I wanted to point out a piece in Alternet excerpting a new book called Feminism and Pop Culture. What I liked about the article, aside from the fact that it gave a nice review of the rise of sex-positive feminism (aka "do me" feminism), was how ambivalent it was. That the "politics of pleasure" is complicated, with women both empowered to embrace their sexuality yet still finding their greatest value in being sexually objectified.
It made me think about the messy nature of spanking – particularly Domestic Discipline – and feminism. In the discussion on feminism and DD at the Punishment Book almost a couple of years ago (it so does not feel like that long ago), what was remarkably lacking in all the talk about choice was empowerment. Feminism requires both. You can make choices that are inherently anti-feminist when they fail to empower women. Women are empowered when they have the ability to fully embrace their sexuality, regardless of how unequal it may appear. Women are not empowered when they are subordinated to men because of their gender. Both of these occur within the DD community.
There is a great deal of feminist backlash within the DD and BDSM community, including blogs which insist that a woman is required to be submissive because she was born with a vagina or dominant women (and submissive men) who feel distinctly unwelcome in their local BDSM community (which is often run by dominant men). I think sometimes that because we're trying so hard to show that you can be a feminist and a sexual submissive, we fail to call out the sexism that exists in our community. But it's there. It's so there.
Interestingly enough, I often think that within our community the ones who suffer the most from entrenched patriarchy are submissive men. While acting out our sexuality might make us feel a bit uncomfortable with some of our feminist peers, submissive women have it easier in that respect than submissive men because society is still far more accepting of submissive women than submissive men. People grasp M/F on a primal level, but feminism has not yet brought us to the point that people feel comfortable with F/M, except in kinky pop culture references here and there (and frequent illogical dominatrix analogies).
At some point I'd like to write more about this, but my brain has been really mushy the last two weeks, so it won't be tonight. :::grin::
Wednesday, October 22, 2008
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7 comments:
Well said! Bravo!
i agree--good post. my brain is also a little mushy at the moment, so i'll hope i can remember to come back and post more of a response. ;)
Nicely written.
Great post. Very thoughtful.
Another group I think to be sometimes disenfranchised from the local community are male switches. The power dynamic aside, I see reference again and again *by women* who say that they don't play and are not interested in men who switch, because they're not real tops, or doms, or because they're not masterful enough, etc. I think men are somewhat reserved about the switching male, too...
Anyway, there's a rant/post brewing in the back of my head about this, so maybe I should stop. :)
Hugs,
sparkle
Thanks all!
And I definitely agree with you, Sparkle, about male switches. It's as if men who are at all submissive are somehow tainted in the eyes of submissive women and dominant men. But I can tell ya, while A. can be adoringly submissive, there's no doubt who is in charge when he's in top mode. ;-)
Jinx sparkle!
I swear I wrote exactly that (both here and over at the article Natty was pointing to.
I've got no idea where the comment went here. Maybe I hit preview instead of post... again. (Doh!)
There's also a presumption that *most* submissives are women because most submissives writing blogs about their relationships are women. But I think if one looked online in general, most of the people writing in anyway about relationships are women.
I agree completely the author's statement that “A lot of people who engage in BDSM are sexist.” As a female bottom and sometimes submissive whose partner is a male switch, I get a lot of supposedly dominant men claiming that I’d somehow be more submissive if I had a “real” top or dom as a partner.
Feh.
But the sexism goes both ways. I know plenty of women whose attitude toward men bottoming ever is dismissive, to the point where one hears statements along the lines of it being fine for men to bottom, but if they ever witness it, they could never feel comfortable with that man topping them — it would somehow ruin their fantasy of the dominant man.
Inside or outside the scene, gender stereotypes confine us.
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