This site sheds some light on different personality types.

According to the test results (very comprehensive), I'm just your average non-dominant narcissistic perfectionist.

You are right Kodie :) I think the same about social roles and their possible free will. But at the same time, there is almost a remote connection between instinctive and social structures. Relative to the same connections existing between the paleo-mammal brain and the neocortex. Is at last one single brain in layers.

Well, regard to the submissive way and the will to help people, it could be a possible connection, because submission means ultra-receptivity and that receptivity is sensitivity for needs from other people.
It could be at least a remote connection there.

Of course both things are not synonyms, but may be a certain connection.

I don't dispute submission or dominance can be a natural trait, but this thread seems to ignore socialization in which one learns these roles. As a personality generalization, submission relates more to femininity as a learned role as dominance is assumed by males by similar socialization. Of course, the roles can be reversed or more even, it's not 100%. I don't think submission and generosity are the same thing. If a person values themselves on how they think others perceive them by what they can give them, if not being a person in their own right is enough, that is not a good thing. There can be people who give more than others, but it's not to say they don't enjoy it. It's different when a person feels their value to others matters more than their value to themselves.

I have this issue I've discussed with my therapist - just an example, I get resentful when I feel I'm being manipulated to behavior, which is different than feeling responsible when I do the same behavior. A past boyfriend tried to belittle little things about my housekeeping and I resented simple things like doing the dishes just to avoid him making a negative comment about having dishes in my sink, as his expectations that they should be done. He didn't live with me, so we weren't "sharing" household duties, but he did act a lot like he lived there, and I wasn't measuring up. I feel bad when I'm submissive, and don't feel like I've accomplished my own goals when I do the dishes, or that's how he dominated me into feeling like it's something I should do, not for myself, but so he would like me. On the other hand, it's responsible to keep a tidy home, something one should want to do for themselves. I have a dominant mother, it's easy to see she is weak underneath, I feel like that model warped me into not knowing how to be responsible and only to be motivated by external reward and measure myself on whether I please someone else. To that end, I spite myself constantly just to keep from submitting because it feels different than being responsible, something I need to practice and feel how it rewards me for being me.

So, if a person gives you money because they see you need it and want you to have it, is not submissive, it's genuine (generosity rather than responsibility). If a person gives you money because they feel guilty and worthless if they don't, that's submissive. It's the same person and the same money.

It can be a good and a bad thing. My sister is always very willing to help people and I appreciate her for that.
Having a submissive personality isn't automatically a bad thing, as long as you pay attention to the people you're with and make sure none of them are taking advantage of you.

@Julie42

I really and deeply understand you, believe me!! I wished to be like you are...
Thing is that I´m much like your sister, and I really don´t feel that´s an advantage.
Moreover I´m just like oriental women (chinese-japanese) I enjoy being submissive (specially against men will) and that´s quite dangerous, because with that attitude I tend to look very attractive sometimes to violent men.
Your post has been enough intense to perceive your feelings, and I have to tell you that I really admire you for leaving the stereotypes behind and succeed as a new being, different from what your parents were.
That´s good! :)

I hope you keep evolving!!

I think we tend to separate different aspects of a person more than you do because a lot of us have been fed up with the idea that our personalities are completely bound to our genders. It's not as bad today as it used to be, but people used to believe that women shouldn't even read or have an education because our minds are too weak. Things are getting better, but it just gets frustrating to have people say that having a penis or vagina completely determines how someone acts.

I get what you mean. I definitely think that every aspect of a person is related in some way, but I don't think that necessarily means that gender determines personality. The relation could be as simple as how someone feels about their gender and their body or how someone relates to people of the same gender or opposite gender. That is still a part of our personality, but not as huge as saying that having a penis makes you aggressive and want to hit things or having a vagina makes you submissive and want a baby. Does that make sense?

As far as submission goes, I agree with ydgmdlu; that testosterone tends to make men more aggressive, so women seem submissive in comparison. I don't think there is anything about being a woman that automatically makes you want to let someone else have the final decision, unless she's been completely socialized that way or that's her own personality.
My sister is a very submissive person. I wish she wasn't because she really is a doormat. I'll borrow money from her and then joke about not giving it back and then she'll get this guilty tone of voice, like she should give me the money because it would be nice, and says that I don't have to pay her back. I do, of course, because I don't want to walk all over her even if she'll let me. I just worry because she is a very trusting person and gets herself into bad relationships and friendships. I would not say this is a good quality for women to have.

As for relationships, I think you tend to see most of either dominant-submissive relationships or equal relationships because two dominant people or two submissive people could be really bad. You'd either have two people who always need to get their way or two people who can never decide what the best decision should be. My dad was very dominant and my mom was very submissive. I'm not a big fan of either of them or the way their relationship worked out, but I know my dad was someone who liked to get his way and my mom has no decision-making skills. It worked, but then again, it would have been good for my dad to learn to listen to someone else or for my mom to learn to take charge every now and then. dominant-submissive relationships are for people who want to hold on to their pattern of behavior and not be forced to change for anyone.

I'd say me and my boyfriend pretty equal. We talk things through and we're both willing to stand up to each other if we need to.

@Ty

Thanks Ty, Nice words :)
I really feel the same. all those thoughts were mere theoretical speculations from my part.
May be at some point I did believe a bit in that, but the fact is that I really wanted to get rid of that, and hear your words has been important.

I'm with SWMR. I don't see any value in enforcing dominance/submission roles on a relationship, and especially for something as silly as the differing shapes of their genitals.

My wife and I are partners. There's no boss.

@Yoav

Thanks for the post :) I´ll follow the link.

Cure by placebo is far from being a proven fact, many of the studies that found positive effect were poorly designed and in other while people on the placebo reported feeling better there was no improvement in the physical condition. Here's an article discussing some of these issues.

But in a being as a whole, there are not mere similarities, but a whole design (by nature or no matter the designer)
It is obvious that all "parts" (aspects) are perfectly designed in a whole.

Is well known that somatization and cure by placebo are proved facts. That means there is a quite close interrelation among physic and psyche.

For me, (I said for me) there is always a connection.

For human minds it is very natural to categorize things and to note similarities which result in effects like pareidolia. (seeing faces in things) This is awesome in that it allows us to make connections between things which can give us insights but we also have to take care that we don't end up drawing connections that don't actually exist. Just because we can come up with some similarities between things doesn't mean that there actually is any connection between them.

It is kind of like the phenomenon of horoscopes in that you can give the same one to 20 different people and they all see themselves in the description. We can always find similarities if we look hard enough but that doesn't really mean anything in itself.

Yes of course, you can perfectly compare to a non regular polyherdon.
The main idea is the undetachable property of the aspect, and its apparent "self-subsistent" reality.

Perhaps. If you are making the comparison to a polyhedron, I would argue that all the faces must be there, but the polyhedron need not be a regular one. Some faces (aspects) may be larger or smaller than others. If this were not so, we would all be perfectly alike.

For me all those factors you have mentioned are more than interrelated parts, are just aspects of the same individual. Such as those aspects were faces in a polyhedron, you cannot detach a particular face.
Aspects as psyche, physic, and other aspects are not auto-substantial elements (the same as the polyhedron faces) but a aprticular perception of the human being.
that´s my phylosophy of life.

Did I express correctly?

I think most of us are assuming a less intimate linkage between the physical and the psychological than you are, and that social factors play a large role in how people think and behave. Biology may incline, but it does not compel. Multiple influences are at work, in a complex way.

It´s incredible how flat, simplistic and ingenuous you consider me!!! WOW!!! I´m amazed!!

What I see is something different. I see you tend to simplify the things by assuming that the body proportions and genitalia design has nothing to do with the psychic dynamics.

Why that impassable line that divides the physic and the psyche? The human being is a whole and there aren´t unrelated or incoherent aspects.

May be is the materialistic effect of this site "Unreasonable faith"

And what about if a woman is naturally submissive? Do you think she´s wrong or mentally ill? Or she may has a weakness?

Animic: Related to the anima. The mood. The "soul" quality (not in a supernatural way). Psychological. Inner.

Motility: Inner motion (for psyvhological uses, and also for internal organ dynamics)

Those words actuslly exist :)
Thanks for asking, pre-dialogue is quite important for a right understanding.

And, yes, my english is poor, I´m a spanish speaker. So I´m doing my best with these difficult topics.

Thank you very much for your will of understanding :)

With regards to a marriage or relationship, no partner should be submissive or dominant.

Not every relationship must have equal partners. "Dominant" and "submissive" attitudes may just be hard-wired as part of someone's personality or disposition, regardless of gender. In any case whether partners are dominant or submissive or neither, the most important aspect of a relationship is mutual consent. No one should be pressured or forced into a dominant or submissive role, and neither should anyone be presssured/forced into an equal role.

crileside:

To address your key point, I do agree that gender archetypes/roles/stereotypes are strongly based on biology. But I don't agree that women have ever instinctually been "submissive." Rather, the truth is actually that males tend to be more aggressive and thus domineering, making females SEEM submissive and "weak" and "frail" by comparison.

What makes all the difference is testosterone. The higher the testosterone level in a human body, the more aggressive the person tends to be and the more easily muscle mass can build. (In fact, not only does that make healthy women slimmer than healthy men on average, but it also results in women having roughly double the percentage of body fat compared to men on average.) In the early hunter-gatherer societies, these basic physical differences naturally translated to the hunter roles for men and gatherer roles for women. These gender roles permutated through the ages until they became more like the modern sterotypes.

As societies and human thinking grew ever more sophisticated, gender roles were abstracted to where the biological differences in aggressiveness and physical strength turned into the notions that males have greater intellectual, emotional, occupational, and social strength and power than women. And thus, by assuming the dominant position, men invented the idea women were "submissive" and persuaded women to accept it. Even women's greater emotionality (largely due to estrogen, which intensifies emotions) was spun into a weakness, because it allegedly meant that women had less mental focus and self-control and would prefer to feel rather than think.

I'll bet that the main reason why men were able to do this, and women let it happen, was the roughly equal numbers of males and females in most societies. Men didn't feel outnumbered and so felt like not much was in their way to take control. In a society where the female population was significantly greater than the male population, women would probably have had the dominant roles, no matter what tendencies were given to men by biology.

Whether or not gender roles are Jungian archetypes, because of biology, is something that we may never know.

Huh. I don't think either character in a relationship has to be "submissive" necessarily. I think good communication is key for that, not personality exactly.

My gf and I don't really have roles like that at all, but I've come to recognize when she does prefer for me to make decisions and take the lead on something. She's very, very independent in some ways, however, so we both talk through things enough that we can understand what each other needs.

Poor baby has had a horrible week. I gave up getting much sleep last night so I could go get her and hold her for a while. She didn't ask me to but she needed it.

@crileside—
You actually remind me a LOT of my gf's older sister. You really love making sense out of people, reality, all of that, and you love simple conceptual structures or categories to do it with. Such as:

I think the conformation of the sexual organs, and the animic motility are a whole interrelated.
The expulsion of men has to do with the drawing of the external reality, and the absorption of women has to do with the receptive attitude and the progestational dynamic.

I think that the human physical design (inherited from the animal and later socialized as culture) has a lot to do with the gender´s behaviors and roles.

Some of this is entirely confusing to me...but maybe your English speaking skills just aren't quite up to expressing your thoughts fully? You seem to have quite a vocabulary ("progestational," "motility") but I'm not sure your sentences make a whole lot of sense. I couldn't find anything for "animic," except misspellings for "anemic." I honestly would suggest proof-reading your comments since you have a lot of misspellings in general and it would help us to understand you better if you double check on things.

Um, anyway, you seem to like breaking things down into simple categories and drawing connections between physical and conceptual structures (metaphors and such, I guess).

For instance:

What about the submissive attitude in a woman?
Does it mean that she has no strength?
or it means she has an inner strength related to her "concave" and invaginated sexual organ? [...] Does the evolution of our society make the women to progressively lose their femininity and to gain a masculine attitude and external strength?

I'm observing a few different categories you are employing: Submissive-Dominant, Feminine-Masculine, Weakness/Strength, etc.
I would encourage you to possibly think about the similarities/parallels instead of differences with whatever topic you are considering. The differences in male-female psychology are very slight compared to the similarities.

We experience them as vast differences simply because we are so used to interacting with other human beings, we notice dissimilarities easier than similarities. It's just like this—it is harder for us to differentiate between the faces of an other ethnicity than those of our own because we are so used to seeing the faces of our own ethnicity that we can easily distinguish individuals by their dissimilarities. We can't do that easily with other people groups so they kind of blend together.

Jesus H. Christ, what a wall of text. That's what happens when I get up early to drive my baby back and have an hour and a half of extra time to mess around. While hitting it hard on prescription stimulants. I could keep writing for hours. Got a paper due in a week and a half, why am I not working on that? LOL

I pretty much agree with Nzo, people should assert themselves and let their desires be heard. I think the whole notion of femininity and masculinity is a social construction, which in my opinion is outdated and potentially harmful. Expecting people to conform to a rigid gender role stifles individuality and allows sexist beliefs to foster on either side. For example, notions of a typical 'feminine' woman as being passive and introverted aren't good traits if you want more gender equality in leadership roles and are not conducive for others taking a female leader seriously. Also, expecting men to be tough and promiscuous places an unreasonable expectation on them. In my neighbourhood, a male was less of a man if he wasn't quick to fight and hadn't slept with a lot of women. Being called a 'pussy' for not doing those things can be very emasculating.

So I'm almost always in disagreement with people who lament the lack of femininity/masculinity in contemporary women/men. If men and women are losing those notions, then it means that they are realising that instead of conforming to society's gender expectations, they can seek their own individual subjective happiness. If a guy wants to take meticulous care of his appearance and look after poodles, then let him. If a woman wants to go hiking and kick-box, then let her!

I think being submissive invites others to take advantage of you. I suppose there are times when it makes sense not to assert one's self, but in general I think being submissive isn't a policy that should always be applied.

With regards to a marriage or relationship, no partner should be submissive or dominant. It should be an equal relationship. I've been in a long term relationship for around three years and my girlfriend has tried to adopt a submissive role. She has asked me for permission to do things and it just bugs me. She's a Muslim, so I can kind of understand why she would expect me to be dominant, but I still have to tell her that she doesn't need my permission. I think we've gotten to the point where we are pretty equal now.

There are dominant individuals, submissive individuals, and individuals that don't adhere to one or the other, either by camping at a point somewhere between, or moving about the spectrum as they choose.

Agreed. My relationship with my husband is a partnership - a constant shifting between asserting oneself and acquiescing to another. I think the more liberated women are in a society, the more this is possible.

what do you mean with "I'm afraid you've lost me here"?
Disappointed with the topic? You´re leaving?

No. I meant that I could not discern the overall meaning of your previous post.

The story about your cousin does match the description of castling. It's not really much of a problem here, but I hear that in Japan(I think), men have become so weak of personality that women en masse have complained about it.

I don't really see the relationship as unsightly. There are dominant individuals, submissive individuals, and individuals that don't adhere to one or the other, either by camping at a point somewhere between, or moving about the spectrum as they choose.

I personally would want someone around my level of assertiveness, as I want to switch roles when I feel like doing so.

Honestly, that's pure bullshit.
Those that called 'phallic" a certain behaviour and "uterine" another were men.
Think about all the instances you met of submissive man and dominant woman.
It's called cognitive bias.

It's only insecure men that seek passive women.
Basically those men are complaining about loss of male privilege and control.

Some men are intimidated.
Some women give up to the pressure to conform, they are afraid that otherwise they won't be attractive (and being attractive is all that there is for a woman...)

Personally, I want a woman that can enrich and challenge my life, not a doormat.

"You've lost me there" - It's colloquial English for "I don't understand what you're saying / the point you're trying to illustrate".

what do you mean with "I'm afraid you've lost me here"?
Disappointed with the topic? You´re leaving?

There is a "phallic" behavior and an "Uterine" behavior in humans. Usually those are related to their respective genders. But nowadays women tend to be more phallic and men tend to be maternized.
It´s happening a castling of roles in genders.

My cousin is married, and his wife did always work out of their house. But my cousin always works in the house in music and such. Then when she had a baby, she was extremely unsafe with the idea of looking after the baby. She said "What will I do when the baby cry!!I´ll get mad!!"
But my cousin had a natural "maternal instinct" and he was very comfortable with the baby at home.
She said s lot of times that she found her own life back again, each time she went out for work all the mornings, and hated to come back home, and never felt secure being alone with the baby at home.

Of course she´s a very dominant woman and he´s a very submissive man.

That´s a perfect example of a gender castling.

I find that couple at least unsightly... (not to say things that are more relevant)

I'm afraid you've lost me here.