My submissiveness may be attached to the male in me—and the less of a man I become, the less submissive I feel I need to be.

Or even want…

There is less and less doubt in my mind that the origins of my own submissive nature were contextual.  I wasn’t born submissive, it was how I processed life.  I wrote recently about a revelation that my father’s abuse of my mother in various forms set a tone for me that caused me to reject male energy, including my own.

I distinguish this energy in me from the essentially feminine energy that I was born with, as something that was at least pre-natal, if not genetic.  Indeed, there is emerging science suggesting that transgenderism is born from hormonal fluctuations in the womb.  Tough to prove, interesting theory…and one which would relieve my wife tremendously (and perhaps many other spouses, parents, siblings, troubled relations).

Submission was a form of apology.  It was an act to say that I am not like other men.  I am not a threat.  I wish to lay down before you and serve.  Of note was that this was not a general character trait.  In other words, submission only happened to my love interest.  Nobody else.  I am no shrinking violet.

Submission, in other words, was how I expressed love.  And the feelings were so strong, that it is almost impossible for me to experience them or to even talk about them with someone that I am having submissive feelings with and not to become tearful.

It is like submission is penance for being male.  It is a way of processing my father, and of showing that I am not at all like that marker…and my twisted relationship with my mother, a mix of infantilism, transgenderism, clinginess, but also total physical and emotional rejection—was a kind of tortured co-dependency.  These two boundary posts, however, created the perfect conditions for me to exist as a submissive man.  It is the only way that I could love a woman as a man.

I am not convinced that such a man can be loved by a woman that this man might be attracted to, simply based on a failure to find it.  Reading is one thing, so too are professional companions—a kind of illusion to tell you what is fantasy can be real.

But these things seem to matter less and less.  The hormones that are coursing through my body are changing me.  Changing my mind.  You might think that by taking oestrogen, a superficially (and sexist) “passive” sex hormone, I would become demure, more passive, more submissive.  Absolutely not.  Emotionally supple yes, but these things, not at all.

What is going on?  Along with a florescence of the feminine in me, is the draining away of my submission.  I am beginning to understand that being submissive was a consequence of being a man—I could not accept being male in any other way…but as I step into my femininity, the last thing I want to do is to submit. Maybe the woman in the BDSM store was actually seeing female me–she certainly dressed me that way.

Instead, I feel like roaring.  This kitten just hung up her paws.

Is this a consequence of being more female?  Of being regarded differently?  Of having to fight for the same place in line?  Or is it simply that by letting go of my manhood, I no longer have anything to apologize for.  I am no longer ashamed for my sex.  I am deeply and utterly relieved by how women look at me, talk to me, engage with me, relate to me, connect with me.  I may not be a fully-fledged sister, but I can taste the sisterhood, and the last thing that she feels is submissive.