Towards masculine submission

"It's not your fault. You are not the patron saint of submissive males."

This is true. I would be a terrible patron saint, starting with the facts that I am neither catholic or dead. Though the iconography and worship is pleasing. But my beatification aside, there is still something rotten in the heart of Kinksville. Submissive men are not getting a good deal, possibly through the reasons I've outlined before, but I also think there is more going on.

Several young men of my acquaintance have recently commented on their struggles to get a suitable dominant - go here for a beautifully articulated, and personal, online starter for ten. To be clear, I know people on all sides of the wobbly, variable kink / gender lines who struggle to find partners and as yet I have not found my knight in shining latex, but I'm (very) happy to enjoy the ride.

Submissive men do get play. The recent strap-on party was well attended by many male submissives who all (I believe) got a good fucking. Public clubs, such as Pedestal also caters to those tastes, but sporadic public play is not the same as finding a compatible partner, especially to a submissive, and I use the word specifically to mean "not a bottom". Submission means D/s and that needs a relationship of trust with an ongoing, supportive power-exchange, these are not easy things.

I think that male submissives struggle to find partners partly because of the conflation within our society of masculine/dominant and feminine/submissive. The structures in which we live encourages these behaviours. Worse, depictions of the alternative are often crass, stereotyped and deeply unflattering. Dominant women are Cruella de Ville, submissive men simpering curs. Power is exciting, so our Cruellas are still somewhat sexy, although evil, the submissive less so unless they are female because under these rules submission = feminine and feminine women are more attractive, right?

So much, so fucked up. So how do we unfuck it: how do we as a community of kinksters and as participants in human sexual explorations move beyond these problems?

As a lover (and fighter) of submissive males - canonisation pending - I'm going to propose a few ideas, please feel free to add your own. Note that these are not things that I think only women should do, but rather everyone - it's very easy to blame either the female dominants or the male submissives for this situation, when it is in fact the scene as a whole that creates and supports certain behaviours which limit the scope of male submission.

Male submission is masculine: This is the stuff that I find particularly hot, so this is a personal one. It's also the one I don't understand anyone not finding gobsmackingly attractive. I love hyper-masculine submissives. Alpha male is a known weakness of mine, those sets of muscles bowing to me and me alone. But that's not the only sort of masculinity I enjoy and there are all kinds of masculinities. Male submission does not begin and end with forced feminisation (we're getting into the "feminine is submission" area here). I'm working with Mr Smith at the moment on his anxieties over being seen as "weak" for submitting in public, especially seen as weak by other men. Literally emasculated. Which is a crying shame because I find nothing quite so manly as the ability to hand over that strength of body and mind to someone else. Me, in this case. So here's the deal - don't call male subs feeble and I won't set my army of buff, combat trained male minions to show you exactly how strong male submission is.

Support the sexy: Men generally don't get as many compliments on how they look. This can lead to generally feeling a bit uncomfortable about presenting as sexual or available, it can also lead to a failure to recognise themselves as visually attractive sexual objects. There is an assumption amongst certain corners that submission itself should be the attraction, regardless of such facile things as looks. Other, "twuer" dominants might subscribe to this purist attitude, my tastes are more superficial and firmly in the gutter. I like sexy men to look sexy, anything that increases the amount of sexy submissive men is good.

Recognise your prejudices, try something different: We all have our own predilictions, things that we think we like. Often we don't try new things because we assume that we won't like them. Assumptions are prejudices, and they can be wrong. They can hamper and curtail us. We are all prejudiced by the dichotomies outlined above. I'm not saying that everyone should do things they don't want to do, merely that preconceptions are a poor basis for selecting sexual partners. Give it a go.

Boy on boy bonus points: Women play with women. We develop skills, relationships and much more, from that play. It's how Mannequin and I got started. Public play is the availability advertisement, like it or not, and from the looks of things, women are much more available. In my social group, women play with women a lot. I do not see as many men playing with other men and given we are roughly 50/50 that's a lot of chaps on the sidelines. I feel like a sleaze (I am a sleaze) for suggesting it, but the fact is that if there was more boy-on-boy the world would be a better place.