The fear that submission is forever

Confronting the primordial fear of losing control and losing the respect of others

Venus in Furs by Leopold von Sacher-Masoch

The laughter of Wanda in Leopold von Sacher-Masoch’s genre defining book, Venus in Furs, is what hit me hardest as a sweaty-palmed and pimple-faced adolescent.  Her laughter was lusty and free, genuine, sparkling like diamonds as she felt utter triumph over the man after whom the word masochism was coined.  At once arousing and humiliating for him, this was just an opening shot in a drama that has played out through history.

Clearly our lust as humans for this very game appears inexhaustible.  It was only our emergence from Victorian shame that hid the omnipresence of the submissive man and triumphant woman from public view.  But they have always been here.

I don’t think I have ever been as traumatized by a book as I was Venus in Furs.  And not for the reasons that one might think.  No.  It was this moment of laughter and all that it represented which scarred me.  The narrator, really just the author, describes in painful detail the emotional turmoil which roiled him at the moment he surrendered to his deepest desire, to submit to Wanda, a woman who unlike him was not noble, who under normal circumstances might have been dependent on him.  He gave up the trappings of privilege in order to be under her feet, metaphorically.

But in that moment of laughter, the energy goes very much from one of being ‘this is a game’ to one of ‘now we know what you’re really like, that is what you will always be’.  Powerful.  This very turnabout drives so much sexual fantasy.  Rape fantasies, gay male first time fantasies, so much of the D/s and BDSM power cultures.  And it is as scary as hell.

But why?

The narrator does not expect this outcome.  He has described a fantasy to her and believes that he is still in control.  But this isn’t the way things work.  A woman’s ability to mock and ridicule is first off far more adept than any man’s but also a man’s ego is more fragile and more susceptible.  Therein lies a big part of female power.  In polite society, women don’t dare to take this privilege all the way to the bank, they self-police, and yet could very well do it if they chose to.  A woman’s ability to seduce, honed on a lifetime of small actions and reactions in the dance of life, is so sharp and powerful if she chooses to use it.  And here, in Venus in Furs, is just such a situation.

Why did it scare me so much?  Well, I am submissive too.  And like Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, I have a desire to hang on, to not lose control.  We can call it topping from the bottom if we want, though I am not sure that is accurate.  In my case, it lingered like fear throughout my pubescent and early adult life and so on…until very recently.  The fear is that she won’t respect you once you have submitted to her.

Everyone likes a challenge, right?  Women are no exception.  If you are a pushover, then where’s the challenge.  Whether it is true that a submissive is ‘easier’ is an argument beyond the scope of this one.  It is moot.  Why?  Because society has already decided that it is thus.

And this fear has remained real for me for many years, and still lurks in my animal mind.  Once conquered, always conquered, and therefore, also, boring.  This is what pops into my mind when an attractive hits on me, moves in with me, or visits me, or does something which feels like a very thirsty/hungry action…It implies intent.  And one which I welcome.  But then what?  She discovers I am submissive and is no longer interested.

This is also not an argument or lament about how there are more male subs than female dommes…it has nothing to do with that.  For all intents and purposes I can be talking about the vanilla dating world, a world which is every bit as driven by power dynamics as the D/s world is.  We just call it something different.

My love of the pro-domme has been an elaborate avoidance mechanism.  You can submit to her and most of the time, she will hide her true thoughts, and instead feel that she really cherishes you and loves you more for your submission to her.  I am not saying that this isn’t real some of the time, even all of the time, I am instead referring to my fear, to the fear triggered by the book, the fear of Leopold von Sacher Masoch’s narrative voice.  She laughed at him, universal symbol of disrespect.  Ouch.  

The world comes crashing down.

When I think of what this means, it tells me two things.  First, most submissive men are probably only going through the motions, that it is a bedroom-only game, or that it is highly confined.  But second, the man who is truly capable of submitting and not being skewered by this fear, is the strongest man there is.  To submit utterly and completely and to have the ‘confidence’ or blind faith that the submission is received, welcomed.  In the case of Sacher Masoch, it was received but then transformed into a humiliating disregard for the narrator.

A fail.  But what of the submissive who has successfully tickled her fancy and triggered some kind of true dominance in her?  Possibly rare, but possibly there.  I am struck by how many genuinely dominant women there are out there, only you would not necessarily know it.

So many of them, inspirations all, are redefining what dominance is.  They are being vulnerable, crying, showing they have needs, a desire for emotional connection.  They like pampering, baths, and pretty.  And the power of that is that it is by women and for women, not something torn from the pages of the fantasy landscape penned by the male libido.

And as I think about it, I still contain this fear.  Ex-Mistress told me the last time we were together that I should find a lifestyle domme.  My response: “way too scary.”  We were both right…but me being ‘right’ in this sense was all-wrong.  It is scary.  But who is to say that this is the whole point.  The strong ‘man’ here is the one who let’s go.  

Me.  Weak.  Leopold von Sacher-Masoch.  Also weak.  That kind of sucks.

I’ve been telling myself that I am not submissive anymore and yet I keep finding myself in the clutches of various dommes.  The woman I met in the club the other day was absolutely skilled enough and beautiful enough to be a pro, but she came across as 100% lifestyle.  I believe that she really got off on beating me, just as I had gotten off on beating the men I had beaten a few weeks prior.  And as is my way, I fell into a very deep and warm feeling towards her.  I may never see her again, though I do suspect that I will.  Small communities have a way of keeping people knit together.

And for some reason with her, although the thought skittered across my mind, I don’t think she disrespects or disdains me because I was so ‘easy’ to get under her whip, so easy to strip, so easy to dominate.  No, she paraded me through the crowd like a trophy.  But then, once done, she was on to the next one.

I left because the Companion wanted to go, which was great, because I wanted aftercare, which in the end was delivered in the form of a pizza, but who’s complaining.  But in a way, if I ever see her again, she will assume that I am as easy as a bunny rabbit.

And that makes me want to come up with ways to offer some sport to her, to be challenging.  The first person who ever put her foot in my mouth and told me, “I can make you into a foot fetishist if I want,” and she is/was right, put her foot in my face the next time I saw her, but I found a reason to jump up and run across the room, and break the tension…why?  Because I didn’t want her to think I was a fetishist.  I am, just in a different way.  My fetish is that whatever we do is a genuine pleasure for her.  And isn’t that hypocritical?!  What’s to say that what she wanted to do was to put her foot in my mouth a second time, but instead I broke the spell by dodging out.  This is not some holy best-in-class submissive in action, but an egotistical fetishist.  Topping from the bottom.  Hiding it.  Being manipulative.  This is narcissism.  I’ve finally found it.

And what’s funny is that what I wanted most when I first started talking to her was to make out with her.  And what else?  The whole time she was whipping me, I wanted to make out with her even more.  When she presented her thigh and ass to my lips, I wanted her to feel my soul pouring out of them, so that she would want more.

Deepening my skills as a domme

We must find ourselves and brand ourselves in order to attract the right fit for what we put out.  Doing this well requires self-mastery.  I could never hit a woman, even if she was begging for it.  I would want to because she really wanted it, but I just couldn’t.  I was begged by a gorgeous woman at a kink party to do just this, but turned her down.  My friend, a pro-Domme, was very encouraging, and even said, “now that you’re a woman, its okay to hit another woman when she’s begging you.”  But I still couldn’t do it.

I have no problem doing it to men.  And this isn’t some version of preserving the status quo or putting my animal instincts in check, and not hitting her because I was taught not to do that.  No.  It is something more primordial.  It has to do with love.  It has to do with society.

So, I have been carrying this fear leftover from the reading of Venus in Furs ever since high school.  And it is still there.  I live with a fear that the domme lady who smacked me around will not want to play with me as badly as before.  It is an irrational fear.

In the meantime, I am deepening and cementing my skills as a rigger, a master of rope.  I really enjoy it…but here is the gig.  I won’t tie a man.  I don’t want that kind of intimacy with a man.  I also am finding that I am not afraid of dominating a woman in this way.  Afraid/not wanting to hurt her, as in I could never be a sadistic player.  No, it is a kind of safe-space holding and nurturing that is a beautiful feeling.

I have gone again, and had some wonderful feedback.  A woman who had spent two days in my arms and in the embrace of the rope told a friend how good she felt doing it with me…and so her friend came this time, and told me the difference in large part, and which had nothing to do with technique, all came from feeling comfortable with me.  The perceived death or absence of a dick is all it takes.  And I want to earn that surrender, to make sure she has the beautiful experience she is looking for.

Well, the teacher of the class this time was a bunny.  She is a very accomplished rigger herself, but to see her submit to the rope is artistry.  We spoke after the class.   She knows me as a bunny too.  I am on the “list” of bunnies to call when a rigger is looking for a partner.

During the class, I had said, “hello boss, can you help me with this?”  I needed her help with some knots.  I like being helped.  She smiled when I called her boss because it was also an acknowledgement of relative position.  She may be a bunny most of the time, but she is a very experienced bunny, working with a very experienced rigger.  She is a teacher herself.  I had recently asked her about bottoming for someone during an advanced class, and she had said “no, you are not experienced enough.”

“Please make sure I get the experience.”  

She tilted her head in response, “I think that can be arranged,” and smiled.

After a beautiful couple of hours relearning and practicing things I had learned, and giving pleasure to my bunny for the class, I said to the teacher, “I’m enjoying this; it was a great class.”

“It’s interesting to see you develop, when I know your inclination is to bottom.”

“Yes.”

“But part of what makes you have a natural feeling for this is that you know how the bunny feels.”

“So this.  Truly.  That’s exactly what is going through my body when I was tying her.  I could feel every cord.”

“It’s important that you not lose that as you go.  You are still such a beginner, but even today, with much more experienced riggers, because you have this sensibility, you were able to create a much better experience for your partner.  As people grow in knowledge they become obsessed with the technical aspects, and lose site of the dance of rope.  I want you to come to another class that is tying with one strand [we typically use quite a few].  It will help you develop this feeling.  And I do want you to continue to bottom.”

“I don’t think you have any need to worry about that.  I had a reminder the other day of my true nature at Club X.”

“Really?  We used to go there all the time.  I know everybody there.”

“I went to beat men, and it ended me getting the beating.”

“Beautiful,” she sighed.

“When you meet dominance, true dominance, an intractable wall of dominance, there is only submission.”

She smiled.

What is so strange for me is that when I took the kink test a few years ago for the first time and then again a year later, this concept of “rope bunny” was at the very top of the list…and “rigger” was at the bottom.  But I had never done it at the time.  Thanks to the most wonderful dominatrix I have ever had the pleasure of being with, she took my test results and began exploring right there, creating the most memorable session I have ever had.  True art.

I am finding that these threads coursing through my life are powerfully intertwined.  Becoming a woman and embarking on a life journey into the feminine [goodbye boys, thank you for your friendship and your company]; letting go of the toxic aspects of people-pleasing and needing to be needed; letting life flow rather than trying to force it, allowing my energy to attract; allowing for submission to take me and teach me as a way to both confront and let go, to find strength from submission; confronting that which is ugly, selfish, nasty, and inhuman inside of me, for all time, present, past, future; living a life of healing, for myself, for others, for generational pain.

[An aside.  I am changing my name.  My children and many friends have been active participants in the selection process.  I have been using different names with bookings for restaurant tables and with people I meet to see how they feel, how people react.  All of the names come from my ancestors.  The most ancient is from my 29^th great-grandmother and grandfather.  Another, my new surname, is from the 19^th great-grandparents, a number which is of growing significance to me.  A middle name is from the 21^st.  Why do I mention this?  Because these names are not just names, they are manifestations of people.  And each one of these people has a backstory which is relevant to me.  One of them was poisoned by a rival.  Another was a ‘cripple’—apologies for the use of a word which is charged—but their name included ‘the cripple’.  Another died in the Crusades, a misguided adventure.  A bevy of victims and predators who had unpleasant and sticky ends.  I did not choose any of the three names of witches in my family who were executed for their purported witchiness.  I carry them inside me so strongly that I can feel them.]

There is a deep irony in the sub-title of this post. It is not so much a primordial fear of losing control. After all, that is the fun part of submission. The fear instead is deeper. It is that ‘she won’t respect me anymore’. And this has echoes of sex in it…the whole idea that if we give it up, they won’t want it anymore. We have become completely naked, and all they really wanted was to take it, not to hold it and cherish it. That is a deep fear. I shall have to take this up with “Mommy” the therapist, whose skills with my inner child are unrivalled.