Submission You Choose Is Power. Everything Else Is Just Control.
Submission You Choose Is Power. Everything Else Is Just Control.
I went to a calligraphy workshop with my friend Theresa. She is Taiwanese, and even though Taiwanese isn't Chinese, the calligraphy is basically the same language. I had this idea that I wanted to write the title of my book, Why Submissive Women Are Happier, in calligraphy. And Theresa looked at me and said, no.
Not because she didn't like the book. Because the word submissive alone is three big chunks. Three symbols. Like a big trunk for just that one word.
"Just the word submission or submissive is like three calligraphy. So three. It's like a big trunk." — Marian
So why submissive women are happier was way too much. She suggested we do the happy symbol instead, since the end goal is happiness anyway. That sounded simple. It wasn't. There were two eights, a box in the middle, a little antenna like the Reddit guy, and a T at the bottom with two little lines. But I learned something at that table that has nothing to do with my wrist technique.
The thing that made me think about China
Calligraphy is a thing you do to relax. Master was the videographer the first time I did it with Theresa, three years ago, for Piper Blush. It is not about learning Chinese. It is about breathing, using your wrists, going home and feeling great about drinking tea.
But sitting there with a Taiwanese friend, I couldn't stop thinking about what's happening across the strait. Taiwan, and China being so calm about it, like, we'll conquer them later, we're just taking our time. And from there my mind went straight to AI and surveillance, and the kind of submission that's happening over there.
Because there are different kinds. And not all of them are the kind I write about.
"You Taiwanese people, you submit to the China government, or you try not to submit, but still it's kind of like oppression. So submission can mean many things." — Marian
In China they have social credit. They have video surveillance everywhere. They know who you are, your credit score, your social credit score. They can track all of you. And here is the part that changed with technology: those things were already there, the cameras, the facial recognition. But before AI, even if they listened to you, they had to put a team on it and decide if what you said was worth anything. You had all this information but you still had to go through it.
"Now with AI and even just some really big data refinement, you can actually spy on people a lot better." — Marian
Master works in data refinement, like in Severance. You refine the data. And suddenly all of that listening becomes usable. So now everything you do, everything you are, is tracked and you are scored on it.
That is not submission. That is something else wearing its clothes.
Why it is not the same as what I do
When you are born in China, you didn't choose it. That's your passport, that's where you're at, and it's very hard to get out. There was a man, Chinese, who died kayaking here in Canada, in Vancouver. At first it looked like an accident. Then people realized it wasn't. He had been speaking against the party. There is only one party, after all.
You don't choose to be born into that. You're just there, and then you suffer from this forced submission where everything you do is tracked and quoted back at you.
"You're not choosing to be born there. You're there. And then you're suffering from this kind of forced submission. And it feels pretty awful." — Marian
That is the opposite of my life. When I choose to submit to Master, I chose that, and I still choose it every single day. It is a conscious choice. I have freedom, so I can choose. And that is the entire difference.
"If you don't have freedom, then there are no choices, and then submission is forced upon you. It's more like slavery and not submission." — Marian
What real submission actually requires
Here is the part people miss when they hear the word and flinch. Submission, the real kind, the kind that makes you happier, isn't about being controlled. It's about consciously handing something over to someone who has earned it.
"Submission is about submitting to someone who has authority, who has knowledge, who has wealth, or who can offer you something in that way." — Marian
A government can offer you things too. But in the case of China, there's no other option. You can't say no. And submission without the ability to say no isn't submission at all. It's just control with better branding.
Master made the point cold, the way he does, and it stuck with me. When we were talking about all of this, he asked me a question I didn't have a good answer to.
"Do you know what's the waiting time for an organ transplant if you have money in China?" — Master
That is what a system looks like when people have no agency. When bodies are just data and scores and resources to be moved around. And it is exactly why I keep saying my kind of submission is not that. It can't be. The whole thing that makes it powerful is that I could walk away, and I don't.
So when someone hears submissive and pictures something oppressive, something that crushes you down, I understand why. There is a version of submission in the world that does exactly that. But that version is missing the one ingredient that matters.
Choice.
Submission that you choose, with your eyes open, for your own growth, to someone who can actually offer you something, is one of the most powerful decisions a woman can make. Everything else is just control wearing a different mask. I wrote a whole book about the difference, and I think about it every time I pick up a calligraphy brush and decide, on purpose, what I want to write.
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