Academic literature on the topic 'Sexual dominance and submission'

This study found that German heterosexual women’s personal and partnered consumption of pornography were positively correlated with their desire to engage in or having previously engaged in submissive (but not dominant) sexual behaviors such as having their hair pulled, having their face ejaculated on, being spanked, choked, called names, slapped, and gagged. The association between women’s partnered pornography consumption and submissive sexual behavior was strongest for women whose first exposure to pornography was at a young age. The findings also indicated that women’s personal and partnered pornography consumption were uniquely related to their engagement in submissive sexual behavior. Public Health Significance Statement: This study suggests that greater exposure to pornography among heterosexual German women is associated with their desire to engage in or having previously engaged in submissive sexual behaviors but not dominant behaviors. This pattern of correlations aligns with sexual script theory and content analyses of dominance and submission and gender in pornography. It does not align with the perspective that measures of pornography consumption are simply proxies for factors such as a high sex drive or an adventurous approach to sex.

Indecent Theology has provided both Feminist Theology and Liberation Theology with new contours for rethinking bodies, power, dominance, and submission. With regard to the logic of dominance that radically pushes the margins of the margins into a form of inexistent living, I suggest a material turn to rethink the contours that are evoked with Indecent Theology. Materialism has long stood as a philosophy opposing the overwhelming dominance of language and the poststructuralist emphasis that has emerged as the ‘linguistic turn’. Considering ‘new materialism’ as a theoretical platform to reread Indecent Theology provides theologies and ethics an opportunity to re-imagine indecent methodologies through indecency, a sort of ethical perversion. I suggest an indecent turn in mobilizing materialism and kink as theories to reread indecent theology for a productive queer materialist sexual theology. The feminist liberation theology of Marcella Althaus-Reid pushes both feminism and liberation into new contours of power and submission and initiates new contours of queer sexuality into the discourse. When analysing Althaus-Reid’s work, we are brought to attention to the margins of the margins, an awareness of the struggle for power and control by those deemed less than. There are contours of power at and in the margins of the margins, those who occupy ‘bottom space’. From a kink/BDSM orientation, I propose to reread Alrhaus-Read’s feminist liberation theology as decolonial erotics that helps to generate a productive materialist queer sexuality. The overarching methodology of this article is a quasi-auto ethnographic investigation into the ways in which the contours of race, class, gender, sex, sexuality, and ability affect power and submission and in turn reframes both queer theology and queer sexuality that is rooted in the living out of a very particular theology and ethics, which is rooted in queer relating. Theology can neither materialize in a vacuum nor in isolation. An indecent turn to(wards) a queer sexual theology that is rooted in a queer relationality demands attention to the interdependence of queer relating that is materialized through the interdependency of the growing queer desires of bodies, power, dominance, and submission.

One less common and more stigmatized form of sexuality is BDSM, which is an umbrella term for consensual practices that involve, but are not limited to, bondage and discipline (B&D), dominance and submission (D&s), and sadomasochism (S&M). Focusing on one of many different conceptualizations, BDSM is comprised of a power dynamic between partners enacted through various activities (for an inclusive list, see Sandnabba et al., 1999; Weinberg et al., 1984). However, beyond being recently accepted as nonpathological, research has yet to reach consensus on BDSM’s nature and development. Specifically, although theories describing its origin abound, it remains unclear whether BDSM is best conceptualized as a sexual behavior, sexual attraction, sexual identity, and/or sexual orientation for those who practice for sexual purposes. Accordingly, the present paper outlines a common framework of sexuality while presenting an alternative yet complementary theory: Consistent with a sex-positive framework, BDSM may be best conceptualized as another form of sexual orientation for a percentage of practitioners.

The investigation of sexual crimes against minor children is the most complicated and responsible work of the investigation. Children who have been involved in criminal acts experience severe stress and mental shock, suffer from borderline personality disorders and even worse mental disorders. Without professional social and medical care, in adolescence and adulthood the depression, neurosis, self-blame, anxiety and guilt they experience are aggravated. It is not uncommon that they lock themselves in, try to hide information because they are afraid of publicity. Working with victims requires empathy, understanding and empathy for their difficult life situation. Sexual abuse of a child includes many criminogenic, social and psychological factors that form the picture of the crime. Learned helplessness and submission appear in disharmonious child-parent relationships and can form the victim’s subordinating behaviour towards the molester. The authors give a description and mechanisms of the emergence of the behavioural pattern ‟submission – dominance”. The aspects of pathological socio-psychological relations from the side of ethology, psychology and criminology are analysed. They give examples from their own practice on victimisation of minor children. The article may be of interest to psychologists, law enforcement and supervisory authorities, lawyers, medical psychologists and psychotherapists.

Professionals in bondage and discipline, dominance and submission, and sadism and masochism (BDSM) have received minimal attention in the literature on sex work. Moreover, investigations of performance in sex work have focused overwhelmingly on cisgender women professionals, and tended to emphasize laborer–client encounters within paid sessions while neglecting encounters among colleagues. In this article, I engage in sociological introspection to provide a layered autoethnographic account of dungeon labor. I draw upon 10 months’ experience as a White, Jewish, queer, transmasculine person who enacted a White, sometimes Jewish, queer, cisgender womanhood throughout workplace encounters. Analyses emphasize gendered and sexual normativities, racism and discourses of client “taste,” violence in the workplace, and tensions between dungeon laborers’ professional personas and sense of authenticity.

How should feminist theorists respond when women who claim to be feminists make “choices” that seemingly prop up patriarchy, like posing for Playboy, eroticizing male dominance, or advocating wifely submission? This article argues that the conflict between the quest for gender equality and the desire for sexual pleasure has long been a challenge for feminism. In fact, the second-wave of the American feminist movement split over issues related to sexuality. Feminists found themselves on opposite sides of a series of contentious debates about issues such as pornography, sex work, and heterosexuality, with one side seeing evidence of gender oppression and the other opportunities for sexual pleasure and empowerment. Since the mid-1990s, however, a third wave of feminism has developed that seeks to reunite the ideals of gender equality and sexual freedom. Inclusive, pluralistic, and non-judgmental, third-wave feminism respects the right of women to decide for themselves how to negotiate the often contradictory desires for both gender equality and sexual pleasure. While this approach is sometimes caricatured as uncritically endorsing whatever a woman chooses to do as feminist, this essay argues that third-wave feminism actually exhibits not a thoughtless endorsement of “choice,” but rather a deep respect for pluralism and self-determination.

To the date, we hardly understand what and how affects the social structure in animals. Longevity and social stability must be the key factors influencing the relations among individuals. To test this suggestion, I described the spatial and social structures of the spotted forest skinks (Sphenomorphus maculatus) from southern Vietnam in the breeding seasons of 2008 and 2009. This species is known to have short lifespan and low social stability among seasons. No difference between male and female space use was revealed. Home ranges were 107.7 ± 23.68 m2 in males and 78.9 ± 27.27 m2 in females, and these contained core areas and activity centres within them. Home ranges and their parts overlapped among individuals of all sexes and were used by several residents, although not at the same time. Intrasexual and intersexual relationships were agonistic, more aggressive among males, and characterized by hierarchy with males as dominants and females as subordinates. Dominance status in males was supported by aggression in males and by submission in females. Females avoided sexual encounters, and no affiliation between sexes or mate guarding behaviour were revealed. A poor social behavioural repertoire was limited by aggressive and submissive behaviour, and it was difficult to distinguish sexual courtship from agonistic interactions. Hence, social and spatial structures were relatively simple in comparison with other saurian species and low stability of social composition is the most probable reason of such a social simplicity.

Background: Alt-sex practitioners are a diverse group with diverse unconventional sexual behaviors including consensual non-monogamy (CNM), kink, fetishism, and bondage/discipline dominance/submission, sadomasochism (BDSM). Perhaps because of their openness to non-normative sexuality, these communities often comprise a large proportion of lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, queer, among others (LGBTQ+) individuals. LGBTQ+ individuals experience higher rates of sexual violence and consent violation than their cisgender, heterosexual peers both inside and outside of formalized alt-sex communities. Pleasure, including but not limited to sexual pleasure, is often a motivator for engaging in sexual and alt-sex activities. This study examines how consent violations influence pleasure among LGBTQ+ alt-sex members. Methods: We conducted an electronic one-time survey of LGBTQ+ alt-sex practitioners (N = 1354). In this study, we analyze open-ended responses for ways pleasure was described in response to questions about consent violations. We use thematic analyses in Dedoose online software. Results: Two subthemes emerged related to the violation itself, (a) pleasure as a motivator for violating consent and (b) pleasure in spite of consent violation. As the second theme that emerged, pleasure was a component of the aftereffects of the violation in two ways: (1) pleasure was reduced or inhibited by consent violations; (2) pleasure was a motivator for healing and advocacy. Conclusions: We discuss practical and research implications based on the complex relationships between violations and pleasure reported by participants.

BackgroundDominance is one of the most pervasive concepts in the study of wolf social behaviour but recently its validity has been questioned. For some authors, the bonds between members of wolf families are better described as parent-offspring relationships and the concept of dominance should be used just to evaluate the social dynamics of non-familial captive pack members (e.g., Mech & Cluff, 2010). However, there is a dearth of studies investigating dominance relationships and its correlates in wolf family packs.MethodsHere, we applied a combination of the most commonly used quantitative methods to evaluate the dominance relationships in a captive family pack of 19 Arctic wolves.ResultsWe found a significant linear and completely transitive hierarchy based on the direction of submissive behaviours and found that dominance relationships were not influenced by the competitive contexts (feeding vs. non-feeding context). A significant linear hierarchy also emerges amongst siblings once the breeding pair (the two top-ranking individuals) is removed from analyses. Furthermore, results suggest that wolves may use greeting behaviour as a formal signal of subordination. Whereas older wolves were mostly dominant over younger ones, no clear effect of sex was found. However, frequency of agonistic (submissive, dominant and aggressive) behaviours was higher between female–female and male–male dyads than female–male dyads and sex-separated linear hierarchies showed a stronger linearity than the mixed one. Furthermore, dominance status was conveyed through different behavioural categories during intra-sexual and inter-sexual interactions.DiscussionCurrent results highlight the importance of applying a systematic methodology considering the individuals’ age and sex when evaluating the hierarchical structure of a social group. Moreover, they confirm the validity of the concept of dominance relationships in describing the social bonds within a family pack of captive wolves.