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This is written mainly to help men who don’t always want to take the initiative romantically and their femme partners understand where their fantasies may have come from growing up, but I’m sure there are other interesting parallels that can be drawn.

It’s important to note that studies show the desire to play around with vulnerability mostly resides in the person role-playing submissiveness rather than the person role-playing dominance. The person playing the dominant usually gets their pleasure from seeing the other person testing their limits.

As well, even though I’ve tried to delve the depths of how desiring to make sense of and play around with power dynamics can affect many aspects of one’s identity growing up, it also happens that some people are simply introduced to bondage for example and discover they enjoy the sensation with no more deeper reason than that.

Finally some people for stress release reasons might just desire to be submissive in bed because they have a competitive job, or similarly desire to be dominant because they’re shy in everyday interactions.

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The stories are sorted into stages of identity development, such as first gaining knowledge of an identity, testing the waters of that identity, becoming that identity, then exploring the outer limits of that identity you don’t want to be. So:

Noticing – Exploring before becoming – Becoming – Exploring the fear of becoming going too far.

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1. Noticing – Dominant/Submissive Unfairness

Noticing unfair power dynamics from a removed perspective of not desiring to be involved or being insulted for not engaging in competitive behaviours is one way this kink can develop for trying to make sense of an irrational dynamic.

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2. Exploring before becoming

Imagining being the object of a femme persons adoration

Fantasies about what things the person you want to submit to might love and have good feelings toward; growing up one thinks of pretty dolls, and later you imagine a penis that serves them.

So by dehumanising yourself, your able to think of what it is about the femme person that makes them desire the object.

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Wanting to be punished for being a man

On seeing other men being told off for sexist behaviours and shrugging it off to show their opposition to women, the shy boy who wants to mimic the good qualities of being a woman, but only ever sees the two separated genders talk when they are affirming their opposition to each other might turn this into a sexual fantasy of enjoying the idea of being irrationally punished for being a man, even though they can’t help it and have to struggle with these anxiety inducing gender norms.

For example the social norm that men are supposed to be the ones who make the first move in showing sexual interest. The resentment flares when women criticize men’s sexually aggressive behaviour, which the men see as a necessary role that has been delegated to them exclusively, along with the ego-risks involved: we have to do this, and you don’t. And therefore don’t understand.

So the sexual fantasy coming from irrationally being punished for completely acceptable advances in a bar for example, e.g. my eyes will see you, and there will be sensations and emotions, lust and eroticized longings, and this will be true even though I don’t want to be your colonizer and your oppressor, what I will also be feeling is my own defenceless sensitivity to those very feelings.

Or, the fantasy can come from a fear of being made to feel bad for not taking the initiative. For example the anxiety around being the object of attraction pre-puberty, I remember really not liking other kids slapping and pinching my butt or getting a girlfriend to say I’ve tried stuff and not liking any of it. So when I later did develop attractions, fear of it not being enjoyable would make it difficult to want to take the initiative, therefore the fantasy developed that it would be easier if more people were making uncomfortable advances like before, only now I would like it more, so a desire for pain and pleasure mixed together.

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3. Becoming – Submissive awakening

Being uncomfortable approaching women, the shy man might enjoy imagining what it would be like to experience romance and sex through the average woman’s eyes, being the one pursued and their partner taking the lead in suggesting what to do next. So, the shy man might enjoy lusting after a person who’s body has exciting differences to them, but want to experience their sexuality in similar ways, enjoy the coming together of similar desires in a relationship and tentatively learning to express their new found sexuality.

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4. Exploring the fear of becoming going too far – Loss of self

By romanticising sex as a loss of control, you can extend that to loss of the ego through regression, and getting to exist in a sub-space trance where you remain in a pleasure state for a long period of time.

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