Dworkin and sexual submission

The following is a collection of Dworkin quotes. To me, they suggest that AD may have, before her relationship with her husband turned brutal, have had a penchant for erotic submission and perhaps even for BDSM.

This is not a fleshed-out theory, but rather something I always found intriguing. I'm not asserting it in any serious way. But the idea that she's an ex-BDSMer, someone who had erotic submission go bad in her personal life and that fed into her theories of what sex meant, what intercourse meant, what porn meant, what submission meant, intrigues me. So I thought I'd share.

I was happier when we moved from dolls to canasta, gin rummy, poker, and strip poker. The children on the street developed a collective secret life, a half dozen games of sex and dominance that we played, half in front of our mothers' eyes, half in a conspiracy of hiding. And we played Red Rover and Giant Steps, appropriating the whole block from traffic. And there was always ball, in formal games, or alone to pass the time, against brick walls, against the cement stoops. I liked the sex-and-dominance games, which could be overtly sadomasochistic, because I liked the risk and the intensity; and I liked ordinary games like hide-and-seek.

(http://www.nostatusquo.com/ACLU/dworkin/AutobiographyI.html)

Also, O [as in, the character in The Story of O] is particularly compelling for me because I once believed it to be what its defenders claim--the mystical revelation of the true, eternal, and sacral destiny of women. The book was absorbed as a pulsating, erotic, secular Christianity (the joy in pure suffering, woman as Christ figure). I experienced O with the same infantile abandon as the NEWSWEEK reviewer who wrote: "What lifts this fascinating book above mere perversity is its movement toward the transcendence of the self through a gift of the self . . . to give the body, to allow it to be ravaged, exploited, and totally possessed can be an act of consequence, if it is done with love for the sake of love."

(http://www.nostatusquo.com/ACLU/dworkin/WomanHating.html)

And these, from a work of fiction... not sure how much they reveal, but they seem consistent with the other two:

I was a person who always had her legs open, whose breast was always warm and accommodating, who derived great pleasure from passion with tenderness, without tenderness, with brutality, with violence, with anything any man had to offer.

I was a person who always had her legs open, who lived entirely from minute to minute, from man to man. I was a person who did not know that there was real malice in the world, or that people were driven--to cruelty, to vengeance, to rage. I had no notion at all of the damage that people sustain and how that damage drives them to do harm to others.

I was a person who was very much a woman, who had internalized certain ways of being and of feeling, ways given to her through books, movies, the full force of media and culture--and through the real demands of real men.

I was a person who was very much a woman, accomodating, adoring of mens bodies, needful, needing above all to be fucked, to be penetrated, loving that moment more than any other.

I was a person who was very much a woman, who loved men, who loved to be fucked, who gloried in cock, who called every sexual act, tender, violent, brutal, the same name, "lovemaking."

....I was happy. I loved you. I was consumed by my love for you. It was as if I breathed you instead of the air. Sometimes I felt a peace so great that I thought it would lift me off the earth. I felt in you and through you and because of you. Later, when you were so much a part of me that I didnt know where you ended and I began, I would still sometimes step back and marvel at yr physical beauty. Sometimes I would think that my life would be complete if I would always be able to look at you.

(http://www.nostatusquo.com/ACLU/dworkin/FirstLoveI.html)

These few snippets -- and again, I'm not saying they paint a whole picture of a whole person -- suggest to me that maybe AD was particularly fulfilled by a certain sort of submission to men. A fulfillment and a joy that fell apart when her dominant partner turned abusive. Here's the novel again:

I dont know exactly when or why yr anger took explicit sexual forms. You began fucking me in the ass, brutally, brutally. I began to have rectal bleeding. I told you, I implored you. You ignored my screams of pain, my whispers begging you to stop. You said, a woman who loves a man stands the pain. I was a woman who loved a man; I submitted, screamed, cried out, submitted. To refuse was, I thought, to lose you, and any pain was smaller than that pain, or even the contemplation of that pain. I wondered even then, how can he take such pleasure when I am in such pain. My pain increased, and so did yr pleasure.

Once you stopped speaking to me (had I resisted in some way?). When finally (was it a day or two?) you came to me I waited for an explanation. Instead you touched me, wanting to fuck me, as if no explanation were necessary, as if I was yrs to take, no matter what. Had I been strong enough, I would have killed you with my bare hands. As it was, you were weak in yr surprise, and I hurt yr neck badly. I was glad (Im still glad). We fought the whole night long, with long stretches of awful silence and a desperate despair. In the course of that night you told me that we would marry. It was towards morning, and after you had raped me as is the way with men who are locked in a hatred which is bitter, and without mercy, you said, thats all thats left, to get married, isnt that what people do, isnt this the way that married people feel. Bored and dead and utterly bound to each other. Miserable and sick and without freedom or hope. Yr body moving above me during that rape, my body absolutely still in resistance, my eyes wide open staring at you in resistance, and you said, now Ill fuck you the way I fuck a whore, now youll know the difference, how I loved you before and how I hate you now. I said, numb and dead and dying, no, I wont marry you, I cant stand this, its worse than anything. You said, we cant be apart, youll see, it wont be so bad. I remember that then you lay between my legs, both of us on our backs, and we didnt move until dawn. Then you left.

(http://www.nostatusquo.com/ACLU/dworkin/FirstLoveI.html)

All this suggests to me that maybe she was someone who really liked domination and submission, at least as a sexual game or spice, and that someone using that to abuse her destroyed a part of her spirit and she's writing from that hurt: "Don't you other women see where this led me, and will lead you, no matter how good it feels now?"

To me that gives a quite plausible explanation for why she'd be so against it the rest of her life: that it IS in fact attractive, but brought her misery, so her role is to warn everyone of the hidden horror.

definition: I am not damaged

An awesome post that needs linkin': I am not damaged: the intersection of queer and kinky

One thing that has always really bothered me in feminist discussions about kink is the assumption I often see that a woman could only want to be submissive if she’s been abused, coerced, brainwashed — that nobody could possibly be born with these sort of desires, that they’re inherently unhealthy and abnormal and could not develop on their own in a vacuum. There’s this sometimes unspoken, often articulated, assumption that the only way a woman could want what I want is if she has been emotionally damaged.

I suppose I’m just here to say: well, they can develop in a vacuum, and they’re not abnormal for me. I have never been sexually or physically abused by a parent, family member, friend, partner, or anyone else. As much as I desire a relationship where I am not in control, where there is a distinct power imbalance, where I might get bitten and smacked a little, pushed to my limits and beyond my comfort zone sexually, mentally, and emotionally…I have no desire to be abused. Wanting to be dominated consensually by someone I trust who respects my hard limits but not always the more flexible, softer ones is entirely different from being with someone who forces me to do things I really don’t want to do.

....So now that I’ve laid that out, the real point I’m trying to get at. One thing that’s been nagging at me for awhile is the realization that these criticisms of kink are exactly the same as arguments about homosexuality. The argument, especially, that women are made queer by rape or other trauma. Most of the normally, otherwise very intelligent women I see arguing that BDSM is inherently harmful and degrading to women would never say such a thing about queer women because it’s plainly ridiculous. Most women do not decide to be lesbians because they’ve been damaged by men in their lives. The assertion is clearly and fatally flawed.

So why is it okay to say these things about submissive women? (And it’s always submissive women. The very concept that dominant women could possibly exist seems to fly over these people’s heads — when they do acknowledge the existence of dommes, it’s usually in a sneering, “it’s all just an act they put on for men, they aren’t actually powerful” sort of way. And forget the idea that a submissive woman might want to be topped by another woman.) Why is it not okay to say that I only like women because of some severe psychological trauma, but it’s perfectly fine to assert that I Must Have Nasty Issues if I want to let a partner (especially, heaven forbid, a partner with a dick) to tell me what to do and be in control?

I am not damaged. I am not queer because of abuse. I am not submissive because of abuse. I have been both queer and submissive my entire life. I can recall having both of these desires from an incredibly young age: an unusual attachment to female friends and a near total absence of crushes on male peers, and a persistent desire to be “owned”, an eagerness to please and take care of everybody in my life. These are the things which fulfill me. These are the things that I need to be happy. Attempting to deny me that because it’s “un-feminist” or “unhealthy” denies and undermines my actual health (mental and emotional, by extension, physical) and my very real dedication to women’s rights.

I should not have to justify my submissive identity (and it is that — it is not simply a role I adopt in the bedroom, it is a basic cornerstone of who and what I am) anymore than I should have to justify my attachment and attraction to women. Would the feminists demanding that I “examine” the roots of my kinky desires for their entertainment ever dare to say the same thing about my queer desires? Of course not! Even if (and this is important!) I did feel I were only attracted to women due to an abusive past, it still wouldn’t be relevant, it still wouldn’t mean there’s anything wrong with my same-sex attractions, and it still wouldn’t be any of their damn business. Because there is nothing inherently wrong with my sexuality, in the queer sense or the kinky sense.

I find the allegations I’m not a real feminist actually hurtful. It’s like someone saying that because I like to play video games with fake violence in them I can’t be part of the anti-war movement. One has pretty much almost nothing to do with the other. While it’s definitely worth looking at how violence is normalized in our culture and how that feeds our willingness to do real harm to others, my personal recreational habits don’t disqualify me from standing up for my pacifist principles.

The post itself is a bit longer than this. Oh, and I have been abused and I'm dominant. Which of course must mean I identify with someone whose idea of fun is torturing kids with disabilities. OH WAIT EXCEPT NOT.