How Supernormal Stimulation explains Domination and Submission

And why most D/s related fetishes aren't really fetishes...

Super Stimulation?

A comment of mine got quoted on Slate Star Codex. This is an expansion of what I wrote. (Please note that ‘natural’ doesn’t mean ‘good’, or even a ‘good idea’, and that human nature often pulls us in more than one direction — if there’s a natural drive to predate, then there’s also one to cooperate, and so on.)

My name is Giles English and I’ve been mostly locked in a male chastity device for more than two and a half years, with no orgasm. My wife prefers me this way, and I can’t seem to resist her.

What the hell is going on? And, am I in the grip of a fetish?

I think that the simplest explanation for compelling nature of kinky Domination and Submission is that our perfectly normal human drives for domination and submission are massively amplified by the Supernormal Stimulation of consent.

By “kinky Domination and Submission” (henceforth, D/s) I mean consensual power exchange within explicitly defined boundaries, e.g. involving taking on the roles of master/mistress and slave. When the relationship goes outside those boundaries, it becomes something else. This kind of dynamic has its risks, but there’s a whole body of literature and advice around making this work safely.

I also think that many of our so-called fetishes are really just “kinks”, by which I mean objects and activities embodying a D/s relationship. However, some kinks themselves cause Supernormal Stimulation, and some of these become woven into our sexual identity in the classic sense of the term “fetish”.

So maybe I am in the grip of a fetish.

Here goes…

It’s perfectly normal

“historically normal but politically unfashionable”

Let’s start with the perhaps uncomfortable thought that a lot of D/s is really just historically normal but politically unfashionable human behaviour de-fanged and re-skinned as BDSM.

Humans are status seeking, some more than others. For many people, doing anything that feels high status also feels good. Similarly, humans are also leader seeking — leaders hopefully protect and organise us for collective action — so some people really like submitting to a leader.

This explains why D/s is so satisfying even when it’s non-sexual. As the submissive in our relationship, I act as servant to my wife — do most of the chores, literally wait on her hand and foot, accept her domestic standards — and defer to her leadership and it just feels good for both of us. (She says she can’t imagine living any other way.)

However, the baseline of D/s, especially “bedroom only” is sexual, and so must be specifically about the “reproductive strategy” that our instincts nudge us towards (often unknowingly with no conscious intention to reproduce).

There are probably reproductive advantages for both partners if one of them provides focus and direction. It certainly seems common for one or other partner to lead a couple. The male head of the household has often been the cultural default, but even under various historical patriarchal societies, a woman could sometimes “wear the trousers”. (God I hate that term.)

Being the dominant partner seems like a good reproductive strategy. In ancestral monkey terms, the male dominant benefits from effective mate guarding, so avoiding raising another man’s children. Likewise, the female dominant is assured access to resources and grooming when pregnant or nursing, and is less likely to be assaulted by her mate, so more likely to raise her children to breeding age. Being the submissive partner, whether male or female, also seems like a good reproductive strategy because it gives you a higher status mate who has access to resources, can protect your offspring and has — hopefully — good genes.

(I should probably mention here another purely male breeding strategy that only looks submissive called— and this is an actual technical term — “sneaky f*cker”. Basically, you adopt a non-threatening posture in order to infiltrate the dominant male’s harem. The modern vanilla version of this strategy is creepy and ineffective. However, there’s a certain flavour of male submissive who seems to express this through sissyfication and cuckolding.)

What is a fetish?

Photo by Arnel Hasanovic on Unsplash

Scott Alexander summarises the standard narrative about fetish as a (1) targetting error (2) learned early during sexual development (my cuts indicated by “…”):

…some humans’ libidos are fundamentally confused. For example, some men, instead of wanting to have sex with women, mostly want to spank them, or be whipped by them, or kiss their feet, or dress up in their clothes. None of these things are going to result in babies!

….Here’s a simple story of fetish formation: evolution gave us genes that somehow unfold into a “sex drive” in the brain. But the genome doesn’t inherently contain concepts like “man”, “woman”, “penis”, or “vagina”…. concepts like “man” and “woman” are learned during childhood as patterns of neural connections.…

So the simple story of fetish formation is that the genome contains some message written in nucleotides saying “have procreative sex with adults of the opposite sex as you”, some galaxy-brained Rube Goldberg plan for translating that message into neural connections during childhood or adolescence, and sometimes the plan fails.

It’s also common to see definitions of fetish where it is (3) compulsory for sexual gratification. e.g. this classic dictionary definition of fetish:

an object or bodily part whose real or fantasied presence is psychologically necessary for sexual gratification and that is an object of fixation to the extent that it may interfere with complete sexual expression.

D/s kinks and D/s aren’t usually fetishes

Still not a fetish!

If I’m correct that the urges for domination and submission are natural, then the things — kinks! — people get up to in D/s relationships, and props that point to them, fail the first Fetish Test by being actually totally on target!

Historically — and regrettably — it’s entirely routine for the powerful to punish their subordinates, sometimes just to show who’s the boss. Whether you were a slave or an early modern servant or wife or whatever, being on the wrong end of a hand or a stick just came with the role. Sexual exploitation is also historically normal — in the grand scheme of things, dominants who enjoy oral sex on demand are just being human — as are those who dominate through rough sex or administering powerful orgasms. And submitting to all that in order to signal submission is also, though the thought makes us uncomfortable, natural as well.

To be clear, much of this wasn’t OK for the victims — forced submission isn’t consent — but is nevertheless historically normal human behaviour.

So, D/s kinks fail the first Fetish Test because, just like D/s itself, they are totally on target.

They also fail the second Fetish Test by not being learned early. Most of them don’t have an obvious St Paul moment. Corporal punishment of minors is unfashionable and often illegal in most of the developed world, but a quick glance at Fetlife suggests that Gen-Z kinksters are still merrily flogging each other for kicks. Other kinks like orgasm denial or forced orgasm, or oral service, or domestic slavery, aren’t encountered during a normal puberty, but rather discovered later when exploring BDSM.

Finally, D/s kinks fail the third Fetish Test because they are not usually individually compulsary for sexual gratification.

D/s itself often passes the second and third test. Many kinksters report experiencing its urges early in their sexual development, and it’s common, especially in older couples, for D/s to be the only form of erotic activity. So learned early and compulsory, perhaps. However, I still don’t think it’s a targeting error.

But D/s if not a fetish, why is it so compelling and absorbing for its practitioners?

Supernormal Stimulation

Photo by Pedro Novales on Unsplash

My argument so far is basically:

Some people are instinctively drawn to dominant or submissive partners, and to also enjoy the resulting domination and submission relationship. This relationship is expressed through a range of historically normal and instinctive activities we can call kinks. Since none of this is a targeting error, and little of it is learned early, even if it’s often compulsory, I don’t think any of this is a “fetish” in the normal technical sense of the term.

Well and good, but that doesn’t explain why I’ve been stuck in a chastity device for more than two-and-a-half years, nor why other kinksters do other extreme stuff. For that we need another concept; Super Stimulation.

Supernormal Stimulation is what’s happening: when poor little baby turtles fatally crawl the wrong way, up the beach towards the bright lights of the local bars and discos; when randy Australian beetles try to mate with beer bottles (and risk dying out); and when humans make binge on refined sugar and make ourselves ill. It’s why people collect big-eyed plushies. And, I think it probably also explains unreflective high status men descending into serial infidelity.

People often talk about Supernormal Stimulation “hacking the reward system” and go on about serotonin and dopamine. However, that’s under-the-hood-stuff, and might as well be technobabble — anybody want to reverse the polarity of the neutron flow?

What really matters is the shape of it, which is something like:

We experience Supernormal Stimulation when our hardwired rules encounter ‘unplanned-for"‘ levels of stimulation, resulting in ‘unintended’ compulsive behaviour.

I put unplanned-for and unintended in scare quotes, because natural selection doesn’t really plan or intend. It’s just easier to talk about it that way.

So the baby turtle has the rule “go to the bright light when you hatch”, but the really very bright electric lights send it up the beach, rather than into the moonlit ocean. (Poor baby turtle!) The male beetle has the rule “shag big shiny things”, but the big shiny beer bottle is therefore more feminine than a real female beetle. Humans have the rule “stuff yourself with sweet things when you can”, which was fine when that meant a chance find of honey, but is disastrous now sugary things are in abundance.

I’ll leave it as an exercise to explain the plushies and “sex addict” rock star… and why we care about baby turtles. (There’s a good article on Supernormal Stimulation here, though I won’t vouch for the rest of the site.)

D/s is Supernormal Stimulation

Supernormal Stimulation…

The thing about non-BDSM domination and submission is that it’s always been provisional, limited by fear of consequences, and these days is also limited by self-image.

Unless they were, e.g. rich Ancient Romans, in pre-modern cultures, the would-be alpha male had to tread carefully for fear of being speared to death by his comrades, or cuckolded by his partner, who he also had to avoid injuring, and the pre-modern alpha female had to worry about being shunned by her sisters, and assaulted or deserted by her mate. The modern non-kinky alpha fears the HR department. They may be the boss at home, and have some rough sex going on, but the acceptable limits are both fuzzy and constricting, and they (hopefully) don’t want to feel like a bad person.

The pre-modern submissive of either sex would be watchful of being exploited or mistreated too much. The modern version is maybe fierce about setting boundaries at work — good old HR, eh? — and with their partner. They are maybe giving at home and in bed, but they don’t want to feel like a doormat, because Jordan Peterson/Feminism.

So, some of us have a rule that goes something like “dominate or submit until you are no longer safe from consequences”. The consequences generally turn up sooner or later, providing an external brake on dominant and submissive behaviour.

Then along comes BDSM consent culture.

Whoosh!

Some of the consequences simply vanish — you can be dominant without being evil, submissive without being a doormat — and others become explicit and permissive limits — “You can hit me with those whips but not those chains, and don’t draw blood… also, Red is my safeword.”

Consent is to kink as sugar is to a sweet tooth. Our hardwired rules weren’t designed to deal with freedom from consequences.

It’s very hard to come back from that kind of headspace, and some of us in lifestyle relationships don’t bother to even try.

D/s becomes our love language, and our erotic roles become part of our identity. I don’t just enjoy submitting, I am a submissive.

(The whooshing earlier was the sound of couples sliding down a very slippery slope.)

D/s Kinks are also Supernormal Stimulation

Supernormal Stimulation, also

Finally, we come to my permanent chastity device and to other crazy or extreme stuff kinksters do compulsively.

I think what I’ve called kinks either point to D/s in ways that are Supernormal stimulation — kinky boots, for example, exaggerate the apparent power and status of the dominant — or else derive from secondary rules limited by both practicality and consequences. This last requires some unpacking.

If, for example, the rule involves the dominant inflicting pain on the submissive, then the natural limits are (a) the submissive being driven to escape, and (b) the risk of damage. So, the spankee can wriggle free if you go too hard — which probably happened in non-consensual pre-modern situations — but if they don’t, then the spanker will have to stop anyway, for fear of causing real harm or getting a sore hand.

What if you do away with the practical issues and remove the consequences? The submissive is tied up, and the dominant is using an implement that’s both extremely painful and takes a long time to cause harm.

Again — Whoosh!

Another example. A lot of kinks seem to satisfy the rule “make/receive a mark”, plausibly including things like knife play, scarification, branding, ownership tattoos, intimate piercings, and slave collars.

Finally, male chastity devices clearly take several rules run with them to make a big fat Supernormal Stimulationtastic Kink; one-sided sexual exploitation, extended sexual denial, and emasculation without the dangers and downsides.

If you have a strong kink for chastity, and you are in a good device that doesn’t need to be removed, then it’s psychologically hard to actually remove it, and almost impossible if — like me — you have a dominant pushing you not to.

I think sometimes powerful kinks like that get woven into our already kinky sexual identities and then become compulsory. I certainly fall into that category. Not only am I a submissive, I am a chaste submissive. Being locked in chastity is part of my sexual identity. Two rounds of super stimulation and here I am.

Even so, my chaste identity doesn’t result from mistargeting, but rather chasing a target rather too well. Call it a fetish if you will, but it doesn’t feel or function that way. Perhaps perversion would be a better term…

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