Loving Submission
By Shayne Cage
Psychologist William M. Marston, creator of the popular comic book heroine Wonder Woman in 1941, is often mistakenly thought to have been a feminist. However, Marston didn’t actually believe in equality between the sexes. Marston believed women were superior.
From that belief, and in the pulpy pages of his comic book ‘Wonder Woman’, sprang his philosophical concept of "loving submission". It's the idea that true happiness comes from freely giving trust and obeying someone who loves you. He believed women were uniquely qualified to hold positions of power because they were already accustomed to being placed in positions of submission. In his view, this familiarity with submission meant women were better prepared to assume dominant roles, while men still needed to learn how to surrender control. Knowing this, it’s likely Marston (who passed away in 1947) would have loved the current rise of popularity of chastity play among men.
Called the kink of 2025 by Cosmopolitan Magazine, it’s estimated that over 2% of Americans now own a chastity cage. The most popular being made by American cage manufacturer KINK3D. Since their arrival on the scene in 2019, their original 3D-printed products have dominated the market, turning the idea of extended periods of chastity into a new reality.
Chastity play is a form of consensual kink where a person voluntarily gives another person control over their genitalia, usually with the aid of a lockable cage to restrict access. It’s often mistakenly believed to date back to the Middle Ages but as an actual practice is much more likely to be about 150 years old. (Fascinatingly, chastity belts were a tool originally conceived of by men to subjugate women but were later adopted by men to freely subjugate themselves.
Themes of physical and mental submission appear again and again throughout Marston's now classic Wonder Woman comics. Heroes and villains alike find themselves tied up and gagged. Chained or handcuffed. Many find themselves enveloped by Wonder Woman’s unbreakable golden perfect. A yellow rope that can stretch to any length and force those confined within it to tell the absolute truth. Yet somehow the villains always find escape before their inevitable recapture. A cyclical drama that has kept its readers returning to its pages across generations for over 84 years.
A chastity cage can sometimes feel like getting captured. Like struggling against bounds. A frustrating entrapment to overcome rather than concede too. A never ending battle for freedom that continuously alternates between restriction and release. Yet, therein lies the enjoyment. It’s a battle between two dynametrically opposed forces that can never find equilibrium. Good and evil will always be locked in combat.
Growing up reading comic books, I sometimes wonder if my penchant for submission took unconscious inspiration from the pages of Wonder Woman. Indeed Marston freely admitted his fiction writing itself constituted ‘psychological propaganda’. Regardless of the source however, I have long thought of Marston's concept of loving submission as the path forward for men and chastity as its ultimate tool. If there’s anything both have taught me, it’s that there is great release in surrender to the feminine.
Shayne Cage (he/him) is the organizer of Canada’s first recurring chastity social event L.O.C.K. (Lovers Of Chastity & Kink) in Toronto. You can hear him speak at CLIMAX Conference on October 25, 2026 on the ‘Kink for Newbs’ panel at 3:30pm on the CLIMAX Stage. He has two Wonder Woman tattoos.
