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Padriag -> RE: MAKING someone Submissive (3/21/2008 4:52:33 PM)
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I already, briefly, answered that. To recap, who we are is born out of our needs and how we learn to have those needs satisfied. To extend my food example, if you learned that the best way to get food was to hunt it, you'd tend to go hunting to find food. If you learned growing up that the best way to get food was to beg, you'd tend to beg. The rest of human behavior, though complex, operates on that same simple principle. We adopt behaviors because we have learned them to be successful strategies in securing that which we need or desire. Some do that by being bullies, assholes, etc. Some do it by being submissive, passive, compromising, etc. Some do it through self reliance, independence, etc. But being the complex creatures that we are, so are our behaviors. We might learn that being aggressive is successful in having one need met... and that being submissive works for a different need.. producing someone who is neither wholely submissive nor dominant nor anything else... but an amalgam of various behaviors learned at different times in their life in response to different needs. Complicating that even further, all this changes... we are living beings, and all living things are in a constant state of change. Our needs change, and thus our behaviors change as we adapt (however quickly or slowly, poorly or successfully) to those changing needs and circumstances. Who we are today is not exactly the same as who we were yesterday, nor who we will be tomorrow... none of us is ever the same one day to the next, though the difference may be so miniscule it passes notice.
A submissive can learn to become dominant... a dominant learn to be submissive... a vanilla learn to be either... all of the above learn to be switches... and endless permutations thereof. But I suspect that rattles too many people too much for them to ever accept. It tears away the boundaries, the nice neat labels so many seem to love to argue about, leaving no more boxes to sort people into. To paraphrase the Matrix... the trick is to realize that there is no box. Suddenly being submissive or dominant isn't so special... cause heck, anyone could learn to do it. It strips away all that romanticized, mysterious drivel that gets heaped on with a laddle. People don't like that... they like their labels, their illusions and delusions... they want all this to be special, to somehow be better, to be more... its part of the fantasy and romanticism so many hold about BDSM. So long as people insist on clinging to their supositions without rational evidence to support it, these discussions will continually go round and round and never ever get anywhere. There have been hundreds of discussions on this sort of topic already, there will be hundreds more... my guess is they'll all end the same way the previous hundreds did.... we'll agree to disagree... at best.
To return to the original question once more, consider this simple example. I tend to inspire submissive behavior in others, they're responding to my own nature, my own character traits. There is a clerk at a store here, she's quite cute and I rather fancy her. I flirt with her a bit whenever I shop there. Recently I was going to ask her out, something I'm sure she has been waiting for for weeks. Unfortunately the night I intended to ask her out, I found out she smokes... something to which I am allergic and don't tolerate. But not one to just give up I turned it around. I told her, while still flirting, I'd take her out to dinner anywhere she wants when she quits smoking. So now she's trying to quit. Apparently she does want to go out with me (who knows why LOL). To get what she wants she's learning to adopt a change in her behavior, or more precisely to give up a behavior. In doing so she is also exhibiting submissiveness towards me... not precisely in the BDSM sense, she's not begging me to tie her up... yet. But one thing can and often does lead to another, given time and building one behavior, one conditioning, on another... this could get quite interesting... or not... it is after all an imperfect process and will likely have imperfect results.
I see this sort of change all the time... and one of the most blatant are the submissives who suddenly "discover" their dominant side. They didn't discover anything... they began adopting a new behavior because the old behavior was no longer effectively getting a need met or they discovered new effective way of getting a need met. Maybe it was because of a dominant who broke their trust one time too many, maybe they had an experience with another submissive and learned through that experience that behaving in a sexually dominant manner worked for them too, could be an very long list of possibilities. But they all have two things in common... experience and perception of that experience. Its just people changing, learning, growing, exploring who they are and can be... and some few learning they can be a lot more than they thought.
But then I always liked what Edison said,"If we were to do all that we are capable of, we would astound ourselves." He was right.
But like I said, its just my opinion... however strongly and firmly stated it may be... take it or leave it as you please. [;)]
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