squirrelfury
Posts: 44
Joined: 8/20/2004
From: Houston, Texas
Status: offline
|
Right, so I was asked (read: ordered) to write a 1,000 word essay on submission as I feel it relates to me. Since I took all that time (about an hour, total) and ended up with a bit more than a thousand words, I figured I'd post it here to toss about in the usual fun debate-y ways. Keep in mind, that as I feel I stress all too often in the essay, these are just my views. I don't by any means think they apply to everyone, so don't get angsty, huffy, self-righteous, et cetera with me if you read it and decide I'm an idiot. Just explain why I'm an idiot, and we can enjoy talking about it from there. *grins*
Submission Through My Eyes
Thinking on this subject, I realize that writing any intelligent sentence on it means that I can't really do more than define what my personal views are. There are surely other definitions out there, but none of them count, simply because they aren't mine, and I only live with me. That said, my views are constantly fed, changed, and refined by everyday experience, both within and without of the Scene.
Firstly, submission to me is not an all-encompassing thing. Meaning that while I identify as a submissive, I'm neither required to or obliged to be submissive to everyone. This couldn't work in life in any case, and certainly not in my current circumstances as an NCO in the military. So naturally it follows that not all of my day is spent pursuing the ideals of submission. Even outside of the military context, I don't spend my personal life, or all of it, submitting to everyone. It's an inspired feeling, not a general state of being, at least for me.
This is corroborated by my innate S/switchiness with males. While I generally (though not always) take a submissive role to females within the Scene, I inherently tend to gravitate more into a dominant position around other professed submissive men. There are of course exceptions, as some men have easily had me bottoming while some women have made topping the happiest course of action for me. Summarily, the best I can say is that I live always on a case-by-case basis with people, and try to avoid generalizing myself or them.
Getting into the broader sense, I still find it difficult to set a strict definition of what submission is, even to me. Suffice it to say, all that follows is from where I'm at and how I feel right now, on this day, at this moment. Tomorrow, who knows what will change?
Firstly, I feel that to be submissive is not to give up entirely (or even the majority of) my independence. Subsuming myself in the wills and desires and needs of another becomes then, to me, a delicate voluntary act. Being who I am and how I was raised, I find it impossible to completely lose myself in another, and always have that measure of self-awareness and self-worth that any proud, functional, and sane person should exhibit. So saying, to me a doormat is not a sub. There's no pleasure to be had in a doormat bottom from a Dominant, I feel.
Neither is a bottom a submissive. A submissive is a bottom, by nature (again subject, I feel, to the case-by-case way I live), but a bottom is not automatically a sub. I could be a masochistic bottom, a hedonistic bottom, or whatever, and not be submissive. In other words, the two aren't mutually inclusive. Granted, bottoming is no better or worse than being a submissive. Each role has its own calling, and as long as the person filling it is happy, who can complain?
I also neither endorse or even buy into the automatically fallible logic of people who identify as slaves. Slaves, by definition, are human property, with no choice ultimately in anything. In the context of the Scene, a "slave" has every choice, and the power truly resides in his (or her, though I think this fuzzy logic primarily tends to show up in men) hands. Safe words, safe signals, et cetera all guarantee that there is truly nothing that can be done to a Scene "slave" they don't allow. Thus, with choice, you lose slavery, and those who then identify as slaves just don't qualify. Most of the time men new to the Lifestyle seem to assume "slavery" is the default state for a non-dominant male.
After all this, all I've so far defined is what submission isn't. Let me move on to what it is, then, as I see it. First and formost, I don't believe the idea that submission is a gift. I've never felt urged to give my submission to anyone, because doing so implies to me that submission is separate from yourself, and outside factor. I don't buy this logic. It's internal, as irrevocable part of you as your genes, your eyes, your hair color. Granted, the latter two can be and often are masked, but underneath the dye or the contacts they remain the same. Therefore, all that's left as I see it is to say that submission is something one person can inspire in another. I speak of course in the context of B/D/S/M, not referring or alluding to the outside pressures of bullying bosses, tyranical teammates, et cetera. If the seeds of submission are in someone, then there is likely a person who can evoke them, nurture them, and give them life. This has always been the case for me.
To expand on statements I made near the beginning of this piece, submission does not equal a general state of being. I reiterate that I do not submit to everyone, or even most. I do, however, respect them in their dominance, as long as they take it as that, the respect of a colleague following a different path to the same destination. I have the potential for submission in me, and so I rely on them to cultivate it, and help me to strengthen it. As dominants, this is their role, I feel. But there exists no obligation to do so out of hand. Only through mutual understanding, respect, and informed consent can such be achieved.
Also, submission can be a moment-to-moment, day-to-day thing. I feel that we can and often do get what we were looking for from our dominants, and then what we look for and need changes, and we "outgrow" them, for lack of a better word. Few things are truly now-and-forever, and so it is almost inevitable we will move on in time from what and who we are now. Some move on to other people as sources of the steadying, guiding hand of domination, while others move on to become switches or dominants themselves. There is neither shame nor wrongness to this. Where we so often go wrong is in our failure to communicate our shifting feelings to our dominants (and sometimes they to us), and so one party or the other feels trapped and can lead to acting out that ends up hurting both. A few quiet, courageous words at the beginning can save much heartache at the end. I've tried to learn this lesson, though admittedly I've stumbled a few times.
On a side thought, we're all familiar with the concept of the professional dominiatrix, coloquially known among the Lifestyle as a proDomme. What I often wonder if there is such a thing as a professional submissive. I think, by the patterns I follow, that this can't be so. It's not something that can be inspired by pay. At best, one could be a professional bottom, willing to accept what others pay to heap upon you. Submission, however, is a private service, not a public one, and as such the idea of an exchange of goods, services, or money for it renders it null. Maybe not meaningless, because rarely is anything we're called to do meaningless, but certainly null in spirit.
So, to summarize, I can safely say this: Submission is. Period. My flavor of it isn't the same as anyone else's, as it is unique to the person who experiences it, and to the dominant who brings it out. Tomorrow, I might have changed my feelings, or have had them changed, but for now, I have laid them out as concisely as I am able, with regards and respects to the idea that even trying to trap my varied views and thoughts of it on paper fails to capture what could be understood if we knew how to get truly inside another person's mind.
I am, you are, submission is.
What more need be said?
_____________________________
~Squirrel~
I wept for I had no shoes, then I met the bastard who took them. Who's crying *now*, fetish-boy?
From a word to a word I was led to a word, from a deed to another deed.
|
essay - 
Profile
New Messages
No New Messages
Hot Topic w/ New Messages
Hot Topic w/o New Messages
Locked w/ New Messages
Locked w/o New Messages
Post New Thread