Noah
Posts: 1660
Joined: 7/5/2005
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quote:
ORIGINAL: DiurnalVampire
If someone wants to deal strictly with the language... they are similiar.
In action and in life, though, there is ahuge different. Dominants can be passive. Submissives can be passive. Vanillas can be passive.
I take your points, DV. Especially the last three sentences.
Even in the conventional uses of the words, though, I think we can see a difference which can be instructive in terms of the original poster's question.
Passivity can be seen as a thing in itself. One can be passive in isolation, so to speak, or passive in the presence in interaction with other people and things.
But for the word submit to mean anything (familiar) there has to be a submitting to. And if there is a submitting to then there must be a person, thing or idea being submitted to.
We all submit to the rule of law, for the most part. At different times we do so by acting (paying taxes) or omitting action (refraining from shoplifting.) My suggestion is that when we refrain from stealing an item we could use we are exercising an active intention to live within the law. To call that passivity seems to smudge away away too much of the meaning to be found in the action.
My personal take on the words, in reference to the behavior of partners in d/s relationships, see the words "passive" and "submissive" as being at odds rather than being synonyms.
To submit to me is an intentional act, an act of the mind first. Often enough it involves physical acts as well, or the refraining from physical acts. If you're sitting on the porch quietly watching the world go by, that might be simple passivity. If you're doing so because Daddy Said So then I would see you as acting on an intention to obey. If you're playing a spirited game of tennis at my behest you are, in my view, submitting to me just as well, and there isn't much passive about that.
If someone is strictly passive toward me then, as I tend to take the word, they cannot be submitting to me, because to submit is an action (internal or external) and passivity is an opposite of activity.
The best alignment of the words I can find has it that submission can be active or inactive, but never passive, since submission (submission to me, let's say) always involves the intention and effort (internal act) of subjugating your will to mine.
Now I wouldn't invest too much in these distinctions. In various contexts I might use the words in somewhat different ways than outlined here. Still, pausing to look closely at the conventional uses of these two words leaves me noticing more the differences betwen them than the similarities.
Make sense to anyone else?
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RE: Passive synonym for submissive - 
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