Male Submission Art

A man with a shaved head wearing cuffs on his wrists rests his arms against stone tiles.

This black and white photograph was suggested by Val who said, “This is one of my favorite images ever.” I wish I knew why Val liked it so much, because while it is certainly beautiful and has obvious overtones of submissive intent—the man’s open palms, cuffs, and tilted head—very little here strikes me.

Is this man against a wall, or is he resting on the floor? Why can’t we see that clearly? Why must the “artistic” nature of so many images of submission, particularly when the solo model is a man, be about implication, mystery, or emotion rather than activity and actual physicality?

-maymay

A woman holds a man’s face as she leans in to kiss him, pressing his body against a wall behind him.

This black and white photograph was suggested by Bailadora. It looks to me like a fashion shoot of sorts, most of which seem to be filled with more pretense than sex appeal. However, Bailadora’s interpretation of this image is entirely too hot to pass up:

I think this picture is very sexy and while not overtly suggestive of submission, the positioning of her hand on his jaw plus the slight indentation of his skin from the pressure of her fingers suggest to me that she is the aggressor in this situation. In my imagination, she’s arranging him just so before leaning in to claim his mouth. 

-maymay

A man standing naked with an erection is chained against a pole with his arms behind his back and a garment of some kind tied across his mouth as a makeshift gag.

I have a particular fascination with chains when they’re used for bondage. Personally, more than any other material, being bound in chains can trigger head-spaces in which I feel like a slave, which is a sexy and perhaps oddly empowering feeling. Even more fascinating than my own response to such things, however, is the incredible diversity with which people respond to specific details about their sexual experience. To make a sexual encounter successful, you must act upon such details because that’s where everyone’s fantasies—and demons—are:

It’s important to understand what these details are before you access them, but it’s equally important to eventually access them; ignoring such details is tantamount to ignoring me. When I play with a partner, a sense of depth and meaning is literally impossible to achieve if I have not first talked (usually at some length) about the details of my desires and fears, and asked questions of my partner to understand the details of theirs.

You need to be consistently inviting these details into our talks and our play; merely acknowledging their presence—without acting upon them later—is not enough. I do not believe a meaningful relationship can be built without successfully interfacing over these details.

-maymay

(via pornotumble)

A man whose wrists are handcuffed behind his back stands with an erection as he is idly threatened with a firearm.

This photograph, sent in by Heliotrope and Zac, was a difficult picture for me to post here for a few reasons. I have some reservations about making this site a place that creates its own content because I want it to remain a mirror onto the rest of the Internet. That’s part of why this site doesn’t have comments: I’d rather conversations about the ideas expressed here spread to the furthest reaches of sexuality discourse instead of staying contained within this one domain. That’s also why I’ve never posted pictures of myself, as this photograph is, unless the photos were first published elsewhere.

It was also difficult to post this image in particular because it makes visible a lot about me, none of which is performative. The only inanimate object in this picture not intended for the scene itself is the garter around my right leg; I am not cross-dressing when I am wearing “girls’ clothes”. The handcuffs, rope, fake gun, and even the clothing Heliotrope is wearing (save her watch), are the parts of the picture that are dressed up, specifically brought out of our closets and toy boxes for play time. I feel like somehow the picture is almost too raw, too baring, too naked with the bit of everydayness the garter adds, and too unreal for others, too weird because of the fact that it’s the garter that adds the everydayness in the first place.

-maymay

A naked couple is having sexual intercourse in the missionary position. The woman is holding the man’s neck with her right hand as he props himself above her.

This photograph interested me because there are distinct signs of power dynamics to explore. Most notably, the woman physically on the bottom is gripping the man’s neck in what looks like a somewhat tight hold. Although many people might have a knee-jerk reaction and assume that this man is attacking the woman, my first instinct is to believe that she is controlling him, moving him toward and away from her in motions she enjoys. The thought of being made to move for the pleasure of a partner is intensely arousing to me, and this image instantly triggers that arousal.

Sadly, rape culture reactions overwhelm almost all public discourse about pornography. Heteronormative, pornographic depictions of sex are likely to trigger simple feelings of arousal. The leap to rape culture isn’t one that happens because of pornography but because of reactions to it, perhaps even more precisely to the specific overabundance of hegemonically skewed representations of what sex can be like.

The crux of the matter is that intentionality does not follow from appearance. Especially in sex, people should be free to be what they feel, not what they look like.

-maymay

chagrin:

(via biandbi, sociorehab)

A shirtless man looks into the camera, his wrists tied together with black ribbon.

I’m not certain whether this man looks like he’s trying to be defiant, mischievous, or something else entirely. Thankfully, there is just enough hint of a smile in his expression to make me comfortable posting this. If I had to hazard a guess, I’d imagine he’s trying to initiate play of some sort.

Initiating play, a scene, or simply some form of sex isn’t actually something I’m very good at; there are many negative connotations I’ve associated with actively pursuing sexual encounters in this way. However, it’s important to remember that pursuing a partner for sex and initiating sex with a partner are two distinct things. For a while, I’ve been trying my damnedest to learn how to submissively initiate play in ways that are satisfying for a dominant partner as well as for myself because (despite some popular beliefs) submissiveness has little to do with passivity.

-maymay

(via pornotumble)

A naked young boy is restrained on a circular platform in the middle of an audience of similarly-young and naked other boys. Bullet vibrators are attached to the restrained boy causing him to orgasm as the experience is filmed by a camera.

When I look at this picture, I’m reminded of how young I was when I became sexually aware: I knew I found bondage enjoyable at age 4 and discovered pornographic material on the Internet when I was 10. Far from being negative experiences, I credit having such physically detached and solely educational access to information about sexuality at this young age as being one the best, most self-affirming and positive experiences in my sociosexual development. It gave context and validation to otherwise unexplained urges I didn’t fully understand, and which no human was willing to talk to me about; it grounded me to the world in a time of my life when I felt least stable.

Nevertheless, I expect that this might be an extremely uncomfortable picture for some people to look at, almost certainly because the boys in this fictional drawing look like adolescents as opposed to adults. While there are undoubtedly dangers for younger people in a sexualized environment, I sincerely believe that hiding sexual information (including imagery) from youth is a bigoted, adultist act. There is an important distinction between sexualizing children and providing sexual information to them.

As Eileen recently said on a KinkForAll thread,

The reality is that sex education begins much earlier than 18 years of age, and […] I think it is personally important to provide said education in an informed manner.

I am first and foremost an autodidact—there are huge numbers of young people like this—so it makes sense that I was capable of gleaning the accurate information about sexuality from the mounds of misinformation the Internet spewed at me when I was a child in the 90’s. Not all people learn well in self-directed ways, though, so I challenge readers to carefully consider what they believe appropriate or inappropriate sexual information is for young people to have access to. As John Bell writes:

Adultism, racism, sexism, and other “isms” all reinforce each other. The particular ways young people are treated or mistreated are inseparable from their class, gender, or ethnic background. However, the phenomena of being disrespected simply because of being young holds true across diverse backgrounds.

[…]

Give young people accurate information about the way the world works, our experiences, relationships and sex, the contributions of young people to humankind, and other issues that interest them. Never lie to them.

Adults must bear in mind that youth are a crucial group of people for whom education and access to quality, reliable information is perhaps more paramount for the future than anything else. Believing young people are less capable than they are is not only a skewed perception of reality, but a disrespectful and fundamentally harmful thing to do.

-maymay

toonville:

SHOCKING!

A smiling woman bites the lip of a smiling man while holding her hand over his eyes as they embrace.

This photograph was suggested by Miss Calico, who said, “I like the smiles on their faces (his dimples!), and the passion in their kiss. It makes the way she is biting his lip and covering his eyes seem uncontrived, like a spontaneous expression of their attraction to each other.”

Part of me just wants to say, “Yeah, what Calico said,” and call it done. The other part of me wants to take the opportunity to remark on the importance of being confidently self-expressed. Who says submissive men can’t or shouldn’t fuck their beloved dominant partners? Who says jeans and a t-shirt isn’t fetish wear? Who says women are inherently better than men, or vice versa? Who says men have more rights than women?

When someone starts talking about a One True Way, remember that it’s nothing other than the one true way that works for them. Don’t let the self-righteousness of others stop you from finding your own true ways.

-maymay

A naked man with an erection lays on the floor and is bound in a simple rope harness.

Here’s an all too rare photograph suggested by psychoadept that I like for the obvious and simple fact that it shows a man enjoying being tied up (or so we might, but not necessarily, safely infer from his erection). The style of rope work in the picture is reminiscent of shibari, which essentially refers to Japanese-inspired rope bondage aesthetics. Shibari became increasingly popular in the Western BDSM scene during the 1990’s and quickly reached a level of fetishization arguably rivaled only by the even more popular fetish for Asian women.

Moreover, I observe an intense elitism within the ranks of shibari enthusiasts, just as I see similarly ridiculous elitism in many other areas of the BDSM community. Sadly, this and other BDSM elitist aristocracies unwittingly monopolized the very thing they claimed to want to make free: having sex, and how we do that. When reputation becomes more valuable than results, egos prevent progress.

-maymay

A young man is bound and gagged as a fully-dressed man stands over him tickling the soles of his feet.

There are some pretty obvious reasons why I liked this picture: the cute guy, the focus on the submissive partner, and the obvious effect that getting tickled is having on him. I also liked the simplicity of it, as though these two men were just fooling around and, yes, playing without any need for validation or pretense. It turns out such play, sexual and otherwise, is incredibly important for children and adults alike.

I wonder if some people don’t use tickling as an excuse for laughter in the first place. Many people have a crazy idea that submissive men should be silent, stoic, that they should “take it like a man,” which always seems to describe the epitome of terrible communication. Even more people believe that such behavior—a lack of connection to emotionality—is engrained in men’s genes, but it is in fact culture and social rules that work to stymie men’s emotional expression.

-maymay

mostlystraight:

[Via] manfever