Do You Want a Submissive Woman, or Just a Woman Who Likes You?

Either way, you'll have to put in some work.

You don’t have to watch Secretary to read this article- but it’s a decent movie.

It’s not uncommon to hear a man (especially an online man) say that he wants a “submissive” woman. This is usually said against the backdrop of what they believe to be a population of hostile, masculinized, gruff and overly-dominant girlbosses who are failing to manifest any male attention because they’ve abandoned their softer, sweeter side for the fake glory of Excel spreadsheets.

As I’ve mentioned before, today’s egregiously “modern” woman is not starved for male attention, and certainly not because she has a good job. But the fact remains that many men (even if not the majority) say they want a “submissive” female partner. In my recent survey, 31% of heterosexual men reported wanting a submissive female partner, and only 15% preferred a dominant female partner. (Overall, 56% of straight women identified as submissive, and 46% of straight men identified as dominant, so that matched up somewhat well. Dominant women and submissive women were both under 10% in prevalence, with “a mix or neither” taking up the rest.)

For a while now, my theory has been that a great proportion of men who extoll the virtues of submissive women don’t actually want a woman who is submissive in a way that requires them to show dominance or leadership, but rather a woman who submits to the idea of having sex with them, aka a “woman who likes them.” Better yet if she makes this as easy as possible, with zero concern about rejection or looking stupid. TLDR: men want hot women to willingly sleep with them and dispel any fears of being rejected or accused of sex-pestistry. What else is new?

But among the thousands of people who filled out my survey, I uncovered one thing I didn’t expect: the more common expectation isn’t for women to be submissive, it’s for men to be dominant. And the biggest mismatch when it comes to straight men and women is the idea of pursuit and initiation. Nobody loves making the first move, but straight women hate it more than anyone.