The Dominant Submissive

by Gillian Colbert

Ever since becoming exposed to Dominance and submission, I’ve attempted to find analogies in my vanilla life to understand and internalize what this means. It was the only way I could think to be able to translate it both into my own personal lexicon and into my writing. The best way that I found to do this is through dog pack dynamics. A dog pack is like a Dominant with many submissives and then there is a hierarchy among the subs as well — a concept that I’ve seen in BDSM. Sometimes a slave to one Master is a Master to their own slave, etc. It will get entirely too confusing to continue that example, so I’ll leave it there.

What I also see in dogs packs that I believe translates back into human behavior is the dysfunction of the leaderless submissive dog. When a dog that is naturally submissive is forced to be the leader in their pack with their human, they become unstable, aggressive and self-destructive. If you’ve never watched an episode of The Dog Whisperer, give it a go and you’ll see exactly what I mean. A pack must have a leader. It can be a pack of two, the dog and the human, but it is a pack. The human must be dominant in that situation and if they are not cognizant of their role as leader, the dog suffers for it. Most dogs do not wish to lead and when they are forced into it. It, literally, is harmful for them.

How does all of this relate back to the D/s within BDSM? Well, I believe that naturally submissive women who either don’t recognize their submissive nature and/or lack a Dominant become dysfunctional and self-destructive. I believe it is very possible that many vanilla women who are accused of being control freaks or aggressive are really just unaware and haven’t found their leader.

We no longer live in a world where the cream rises to the top. When we were still primarily an agricultural society, the man who was strong enough to work the farm, smart enough to make it successful, and virile enough to have living children was the recognized Dominant. Who are our recognized Dominant’s today in our society at large? Those within the lifestyle are one thing and I think the wheat separates from the chaff eventually as you practice the life, but what about in the world at large? Is Bill gates Dominant just because he has wealth? Is the M.I.T. graduate Dominant because he was successful in a highly competitive discipline?

We have become a society of thinkers and not doers. The outward signals of Dominance and leadership no longer exist and only through a lifestyle like BDSM can you openly evaluate a man’s dominant characteristics. What this means for women, is that it is much harder to find a man worth submitting to. Add in the complete confusion that feminism added to our role as women and you have a recipe for a  lot of natural submissives trying to act Dominant because they feel like they are supposed to and being thoroughly unhappy for it.

I also believe that this is where the “bad boy” syndrome comes from. Because we no longer have our rituals and societal constructs to separate the strong from the weak, we biologically associate men who are aggressive and “hard” as Dominant. This is not true as a general rule, but I think it’s why we do it.

At the risk of getting flamed by the hard core feminists out there, I believe that every woman is looking for a man to submit to, we just don’t know how to evaluate objectively a man’s worthiness anymore and we are castigated as anti-women if we submit. I believe that lacking a suitable mate for submission, we are becoming a gender of “dominant submissives” and the results speak for themselves. Take a look around and see exactly how many women are actually happy in their role as a woman and not adopting masculine ways to cope.

There I said it … As always, just my $.02.

(Posted with permission of the author)

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