Note: the following comment was posted here The Lion’s Share as an anonymous comment. Although I do not know the person who sent it, the email address was of a female. I copied the comment only and erased the entry from the backend.
This question seems to reference sexual domination of women by men and asks for an opinion in terms of ‘[my] experience’. Although I am comfortable with the concept, I am not comfortable with discussing the subject in a personal nonfiction context. If you are curious as to what this is like for a certain kind of man—a fighter—check out any of the postings for Cities of Dust or Pillagers of Time featuring the meathead Jay Bracken character. Little Joey Although two editors have accused me of using that character as a platform for male sexual domination fantasies, all of his sexual misadventures are drawn from the experiences of myself, Curtis, Dante and Oliver [three of my fighters]. In terms of sexual dominance he is the most realistic and unimaginative character I have written, yet modern female readers refuse to believe that women would throw themselves at the feet of some likable inarticulate brute. Much of this impulse is an expression of our culture’s denial of chemical and hormonal influences on human behavior, and an overstating of the role of considered choice.
The Question
If women generally ask to be dominated, to varying degrees, in your experience, and these are not the self-identified BDSM submissives, the desire to feel dominated must be a biological imperative.
If this is so, it stands to reason that our male counterparts must also have the biological imperative to dominate, to varying degrees. It's obviously a useful pair of traits for mating that is also seen in the animal kingdom.
I am curious.....what does the desire to dominate feel like, and how does it translate into mating? And if you don't mind, could you explain the general difference between how a man dominates versus an emasculated male?
Anonymous
Considering the Taboo Answer in Sexual Terms
I will tackle the bulk of your question in terms of modern martial arts, but first, a single anecdote from my life that was actually a humorous interlude that I wrote into the Bracken character’s life as a brutal actuality. When I was more fit and vigorous, and could stay up for five days straight and still fight for 40 rounds, I met a firebrand of a feminist. It is a fact of my life that almost every one of the dozen or so women I have been intimate with have been feminists. As a writer I have used these relationships as a means to get to know the feminist mind. Eventually, if a woman trusts you with her body deeply enough, then she will consider trusting you with her thoughts and feelings, which are usually hidden from all men and all but one of the women in her life, like a kung fu master keeping his secret eye-gouging technique a mystery in fear of it being used against him.
This one particular lady was a powerful woman with a lot of influence who had just targeted me as a disposable orgasm enabler. Somehow, I ended up still in her bed the following morning. She told me that this was a surprise to her; that she was shocked that she could tolerate my male presence in the wake of her temporary unmasking. She lay on my arm, her lustrous blonde hair now just a matted mess, looking up at the ceiling fan that had chopped me in the head the night before—almost a KO!—and what she said put me in a mind to let her fall back asleep, chew my arm off below the shoulder, and leave it under her head while I made my escape coyote like.
She said, “I don’t know what to think about the way I feel right now. I feel like I’ve been conquered; like you just took me by force and dragged me away from my people, and I’m okay with that—it feels delicious. What about you, do you feel like a conqueror.”
I had to do something to derail what was already threatening to become an actual relationship with this fiercely intelligent control freak of woman, so decided on humor as a way to ease my way out the door. “In that case, I’m sorry about your brothers.”
She looked at me in stunned silence, so I continued, “Look, they probably just picked on you anyhow. If it makes you feel any better I’ll take their heads down off the wall.”
She just looked at me with her mouth and eyes wide as I got up and dressed and wondered if I could run to the bus stop before she decided that she liked me even more for my sense of humor.
A Combat Arts Answer
Okay, I’m not going to discuss what it feels like for me to have the desire to dominate a woman sexually [You will have to wait for the instructional video I will hopefully film with Scarlett Johansson]. I will tackle this in terms of combat, and the expansion of the question into the realm of the ‘emasculated male’ in terms of the overlapping world of the combat arts and the martial arts.
Combat is all about domination. The ritual combat I have been involved in throughout my life is, spiritually for the man, a test of his own determinism. No combat sport is more true to this than boxing, where most fighters have elected to be beaten to death or brain damage rather than submit. In a sport such as jiu-jitsu or MMA where submission is acknowledged as recognizing a temporary technical superiority with an equal, then this combative meditation on free will is expanded more easily. No matter the combat type or venue the fighters achieve domination over the crowd and the venue in moral terms, often with the one who failed to dominate the other winning over the viewers. This is particularly true in Asian cultures—most notably in Japan—where there is no stigma attached to the specific failure to dominate the other contestant so long as the fighter shared in the domination of the moral space, if only as fuel for the elevation of his better. Even though he has lost, he is the second man among a multitude.
When we get into more political and materialistic venues, such as martial arts associations, fight sport promotions, athletic commissions, etc., we begin to see the physically and spiritually dominant warrior figures submerged in the corrupt social fabric. Largely, the purpose of hierarchies is to facilitate the domination of the dominant male by the passive society; by the withered old men, the meddling crones, and the manipulative women and conniving feminized males. The ushering in of democratic politics in ancient Athens essentially turned 25,000 Athenian men into squabbling backstabbing women, who forever judged and condemned the dozen or so generals they would elect to save their ass from enemy nations. Politics is the very road to social emasculation. When actual women—as opposed to the emasculated men who engage in politics—got the vote, it was just a matter of time before politics became an exercise in scare tactics based on the fear of domination by an un-trusted party and a concurrent appeal to the fear of the feminized masses by the ‘trusted’ politician.
In martial arts associations in particular, stories of female and emasculated male tyranny are rife, with almost the entire martial arts community having become a for profit day care operation. Just yesterday a man I coach for was telling me tale after tale of weasel-like martial arts politicians maneuvering for power, buying black belts, banning dominant fighters from events, etc.
As for the specific desire to dominate the opponent, it is interwoven with the fear of domination, in measures varying greatly from fighter to fighter. Perhaps the fighter best known for his fear-based need to dominate was Mike Tyson, who, coming from an abused childhood, had a deep fear of domination, which made him exceedingly dangerous.
The fighter least in need of control—and hence demonstrating the least fear of domination—was Royce Gracie, the jiu-jitsu fighter who changed the face of combat sports by calmly letting massive men put him on his back, and then put them in a serpentine bind.
When I match up fighters for training I need a Royce Gracie type to coach-spar with the new guys in fear of domination. Meanwhile I will take the Tyson type and mentor him one-on-one to develop trust in me, my method, and his developing art, so that he might develop beyond primal impulse to technical solution. Eventually the fighter fearful of domination learns to trust his ability to dominate the combat space and break the chains of fear.
In the end, Ms. Anonymous, it is about a man’s ability to dominate his environment, not a specific person.
I hope this was some help. You opened up a door to an inner masculine space far too vast to explore in an article.
Thank you again for your thoughtful answer. I only have one question remaining, relative to this part of your response:
"Politics is the very road to social emasculation. When actual women—as opposed to the emasculated men who engage in politics—got the vote, it was just a matter of time before politics became an exercise in scare tactics based on the fear of domination by an un-trusted party and a concurrent appeal to the fear of the feminized masses by the ‘trusted’ politician."
I totally agree with politics being rotten for many reasons. The question I have regarding the rest of your explanation is this: How do you explain the male-dominant Catholic church with its centuries of history of rotten political agendas, mafioso-like control, murder, torture, etc., etc.? How would you explain an institution that has conspicuously dominated and shut women out of its control structures for the majority of its history, which in my opinion has the qualities that you describe above, therefore developed completely independently of women?
I look forward to your thoughts,
Ms. Anonymous
No male in human society is more emasculated than a celibate priest turned politician. It might be easier to imagine the feminine nature of the catholic church if we used the metaphor of three flaming gay men telling some old lady named Mary to go sit in the corner because they were 'the new bitches up in here.' Understand that the catholic church of the middle ages served the masters of the material world in much the same way as the media serves our masters today, by limiting dissent.
My point was that the Catholic church was created by men. Are you saying that it was created by the masters, using emasculated men in its control structures, but still essentially a negatively feminized institution?
Am I to understand that the "negative feminine archetype" has been used by men to oppress other men?
Or were the masters already negatively feminized themselves in some way?
As an aside, note that I am distinguishing between a positive and a negative in our archetypes of masculine and feminine. You need certain qualities to defend your family, and I need certain qualities to raise my family.
Catholicism is an evolved form of Pagan/apostate-Judaic synchretism, in which the lunar earth goddess was resurrected as the mother of the solar sun god; the best position the celestial mom has had since the first sky worshipping nomads rode out of the steppes to subjugate her daughters.
An interesting aspect of Catholicism is that it nearly replaces actual woman with a perfect metaphoric male idealization of her in the form of the Virgin Mary. When women tried to do things natural to women—like heal with food and herbs and such—the homosexual priesthood burned them at the stake. So, social and spiritual emasculation—as it does today—was a scourge on Man and Woman, but not homosexual men, who thrived in the cloisters.
In the Middle Ages the church itself was called Holy Mother Church, and was seen as the mother of all men, served by sexless male drones, and taking on the role toward the population—ruled over as they were by cruel men—as the comforting mother. Due to its focus on materialism and its resurrection of the Goddess, the Catholic Church was and is the most emasculated patriarchal system I have studied. I will cover this in greater detail under the Of Lions and Men tag.
Thanks for your assistance in this project.