Male Submission Art

A nude man lies on his back on a bed with crimson sheets, holding his arms over his head. He wears a studded leather cuff around each wrist, and a black ribbon tied around his erect penis.

This photograph was sent in by Felixpath, along with a very apropos description:

This is a pose I’ve always found intensely erotic: the submissive man laid bare, his body holding no secrets for the one who controls him. As a switch, I can easily picture myself standing over him…or in his position. Both are equally enticing. The eager, willing submission is what I like; a closer look reveals that his wrists don’t appear to be actually restrained. He is happy to bare himself and submit.

The subject of this picture happens to be a very close friend of mine, one who finds a great sense of self-identity in being submissive. Dominance and submission are built on trust, and it makes me happy that he trusts me enough to share this, and that he gets enjoyment out of displaying himself to others.

Despite obviously being very “out,” I have a certain amount of apprehension about baring myself too bare. It’s very, very difficult to be naked—both physically and metaphorically—in situations where one feels unsafe. And, while I strongly believe that being out of the closet is a safer place than being in it, there is an enormous difference between being “closeted” and being “private.” That’s why I’ll never accept the closet, and will always demand that everyone have a right to privacy and the right to define what that means for them.

Thank you, Felixpath, for sharing such positive thoughts with me (and everyone reading), and thanks also to the exhibitionistic man in the image you sent! :)

-maymay

Two feline anthropomorphic humanoids have sex with one another. The larger of the two has spotted fur and is bound and gagged while laying on his back, penetrating his smaller partner on top, who is ejaculating.

This picture was sent by Alcibiades, who posted this drawing on their own blog along with a portion of the blog post as the suggested description, which is well worth a read.

I like furry porn a lot, as I’ve always been attracted to anthropomorphic ideas, especially when they manifest as sexual fantasy. Some of my favorite erotica has involved inter-species relationships, not because I find the thought of physical sensations with other intelligences necessarily pleasurable, but because of the humbling idea that such interactions demand a sensitivity to cultures, concepts, and physiology that is unfamiliar. This idea of remaining sensitive to difference is central to my sexual interactions with human partners, especially when we are new to one another. As I discussed on This Week In Kink episode 8, I often make it a priority to have “exploratory sex,” because I know that sex with someone I’ve never had sex with before is going to feel different than it ever has before, and that sex changes as we age. I get off on the novelty.

Furry facts aside, Alcibiade’s contribution is also incredibly on-point:

I’ve noticed in several gay communities online (nearly all of them also being furry communities, for whatever reason) that sub/dom is becoming a synonym for top/bottom[…]. For example, this picture was posted in the “subs coming handsfree from being fucked” thread on fchan.

It’s true that being the penetrated partner has always had submissive implications for me. […] Of course, at least part of it was because of ambient cultural memes about penetration: surely any guy that wanted that had to be submissive.

Yet it was also because of the simple mechanics of the acts as they had been presented to me so far: as far as I could tell, the penetrating partner controlled the action. He or she was generally in an upright, dominant position, with the penetrated partner in a vulnerable, inviting position, ass high in the air or on his or her back. While this is what the culture tells us what penetration should look like, it doesn’t have to be so.

Reading Alcibiades’s words, I can’t help but think that’s precisely what the woman on top sex position can be for. Moreover, penetrating can be an act of submissive service, and blowjobs can be dominant. Alcibiades’s point is well made, and I would perhaps only add that blurred distinctions between “top/bottom” and “dom/sub” are not good for the clarity of your relationship’s communication.

-maymay

(via physicalsophistry.blogspot.com)

A physically aroused young man sits on the ground, stripped and bound to a fence behind him. Semen drips down his face, chest, and from his anus as another person takes a photograph of the moment using a cell phone camera.

This drawing turns me on because it contains many elements of my sexual fantasies. However, I seriously reconsidered posting it tonight because it shows an incredibly volatile subject. Interestingly, despite all that’s depicted here, the bondage, the indications of rough, likely homosexual sex, and the intense power imbalance, it’s the inclusion of the cell phone camera that turns this fictional picture into a potential political nightmare. I’m talking, of course, about “sexting.”

Personally, I enjoy rough sex involving consensual use of restraints and, yes, photography. While restraints were simpler for me to enjoy, being photographed makes me a little uncomfortable to this day because, by and large, a man’s value is measured in everything except his sex appeal. To be considered as potentially beautiful, or at least pretty enough to be visually desirable, seemed so impossible for so long that even a hint of such attention felt more likely to be putting me at the butt of a joke than giving me a compliment.

In the hegemonic gender paradigm, what a man cannot be, a woman is, and so when I was sixteen, my then-girlfriend and I set up a few private photo shoots in which I photographed her naked. This is not uncommon, abnormal, or unhealthy. It was, as much of young people’s behavior is, simply a necessary exploration of our own bodies, feelings, and desires. It was partly through experiences such as that one that I developed my sexual personhood, and my girlfriend developed hers.

Increasingly, however, young people’s rights—and particularly their sexual freedoms—are being whittled away by outrageous, paternalistic, and contradictory claims. As I said at KinkForAll Washington DC,

In December of 2006, the Denver Post reported on a Utah court case in which two 13 year old heterosexual adolescents were convicted of sexually molesting each other. They, too, are now both registered sex offenders. This story showcases a horrible double-standard of youth sexuality: at 13, you’re too young to be capable of consenting to sex, but apparently you’re old enough to consciously decide to sexually molest someone else.

Moreover, at such young ages you’re also apparently old enough to be charged with producing and distributing child porn of yourself, even when the pictures you take are not even close to the explicitness shown in the fictional drawing at the top of this post. So, in what is poised to be an extremely important legal case, A federal appeals court in Philadelphia may soon decide whether [teen girls] can be prosecuted under Pennsylvania child pornography laws merely for appearing in a “sexting” cell phone image, the Post-Gazette is reporting:

In 2008, then Wyoming County District Attorney George Skumanick Jr. threatened to prosecute the girls unless they attended what their lawyers called “re-education” classes and wrote an essay about why sexting is wrong.

Yesterday, before the three-judge panel, a lawyer for Mr. Skumanick said that was a legitimate effort to protect the teens from themselves and potential child predators, and compared it to other state laws—like motor vehicle rules—that regulate teen behavior.

That claim outraged ACLU lawyer Witold J. Walczak, who argued the prosecutor cannot accuse the girls of being pornographers under the guise of protecting them from pornographers.

“We’ve been mystified how anyone can look at these photos as pornography,” he said. “These photos are not even close calls.”

(Emphasis mine.)

America is tragically embroiled in more than enough wars right now. Stop putting our kids on the front lines of the war on sex. Stop treating them like the criminals you claim to be protecting them from. Stop destroying their future by forcing them onto sex offender registration lists. And, please, stop shaming American children to their own deaths. Just, stop.

-maymay

(via orz.4chan.org)

A man lays on the floor on his stomach in front of a partially dressed, smiling woman smoking a cigarette, who spreads her legs open in front of him.

This photograph looks like a scan from a magazine or other dead-tree media and seems to have a watermark pointing at this Russian-language blog (although I have no idea why). It caught my eye because of how wonderfully it captures the interactions that go along with consensual sex, and cunnilingus in particular. Rather than giving us “a gynecologist’s view” with a closeup of the woman’s vulva, it includes most of both partners’ bodies, connecting not only to the sex act itself but also to the people involved. Even better, the camera angle simultaneously focuses on the man’s body in this position, yet we can also see the woman’s satisfied, genuine smile very clearly.

The simple fact that these people are obviously enjoying themselves makes this picture infinitely sexier. Since I’ve always absolutely loved giving my girlfriends oral sex, I really appreciate that she doesn’t seem to have any issues with her partner’s head between her legs. Sadly, however, many women do, because everything from national television programs, to countless products in the supermarket’s feminine hygiene aisle, to their workplaces reminds women that their value is sex appeal, as defined by hegemonic feminine ideals.

Without genitals of the right smell, taste, or color (for which dangerous and ineffective labia dye can be purchased), many women fear that there may be something “wrong” with their genitals. Tragically, this idea so strongly infects some women that they are willing to risk forfeiting health and sexual pleasure with surgery like labiaplasty to buy desirability from the very system that made them feel undesirable. This vicious cycle is nothing short of sexual consumerism at its worst.

-maymay

eagerlicker:

oldfart:

beautysub:

via img-d.photosight.ru

A young blonde man, bound at the wrists and gagged, kneels on all fours as a fellow man anally fingers him while smiling broadly.

This drawing was suggested by psychoadept some time ago. I like it mostly because it seems the artist intentionally drew the pair having a lot of fun. The wide smile on the face of the top doesn’t strike me as sadistic, just happy. The bottom, for his part, seems to be enjoying the activities equally; his raised ass, open legs, and concerted look mimic my own when I’m starting to really get into it.

It’s a real shame that the simpler pleasures of sex, like, y’know fun, are so often hijacked and masked under layer upon layer of solemn ritual or other obstables. Sometimes they’re hijacked by the sorts of things you’d expect, like misguided morality or genuine ignorance and a lack of education. Other times they’re hijacked by things you wouldn’t expect, like sexism from people who ought to know better, or undeserved elitism.

Either way, sexual freedom is at the heart of what it means to be human, and happy. Sex and reproduction is, for obvious reasons, at the very core of life. I honestly can’t understand how so many people think actively restricting others from loving who or how they love, whether by stopping others’ marriages, preventing them from getting reproductive healthcare, or actively criminalizing consensual sexual tastes is in any way just, or why more people don’t deem such restrictions totally, unacceptably outrageous. Sometimes songwriters say it best:

If you’re not angry,
you’re just stupid,
or you don’t care.
How else can you react
when you know
something’s so unfair?

As Ani DiFranco’s lyrics point out, maybe some people don’t care. But if you care about your freedoms, the best way to protect them is to give others the same ones.

-maymay

A young man reclines on a couch in the sunlight, smoking a cigarette. He is naked except for wearing heavy leather boots, a padlocked leather cuff on his right wrist, a collar with an O-ring, and a cockring at the base of his semi-erect penis.

I’ve been enamored with this arresting photograph for some time. From the markers of a collar and especially the single leather cuff around this man’s right wrist, it’s clear that he’s presenting as a submissive or a bottom. And yet everything about his body language speaks of an assertive, willful presence. His pointed gaze is insistent, bordering on demanding, and his unabashedly open pose screams shamelessness. After all this, I find the addition of a cigarette almost too much, as though the photographer didn’t trust the viewer to recognize the playful “bad boy” tone without it. Nevertheless, I think this picture is gorgeous.

It’s also particularly incisive because pairing submissive signals with such an imposing presence is rarely seen and even less often understood. The idea that submissive people (of any gender) can and should assert themselves in their submissiveness is, infuriatingly, heretical in both heteronormative and alternative communities. The idea of a submissive person as purely passive, or receptive—as, in the case of men, “womanly” and “less-than”—so thoroughly overwhelms hegemonic society that those of us who are submissively-inclined struggle to claim satisfaction in the face of our own desire for unfairness.

Recently, Thumper wrote a must-read blog post highlighting his struggle with this situation:

I was suddenly struck by something very profound. Something I’ve danced around and paid lip-service, but have not really owned up to. Something that has, oddly enough, left me somewhat shaken.

I am submissive.

Seriously, I know. Isn’t that ridiculous? Like, it says that right up there in the blog description. “Submissively inclined.” I’ve known this. But no. It’s different now. I’m not submissively inclined. I am submissive, period.

Considering the hegemonic masculine ideal as dominant, I posit that personal realizations of this sort are more difficult for submissive men than for women. By way of explanation, Thumper continues:

I admit to carrying around a prejudice against submissive males. […] It’s like I’m the white supremacist who just discovered the black grandmother he never knew about or the uber-masculine father of 12 who suddenly figured out he was gay. This is all horrible and all nasty and sad and not anything I’m happy about, but I see now that I’ve never fully embraced my submissive nature because I don’t especially like the archetype as it exists in our culture. In fact, there is no archetype. No role model. Nothing positive to look towards. Just layer after layer of stereotype and ridicule and cultural indifference. And now I know I’m one of them.

Submissiveness, and especially submissive men, are depicted as so undesirable by so much of contemporary culture that it’s no wonder “submissively-inclined” men like Thumper (and me, for a long time) refused to own the label. Moreover, common perception of what it means is hampered:

I’m very self-centered. […] You can’t be a self-centered submissive, right? That’s not actually possible, right?

Of course it is. There’s a distinction between self-centeredness and submissiveness; they’re apples and oranges! You can be a self-centered donor to charity, for example, because you get tax deductibles. Being submissive has nothing inherently to do with selfless service, an oft-cited misconception. Both dominance and submissiveness is entirely about satisfying one’s own sexual desires, just like any other sexual orientation or inclination. Submissive or not, we all deserve to have what we want.

-maymay

Update: Several people have written to me questioning whether or not this picture is entirely real. Closer examination shows that the model is wearing a left boot on his right foot. That’s disappointing, and it seems all of the leather accessories are Photoshopped. Everything I wrote regarding submissiveness, however, still stands.

derekisme:

strange get up … but very sexy boy

A blindfolded man cuffed to a bedrail lays motionless, his lips parted in anticipation.

This picture is the one used by Wikipedia’s article on male submission. I don’t think I’ve ever seen it before, but I really like it. I can feel a certain empathy with the model because his slightly parted mouth and his tense hands betray his excitement.

Having not actually seen the Wikipedia article about “male submission” before, I eagerly read through the short page but was disappointed to find that it was written in much the same One True Way® tone that most of the depressingly “pathetic” blogosphere uses for the topic of submissive masculinity. Although a valiant attempt, the article discussed “levels” of male submission and needlessly focused on activities and negative gender stereotypes such as “sissification.” So, of course, I made some edits to improve the article.

The 30 minutes or so that I spent revising the article may seem like too much wasted effort to some people at the same time that it may seem like too little effort to others. This observation highlights a beautiful thing: the freedom to define personal value. I spent exactly the time and effort I wanted to spend on the work—no more and no less—and therefore contributed and acquired exactly the value I wanted from the experience.

For me, 2009 was a year of massive personal upheaval, as though a wildfire swept through my life and left me fresh and raw. It hurt, but like all natural processes, it also provided an incredible opportunity for rejuvenation. Our lives, like Wikipedia pages, are instantly editable in whatever way we want, whenever we want, and have far-reaching impacts we can’t always see instantly. Now, imagine what kind of world we would inhabit in 2010 if you, your friends, and all the people who look up to you understood that their opportunities today, like mine, are greater than they’ve ever been before.

-maymay

On a bed, a blindfolded man is gently bitten on the lips by a woman who has slipped her hand underneath his unzipped jeans. Bright red lipstick marks line the man’s torso.

This picture caught my eye because the evidence of what came before is wonderfully obvious. Kissing is excellent foreplay, and the positions of the models, now necessarily different than when she kissed him, pulls me into thinking about what they’ll do next. I also love the playful smile glimmering on the woman’s lips and the open-palmed, relaxed position of the man’s arms and hands above his head.

Despite the penchant many people think a submissive guy like me would have for only somewhat more intense sex, I genuinely like calmer and more comfortable encounters, as well. This shouldn’t really be a surprise, since sex can be deeply emotional. Just as I enjoy being penetrated, I enjoy penetrating as well.

It’s unfortunate that so many people are eager to limit and restrict what you may find enjoyable merely by telling you that you “shouldn’t.” Please think about that as you give and receive gifts this holiday season. Everyone needs and deserves the freedom to want what they want to want.

-maymay

ireensarrows:

apocalips:derekisme:(via secondstar05)

A smiling man wearing only close-fitting underwear pulls an arm-length glove off the hands of a woman seated near him.

I love this fun picture! It was suggested by Wendy Blackheart, who wrote:

I like the playful tug of war that seems to be going on with her gloves. At the edge of the photo, you can see the girl laughing, and the boy seems to enjoy it as well.

I find that when I’m truly having fun, I rarely think about what’s just happened or what’s to come next, and that’s the impression I get from this photograph. It’s kind of wonderful that there are no clues as to whether these models’ playtime is just beginning or if it’s coming to a close. The part of this image that provides the most insight, to me, is the fact that the man is wearing leather cuffs, but only his left wrist is buckled into the restraint while the other buckle dangles loosely at his side; they’re letting the toys be just toys.

The fact that both models are obviously having a good time makes it easy to engage with the activity—whatever it is—depicted here. It’s in our nature to enjoy seeing other people happy and, despite the misguided pathologizing beliefs many folks hold about sadomasochists, this basic principle of human empathy is no different for us than for people who like to fuck differently. Indeed, if you’re not enjoying yourself, then it’s probably time to go find something else you will enjoy.

Sex, just like the rest of life, is supposed to be fun. If it’s not, then it’s up to you to make it fun. Not only are you missing out on great sex if you don’t, you’re not doing your sex partner any favors by pretending to be enjoying yourself when you’re not.

-maymay

wendyblackheart:

bendmeover:

chagrin:Photo by Valeria Lazareva