My good friend Torthal wrote this fantastic rant that was very widely shared on Fetlife, and was gracious enough to allow me to reblog it here so even more people can see it. Feel free to comment either here or on the original Fetlife post.

Right then, let’s straighten this shit out.

If you’re a submissive man, you’re saddled with a shitton of stereotypes. Most of them damaging. I like to rage against the stereotypes. It’s like Rage Against the Machine but with less power chords.

Yes, I am a submissive man. No, I am not weak. I find your correlation of “submissive male” and “weakness” disturbing (and furthermore the association of submission in general!).

No, I am not a cuckold. No, I am not pathetic, nor am I snivelling, a worm, or any other value-decreasing adjective, and I refuse with enthusiasm the conjecture that these are requirements for male submission. The entire point of me and my submission is that I have fucking value. How else am I appealing? I have strength. I’m comfortable in my masculinity and in my submission, and boy let me tell you but society had a fun time telling me the opposite to that one!

How can you have a power exchange without the power? It’s like a paraphrase without the phrase. I want to build myself up, not build myself down, and I’m writing this as a call out to others, male or female, who feel this way. There’s something seriously wrong with the popular conceptions of all of this, and I want to help change it.

I don’t want to have to sacrifice one aspect of my personality to adhere to a certain set of expectations, a sort of “twisted” rulebook quietly set up to go about our business without forcing society to actually re-evaluate what it means to be dominant, what it means to be male and/or masculine, or any gender, really, so I’m not going to.

This is me standing up and calling out. I’m a submissive man, and I’m comfortable in that. I have strength, I enjoy that strength, and I’m looking forward to the day where I find someone who enjoys it too. Until then (and even after then), I’m just gonna be here, standing up and telling those stereotypes to fuck right off. Because they’re damaging and they need to change, and if I need to demonstrate that by example, then hell yes will I do so.

mic drop