On Male Submissive-ness

rachelrabbitwhite:

This is from a thread on the comments section of on my piece on male sexuality.

Tomio Black comments:

“I think male submission is much more common than anyone even starts to believe.

As a sexually submissive man, I have to deal with gender [masculinity] issues simply because submissiveness is equated with femininity. 

Where I have had trouble is my submissive nature needs a woman’s permission to advance beyond flirting. So if she wants me to kiss her, she has to take the lead. It just doesn’t work for me otherwise.

I haven’t actually noticed any actual submissive men in pop culture, unless one counts the stereotypical ‘yes, dear’ hen-pecked husband – which is as much a stereotype as anything else out there. There are often shy men depicted culturally, but shyness is not submissiveness – shyness often disappears with growing intimacy.

It is also necessary to separate submissiveness from ‘being comfortable with showing emotion.’ I was socialized as much as any other Western male and I still struggle with my emotions.”

Read more / Join the discussion on male sexuality here

Photo: Mona Kuhn

Comment is edited for flow.

so abuse isn’t tolerated in your BDSM community, you say?

(tw for sexual abuse)

maymay:

Presented without comment:

kittystryker:

Check out the case of John Hauss, who picked up a 24 year old sex worker, who agreed to some light bondage. Instead, he brought her blindfolded to a place where he tied her up, shocked her with a cattle prod, plucked out her pubic hair to see if it hurt, paddled her all over her body, used a catheter to pump her bladder with liquid til she worried it would burst.He ignored her safeword. He refused to listen to her say no. And you know what? He had been a part of the Seattle scene, a wallflower, for a decade. A DECADE.

And how did one member of the Seattle community respond?

When the subject turns to John Hauff, Master Ray’s face hardens. He’s never met the man, he says, pausing to sip from his glass of milk. He knows only what he’s seen on TV and heard on the radio. Because he doesn’t have all the details, Master Ray cautions that making a judgment “would be improper and foolish.” Still, he says, there’s something about the young woman’s story that troubles him. She acknowledges negotiating up front for a certain amount of bondage, Master Ray points out. She got in his car willingly, and they drove to his place. There was no threat of brutality in the car.

“It wasn’t a kidnapping,” Master Ray says. “It was a negotiated sex scene between a hooker and her client. And somewhere along the line, she crossed her own panic line and cried ‘Help!’ “

As for her texting of Hauff’s license-plate number, Master Ray points out that this is standard operating procedure in the fetish community, and doesn’t necessarily mean the young woman was unusually leery of Hauff. “We call that a ‘safe call.’ It’s perfectly legitimate and normal,” he says. Once she’d revealed the text message to Hauff, Ray continues, “What happened next? She got dressed. He took her back where she belonged. He dropped her off. There was no threat. No murder. No ‘Keep quiet or I’ll come get you.’

By the way, sex workers ALSO have safe calls, for just this reason. And catheters do not “light bondage” make.

Kind of horrified? Oh, it gets better, folks, WAY better.

During a bondage session in which the rules have already been agreed upon, a dominant partner’s saying something to arouse a submissive partner is as common as flirting, Master Ray says. If, during a bondage scene, Master Ray were asked by a submissive he didn’t know if he planned to kill her, he would read it as a sign that this type of talk turned her on. “So I’m going to smirk and say something like ‘We’ll see,’ or ‘Maybe later,’ or ‘Only if you’re not pleasing to me, only if you don’t satisfy me,’ ” explains Master Ray. “Call me a smart-ass, but I’m going to say something that is going to elicit a response from her.”

When the prostitute asked Hauff if he was going to kill her, Master Ray says, “We don’t know what tone of voice she used.” Her question, he says, could have been understood as a clue that this form of “danger” was a turn-on for her. “And the worst part of it is that between the time it happened and when she finally decided to report it, her feelings, her thoughts, can change,” Master Ray says. “Shame can set in. And then he gets punished because now she’s feeling bad about it.”

Still, Master Ray acknowledges, Hauff’s alleged use of such techniques as bladder manipulation and electric shock, which are at the outer edges of the bondage-play repertoire, give him pause. “If he did spring this on her, then he crossed a line,” Master Ray says. “That would not be tolerated in the [fetish] community.”

-Will John Hauff’s Gorean Bondage Fetish Set Him Free?, Seattle Weekly

So when you tell me “oh, it couldn’t happen in MY community” or “we don’t tolerate that in my local dungeon” I want you to think about this. Think about why, exactly, it couldn’t or wouldn’t. Here is a perfect example of what I’m talking about- Master Ray blames her for her own assault. And his response is enabling, excusing, and justifying Hauff’s. Read the article further, and see how when these things happen, the community is “devastated” or “crushed”. Waaaaah. Imagine how the people who are raped and abused and broken and left to pick up the pieces feel.

That is unacceptable and I absolutely will not sit back, as a kinkster and a sex worker, and listen without protest.

And don’t you dare try to pass this off on Hauff’s just being a Gorean. Master Ray doesn’t identify as one and he doesn’t seem to think there’s much wrong with what happened. So fuck him too.