June 6, 2007...12:18 pm

My Hero

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So the other day someone mentioned in the comments of this post that submissive men might not be the most likely people to save the world seeing as how submissive men are no very superhero-y. How are they going to fly with that testicle weight attached?

But of course, here is where I smile sagely at you and you realise I am already three laps ahead. Submission is heroic. More than that *all* heroes are submissives. All heroism is submission. They are the same thing. Superheroes might as well be called super-submissives the way they carry on with their self sacrifice and their getting tortured so often anyone would think they had it written into their contracts.

(And you know, deep down in the irrelevance retaining database I like to call a brain I am sure there is some connection between Eric Stanton (who I like a lot more than you probably would expect me to) and - I think - Spiderman that would make me seem awfully well informed if I could remember what it was.

(Ah! Of course Wikipedia has now superseded actual remembering of anything ever.))

But the point is simply this. Male submission and the archetypal heroic narrative are basically interchangeable. But somehow submissive men (and, I guess, a lot of people in general) seemed to have been tricked into thinking submission is basically feminine; that submissive men need to create feminine personas to make their submission make sense, get I touch with their feminine sides.

Which is bollocks.

Male submission is not female submission. Does not need to be. And the thing about female submission is that it is so fucking everywhere. Draped about the place. I see about twenty trillion-gazillion pictures of women tied up every day just surfing about. And I am not going *looking* for distressed damsels. I am not surfing porn sites. I just surf sex blogs and kinky community sites - where usually the first thing that seems to have been done for this ‘community’ is to assume everyone is a male dom. I don’t know about you, but I really do find that very welcoming and community-y.

Tied up women are like the default image for kink. Oh yeah, you’re kinky, you’ll be wanting some pictures of tied up women then.

But, hey, don’t be disheartened, because sometimes, for extra fun in amongst all the tied women pics their might be a picture of a woman doing some tying! Yay! Tying up another women! Um…

Why? Why!? WHY!?

Homophobia/misogyny/heterosexism/patriarchy, darling, that’s why. Here’s the shitty little deal. In kink porn everyone looks at the sub. They are the ones with the fancy bondage and the pained expressions and the fireworks up their arses. If you’re a dom you look at the sub and imagine you’re topping them, if you’re a sub you look at the sub and imagine you *are* them. Everyone’s gaze falls naturally onto the sub. Now, here’s where everyone comes unstuck trying to make F/m porn. No pornographer on the face of the earth can get his pretty little head around making porn where we naturally look at the man rather than the woman. Therefore (stay with me) it is actually completely *impossible* to make F/m porn.

So they hardly bother. (And when they do the point of focus tends to go a bit wangy.)

Instead they mostly make F/f instead for femdom, ’cause that’s kind of the same (if you ignore me and anyone like me) and then you have dom woman stuff but – wahey - the sub is a woman and we are all looking at a woman and - phew! – heterosexuality (that delicate flower) has been saved once again from the ravages of men looking at other men and feeling slightly aroused.

(Psst - Tell you what, girls, we’ll file all the naked men under gay porn. You can go there and the straight guys will know not to look at that. That okay? I mean, it’s not offensive or anything to mark all porn featuring men as homoerotic. Like women don’t fucking exist as viewers. Fuck. As if women’s only role is to be *in* the porn. You utter cunts. God, sometimes, I really do hate everything in this misogynistic wankfest that calls itself beedeeessem)

And, of course, I am only complaining about this because I forgot for one tiny moment that in the big wide world of kink, dom women are rare and special and precious to the point of being the completely fucking irrelevant to everything underclass of kink. (The automatic revolving door for dom women is just there on your left, btw.)

But, you know, what with that being the situation - with so much femdom porn being full of F/f - who is surprised if male submissives have got confused and ended up thinking that, oh, if I want to get tied up, I better do a bit of gender fuckery.

Hold it right there, mister.

Because what you’re about to do. It makes no sense. Forget the fact that 90% of the images you see of dom women are of them tying up other women – that doesn’t mean a fucking thing about your submission. You don’t need to feminise yourself to submit - outside or in. That isn’t what submission is. That isn’t a more acceptable face of submission that you can wear to avoid being gimpy boy.

Also, you try and submit like a woman and it ends up making no fucking sense.

Witness the difference between male doms dressing their subs in slutty lingerie and female doms doing the same. With Mr Sir the expectation is that he is clearly making his girl wear hooker-wear because it gets his dick hard. Hooker-wear does indeed get men’s dicks hard – that kind of being the point of why hookers wear it. But when a woman humiliates her man with same slut-o-wear how is her sexuality being served?

Men, if you want to dress like a slut, (i.e you want to dress like your desperate screaming need for sexual humiliation overwhelms and degrades you – and really, please do) dress like a man-slut, damnit. Wear a white jockstrap and big black boots and a collar and shave your head and get some bits of metal slammed through your strategic points of interest. Yeah, you will look kinda gay. That is because gay men know how to sexualise men. In fact, if you look gay you’re doing it right.

Male submission is a masculine thing. You don’t need to be anything but you. And you know that thing you have between your legs that gets hard and demonstrates very visibly (and sometimes wetly) that you are aroused by your degradation. Yeah, that. Oh, baby – you had me at hello.

But joysticks aside, male subs are heroes. Everything we are ever told about good wholesome pure beautiful masculinity - everything women are taught to fall in love with about men - is right their in the bloody beating heart of male submission.

There isn’t a story of heroism ever told where the hero wasn’t a gorgeous fucking male submissive. And I’m going to fucking prove it.

The only difference between male submissives and every hero of every story is the part where the woman gets turned on by what my hero does. Because, as we know the part of every story where the man gets tortured and the woman gets wet has been erased in case male submissives find out we exist and start feeling okay about themselves. This would, unfortunately, destroy the world faster than China’s industrialisation.

Submissive men are heroes. Every time they take off their clothes. Which they should do both frequently and often.

Look, Prometheus stole fire for humans and was, in retaliation, tortured daily for 30,000 years (sm). Atlas holds up the fucking sky on his shoulders (predicament bondage).

And then there’s Jesus Christ. Where to begin? Sacrifice? Submission? Dying for all our sins? Nails? Hot jewish guy in pain and mostly naked? My god, my god, why have you forsaken me? He safewords on the cross! I fucking loved Sunday school.

Do you see what page I’m on? Every story of heroism. From then to now.

Dr Jack says to the evil ‘others’ in Lost – let my friends go and you can do what you want with me.

Angel goes back to fight in the Ring even when he could walk free because he can’t leave the other demons to their fate.

Goddamnit, Indy, where doesn’t it hurt?

And Elizabeth has covered Jack Bauer in detail. (She’s an inspiration – that woman.)

Oh yes, men suffering, every hero. It’s not that big a step from here to men locked in CBs, tied up in stress positions, clamped and weighted, begging for the strap, the cane, the gag, hurt and cut and burned and bruised and sweating. Kissing me with his face covered in blood and piss (-mine and his one day, his and mine another). Because that is it. It. That is why this stuff is so delicious like molten sugar and gold. What man doesn’t want to show what a man he is? Does what to demonstrate his machismo *like* *this*?

Male submission has a big image problem. Because how else are women failing to go nuts over men who are brave and gorgeous and fucked up and bloody when they clearly love it everywhere else but kink. Hard and hurting and desperate to prove how deep his love goes?

And the images we use to represent kink might have something to do with that

45 Comments

  • This is so right-on-the-point, wonderful. The observations you’ve made have often crossed my mind as well, it’s so great to see it all put into words. Thanks for writing it, I hope your passion and eloquence help to make some kind of seismic shift in the status quo.

  • Uhmm, nope, don’t buy it. Sacrifice Submission

    In all your examples the sacrifice is being done for a greater good beyond the individual, not for the greater pleasure of a partner and themselves.

    However I will buy Submission = Courage

    You have to be strong to submit, not weak.

  • I am the greater good

  • dammit girl, you are right on as usual. I want to shamelessly reproduce this to about 1000 people I have met that don’t get it. But I’d ask for permission first of course and send them back to read the rest of your site too. So can I, can I, huh? Can I put this in my online journal?

    You rock.

  • Pure wisdom.

  • Que Sera

    Of course. I *want* people to know this

  • This post is fantastic!!

    I wouldn’t say I agree all heroism is submission,because I confess I hate the words dom and sub;for me,there’s only sadism and masochism. So,I’d agree to a certain extent if you say all heroism involves a relative amount of masochism.

    But,Bitchy,I really don’t imagine those names you referred being submissive. Prometheus and Jesus were rebels. Prometheus was punished due to his defiant act,he did not offer himself to be tortured,nor did Jesus. Perhaps they’re slightly masochists,but submissive?

    Anyway,I prefer the anti-heroes.But that’s why you’re a sad/dom and I’m not.

    Your evaluation of porn is just so damn perfect!
    You just said it all.

  • Thanks

    I like Prometheus and Jesus the way I see them. What? I’m *wrong*? Were you there?

    I’m going to talk about Odysseus soon. Guess how I see him?

    God, I love the smart ones

  • Damn Bitchy! This is so GOOD!

    my favorite line…..

    “You utter cunts. God, sometimes, I really do hate everything in this misogynistic wankfest that calls itself beedeeessem”

    Best ever!

    And I have been thinking the same thing for a very long time…Hercules is such a bottom…practically BEGS for it.

    I can’t wait for your take on Odysseus…I have a soft spot for him…of course that could have something to do with Bean…

  • Okay, let’s back up.

    First off, I agree with this:

    Male submission has a big image problem.

    I’ve been saying the same thing myself for years - it’s one of the horrors of many men have about being “outed”. Our culture makes fun of submissive men; in the media they are always played up for laughs. Nothing seems to be funnier than to show a man in bondage, unless it’s to show him being humiliated in bondage.

    But this raises the question of why so many self-identified submissive men seem to get so hot and bothered out of exactly those things that you decry. If I wrote a few posts about being cuckolded while wearing my wife’s panties, my blog hits would double. For some reason, men continue to seek out what you’re calling feminized submissiveness; blogs and websites that cater to this are insanely popular. However, they’re insanely popular with men, not women. How the hell did that happen?

  • I am completely convinced.

    And I love your Jesus image…. perfect.

  • Interestingly, this porn problem you have is shared by the ubiquitous straight female submissive. (That’d be me.) All the porn is pictures of us, true- BUT I DON’T LIKE WOMEN. Dammit, show me a big handsome manly MAN. The male doms are never the focus of the porn so we’re left out to dry (literally)- nothing but a disembodied cock with some chick on it, or an ugly milktoast longhaired out of shape and usually out of frame man.

    Porn needs MUCH more men. I demand equal opportunity sexploitation. In fact, we should start mainstream- the cheerleading team for men’s sports, and a bunch of shirtless hot men at the WNBA.

  • Er, not to say the problem is the same. Just that I feel ya, sister, bring on more men in porn.

  • Yet another post that says it all and says it superbly.

    The essence of the hero is surrender or submission. it is sacrifice.

    And yes, I have often been completely turned off by Dominant Women who want to dress me in lacy frilly stuff.

    If that makes her wet, then okay, but more often than not it seems to come from some preconceived notions.

    It seems as fundamentally flawed as the idea that Dominant Women should be shrieking harpies yelling insults at a man. It’s always far more compelling - and far more a demonstration of dominance - when the opposite occurs, when things are done simply and in a calm tone of voice.

    Thanks for saying what needed to be said, yet again.

  • I hear you Bitchy…..

    I’ll go you one further. If you go to Google or any other search engine and type in bondage, or bondage images, all you will get are women tied up by men. That’s it. Oh , sometimes you’ll get women tied up by other women. So bondage actually means “tied up women”…

    If you type in “male bondage” you will get taken to sites or images of a flabby pasty man with a collar on, or a dress and bad wig, laying on the floor in front of a bored domina and no actual bondage to be seen.
    So male bondage means “non tied up ugly man kneeling on floor”…

    Apparently no men like being tied up.

  • Kate

    I saw this on your Troy post on your blog the other day.

    Sadly, we might have to have some kind of dominatrix smackdown because I don’t buy Bean as Odysseus for a moment. But then I have been in love with my Mr O since the age of 10 and some bloke from Sheffield was never going to cut it as my forever hero.

  • Radial

    You know, I never thought about that. I kind of assumed female subs would be drowning in porn and just jolly themselves along imagining that they are in the same predicaments as the women.

    And I am so glad you said you don’t get turned on looking at pictures of women. Sometimes in kink it feels like straight women aren’t actually allowed to say that. I have been chastised before (while making the complaint I make above) for not liking looking at women like that makes me some kind of receptacle of misogynistic evil. I’m just straight. It happens. I like boys. I like cock.

    And you’re right though, male doms are completely absent. The double blow of everyone looking at the sub, plus women being the focus of all porn means that Mr Sir is more a facilitator that anything else.

    In fact, I have noticed in my travels that on some websites the male dom appears to have been replaced by some kind of machine. Seriously, I don’t know if that is really about some kind of kink or just a way of keeping men happy by making sure no men intrude on their porn imagery and make their dicks fall off.

    Feels pretty much like a slap round the face to women who get off on some butch snarling hunk with a grouchy expression and his big forearms crossed in front of him as he snarls, ‘Hey baby, daddy’s home.’

    I think my problem is mainly this. BDSM acts like its so welcoming and sex-positive and open to all comers and all that. But it’s not. I don’t expect miracles, but some acknowledgment we have a way to go.

  • Paul

    And the truth is the best thing to type is ‘gay bondage’. This I know. As I’m sure do you.

    And much as I love guy/guy stuff it really pisses me off that I can *only* get what I want from gay sites. There’s something really fucked up about that.

  • Tom

    (God, I’m all over the place here. Sorry. I have a thing for doing nested comments but I am bit scared it will make my blog explode. I am such a ninny.)

    I don’t know the answer to this one. Why do men perpetuate this stuff. And it’s true - this blog gets more search engine hits from ‘forced fem’ than anything else.

    They only answer I have is the one above. That men are fed this notion over and over that submission is feminine. That that is the quickest easiest way to go down. And then the subs who read here and talk to me overwhelmingly want to submit like men. Maybe there are different kinds of submission. Maybe a lot of men are using submission to achieve something else.

    I just want what I like to have a space. I guess some people would think that my ideas of masculine submission are pretty nichey. But I don’t. I think this is the answer.

  • Yes, male submission and female submission are indeed different. A man submits differently, a woman submits differently. But submission by default is associated with women, and men who submit are feminised. Great post. I too hope that people do get to know about this someday.

  • Thanks. Yes. Me too.

  • Why do you think it turns one on to see men in pain? What does it make one want to do? There is a psychological symptom that someone told me about once: some mothers hurt their babies and make them cry or give them fever just so that they can cure them and experience the pleasure of taking care of them and feel maternal. I don’t know if this is too far-fetched, but do you think it’s a derivation of that? Like, hurt the person so that you get the opportunity to give them pleasure and then soothe them with sex?

  • No I don’t think it is anything to do with that. I enjoy the hurting and I tend to be the one who needs soothing afterwards - often about enjoying the hurting.

    I do not know why.

  • Who do you think it’s Mary Magdalene’s reincarnation,Bitchy :D?

    I’ve to agree with Radial: I focus on the sad/dom male,not in the girl. Which is hard,because men are rarely there. It’s more of a creative thing,imagining a bloke when there’s none.

    Male dom’s fic ( I prefer written porn to visual porn) is more or less the same. A more or less repetitive and boring speech about what sub women think/feel ( because we’re all the same) but never the man himself,the author speaking about what his male character thinks/feels.
    When such fiction is written by women,it also ignores the dom.But,in both genders,when we have F/f porn, the dom’s thoughts appear.

    Why is the man always absent?! I mean,I’m already a masochist,so I’d like to fantasize about the sad/dom instead.

  • I read a lot of SM smut. I have never read anything from a male dom’s POV.

    I would really like to.

  • Although, I have heard very good things about this guy’s stuff from a trusted source.

    And this guy is nominated for the erotic awards with me. Not sure if he is a dom though

  • Monmouth is a prostitute,and,in certain occasions,he was asked to act as a dom. I admit he was rather hot doing it ( I like such style) but he only describes ” I did;she did”.

    I’m still reading the other bloke.Thanks :)!

    I don’t know if it may be considered porn,or even SM,because it’s plainly sick,but there’s always the infamous book who gave a film with Hugh Grant, “Bitter Moon”,by Gérard Brach. But,sincerely,it isn’t exactly what I was meaning.

    Speaking about your concept of hero,I’d daresay Mel Gibson’s films may seem attractive,lol.

  • Thanks for the linkage, Bitchy. Praise from said quarter is praise indeed.

    I won’t claim my (smut/porn/erotica, choose a title, any title, I just call it ‘fiction’ ;) is BDSM; it does though tend toward the violent, and in some cases, noncontest-ish. I’ve found that writing fetish erotica, even if it’s for my own fetishes, is dull. What I prefer is to tell stories about characters, and if the characters happen to hurt each other in sexual ways, it’s handled in the same way you’d handle any other sexual narrative. It’s not the goal of the piece, it’s simply part of the pathway.

    It’s a rare writer, I think, who can write fetish-driven erotica and not tend toward the silly. Because in fact, no matter how much we love our kinks and fetishes, there’s something inhenetly silly about them. Even, you know, mine.

  • Dom men writing about non-con is quite interesting. It seems to still be quite taboo, even now when quite a few sub women writers are writing about rape fantasies (aka forced submissions aka ten million other ways to avoid saying rape). Men are still not really allowed to be too public about that turning them on. (Fuck - it turns *me* on.)

    I will read your stuff (but not now it’s verrry late here). And I’m sure fetish has been done well, but I forget where… I’ll get back to you. Maybe.

  • Is that why I love Angel so much? You’re right, submissives save the world. So say submissive men save the world, well, I need my Buffy-types too! But then, no one wants to see Buffy suffer, only when. We *want* to see Angel suffer. Is that machismo or misogyny?

  • ps

    I have had a man tell me his fantasy was to be raped by a woman. Yum. Unfortunately I did not get to that before he had to go.

  • Ilovehimsomuch. I mean, David Boreanaz *helps*. A lot. Obviously. But D-Bor is pretty almost misses the point…

    …That whole I-want-to-suffer, I-can-never-atone thing. Aw fuck.

    Miss that show. Miss that man’s pain. I hope he’s still suffering. Somewhere.

  • I’m late. I seem to be running late everywhere the last couple weeks.

    Where were we.

    Heroes. Yes. Thanks for the link. Apparently more than few people are interested in my, um, perspective on Jack.

    Sigh. Jack.

    One of the questions that came up about Jack on my blog was, well, isn’t he really a sadist and not a masochist…..it’s true there are hints in the show that Jack may, possibly, enjoy inflicting pain. (Not sure I agree, but it can’t be proven.)

    Masochist or sadist, doesn’t really matter… a hero is about service to a greater good, damn the personal cost. Not hard to take the imaginary leap to service of *me*, nope, not at all. I don’t really care if he enjoys inflicting pain or receiving it, just as long as it’s all about me.

    Concept is all very sexy and very masculine at the same time, which of course you have said. We really need to fix this male sub image problem, one hero at a time, or something.

    I rambled. You wrote beautifully, again. Thanks!

    E

  • Well Freud thought masochism was a kind of sadism. Or perhaps I’ve got that wrong way around.

    And guys who switch are hot

  • OMG I miss that show so much too! Didn’t you love the scene where Wesley was crying about having hurt that ultra-Virgin-symbol-girl? I used that again and again…for um…nothing. Angel/priest/Jesus, can you write more about that? Especially about Jesus as a sub? Brilliant interpretation of Jesus’ famous cry to his God. As far as what really happened goes, Jesus might not have been a sub. But we can play with the archetype all we want of course! Plus, you gotta love a St. Andrew’s Cross.

  • I wonder what would happen if you nailed Angel to a cross. Because

    (a) crosses burn his skin
    (b) he doesn’t need to breathe

    Welcome to my brain

  • You’re brain is sofingsexyhot! Angel on a cross? Um, where can I read your fan fiction? And don’t tell me fan fiction sucks, because it does, but if you wrote something about Angel repeating the Jesus myth I’d die of ecstasy!

  • I love fanfiction.

    Unfortunately, you can only read my fanfiction in my brain

  • When can I schedule a vacation?

  • Dear Bitchy:

    Oh good, you know about Angel. When I found your blog a few weeks ago I spent some time looking all over YouTube for that clip of Angel in the Wishverse with Willow playing with him to send you as a thank-you present for having such an awesome blog. Because Angel suffering in chains is pretty much the best thing ever. Sadly I could not find it!

    Instead I shall point you to this Star Trek fanvid. Just in case you are not an enormous geek, the thing to know is that once every seven years Vulcan men go into heat and get all crazy and have to have sex or they die, and in the old Trek episode “Amok Time”, the Enterprise was rushing to get Spock home so he could get laid before he went crazy.

    Okay that didn’t make anything sound sexy. Sorry! The vid is better, I promise.

  • I *heart* Angel. In fact, I would probably say David Boreanaz is my absolute physical ideal.

    Nice vid. Sad ending. I’m not hugely into K/S - but this was very nicely done. Thank you.

  • I have to say that I like dressing men up in panties and skirts, as long as it’s humiliating and they don’t like it.

    As soon as they’re fetishing about it, it turns me off. It’s SUPPOSED to be a way to make you suffer, assholes! Stop jacking off to it! I want to make you feel uncomfortable, off balance, awkward, and shameful. Then it’s easier to make you CRY.

    So, leave the fugly polyester ruffle ass panties at home. Really.

    My two cents.

  • Bitchy, if you get me a pic of a sub with “mydungeonspace.com” written on his back, I will SO get it up as a logo on mydungeonspace.

    If he’s dirty and grungy and wearing an eye patch, all the better.

  • You have a girl now, don’t you?

    I might be able to do that, you know. I have some men. They have backs.

  • Yeah, you will look kinda gay. That is because gay men know how to sexualise men. In fact, if you look gay you’re doing it right.

    I think I love you.

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