Male Submission Art: The Case of the Bloodied Back

When I go for submissive men, I like them to be assertively submissive. I like them to be proactive, engaged, and intelligent. I want to top and dominate, and regardless of what happens sexually, I want to be able to respect them as full human beings AND as subs before, during, and after our interactions. For this reason, I present to you the following post from Male Submission Art, a blog that my friend Maymay curates; it embodies the type of submissive man that I really like.

I first saw the following image when I was bein' all creepy and reading old blog posts Maymay had written. My first thought was "OUCH!," but the reaction that immediately followed was "awwwww." When you get past the initial "shock" of seeing a bloodied back (if that sort of thing is shocking to you in the first place) and get to understanding the context, you see the love with which this pain was inflicted, and the beautiful overall dynamic of the image and the relationship it represents. So, obviously, after the OUCH! and awww!, my final reaction was "WANT!" :) 

I know that some people might not be into this sort of thing, but what's important is to recognize how this picture came about and what it really represents--loving domination and adventures in consensual single-tailing, NOT abuse. That's not to say that abuse does NOT happen in BDSM contexts, because it does (as it does outside of BDSM contexts), but that it is very dangerous to confuse the two things with one another. This is dangerous because it:

a) hurts and stigmatizes people who are engaging in consensual, informed, and mutually-satisfying behavior by painting them as harmful to society and invalidating their lifestyle choices

b) leads to misinformation, confusion, witch-hunts, and fear-mongering

c) makes it harder for people who are into BDSM and ARE being abused to come out and seek help, because both things are treated as one and the same, which makes it hard to identify/address the truly abusive behavior and begin a path of change & healing.

We need to approach this type of image, post, lifestyle, etc. with an open mind and a willingness to learn, NOT with fear or prejudice or hatred. 

As for the text accompanying the post, it challenges the stereotype of the poor, pathetic, weak submissive man. Furthermore, it talks about some nasty problems we have had with Margaret (Barber) Brooks and Donna M. Hughes after I was the primary coordinator for KinkForAll Providence and after I dared to organize more sexuality events through SHEEC, the Sexual Health Education and Empowerment Council at Brown University. If you want to read a bit more about this whole situation, check "The Salvation Army incites personal attacks against me; a blog reply",  "Addressing Donna M. Hughes and Margaret Brooks’ concerns over KinkForAll unconferences, " and the excellent post by Elizabeth Woods (titled "What To Do If Attacked by Donna M. Hughes and Margaret Brooks?") which elaborates upon the situation, the need for people to engage & rally around common goals, and the danger of decontextualizing statements and blending them with factual inaccuracies "to produce a piece of writing capable of creating (or sustaining) irrational moral panic on the part of those who read it."

Posts like the ones I've written, linked to, and just copy/pasted here are VERY important in the fight for sexual freedom and empowerment. We need to make it known to everyone, including people like Margaret Brooks and Donna M. Hughes, that the way to make the world a safe, happy place for all is through educating the masses and seeking to understand the diversity of practice, thought, and opinion that is present in society. What we should NOT be doing is spreading (or supporting insinuations of) hateful messages of blind intolerance. We should advocate for everyone's rights to learn about sexuality in open and non-judgmental environments, where people's needs and desires are acknowledged instead of ignored and demonized just because they're "different." We need to empower ALL people (yes, including minors) to make informed choices and to seek out information in the first place, but until we begin to create spaces and systems that support this goal and provide truthful information (as opposed, to, say, one-sided attacks on individuals/lifestyles masquerading as accurate information), we will have an ignorant and unhappy population that is controlled and oppressed by fear and stigmatization. 

That is not the future I want for the world, 

and so I am making myself an agent of change.

Anyway, problems with fear-mongering folks aside, definitely check out the rest of the Male Submission Art blog, as it has a wide variety of lovely images. 

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Via HERE.

A shirtless man with a bloodied back kneels in front of a standing woman who’s holding his hair in one hand and his cheek with the other.

This photograph is an old picture of me and Eileen. I love it because it reminds me of the loving relationship I had with her. I’m proud of it because it (and the response it got on my blog) was an early spotlight on the need for a more equitable representation of and focus on submissive men in erotic imagery, rather than a myopic view of women.

This picture was also re-published by Donna M. Hughes and Margaret Brooks in a bulletin inciting several bloggers to name me a “pedophile” and “sexual predator.” They cite my work on KinkForAll as cause, which I’ve written about before, and they make references to this blog,Male Submission Art. These are both places where I consistently speak up in defense of a fundamental human right to access free educational resources, including sexuality-related ones.

It’s hard to stand tall when mean, angry, or frightened people like Margaret Brooks and Donna M. Hughes, the same person who conflated Megan Andelloux’s non-profit sexuality education center with human trafficking, misquote you seemingly on purpose and paint you as a creature of (their) nightmares. It’s greatly offensive and fucking terrifying to be likened to things you revile.

Donna M. Hughes, Margaret Brooks, and other fear-mongering alarmists scare me because their vitriolic ignorance hampers the very thing we all want: a generation free of sexual abuse. When they conflate adults’ consensual behaviors with humanity’s worst, they aren’t just attacking me personally, they damage the possibility for everyone on Earth to live free of sexual coercion, whether the abuser is an individual, consumerist culture, or religion.

Standing up for what you believe in isn’t mutually exclusive with being scared or angry. That’s why it’s partly because of people like Margaret Brooks, Donna M. Hughes, and others who baselessly equate evil intent with whatever their personal sexual mores don’t allow, that I am standing tall, speaking up, and writing all this in the first place.

If I can stand up and empower others to break free of intimidation or coercion about what they should or should not do, want, or think, then you can do it, too. So speak up and help one person make something better for themselves than was done for you.

-maymay