Male Submission Art

A mostly naked Little Red Riding Hood keeps the Wolf, a naked man with animal ears, on a leash as he eagerly performs cunnilingus on her.

I like this picture a lot because it reminds me that so much of people’s shared vocabulary comes from sources outside of their own control. In many variants of the Little Red Riding Hood fairy tale, the (male) Wolf violently threatens the (female) Little Red Riding Hood, however in this one it is the girl with evident control over the Wolf. I particularly enjoy the fact that the Wolf’s cheeks are flushed and his mouth dripping, as though sexually pleasuring Little Red Riding Hood is a primal need of his.

While reading fairy tales such as Little Red Riding Hood as a boy, the overtones of masculine aggression and feminine vulnerability were not lost on me. Although children today most often hear only one variant of this fairy tale (and most other fairy tales), these old stories have undergone major adaptations dozens of times throughout history. As Catherine Orenstein writes in her book, Little Red Riding Hood Uncloaked, [I]nevitably the tale has been a vehicle for imparting sexual ethics in keeping with the social fabric of the times.

Thus, if there is a lesson in all of this, it is that such social fabric has been constructed (and is continually reconstructed) time and again, whether in society at large or in subcultures; if a social construction does not work for you, then you have the power and the right to make one that does.

-maymay

ireensarrows:

petitchaperonrouge:

plainnasty:

all the better to EAT you with!

A young man kneels on the ground in a forested area, his wrists loosely tied with a single thick rope to the stump of a tree.

I think this photograph, suggested by Dorinda, is beautiful (albeit with sorry-looking bondage) and I like the vintage feel it has. I particularly like the shape of the model’s back, ass, and legs; the curvature of his lower body looks feminine while the trapezoidal frame of his upper body looks masculine, and I appreciate this aesthetic mix immensely; it’s pretty and manly.

Much of the time, people refer to the mixing of genders as androgyny, but that word has etymological roots pertaining to being devoid of gender, of being genderless. While valid and attractive to me in its own way at times, this is subtly different from what I find most attractive: the presence of mixed genders. Rather than being half a woman (50% feminine) and half a man (50% masculine), why can’t we be all of both at once? A person can still have 100% feminine and 100% masculine wholes within themselves.

-maymay

Five naked men in various poses inhabit a fantastical courtyard underneath arches while clouds darken the sky outside. Sculptures rife with historic imagery also fill the space.

This picture was suggested by Wendy Blackheart, who wrote in saying “If I had a harem, I’d like it to be something like this.” While certainly attractive, this picture feels a little morbid to me. I don’t know exactly why, but sex harems in my fantasies are usually brighter, with an almost (but not quite) resort-like feel to them.

The harem fantasy is a common one, and it can take a variety of forms, but I think it’s safe to say that it’s centered around the idea that many submissive people exist for the pleasure of a smaller number of dominant ones. Although I’ve had fantasies that involved larger numbers of dominant people with fewer numbers of submissive ones, this second variation might be less common for me and I don’t seem to hear about it as much from others, either. Sometimes I feel that, when it comes to numbers of people, “submission” is singularly-focused (my submission is directed towards one dominant partner) while dominance might be multi-focal (a desire to dominate multiple people).

However, I’ve been questioning that assumption. It’s likely that negative past personal experiences have colored my view, and informed my fantasies. Now that I’ve lost the first relationship involving D/s play I’ve had, began exploring on my own, and started another very different relationship with D/s interplay, perhaps it’s time to reexamine these ideas.

-maymay

wendyblackheart:

Erotic Oddities - (via pornotumble)

A naked man is bound and hosed with a jet of water directed at his genitals.

This photograph, suggested by Bailadora, reminds me of one of the ways I used to masturbate as an adolescent. Although I didn’t have the bondage gear, I did have a very adjustable shower head. Laying under a jet of water directed at the frenulum of my penis was a deliciously slow way to bring myself to orgasm.

I also like this picture because I like water a lot. Not only is wet skin aesthetically pleasing, it also feels good. In that sense, water is a toy like any other might be. Unlike floggers, whips, shackles, or other so-called “gear,” water is usually free.

-maymay

A naked man on his hands and knees bows very low on hardwood floors.

Here’s a picture that, in my eyes, shows a simple yet very satisfying moment. Maybe it’s the calm before the storm of play time, or maybe it’s a moment after play. Either way, I recognize the pose as one that I’ve often felt a strong desire to be in, to use as non-verbal communication to express submissive feelings such as “I’m yours.”

Many sexuality communities constantly bring up the importance of communication and most of the time this means talking. However, while verbal communication is often less ambiguous than non-verbal communication, non-verbal communication comprises the majority of interaction among people. Paying attention to what your partner is doing, and how they’re moving, is therefore just as important as paying attention to what they are saying.

-maymay

leplumeau:

hypersexualgirl:

servile

Humbly craving my Mistress to be Her servant

A collared man lays naked in the grass and mud at the feet of two classically femininely clothed people, one of whom seems to be holding his chain leash.

I think this photograph is exceptional because it remains focused on the submissive man in a way that most imagery depicting the fetishes shown here do not. In this picture, I see elements of “clothed female, naked male” (CFNM), pet play, and mysophilia (fetish for dirt, mud, or filth). While editorializing about pictures I post here, I walk a fine line between describing erotic humiliation of the sort I view as perpetuating damaging stereotypes about submissive men and the sort I view as promoting an accurate and healthy awareness about us. Of course, I have my own biases.

I am an almost obsessively clean person. When I can, I routinely take showers twice a day. I dislike feeling filthy and I enjoy the sensuality of cleanliness, which is why I love it when I’m made to be dirty. Not because I’m less or worse, not because I “deserve” it—that’s all ridiculous self-loathing; that’s the damaging stereotype. I like this picture because I like to be dirty. Part of why I like being clean is because it’s a great excuse to get dirty again.

I falter here, because it’s an area in which I understand almost nothing about the reciprocal role. As Bitchy Jones concludes:

here’s where humiliation ends – destroying the man you desire without destroying your desire along with it is hard.

-maymay

mostlystraight:

(via derekisme)

A young man is shackled and leashed to spreader bars at both his ankles and wrists.

I like this photograph a lot, and I don’t imagine it’s hard to see why. Of particular note, I love spreader bars, and what’s especially cool about these is that they appear to be homemade. It’s relatively simple to buy thick wooden dowels at a hardware store like Home Depot (which is really a fetish superstore without a pricey markup!) and then drill eyehooks into the ends of them. I miss the set I used to have.

More interestingly, of course, is the man’s expression. He looks pained and distressed. Often, I am confronted with explaining my desire for experiences in which I am pained or distressed to people who don’t share a desire to have those experiences. This is a hard thing to do, but ultimately it boils down to a misunderstanding. Rather than merely consent to such things, I actually ask for them, I want them, and I’m happy to get them.

If, hypothetically speaking, my partners always refused to interact with me in a way that distressed me physically because they believed I shouldn’t want it, I would be sad. Passing negative judgement on my own wants would not be exerting dominance over me in “classier,” or “more intelligent” ways. They would, in fact, be denying me the pursuit of my own happiness. They would be an obstacle to my freedom, not a savior of my skin. They would not be giving me what I “deserve better,” for they would be mistakenly imposing their own will on me. Submission is not about relinquishing one’s own desires.

This may sound strange to some, but never whipping me when I want to be whipped, never tying me down when I want to be bound, never painfully prolonging my sexual pleasure when I want to be teased, might be an emotionally harmful thing, equivalent to the ways withholding loving sexual touch from a partner could be considered a harmful act in other aspects of a relationship.

-maymay

gaysexnearby:

Stop crying, bitch.

A naked man in a locked cage sits, looking at his own genitals, which are themselves locked inside a CB-2000 male chastity device.

Chastity play—often discussed under the guise of various different yet subtly different names including teasing and denial (T&D), orgasm control, and more clinically erotic sexual denial—is a very core kink of mine. It feeds right into feelings of being lovingly, sexually controlled, and offers numerous additional twists with which to incorporate yet other kinks. When combined with pet play, an activity makes me feel owned and taken care of (as most people care for and own their pets), the two kinks together inspire feelings of primal sexual desire and even competence in me, of virility and a positive acknowledgement of lust.

Sadly, many of the associations people make to chastity play, and male chastity in particular, are extremely disturbing. By and large, people sometimes think about chastity play as a way to instill impotence. When used on men, many write about deadening masculinity and forcibly replacing it with femininity, but little of that appeals to me and none of it is universally true. As this Tickleberry gallery says, being chaste doesn’t mean that you surrender your masculinity.

I do wish this picture was a little better, perhaps with the boy on all fours and without the doors behind his cage. (I mean, seriously, what idiot makes doors in a house inaccessible by keeping a large cage right in front of them?) Nevertheless, I decided to post this because it’s not often I see a photograph so evidently incorporating chastity play, and even less often one that simultaneously touches on pet play themes. I’d love to see more of them.

-maymay

(via soumis)

A naked man hangs an American flag against a brick wall already covered with various classic American paraphernalia.

Today, July 4^th, is America’s Independence Day holiday. All across the United States, people are celebrating principles such as freedom and justice. Reading the Declaration of Independence, I was struck by a part I never examined closely before:

[A]ll experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security.

As the authors of the Declaration of Independence acknowledged, people are often willing to suffer rather than to attempt to change for the better. Change is hard and no change is harder than a mental paradigm shift. As you know, today I describe myself as a submissive man, but this was not always the case.

So painful and so abusive was imagery and ideology of submissive masculinity to me as a teenager that, in spite of the awareness I had of my submissive and masculine desires, I refused to take on that label. Easier, I thought, to suffer the pretense of something that wasn’t really me than to make myself visible to others. What’s more, how would I go about making myself visible in the first place? Neither my submission nor masculinity were things I could accurately portray to other people—and it’s still a challenge to do this.

Indeed, I struggle with that almost every day. I often feel like I have to “pass” as a very different kind of man than the one I want to be. So do others. In a comment on Bitchy Jones’s recent post, Tom Allen shares similar feelings:

I’ve been thinking about how I hate to be associated with:

• sissified sissy maids who insist on talking about their sissy clitty, and
• exceptionally out-of-shape subby men.

I’ve become so squicked by these stereotypes that I’m letting my sub/bottom status card lapse when the registration comes up again. For some reason, these are the first images that seem to come up when people think about male submission, and I don’t blame them for being turned off.

Tom and I have come to different conclusions regarding how we choose to self-identify, but our motivations are clearly the same: the long train of abuses and usurpations that American culture has forced upon men. There are many things to be proud of America for, but let us not forget that the dream of a government instituted to secure the unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness for all people has not yet been fully realized.

-maymay

(via pornotumble)

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