January 29, 2009
Natural?
A brilliant new blogger asked an important question recently, and it got me thinking: are men naturally Dominant and women naturally submissive? (You can read the original post here).
Part of me wants to say yes, on the whole i think women are naturally designed to be submissive, and men to be Dominant. When you look back through history, those are the roles that they took on, but i'm not sure if that only applies to certain cultures cos i got a feeling that in African tribes women have had a Dominant matriarchal role for quite some time. But maybe other people know more about that than me. And even now with all this 'new-age man' and 'equal rights for women' stuff, there's still plenty of evidence that actually underneath it all men are better at the aggressive, assertive, competitive, dominant stuff and women are better at the nurturing, caring, compromising, helping stuff.
Buttttttttttttt having said all that, i do think there are some really fantastic Dominant women out there, who have those characteristics naturally inbuilt as part of their personalities, and the same for male subs/slaves. So i'm not sure where that fits in with what i have said so far.
i guess i'm a bit confused..... any thoughts on all this?
Posts
8 comments:
Heh, I could go on about this for days. I can tell you my opinion (based on my experience and research) but it would take to long and I need to get my @$$ moving or I won't ever finish my school work.
10:09 PMIf I remember to I'll come back tonight and try to give the cliff notes version. As a tease I will say that the answer to "Are men naturally Dominant and women naturally submissive?" is yes and no. But not for the obvious reasons.
ooooooh i really want to hear Your answer now!
10:39 AMOk, finally got some time to ramble on this topic.
5:44 AMThe premise is men are naturally dominant and women are naturally submissive. Be this by genetics, culture or evolution.
Whenever speaking in generalizations it can be difficult to summarize if the generality is to large. If we take the position that there are only two kinds of people in the world, men and women, the shear numbers get so large that it's difficult to make a generalization accurate or specific enough to be of much use. However, we can still use what information and understanding we have to try and come up with theories that could possibly hold water (as the saying goes).
Whew! That pretty much exhausted my pontification abilities. Now it's time to ramble on in a semi-intelligent way. More or less.
Evolution tells us that men are physically bigger, stronger and more aggressive than women. You can see this by looking at the anthropology of man and at the animal kingdom. Males hunt, fight and protect the females. For this they need to have the physicality for these tasks or they won't survive. This gives males a more dominant role in their relationships with females. In human terms, men protect and provide while women support and care for the "family." This leads to the generalization that men are more dominant and women submissive.
But evolution and genetics only go so far. Once the human race started to manipulate their environment evolution and genetics started to take a back seat to cultural and social drives. Physically humans haven't evolved for a few hundred thousand years. In fact, I believe that physically we have devolved into beings that can't live without our social, cultural and technical constructs. But I digress.
In the modern age women can do nearly anything men can do. Size and strength aren't the primary requirements for the vast majority of jobs we have in the world now. This is why culture and society draw the lines of power in today's world.
Now, in order to get more specific on this we will need to narrow the parameters of the discussion. I will narrow the scope and refer to people in large cities of the world and what some call the Western culture (e.g. Originating from Europe).
Men and women today do not have the same solidly defined gender roles as they did a few tens of thousands of years ago. In fact, over the last three or so generations the gender roles have become so blurred it's a wonder that the definitions of masculine and feminine still exist.
I, myself, have been called a wuss and a pussy by women who think I'm to weak and wimpy to make a good mate. This would imply that there are still dominant and submissive roles for men and women respectively. But women who I've been in lengthy relationships come to find that, while I'm no big strong he-man, I am not a wimpy Nancy boy. I just don't give a $#it about most of what's happening around me so I don't care if things are done her way. When it does come to things that I feel are important I can be very, well, let's say insistent.
So what does all the above mean? If you have actually read this far into these babbling's, you might be wondering where I'm going with this. And you'd have a right to. But this is where I clear it all up.
When you factor through evolution & culture and sift to the bottom line you end up with one final position. Sex. Yes, dominance and submission are all based on gender roles in sex. Women find men most attractive who are confident, powerful (primarily in personality but physical power is good, too) and can "take charge." Both meek and strong willed women end up attracted to men who can lead. Men who forge ahead and, again, take charge. Men who have confidence issues or are in any way afraid will not be seen as worthy of a woman's time. How many strong and successful women want their man to accept them as an equal except in the bedroom? Why do so many women end up with the "bad boys" instead of the good, polite, kind ones?
Some might see this as an extension of evolution. We evolved from and into beings with specific gender roles so even today these genetic aspects still rule. This is only a part of the explanation. Culture and social "norms" also help to create the whole of who we are as men and women. Thus, without specific and clearly defined gender roles and with the evolution and genetics being overruled by our environment, the only place we have to be different from each other is the bedroom. So all my aimless prattling comes down to this...
In a very general sense, men _need_ to be dominant and women _need_ to be submissive in their sexual relationship. As we all know, there are plenty of submissive men and dominate women in the world. As well as submissive women and dominant men outside of the bedroom (I believe that libbysub might classify herself in this last category). But the vast majority of people fall into the HE/she category when it comes to sex.
Men fuck; women get fucked. It's as simple as that.
Joe
================================
The preceding lecture has been brought to you by the members of the "Joe Needs To Get Laid" foundation. If he didn't need it he wouldn't have spent the last two hours spewing incomprehensible gibberish.
Transcripts of the lecture, translated into intellectual English, can be purchased for $5.95 plus $2.00 shipping. Just send an email requesting a copy to JoeNeedsToGetLaid@x-nc.net for further information.
================================
Rats! That should have been "translated into intelligible English". Oh well.
5:46 AMwow, thanks for getting back to me on this. i was really interested to read what You had to say (several times) and i can see where You're coming from. i think the Dominance thing in sex is pretty much true, but i also think that quite a lot of people extend this outside the bedroom - not to the extent that BDSMers do, but in a general sense so that they expect men to be dominant and women not.
9:17 AMLots to think about though :)
There's one aspect of this that has caused me some inconvenience all my life. I am neither dominant nor submissive. There are just things I feel strongly about and things I don't. The problem comes into play when interfacing with girls. No matter what women say, they all want their man to be a MAN (except for Dommes, OC). They'll talk and talk about wanting a guy who's sensitive and "in touch with his feelings" blah blah blah. But when it gets down to the bottom line they want a man who's going to basically be the dominant part of the relationship.
8:51 PMHere's an example of what usually happens -
* I meet a girl and we're both kinda digging each other.
* I ask if she'd like to go somewhere for drinks or dinner or whatever.
* She says yes so I ask where she'd like to go.
* She replies by asking me where I'd like to go.
* Since I don't care at all where we go I ask again where she'd like to go.
* This goes round and round for a little while and we usually end up nowhere.
And that's the end of that. She will now remember me as a wimpy pussy boy.
This is all probably due to my sideways brain wiring. Unfortunately for me it wasn't discovered until last summer.
BTW, you don't have to You me. I'm just a you.
2:36 AMoh sorry
6:45 PMPost a Comment