Male Submissives

Other men may condemn them, but how do women feel about men who want to be dominated? Today I'm thinking again about masculinity and how it's dealt with in media representations of kink, and pondering why a submissive man might appeal to some people...

When women are portrayed as submissive in popular media, the reaction broadly seems to be one of two things: "that’s hot" or "that’s offensive." When men are portrayed as submissive, the reaction is more likely to be one of pity or derision.  I recently attended a play party and got chatting to a male dominant while a male submissive was strapped to a nearby spanking bench and flogged by his female dominant. The submissive was young, slightly built, and wearing only a skimpy G-string. The dom I was conversing with admitted he found it hard to watch another man being dominated, because he felt the male submissive was letting their side down. “I want to say, ‘be a man!’” he admitted, although he went on to say he respected that submission made this particular man happy. In her essay "Maid To Order: Commercial S/M and Gender Power," Anne Mclintock points out that "S/M theatrically flouts the edict that manhood is synonymous with mastery, and submission a female fate." Indeed, the media fascination that results every time a powerful man is caught associating with a dominatrix implies an ongoing curiosity about BDSM’s power to invert gender stereotypes .