Submission, self actualization and related radical ideas…
This started as a comment in answer to a great post on Amber made on her blog. My answer got truncated… something I never knew happened… in the haloscan comments… but I guess you’re limited to 3,000 character answers. Bad me for being long winded… First time. LOL.
Well, after having gone round and round in my own mind about submission and what it means, and whether or not I was a submissive, could be, wanted to be, etc… and discovering that my aversion to the word was stupid, blocked my ability to look objectively and openly at my life, and was mainly based on the social stigma associated with the label and had nothing concrete to do with what it really was or meant… I am a sexual submissive. Worse yet! LOL I’m a sexual masochist. How awful for me! LOL! NOT!
Coming to terms with facts and relaxing into some realities I am now comfortable in who I am. There is nothing defective about a woman who thoroughly enjoys sex with her husband, and who has a healthy generative connection with him outside the bedroom. There is nothing defective about a man who has the same thing with his wife. I want, need and like him to spank me. I want need and like him to be the head of our household. I want need and like the comfortable reality of discipline in our lives that now and then includes me being spanked for punishment. He wants, needs and likes all of those things too.
As I tried clumsily to put in my story “Into Secret Places,” I made a neat discovery on my journey as a submissive recently…. Submission is a powerful thing, and it isn’t all me. When Mark took me to a place where I completely gave over to him… where he could have done anything he wanted to me … I realized that in giving him myself so completely, he showed me that the deepest, darkest, most protected secret part of me has a twin place within him where it fits perfectly. He’s been making it for “me” over the years. The most perfect element of my submission was how it dovetailed into “my” place in his soul. How he made me able to trust him to lead me there, and when I made it there, I knew I was safe, and how I knew that I would never be alone again as long as I could stay there. And most amazing of all, was the perfect awareness that even though I was there, completely his and woven into him and what he is, I was and still am me. Not only that, but I knew in that moment that for him I am perfect and for me he is too.
I only hope that vanilla couples can make discoveries like that with each other. I’m sure they can, and do. But so did we and that’s what I think matters.
Submission is a powerful thing. When a submissive can find herself stronger and more whole as a result of where she’s been inside and with her partner she is well on her way to self-actualization. We all need each other, and I think one of the most profound things that human beings can do is discover their humanity and connection to each other.
Submission needs domination. There must be that balance. As I become more whole and at peace with myself as a submissive, I become more and more appreciative of the glow my dominant partner has as he makes his own journey to actualize and realize all of his potential. Together we are more than we are apart, yet because of each other and the strength we draw from who we are together, we are both stronger and better as individuals…
there… my parallel rant about submission and its meaning in my life … met lots of internet rescuers in my travels, never yet met one who seemed as comfy in their own skin as I have become over time….
Also, since you already are here 🙂 I put a very comprehensive How-To together, for all the people out there who want to get in domestic discipline…
There are chapters on the lifestyle and introducing it, living life in the lifestyle, a detailed description of tools, and much more… Each chapter contains valuable tips and habits that you can apply to your life. I wrote this book because there are no such books out there (!), and … we have developed our relationship with Domestic Discipline so far, that I now consider myself as an expert 🙂
… write me you like it !
Click here to read a detailed description, or go to Amazon and click here for more!
Love,
Constance
Domestic submission 
Hi Constance! I am a fellow submissive wife, and I just recently found your blog through Jgirl’s blog. I really liked this post immensely! I and my HoH are struggling to find our connection outside of the bedroom, and we are quietly (8 yr old son in the mix) putting together a submission training session for me after the new year when we are able to get a sitter. I am always looking for posts and articles as yours that help to build me up and encourage me in my submissive journey. Thanks again for your post, and I’m so glad to have found ya’ll’s blogs, again, as a means of encouragement to the rest of us submissive wives:)
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Meg, thanks! Sorry for the late answer. Keep us updated on your progress 🙂
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I definitely will!:)
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Thanks and good luck!
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Hey Constance,
Just wondering which blog post it was since I have not posted on it in a couple years. With busy teaching high school, boyfriend, 2 big dogs, house, etc, I just had no time anymore 😦
Anyways, I completely understand your feelings.
Although boyfriend and I do not really do any “punishment” outside of role play, I absolutely crave his sexual dominance. My sexual submissiveness is a part of me that I not just accept but love.
I am so fortunate that he feels the same, well meaning of course the opposite. Nothing is “forced”, it is just natural lifestyle for us.
I also agree that there needs to be a head of the household. 2 captains cannot effectively run a ship, household, marriage, etc. And I am fine with him having the responsibility.
Besides, we have ways of getting what we want anyways , might take a little effort, but we have our ways, eh? 😉
Thanks for the good read hun
amber xxx
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Amber,yes we have our ways 🙂
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If a man does not control a woman, even to the extent of making her thoroughly submissive on occasion, she will dominate him. In the process, she will make both of their lives absolutely miserable.
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There is some truth to this.
A submissive (not sexually in the context of bdsm for example) man that constantly does everything a woman asks and gives in “to avoid an argument” or to “keep the peace” etc, WILL eventually lose his woman’s respect.
And it is a long road to try to get it back too. If he “all of a sudden” starts asserting himself, it will only get worse before it gets better. I have seen many relationships and marriages fall apart because our media has done its best to emasculate men. To tell them they need to evolve and cry and be sensitive and all kinds of other platitudes. Nothing wrong with it in very moderation, but a man still needs to be a man. And fuck what the idiots on the view and oprah news say.
amber
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True…
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Media is merely a vehicle for conveying information. In particular, daytime television was intended to sell products to housewives during the post-World War II years. This carryover from the 1950s still exists in the early 21st century. The presence of The View and Oprah Winfrey on daytime television are and were merely more recent examples of that phenomenon.
However, the emasculation of men did not begin on television. In fact, during 1950s primetime programming, there were occasional scenes of badly behaved women getting the seat of their dresses spanked by a man. Even one soap opera of the day was famous for its references to spanking the fairer sex.
In reality, the emasculation of men originated with federal equal rights laws. While benign on its surface, federal equal rights legislation in the 1960s demanded men and women be treated equally. Although intended to promote equality between the sexes in the workplace, the statues soon produced very insidious effects in families.
Back when my wife and I were growing up, it was an open secret that parents typically stopped using spanking for the routine disciplining of boys with the onset of puberty. For example, I got my last spanking when I was in elementary school.
On the other hand, as happened to my wife, parents usually continued spanking their daughters well into their teens. In fact, until the 1970s, it was perfectly legal in many states for parents to spank their daughters until their 21st birthday!
Despite generations of tradition producing well-behaved young ladies, advocates of women’s liberation perceived the dissimilar treatment of teenage boys and girls as being a threat to equality for women.
Prior to the late 1960s, as had been the case with my wife when she was in high school, it was not uncommon for a disobedient teenage daughter to wind up being spanked over her father’s knee as if she were still a preteen. Likewise, as is still the case in states where school paddlings are still permitted, it was standard practice for noncompliant female students in high school to be paddled by a male administrator.
Whether parent or principal, the idea that a female should submit to male authority under any circumstances was an anathema to feminists of the day. Thus, it was within the context of promoting equality that the seeds of the anti-spanking movement were sown.
Paddles began disappearing from schoolhouses. A federal law known as CAPTA essentially rewarded local child protection agencies for removing children from their parents. Spanking was commonly used as an excuse.
At about the same time, beginning with California, states began passing no-fault divorce legislation. A short time later, the phrase “domestic violence” entered the English language. Concurrently, because young men could be drafted to die in Vietnam without being able to legally buy a beer or vote in an election, 18-year-olds began being treated as adults.
Additionally, whereas the university registrar sent my wife and my grades to our respective parents when were undergraduates, federal legislation further mandated colleges treat students as adults independent of their parents.
It was within the context of the forgoing that boys were expected to behave more like girls in elementary and high school classrooms. This helps explain why many men these days try to appease women as well as adopt feminine attitudes. In many instance, especially if they have been raised by a single mother and taught almost exclusively by female teachers, there may not have been a male role model in their life.
When coupled with the rise of only child families, many boys grew up to be men without ever seeing, hearing, or knowing that big girls could be spanked. Of course, in a lot of cases, women weren’t going to tell them otherwise!
Interpersonal problems often develop in today’s relationships because, for the most part, women evolved under male domination. Historically, it was often how their maternal ancestors picked men they believed best able to protect them and insure the survival of their offspring. Much of what women today think of as a choice in seeking out a dominate partner is actually biological in origin.
One the negative side, biological determinism helps to explain why it is often hard for abused women to separate themselves from a bad relationship. It is not that these women are weak. Nor is it necessarily that they make poor choices. Instead, it merely confirms that male domination has been hardwired into the human species for millennia.
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You always add an interesting perspective and I really like reading your comments – I wouldn’t support all of your opinions entirely, but nevertheless, what would my comment section be without you?
Are there any other blogs which you frequent? My offer to write a guest post still stands, by the way.
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I see what you are saying about where the emasculation began.
But, today it is no more prevalent than our media.
Look at just the different tv shows. I can only think of TWO out oh how many thousands of series there are? where the leading man is a strong, intelligent, healthy, character.
Criminal Minds. And NCIS . and even in NCIS they have to have this bumbling buffoon of a male character that is always being put down by the women.
The rest of the shows have male characters that are fat, whiny, submissive, idiots that could not tie their shoes without the women that make fun of them the whole show doing it for him.
The view is just an example also of what women are watching and in the live audience that are lapping up.
Yes, it is “supposed” to be “just television” But girls are growing up with Continuous, non stop emasculation played out over and over and over throughout the media day and night. And the boys are growing up with this as well without parents taking an active role in helping boys become men. They are leaving it up to schools to do so.
Where they are not allowed to keep score, some cases not allowed to run, and any display of masculinity is discouraged.
Anyways, as only in my 30’s I missed the beginnings of the trend, but thankfully I did not fall into the sheep mode and accept emasculation that so many other girls are active in, and so thankful that my boyfriend grew up to be a masculine man 🙂
amber xxx
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In recent years, a couple of professors (one male, the other female) from McGill University in Canada have produced several titles addressing how misandry has wormed its way into Western culture. One example they cite is The Color Purple. In that movie, all of the men are either weak or they are wicked.
Although I have no definitive proof, and so-called experts in the field with whom I have spoken seem to have no answers, I would further suggest that the emasculation of males may be a contributory factor in school shootings.
In both the United States and Canada, for example, one notices an uptick in school shootings after the Sexual Revolution of the 1960s despite increased efforts to promote gun control.
It well-known that boys experience more problems in elementary school than do girls. They typically have fewer verbal skills and learn to read later than do girls. Even in high school, many boys “fake it” in the classroom.
When coupled with a proliferation of female teachers and a society that rejects expressions of masculinity, the results may push some boys over the edge.
It wasn’t that a “boy problem” in schools didn’t exist before the 1960s. Rather the Sexual Revolution exacerbated a problem that seems to have had its roots prejudices associated in early 20th immigration from Southern Europe.
I would further suggest that the much of insidiously divisive nature of the recent presidential election can be attributed to a battle of the sexes. In many ways, the current president elect is an embodiment of chauvinism. On the other side, the core supporters of his primary opponent primarily consisted of women coming of age either during or just after the Sexual Revolution.
Meanwhile, one thing to remember about television is that it primarily exists to deliver an audience of potential consumers to advertisers. That’s one of the primary reasons why television programming, even news, so seldom deals with the thornier problems of the day.
When it comes to cop shows, it may be worth pointing out that Law & Order began with an all male cast. The program added females to attract female viewers. In other words, while television may seem to be a trend setter, it exists to give views what they want to see and hear.
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Whether or not you agree with my chronology is irrelevant. Nevertheless, while we may quibble over details, the flow is back up by the historical record. Moreover, I arrived at my assessment by having lived through the rise of anti-spanking.
On the other hand, back when I was growing up, even my mother’s women’s magazines sometimes carried an occasional mention of wives being spanked. While by no means advocated, the spanking of wives in those days didn’t have the same negative connotation that developed after the 1960s. At the same time, men’s magazines advocated the practice.
A little over a couple of decades ago I began writing about domestic discipline issues as the anti-spanking movement began crescendoing, Since then, I’ve learned that, for want of a better term, domestic discipline websites have a shelf life or life expectancy. Things happen. Real life becomes a little more complicated than people realized when they launched their website. Even worse, inevitably someone things THEY discovered spanking!
These days, I will occasionally peruse website and drop a few comments here and there. Among the things I’ve noticed is that far too many web authors tend to over-complicate these things. In reality, given a little time and a lot less interference, most reasonably intelligence people can discover the nuts and bolts of domestic discipline. It isn’t rocket science. The key is having two people willing to work together to make their relationship work. Part of that includes women sharing with men what they know about disciplining the fairer sex Then, they needs to swallow their pride and let men do what comes naturally.
Truth be told, none of this is new. In fact, most of what I know about domestic discipline I learned over half a century ago. Much of it came from listening to mothers and daughters at a time when spanking was considered a socially acceptable topic for conversation. Among the most important lessons I learned back then was, despite more recent protests, women know they don’t get too old to be put over a man’s lap.
The mother of a high school friend even went so far as to caution that a girl will run all over a boy if she thinks she can get away with it. While she never mentioned spanking as a cure, it was obvious this mother of two sons expected boys to grow up to be the man of the house.
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As a teacher, I do see the worst indeed. And it has got worse just in the time since I was in school, so I can imagine how bad in total it has been since you have been in school.
Yeah it doesn’t matter how and when the trend has started, it is getting progressive and I believe it is not only systemic but even worse, it is encouraged. 😦
amber
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To give you some idea how much things have changed, when I was in elementary school, there was no “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance; schools were still segregated by race; morning Bible reading and prayer were still legal; and paddling was permissible. Before I graduated from high school, most of that had changed.
Back then, beyond Supreme Court mandates such as Brown and Vitale, most educational trends started in California and swept eastward. As might be expected, most of these were more experimental and liberal than the traditions they replaced.
So far as I can tell, education in the United States is currently adrift. Much of the problem was caused by a conflict between academics and socialization. For example, schools have tasked with solving America’s race problem and promoting sexual equality. At the same time, in many instances, discipline in schools has become the responsibility of school resource officers rather than principals and teachers.
When I was younger, most elementary schools were modeled on a middle class white nuclear family model. There was the daddy-like principal and the mommy-like classroom teacher. Being sent to the office was the equivalent of: “Wait until your father gets home.” High schools were based more on a factory of office model.
The massive old high school that I attended actually had a dean of female students. Responsible for dealing with less than ladylike young women, her office was tucked away on the third floor. Although I never actually went inside, it appeared to have an smaller outer office just off the hall. Behind that, was apparently an inner office extending to the exterior wall of the building.
In a high school psychology class, one of the female students told about having recently been spanked by her mother. Most of the discussion revolved around the discussion she and her mother had before the spanking. Subsequently, the teacher acknowledged having spanked her daughter when she was in high school.
Today, of course, such a classroom discussion would be unthinkable. Yet, these revelations weren’t all that unusual in the days before the Sexual Revolution.
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As you know, some have accused you of being a troll. I don’t believe you’re one – you always add an interesting perspective to this blog, not mine, but the perspective of someone who has seen a lot of change.
For example, where I am from, spanking was never a topic – it is totally forbidden and considered close to rape (ok I’m exaggerating, but you get the point).
The anonymity of the internet just allowed me to open this blog in which I could a) talk about spanking and b) read opinions such as yours, which show me how much we have changed (and not for the better, arguably).
I mean back then spanking was at least considered, and these days we have ‘safe spaces’.
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Over the years, I’ve been accused of various things online. Among them was being a woman because I seemed to know a little too much about how women think. Some women really hate it when a man does that. It threatens their whole feminine mystique veneer!
One thing to remember about the troll accusation is that it is easy to make and impossible to disprove. All one poster has to do to be labeled a troll is to upset another.
A few years back, during an online exchange with someone taking exception to my point of view, I got the distinct impression that I was dealing with a young woman, perhaps even a teenager, exposed to women’s studies. I have also learned that some women apparently feel threatened by an articulate male. It is obvious that these women want choice in everything except spanking!
Understanding what has been labeled a “war on spanking,” requires becoming acquainted with feminist literature. Because the original feminists were 19th century abolitionists, it was natural for them to equate marriage with antebellum slavery. Not surprisingly, then, Victorian husbands were equated slaveholders. It is a theme that still exists in feminist rhetoric.
Of particular annoyance was the fact that marriage facilitated a young woman moving from being legally spanked by her father to being spanked by her husband in a society dominated my men. Thus, one of the primary goals of feminism has been to get women out from under the thumb of men. In doing this, feminists didn’t care if they wrecked marriages, destroyed school discipline, or created a wave of female juvenile delinquents. Putting women on an equal footing with men was of paramount importance.
One of the more fascinating reversals during the 20th century occurred when sex replaced spanking as an acceptable topic of conversation. In large measure, this seismic shift in attitude was evidenced when Hollywood discarded the old Hays Code and adopted the Valenti Code (the current MPAA movie rating system) in the late 1960s.
At the same time, equating spanking with rape is a natural outgrowing of the pervasive influence of Sigmund Freud. Everything has a sexual connotation.
To a large extent, opponents of spanking have succeeded to marginalizing spanking by labeling it as either abusive (domestic violence) or sexual (erotic). Lost is the traditional middle ground of spanking as discipline.
The primary problem in all of this is that what people have done over time tends to outlast efforts to eradicate it. That’s why, just under the surface, spanking still goes on much as it has always done.
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I’m normally not one for political comments, but I totally cosign this one:
” In doing this, feminists didn’t care if they wrecked marriages, destroyed school discipline, or created a wave of female juvenile delinquents. ”
Let’s not forget that the destroyed marriages result in lots of single moms, whose kids lack of a proper father figure.
I’ll have to look into this Valenti Code thing – it’s true that Hollywood has pushed its own narrative over the last 30 years or so .
“Lost is the traditional middle ground of spanking” that one is true, too. It’s why I opened up this blog and I stress at every possible occasion that I only advocate consensual spanking, and that spanking is not necessarily abusive. The internet has been a refuge for such thoughts, so to say.
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The “war on spanking” is too intertwined with a resurgence of late 20th century feminism to be easily untangled from political motivations. The timing is likewise too coincidental to totally discount a possible linkage.
The rise of single motherhood was less about empowering women that it was about undermining traditional male led marriages. At the time, there seemed to be a widespread, and frankly naive, belief that government intervention would prove to be an adequate substitute for absent fathers. Any adult at the time should have known better.
During World War II, there had been a worrying uptick in juvenile delinquency. The simple fact was that working mothers and government babysitters couldn’t make GIRLS behave themselves. During the war, while arrests for boys up slightly, arrests of girls (classified as being under the age of 21 until the 1970s) increased alarmingly!
Among the more intriguing questions surrounding the demise of the Hays (movie production) Code has less to do with spanking in movies than with sex on the screen. While Hollywood flirted with sex on the big screen before Hays, it was nothing compared to what was shown after the late 1960s.
Despite Mae West’s provocative antics in front of the camera, introduction of the Hays Code was less the result of what was shown on screen than it was what was happening behind the scenes when the cameras stopped rolling, the lights were turned off, and the actors went home. Hollywood scandals threatened the whole industry with either boycott of federal intervention.
The above history brings up an intriguing question. What was so important that Hollywood would, quite literally, trade a few smacks on a clothed bottom of a badly behaved female character for an actress taking off her clothes and crawling into bed with a man?
In answering this, it is important to remember that under the Hays Code, as well as its television equivalent, there were no double beds. Even married couples had twin beds. All of the children had to have the same color hair (blonde or brunette) as their parents.
Over the years, the only answer I can consistently come up with is women’s equality. Granted, while the Hays Code had been weakened during the post-World War II years, it still retained considerable influence before suddenly being discarded in the late 1960s.
Of the 32 states to ban corporal punishment (paddling) in schools, 31 did so after 1970.
Beginning about the same time, Congress passed child abuse legislation that would be eventually used by local governments agencies to justify removal of children from their parents because of spanking.
During this same period, the age at which children became legally independent from their parents dropped from 21 to 18.
States also begin passing no-fault divorce laws. History has shown that the vast majority of divorces are initiated by women. Divorce rates, which had been slowly climbing during the first part of the 20th century, suddenly shot up after 1970.
Congress held hearing on corporal punishment in schools in the 1980s. Among the chief concerns were male administrators paddling female students. While boys received far more paddling that girls in elementary school, girls began to catch up by high school. That fact that the elementary school age boys were frequently padded by female teachers or administrators wasn’t seen as a problem.
Anti-spanking research also began with a vengeance in the 1980s. Concurrently, female juvenile delinquency saw a dramatic increase. This was a repeat of the same problem seen during World War II when fathers were absent from homes. Not surprisingly, this same period saw teenage pregnancy rates peak.
The commonality in the above is that when husbands and fathers are in the home, the behavior of girls is more stable. While boys have always been problematic, at least traditional parenting could keep half the juvenile species in line.
Likewise, when domestic discipline was considered to be a “family matter,” rather than a justification for arresting men, families tended to be more stable.
Essentially, during the late 20th century, society traded spanking for divorce in the name of women’s equality. It also made the same trade when it came to female juvenile delinquency. In other words, equality and female independence from men became the altar on which feminine virtue was sacrificed.
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Are you people for real.
As a woman, I say you are a disgrace to your gender and future generations of girls.
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Why?
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