There is the basic problem of someone dropping the ball, and offering submission rather than fixing the problem on some level. As someone who tried to run a company, this is especially maddening. I do not want you to show your submission, I want you to tell me how you are going to fix what went wrong,
This isn’t submission, this is cowering away from your expectation for them to submit to you. Actually submitting means swallowing your pride and eating whatever criticism is given to you. It hurts. Saying “Sorry I let you down, I suck” is a way of avoiding facing the responsibility you want to place on their shoulders for them to figure out what they did wrong and fix it.
The purpose is to show “hey, I’m not fighting you” so that if you continue to be an aggressor, you will feel bad and look bad to others. It’s still “violent communication” in the NVC sense, as it is basically a plea for others to do violence on the behalf of the “victim” if the aggressor doesn’t cut it out. It is understandably infuriating when someone will screw up, shirk responsibility, and then play victim to get out of facing the consequences. And so it’s very easy to get angry at them for this. I’m ashamed to admit it, but I know this failure mode very well.
The solution is to make submitting to you easier, more enjoyable, and more visibly safe. It used to boggle my mind that anyone could think I would be at all unhappy with them for making mistakes once I could see that they’re taking responsibility and fixing them, but in the times where it would become an issue it really wasn’t clear to them and they hadn’t even considered that it could possibly be otherwise. I felt pretty shitty realizing that people actually expected me (by default) to not be forgiving and understanding in positions of local dominance, and that motivated me to start making it explicitly clear a lot more often. The difference is night and day, and can be pinpointed to the exact moment you reaffirm good feelings and trust that they will take you up on the offer to let them submit and make things better.
If the dominance games and submission don’t feel right and desirable for both parties, something is going wrong somewhere. Even when submitting after a fuckup can be emotionally painful, it should feel like a pain you want—not a pain you want to avoid. There are a lot of reasons it doesn’t always feel desirable in practice, but that has a lot more to do with the trust and empathy shown than the dominance/submission aspect itself. BDSM is pretty explicitly about these kinds of dynamics being mutually desirable, so if you want to better understand how dominance games and submission can actually be good things, it might help to read accounts of what people get out of that stuff. Even though it’s a bit of a corner case, the same principles apply to a lot of “normal” social interactions.
This isn’t submission, this is cowering away from your expectation for them to submit to you. Actually submitting means swallowing your pride and eating whatever criticism is given to you. It hurts. Saying “Sorry I let you down, I suck” is a way of avoiding facing the responsibility you want to place on their shoulders for them to figure out what they did wrong and fix it.
The purpose is to show “hey, I’m not fighting you” so that if you continue to be an aggressor, you will feel bad and look bad to others. It’s still “violent communication” in the NVC sense, as it is basically a plea for others to do violence on the behalf of the “victim” if the aggressor doesn’t cut it out.
That is what submission is: sending a clear “I lose” signal so as to end the interaction by accepting a loss of social status.
I don’t want to get too deep into the semantics argument, as the point is a substantive one, but google defines submission as follows: “the action or fact of accepting or yielding to a superior force or to the will or authority of another person”. Actually accepting their authority over you and working to cooperate and follow their direction (rather than making distress calls for backup while non-cooperating) is at the heart of what is important here, and is what people generally mean when they speak of “submission”. Whatever you want to call it though, “Please don’t hurt me!” is a very very different thing than “yes sir, whatever you wish”, and the former is not by any means an “I lose” signal.
There is a difference between “I accept defeat” and “I do not want to fight you”. Accepting defeat means agreeing on terms of surrender. “I don’t want to fight you” is trying to avoid giving them what they want by avoiding the direct confrontation. It does mean that you’re conceding that they are stronger here, but it does not necessarily mean losing status, or losing anything, really. Status isn’t all about direct strength and the battle isn’t always about being stronger than each other. For example, imagine the town asshole yelling at the sweet and friendly ten year old girl that everyone likes. If all you see is some 30 year old man yelling at a 10 year old girl who is girl crying and saying sorry, does the asshole’s status go up in your eyes, or does it just go down further because he looks to be picking on this little kid again? You’d probably pick the man to win in any direct one on one confrontation (physical or otherwise), but when the rest of the town shows up, the pitch forks are coming out on the side of the little girl. Status is a social thing, and when you come out ahead in the end because everyone holds you as in the right and worth defending, you’re the one with higher status. This is what people mean when they accuse people of “playing victim”—it’s still a status play, even if not in the way you’re used to seeing.
This isn’t submission, this is cowering away from your expectation for them to submit to you. Actually submitting means swallowing your pride and eating whatever criticism is given to you. It hurts. Saying “Sorry I let you down, I suck” is a way of avoiding facing the responsibility you want to place on their shoulders for them to figure out what they did wrong and fix it.
The purpose is to show “hey, I’m not fighting you” so that if you continue to be an aggressor, you will feel bad and look bad to others. It’s still “violent communication” in the NVC sense, as it is basically a plea for others to do violence on the behalf of the “victim” if the aggressor doesn’t cut it out. It is understandably infuriating when someone will screw up, shirk responsibility, and then play victim to get out of facing the consequences. And so it’s very easy to get angry at them for this. I’m ashamed to admit it, but I know this failure mode very well.
The solution is to make submitting to you easier, more enjoyable, and more visibly safe. It used to boggle my mind that anyone could think I would be at all unhappy with them for making mistakes once I could see that they’re taking responsibility and fixing them, but in the times where it would become an issue it really wasn’t clear to them and they hadn’t even considered that it could possibly be otherwise. I felt pretty shitty realizing that people actually expected me (by default) to not be forgiving and understanding in positions of local dominance, and that motivated me to start making it explicitly clear a lot more often. The difference is night and day, and can be pinpointed to the exact moment you reaffirm good feelings and trust that they will take you up on the offer to let them submit and make things better.
If the dominance games and submission don’t feel right and desirable for both parties, something is going wrong somewhere. Even when submitting after a fuckup can be emotionally painful, it should feel like a pain you want—not a pain you want to avoid. There are a lot of reasons it doesn’t always feel desirable in practice, but that has a lot more to do with the trust and empathy shown than the dominance/submission aspect itself. BDSM is pretty explicitly about these kinds of dynamics being mutually desirable, so if you want to better understand how dominance games and submission can actually be good things, it might help to read accounts of what people get out of that stuff. Even though it’s a bit of a corner case, the same principles apply to a lot of “normal” social interactions.
That is what submission is: sending a clear “I lose” signal so as to end the interaction by accepting a loss of social status.
I don’t want to get too deep into the semantics argument, as the point is a substantive one, but google defines submission as follows: “the action or fact of accepting or yielding to a superior force or to the will or authority of another person”. Actually accepting their authority over you and working to cooperate and follow their direction (rather than making distress calls for backup while non-cooperating) is at the heart of what is important here, and is what people generally mean when they speak of “submission”. Whatever you want to call it though, “Please don’t hurt me!” is a very very different thing than “yes sir, whatever you wish”, and the former is not by any means an “I lose” signal.
There is a difference between “I accept defeat” and “I do not want to fight you”. Accepting defeat means agreeing on terms of surrender. “I don’t want to fight you” is trying to avoid giving them what they want by avoiding the direct confrontation. It does mean that you’re conceding that they are stronger here, but it does not necessarily mean losing status, or losing anything, really. Status isn’t all about direct strength and the battle isn’t always about being stronger than each other. For example, imagine the town asshole yelling at the sweet and friendly ten year old girl that everyone likes. If all you see is some 30 year old man yelling at a 10 year old girl who is girl crying and saying sorry, does the asshole’s status go up in your eyes, or does it just go down further because he looks to be picking on this little kid again? You’d probably pick the man to win in any direct one on one confrontation (physical or otherwise), but when the rest of the town shows up, the pitch forks are coming out on the side of the little girl. Status is a social thing, and when you come out ahead in the end because everyone holds you as in the right and worth defending, you’re the one with higher status. This is what people mean when they accuse people of “playing victim”—it’s still a status play, even if not in the way you’re used to seeing.