The Secret Brotherhood, Part 2

“There is a brotherhood of man…

Keep a-giving each brother all you can.

Oh aren’t you proud to be / In that fraternity…”

—Frank Loesser, “Brotherhood of Man,”

from How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying

In this Internet Age, submissive men, like birds of every other feather, are able to flock together at virtual gathering spots. Online “Cheers!” bars, I called them in an earlier posting (“Boys Night Out, Part 2”), where the regulars always know your cybername.

Here, to quote myself on an earlier posting, submissives gather to get their daily dose of “reinforcement, reassurance, feed-back, occasional cautionary words-to-the-wise and a wealth of been-there-tried-that ideas for taking the lifestyle up a notch.”

All extremely therapeutic and needful, according to female supremacist psychologist Paige Harrison: “I encourage all sub males to begin to make efforts to contact one another and begin to bond together just as Women do to discuss their mutual interests and concerns. Submissive males should become known to each other and share their feelings and experiences.”

What exactly do we “share” in these ad hoc support groups? Some guys tend to exhaustive self-analysis, dredging into why they are the way they are. I prefer the pragmatic and inspirational, trading tips on ways to be even more devoted and useful to my wife—to be, in other words, even more the way I am. Luckily for me, there are plenty of husbands and boyfriends similarly disposed, like this guy, from Lady Misato’s original Wife Worship Forum, greeting a newbie:

“Welcome! Get a cup of coffee, sit back and read all the posts to this forum from the beginning. You’ll soon see you’re not alone! Keep serving your wife, putting her first. Listen intently when she speaks and do everything she says.”

Another charter member, Au876, put it this way: “I too very much enjoy all the postings and knowing other husbands find joy in serving their wives. I am glad to be here and am thankful for our Founder [Lady Misato] having the grace to set up a site where men on the cutting edge can discuss, ex-change and even daydream. It is great to have a place where I, and we, can get it off our chest and know we are understood by those that read our post.”

With the female-led movement gathering momentum, you will find more and more submissive guys moving from guilt to pride in regard to their lifestyle. Calmly they are asserting that serving one’s wife, worshipping her, following her lead, all are “natural.” You will find articulate examples of this in the opening comments to the previous post on this topic.

Here are a couple more: “Far from being ashamed of all the things I do for her around the house, and in the bedroom and boudoir, my greatest joy and fulfillment is to serve her with all the adoration and respect that she deserves.”

“I want people to notice. I used to be ashamed of it or would hide it. If I was ironing, I would act like it wasn't me ironing. The same with laundry or cleaning. I've since grown up and said, ‘You know what, I should be proud of helping out’ and I've since stopped worrying about what others think. I beam with pride when someone makes a comment about how great my wife is treated.”

A few more for good measure:

“Hopefully, we can reach a point where a submissive man who is pledged to a woman is viewed as someone special. This will come, of course, if and when women continue their ascent in the world of politics, business, the academy, etc.”

“If my wife wants to leaves clues of the nature of our relationship for our friends to see, I think she must feel empowered by it. And that makes me feel wonderful. It also makes me think that she must not feel any shame about having a submissive husband. That makes me happy.”

“I feel best about myself when submitting to my wife, and when I am allowed to exhibit this deference to her when around others I am not embarrassed. Often, others may see me serving coffee and dessert and then returning to clean up the dinner dishes while she enjoys their company, be they women, couples or men friends.”

These prideful voices are not just from the male chorus. Wives and other female authority figures are even more forceful:

“As women get more power, they may head their families; there is no shame in admitting who the head of the house is. I do not beat or whip my husband. He freely chose his role; his submission to me is an honor he feels I deserve.”

Kathy, of the estimable femdom101 blog, has often stated that a man should be proud to follow his wife’s lead:

“There are a lot of men in the world who need the guidance of a strong, smart woman. Society has taught men that this is something to be ashamed up. In my view the world will be a better place when men will be able to speak freely and openly about their submissive needs.”

“Society has programmed men with idea that they should be head of the house and leaders in society. The more modern, mature man will be more willing to admit to the world that his wife is head of his house, and he is proud to be her helpmate.”

“[A man] should be able to tell his family that his wife will be the head of house and the boss in their relationship. He should be willing to take routine instructions from his wife regardless of who is present. “

Ms. Barbara, who operates her own tease-and-deny female-led Yahoo! Group, puts it this way:

“There is nothing wrong with being a submissive male.... just be proud of it guys and we will like it! Pride and submissiveness are no contradiction. [My husband] manages to make me happy and I think that he's got a right to be proud of that. That is the kind of pride every man should strive for, i.e. making a woman happy...first and foremost.”

She’s so effervescent I can’t resist a refill: “My hubby wears the badge of being pussy-whipped quite proudly. I think that maybe, just perhaps, submission to a woman starts much earlier than the courting ages, yes? How about a small boy's love for his mom? I would think a mother's impression upon her son would be quite strong and his desire to please her is natural and uninhibited.”

I will close with what I regard as the clearest, most eloquent and certainly the most concise rationale of male submission in regard to the opposite sex. Its author, a frequent contributor to FLR boards and occasionally to this blog, signs himself “Ken Brix”:

“Indeed, one should never feel ashamed of one's submissive feelings to a woman. Love, in other words, is submissive.”

The Secret Brotherhood, Part 1

"Oh aren't you proud to be
In that fraternity,
The great big Brotherhood of Man?"

—Frank Loesser, “Brotherhood of Man,”
from How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying

Do secret societies exist outside the fanciful plots of Dan Brown? Well, I know of at least one, because I belong to it. It’s pretty secret. Unlike the Illuminati or the ancient Freemasons, Hollywood hasn’t made a movie about us. Maybe because the members of this super-esoteric brotherhood don’t plot the overthrow of anything, don’t dress up in silly costumes, don’t have secret recognition signals (or, if they do, I missed the memo); they don’t hold conventions, conclaves or covens. They don’t seem to meet at all, except in cyberspace.


I’m talking about the secret fraternity of submissive males—in particular the sub-husband chapter thereof.

It’s a huge cohort, I’m convinced. Maybe, all these years post-Gay Liberation, we’re the largest collection of guys still closeted and fearful of being outed.


Before the miraculous advent of the World Wide Web, who could have guessed at our number? Each potential member must have assumed he was uniquely deviant in his submissive-to-the-opposite-sex yearnings. Now we are discovering that we are part of a great submissive beta-male tribe, at least a statistical subset of normalcy.

Is it safe to come out of the closet? Hardly. Even those of us who blog about our desire to be female-led usually hide behind cyber-monikers. Like “Mark Remond,” or “John,” the admirable fellow who subtitles his blog, “I’m SubmissiveProud."

I doubt we could muster many foot soldiers of our hidden army to march down Fifth Avenue, say, under a banner proclaiming “Submale Pride” or “Henpecked, Pusywhipped & Proud of It!”

Yet, like gayfolk or other sub-rosa groups, we submissive guys yearn to be socially accepted. By our wives, first and foremost, of course, but also by society. We’re not militant about it—not docile us!—but wouldn’t it be awfully nice to stop hiding who we really are from everyone, including, often, ourselves?

As one submissive husband put it eloquently: “Closets are for clothes, not relationships.”

And another: “To have this special relationship that I have with my wife gives me a sense of pride. It's like our own little secret. But even though most people would consider this lifestyle to be deviant and twisted, I see it as a beautiful, totally normal thing, and therefore I don't have to be ashamed of it at all.”

So we even hide our pride, and shame prevails. We know too well the buckets of contempt waiting to be dumped on us, not only by other guys (many of them perhaps “latent” or “repressed” submissives themselves), but by too many women. We dare not reveal what we do, or dream of doing, behind closed doors. Yes, behind the bedroom door, but also in the kitchen, bathroom, and laundry room.

Sure, it’s acceptable for a guy to moon over a girl he’s courting, or make a romantic fool of himself as honeymooner or newlywed. But what about some long-married guy who fold his wife’s nightgown, warms her bath towels, paints her toenails?

We of the Secret Brotherhood may not practice the only love that dare not speak its name, but we’re definitely in the non-conversation. In fact, our married members often agonize for years before revealing our submissive side to our own wives. How or when or if to do so remains a perennial topic on our clandestine message boards, which serve as a virtual support group of wife-led husbands alongside those who wannabe.

I don’t mean this to sound tongue-in-cheek. Without the friendship and encouragement of my secret submissive brothers, via Internet groups or message boards and emails, I would not have been able to persevere and eventually succeed in my second courtship of my wife and win her heart anew.

In a follow-on post, I'd like to share a few testimonials from other husbands who have been helped by their secret brothers.

As one of my pseudonymous mentors, “fdhousehusband,” put it: “We are all in this together.”