Slaves of Desire

[Ar****]

Power and sexuality have long been connected to authority, submission, and desire.
In social life, roles such as leadership, protection, and responsibility within family or home have often been associated with authority, while obedience and care have been associated with submission. Psychoanalysis and philosophy suggest that these patterns can also appear in intimate relationships, where some people feel drawn to leading and others to surrendering.
Sigmund Freud approached this by explaining sadism and masochism as psychological tendencies rooted in the ***, not as moral rules about how people should live. These desires, according to Freud, emerge from early experiences with authority, attachment, and control.
Friedrich Nietzsche, in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, uses provocative language to explore power and human desire. When he writes, “You are going to women? Do not forget the whip,” that is not promoting *** or slavery. Rather, the line symbolizes power dynamics, attraction, and the tension between leading and surrendering.
In modern terms, such ideas are most responsibly understood as consensual power exchange, where dominance and submission exist by choice, trust, and mutual desire not *** or ***.
Why did modern thought move away from treating masculine authority and feminine submission as natural roles, and toward understanding power as something chosen rather than imposed?

[jo****]

Babe….love your post. I’m an Oscar Wilde fan as well as Noetzsche, and Aliester Crowley…and can totally relate.