The structure of male submissive sexual fantasies: Loss of sexual autonomy
The category that deals with sexual fantasies of masturbation instructions and chastity, and how they intertwine with other kinks.
This is part of a series of essays that collectively survey male submissive kinks. Find the Table of contents here.
Some men fantasize about losing their sexual autonomy, surrendering control over it to a dominating woman, either voluntarily or by coercion. This loss of autonomy is expressed in the woman’s control over the man’s sexual pleasure. She determines, as she pleases, when and how he can enjoy himself and when he is forbidden from doing so. This control can take two major forms. In the first, the woman gives the man masturbation instructions—or as they are colloquially known, “jerk-off instructions”. She can lay down rules for him to follow, give him countdowns to orgasm, make him ask or beg for permission to climax, deny him release or instruct him to ruin his orgasm, and make him ingest his own semen after ejaculation. The second form that the woman’s control of the man’s sexual pleasure can take is chastity. The woman locks the man’s penis in a cage to which she holds the key, preventing him from autonomously accessing his penis for erotic purposes. As the keyholder, she decides when to release the man’s penis to grant him temporary pleasure before locking it again.
Masturbation instructions
One major way in which the man’s loss of sexual autonomy can find expression in submissive sexual fantasies is masturbation instructions. A man can enjoy being controlled in the way he masturbates by following instructions issued by a dominating woman. These instructions can feature a myriad rules, with prominent devices including orgasm countdowns, asking for permission to climax, denied or ruined climax, and semen ingestion.
Countdowns
The simplest aspect in which a woman controls the man’s sexual pleasure is the so-called “cum countdown” where the woman counts the man down to orgasm. This is a prominent feature in pornographic videos in the style of so-called “jerk-off instructions” where the female actresses give specific instructions to the male viewer on how to masturbate.
For men with submissive sexual fantasies, the appeal in the cum countdown is the subtle power the woman holds over the fate of the masturbation session, surrendered to her willingly by the subject.
She can, for example, control the number from which she starts counting down, the pace at which she counts down, and whether or not she restarts the countdown at any given moment. All these aspects can serve to frustrate the man who has to follow the woman’s instructions closely.
Failing to comply—that is to say, either accidentally ejaculating before the end of the countdown or not being ready to ejaculate when it ends—can sometimes be accompanied by punishments determined by the woman.
Instead of making the countdown agonizing to the man, the woman can also go the opposite way by making the countdown shorter on purpose, thus forcing the man to try to ejaculate prematurely. Fantasies like this incorporate the premature ejaculation kink.
Rules
More generally, the woman can lay down any rule for the man during the masturbation session. An exhaustive enumeration of all the instructions she can give him is a hopeless exercise as there is no limit to creativity in this domain. A few examples will suffice to illustrate.
The woman can dictate that the man only touch himself when she gives a specific signal. A prominent style of pornographic videos in this context feature the so-called “red light–green light” game, where the man is only allowed to touch himself when the woman gives a green light signal and he has to stop stimulating himself when she gives a red light signal.
The woman can also dictate that the man only touch himself when she is clothed and that he has to cease masturbating when she reveals skin. This intertwines with aspects of rejection as it is implied that the man does not deserve to derive pleasure from the nude view of the woman.
Instructions can also feature aspects of corporal punishment. The woman can, for example, instruct the man to strike his genitals when she gives certain signals, torturing his genitals. Financial domination can enter into the picture if the man is made to send the woman money on specific signals during the masturbation session.
The woman can instruct the man to stimulate his anus while masturbating, in which case the masturbation instructions intertwine with aspects of degradation of masculinity. The man can be made to anally penetrate himself with fingers or toys. He can also be made to perform oral sex on the insertion objects. This is particularly humiliating if the oral sex is performed right after anal penetration, due to the disgusting nature of the practice.
Cum-eating
A prominent feature of masturbation instructions is the so-called “cum-eating” practice in which the man is made to ingest his own emissions. This is usually accomplished through the consumption of his semen after he ejaculates, either by attempting to shoot it directly into his mouth or by collecting it in his hand or in a cup before consuming it. Cum-eating instructions can also include the tasting of the man’s pre-ejaculate while he masturbates before ejaculation.
Cum-eating instructions involve aspects of degradation of masculinity as the man assumes the role of the heterosexual woman who ingests her male partner’s semen. Similar instructions can include the man’s ejaculation on his own face or body, all acts which are humiliating to him.
The issue with the fantasy of cum-eating instructions is that, like all submissive sexual fantasies, the desire for it immediately fades away after orgasm. As such, a man can intensely yearn to eat his own ejaculate while he masturbates, entertaining this craving up to the moment immediately preceding climax. Once he orgasms, however, this desire instantly evaporates and he no longer wishes to go through with the cum-eating exercise. Thus, he becomes repulsed and disgusted by the idea that just a few moments before took such a strong hold on his imagination.
For this reason, cum-eating instructions can get very creative. For example, the man can be made to collect his ejaculate beforehand and keep it in the freezer. On a subsequent masturbation session, he is to fetch the frozen ejaculate and eat it like a popsicle, thereby solving the aforementioned problem.
Permission
A prominent aspect of the woman’s control of the man’s sexual pleasure is the requirement of her permission to climax. The man surrenders the decision to orgasm over to the woman, and she decides when to grant it and when to refuse it.
This aspect intensifies the man’s submission to the woman, as he has an added incentive to please her and to follow her instructions in the hope that she will grant him release. If he slips up, she can easily forbid his orgasm as punishment. She can also torment him by not giving him permission even if he obeys all her orders and follows all her instructions, as an act of gratuitous cruelty on her part.
To get the woman’s permission to climax, the man can be made to beg. Imploring the woman and pleading with her to allow him to orgasm is humiliating, and the longer it goes on, the more humiliating it becomes as the man is made to beg with more intensity, degrading himself more and more in the process. He remains uncertain about the success of his doubled efforts as the ultimate decision resides with the woman. In some fantasies, the woman is pleased with his efforts and she grants him permission to climax as a reward. In other fantasies, he is denied.
Denial
One of the ways the woman can control the man’s orgasms is by denying them. She can instruct him to masturbate and to bring himself to the edge of climax, exciting him to the utmost only to deny him release ultimately. At the end of the masturbation session, the man is expected to stop touching himself and to let his penis lose its erection without bringing himself to orgasm, thus frustrating himself on purpose.
The practice of masturbating on the edge of orgasm but stopping oneself from going over it is called “edging”. The woman can use this as an instrument to agonize the man as it can take a tremendous amount of self-control to fight against the overwhelming desire to orgasm when on the edge. In this context, the woman can lay down punishments if the man fails to stay on the edge and orgasms against her instructions.
The woman can inform the man that he will be denied before he starts masturbating so that he knows what to expect, or she can make him believe she will make him orgasm but deny him instead. This denial can come as a surprise, sometimes in a “surprise countdown” where the woman initiates a normal orgasm countdown, which the man assumes will bring him to orgasm, but she stops just before reaching the end to reveal her intention of denying him. Some men derive great sexual satisfaction from these forms of surprise denial and situation reversal.
When the man denies himself orgasm, he can have a condition colloquially known as “blue balls”, which refers to mildly uncomfortable sensations in the testicles after a prolonged state of sexual arousal which causes temporary fluid buildup that is not relieved by orgasm. The woman can verbally humiliate the man and mock him by talking about leaving him with blue balls.
In today’s internet culture, some men engage in a challenge called “No Nut November” in which they attempt to abstain from masturbation for the entirety of that month. Men with submissive sexual fantasies can engage in a specific version of this challenge where they are teased and tormented by a woman (typically in pornographic videos) but denied orgasm, with this occurring for the whole month. Some men fantasize about engaging in the original version of No Nut November but having their efforts laid to waste by a seductive woman who persuades them to break their streak of abstinence, in which case the fantasies incorporate aspects of manipulation.
Ruin
Another prominent way the woman can control the man’s sexual pleasure is by forcing him to have a so-called “ruined orgasm”. This is when the man brings himself to the edge of climax by masturbating normally then ceases all manual stimulation right as he goes over the edge.
In doing so, he denies himself the pleasure to be had from grasping his penis and stroking it for the short duration of the orgasm, which can significantly enhance the pleasurable sensations of climax during male masturbation. By denying himself these sensations, the man is effectively ruining the orgasm, hence the name. Ruined orgasms can also serve as punishment if the man fails to follow all the instructions given by the woman.
Chastity
The other major way in which the man’s loss of sexual autonomy can find expression in submissive sexual fantasies is chastity. A man with the chastity kink fantasizes about having his penis locked in a device which has the dual function of restricting it from achieving erection and preventing the man from manually stimulating himself. Such a device is called a chastity cage.
Chastity devices
Chastity belts for women were purported to have been used in medieval times by crusading knights who, in their prolonged absence from home, wanted to ensure the fidelity of their wives. This history is now thought to be a myth invented in later ages.1
Some chastity contraptions seem to have been used by parents to prevent their children from masturbating during the short period of history in the 18th and 19th centuries when masturbation was believed to cause serious physical and mental ailments and even insanity.2
These contraptions were never widely used or accepted but many such inventions were patented.3 The idea of a male chastity device as an instrument for sexual arousal seems to have become popular in the 20th century, but this history remains obscure.
Chastity cages for men are typically designed to have a ring that wraps behind the testicles. This ring connects to the actual cage that conceals the penis, leaving space for urination but otherwise constricting the ability of the penis to tumesce. The two parts of the chastity device are typically secured together with a small lock and key.
Keyholder
The woman who holds the key to the man’s chastity device is called the keyholder. The key comes to symbolize the power she holds over him through her control of the sexual use of his reproductive organ. The keyholder often keeps the key on her person, visibly displaying it to the man in chastity whenever he is interacting with her. She can wear it, for example, in a necklace or in an ankle bracelet. The visible display of the key serves as a constant reminder to the man of the state he is in.
When a man devolves this kind of control to a woman, he is effectively surrendering his entire reproductive strategy to her, for without the key his penis is doomed to permanent flaccidity and reproduction becomes impossible. A dynamic emerges in which tremendous power over the man’s sexuality is conferred on the keyholder after the penis is locked away. The man falls into a particularly submissive position to the woman as a consequence, as she is the only one who can decide to unlock his penis.
In some fantasies, the chastity kink occurs exclusively on its own without any other kinks involved. For example, a man can fantasize about engaging in simple chastity play with a female partner where she locks him and holds on to the key, controlling when he is allowed out of the cage. She can tease him and deny him or unlock him and grant him release, allowing him to masturbate or to have sex with her only to take the pleasure away again by putting him back in chastity after she is done with him.
While the man is locked, the woman can pleasure herself in front of him, frustrating him. This frustration can be furthered in a variety of ways. For example, the woman can make the man wear a strap-on dildo and engage in pseudo-intercourse with him (with the dildo) while his actual penis remains locked.
Other fantasies incorporate kinks from other categories alongside chastity. The following examples will serve to illustrate the major ways in which the coalescence of these kinks gives rise to complex sexual fantasies.
Cuckolding
If the chastity takes place within a relationship, it can intertwine with the cuckolding kink. In these fantasies, the chastity cage serves to deny the cuckold sexual pleasure while the woman freely enjoys herself with other partners. If the man also has fantasies of serving the woman’s bull, he can fantasize about having his chastity key handed over to the bull by the woman.
The woman typically denies sex to the caged cuckold but she can periodically decide to free him from chastity and allow him temporary release. In this case, she decides if he is allowed to orgasm or if he should just be teased and denied. The man can find a great source of arousal in his loss of power and his uncertainty in not knowing if he will be allowed orgasm and when he will be unlocked next.
Small penis
The chastity kink can intertwine with small penis humiliation in fantasies where the size of the penis is the reason behind the woman’s decision to lock it in a cage. Chastity is therefore a punishment that the man endures for not having a penis up to par with the woman’s standards.
Some fantasies also play on the imagined possibility that chastity will lead to permanent shrinkage of the penis or to damage of its erectile function, thereby making the man even more sexually inadequate.
Feminization
In connection with having a small penis, the fantasies of chastity can further incorporate the feminization kink where the woman imposes chastity on the man as part of her wish to degrade his masculinity and to make him more feminine. In these fantasies, the penis is often referred to as a clitoris (“clit” or “clitty” for short).
The imagined possibility of shrinking the penis in the cage can play into the feminization process, in which case the man imagines that the size of his penis will decrease to the point of practically becoming indistinguishable from a clitoris.
Chastity can also serve as part of the sexual training the man undergoes to behave more like a woman in the sexual sphere. For example, he can be trained to adopt more feminine behaviors such as learning to derive pleasure exclusively from the stimulation of his anus. The chastity cage serves in this case to prevent him from reverting back to masculine sexual behavior.
Preventing the man from masturbating can also play into the more specific “slut training” aspect of feminization, where the man is kept in a constant state of arousal without release to make him more obedient, more focused on sexually pleasing others rather than himself, and generally more promiscuous in his imagined role as a woman.
Friendzone
The chastity kink can also intertwine with friendzone fantasies where the man is locked by the woman as a condition to be friends with her so as to guarantee that he do not inappropriately procure any sexual pleasure from their friendship.
This can be especially arousing if the woman tells the man-friend about her encounters with her sexual partners while he agonizes in his cage, further incorporating aspects of cuckolding.
Chastity in the friendzone can also serve to prevent the man from pursuing other women, either because the keyholder believes he is unworthy of women in general or because she wishes to guarantee his complete devotion to her as a platonic friend.
Exposure
The woman who imposes chastity on the man can make him go on dates with other women while his penis is locked in a cage, thereby ensuring that he will not be successful in his conquests. Even if his dates go well, he will be unable to take things further as he cannot have sex with a locked penis.
Aside from denying the man sexual access to the women he pursues and thereby ensuring the failure of his courtship of them, these fantasies can further incorporate the kink of exposure. The man contends with the fear that the women he goes out with will discover that his penis is locked in a cage, in which case he faces the possibility of being exposed and humiliated for it.
Worship and servility
In fantasies of chastity, a man can eroticize denying himself any and all sexual pleasure to focus exclusively on the woman who holds the key to his cage. This focus can be cast in the light of worship or servility, thus incorporating those respective kinks.
In the case of worship, the chastity becomes a token of the man’s adoration of the woman and his complete devotion to her as a loyal worshiper. He experiences his loss of sexual autonomy as a sacrifice to the goddess, voluntarily surrendered to her. If the worship is focused on her feet, their power over him can be symbolized in the woman’s wearing of the chastity key in an ankle bracelet.
In the case of servility, chastity can come into play in fantasies of enslavement. The loss of the man’s sexual autonomy can be one of the stipulations of the slavery contract into which the man enters with the mistress.
In connection with worship and servility, some men fantasize about being locked permanently and living forever in chastity. Permanent chastity can be agreed to voluntarily or arrived at accidentally. In the latter case, the keyholder accidentally loses the key or fails to remember where she put it, thus forcing the man to stay in permanent chastity by force of circumstance. This permanence cements the man’s subjugation to the woman.
Genital torture
Some chastity cages have spikes on the inside that are designed to cause pain if the penis tumesces. The man who wears such a spiked cage has an added incentive to avoid any attempt at erection in the device for fear of the pain caused by the spikes’ piercing of the skin of the penis. Such fantasies intertwine with aspects of physical punishment through genital torture.
Challenge
In the internet culture of female domination, some men engage in a challenge called “Locktober” where they lock themselves up in a chastity cage for the entire month of October, hence the name. These men enjoy watching pornographic videos where women tease them while they remain sexually frustrated and unable to touch themselves or achieve an erection.
This concludes a survey of the kinks of the man’s loss of sexual autonomy. If you think something is missing from this overview, leave a comment and share your thoughts. You can also message me on Substack or on Reddit if you wish to remain anonymous and discuss privately.
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The line art in this essay’s card is by Georgian artist Dorian Chelios.
Keyser, Linda M. (2010). The Medieval Chastity Belt Unbuckled. In S. Harris & B. L. Grisby (Eds.), Misconceptions about the Middle Ages. Routledge.
Hare, Edward H. (1962). Masturbatory Insanity: the History of an Idea. The British Journal of Psychiatry, 108(452), 1–25.
Bullough, Vern L. (1987). Technology for the Prevention of “Les Maladies Produites par la Masturbation”. Technology and Culture, 28(4), 828–832.