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.

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.

Enlightening Pillow talk

so my housemate, her boy, my beloved, a friend of his and i were all sitting around watching Pen and Teller's Bullshit. now, i love these men and i will totally fess up to having a wee crush on mr. gilette. and i'm not entirely sure how we got on the subject but my housemate said she wouldn't allow her kids to have barbies. and i said something to the effect of not allowing barbie because of some crazy second wave feminist idea was... something. i was tired, and don't really remember all of it. but it's got me thinking back to something i read on fatshionista! a while back about the phenomenon of the "incredible bulk" or fat girls who verbally rampage about their fat acceptance and refuse to "worship at the alter of diets" and how alienating that can be to the casual listener. and i think i'm getting into that mind frame. which i have to curb. which means i have to apologise to my housemate when i see her for possibly getting out of line.

though it did end up with a really intense convo between my beloved and i. we were talking about how this whole activism thing has become REALLY important to me and that i know he understands it intellectually but i'm pretty sure he doesn't get it. and i finally found a really amazing way to express it to him... he's a history major and he's looking to deal in pre-colombian middle and south america, which means aztecs, olmecs, incas and mayans. these cultures are mythic and mystical and alien to the average american, and we imbue them in our pop culture with all kinds of fantastical properties. or we say there we totally savage and marvel at how they could have done the things we have evidence of them doing. and i realized, he plans to spend his education and stake his academic reputation on refuting these myths. and he takes the opportunity to talk to people about them pretty much every time they get brought up. and i asked him, "how is what you do any different then what i'm doing?" and we talked about it, and came to the conclusion that it isn't though it is. but we're coming to a better understanding.

because he asked me the most important question i think he's asked me in a long time. "what do you want from me?" and i have to admit it took me a while to answer the question since i hadn't exactly framed it out in my own head. what it basically came down to though was the need for him to understand how big this really was, and that i was challenging many things in my own head. for him to understand that i'm more than a little afraid of the challenges this could bring into our relationship. and most importantly for him to take this seriously, let me sound off, challenge me with questions, encourage and support me. i also expressed the very real concern i had over creating a cognitive dissonance in my own head about our power exchange relationship which is not equal or egalitarian, and how it fits in with other things i think and feel about unequal relationships between men and women. i do not want to be hypocritical and say it's not ok for you but it's ok for me.

which made him ask in that kind of scared, vulnerable voice i find so delightful and lust inducing, "you're not going to suddenly get rid of me, are you?" i'd be a liar if i said showing him how much i value him didn't end the night on a really good note.

Virtually Walking the Walk

so, i am a gamer geek girl. unabashedly most of the time. and in my geekdom i was playing WoW (that's World of Warcraft.. or Warcrack as we like to say in my house) and chatting with the group i was playing with. in WoW it's very common for several players to group together to accomplish a particularly difficult task, and that's what i was doing. we were waiting for another group member to finish repairing his gear, and during the down time another player said they were going to go get a snack since he was due for lunch but we were about an hour from being done with the task. so, more down time... which usually leads to chatting in game. the three of us left started comparing time zones and where that placed us in the greater world. eventually the first group member came back from getting repairs done to his gear (in game repairs to in game gear, not to be confused with actual equipment) and asked where the second player had gone.

"he's being fat." responded one of the three of us that had been chatting. and my fingers flashed out, seemingly of their own volition.

"that's not a cool thing to say. how do you know he's fat?" and i swear i hit return before i quite knew what was being typed. it just happened. and i waited for this to explode in my face, to have my group tell me to back off and not be so sensitive, to have the player react all insulted... because these were not people i play with regularly. these were people i just happened to find who needed to do the same thing i needed to do. there was no personal context in which my comment might be received. and yet the person on the other end of that comment was surprisingly cool in their response.

"i'm sorry," i'm paraphrasing here, "it just means he's eating here in australia, it's just slang."

and i wanted to have the conversation i could feel was coming, the pointing out how icky it is to associate any kind of eating with being fat. to point out that eating is needful for human life to keep living. that we shouldn't have this kind of association... and yet there were some less than mature members of the group that i just didn't want to deal with, who could have very well turned the potentially awesome conversation into something really ugly. and so i left it. i just told this other player i didn't mean anything personal by it, but that i believed very strongly in size/fat acceptance and felt it was a really mean thing to say. and they kept apologizing.

which totally blew my mind, because i couldn't hear their voice but they seemed really genuine. at least in type, which is all i have to go on in that setting. and it surprised me too that i spoke out like that. it's not something i would have done even a month ago. sure i'll eat cheesecake in retaliation, but opening my mouth to a complete stranger? not so much. until that moment. maybe this is the first few steps of walking the walk... cause i still find it hard to talk about these things with some of the people i'm close to. like my mom. but that's a whole other post.