perhaps it’s just how they are wired. I don’t have census data on this, so I can’t say how many there are or which group they fall into. So long as they, and the men they are involved are satisfied; then everything is good.

But just because some people don’t want to get into Section 2 doesn’t mean that those who do are involved in abusive situations. It just means they have different expectations for their relationship. That, I suppose, is the take-away: It’s good to be aware of the possibilities of abuse in BDSM; but let’s not get crazy to where we view anything other than what we do as abusive. While there are some wrong ways to do things (ways in which people get actually harmed or damaged), there is no single right way. So find what works for you and yours, and go with it.

I’m submissive because of my mother’s what….?

That pinnacle of psychological asshattery intelligensia blames my mother’s uterus for me being submissive. Don’t believe me?

But here’s the intriguing part. In humans, the hormonal vagaries of prenatal development appear to cause a substantial portion of men to be born with active submissive circuitry. These men find sexual submission as arousing—or, quite often, far more arousing—than sexual dominance.

So…I’m submissive because my mother had some bad pussy chemistry going on?

I understand the article is nearly a year old, but I think it’s worth a comment, because, quite frankly, I find it offensive. It is basically claiming there is something biologically wrong with me because of some undisclosed chemical event in my mother’s uterus. And it isn’t just submissive men who are aberrations, but Dominant Women, as well (also, Dommes are now officially rare – psuedo-science proves it):

So if your boyfriend is wired to prefer sexual submission, then role-playing “The Rape of the Sabine Women” probably won’t solve your arousal problems… not unless you’re one of the even smaller portion of women born with active dominance circuitry—and your boyfriend plays the Sabine.

I will be the first to say that I do not think I have a choice in being submissive. It’s the way I am. I can pretend to be otherwise, but it is just a show. But can something as complex as my submissiveness be traced back to a simple series of chemical events? It doesn’t seem likely to me. Human behavior is much to complex to be reduced to that level.

It is more likely that the best that such chemical reaction – if it exists – would do is create some sort of predisposition. But just like arguments about genetic causes of behavior, something still has to happen to cause that predisposition to be expressed.

And how would this explain switches – people who dominate sometimes and submit others? How does it begin to account for the wide variety of submissive behaviors? Is a masculine type submissive like myself the victim of just a little bit of bad pussy juice while a sissy sub had a whole heaping helping of it? And why is it that most male submissives have no problem being non-submissive outside of their primary relationship?

Even the short list in the article is idiocy:

Such submission-wired men are fans of the equally popular, inventive, and varied genres of male submissive erotica, such as femdom porn, transformation fiction, golden showers, CBT (penis and testicle torture), and CFNM (clothed female naked men).

You know, there are submissive guys who are into none of that. Some of them are into just a little of it. Some take the whole raft of choices. Or maybe there are a multitude of chemical interactions en utero that cause each of these…that seems…unlikely.

What other sexual preferences are caused by uterine chemicals? Redheads vs. blondes? Big breasts vs. small? Dark skin vs. light? Blowjobs vs anal?

How would this chemical accident account for something like eating creampies? As far as I know, that’s not a typical feminine and therefore submissive behavior. Yet a lot of male submissives enjoy it.

Here’s a clue to how badly this whole article is biased – way down in the footnote:

In mammals, sexual dominance and submission refer to very specific physical actions (such as lordosis and intromission) controlled by circuits in the subcortex.

Okay – as the article explains “lordosis” is when a female rat arches her back to display her vagina and “intromission” is basically the male rat mounting her to copulate. But…do rats know of other sexual positions? Do rats 69? Do they do it missionary or rearing up on their back legs? As far as I know, they do not.

So what we have here is a researcher reading a female getting ready for sex as inherently submissive and a male readying for sex as inherently dominant. You know, if we consider an erection to be dominating and vaginal wetness to be submissive; then we get an even higher correlation to the whole “male is inherently dominant” thing, don’t we? But that doesn’t mean it’s so.

In fact, Norwegian rats (the kind we are talking about here) mating behavior is dependent on density. No word on whether or not that is due to some uterine chemical imbalance (seems unlikely). Yeah, female rats always exhibit lordosis and male rats exhibit intromission…but given that it is a fact of reproductive biology, can we expect anything different? If not; then can we accurately label one behavior dominant and the other submissive? I think not.

This is a big reason why I have this blog in the first place – the existence of male sexual submissiveness is treated like some sort of freak-show. We are caricatured and despised on all sides. Even the medical and psychological communities are loath to embrace us as models of a happy and healthy lifestyle. Even within the BDSM “community” we often feel like second-class citizens.

Until that stops, I’ll always have something to write about.

Unexpected beauty

This…has become surprisingly hard for me to talk about.

When Ferns announced that She was putting together some mysterious art project involving submissive men, I retweeted her announcement, just to encourage guys to participate. It was a pleasant surprise when She asked if I would send a pic, as well. After discussing it with Mistress Delila, I sent the one She requested, plus one more. That, I figured, was the end of that.

Except it wasn’t. When Ferns announced the project was completed and ready for viewing, I quickly clicked over to Her blog to see it. Then I sat there with butterflies gnawing through my belly while it loaded. When my pics finally floated by, the sense of relief was nearly overwhelming. But as interesting as that was, there was more to it than that. Unexpectedly, I found myself on the verge of tears.

The thing is – I never saw myself as being beautiful until I saw how Mistress Delila loved me because of my submissiveness. I didn’t think I was hideous or anything, but for forty-one years I just didn’t see anything special when I looked into the mirror. It took three and a half decades to understand that I am submissive, and several more years before I looked into a woman’s eyes and saw…

I saw a lifetime of not quite fitting in fade away into memory. It took me more than thirty-five years to realize that I am submissive, and six more before I found a relationship in which that submissiveness could be fully expressed. It was like I had been holding my breath my entire life and I finally broke through to the surface. It was like I had just been released from solitary confinement – a sentence served entirely within the confines of my own body.

I saw that I am beautiful.

I don’t mean that in a haughty, “look at me now!” kind of way. I simply mean that it had never occurred to me that ANYONE would find pleasure in simply looking at me, even after I’d been married twice. I’ve never had a hard body or the chiseled features that makes women’s hearts (or lower parts) throb at first glance, and I never will. But seeing the glimmer in Mistress’ eyes showed me that I don’t need them.

I feel like I’m dancing around the subject, and I really don’t know how to describe it better. Either you’ve felt beautiful because of the what you see in someone else’s eyes, or you don’t, I guess. If you have; then I’m sure you understand what that feels like. If not; then I hope you do feel it – and soon.

But I think there is a difference in what a woman experiences when she feels beautiful and what a man experiences. Men are not, as a rule, told they are beautiful. They are handsome or good-looking or…whatever. But not beautiful. We generally do not achieve that pinnacle of human desire that “beautiful” denotes. On the other hand, because we are told over and over again (through gender roles) that we CANNOT be beautiful, we don’t feel like we are missing out on it…until it happens.

The opening of the floodgates of possibility are one reason why I wept in Mistress’s arms. And those floodgates re-opened when Ferns posted Her artwork. It’s one thing for someone who loves me intensely to find me beautiful. It is quite another for someone who I only know through internet banter to include me in a project She has promoted as celebrating beauty. It’s like I was pulled out of the crowd and stuck in line with the Ms. America finalists. (Yeah, I know I picked out the pics and sent them to Her and knew about the project…but part of me still suspected that I’d not make the cut, so to speak.)

I also understand that part of what makes this so emotional is the baggage from my childhood abuse and neglect. Those long years of trying to be invisible still mark me. I understand that those messages were – and are – logically and emotionally wrong. I think it is a sign that I’m in the last stages of healing that allows me to receive the kind of adoration in Mistress Delila’s eyes…and also the admiration in Ferns’ eyes (if I can read that into the project).

I also know that part of what I feel is the loss of isolation. Submissive men are too often told (through gender roles) that they cannot openly display who they truly are. When it slips out, we are often subjected to derision and the bondage of gender roles is forced back upon us so that our authentic selves are damaged and left limping in solitude. This is why I started the Submissive Men group on Fetlife several years ago: Because I needed to know that I was not the only one like this. The relief of belonging to that group has done multitudes of good in helping me understand and accept myself. Ferns, whether She knew it at the time or not, struck a blow against that sense of isolation and solitude.

So this little project has moved me to these words, and beyond them to a place where words simply cannot exist. It’s a place of pure emotion and belonging. It’s a place of home and of being owned and adored. For that, I have to thank Mistress Delila for the photos that showed me Her gaze…and for letting me share them.

And, Ferns…to simply say “Thanks” seems trite and shallow and insufficient. But there is no other word that can convey the depth of what it means to me. So I will close with this simple word:

Thanks.

A rather masculine closet, nonetheless, is a closet

I decided to write this because of this post written by Emily Manuel (and tweeted by Charlie Glickman). That post is about Anderson Cooper coming out as a gay man and the responses from non-gay people. Ultimately, it’s about identity and having to decide if one should be in a closet or not.

I have to start by admitting that I really didn’t see it as very meaningful. I don’t feel either way about Mr. Cooper and I think that people should be free to speak about their sexuality if they choose and not to speak about it if they choose. In short, they should be in control of how much they disclose because…well, because it’s THEIR life. I forgot, just for a bit, that no one lives their life according to their own set of rules. We each have to deal with the society in which we survive, and that means identity minorities have to deal with what it means to be a minority.

For example:

Even now, Americans like Mister Cooper still live in a country where there is no national anti-discrimination bill for such things as employment and housing. There are still parts of the country where it is completely legal to sack someone for being GLBT, or to refuse them housing, where parents lose custody of their children after coming out. Even in areas where there are local anti-discrimination laws, these are often still ineffective – it’s easy enough for a bigot to discriminate without being caught.

That part hits home. A while back, it was suggested that all I needed to do to find the right Dominant Woman was to start attending “munches.” When I pointed out that this was tantamount to publicly outing myself, I was ridiculed and my sincerity was doubted. For some people, being able to live openly and authentically as a D/s couple is simply not a big deal. They do it and they have either decided that the consequences don’t matter, or they found that there were no consequences. For some of us, those consequences are potentially profound enough that we are, essentially, obeying a societal gag-order.

Forgive me for not having my source at hand to quote directly, but a gay rights activist once said that no gay man lives in a closet that he has built. It was built for him by all of the people around him, and then they shoved him into it and took away the key. The same holds true for many submissive men and Dominant women – more, I believe, than for Dominant Male/Submissive Woman pairings (ummmmm – Fifty Shades of Fluff?).

I don’t want to throw my sexuality in the faces of those around me. I’m really pretty private about it. But I don’t want to feel like I have to keep it hidden, either. I don’t want to wonder if my career could be threatened by how I live in a consensual, loving, and supportive relationship.

Anderson Cooper is helping me because he’s challenging the sexual identity stereotypes that run rampant through our culture. He’s openly gay without being effeminate or threatening or consumed with crusading for gay rights. In a way, he’s a quiet revolutionary simply because he is in a position to be open about his identity and not let it interfere with his professional life. We need more people like that.

I need more people like that.

I’m still here

I haven’t gone away…just dealing with other stuff for a bit. 

I want you to see me

First a short synopsis: In the movie Avatar, a marine is sent to live with a group of aborigines (it’s way more sci-fi than that, but that’s the core of it). While living with them, he learns that they see every living being as connected. I don’t mean connected in some abstract way, but in a direct and meaningful way. So when he kills prey to eat, it isn’t just an animal that is being killed – it is also part of him. Not incidentally, the way these natives say, “I love you,” is by saying, “I see you.”

There is a LOT of emphasis on the word “see.”

You can probably tell, from the title, where this post is headed. But let me pick up another diverse thread.

As far back as Plato (and probably further) there has been a conceptualization of the universe as being comprised of two realms. The first is the one in which we live – Plato called it a world of shadows, or shades. When we look at a table, we see a table – but it is not truly a table that we perceive. It is simply the shadow of what a table really is – it is the shade of an idea version of a table. The true archetype of all things exists in what Plato refers to as a world of Forms.

Greek philosophy isn’t really my forte, so I don’t want to go too deeply into that, but I want to borrow that idea and marry it to the Avatar example. There is, for each of us, an external person that the world sees. Maybe we are tall or short; fat or skinny, hairy or bald. But the world looks at us and see the same reflection we see in the mirror. That, however, is not the real us.

To truly see us, someone must know us. They must be connected to us in a direct fashion. It isn’t that they don’t see our flaws – that is simply a method of denial about who we are. It’s that they see our flaws, and see that those flaws simply cover what lies beneath. When they see us, they see our Form. They know who we truly are.

Mistress Delila sees me. She knows my Form. And She treasures it/me.

There is a feeling for the…relief of being truly seen and loved/treasured. It is a humbling and heart-warming feeling. It is so intense that it is terrifying. If I’d never felt it; then I’d never know it even existed; yet now that I do, I would do anything and everything to never have it taken away.

The last time Mistress Delila and I were together, I ended up crying in Her arms. I couldn’t explain why, I just exclaimed, “Don’t take it away from me!”

This is what I meant, Mistress. Please, don’t ever stop seeing me.

Approval given by Mistress Delila