I identify as a straight, submissive man. I started a blog this year called SubVersal Man, where I talk about how challenging it is to date and find love.
I got divorced seven years ago, not because my ex objected to occasionally spanking my balls, but because she objected to me being better in the kitchen than she was and to her being better at finding the studs in the wall. From that point onward, I vowed to fully embrace the part of me that led to that marriage falling apart.
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The stigma around submissive men
Part of the struggle is that people care both too much and not enough when I tell them I’m a sub. There’s no club to join, no closet to come out of, yet the term still carries both internal and external shame.
When I tell potential partners that I’m submissive, I can often see the excitement vanish from their faces.
I’ve heard: “But you look so manly.” “That picture of you with the thick beard in the woods, you can’t be a sub, even sometimes.” “Have you gone to therapy about it? Maybe you can fix it.” “Since you’re great otherwise, I might be open to accepting that baggage, but I just don’t know. It’s a lot.” And then there’s the question that confuses submission with sexuality: “Are you actually straight? Are you sure?”
Sometimes I’ll get some traction when discussing specific kinks, but it usually feels more like shiny-new-toy or trip-to-the-museum excitement than a desire to build a relationship with a submissive man. Once, a girl wanted to meet me specifically because she thought it was fascinating, and kind of hot, that I wore panties. Eventually, she decided that dating me would be like dating a woman because of said panties and that she wasn’t into chicks.
I recently posted a video of me getting a slap shot, which is basically what it sounds like: you take a shot and then get slapped in the face. The post got a ton of likes from women I hadn’t interacted with in years. Not just likes but comments: stuff like “I’d love to do that, hit men,” plus a waterfall of laughy faces, covered eyes, and hands over mouths.
Sometimes I’d respond with “Really?” And it was either “Yeah, lol” or “No, lol,” but always “lol.” Without a doubt, male submission, as loosely represented by the slap-shot video, was intriguing, engaging, and moderately enticing, but in a “maybe in another world” kind of way. Why not in this one?
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Why are submissive men still expected to lead?
I think part of the answer lies in the world we live in, the one with the manosphere, the womanosphere, tradwives, high-value men and women, and divinely inspired gender roles. That world encourages scorekeeping in heterosexual dating: people track who brings what to the table and, in some cases, who is the table. Even as this thinking is challenged in many circles, it runs deep in our subconscious. If it didn’t, people wouldn’t so readily identify as alpha males or passenger princesses.
One of the most common explanations I hear from women who prefer to be submissive in and out of the bedroom goes something like this: I’m in my masculine energy all day at work and while adulting. Sometimes I just want to turn my mind off, be soft, feel held, and be taken care of. Okay, interesting, and relatable. I also work, pay taxes, have to renew my passport, decide what to eat, and make decisions. You know who is expected to remain in that so-called masculine energy too? Men.
We all need softness and reprieve, and we need to feel held. We all need the grace to shut our minds off and escape the harshness of having to be on all the time. Why should one gender have more space than the other for those things?
When I realized my submissive side was more about having equal space to be soft outside the bedroom than equal space to be spanked, something clicked.
I became more comfortable asking for that softness and writing about it. Softness can be as simple as a partner planning a date. I feel tired and defeated every time someone answers a dating-app prompt about the perfect first date with some version of “one I don’t have to plan.” Like, me too, for once, please!
It can also mean having the space to admit that I’m overwhelmed, ask to be held, or say “I don’t know” without the fear of watching her confidence in me evaporate. I don’t want someone else to take over or carry every burden. I want us to negotiate who leads, provides, decides, and receives care instead of letting gender answer for us.
Unfortunately for me and other submissive men and, in my opinion, for humanity at large, pop culture’s vision of heterosexual relationships seems to leave only a finite amount of space for softness.
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Male submission, vulnerability and masculinity
We all know, or at least claim to know, that there is strength in vulnerability. Putting that belief into practice can get messy. In my experience, there can still be limits to how much vulnerability and emotional availability men are allowed before it starts to challenge expectations of masculinity.
We’re encouraged to be softer, but not always so soft that we stop looking strong, self-sufficient or capable of taking the lead.
I don’t see my desire for softness as being at odds with my ability to offer it. But patriarchy runs deep, and our ideas about masculinity can still struggle to accommodate a man being a rock and a pillow at the same time.
I think back to my ex-wife explaining that she felt like less of a woman because I did so much of the cooking. She felt whatever the opposite of emasculated is. Ever notice there’s no equally familiar word for that? That difference in language says something about how differently we think about masculinity and femininity. We’ve built an entire moral economy around masculinity as something precious, fragile, easily taken, and constantly in need of protection and assertion.
I openly reject that economy and find relief in shedding the pressure of living up to its standard of masculinity. I invite more men to reject it or, if they already have internally, to be open about it.
I’d like all of us to make more space for male submission, and for the softness and vulnerability it may include, inside and outside the bedroom.
Choosing our roles, rather than inheriting them
BDSM offers another way to think about all of this: power can be consciously negotiated rather than silently assigned by gender. Who initiates? Who provides? Who leads? Who gets to turn their mind off, be soft, and feel held?
The answers should come from the people in the relationship, not from their genders. Accepting a submissive man beyond the bedroom doesn’t mean assuming he never wants to lead. It means no longer assuming he always has to.
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