Male Submission Art

Art and visual erotica that depicts masculine submission.

We showcase beautiful imagery where men and other male-identified people are submissive subjects. We aim to challenge stereotypes of the "pathetic" submissive man. Learn moreā€¦.

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Mon Aug 31
A blue-eyed man in a white t-shirt is shackled and gagged with tape. The four glyphs “NO H8” are written on his cheek.
I recognize this photograph as one taken by Adam Bouska from an advertising campaign against the much-publicized Proposition 8 in (my new home state of) California. Proposition 8 is legislation that bans same-sex marriage. This photograph was suggested by Stefanie, who wrote in from Germany saying:
This picture is of Benjamin Linus from the TV show “Lost”. The actor is called Michael Emerson. It’s one my favourite submissive men picture at the moment because I really enjoy his evil character in the LOST show and seeing him tied and gagged is hot :)
I don’t know whether or not Stefanie was aware of this, but the context of the picture is one of oppression?the not-fun kind. This might make sexualizing the image somewhat uncomfortable, and some could find doing so morally appalling. How dare someone be aroused by a picture of a man working to support LGBTQ civil rights? Which doesn’t address the fact that I find working on social justice causes sexy, but let’s just move on for now.
Now, banning same-sex marriage is certainly an act of discrimination against homosexual relationships. However, I’m pretty damn soured by the notion that somehow marriage is in any way a legal right for anyone at all. Kate Bornstein said it best:

Fuck marriage equality. Fuck marriage. We’d be more in line with the US Constitution to abolish marriage altogether as a function of government. We could give everyone the rights that come with marriage, via a civil union?a union that isn’t based in gender, romance, religious belief or number of partners involved in the union. And excuse me, but marriage between a man and a woman, or a man and a man, or a woman and a woman still leaves out a LOT of people!
If what people want is rights, civil unions for everyone is the answer that wouldn’t make anyone a second class citizen. And church and state would be nice and separate. The way they’re supposed to be separate, remember?

Equality is tricky, and it gets trickier when you add to the mix people for whom narrow views of equality itself doesn’t work?people perhaps like Stefanie and like me. In the BDSM subculture, where differing expressions of power are a core part of people’s sociosexual identity, the concept of marriage is perhaps too equal, so a replacement exists:

Some people conduct formal “collaring ceremonies,” which are regarded as effectively solemnizing their relationship in a similar way as a marriage ceremony.

Clearly, marriage?and maybe even equality?as it is commonly understood today isn’t actually well understood at all. Legislating on marriage sounds just as ridiculous to me as legislating on collaring ceremonies. This is why I’m such a big fan of decoupling things from the similar but contextually irrelevant things they sometimes look like yet aren’t, such as how I can sexualize this picture of Michael Emerson without personal guilt. As it happens, this is a skill that every human being arguably exercises in both D/s and vanilla relationships, as harperjean explains:
[B]y necessity individuals in D/s relationships view themselves and their relationship to one another through two very different, and seemingly opposed, lenses at the very same time: one in which the dominant partner has control and the submissive is not autonomous; and one in which both are fully autonomous individuals. The D/s reality depends, of course, upon the autonomous reality, which both circumscribes it and gives it life. And yet both partners must inhabit both realities at once for the relationship to work, must believe both that the submissive is free (to disobey, to renegotiate) and that he is bound. (One might say something similar about the tension between “one-ness” and “two-ness” in vanilla marriage, though obviously there are differences.)
So back to this marriage thing, one solution is simply not to deal with the complexities that the existence of people not-like-you bring to the table. Radical feminists (“radfems”) who denounce any kind of power imbalance as a construction of the patriarchy do this and, though often subtler, almost every outlet of hegemonic society does this as well. Radfems pathologize the choices of submissive women into dismissal, while mainstream media provides a frighteningly systematic misrepresentation of gender “norms” that consistently associates submissive men with unattractiveness.
Of course, if we keep doing this, then we’re right back to discrimination, and we already saw where that leads.
-maymay

A blue-eyed man in a white t-shirt is shackled and gagged with tape. The four glyphs “NO H8” are written on his cheek.

I recognize this photograph as one taken by Adam Bouska from an advertising campaign against the much-publicized Proposition 8 in (my new home state of) California. Proposition 8 is legislation that bans same-sex marriage. This photograph was suggested by Stefanie, who wrote in from Germany saying:

This picture is of Benjamin Linus from the TV show “Lost”. The actor is called Michael Emerson. It’s one my favourite submissive men picture at the moment because I really enjoy his evil character in the LOST show and seeing him tied and gagged is hot :)

I don’t know whether or not Stefanie was aware of this, but the context of the picture is one of oppression—the not-fun kind. This might make sexualizing the image somewhat uncomfortable, and some could find doing so morally appalling. How dare someone be aroused by a picture of a man working to support LGBTQ civil rights? Which doesn’t address the fact that I find working on social justice causes sexy, but let’s just move on for now.

Now, banning same-sex marriage is certainly an act of discrimination against homosexual relationships. However, I’m pretty damn soured by the notion that somehow marriage is in any way a legal right for anyone at all. Kate Bornstein said it best:

Fuck marriage equality. Fuck marriage. We’d be more in line with the US Constitution to abolish marriage altogether as a function of government. We could give everyone the rights that come with marriage, via a civil union—a union that isn’t based in gender, romance, religious belief or number of partners involved in the union. And excuse me, but marriage between a man and a woman, or a man and a man, or a woman and a woman still leaves out a LOT of people!

If what people want is rights, civil unions for everyone is the answer that wouldn’t make anyone a second class citizen. And church and state would be nice and separate. The way they’re supposed to be separate, remember?

Equality is tricky, and it gets trickier when you add to the mix people for whom narrow views of equality itself doesn’t work—people perhaps like Stefanie and like me. In the BDSM subculture, where differing expressions of power are a core part of people’s sociosexual identity, the concept of marriage is perhaps too equal, so a replacement exists:

Some people conduct formal “collaring ceremonies,” which are regarded as effectively solemnizing their relationship in a similar way as a marriage ceremony.

Clearly, marriage—and maybe even equality—as it is commonly understood today isn’t actually well understood at all. Legislating on marriage sounds just as ridiculous to me as legislating on collaring ceremonies. This is why I’m such a big fan of decoupling things from the similar but contextually irrelevant things they sometimes look like yet aren’t, such as how I can sexualize this picture of Michael Emerson without personal guilt. As it happens, this is a skill that every human being arguably exercises in both D/s and vanilla relationshipsas harperjean explains:

[B]y necessity individuals in D/s relationships view themselves and their relationship to one another through two very different, and seemingly opposed, lenses at the very same time: one in which the dominant partner has control and the submissive is not autonomous; and one in which both are fully autonomous individuals. The D/s reality depends, of course, upon the autonomous reality, which both circumscribes it and gives it life. And yet both partners must inhabit both realities at once for the relationship to work, must believe both that the submissive is free (to disobey, to renegotiate) and that he is bound. (One might say something similar about the tension between “one-ness” and “two-ness” in vanilla marriage, though obviously there are differences.)

So back to this marriage thing, one solution is simply not to deal with the complexities that the existence of people not-like-you bring to the table. Radical feminists (“radfems”) who denounce any kind of power imbalance as a construction of the patriarchy do this and, though often subtler, almost every outlet of hegemonic society does this as well. Radfems pathologize the choices of submissive women into dismissal, while mainstream media provides a frighteningly systematic misrepresentation of gender “norms” that consistently associates submissive men with unattractiveness.

Of course, if we keep doing this, then we’re right back to discrimination, and we already saw where that leads.

-maymay