I once participated in a discussion in a BDSM community group.
During the discussion, some people linked male subs with derogatory terms like “worthless,” “beast,” “female supremacy,” and the notion that male subs should pay tribute to female doms just to grovel. Everyone seemed to take it for granted—not in a “two people mutually agree to play” kind of way, but as if “that’s just how male subs are.”
So, I replaced “male sub” with “female sub” and “female supremacy” with “male supremacy.” This time, people immediately stood up to stop me, saying I was insulting women. Even if it’s a female sub, they said, you can’t degrade them like that.
Another interesting phenomenon is that when a male dom and a female sub go out, the male dom usually pays for everything. But when a male sub and a female dom go out, the male sub still ends up paying.
You might find it surprising that I use the word “still.” This indicates that some notions have unconsciously taken root in your mind.
It seems that male subs are the most overlooked, voiceless, and invisible group in the BDSM community. They seem afraid to speak up for themselves, always acting like guilty animals, eager to dig a hole and hide.
This article aims to explore:
- Why is it harder for male subs to face themselves compared to female subs?
- Why do we, to some extent, think their degradation is natural?
- Why can’t they receive the same understanding as female subs?
Dickens said that an individual’s personality formation is related to their family, while a group’s personality formation is related to society. To find answers about the male sub group, we have to look at the issue from a societal perspective.
What kind of society is China?
It has been a Confucian, patriarchal society since ancient times, emphasizing “loyalty and filial piety” and “the three cardinal guides and five constant virtues.” We often say that the basic unit of society is the individual, the citizen. But in traditional Confucian culture, the basic unit of society is the family.
That’s why there’s the saying “Cultivate oneself, regulate the family, govern the state, and bring peace to the world.” It means if you can’t manage your own family, it’s impossible to accomplish great things.
But note, these words are all directed at men. They are expectations of men, not women.
In our traditional culture, the core of “family” is the “father-son” relationship, a male bloodline relationship. It’s different from mother-son, mother-daughter, or father-daughter relationships, which are just “natural bloodline relationships.” The father-son relationship is a “social bloodline relationship.”
What does that mean? It sounds a bit complicated, right? Just think about it: even today, aren’t most families where the mother handles small matters and the father makes big decisions?
Isn’t the preference for sons over daughters still prevalent?
Do many families still believe that only by having a son can the family lineage be continued?
If so, we can say that the “father-son bloodline system” is not only a natural biological inheritance but also a symbol of rights and significance assigned by our culture.
But how does patriarchy relate to male subs?
Don’t worry, it’s very much related. All our discussions today are deeply intertwined with “patriarchal society.” But before that, I want to talk about female subs who share the same taste but not the same suffering as male subs.
Our great socialist thinker (just kidding) Karl Marx believed that:
“In a patriarchal social system, women are ignored, powerless, and the guardians of tradition, customs, and all forms of archaic thinking and will. They are the eternal drag on civilization’s progress.”
Sounds outdated and pedantic, right? What are you talking about, 48! Women in our country have long been liberated!
Really?
Foucault once solemnly warned that forms of repression are diverse, not just limited to forbidding speech and restricting actions. When people think they have gained freedom and liberation, they are often more firmly controlled by power and subjected to deeper repression.
Since the 1990s, with a certain degree of female liberation, women have been freed from the backward, weak, and ignorant image but have fallen into a new round of image constraints.
Since then, whether in novels, films, scripts, or advertisements, women’s images have been associated with beauty, sensuality, body, and emotion. This seemingly positive value pursuit has simultaneously pushed the image of men to another extreme—linking them with fame, wealth, glory, reason, and success.
This is the most distinctive feature of a patriarchal system, the binary opposition of genders, where “men rule outside, women rule inside,” or men represent spirit and will, while women represent emotion and body.
In our patriarchal society, we are taught from a young age that upright and decent men, especially the “protagonists,” cannot exhibit traits like “lust,” “weakness,” or “submission.” These traits, which cater to the senses and vulgarity, can only be presented through women’s bodies or villains.
That’s why female subs are relatively easier for the public to “understand” because the female image we are indoctrinated with already contains these traits. A female sub merely amplifies them. This also explains why the bizarre theory that “all women are inherently subs” often appears.
But is this “understanding” a good thing? I don’t think so. We fail to realize that this “understanding” hides a more potent gender opposition and public ignorance.
Male subs are victims of this opposition and ignorance. As Western anti-patriarchal groups often say:
“Men are the deepest and most unaware victims of the patriarchal gender system.”
Indeed, strength, rationality, and the desire for achievement are innate human strengths, but not every person or every man craves wealth, honor, great achievements, or invincibility. Men can also be weak, have sexual impulses, be emotional, and have both dominant and submissive desires.
However, the gender binary opposition indoctrinated by patriarchal society magnifies men’s external traits like masculinity, career, and wealth, resulting in the internal emotional strength of men being drained, turning them into entities opposed to themselves.
The phenomena of men being expected to have houses and cars before marriage and the feminization of male idols in recent years are extreme reactions to this cultural indoctrination.
In this social environment, normal human expression is politically defined by patriarchal discourse as “normal” and “abnormal,” “right” and “wrong.” Desires for domination like those of a dominant can be understood, but submissive desires like those of a sub cannot be forgiven.
Thus, men must unavoidably become the strong, bearing the national dignity and heavy mission forged through centuries of blood and tears. These ingrained gender discourses tie men to the burning stake of shame, leaving no one unscathed.
You are a male sub? You like groveling at a woman’s feet? Sorry, you’re a disgrace to men.
I once wrote an article discussing “What if your child likes BDSM?” One comment said:
“If my son is a dom, I will teach him to cherish and care for others. If he dares to be a sub, I will break his legs.”
Think about that carefully.
Why break his legs? Probably because being a sub means he will bow down to his preferred female dom, which seems utterly disgraceful.
This is a manifestation of deeply ingrained gender opposition in patriarchal society.
Does this mean that in our society, with its deeply rooted patriarchal values, any man who does not conform to its image is despised to the lowest degree, even lacking the qualification to be called a “man”? Are they naturally considered “beasts” or “worthless”?
And does being “expelled” by patriarchal society mean that such men cannot be understood at all—neither by society, their BDSM peers, nor themselves?
Perhaps this is the root of why male subs even hate themselves.
Beauvoir said, to love someone, you must love their differences.
Li Yinhe said that just as there are diverse sexual orientations among men, such as heterosexuality, bisexuality, and homosexuality, men’s spiritual and emotional expressions should also be diverse.
In my view, being a dom or a sub is the answer one finds after conversing with their own spirit. There is no superiority or inferiority; men’s pursuits and desires can also be rich and colorful, not limited to “making money, being an official, buying a house and car, achieving success.”
I hope that one day, not only rational, domineering, strong, and successful men will be admired and praised, but also men who dare to face their desires with grace, honesty, and naturalness will receive the same understanding and respect.
I know this is very difficult, not something one person can achieve. It is a societal issue. But Wang Xiaobo once said, “Besides a realistic life, people should also have a poetic world.”
That poetic world exists in our minds. At least there, we can present our true selves rather than a regulated, false shadow.
- End –
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