Male Submission Art

A clothed woman stands above a man who is kissing the toes of her feet while he is kneeling on the floor, naked.

I like this photograph because, despite containing classic fetishistic imagery that is sadly often tainted for me (namely the “clothed female, naked male” and foot worshipping fetishes) I feel that these things are actually decently positively portrayed here. Neither partner seems disinterested, perhaps because both are obscured to some degree, and she does not look like an advertisement for a fetish shoe company.

Now, kneeling at the feet of a dominant partner (especially while I’m naked and they are clothed) is something I personally enjoy a great deal, and so the fact that these activities are viscerally difficult for me to enjoy due to the negative connotations of being pathetic, worthless, or “not man enough” that are present in other such pictures is an extremely unpleasant reality in which to have sex.

Moreover, all too frequently, I hear self-identifying submissive men ask questions like “Are submissives thought of as weak?” These men are trying to act on their desire to please a dominant partner, but so much in the world tells them that this inherently makes them less of a man. They wonder, does the word man fade away during role play? And how could they not wonder this, when so many representations of dominant women and submissive men explicitly choose words like “worm” over words like “man” in text and in speech?

-maymay

(via soumis)

A shirtless man with money in the back pocket of his pants holds a gun against the chest of a naked man chained to a bed.

Playing with power dynamics is sexy—the more extreme the power disparity, the sexier play can be. Guns, which instantly bring to mind the balance of life or death, are therefore tools of immense power and, consequently, unsurprisingly common in fantasies involving power exchange.

When consensual and acted upon with aware intent, creating power disparities—binaries in which one person has all the power and another person has none—can be a lot of fun. However, when such disparities are implicitly built into social codes of conduct, they are devastating. The binaries enforced by implicit authority are at the root of sexism (man/woman), ageism (young/old), racism (black/white), classist behavior (rich/poor), and other such prejudices.

For the record, those who play with such extreme power therefore need to do so with incredible responsibility, and I know of no gunplay scene that has ever involved a real firearm.

-maymay

wendyblackheart:

(via loveboom)

A naked man is bound in a spread eagle with cuffs and ropes face down on a bed.

This is a simple photograph, but it appeals to me because it’s not often I see images in which a spread eagle tie has a man on his stomach. Like much of porn, huge amounts of attention are dedicated to the penis, but in point of fact, penis-centric sex is missing a lot of other opportunities for good experiences for all involved. One wonders whether the disparity in the attention given to male genitalia is caused by porn or whether porn, like art, merely imitates life.

It should also be noted that the spread eagle tie is perhaps the most commonly attempted form of erotic bondage attempted by inexperienced—even vanilla—tops, yet it is also one of the most immobilizing. This combination makes for somewhat more dangerous circumstances than most. As always, please remember never to leave a tied up bottom alone.

-maymay

(via realprincess)

A man leashed with chain and wearing black, form-fitting clothing kneels beneath the legs of another man.

This photograph was suggested by Wendy Blackheart, who wrote saying, “I find the boy in the photo very appealing—I love his figure, and his posture. And I love the chain. I find chain much sexier than rope. (Plus, I love the noise it makes.)” Personally, I happen to enjoy both chain and rope, but rope really is my first fetishistic bondage love.

I also really like the position the kneeling man is in. In particular, beyond the posture, I like that his right hand is closed. A slightly closed hand such as this (not a tight fist, but not an open palm) is a gesture I make almost subconsciously very frequently when I am feeling submissive, or smaller, or vulnerable. It’s these incredibly small things—so small they are invisible to an uninformed viewer, including most pornographers—that make all the difference between a photograph of authentic submission and a staged fake.

I find it insulting that pornographers consistently think they know me, along with other submissive men, better than I do when the material they produce so obviously lacks the hallmarks of authenticity that just a touch of thoughtful observation would clearly illuminate.

-maymay

(via theonlygayinthevillage)

In an outdoor setting a young man stands against a wooden post with his hands secured behind him, his shorts pulled down to his knees, and his erection in full view.

This photograph was suggested by Derek Isme, who says, “I like this rather grainy picture because it doesn’t appear to be (even if it is) a staged porn shoot. In my imagination I can happily place myself in the same position as this guy.” Relatively few of the images I choose to editorialize about on this site are sourced from a stereotypically “staged porn shoot,” but despite what some may think, I’m not actually biased against such shoots—or wouldn’t be if the imagery they produced was not so radically different from the kind of imagery you see on this site.

In point of fact, as Derek’s comment implies, very little of what is staged porn is appealing to me, and as a result it is very difficult to imagine myself a part of the staged scene. This is in direct opposition to the most often cited reason pornographers seem to give me when they defend the stylistic choices they give to their work: “sexualizing men turns men off, and anonymizing men makes it easier to see yourself in the model’s shoes.” Bluntly, these pornographers are being sexist and stupid.

-maymay

One naked man’s ass is held gently by the outstretched arm of another man.

Although hard to find explicit submission in this photograph, I like it because of how explicitly it sexualizes the male form. Admittedly, it does so with homosexual connotations, which I remark on only because of how accustomed I am to seeing the male body sexualized in photography almost exclusively by other men. Nevertheless, perhaps thanks to the omission of a penis, the image seems to subvert the stereotypical male gaze (homosexual or otherwise) by the passivity implied on the part of the bottom.

By most societal norms, masculinity is both reduced to lust and defined by aggression—sometimes violently—such that men are all but required to be aggressors in any sexual encounter. Similarly, many people incorrectly couple this notion of being sexually aggressive with being the initiator of sex. Together, this is called “being the active partner.” This view is unnecessarily restrictive because it arbitrarily limits the activities one can have. In fact, activity or passivity have little to do with initiating sex, and much more with the intentionality behind the initiation.

-maymay

(via pornotumble)

Standing against a tree, a shirtless young man stands with his eyes closed, neck bared, and hands bound behind him.

This vintage photograph struck me because of how similar it looks to contemporary images of tied up men. There’s very little in the way of nudity or otherwise explicit sexuality and most of the submissiveness I see in this photograph has to do with hints of bondage—albeit more obvious than most—than a confirmed and visible restraint. In comparing vintage erotica in general with today’s pornography, it seems to me that there isn’t quite the same amount of stagnation among depictions of women as there is of depictions of men (with the notable exception of gay iconography).

Case in point, the source of this photograph cites that it is a depiction of Saint Sebastian by F. Holland Day, circa 1906, an extremely common subject for ostensibly (but not really) submissive men.

-maymay

fukkinng:

wwtt:

killingbambi:

teacakes:

pootee

A naked man lays strapped to a large wooden board as a second man touches his erect penis. The man on top is shirtless and has his own penis in his other hand.

I like the simple ways in which this photograph make the bottom the compositional centerpiece. It also raises some interesting questions; cutting out the top’s head gives me as a submissive the opportunity to objectify him as much as the rest of the photograph lets me feel as though the submissive partner is still a sexualized center of focus. In such a situation, who’s objectifying whom?

There’s certainly no doubt that in my mind, I construct fantasies of dominant personas all the time, and I have no qualms about getting off to these fantasies and ideas.

-maymay

(via pornotumble)

A naked woman grips chains encircling a naked man’s neck as she stands above him.

The sexiest thing to me is the obvious power dynamic here; chained as he is, the kneeling man is quite vulnerable. However, other things about this photograph strike me much more. First, both the man and woman exude undeniable physical strength. Second, both of them aren’t white.

It’s hard not to notice that the majority of pictures on this site and others like it have Caucasian models. As I’ve said before, this site can’t help but be a mirror on the rest of the Internet and, more specifically, representations of the BDSM community. Sadly, as Clarisse Thorn mentions frequently, the sex-positive movement is overwhelmingly white and middle- to upper-middle-class. There are certainly wider socioeconomic issues at play here, but it is still useful to remark upon the parallels and intersections that sexuality issues have with racism.

-maymay

(via bendoverloverboy)

A naked man stands by a tree, his hands bound above his head and his penis connected by rope to a padlocked collar around his neck.

This photograph was suggested by Derek Isme, who says, “I like the simplicity of the scene, and the fact that it’s outdoors—one of my favorite turn ons!” My favorite part is how much the man’s body is made prominent by the simple neck-to-penis rope, as it’s probably mostly a decorative addition.

Such genital decoration can be incredibly mentally profound. Further, one’s self-image and comfort with one’s own body, particularly one’s sex organs, is not restricted to explicit sexual expression. The impacts of a body-phobic culture are dangerously homogenizing to the same degree that the monopolistic representations of submissive masculinities this site is trying to diversify are: for women, the latest plastic surgery trend is labiaplasty.

-maymay