In this discussion, I will be talking primarily about the female
heterosexual submissive, because I don't know enough about
non-heterosexual female submissives and Dominants to know
whether this analysis is completely applicable. This focus
is not to suggest that lesbian female submissives and their
challenges are less worthy of study, merely that I am not
equipped at this time to do such a study.
So often, women who are newly aware of their submissive needs
endure a period of self doubt around the troubling question:
am I sick? I've seen women read the psychiatric diagnostic
manual (DSM-IV) and then ask, "Do I have borderline
personality disorder?"
I am writing here not only about the sexual aspects: "am
I sick because I get turned on by images of being taken, used,
forced, swept away by masculine energy more powerful than my
own?"; I am also writing about the nonsexual aspects of being
submissive: "am I sick because I yearn to depend on, and
follow the lead of, a man stronger than myself?"
I will attempt to address both aspects in this essay.
What precisely fuels this kind of question, "am I sick?"
Why would a woman discovering the language of her nature think
she has a mental disorder? Or at the very least, have
something very wrong with her?
A submissive discovers, or more properly, realizes and
acknowledges that she functions at her best in relation to
another. And the more intimate, holding, containing that relationship,
the better she feels and the better she performs in cardinal
areas of adult life: work, friendships, and parenting.
Realizing she is at her best in such relation makes her
wonder why she can't do it for herself? Why does she need
such a relationship to accomplish what she should be
able to do for herself?
In thinking about this, I have come to question the cultural
determinants of what is considered the highest good. Here
in Western society, we place highest value on independence,
on "pull yourself up by the bootstraps", on the lone pioneer,
the trailblazer, the less needy and more self sufficient.
We value competition over cooperation, tangible achievement
over achievement in relationship. We pay big bucks to men
(and the few women) who run big corporations, and less to
the nursery school teachers, the nurses, the secretaries,
the social workers, the caregivers rather than the producers.
There is something wrong with believing that such independence
is the only good. It is especially wrong for the most
relatedness-oriented among us, the submissive female.
Part of the newly aware submissive's task is to separate
out the internalized voices of her culture: those voices
that tell her she is too needy, too dependent, too focused
on the others in her life. Once she can articulate what
those voices tell her, she can begin to question not herself,
but the validity of those internalized values, using her
own yardstick to measure her life, rather than our culture's
standard.
We can see how perspective is critical in understanding
a phenomenon. For example, Dr. Robert Coles, in a study
of moral development in children, researched how children
decide what is good and right. To do this, he presented
several scenarios describing a moral or ethical dilemma,
presented the scenario to school age children, and
analyzed the results. The description of the study here
is to illustrate the nature of cultural bias and it's
impact on individuals.
One of Dr. Cole's scenarios was as follows:
A man has a very, very sick wife, so sick she could die
if she doesn't get a particular, very expensive medicine.
The man doesn't have the money for the medicine, so in
desperation he steals it from a pharmacy.
The children are asked questions about this scenario.
Coles found that boys tended to conclude that the man
should be punished, because the law is the law, and nobody
should break the law. Coles saw this as a higher order
of moral reasoning, reflecting the statement, "a nation
of laws, not of men." That is, that nobody is above the
law, and the rule of law is not situationally defined.
The boys applied an abstract universal principle to a
singular instance. Coles understood this ability to
transcend the personal as a "more evolved" form of
moral development.
The girls were deeply troubled by the scenario, and most
of them sought ways to solve the man's problem within the
context of relatedness: they wondered if the man could ask
the pharmacist for the medicine, and offer to work for
him to pay for it, or pay him back later. They wondered
if the man had friends who could help him pay for the
medicine, and they believed he shouldn't be punished for
his act of desperation. Their sense of right was situational,
and defined within the context of relatedness. They did
not come to articulate an abstract universal principle,
but sought to solve the problem within the context presented.
Coles saw this as a less logical, lower order of moral
development because the girls could not emotionally distance
themselves from the central human drama in the scenario.
After Coles' work was published a woman named Carol Gilligan
reviewed the studies that Cole had done and reanalyzed them,
in a book called, "In a Different Voice." Rather than seeing
the boys' responses as evidence of "higher" development and
the girls' as "lower" she redefined them as different. And
she pointed out that the girls responses, so firmly rooted
in human context and relatedness were devalued by a society
in which the typically masculine is of more cultural worth
than the typically feminine. She asked, "Why is it considered
a 'higher' order of moral development to value universal
principle over human context?" and in so doing highlighted
the sexism inherent in the analysis.
As we can see, this type of analysis is extremely useful in
understanding typical submissive conflicts. We tend to ask
the wrong questions: "am I bad, sick, weak?", when we should
be asking, "is there something missing from the yardstick
I use to measure myself?"
If one looks at capacity for relatedness as a strength, as a
good, then it becomes clear that the submissive has a talent
for this, for relatedness. And that seeking a partner who
can meet her need for this relatedness is a good thing,
a healthy thing.
If we begin our analysis without the cultural assumptions
about what is of "higher" value, we can begin to understand
that it is possible for a woman to be submissive, and to be
healthy. And we can try to imagine what a healthy submissive
functions like, and how she developed her adult personality.
Let's start backwards, and ask ourselves, what might a
healthy adult submissive woman "look" like, psychologically
speaking:
1. The healthy submissive is capable of, and thrives on,
intense, intimate, emotionally open relationships. This is
often evident in the number of nourishing, sustaining, and
life affirming friendships she makes over the years.
2. The healthy submissive is a giver. She often needs help
to ration herself because her impulses nearly always lead
her to want to do good for others.
3. The healthy submissive is capable of intense joy,
especially in the context of a sustaining relationship.
4. The healthy submissive finds significant relaxation
when properly related. She is at ease in that place.
5. The healthy submissive has finely tuned interpersonal
sensitivity. She is reactive to subtle shifts in the emotional
tone of others.
6. The healthy submissive has a fluidity of self, a
flexibility that enables her to adapt to changing circumstances.
7. The healthy submissive is playful.
8. The healthy submissive has no more than the usual
cultural conflicts about her body, and its goodness and beauty.
9. The healthy submissive takes pride in her accomplishments.
10. The healthy submissive accepts herself as she is, knowing
that while her culture values independence and self sufficiency,
she has strong dependency needs and that there is no inherent
"wrongness" about those needs.
11. The healthy submissive seeks nourishing relationships.
12. The healthy submissive, in accepting herself "as is" is
tolerant of others. But neither will she allow anyone to tell
her what her truth should be.
13. The healthy submissive has a reasonable self concept,
aware of her difficulties as well as her strengths.
14. The healthy submissive hungers to be the object of an
intense and penetrating understanding. When her nature is
understood and she is held in a loving and firm frame, her
devotion is almost limitless. The healthy submissive has
an enormous capacity for devotion, from which springs
her service.
What makes a woman a submissive?
As with all conjectures about human development, the answer
is likely twofold: a combination of nature and nurture,
biology and environment.
There is a whole body of literature that makes observations
about temperament. This literature talks about the variations
in behavior in infancy as a manifestation of temperament:
the expression of regularity, responsiveness, and reactivity.
In the area of regularity, some infants are regular and
predictable from the get-go: they sleep regularly, wake at
predictable intervals to nurse, and have predictable periods
of alertness in which they begin the earliest socialization.
Some infants are irregular: they will one day sleep for an 8
hour stretch, then be awake all night, the next day they will
sleep for one hour intervals through a 24 hour period. In the
area of responsiveness, some infants will find novelty and
intense stimulation aversive, and will withdraw or become
irritable when presented with those; some infants are stimulated
to engage and explore novelty and intense stimulation. Some
infants have high thresholds for sensation, requiring a relatively
intense stimulus to become aversive, some have low thresholds,
and respond to mild stimulation. Some infants will for example,
be intensely distressed by a wet diaper; some will not register
discomfort until diaper rash sets in.
The sum total of these innate, biologically founded responses
make up temperament. It is easy to see what people mean by an
"easy" baby: one who sleeps, eats, and eliminates regularly
and predictably; one who has a moderate response to stimulation,
neither withdrawing nor reacting intensely; one who is drawn
easily into social exchanges, and provides pleasurable reinforcement
of socialization with their caregivers, one who is easily "read"
and easily comforted, one who accepts change without undue distress.
I think one of the traits in this biologically grounded array
that makes up temperament is common to all submissives. And that
is social responsiveness. I would suggest that the baby who is
temperamentally "set" to register and respond selectively and
sensitively to social cues has the seeds of submissiveness in
her nature. This is the baby that will search the environment
for a human face; who will be attuned to, and very responsive
to the human voice; who will preferentially and selectively
attend to, and process, human interaction.
This baby, as she grows into childhood, will be easy to control,
to shape, especially if she is temperamentally on the "easy" side.
This little girl will be exquisitely sensitive to criticism and
correction, to disapproval, to praise. Rather than requiring a
raised voice to correct, a raised eyebrow will often do.
Even further, this little girl will be exquisitely sensitive to
nuance: she will know when others are angry, hurt, sad, bewildered
even when they are not spoken about. She has a "sixth sense"
about people. As children do, she requires the adults in her
life to validate her perceptions when appropriate. Let's say
her parents are troubled by a financial stress, and like good,
responsible parents seek to shield her from their stress.
The child will pick up on the unspoken tension, sensitive as
she is to subtleties of body language, voice pitch, facial
expression. She might inquire of her parents what is wrong, and
be told "nothing is wrong, honey... go and play." This leaves
the child confused: she knows in that way that she knows, that
something is wrong. But her perceptions are not validated. She
is told nothing is wrong. But her parents, who are not at their
best, may be a little short with her, and picking THAT up too,
she goes off to play concluding that she must have done
something wrong, to be sent away. Part of this is the megalomania
of childhood, part of this is a reasonable and logical synthesis
of resolving the child's felt sense of things with what she is told.
This kind of interaction, repeated over the years, in the best
and most loving of families, leads to an adult personality in
which there is some anxiety associated with relatedness. The
submissive female learns to scan the social environment for
signs of trouble, seeks to "fix" the trouble, and all too often,
believes herself to be the cause of the trouble. If someone
important is tired, the submissive has exhausted them. If someone
important is angry, the submissive must have angered them. If someone
important is disappointed, the submissive must have failed them.
This trait, this interpersonal sensitivity in its highest
expression is when the submissive accurately registers interpersonal
nuance, and responds to it with a minimum of self-referral, recognizing
that other's emotional states may have nothing to do with the
submissive herself. This is how it works for the healthy submissive,
who as an adult, often finds great fulfillment working in fields
such as social work, nursing, medicine, counseling, teaching.
There are certain vulnerabilities a child constituted with a
submissive nature faces.
Because of her intense awareness of interpersonal nuance, she
is highly sensitive to both criticism and praise. When criticized,
she is likely to feel intense shame; when praised, intense
pleasure. Since the shame feels so bad, and the praise so
pleasurable, she becomes a people-pleaser. This tends to lead to
the development of what psychologists call "an external locus
of control." Meaning that child bases her self assessment (am
I good or bad?) on factors outside herself. The female submissive
defines herself based on what others tell her she is.
Parents have enormous responsibility with such an influenceable
child. Nascent talents can either be nurtured or aborted with
just a word. This child will likely live up, or down to, whatever
is expected of her. Expect more than she can constitutionally do
(like academic, athletic, or social success) and she will develop
an intense sense of inferiority. Praise her out of proportion to
her talents (this is the best drawing any child ever did) and
she will develop an inflated sense of self. Accurately and
sensitively validate her real abilities and talents, and she will
seek goals appropriate to her ability, and take pleasure in
achieving them.
When the environment is reality based, sensitive, and balanced,
the child grows up embracing her special ability to be "related"
to others, to be sensitive, and has a sense of self in reasonable
tune with her true abilities and vulnerabilities, neither excessively
self effacing or self aggrandizing.
But if development should go awry, as it too often does for
this child, the personality traits she has develop in a distorted
manner, and cause her difficulties.
In dysfunctional families, this child suffers more than others
with tougher hides, less reactive temperaments. She is often the
one singled out for physical, sexual or emotional abuse. Her very
nature makes her available for use: for the parent's angers,
frustrations, sexual impulses, or narcissistic gratification.
When a submissive child is misused in this fashion, she is unable
to utilize her interpersonal talents in a constructive way.
Around the core of her submissive nature, psychological pathology
develops, and distorts her submissive development.
Women who emerge from childhood with these traits will be more
or less consciously submissive in that they are moldable,
controllable by others whether or not they call themselves "submissive."
Those who don't consciously seek a Dominant partner will
naturally gravitate to a man who influences and controls her
in a benevolent manner, who accepts her, loves her, nurtures
her, and values her sensitivity.
Those who consciously seek a Dominant partner are those who
are perhaps, so sensitive that they require not only benevolence,
but someone who understands precisely how moldable and influenceable
they are, and is capable of using the power to mold her and
influence her deliberately and consciously, for her good and
the good of the relationship. Or she may have been fortunate
enough to be exposed to a conscious Dominant, who fulfills her
and reveals her nature to her. Or, increasingly evident, are
those who recognize themselves in the explosion of information
available via the Internet, and proliferation of BDSM-theme
publications.
In relationship with an appropriate partner, the submissive
is freed to be all of herself. She is safe enough to feel her
exquisitely sensitive reactions to others, to play like a child,
to give care and to take care, to be angry, to lose shame.
Part of what she is relates to her sexuality, what she finds
erotic. To understand what makes a healthy submissive, we need
to examine the nature of a healthy submissive's sexuality.
We start by looking at the relation of her overall temperament
and development to the particulars of her sexual core. It is in
childhood, that we learn how to love, how to be loved, and how
love feels in some existential way. A blueprint is laid down in
childhood that influences adult love relationships in ways
often not evident to the adult.
Let's remember what we've proposed about the core of a submissive
child's nature: an intense, preferential attention and sensitivity
to social cues that develops into a special sensitivity to the
influence of others, and an eventual "external locus of control."
This child, in a reasonably suitable environment free of excessive
trauma will develop as follows: when she senses her parents
having even a small degree of distress from the normal tensions
of life, she will try very hard to "be good" for them. She will
try not to irritate them, make demands on them, she will try to
be helpful, while at the same time putting her needs to the side.
Because she is still a child, she will while wholeheartedly
trying to "be real good" feel some resentment and anxiety for
having (in response to her own internal demands) to be good.
Now even good and loving parents will encourage this, praise
this response: "Honey, thank you for being such a good girl
while Mommy has to take care of your baby sister. You are so
good to your little sister, and to me." So the submissive child
experiences first, the impulse to take care of others, to soothe
them, to not be difficult, leading her to put aside her needs,
and also the resentment for not having her needs recognized and
met. She suffers on some level, to some degree, from the putting
aside of her needs, and from stuffing the angers and resentments.
She suffers.
Yet at the same time that she suffers, she is being praised,
and that feels exceptionally good, exceptionally meaningful to
the submissive child. She learns that to suffer in service to
another brings pleasure.
If we look at the core of submissive sexuality, we see that
the essence is a mirror, a concrete embodiment of her entire
personality as formed by early interpersonal relations. To
express love, one serves. To feel loved, one serves. When
she is an adult this imperative is expressed in her sexuality.
Her fantasies are nearly universal amongst submissives: sexual
pleasure in suffering as the captured slave, the harem girl,
the maiden stolen by the pirates, the whore for use by a roomful
of men under the watchful eye of her pimp.
Her adult sexuality is elaborated upon this psychic core: she
is receptive, she is open, she is giving, and what touches her
most powerfully in sexual intimacy is to be commanded, taken,
used, even forced to suffer because even in suffering she is
loved. She learns the equation of suffering = pleasure in
those very early interchanges in which she experienced the
flush of pleasure in being of service to her family. The more
she had to suffer, the more she had to put aside her own needs
in order to "be good", the greater perhaps is this connection,
and the more overtly masochistic the submissive may be. This
construct may account for the spectrum of masochism amongst
submissives: the more challenging or difficult or overtly
painful her early experiences are, the more likely she may
be to learn that loving for her, involves some degree of
suffering. Pure service without physical masochism defines
one end of this spectrum, and intense masochistic needs in
a submissive woman defines the other.
Please note that we are still talking about the healthy
submissive here. Such a woman will have minimal conflicts
about being constituted the way she is, whether or not she
is intensely masochistic. It just is the way she loves, different
loving, so to speak. It never stops feeling loving to her, as
long as she is in service to, and "suffering" for, a loving
Dominant. Once she has unraveled the knots of her culture's
values, she will not be seriously conflicted about her sexual
nature or desires. She will have an intense, expressive,
emotionally intimate and meaningful sex life within the
safety of the hold of her keeper.
Let us not then mistake the submissive need to follow
for weakness. Let us not mistake the submissive's capacity
for relatedness to inability to be alone. Let us not mistake
the submissive's vital, joyous sexuality for self-destructive
masochistic equivalents: self-mutilation undertaken out
of rage or despair.
©Yaldah Tovah 2000
©tiana 2000-2005
