Sexual Submission as Freedom
I've been a sexual submissive for as long as I've known what BDSM was. The idea of it always felt right at home to me. And when I started experiencing it for real, I realized that the act of submission made me feel at home in my body, too. It made me feel free.
To the vanilla observer, or even to the non-submissive kinkster, that statement might sound like an oxymoron. How can it be freeing to submit to someone else? How can it be freeing to obey their commands? How can it be freeing to let someone have control over your body and what you do with it?
Because my dominant only has control over me insofar as I handed that control over to them. Because the commands they give me are the ones that I want to obey, because they are the ones we agreed upon when we negotiated the scene. Because the things they do to my body are the things I told them I want them to do, and I can change my mind at any time with the safe word we agreed on together.
Because I practice proper communication and kink etiquette, and because I take the necessary safety precautions with my partners, I can free myself from the constraints of my routine vanilla life and allow myself to be fully immersed in the physical, emotional, and mental stimulation I receive as a submissive in a BDSM scene. I am free to be fully present in my body as I feel the sting of a paddle on my ass, or the painful tug of a clamp on my nipple. I am free to lie there, spread eagle like a sex doll, enjoying the sensation of warm hands and lips and tongue all over my body, taking me and exploring me with abandon. I am free to receive all these sensations without feeling selfish—because the point is for me to be an object of their pleasure, the point is therefore, for me to receive.
I am also free to give. When I submit, I let go of the everyday expectations that require me to behave a certain way, to comport myself in a certain manner. I am free to give my body, my hands, my mouth, every part of me for the purpose of their pleasure. I am free to crawl on all fours in my submission and offer myself to them at their feet. And I can feel sexy and seductive and desirable in doing that, free from the normative judgment that doing such a thing would be a degrading act worthy of reproach.
It is a space free from the puritanical sex-negative culture that shames me for enjoying sex at all. And it is also a space free from the anti-porn, SWERF rhetoric that considers me brainwashed for wanting to be seen as an object of desire. So yes, I may be tied up, I may be getting my ass beaten, and I may be getting called a slut and other names that would make many people flinch. But in those moments, I feel totally at peace. Totally free. And most importantly, totally myself.
