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Padriag -> RE: How do you spot a Dominant or submissive? (12/20/2005 3:48:56 AM)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: Sardaxia
That is very interesting Padriag. I guess if a personality translates to a persons sexual orientation then that would be easy but is it not often the opposite or is that a myth?(bear with me i'm very green to this!) i.e..powerful company boss like to get his ass spanked whilst dressed as sissy-maid.
I think there is perhaps a certain perverse desire to imagine powerful CEO's (or your boss) in a pink tutu or being a sissy maid. There are certainly some cases out there where that is true, but also many where it isn't, so its not a useful generalization.
But, there are some useful observations we can make. One of the main ones is to watch the general behavior of said CEO, manager, etc. One indicator that they might actually be submissive is if they look to others for approval for things. This might be approval from their peers (golfing buddies, board members, their family, etc.) That is a form of submissive behavior. By looking for someone elses approval you are giving them authority over you... you're essentially asking them to validate that what you've done was good, which puts you in a subordinate position to that person. I once knew a very successful business woman, she owned her own company and outwardly most would have thought she was a dominant, over achieving person. But in getting to know her, not only was she submissive she had fantasies about being a slave. She also was very much her daddies lil girl and had spent her whole life trying to make her father happy, trying to win his approval. Her business, she'd done it entirely because it was his suggestion... she'd built an entire company just trying to make daddy happy. So when you are wondering if a CEO might be submissive or not, look at why they became a CEO, what motivated them to do so. If they were pursuing their own goals for their own reasons, they're probably dominant... if they were doing it to make dad or their friends or their golfing buddies or whoever approve of them, they're more likely submissive. But that just indicates a dominant or submissive personality, it doesn't mean they would be interested in or active in the lifestyle.
So in other words, submissives and dominants can be found in all walks of life... from CEO's to teachers to law enforcement to artists. But if you want to try to spot them in a crowd you have to watch their behavior, how they interact with other people, and what motivates their behavior. Which is what I meant in my earlier post about the role of perceptiveness... the intuitive ability to guess at someones motivations for their behavior by just observing that behavior. When I watch peoples behavior things that indicate a submissive personality to me is seeing someone who looks for approval for others, seems particularly concerned with others being pleased with them, or tends to want to be useful to others. "Others" could be one individual in particular (indicating the submissive may be particularly interested in that person), it might be a specific group (a peer group, a group of friends, etc.) or it might be anyone at all. Its not uncommon for submissive to only express that towards a specific group, a peer group for example, and yet be indifferent to anyone outside that group. What that indicates is that while they are submissive they seek the approval, etc. of a specific group or person, and thus only exhibit their submissive behavior to that "other." Submissives are not necessarily submissive to just anyone... and I believe there is a reason why.
Nietzsche wrote about what he called the Master Morality and the Slave Morality, and much of this deals with qualities of leadership and dominance (Will to Power). But this gives us only two groups... masters and slaves... what about switches? I drew on John Maxwell for my own explanation about his. Maxwell writes about degrees of leadership. He postulated that everyone possessed some degree of leadership ability and that we could theoretically rate this on a scale of 1 to 10 with 10 being the most leadership ability and 1 the least. He also theorized that weaker leaders would follow stronger leaders. Thus a 6 will follow a 10, but not a 2... while a 2 would follow a 6 or a 10, but not a 1... and a 10 would follow no one. I believe dominance can be looked at in a similar way. "Doms" tend to be high on that scale, say a 7+ while submissives tend to be lower, say a 4 or less. Switches then fall somewhere in the middle... say a 5 or 6. That means a switch could "dom" a 2 or 3 or a 4... but would submit to a 7 or an 8 or a 9. A submissive who rated say a 4, would probably be more selective about who they submitted to than someone who was a 1; conversely a dom who rated a 9 or 10 would have such a strong presence as to enable them to dom almost anyone to some degree, even other doms (at least theoretically, see below for two other qualifications that limit this). Although this gives us a more complicated model of dominance and submission I like it because I think it better reflects the reality of how things are.
There's a couple other important ingredients to that however... one is perception. If you have dom who say rates a 9 and he meets a submissve who rates say a 4. Theoretically he ought to be able to dominata the submissive. But this doesn't always happen. Part of the reason is perception. Suppose the dom-9 doesn't do a very good job of presenting themselves as who they are... maybe he's just too quiet, maybe he's too arrogant in his behavior, but for whatever reason he doesn't effectively express that dominance even though he possesses it. If the sub-4 doesn't perceive that dom-9 as actually being a dom-9... then the submissive won't respond to him as such. If instead he comes across as a mid-6, he isn't presenting himself as a strong enough dominant for the sub-4 to react too submissively.
The other ingredient is what might be called "reward." All submissives want something from a dominant. Usually its some form of approval and/or validation. Sometimes that may be a very specifical kind of approval or validation. For example, maybe the submissive is still trying to make dad happy... so she only responds to dominants that remind her of her father in some way. Thus by pleasing such a dominant, she feels on some level she's getting approval from that father figure. That same submissive, encountering say a dom-9 or 10 who did not remind her of he father at all might not react submissively at all because he doesn't have that necessary quality to trigger her submissive behavior. Sexuality can be part of this... a male sub-3 who is gay meets a female dom-9... but doesn't react submissively because he only seeks "reward" from male doms, although she is very dominant (and presumably expresses it effectively) she just don't have the right plumbing to trigger a submissive response from the male sub-3.
Complicated isn't it. [;)] But then that's why its hard to spot a submissive or a dominant... what makes us one or the other isn't simple and we aren't always dominant or submissive... sometimes we are only those things in specific situations or towards specific types of people. Its not just a matter of whether we have a dominant or submissive or switch personality, its also a matter of perception and what we seek.
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