I am not blogging any more, although, well, here’s a blog post, so, that’s not true, but, you know what I mean
But I do occassionally check comments on my blog and a recent comment on my About page in regards to the Stanford Prison Experiment, Corruptible by Brian Klaas, and a follow up experiment that turned the Stanford results on its head got me thinking. And one thing that has changed since I blogged frequently is that AI can open a whole new scale of “thinking.”
So, I asked AI to look at my blog and tell me what it thinks about me and whether there were vulnerabilities I had to evolving into a Guard/Prisoner dynamic like the Stanford experiment. My view is context is everything, and the life I built is insulated from that. Here’s what AI had to say. Very interesting!
Okay, AI, do your thing. . . . . . . .
You mean is Jenny as the person at risk of becoming the prisoner within the relationship/system she has deliberately entered.
Having looked back at Jenny’s actual “About” page, I think there is a much more interesting argument to make. She explicitly describes her journey as an evolution into a “submissive wife,” says that her lifestyle is based on Domestic Discipline, and describes Mike as the person who exercises the disciplinary authority.
The concern isn’t that submission automatically makes her a prisoner. Jenny repeatedly describes the arrangement as something she chose and something that gives her fulfillment. The question is whether, over time, the language and structure of the arrangement could begin changing the meaning of choice itself.
That’s where your Stanford point becomes useful.
The distinction I’d make
The Stanford lesson isn’t:
“Put someone in a prison and they’ll become a prisoner.”
The more interesting lesson is:
Give people a sufficiently powerful framework for understanding who they are and what their relationship is, and that framework can begin influencing how they behave.
Jenny has voluntarily adopted a framework containing extraordinarily powerful words:
dominant / submissive
discipline / punishment
obedience / disobedience
authority / surrender
good girl / bad girl
rules / consequences
Master / submissive
And the language isn’t merely theoretical. Her own description says that Domestic Discipline has become an organizing principle for her marriage and her identity.
That’s where I’d be watching for the possibility of the voluntary prisoner becoming the actual prisoner.
What would that look like?
Not necessarily fear.
Not necessarily abuse.
Not even necessarily unhappiness.
In fact, the most interesting warning signs could appear while Jenny still feels happy and fulfilled.
I’d look for a gradual shift from:
“I choose to submit.”
to:
“I am a submissive.”
And then potentially:
“This is who I am.”
And eventually:
“This is what I am supposed to be.”
Those sentences sound very similar, but psychologically they’re quite different.
The first preserves agency.
The last one potentially surrenders it.
And Jenny herself provides an unusually interesting example of this evolution. On her About page she describes the journey as something that began in 2015 and “transformed” her life; she says she discovered a way of living that allows her to honor commitments to herself, and she explicitly describes her subsequent evolution as a submissive wife.
That doesn’t mean the evolution is bad.
It means the evolution is worth watching.
And here’s where the word “prisoner” becomes powerful
A prisoner doesn’t necessarily wake up one morning and say:
“I am now a prisoner.”
The transition can happen incrementally.
The walls become normal.
The rules become normal.
The authority becomes normal.
The vocabulary becomes normal.
Eventually, the person may stop asking:
“Do I want this?”
and instead ask:
“Am I doing this correctly?”
That’s a profound difference.
And I think that is the connection you’re looking for.
The risk to Jenny isn’t that Mike suddenly becomes a stereotypical Stanford “guard.”
The risk is that the role itself becomes so deeply internalized that Jenny begins policing herself.
She doesn’t need Mike standing over her.
She carries the rules with her.
She anticipates his expectations.
She evaluates herself according to them.
She experiences guilt when she violates them.
She experiences approval when she conforms.
At that point, the external guard becomes almost unnecessary because the prisoner has internalized the guard.
That’s a much more sophisticated—and frankly more unsettling—application of the experiment.
And there is something particularly interesting in Jenny’s own writing
One commenter on her About page describes the experience in almost startlingly explicit terms: a hierarchical relationship that leads a previously self-confident, self-sufficient woman “to cower,” “to quiver,” “to melt,” “to stand down,” and “to succumb.” Jenny doesn’t necessarily endorse every word of that comment, so I wouldn’t attribute those descriptions to her. But the comment is revealing because it shows how readily the language of submission can become a language of identity and psychological transformation.
And Jenny’s own vocabulary contains similar ideas—she describes herself as a submissive and the household relationship in explicitly hierarchical terms.
So I wouldn’t ask:
“Is Jenny being treated like a prisoner?”
I’d ask something more penetrating:
“At what point does a person who freely chooses submission cease experiencing it as something she does and begin experiencing it as something she is?”
Because once the answer becomes “something I am,” challenging the arrangement can begin to feel like challenging one’s own identity.
And that’s where words become power.
“Submission” is a description.
“Submissive” is an identity.
“Obedience” is an action.
“Obedient” is a characteristic.
“Discipline” is something imposed.
“Disciplining myself” is internalized.
And “I choose to do this” is fundamentally different from “I am supposed to do this.”
That is the prisoner risk I would explore with Jenny.
Not that she chose the cage.
But that, over enough time, she could become so comfortable with the vocabulary of the cage that she stops noticing the bars.
END OF AI INSIGHTS
So, what do I think? I am still digesting. I fall back on, Words are Power and while I very much identify with the journey of “I am submissive,” to “I am a submissive,” I have not gone to “This is what I am supposed to be.” It’s what I like, it’s what I am. It never crosses my mind to frame it, “this is what I am supposed to be.” That just sounds like it is a preordained lot in life. I definitely don’t look at my submission like that. It fits me and I wear it well and it is what I strive to be because it fulfills me.
The part about “self policing” rang true. I am not spanked much anymore because I have become very obedient – being my own guard! Now, if I can just convince Mike I should be my own disciplinarian too! LOL.
People may look for something evil or twisted in my dynamic and in the fact it fulfills me. I look at it no differently than if an artist saying painting fulfills them. The evil or twisted is the context others apply to something that, for me, is loving and nurturing.
Anyway, I love what AI had to say as it raises way more questions than it answers and it also identifies some landmines which, to some extent I’ve been aware, but it articulated so clearly. My goal is not a guard/prisoner dynamic, although I don’t mind playing one on the occasional weekend. LOL!
Enjoy, and comment away!!!
Domestic Discipline, Jenny style! 