Sherlock Holmes

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 .