natural order?

[dolf]

bytor made me think some more on this...it's something i've been thinking about a lot recently....


is D/s a perversion or is it an expression of human nature and the natural order?

social animals....lions. the females certainly sub to the males. the females. wolves, there is an alpha pair, the betas switch, the omegas are total subs. a stag will herd his harem and control thier movements....

back in time the first humans would have lived in small social groups with the most dominant and capable leading them....

is it perhaps an evolved part of human nature...a survival trait...to have Doms and subs? perhaps in the modern world where birth and education hold so much importance there are frustrated dominant types who play this out in thier private lives?

ok, this is a vague outline of a thought and i'm not certain where it's heading...anyone have anything to add?
xx

 

[Kajira Callista]

I'm one of the weird ones who believes things are supposed to be this way...men are born dominant and woman submissive. There are exceptions though. Some woman are born dominant and some men sub, same as people are born homosexual. I think it is not the norm but just happens. I don't know if I'm expressing this properly, but yeah those traits are something we are born with Whether we develop them is a different story though. A lot of people want to fit into the world the way other people say they should. Some just want to be who they are but struggle to be what nature made them to be.

 

[CutieMouse]

*****

 

[bytor2112]

i can understand this line of thinking....

dom/sub relationships can be taken to far though....the pissing and shitting and hitting and slapping is not Dom/sub behavior it is violent and angry retribution to some aspect of life..and not healthy at all!!

 

[Kajira Callista]

It makes sense to me. The guy I'm dating right now- his opinion is that the natural order of things is for older men to be with somewhat younger women, and men to be mmore dominant in general. He views it as a cycle of life/success to continue the species thing. I can't say I disagree with his view much....

Instinctual... but how many people in this world actually listen to thier instinct?

 

[CutieMouse]

*****

 

[caela]

Interesting thoughts dolf, and something I've thought about at different times; when I have the time to think about anything but school and work.

I'm sure other people have said it before and I'm just playing repeat but if you look at nearly any human relationship there is a natural level of dominance and submission inherant in it. It's usually not a concious thing and tends to simply develop with the relationship; even friendships in my observations are this way. Of course in such relationships the power often shifts back and forth instead of having the steadier focus and clearer exchange that a D/s relationship does.

I tend to think that we are all hardwired with certain tendencies at birth simply based on our DNA and evolution but that those tendencies can be developed or squashed depending on a lot of factors including homelife, education, friends, and society at large. For example a woman might be born with more submissive traits but being born into adverse family situation she doesn't develop those traits and instead learns to be very commanding and "in-charge". Perhaps the trait will wait and surface later in her life when she can more readily express it or perhaps like an unnourished flower it will wither and die and the learned trait will take it's place.

With such things it's very hard to say what the truth of the matter is since we can't just look at a strand of DNA and go, "SEE! This one has the submissive gene! I told you so!" It's rather a guessing game and a matter of what you personally believe.

Just my 2 cents worth.

~edited because I can't spell~

 

[NCShin]

i said something similar to this, but it was just a flame war....

 

[Netzach]

Hm.

I tend to have a much more nurture based view of all this. I see D/s and BDSM as operating outside of the social mores that reinforce male-dominant female-submissive roles. Bottom line: I think all y'all would be bored to shit with a nice 1850's-1950's style of female 'submission" - ie. cooking and cleaning for him but not able to tolerate the thought of *gasp* sucking his dick! Much less being able to admit you *like* it. No, there's some conditioning you got that you are operating in answer to, no less so than me.

I think we're finally at a point where we feel we can play with power in the bedroom, and where we need to address issues of power and sexuality in order to feel psychologically fulfilled. Sexual roles and power have been the hot issue of the last 50 years or so, and the changes there have caused us to feel a vacuum.

In my case, being in an arena where being an asserive bitch is a good thing is liberating, and I feel the same sense of natural fulfillment of *my* destiny, to lead, to nurture, to feel the independence I feel, to accept myself as a sadistic person and to accept the violence latent in me...as any of you might feel to find yourself mastered well and finally able to not have to be in control of certain things, or anything in relation to your partner. The message in the media is clear -- girls be assertive! But for God's sake, not where it counts, and not in bed! But don't let him walk all over you either, you know, don't be like that! Ew, no!

I think we are all of us, MDom, femsub, malesub and me...reacting to that in some fashion. The nature of our reactions are all different, but it's a hot button all right.

I don't know about femDoms, but if you are going to use the homosexual analogy, I will certainly assert that more than 10% of the people in BDSM are male and submissive or bottom or switch. So there's something damned unnatural on fantasy island or it's all well and good and as things ought to be.

This also doesn't address the fact of gay/lesbian BDSM. If you look closely at those pairings, as I have, the more "femme" or "queen" of the couple is the top, just about as often as not.

 

[Netzach]

Very very very few.

I listen to my instinct. It tells me the old SOB needs to be pussywhipped by someone young and fast.


They love that kind of thing.

 

[CutieMouse]

*****

 

[Netzach]

You know, now I'm doubting my own ideas. I mean the question of feminism is furthest from the minds of gay leathermen in the throes of doing one another, no doubt!

But I still think that has something to do with the construction of masculinity, I think they're hashing something out there in reaction to male roles and expected sexuality and power stuff.

Cutie mouse, - totally understood and accepted, I would in no way suggest that your submission is less instinctive for you. It's where my instincts get a label in the general argument that I feel a need to chime in.

 

[CutieMouse]

*****

 

[dolf]

thankyou KC for expressing some of my thoughts somewhat more eloquently than i could. i was struggling to get that idea coherent

Netzach , you made an interesting point about dominant females. i'm thinking about wolves again the alpha female often will only sub to the alpha male. lower ranking males are expected to sub to her...i'm trying not to think about hyenas, i'll just get confused


i think cutie may be right about older men...in many animals the females will look to mature males who have proven themselves.

caela, i'll be so happy when that gene is found and people stop trying to force round pegs into square holes

bytor! thankyou for the response! i was expecting...well...lol
i thought maybe the extremeties are caused by the way society represses these "natural" roles...repressed urges seem to bubble up twice as big....but this is merely guess work. i'd appreciate more input in this

NCShin, it sux i'm sorry your thoughts weren't debated. if you have anything you'd like to add i would be interested in hearing your opinion


{the next thoughts are kinda shaky...i don't have enough knowledge to form a theory...just tossing this around inside my head}

i've been musing on tribal cultures, people who still live very basic, natural lives... do thier social structures fit in with this theory?
from the small window into thier lives that tv documentories can offer it seems that mostly the men hunt, herd and talk while the women do everything else. they serve!. there is a basic assumption that this is the role they are born to do....ok, this might be totally wrong, lol, tv has been known to lie

xx

 

[dolf]

just ought to mention...i'm full of flu and fever so if i'm not making sense at any point please prod me
xx

 

[TNRkitect2b]

just ought to mention...i'm full of flu and fever so if i'm not making sense at any point please prod me
xx

you are making very good sense. I am just trying to formulate a coherent response.

Though the idea of prodding you....

 

[TNRkitect2b]

I do think that tribal cutures fit within this framework. That there is a natural order.

However, there have always been exceptions to rules. Biologists would call them variations or mutations. If the new variation is able to live successfully, it will continue. If it is more successful than the original base, it will take over.

The alpha female role could stem from that.

Yet nature also has a way of adapting to overcome specific situations. Some fish and amphibians will mutate from female to male in the absence of a male.

Could the strong female in humans be a result from similar situations? You could almost looks at the sexual chages that some inmates undergo in prison; in male prisons, the femanization of a male, in a female prison the masculinization (sp) of a female. These are in response to stimuli and could almost be considered to stem from a "nuture" aspect.

These thoughts are loosely coherent, and not yet thought through completely. Feel free to disagree and pick them apart.

 

[graceanne]

I have long said, and to several people, that I think that people in D/s relationships are just closer to their instincts. And I also think that it's more likely that the male be dom, the female sub. of course there are exceptions to the rule, there are exceptions to every rule! lol But frankly, look at mother animals. They are the most fierce, so it makes sense that some women would be dominant, and some men submissive.

I think that anything beyond D/s though has to do with the way you were raised and things like that. I don't think you have to be into bondage or S&M to be in a D/s relationship. I know you don't because K and I have always been pretty D/s (although we didnt' know the terms), long before I got honest with him about my fantasies. Everywhere you can see people in D/s relationship that are pretty vanilla else wise. Normally you make comments like 'he's pussy whipped,' or other derogatory things like that. My mother and father in law are upstanding souther baptist people, and let me tell you, they are SERIOUSLY D/s. My father in law says jump, and she says how high.

 

[Netzach]

The tribal cultures you're talking about tend to lead pretty sexually segregated lives. Men and women devlop their own hieracrchies, and rather than "serving" the women provide the 70% - 80% of the food source that the men don't with meat by their gathering/digging/minor trapping activities.

Power and wisdom is often ascribed to the aged, so an older female will sometimes be more revered than a younger male, of course this varies from culture to culture widely and depends on their belief system. Women are low-ranking and considered inferior among natives of New Guinea, for example, and social life is fairly egalitarian and women are integrated into it among indigenous people of the Congo...humans have all kinds of value systems.

There's what your society tells you, the cards you are dealt, but then there's how you play them, and that's where the individual comes into the question.

 

[Netzach]

I do think that tribal cutures fit within this framework. That there is a natural order.

However, there have always been exceptions to rules. Biologists would call them variations or mutations. If the new variation is able to live successfully, it will continue. If it is more successful than the original base, it will take over.

The alpha female role could stem from that.

Yet nature also has a way of adapting to overcome specific situations. Some fish and amphibians will mutate from female to male in the absence of a male.

Could the strong female in humans be a result from similar situations? You could almost looks at the sexual chages that some inmates undergo in prison; in male prisons, the femanization of a male, in a female prison the masculinization (sp) of a female. These are in response to stimuli and could almost be considered to stem from a "nuture" aspect.

These thoughts are loosely coherent, and not yet thought through completely. Feel free to disagree and pick them apart.

I don't know if we evelove that neatly and cleanly. Some mutuations are just there because they...are. We don't know what their role is and we won't for millenia.

I certainly hate to think that I'm the way I am because men are less likely to go out and shoot dinner and as likely to hit the produce aisle as I am. Nor do I really enjoy the prospect of considering myself and my relationships as some kind of duck-billed platypus of the SM world.

 

[graceanne]

Nor do I really enjoy the prospect of considering myself and my relationships as some kind of duck-billed platypus of the SM world.

*giggles* Sorry, I just like word picture there.

Who knows why we're the way we are? Does it make a difference? We're still this way. It could be an instinct thing, like I think, or a nurture thing. I suspect that in truth it's a little of both.

 

[TNRkitect2b]

I don't know if we evelove that neatly and cleanly. Some mutuations are just there because they...are. We don't know what their role is and we won't for millenia.

I certainly hate to think that I'm the way I am because men are less likely to go out and shoot dinner and as likely to hit the produce aisle as I am. Nor do I really enjoy the prospect of considering myself and my relationships as some kind of duck-billed platypus of the SM world.

I did not mean to demean you or who you are in anyway. But if we continute the evolution analogy, I feel that you are a higher evolved form of human denizens of the urban environment. Not a dead end off shoot, but on a higher plane.

 

[Netzach]

Uh oh. Woman controlled urban centers? Creepy. Although they do insist that our brains are more geared towards living together in groups and cooperating, I've not seen any evidence of this in my matriarchal family.

 

[AngelicAssassin]

There's what your society tells you, the cards you are dealt, but then there's how you play them, and that's where the individual comes into the question.

And there be the sharp edge of Occam's Razor. Think KISS. Hold on, this will be one helluva hairpin turn.

i'll state plainly that i don't believe genetics has a lot to do with someone's disposition for top, nor bottom behavior save the physical attributes that allow them to be on top if they so choose. Having rolled out the "choice" word, here's the deadly part. What influenced that choice? What makes a 6'6", 250 pound, 27 year old male poster child for masculinity and testosterone at its finest choose to be bound, whipped, gagged, and bufu'ed by a 4'11", 98 pound 39 year old female poster child for "well aged" femininity? For the moment, lose the outrage about my choice of female characteristics. i chose them for startling contrast.

 

[Netzach]

I *liiiiike* choice.

Now I personally don't feel as though I'm afflicted with my sexuality. I don't feel like I was born this way and I can't change it. I don't have the remotest desire to change it and I never did. I don't think I was born Domme, I think being a Domme was very consciously created in me as a reaction to the world around me, and in answer to what I find sexually arousing. You can ask, "wherefore art thou aroused by men crying" only so many times before I just decide I am and that's that.

I can't choose how the world treats me or sees me. I can't choose to Top when the world wants me on the bottom, and I can't just abdicate and choose to bottom when the world wants me on top. I have to do certain things to function. I have to fight what I might want to do at any given time. I think we can all relate to this.

So, I get home. I have a partner who trusts me, his or her interests dovetail with mine. I get to choose. I get to be in power because I choose to and I will excercise that power in a responsible way (somehow the world missed the bit about safewords, it's just an asshole a lot of the time) My partner gets to choose whether this is a good healthy and legitimate way to be, if it answers a need in him.