This is also how I feel about these ideas of "inherent male violence.” I don't buy that men are "the dominant sex" or that men are "inherently violent." Based on what I've read, it seems quite clear that individuals with higher testosterone levels -- who are, incidentally, not always men -- often experience more aggressive feelings. Yet that's a far cry from large-scale generalizations, and it's also frequently irrelevant to questions about how people can best deal with those aggressive feelings. Plus, psychological submission can be a very separate thing from physical aggression levels.
Much of the time, when it comes to aggression, anger management is the answer, the same way a naturally shy or submissive person needs to learn to set boundaries. But there are circumstances where catharsis is completely acceptable. Lots of perfectly decent men have urges towards violent dominance; what do they do about it? How much do they agonize, like Christian Grey in Fifty Shades of Grey, and how much do they explore their desires in a consensual and reasonable way?
I always thought that the late-90s movie Fight Club was fascinating primarily because of its lens on masculinity and violence. It's not just about the violence men to do each other, but to themselves. Quotes include "You have to give up; you have to know that someday you're gonna die," and "The first rule of Fight Club is: you do not talk about Fight Club.” I first watched it before I knew much about S&M, but now whenever I think about it, I think about how the idea of a fight club -- where people would get together and fight, for catharsis and community -- is so very reminiscent of how a lot of people experience S&M. Fight Club even has safewords. Someone says stop, you stop. I obviously don't support the endpoint of the Fight Club story (1.e., blowing up buildings), but the idea of establishing a men's community via a fight club seems reasonable to me.
So, what are the practicalities of dealing with aggressive or dominant tendencies in the sexual arena? As an S&M person, I've experimented with dominance as well as submission, but because violence is so associated with masculinity, I turned to some egalitarian male S&Mers for advice. I believe that even for non-S&M people, their perspectives make a really good lens for ideas of gender and violence and power. Of course, the first thing one of my friends told me was: "I'm not sure I really see dominance in general as being particularly masculine. I don't really think it's a gender associated thing.”
That gentleman, who comments around the Internet under the name Scootah, went on to add: "I've certainly worried about my kinks in the past. I mean fundamentally, I get really, really turned on by grabbing someone by the hair, throwing them into the wall, backhanding them, etc. That's a pretty disturbing thought for an egalitarian who's worked with abuse victims. I spend a lot of time considering the ethics of my kinks; my partners’ enthusiastic consent is a major priority."
Jay Wiseman, author of the famous S&M primer $101, talks about his own early fears towards the beginning of that book. He writes about how he began having sadistic fantasies, and went to the public library to research them. All he could find was portraits of serial killers, which scared the hell out of him. He writes:
I decided to keep myself under surveillance. I made up my mind that I was not going to hurt anybody. If I thought I was turning into someone that would harm somebody else,
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