Women, Men and Power: what attention has to do with dominance and submission
Women, Men and Power: what attention has to do with dominance and submission
At The Academy, we believe in a beautiful ideal that all human beings are created equal. But in a given context, people play roles relative to each other. And the many different roles possible in the human experience can fundamentally be broken into Dominant and Submissive.
The different socialization of boys and girls begins gendered power dynamics from an early age.
All human beings have a primal need to belong, but it’s particularly pronounced amongst children, whose survival depends upon belonging and receiving attention. But do we pay attention to boys in the same way we pay attention to girls? Of course not!
Let’s imagine there are two children, Billy and Mary. How does each child get conditioned to receive that primal hit of belonging?
The overarching tendency is that Billy gets rewarded like this:
“Look what Billy did. Billy scored a goal! Listen to what Billy said. Look what a mess he made.” Billy gets rewarded with attention when his own attention is out on something, doing something.
Now let’s look at Mary. How does she get rewarded?
“Look at how lovely Mary is. Look at the lovely dress she's wearing. Look at how lovely her demeanor is. Isn’t she getting chubby?”
The attention is placed on her being not her doing. Which means that she gets that hit of belonging – whether it's positive or negative – when she is being seen when her attention is turned inwards on herself.
Billy is rewarded when his attention is out.
Mary is rewarded when her attention is in.
In this paradigm, boys are verbs; girls are nouns.
As Billy and Mary grow up, her default state is likely for her attention to be inward, and his default is for his attention to go outward. But if Billy and Mary are rewarded for having their states of attention in exactly the opposite places, what happens in a power dynamic that’s supposed to be fluid and switching?
Often, when women and men come into conflict with each other, the tendency is that the woman’s attention will go inward, the man’s attention will go outward.
He will talk at her or about her, and she will talk about herself – and if she starts to feel uncomfortable or attacked, she'll freeze and shut down. Which is how we arrive at the Freeze – a neuro-muscular state that renders women temporarily speechless when they’re put on the spot (learn tools to combat it here).
This is why understanding how power dynamics work is so vital: so women (and men too) can break their Freeze, switch the power dynamic, get into the dominant state and be able to lead the conversation towards their own desired outcome. It can be life-saving.
Often, when women and men come into conflict with each other, the tendency is that the woman’s attention will go inward, the man’s attention will go outward.
Everyone has a dominant and a submissive side.
Millennia of cultural conditioning has created a gendering of the two states of attention that are simply not true.
As such, in the world we live in today, the dominant state of putting your attention out and instructing people what to do, tends to be seen as “masculine”. And the submissive state of going to feel, register and receive, tends to be seen as “feminine” (for more on this, read about the ‘Good Girl’ phenomenon here).
But this is false. Power has no gender.
Both women and men can and must access both states of attention in order to live and express themselves fully.
Consider these predetermined power states:
A good teacher is dominant relative to their students.
Students are submissive relative to their teacher.
A good leader is dominant relative to her followers.
Followers are submissive relative to the leader.
Dominant and submissive roles exist in every single interaction with another human being. They are happening in every conversation: one person speaks, the other person listens, and then there is a switch.
That switch marks the fluid alteration of a power dynamic. The fundamental unit of measurement?
Attention.
Yet under duress, men are most likely to get stuck in the outward dominant state. And under pressure, women are more likely to get stuck in the inward submissive state. Why? Because of how we were raised differently.
This old conditioning very much impacts communication, because your ability to successfully influence by asking someone for something will require you to keep your attention out.
Men have this advantage, because they've been training for it their whole lives. Women can and do learn it, but we’re bringing centuries of ‘Mary’ conditioning to the project.
If women are to not just have power, but wield and speak power, we must first make visible the invisible power dynamics, and then learn to fluidly switch where the attention is going.
If women are to not just have power, but wield and speak power, we must first make visible the invisible power dynamics, and then learn to fluidly switch where the attention is going.
Mastering the switch between dominance and submission
When someone is speaking to you, they are putting their attention on you to see how their words are affecting you. Are you here? Is it moving you? Is it making you feel something? They’re watching to see how their words land in your body, and how you are paying attention – they are in the dominant position.
You as the listener are receiving the information. And as you're receiving the information, your attention is inward and on yourself: What do I think about this? Is what she's saying matching my experience? How does that feel? Do I agree or disagree? You’re in the submissive position.
The Dom gives attention and instruction.
The Sub receives attention and instruction.
In a phenomenal conversation – one of those that you could stay up until dawn having – what’s making it phenomenal is the beauty of two people switching fluidly, equally, between dominant and submissive states.
When the dynamics are able to effortlessly switch, these conversations and relationships have the richest, most intimate, most creative outcomes – like taking turns to lead in a dance.
So how do we have more of those? We need to recognise that one state is not better than the other.
Attention is neutral. Power is neutral.
It's not more powerful to be in the dominant state of attention, nor better, nor worse.
It's not more powerful to be in the submissive state of attention, nor better, nor worse.
At The Academy, we teach the martial art of attention. The dominant state of attention and submissive state of attention are like your right hands and your left hands; in learning to use one, you need to know what the other is for.
The submissive state of attention is necessary for true connection to occur
When you’re fully inhabiting the submissive state, you’re open to others. It's not a place of weakness, it’s a place of beauty in the right context. To be telling your story or speaking your truth from a surrendered and submissive place; where you can be transparent and vulnerable – that’s where true connection can occur.
Standing proudly in front of a crowd and saying, “I have a vision!” Submissive state of attention.
Julia Roberts in Notting Hill: “I’m just a girl, standing in front of a boy, asking him to love her.”? Submissive state of attention.
Unforgettable, moving moments of connection that transport the listener? Submissive state of attention.
In the submissive state, your attention is directed on yourself, and you’re inviting others into your experience or story. You’re inviting the energy in.
The dominant state of attention is a state of action. The energy is out. Commanding, instructing, directing and delegating all come from a dominant state of attention.
Domination lessons from the dungeon
Neither the Dominant nor the Submissive states are better, worse or more powerful. But they can be done messily.
Being in the dominant state isn’t just about barking orders. It’s about paying close attention to how those orders are landing on the people you’re instructing, watching their faces, looking to see if they understand, and calibrating accordingly.
Part of my studies into the world of gender and power included working as a professional Dominatrix for a time.
The dungeon is an interesting space to observe this: a microcosm of the interplay between Dom and Sub states at work. Everything from the outside world is stripped – identity, status, context. It’s a blank slate. It’s down to the Dom to see the person, to see where they’re at, where their shame is, where their desire is and where the boundaries are in order to liberate something.
Unfortunately, that's what so many people miss. They try to be dominant agents of change in others, yet stay in a somewhat submissive role – half in, half out. Their attention isn’t out, it’s on themselves: How do I sound? How do I look? They miss entirely whether what they're delivering is actually landing and creating the desired effect.
When a dom stops paying attention to their sub, they lose the truth of their power. The connection is lost.
Our world is full of bad doms.
And likewise, a healthy submissive state isn’t just about going inward. It’s being able to voice feelings with agency, rather than shutting down or acquiseing. If you don't like where the exchange is headed, but you're not able to respond and influence, that’s not submission, but powerlessness. Two very different things.
The submissive state reveals the inner world and experience. It’s based on “being”, not “doing.” It is where we connect with our desires and unmoveable legitimacy in an exchange of power in order to realise those desires.
Collapsed power dynamics
When there’s a dynamic that’s stuck, or two people aren’t meeting each other, what’s happening is the switching is no longer fluid, or somebody is not fully inhabiting their dominant or submissive role. This crunchy, tense state is a collapsed power dynamic.
If someone in a hierarchically dominant position is doing nothing more than giving orders, then there is nothing that the other person, the submissive, gets to contribute other than their very basic execution of the requests. There may be action, but there is no connection. No creativity, no energy, nothing generative. Nothing.
Consider this in the context of a business. An employee does what he’s asked, but nothing more: his engagement plummets. He’s just going through the motions and his individual contribution to the dynamic is nowhere to be seen.
This is the model of control and coercion that we have in the world today and it is responsible for so much of what’s wrong in our world, between men and women, and between different social groups.
Why you need to master and play with both states
You can never truly dominate without knowing first how to surrender, and vice versa.
If you can play both powerfully, switching power dynamics with ease, then you can travel further and further in both directions. You can allow yourself to surrender, but flick the switch and reclaim your agency when you need to.
You can wield power, but know how to use it with care and compassion.
If you can play both powerfully, switching power dynamics with ease, then you can travel further and further in both directions. You can allow yourself to surrender, but flick the switch and reclaim your agency when you need to. You can wield power, but know how to use it with care and compassion.
When you can embody these two states and practice them cleanly, you can start building incredible things: incredible relationships, incredible businesses, incredible ways of being in the world.
As Women of The Pivot, we really are the first ones to redefine what it means to be a woman, what it means to be a man, and to redefine gender in the context of power dynamics. Let’s move beyond the conditioning of Billy and Mary and create the most generative, powerful, enlightening, life-force-filled exchanges possible.
Throughout centuries, women have been trained to give away their power.
The Academy teaches women to take their power back.