I Have No Words

i know i promised you the second part of my feminism and BDSM rant, but this image took my breath away. literally. i'm tearing up, looking at this beautiful woman, who's body looks so much like mine. and i don't know how i could have managed to miss the add campaign that produced it. apparently the body shoppe does this kind of thing regularly. next to it's slick shots of it's products. and i don't think i can ever bring myself to spend money at any other body product store again. this is profound, in a way i'm finding hard to express. she looks like i do. fleshy and folded and round and lovely. she is lovely to look at. and i look like her. is this what my beloved sees when he looks at me? i don't think i've ever felt, for all the hard won self love and all the hard won sanity, as though i could be simply beautiful. beautiful despite my size and shape, beautiful within my size and shape, sure. but simply beautiful? i find the words inadequate to express this...

FemDomme Feminist? Part I

so this whole nine duce debate flare up and subsequent rad fem insanity has me wanting to bash my head against a wall. on my best days i don't understand or really have much tolerance for hypocrites. and maybe i'm judging too harshly by calling these women hypocrites. but i know that if these same patronizing words came from a penis wielding human, they'd be frothing at the mouth over it. news flash! i don't need therapy, i've never been molested, i don't want to hurt the world for fun, i'm not crazy, delusional, or incapable of analytically looking at the way i live my life. and neither are the women you have insulted by saying these exact things to and about with venom and vitriol in your every post.

and since no one there wants to even touch femdomme, and i have a fucking blog, i get to do it. so yeay for me i guess...

here's the thing, female domination as a kink is just as much a part of patriarical sexuality as female submission. the idea of the strong amazonian woman who will crush a man with her thighs, belittle his tiny dick, fuck him for her pleasure, and then stuff him in a corner until future use is pretty common. yeah, the thought of it is pretty hot for me. though generally those are not the fantasies i have. but not only do a whole bunch of submissive men have that fantasy, they get super amounts of shit for it. because patriarchal sexuality dictates that a man should be the dominant one, the penetrator, the one on top. and in femdomme, those are almost never the case.

but if you want to talk about sexual power hierarchies as aberrant to the norm, femdomme is where it's at. in my relationship i am in charge. i make the decisions about what we are going to eat, how we are going to spend our money, what activities we are going to participate in, when and how we will fuck. but i don't do this in a vacuum. no one i've known in a long term BDSM relationship does. and yes, there was a time when i was a bottom in a relationship so i can talk about that end of things too.

when i got interested in BDSM i took the submissive roll. yeah, part of that was because the majority of the women around me engaged in this kind of activity were submissive, that was just the tiny bit of the local scene i knew personally. i won't say that i didn't enjoy the activities, and the physicality of pain play, but i really quickly determined that submission did nothing for me. i did not feel fulfilled by it the way my women friends did. i started topping, realized that was where it was at for me, and that was that. do i think patriarchy predisposed me toward my initial submission in some way? maybe. do i think it brainwashed me into wanting it? not really, but then i didn't exactly want to be submissive. i wanted to participate and lacked the words or knowledge of how i wanted to do that, and so followed the examples of those around me to whom i could relate. do i think this means all submissive women everywhere are brainwashed? fuck no.

there is an equality in health BDSM relationships that is hard to see from the outside. most people have defined roles within their relationships. some people seem to have stronger personalities, are more aggressive sexually, and just tend to be leader types. when these roles are not firmly established you get all kinds of conflict and emotional turmoil. having those roles defined, clearly expressed and acknowledge within a relationship is liberating. the give and take is circular, despite outside views and opinions. but i'm getting into defensive mode here, and i want to actually discuss the idea of power exchange not just hash out a meme about why my relationship is fucking awesome. even though it is.

so, the main questions being asked are:
1. can BDSM and feminism exist and cohabitate? can a woman be a feminist, or a man her ally, and be into BDSM with it's sexual power hierarchies and it's emotional and physical activities?

2. is consent shaded by growing up in the patriarchy to the point where it cannot be reasonably given? and if so, does that negate a woman's right to do so?

3. and just how does all that apply to femdomme v/s maledom?

so, ok, i'm starting to get to the point where i'm almost ok with calling myself a feminist most of the time. as i define feminism as the quest for equality of the sexes, the quest to give women their own voice and agency, and a desire to dismantle the detrimental beauty myth that keeps women hating their bodies... that's where i'm coming from, and that's the label i'm willing to apply to myself. i'm still just testing the waters of how i want to participate in that, but for now we'll assume i have a somewhat basic understanding of the theories. so let's look at it.

*equality of the sexes: is there sexism within BDSM communities? yes, i can say there is. i don't think it's any more or less prevalent than in "normal" society, though i think there's a much better chance of someone backing you up if you tell someone they are being sexist. because the argument that women are all naturally one way or the other is held by a fringe minority that most folks in BDSM don't actually agree with. i would love to see the sexism pointed out more often within the community, same as i would like to see it pointed out in main stream social circles. but overall, in terms of equality... unless you hanging out with Goreans who believe in the natural dominance of men, or Female supremacists who are on the other end of things, most BDSM folks want and support equality.

*giving women their own voice and their own agency: there is a demand on almost everyone who practices BDSM that they express their wants and needs in their relationship and to a greater extent, in their life. the insistence that you self analyse, and that you communicate the fruits of that analysis, contributes to individual growth. being able to say "i want" or "i need" in a safe environment is hugely liberating. especially when it comes to emotions and sex. i cannot speak for all women, but i know i have seen and experienced the growth and ability of many women (myself included) to make those kinds of statements in their daily lives as a result of the work they have done to be able to make them within their relationships. i don't think it makes BDSM better than any other kind of relationship, but i do think there is a great deal to be said for the stress on communication within that relationship style. maybe it's small, one woman at a time, but if the personal is political i think it counts towards the overall movement.

*dismantling the beauty myth: this one is harder to see as an over reaching thing. there is still so much work to do with the main stream media and ideology, but i think being part of an alternative sexuality with alternative standards of beauty is a good thing. i wish more men and women could learn about self love and body acceptance. and that's something i think can be pushed for regardless of kink.

given the above, i think that yes feminism and BDSM can co-exist. at least the kind of feminism i understand and relate to. this is getting hugely long... so i'll be asnwering the second and third questions in another post.

S&M and Me

so, one of the things that i've been rolling about in my head is the idea of the intersection of power both within my relationship and outside of it. and i've been wanting to write a post for a while about how i view BDSM in a feminist context. but i've been dragging my feet. until yesterday, when ren posted about some BDSM articles on Nine Duce's blog. and that there were more than a few comments telling submissive women that they didn't know how to do feminism, in fact pretty much hadn't a leg to stand on in calling themselves feminists, because of their sexuality.

now, i am not a submissive woman. but i have friends who are. and while i don't see submission as a feminist action i don't think that one negates the other. in fact, i think more submissive women should explore feminism. not because i want them to change, cause i really don't. but because i think the intersections of power and sexuality are profoundly interesting and can perhaps deepen an already meaningful relationship based on choices.

the thing that's pissing me off more than anything on the thread is the total denial of female dominants. now, i understand that femdomme doesn't fit into neat boxes of patriarchy and male domination of poor deluded women. i get that. but an honest discussion of power hierarchy in relationships needs to look at M/f and F/m as well as M/m and F/f and all other permutations. maybe i'm hitting my head against a wall thinking that anyone there wants to have a look, and not just have a bash the men party.

but the thing that this has made me realize is this: i love my lifestyle. and i've been neglecting my beloved. not sexually, cause we fuck like bunnies. we're young, he's hot, i have a high sex drive. but in those aspects of our relationship that are unique to us, i have been neglecting him. i have let things slide, while giving him his permanent collar. which seems wrong somehow. that's another post all together. but i think i've been trying hard not to create this cognitive dissonance in my head that i actually did. and that's not ok.

so, well and truly thanks radical feminist hate for making me defend myself and my beliefs. i'm not afraid of exploring the intersection of my sex anymore. and in fact i'm looking forward to it.

More on Race and Privilege

i'm not exactly sure of the meandering path that landed me on racialicious reading a post about the politics of hair. normally i stay in my happy little feminist/FA circuit of blog reading, venturing into other -ism blogs only as they relate to the other stuff i'm reading. mostly because it's all too much for me to wrap my head around most days. there's too much for me to process all at once, and i just let the search take me where it seems to want to go. which is probably how i ended up there.

i've been mulling over privilege, again... because it's the hinge that everything seems to be hung on. and it's the thing i have the hardest time seeing in myself. but Latoya Peterson's post about her decision to let her chemically relaxed hair grow out to a natural texture, and the body politics that came along with that, was really eye opening. and i thought, wow i can totally relate to that. that's just like the time i decided not to diet anymore and... then i realized it was nothing like that. yeah, there were body politics involved with that decision. but no one told me i was more or less really a part of my racial background because of it. while the beauty myh that leads fat women to diet is the same myth that leads women of color to relax their hair it's not the same situation. and i guess i'm making progress that i was able to rethink the desire to relate to her post and then make it all about me. maybe it's enough to just relate, to say wow that resonated with me. i haven't posted a comment to her blog, mostly because i'm unsure of how to bring myself into her space and not bring my entitlement and privilge with me.

and so i went back into posts about privilege to read more about it and get a furthur handle. i'm still working on sorting it all out. i know i have white privilege. i know i have a seemingly heteronormative relationship which confers privilege. i know even if/when i find another partner to join the relationship there will be a shift in that seeming but i don't know to what extent. i think a lot of it will depend on who i end up with. another white guy? a woman? a person of color? each varriation brings other bagage with it. baggage i'm sure i'll deal with at that time.

but the white privilege thing is the one that i trip over the most. and in amoung the articles i found this gem. it's got some typos and it's an older piece but the list Peggy McIntosh puts together had some ahhhhhh moments for me. these in particular:

I can do well in a challenging situation without being called a credit to my race.
If I declare there is a racial issue at hand, or there isn't a racial issue at hand, my race will lend me more credibility for either position than a person of color will have.
I can worry about racism without being seen as self-interested or self-seeking.

that last one especially. because, like peggy, i was taught that racism is acts of meanness and bigotry and are pretty blatent. i still get a gut reaction when i hear, or read, about someone saying something is racist when there is no clear bigotry. i think to myself the person crying discrimination is being overly sensitive, or just trying to get sympathy, or is trying to get more help then they were offered. i'm not sure what i can do about it yet, other than keep on reading and pondering.

My Letter to Oprah

so i'm sure many of you have seen this or a similar article about oprah reaching 200 lbs and basically feeling like a failure. kate and the shapely prose family said this amazing thing but i felt the need to write something too. so i did. having a blog is fun...

why does this amazing, succsessful, wealthy woman who has beat sexism and racism to become a very powerful force hate herself and her body? why does she want to make herself dissapear? women aren't supposed to take up too much space, or be too loud, or too smart, or too succesful. or too ethnic. and while she has broken through most of those barriers she still wants to make herself disapear. her weight isn't a "sorce of shame," as she herself said. i'm quite sure she has more than enough willpower.

but she began to "eat what she wanted", and that wasn't good? not good for her to want? why are we still allowing ourselves, as women, to be told that we are not allowed to want, that we have to put the needs of everyone else before our own, that if we want anything at all we're selfish? and serriously, not every fat person is sitting around stuffing their face with junk food. and before you trot out your friend/co-worker/classmate/aunt eillien as your anecdotal evidence please remember that fat people are not all the same. just like not all black people are the same.

the disservice she's providing for the millions of women who hold her up as a role model is her re-enforcement that if you fail at long term weight loss it's your fault. which is a totally false statement. 95% of people who losse weight gain it back. period. and it's not becuase they don't want it enough, it's because our bodies are not designed to do that. she is clinging to the false hope that she, with all her money and support will be able to be part of that narrow margin. and the false statment that the only way to be healthy is to be thin. and the only way for her to be an acceptable person is to weigh a certain amount, that no other accomplishment is worth anything if she weights 200 lbs.

what i would wish for opera, and everyone who reads this blog, is an opportunity to stop hateing herself and her body. i would wish her the chance to learn about health at every size (HAES...google it, serriously) and the growing size acceptance movement. i would wish her self-love based on her accomplishmnets and strength not on the numbers on a scale or in her clothes.

Me and My Pancreas

so i have a family history of diabetes type 2, and conventional wisdom would tell me i shouldn't drink coke or fruit juice or any other sweet and delicious beverage. or eat carbs. or be fat. but with every study that comes back from heath researchers not in the pockets of drug companies, we see less and less reasons to cling to the conventional wisdom. and now this study by the women's heath initiative. for people unfamiliar i'll be quoting from this article at junkfood science about the study and about the initiative.

"In 1992, the National Institutes of Health and U.S. Department of Health and Human Services launched the largest preventive health study in our history, the Women’s Health Initiative. One part was the WHI Dietary Modification Trial — one of the largest, longest and most expensive randomized, controlled clinical dietary intervention trials in the history of our country."

they were trying to prove that healthy eating was the best way to prevent chronic disease, especially type 2 diabetes and heart disease, and promote weight control.

and here's the fun part for me... they completed this huge study and found NOTHING! i know i'm getting ahead here but, yeah. totally null study, which basically means they found no significant difference between the control group and the study group.

so here's the facts and figures bit:
*$415 million and conducted at 40 medical centers
*48,835 postmenopausal women assessed at baseline (the start of the study), one year and then every three years with clinical follow-ups every 6 months and their medications monitored in a pharmacy database
*more than 19,000 women were in the dietary restricted group while the other group was allowed to eat what they wanted.

in fact, here's the quote from the study:

The WHI dietary intervention group received intensive nutritional and behavioral modification training consisting of 18 group sessions in the first year followed by quarterly sessions throughout the trial. Each participant received an individualized dietary fat gram goal estimating 20% of energy from fat during the intervention and a common dietary goal of 5 or more servings daily of combined vegetables and fruits and 6 or more servings daily of grains. Self-monitoring techniques and group session attendance were emphasized.

and apparently they did really well with the women staying within 5-7% over their recommended fat intake, eating roughly 25% more fruits and veggies than the average american and eating a little over 300 calories less per day than the control group.

now the conventional wisdom tells us that these women should have been very healthy, and if not "healthy" thin at least not overweight or fat. but as i said before, the study found no such thing.

After eight years, there were no significant differences in the incidences of more than 30 clinically-documented cancers, heart attacks or strokes, or all-cause mortality. The dieters initially lost some weight but rebounded and their body weights, despite 8 years of watching what they ate, were no statistically different from the women who’d been eating whatever they wanted. Both groups ended up at nearly the identical weights they started with, differing a mere 0.7kg, about one pound.

and here's the bit that was of interest to me, what with my family history and all.

According to the WHI researchers, a total of 3,342 new cases of treated diabetes were reported: 7.1% (0.88%/year) in the intervention group and 7.4% (0.91%/year) in the control group during 8.1 years of follow-up. No statistical difference...In the WHI, there was no tenable difference in risk for diabetes among the different BMIs, with odds ratios even slightly higher for women with BMIs<25

so i'm back to looking at what goes into my body as fuel for my cells and fuel for my soul. i'm working on the intuitive eating that HAES recommends. i'm trying not to ignore my body and my hunger ques because i realize more and more that i really don't like how mean and nasty i get when my sugar starts to bottom out. and i'm listening more when my body says "give us red meat" as well as when it says "give us broccoli."

Fatter Than the Moon

so one of my housemates is big into anime and somehow this translates into me watching season one of sailor moon, the japaneese version with subtitles. it's cute, more or less, in that whiney school girl saves the world and her classmates kinda way.

i'm about for or five episodes in, rather enjoying the formula that allows me to know what's coming and thus truly veg, and suddenly usagi (sailor moon) is slumped on the bathroom floor crying her eyes out over having gained weight. now, all of a sudden, i'm leaning forward in my seat waiting to see how this plays out. not really interested in the idea of how the episode would go but in how the show, so obviously aimed at pre-teen girls, would handle the idea of body image and weight loss. i have to say, the show did not disappoint my expectations... which is bad since i was expecting the worst.

her brother teases her, her father tells her it's healthy for growing girls to be a little chubby, and her mom lets her know that it's true but all the same if she's really worried about it she could go on a diet. the worst part is the talking cat that is part friend and part mentor who draws a picture of a very round usagi and tells her this is what she'll look like in six months time. which of course makes the poor girl freak out, and begin to "diet". i say diet in quotes because her idea is to just stop eating. which her friends at school encourage because, as the token fat one states, thin girls are so much prettier than fat ones.

suddenly the girls all hear about a new gym that just opened up and promises weight loss in just one session, and beautiful thinness in just three. of course it's just a plot by the bad guys to steal the energy of young women, but the girls rush in on the promise of beauty and thinness. or maybe thinness and beauty. either way they're equated one with the other. so the girls slave on stationary bikes, free weights and rowing machines with beefcake instructors egging them on. once the girls have all but exhausted themselves it's off to the "shapely ray" for some relaxation and to help with their goals. so here's the evil plan bit, but the girls come out weighing less and all manner of excited, especially when they get told how much thinner and how much more beautiful they all look.

meanwhile unsagi still hasn't eaten and collapses in from of the video game arcade. she's helped by the young man she currently has a crush on, and he tells her she doesn't need a diet. he likes chubby girls. which gives the poor thing some kind of permission to eat. not that this new found acceptance lasts beyond the first few dumplings because both the cat and the dark haired stranger she keeps running into both confirm that she's just going to get really fat if she doesn't stop eating.

meanwhile the evil gym owner muses with his evil ruler about how stupid these women are. he says something to the effect of these women and young girls are willing to kill themselves just to be thin, how pathetic. this is really the only part in the whole episode where anything is said about how unhealthy and how dangerous this kind of thinking can be. even the idea that men like the "chubby look" gets laughed off as not the norm and besides chubby is sort of ok but fat is never ok. of course in the end sailor moon defeats the bad guys and save her friends and teacher, but the message is very clear.

thin is beautiful. fat is not acceptable. chubby is only ok for some and most men don't like it. there's no mention of health, no mention of how bad it is to starve yourself, no affirmations of any kind. just this push to be thin, and how monstrous it is to toy with a girls dream of being thin.

there's talk in the fat/size acceptance world about the subversive nature of the this thin=beauty myth. but this was anything but subversive. now, i have no idea if this episode aired in the usa and no idea about eating disorders in japan, but i can imagine what this would do to a young woman who has gained weight prior to a growth spurt. or just in general. and i found myself begin that thought process of self evaluation that says my stomach isn't flat enough and my hips are too big. i shouldn't have been surprised but i was, at least a little. but i think the fact that i could recognize the seeds of that kiltered thinking is a sign of progress.

Cheesecake Liberation

Article by Lady Becca for Fashion Sanity
Reprinting here on my own blog

This past weekend I went to an amazing social salon. Every month this group gets together and presents on topics they know, feel passionate about, or are interested in. It’s a varied group in terms of gender, economic background, sexual preferences, and lifestyles and so the topics are equally varied. During a break I ended up getting into a deep conversation with this super hot red head about the fat acceptance movement, the fashion industry, skinny models, fat hate, skinny hate, medical science and self love. I realized a few things:

1. the media half truths are more pervasive than I thought.
2. even “fat chicks” will think of anecdotal evidence that reinforces the media’s half truths.
3. I really dig red heads.
4. I need to do more home work on the subject.

So I did. I sat my cushy ass in front of the computer and stuffed my brain with facts and figures. The more I learned the better I felt about myself, my body and my ability to have this discussion with people. I looked at myself, and what I do and don’t eat. I knew I was ok, but now I see where I’m doing better than ok, and where I could be doing just plain better. I’ve also become more aware of people.

Last night I went to a certain big name home improvement store. No, the other one. Along the way my housemate, boyfriend and I stopped into Trader Joe’s to feed her addiction to dried mango and my addiction to chocolate…and dried mango. I bought a box of cheesecake bites, enrobed in deep dark chocolate and we wandered about the home improvement store eating chocolate covered cheesecake and dried mango while discussion devious plans for a Rube-Goldberg device. And I noticed something…I didn’t care.

A week ago, I would have bought that box, put it in the car and waited until I got home to open it and enjoy those little morsels with my boy and a few Heroes episodes. Instead, I walked proudly, defiantly, through a major chain store nibbling on cheesecake and my boy. I know, for a fact, that several of the older women manning departments and registers looked. I could see the thought as it marched passed on their faces, the thought that I could be so pretty if I would just put down the sweets and get moving.

I wanted to laugh in their 40 something plus, pursed lipped faces and ask if they had any idea how much moving I do? I wanted to lustily grope my boy right there in front of them, and show them just how hot he is for me. I wanted to rub their faces in their own self loathing and ask if they were really happy with swallowing the bullshit fed to women every day about our bodies and how they should look.

Instead, I smiled coquettishly and had another bite. The effect was better.