A survey of male submissive kinks: Terminology
Masochism, kinks, fetishes, paraphilias, sexual fantasies… To avoid any confusion, a word on terminology is in order.
This is part of a series of essays that collectively survey male submissive kinks. Find the Table of contents here.
Masochism, sexual
The word “masochism” was coined by Richard von Krafft-Ebing, the eminent 19th century psychologist of sex.1 He coined the word after Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, an Austrian novelist whose literary work featured the themes of men’s submission to women. The most famous of these works is undoubtedly the Venus in Furs, published in 1870 and still to this day the only classic novel of female domination.2
Sacher-Masoch enjoyed male submissive sexual fantasies and explored them to a great extent in his personal life as attested to by his relationships with several women, most notably his long-time wife Aurora who went by the name of the dominatrix in Venus in Furs, Wanda. Sacher-Masoch had no shame about his desire to be sexually dominated by women. In fact, he seemed to have a certain pride in it.3
From his writings and his personal life, people were privy to Sacher-Masoch’s sexual proclivities. Krafft-Ebing was no exception as he was particularly drawn to the study of atypical sexual interests. In his magnum opus Psychopathia Sexualis, Krafft-Ebing coined the word “masochism” to refer to the sexual desire to be submissive. He defined it as follows:
By masochism I understand a peculiar perversion of the psychical sexual life in which the individual affected, in sexual feeling and thought, is controlled by the idea of being completely and unconditionally subject to the will of a person of the opposite sex; of being treated by this person as by a master, humiliated and abused. This idea is colored by lustful feeling; the masochist lives in fantasies, in which he creates situations of this kind and often attempts to realize them.4
He justified his coinage in the following manner:
I feel justified in calling this sexual anomaly “Masochism,” because the author Sacher-Masoch frequently made this perversion, which up to his time was quite unknown to the scientific world as such, the substratum of his writings. I followed thereby the scientific formation of the term “Daltonism,” from Dalton, the discoverer of colour-blindness.5
Krafft-Ebing observed this “perversion” in many men whose case histories he documented in the book. By extension, he also used the word “masochism” for women who desired to be sexually subjugated to men. Case histories of masochistic men vastly outnumbered those of women. If you understand the origins of the word, you will appreciate the irony in many people who, unaware of this history, associate masochism primarily with women.
Masochism, nonsexual
Such was the usage reserved for the word “masochism” until it was corrupted. This occurred when the use of “masochism” was extended to describe self-defeating behavior beyond the realm of sexuality. Krafft-Ebing never intended for the word to be used in this way. Indeed, he expressly stated:
The distinguishing characteristic in masochism is certainly the unlimited subjection to the will of a person of the opposite sex […], with the awakening and accompaniment of lustful sexual feelings to the degree of orgasm.6
In the 1920s, Sigmund Freud cemented this conflation by defining what he called “moral masochism” (i.e. nonsexual self-defeating behavior), inextricably linking it with the original (sexual) masochism in his psychoanalytic theories. In doing so, however, he was following a trend that had been well underway in language—and not just in German.7 Freud did not give masochism the new nonsexual meaning, but he advanced ideas that purported that the two were part of the same phenomenon.
Ever since, submissive sexual fantasies (masochism in the original sense) have unfortunately been conflated with nonsexual self-defeating behavior. The new meaning of the word is illustrated well by the concept of the masochistic personality that was introduced later on in the field of personality disorders.8
A person with the masochistic personality disorder shows a pervasive pattern of behavior that includes at least five of nine proposed behaviors. In short, people with the masochistic personality seem to prefer putting themselves in situations that bring them down and make them suffer. They seem to reject opportunities to better their situation or the offers of others to help them. They seem to avoid any pleasurable experiences, preferring self-defeat.
These self-defeating behaviors have to occur in the absence of sexual pleasure derived from them in order for the masochistic personality to apply. As such, the masochistic personality has nothing to do with masochism in the sexual sense. To avoid this confusion, the masochistic personality has come to be called the “self-defeating personality”. To the same end, masochism in the original sexual sense has come to be known as “sexual masochism”.
Sexual masochism and the self-defeating behavior described in the masochistic personality disorder are two independent things. Either can occur without the other, and the occurrence of one is not correlated with the occurrence of the other.9 Unfortunately, the word “masochism” in general usage came to be associated more with the aspects of self-defeat than with sexual fantasies, and the original sense of the word receded into the linguistic background.
Kink and sexual fantasy
Seeing how the word “masochism” all but lost its original meaning as intended by Krafft-Ebing and seeing how it came to be associated with nonsexual self-defeating behavior, I choose to entirely avoid that word in describing the submissive sexual fantasies of men today. I only use the word “masochism” when it is necessary in reference to past literature.
My motivation in doing so is that in discussing submissive sexual fantasies, I do not want to bring forth to the imagination of the reader any association with masochism as understood in the broad sense by the general public (i.e. nonsexual self-defeating behavior and tendencies).
I am well aware that this is a break with the accepted terminology in this field of research, but it is warranted given the facts. Time and again in the scientific inquiry into human sexual psychology, old words were given up and new ones were adopted.
Instead of the old terminology, I restrict myself to two words: “kink” and “sexual fantasy”. I consider a kink to be a specific idea or mental image that causes sexual arousal in people who have the kink. I consider a sexual fantasy to be a more elaborate construction that can be based on one or multiple kinks.
Consider for instance a man who fantasies about his girlfriend’s sexual infidelity. In his fantasy, he imagines that his girlfriend will be driven to cheat on him because she is dissatisfied with him in bed, mainly due to the size of his penis which she thinks is too small. The kinks in this case—that is to say, the elements that are at the heart of the man’s sexual arousal—are the cuckolding element and the small penis humiliation element. The fantasy builds on these kinks, putting them together along with an elaborate setting.
Sexual fantasies are seemingly endless and are only bound by the limits of the imagination. Kinks, on the other hand, recur in identifiable patterns in different individuals. These two concepts are both necessary and sufficient to treat the subject matter, and they are devoid of unwanted connotations.
For lack of better expressions (and because I hate unnecessary acronyms), we will be stuck with mouthfuls such as “male submissive kinks” and “male submissive sexual fantasies”. Clunky, granted, but quite clear in the meaning conveyed.
Fetish
As for the word “fetish”, I avoid it entirely as it has multiple meanings. The original meaning reserved its use for sexual arousal elicited by certain body parts or articles of clothing or the materials of them.10 As such, one can properly speak of a “foot fetish” but not of a “cuckolding fetish”; the former involves a body part but the latter the act of sexual infidelity.
In sex research, fetishism and masochism (in the sexual sense) are two separate categories of atypical sexual interests, but they overlap at times. For instance, if a man is sexually aroused by women’s feet without any accompanying ideas of humiliation by the women or subjection to them, he would fall squarely and only in the fetishism category.
In contrast, if his sexual interest in women’s feet is associated with ideas of being submissive to the women, he would be a sexual masochist. Whether or not, in this case, he would also be considered a foot fetishist is up for debate.
These nuances of definition are of course lost in the lay vocabulary of today, where the usage of the word “fetish” extends to other meanings. More recently on the internet, for example, some people seem to draw a strange distinction between “fetish” and “kink”. They claim that a fetish is necessary to produce sexual arousal; without it, there can be no sexual arousal according to them. By contrast, they claim that a kink is optional for sexual arousal, that it is only an enhancer.11
I draw no such distinction when I speak of kinks and sexual fantasies. The subject of whether or not an atypical sexual interest becomes necessary for sexual gratification, replacing conventional sexual stimuli, is a topic to be broached separately.
As such, the word “fetish”, like the word “masochism”, is fraught with undesired connotations and using it will inevitably lead to confusion. In avoiding these words and sticking to “kink” and “sexual fantasies”, I am choosing alternatives that are free of such unwanted connotations.
Paraphilia
When a sexual interest is considered “atypical”, it is a paraphilia. Submissive sexual fantasies are paraphilias. Normophilia, in contrast, covers conventional sexual interests. If you are a man and you have the burning desire to put your penis in a vagina, that is not a paraphilia, only the natural normophilic sexual desire driving you to procreate.
Whether a sexual interest is considered normal or not depends entirely on how society perceives normalcy, and therein lies a problem.12 Not too long ago in the nineteenth century, masturbation was considered a deviant practice that led to insanity.13 This dangerous malady afflicted many men who sought help for it. It was referred to as “onanism”, an ominous-sounding word for a practice that is considered completely normal—even healthy—today.
Similarly, oral sex was considered a deviant practice that fell under the umbrella of paraphilias. If you were a man who wished to lick a woman’s genitals, you would have been considered weird and probably looked on with suspicion of harboring the hidden masochistic desire of debasing yourself in the act of cunnilingus.
The normal men of back then only had the desire to put the penis in the vagina, and only to do so while they were on top.14 The only forms of foreplay considered normal were kissing and a bit of fondling. Today, oral sex is considered a normal sexual practice that can be part of foreplay or a standalone sexual activity.15
With time, it seems that more and more of the so-called deviant sexual practices become normalized and move from the realm of paraphilia to that of normophilia. Perhaps in our own age, anal sex is moving in that direction. Submissive sexual fantasies, however, remain for the time being wholly in the domain of atypical sexual interests, even though they are part and parcel of the normal sexual experience of a great many people.
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The line art in this essay’s card is by Georgian artist Dorian Chelios.
There were other propositions to describe submissive sexual fantasies, notably “passivism”, coined by a certain Dimitry Stefanowsky, and “passive algolagnia”, coined by Albert von Schrenck-Notzing. Krafft-Ebing’s coinage prevailed.
Available in English translations. For example, Sacher-Masoch, Leopold von. (2000). Venus in Furs. Translated by Joachim Neugroschel from the German. Penguin Classics. (Originally published in 1870.)
For details on Sacher-Masoch’s submissive sexual life, consult Cleugh, James. (1967). The First Masochist: A Biography of Leopold von Sacher-Masoch. Stein and Day.
Krafft-Ebing, Richard von. (1965). Psychopathia Sexualis. Translated by Franklin S. Klaf from the twelfth German edition. Stein and Day. (Originally published in 1886.) p. 86.
Ibid., p. 87.
Ibid., p. 133. Emphasis in bold mine.
“There must be some meaning in the fact that linguistic usage has not given up the connection between this norm of [self-defeating] behaviour and erotism and calls these self-injurers masochists too.” Freud, Sigmund. (1961). The Economic Problem of Masochism (1924). In The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud (vol. 6). The Hogarth Press.
For an overview of the masochistic personality, consult Millon, Theodore, et al. (2004). Personality Disorders in Modern Life (2nd ed.). Wiley.
Baumeister, R. F., & Butler, J. L. (1997). Sexual Masochism: Deviance without Pathology. In D. R. Laws & W. T. O'Donohue (Eds.), Sexual Deviance: Theory, Assessment, and Treatment (1st ed.). The Guilford Press.
“Erotic fetishism has for its object either a certain portion of the body of a person of the opposite sex, or a certain article or material of wearing apparel of the opposite sex.” Krafft-Ebing, op. cit., p. 146.
For an example of these uneducated definitions, see the following article on the popular health information website Healthline: Kassel, Gabrielle. What’s the Difference Between a Kink and a Fetish? Medically reviewed by Janet Brito, Ph.D., LCSW, CST. 2021.
Joyal, Christian C. (2018). Controversies in the Definition of Paraphilia. The Journal of Sexual Medicine, 15(10), 1378–1380.
Hare, Edward H. (1962). Masturbatory Insanity: The History of an Idea. The British Journal of Psychiatry, 108(452), 1–25.
The early volumes on sex research often speak of the “incubus” and the “succubus” sex positions (i.e. being on top or in the bottom, respectively). It was considered abnormal for men to want to have sex in the “succubus” position (with the woman on top) and the same was true for women who wanted to take the “incubus” position.
Some early sex researchers argued that oral sex should only be considered deviant if it was the aim of the sexual act and not just part of the preliminaries.