Sexual submission

We've been having a thread over at soc.sexuality.spanking newsgroup about sexual submission and innate personality traits and someone asked me what I thought makes someone sexually submissive. So here's what I said.

What makes you submissive, or even into spanking (if you prefer it on that basis)?

What makes somebody gay? What makes someone a switch?

Sexuality is an enormously complex phenomena involving neurophysiological aspects, environmental factors, spirtuality -- you name it. Therefore I think it's impossible to state what one thing does it.

Environmentally I grew up in a family and went to schools where spanking was present. But I like spanking and my sister doesn't. What made me go one way and her the other?

My boyfriend claims his desire to dominate sexually has come from growing up with five older sisters. However, because he grew up having to be submissive to women he could have just as easily grown up to express his sexuality in a submissive way. What made him go one way instead of the other?

Now, I do think the way I grew up has flavored the way I express my sexuality. And as I've been reexamining a life that has been very influenced by the Church and the medical profession (due to chronic illness) I am also appreciating there are aspects I don't want to be apart of my sexuality.

For instance, my illness has involved a number of dietary restrictions (at the moment, sugar because of antibiotic-induced yeast infections). While a couple of my fellow bloggers at the Punishment Book have utilized their kink as a means of enforcing dietary restrictions, I know because I grew up as a fat girl who had food frequently withheld as punishment for being something I couldn't help, using the threat of spanking would be an extremely unhealthy thing to add to my relationship with my boyfriend. Food and my relationship to it and my body are something I have to work out on my own and any sort of spanking would just muck up the whole thing for me.

I would also go further and say that I am concerned about the way others who express their sexuality submissively utilize D/s. Like those who say they want a DD relationship with their husband so they'll stop fighting all the time or have stopped fighting after starting one. I feel like this is an unhealthy substitute for developing good interpersonal skills.

I can say that I, and some sexual submissives, can at times lack a certain connection to who they are and therefore exhibit a certain inability to set boundaries or make healthy choices (and I know some sexual dominants who have the EXACT same problem) and being submissive can seem easier because it lets someone else do the thinking for us. I DON'T believe D/s is a good way to deal with this problem. Only I can decide who I am. Only I can develop that sense of self that can provide the foundation for making healthy decisions about boundaries and behavior. Attempting to use D/s to provide that is an ineffective way to learn healthy coping and behavioral skills and can even get in the way of ever doing so.

Ultimately I'm sexually submissive because, well, it's a hell of a lot of fun. :)