At that point, I stop agreeing with you that she is typical of average women, however. In the grandparent, I agreed that a plurality of women are submissive in bed. I emphatically do not agree that most women I have met are secretly suffering from not being lifestyle-submissive.
I assume you’re disagreeing with my top-level comment. I’ll try to elaborate.
“Submissive” has some heavily loaded connotation. Most women (I have met) prefer to have the man ask them out; this is submissive behavior. Most women prefer to be chased, than to chase. Most women in relationships prefer the man to plan and execute dates. Most women prefer to be asked to marry, rather than to ask to marry. So on and so forth.
These are all submissive behaviors that aren’t typically labelled as such, and most women don’t suffer from not being submissive, they -are- submissive. That doesn’t mean “I’ll do whatever you want”. It doesn’t mean “I don’t expect anything from you.” It doesn’t mean “There are no boundaries in our relationship, do whatever you want.” Same as in sex, part of the dominance-submission framework is understanding what is and isn’t acceptable, and ideally having some kind of framework in place (if simply communication—safewords in a sexual context as one example) for dealing with the boundary cases where it’s not really clear.
Dominance/submission aren’t binary, they’re pretty wide spectrums. Women, generally speaking, are on the submissive side of that. (Much to my chagrin, actually, since I’m a switch with a personal preference to be submissive. Fortunately guys are on the table for me as well, so that’s not too much of an issue.)
Most women (I have met) prefer to have the man ask them out; this is submissive behavior.
This is not obvious to me. That makes sense if you think of it as hunter and pursued; you could alternatively view it as supplicant and bestower of favor.
I have no idea. Nor can I think of a good way to test this, since neither of us seems likely to accept women’s self-reporting of the answer as an accurate reflection of what their system 1 is actually doing.
My wild-ass guess is that it’s not even computing anything from scratch in the first place, it’s just reading from a look-up table. (This doesn’t answer the question who wrote that table in the first place, though—but see this.)
I think that’s actually the common model that sex is something women have and men want. So, which of the two simply depends on whether you’re inclined to grant it or not, and on the side you view it from. This may be an unrelated phenomenon to dom/sub (or, alternately, the source of a dom/sub effect.)
That’s an interesting “model”, but it doesn’t seem to be making any predictions here—it fits whether Wilde is right or wrong, so it’s probably irrelevant.
Are you suggesting that “I prefer that you ask me for things and I get to say ‘yes’ or ‘no’” is a submissive posture in general? Or is this limited to the kinds of romantic/sexual contexts you’re talking about here?
Either way, can you point me at some references for this claim? It seems pretty counterintuitive to me.
References for a subjective evaluation? Er, no. At best I might be able to pull some evidence together about how the average person evaluates the situation.
But let’s turn this on its head. Do you think the US president’s veto power gives the president a dominant power position in terms of legislature? Who has more power over legislature—the president, who can say no, or the legislature, who get to determine the questions the president gets to say “No” to?
References for a subjective evaluation? Er, no. At best I might be able to pull some evidence together about how the average person evaluates the situation.
(blink) OK. If what you mean by “dominant” and “submissive” is a claim about how people feel about a situation, rather than a claim about who is able to implement their preferences, then I misunderstood your initial point and am content to drop the subject here.
To answer your question, though: in practice the legislative veto situation is a lot more complicated than you present it here, because there are lots of preferences had by both sides that have almost nothing to do with whether the law gets passed or not, and often the law itself is simply a stalking horse.
But leaving the specifics of veto politics aside, I certainly agree that there are contexts in which the person framing the request has more practical power (in the sense of being able to implement their preferences despite opposition) than the person acceding to or denying the request.
There are also contexts in which the reverse is true.
That is a plausible reading.
At that point, I stop agreeing with you that she is typical of average women, however. In the grandparent, I agreed that a plurality of women are submissive in bed. I emphatically do not agree that most women I have met are secretly suffering from not being lifestyle-submissive.
I assume you’re disagreeing with my top-level comment. I’ll try to elaborate.
“Submissive” has some heavily loaded connotation. Most women (I have met) prefer to have the man ask them out; this is submissive behavior. Most women prefer to be chased, than to chase. Most women in relationships prefer the man to plan and execute dates. Most women prefer to be asked to marry, rather than to ask to marry. So on and so forth.
These are all submissive behaviors that aren’t typically labelled as such, and most women don’t suffer from not being submissive, they -are- submissive. That doesn’t mean “I’ll do whatever you want”. It doesn’t mean “I don’t expect anything from you.” It doesn’t mean “There are no boundaries in our relationship, do whatever you want.” Same as in sex, part of the dominance-submission framework is understanding what is and isn’t acceptable, and ideally having some kind of framework in place (if simply communication—safewords in a sexual context as one example) for dealing with the boundary cases where it’s not really clear.
Dominance/submission aren’t binary, they’re pretty wide spectrums. Women, generally speaking, are on the submissive side of that. (Much to my chagrin, actually, since I’m a switch with a personal preference to be submissive. Fortunately guys are on the table for me as well, so that’s not too much of an issue.)
This is not obvious to me. That makes sense if you think of it as hunter and pursued; you could alternatively view it as supplicant and bestower of favor.
Well, what percentage of women would you anticipate regard it as the former versus the latter?
I have no idea. Nor can I think of a good way to test this, since neither of us seems likely to accept women’s self-reporting of the answer as an accurate reflection of what their system 1 is actually doing.
My wild-ass guess is that it’s not even computing anything from scratch in the first place, it’s just reading from a look-up table. (This doesn’t answer the question who wrote that table in the first place, though—but see this.)
I think that’s actually the common model that sex is something women have and men want. So, which of the two simply depends on whether you’re inclined to grant it or not, and on the side you view it from. This may be an unrelated phenomenon to dom/sub (or, alternately, the source of a dom/sub effect.)
That’s an interesting “model”, but it doesn’t seem to be making any predictions here—it fits whether Wilde is right or wrong, so it’s probably irrelevant.
Are you suggesting that “I prefer that you ask me for things and I get to say ‘yes’ or ‘no’” is a submissive posture in general? Or is this limited to the kinds of romantic/sexual contexts you’re talking about here?
Either way, can you point me at some references for this claim? It seems pretty counterintuitive to me.
References for a subjective evaluation? Er, no. At best I might be able to pull some evidence together about how the average person evaluates the situation.
But let’s turn this on its head. Do you think the US president’s veto power gives the president a dominant power position in terms of legislature? Who has more power over legislature—the president, who can say no, or the legislature, who get to determine the questions the president gets to say “No” to?
(blink) OK. If what you mean by “dominant” and “submissive” is a claim about how people feel about a situation, rather than a claim about who is able to implement their preferences, then I misunderstood your initial point and am content to drop the subject here.
To answer your question, though: in practice the legislative veto situation is a lot more complicated than you present it here, because there are lots of preferences had by both sides that have almost nothing to do with whether the law gets passed or not, and often the law itself is simply a stalking horse.
But leaving the specifics of veto politics aside, I certainly agree that there are contexts in which the person framing the request has more practical power (in the sense of being able to implement their preferences despite opposition) than the person acceding to or denying the request.
There are also contexts in which the reverse is true.
How d’ya know that’s not a biased sample?
I don’t, which is why I made sure to make it clear that that was the sample set I was working with.