“The only hope for peace is to teach people who are full of pep and unbound force to enjoy being bound… Only when the control of self by others is more pleasant than the unbound assertion of self in human relationships can we hope for a stable, peaceful human society… Giving to others, being controlled by them, submitting to other people cannot possibly be enjoyable without a strong erotic element.”
-William Moulton Marston, creator of Wonder Woman
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It’s funny sometimes how much the vanilla and kinky worlds differ. If I were to say, “There is strength in submission,” to most kinky people, I’d likely be met with a “duh” or a “hell yeah.” Conversely, were I to say such a thing to a vanilla person, the responses would vary more widely from some variant of “huh” to “aren’t submissives the weak ones?”
Many people view a tendency toward apology and compromise as shortcomings and a focus on cooperation to a person’s detriment.
But society is built on human relationships, the social contracts we uphold with one another for our mutual protection and at the cornerstone of our very survival. There is safety in numbers, and somehow we must work together.
We must learn interdependence.
There is nothing at all ignoble about choosing a supporting role. In fact, the world depends on those roles being occupied. Someone must do it, glamorous or not. Maybe it’s coming from a musical background that clarifies things: While it may be someone else who gets most of the glory, one of the horns, the vocalist, etc, someone in the jazz combo needs to play the bass to keep things balanced and the time steady, the rhythm section in sync. There are supporting actors in every cast, personal assistants, laborers working under foremen.
Though I differ from Marston in his assertion that the erotic rewards are the only meaningful or motivational benefit of service, I agree that they are quite powerful and convincing.