Sex

[greenstorm]

It occurs to me that the conventional image of sex, where the dominant partner is on top, is backwards in my brain. To my mind, it's the sub who does the work (the servicing?)-- and so often ends up "on top" in a literal sense, because that's frequently where the most physical exertion is required.

So there.

Comments

[petter-haggholm.livejournal.com]

When you describe that conventional image, the dominant partner is not merely the party exerting more energy—but may be the only active party; cf. the most puritanical missionary position where the passive, submissive woman may simply lie on her back, unmoving and thinking of England. By contrast, your sub-on-top scenario, which requires the sub to exert energy, requires the active participation of the sub.

Maybe this has something to do with the sub in your image playing along, as it were—a healthier sort of domination? (Of course consensual domination can still have the dominant partner on top, and of course implicit or even overtly non-consensual domination may be coercive rather than physically overpowering; my speculation is merely one of degree or frequency.)

[greenstorm.livejournal.com]

I think I nearly always, even in the most vanilla/conventional sex, have a feeling that someone is servicing and someone is being serviced, or someone is driving and someone is being driven-- I can think of a couple of periods nested within various encounters of late that haven't felt like that, but those are rare and always embedded in some sort of awareness of who is giving and who is receiving.

And the more I think about it, the more some of those roles seem to be different in my mind to general socially-projected images of dominance and submission.

To my mind submission is always(?) an active thing, a deliberate and conscious revision of priorities for the duration.

[estrellada.livejournal.com]

Uh, do you mean traditional PiV intercourse or uh, any of the other types of sex?

[greenstorm.livejournal.com]

To my mind the "conventional image" of sex is PIV or 'reasonable facsimile thereof'

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

It also depends on the FORM of domination. I mean, if I'm wrapping a belt around my partner's neck, bending zir over or pushed down onto knees, and fucking, then I'm usually physically above zir.

[greenstorm.livejournal.com]

Mmhm, and while I carry something like that around as 'social stereotype of dominance' I realized just then that my own personal tapes play out rather differently when I'm participating in something I think of primarily as conventional sex (rather than things I think of primarily as 'play')-- I'm not sure I have a sex setting where I'm not aware of some form of submissive/dominant roles at least backgrounded in my own head.

In this I expect everyone's MMV.