About
Submissive Secrets is a community art project based on the PostSecret concept and inspired by several contributions to the Queer Secrets Tumblr regarding BDSM.
I don’t know where this is going yet, which means you get to help me figure it out. To do that, send in a secret.
Why “Submissive Secrets”?
I believe it is time to tell the stories and share the thoughts, feelings, desires, and fears submissive men and those who love them have in a way that offers solidarity, compassion, empathy, trust, sympathy, lust, and, of course, love. The aim of this project is to make the often subtle and invisible epistemic violence of heteronormative power orientations, something I’ve called “sexual death by a thousand cuts,” overt and visible in a compelling, hard-hitting way.
The people who are often hurt by this epistemic violence does not merely include submissive men. It includes dominant women. It includes switches when they stray from stereotypical gender roles (maledom/femsub). It includes genderqueer individuals. It includes trans people. It includes feminists who want the line between inequality in sexual fantasy and equality in day-to-day life to be respected. It includes vanilla people who like to have rough sex. It includes people with a disability. It includes asexual people who like doing kinky things. It includes people of diverse racial and ethnic backgrounds. It includes religious devotees of each and every tradition and faith. And, sometimes, it even includes dominant men and submissive women.
Despite all the vital progress we have made towards sexual liberation, sexual freedom today is a sham. Let’s change that—let’s make it real. Early feminists once said, “It’s a man’s world. Let’s fuck it up.” They were on to something, but they’re not entirely correct. The truth? “It’s a white, rich, able-bodied, cisgender, dominant man’s world.” Let’s fuck it up!
Since storytelling is the foundation of any movement, I want to collect the stories of any male, male-identified, or masculine-of-center person who’s submissively inclined or curious. And I also want to collect the stories of everyone else who is attracted to, interested in, or supportive of such drives for personal fulfillment. And then, once we have all shared our stories about these experiences, we will have made the world a better place for it, and, together, we are going to show everyone that it is good to be the kind of people we are.
It’s true we are not all identical; we have a variety of different tastes. But we are all human. And we all deserve to be happy. So if we can’t just snap our fingers and make everyone happy, the least we can do is make ourselves heard.
On that note, please share your own story and encourage others to share a piece of their story with me at secrets.MaleSubmissionArt.com. My hope is that with everyone sharing pieces of their story, we will weave a beautiful patchwork tapestry.
For inspiration, have a look at secrets that have already been shared.
Regardless of who you are or what you are thinking now that you have read this, thank you for reading.
Sincerely,