February 08, 2009
nature or nurture?
This is the big question which is whizzing round my head at the moment - does an interest in the BDSM lifestyle arise mainly because of 'nature' (i.e. inbuilt personality characteristics which that person was born with) or 'nurture' (i.e. the type of childhood they had or specific events such as abuse which happened to them)? i have started a survey which deals with some of these issues, but i wanted to blog about my own thoughts now before i get influenced by the answers people give to my survey questions ;)
For me i would say my submission is definitely due to 'nature' - i was always a people-pleaser when i was little, wanting to help and serve and make other people's lives better, needing to know that others were pleased with me and wanted me and such like. And i was always intuitive, sensitive, empathetic, a good listener, caring, etc. Nothing happened in my childhood to 'cause' me to become submissive, there were no traumas, no abuse/assault, nothing that i can pinpoint that would have changed my mindset or nature in order to steer me onto this path. Infact i had vanilla relationships for quite a while before i accidentally discovered my submissive side, so i guess it's fair to say that i could well have stayed vanilla if i hadn't awoken the sleeping sub within me. Hmmm that's interesting to think about......
But when i read other subs' blogs or talk to people in emails or listen to conversations in chatrooms, it turns out that quite a high proportion of those subs/slaves were abused as children or sexually assaulted when fairly young, and this experience changed the wiring in their mind somehow so that from then on they were inclined to seek out D/s relationships (especially for sex), but ones which emulate the abuse in a consensual, healthy, fulfilling way rather than a destructive, hurtful way. Not sure if i got that exactly right, because i'm only going by my own interpretation of what all those other subs are trying to say, and i know everyone's experience is different, but that's the general impression i get. Some of those subs say they think they would still have turned out submissive even without the abuse/assault incident, but that it triggered something inside them which came to the fore and brought out their submissive tendencies a lot more. Which again is a very interesting comment....
So this is where my musings have led me so far. i think there are many many more people out there with natural submissive tendencies than are currently practicing or even interested in BDSM. Because lots of them haven't discovered those tendencies yet, and perhaps never will. When an abusive incident happens, that can often trigger off those latent submissive tendencies in people and so set them on a different path to the one they had been following, otherwise it is just sheer fluke that leads someone to discover their sub side (maybe they see something on TV or read something in a book which triggers off a desire within them). All of which is why there seems to be a high proportion of subs with a history of abuse, because that triggers the realisation of their nature which else may never be discovered, though in reality there are lots of people out there with submissive traits who just don't know it because the right thing hasn't happened to allow them to discover it.
Hmmm, i think i explained that right, anyone else care to chip in on this?
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15 comments:
This is something I always wonder about as well. As for abuse triggering someone to be submissive, it could be that submissive children are more likely to be the target of abuse.
4:39 PMPredators could be more inclined to abuse kids that are more likely to go along with it and not tell than kids who are feisty and hard to control who might run to their parents or the police.
Being a biologist, I'm inclined to think its a combination of both. Nature & nurture. Personally, I think my submissiveness is more nature than nurture, but there's no way of telling for sure.
5:05 PMI agree with your writing, its a great analytical post. I think you're right and the 'nature' is somewhere in us, its not all 'nurture'. But the right set of conditions ('nurture') must present itself to bring out the nature. Not sure if I make any sense, but Dante d'Amore's illustration fits into this model. Abusive people pick their victims, and inate submissiveness could be a more-picked-on trait.
I love reading your blog libby, your posts make me think!
thanks jelly :) And thanks both of you thoughts on this subject. i found the comment that maybe subs are more likely to have been abused *because* of their innate submissiveness very interesting - it then becomes like a chicken and egg thing, which comes first and which leads to which?
5:35 PMhi. i just found your blog and i think it's very interesting. this comment peaked by interest and i hope you don't mind me commenting even though you don't know me.
6:15 PMfirst of all, i want to say that i am *not* one of those people who believes men are naturally dominant/women are naturally submissive. i actually had problems taking your poll because of that, because there was no option for people who don't believe that submissiveness is an inherently female quality or that domination is an inherently male one. i am open to the idea that there are some differences between men and women and maybe the dominance manifests differently in men than in women (or maybe it doesn't), but i think the idea that women are inherently submissive as women or that men are inherently dominant is hurtful to vanilla people, dominant women and submissive men because then they are not 'real' women or men by that standard. also i think it can be used to keep women down or punish women who aren't seen as 'properly' submissive. i think we live in a culture that celebrates female submission and male dominance and so people are more encouraged or feel pressured to follow those roles. now i know this is not true for everyone, i know some women are just naturally submissive and some men are just naturally dominant and i don't think either of those are bad things, i only think it becomes bad when you say this is ALL women or ALL men naturally are, because in my opinion that can create a lot of problems. i think women are encouraged to submissive by society but that to me does not mean it's an inherently female trait.
that being said, on a more individual level, i think it's a combination of nature and nurture, as other people have said. i am a female switch, currently a submissive in a relationship with another female Domme, and i can honestly say i was not abused, physically or sexually, at any point in time. i don't know if that makes me the minority of submissives or not. and i don't know if that contributes to me being a switch instead of a 'real sub' or anything. i think it's interesting you mention you had vanilla relationships before and that somehow the 'sleeping sub' inside you was unleashed...i had had bdsm sex before my current Domme but this is the first time i've ever tried basing a whole relationship on it if that makes any sense? before this i was sure i could never live like this but i am actually a lot more happy and satisfied this way. :)
i will say that i am now, and always have been, very willful and stubborn. i want my own way. and yet somehow the idea of NOT getting my own way is also very thrilling and i don't really understand that yet. hmmmm...maybe for me part of the appeal of being submissive is that for once i don't have to worry about hurting someone's feelings, which i do a lot and then feel bad about. i'm a very sensitive person in some ways but also very confrontational and aggressive in others, and this can be confusing for me in ways bdsm helps me deal with.
but i will say, from a young age, i had fantasies of both dominating people and being dominated, although i didn't always recognize it for what it was back then. usually i fantasized about dominating a man or being dominated by a woman. sometimes i fantasized about dominating a woman too though. i have never really fantasized about submitting to a man and i don't think i could, i think it would make me afraid and uncomfortable. i'm not sure why i feel differently about submitting to a woman but i do. maybe the switch that would make me want to submit to a man hasn't been turned on yet or maybe it just doesn't exist. (if you can't tell by now i am bi)
i'm not really sure what to think of subs and their submissiveness being triggered by abuse. :/ part of me feels like, in that case maybe the bdsm is theraputic? like, it's a way to deal with their trauma but this time they are in control-- not in control of their relationship, but in the sense they chose this path instead of having it forced on them (the way the prior abuse was)? or something like that. which i guess is kind of like what you were trying to say, right?
anyway i know i'm babbling, i'm sorry if this doesn't make sense.
wow. :( i really rambled on. i'm sorry!!
6:15 PMoh, i'm really sorry, i didn't mean to make my survey biased, i hope i didn't offend anyone too much :/ And thanks so much for your comment, Her Princess, i'm going to digest it slowly and think about what you said some more!
7:26 PMand never be worried about rambling on, i loveeeeeeee to read long comments just as much as short ones :)
7:28 PMI think blogger ate my comment when I pressed post!
10:18 PMDante's point that abusers may well target those who have submissive natures has shone a light for me on something I've struggled with since stepping onto the D/s path.
I had abusive experiences in my teenage years.....and find it impossible to put what happens between M and I into the same space. The difference is that when I physically submit to M it is an expression of love from both of us....whereas my abusive experience most definitely was not.
It has taken me a long time to come to peace with my submission so, for me, I would say the 'nurture' blocked my submissive nature for many years.
Thank you for posting this.
love and hugs xxx
Hmmm... I suppose that maybe I was a submissive child, though I'm not sure if it was submissive as much as just shy early on. But I definitely suffered at the hands of those who I should have been able to trust... a lot, for a long time.
1:59 AMThat in itself was hard for me to come to grips with, and there is still a definitely link between pain and pleasure for me.
But dominance and submission are tougher animals for me... I have both inside me, more of an inclination to be dominant toward women and submissive with dominant men. But I still love the feel of spanking my Dante, and he definitely is dominant.
I'll have to think more on this but in my experience, I think being abused made me shyer and more outwardly submissive, but yet inside, it caused me to rage with a silent dominance as a way of preventing such as that from ever happening again.
Does that make any sense? I don't know...
Hugs,
Tiggs
The diverse comments here show that 'nurture' affects different people in different ways. No two people are alike, and no two forms of 'nurture' are alike.. If it were, this planet would be very boring!!
9:42 AMI'm loving this discussion. It makes me think and its getting very insightful!
*hugs*
i'm loving this discussion too, thanks to everyone who has posted their comments so far and to everyone who has taken the survey. And please feel free to comment and/or do the survey if you haven't already :)
8:08 PMlibby
xxxxx
hummm interesting and very thought provoking, from a personal perspective i've always been submissive in the bedroom and a strong willed woman out of it, having been raped when i was 17 i'm definately not really into groups of men other than that the rape certainly didnt wake up the sub in me, yet my Master says i'm very naturally submissive? not sure if the 2 are connected tho.
1:06 PMi think what this has shown me is that every person is different and complex and there are no generalisations that can be made.
6:57 PMI was abused as a child, but that didn't make me submissive in the least, I became very dominant. It probably came from the fact that I started standing up to my parents and fighting them back (that's right, I came out swinging).
5:07 PMWhen I found BDSM I was actually thinking I'd make a better switch, but the submissive side started drawing me closer and closer. When I met my Master he said that he could see I was submissive, but it was buried.
So he's digging it out so that I can breathe :)
My submission isn't natural in the sense that I've always had it, but more likely nurtured due to the abuse starving it.
I've always been on the fence about connecting past abuse to BDSM attraction anyway. There are no solid statistics to prove that there are more people into BDSM that were abused in their pasts than in the rest of society. Nature vs nurture, sure I get that connection, but abuse really doesn't fit anywhere in it.
--lunaKM
http://www.submissiveguide.com
*nods* i know people have different opinions on the abuse-connection thing, and to be honest i'm not really sure where i stand on it either. But it's been really good to get so many different thoughts on these subjects, and i'm going to report back on the results of the survey this weekend.
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