Face of the Scene

Pantryslut on LJ writes in a post titled "on the Fetish Flea, and the scene in general":

Really, I don't think it's nostalgia that has me remembering a time when "the scene," that is, the public face of BDSM ("our community," however you want to put it) was much, *much*, MUCH more diverse. D/S was always the predominant flavor, of course, and that's always chapped my ass a little bit. But there were all sorts of ways to do it, and all sorts of folks to do it with, including a hefty dose of queers, and a lot of dominant women, and quite a few just kinky weird folks doing whatever the heck they felt like at the time.

Now, there's a definite predominating dynamic.

It's male dominant, female submissive.

In fact, it's a little more specific, but I am having a hard time right now explaining exactly how. But, you know, women are there to be displayed, men are there to display them. Women are there to give blowjobs and accept spankings. Men are there to dole them out. Women are on their knees, or on leashes. Men hold the lead. Women smile and flirt and tilt their heads, or they stare at their feet. Men bare their teeth and joke about "if you know any beautiful young Scorpio women, send them my way."

It's also aspirational, with people aspiring to be more and more submissive, give up more and more control, and not just in scene. And you're supposed to have one role with one person. You can switch, but that means you top person X and you bottom to person Y, not "yesterday I tied you to the bed and cut pretty designs into your chest, and tomorrow I think I want you to spank me."

Which of course reminded me of maymay's There is so little space for me:

The overwhelming feel of the event was decidedly…patriarchal. "This is a flirt-heavy zone," the greeter told us as we entered, and proceeded to inquire about Eileen's weekend. Maybe "flirt-heavy" is just the PC word for meat market now. Maybe that's too harsh, but there's no denying the implication that men would do the purusing and women would be the pursued. There's nothing wrong with that (putting my head in Eileen's lap at a party was how we got together—quite the forward thing for submissive male to do, many people would probably think), but the expectation is nauseating.

Even the men, the poor ignorant sods, are succumbing to the peer pressure. (Maybe that's because most of them are spineless bastards to begin with who are just aching to be told what to do. Oops, maybe that was too harsh again.) You see it in their ridiculous bait-and-switch routines where the submissive men pretend to be dominant only long enough to get the woman to bed with them. Then they turn around and get on their hands and knees and start talking about how pathetic they are. This is probably one of the very few times I'll actually agree with those men: they are pathetic, and I'm not only ashamed but enraged to be thought of as similar to them, not to mention just how many things are wrong with the very idea that this tactic might actually work out well for anyone.

I'm jealous of the submissive women for whom this kind of space must be an incredible cornucopia of sexual celebration. I bet they actually had a blast at the art show. At the same time, I'm sorry, for their sake, that this potentially wonderful environment is all but destroyed by utterly disrespectful men.

Now, I'm light-years from being experienced with the way things are in the "scene", as I'm pretty much a private player and always have been, but I've seen bits and pieces of this in a lot of the online conversations I've seen and the references people who actually do nonprivate play or interactions make. And I can't say I know how it used to be, any more than I can say I know how it is now.

If I make it out to the Flea this weekend, though, I'm going to look and see what I can spot.

How hard do folks here find it to find diversity in their kinked communities, or niche communities that are friendly to their particular things? For people who have been around the scene for a while, how has the diversity changed where you are? Has the community fractured into splinter subcommunities, have people gone more private in disproportionate fractions, is it the big town luxury of having kinksters one can afford to dislike? (Thinking of Trinity's comment on Little Light's small town queer folks post on Feministe, here.) And how can it be fixed?

E is for Eclectic: Why Female Gender Supremacy is Ignorant Crap, part 1 of 87

E is for Eclectic: Why Female Gender Supremacy is Ignorant Crap, part 1 of 87

An excellent post detailing why female supremacy (or any other gender supremacy in BDSM really) sucks hairy donkey gonads -- excuse me, licks the pristine vulva of a queen goddess -- er

really stinks:

I try to ignore it, believe me, but this shit is everywhere.

Why bother? Somebody has to. If the intelligent, thinking female doms and male submissives keep ignoring this crap and not addressing it head on, it will never get addressed. Everybody else is too busy laughing their asses off at such ridiculous statements, when they aren't in stitches or up in arms over male supremacy in Gor. Or when they aren't writing all female doms and male submissives off as fucking nutters.

....This is embarrassing, people. Embarrassing! It's like attending a University science school that has a small group of religious zealots preaching Creation Science with megaphones. Imagine them getting all the press attention, them pretending that of course, all of the University believed and preached Creation Science. Not only would I be mortified, but I'd eventually have to look up from my legitmate lab work and say something.

....Being a dominant woman or a submissive man is a sexual kink. You can make a sexual kink into a lifestyle, if you like, or you can keep it for sex play, but you are deluded if you try to make the whole rest of the fucking world fit your own sexual kink. Not to mention making yourself look very, very silly in the process.

"Ah, I'm kinky turned on by imagining submitting to a woman, therefore this is the One True Way and all men should be submitting to all women all the time." 'cause god knows, you couldn't be like specially perverted or something.

....What the fuck do my perversions have to do with the real world? I am now going to use my perversion to believe that the world is flat, the sun revolves around the Earth, that dinosaurs lived at the same time as mankind and that all women want to hurt men and all men want to be hurt 24/7.

Right on, E.

The bizarre thing to me is when people say "this is what women are and this is what men are, and that's that" and then claim "it's my belief":

Why is one person's point of view so unacceptable to others? If she believes in Female Supremacy - than so be it. There is a desire for men to openly submit to the leadership and decision-making prowess of women. I'm one man who is all for it.

Basic logic for those who slept through it in college (and I don't blame you if you did, it's boring shit. What I do blame you for is being unable to figure this out for yourself):

If you assert that all A's are B's, you're asserting that no A is not a B.

Thus if you assert that all men are submissive and all women dominant, you ALSO (it's magic how this works!) assert that

• No man is not submissive. (Which is broader than, but also includes, "no man is dominant.")
• No woman is not dominant. (Which is again broader than, but also includes, "no woman is submissive.)
  

If you assert that (or the related "Men should submit to women"), you're no longer making a statement about you yourself and what you like. You're being prescriptive. You're telling others how to live their lives, how to set up their relationships, and how to fuck.

There is no cute little backdoor by which you can escape saying you're for anyone living as she likes if your whole framework for looking at the world involves all men doing one thing and all women another.

[sarcasm] Though perhaps people this incapable of using their own reason do need to be governed for the sake of the health/sanity of the rest of us humans. [/sarcasm]

PLEASE EXCUSE ME FOR NOT VOLUNTEERING.

(and don't even get me started on the blazing heterocentrism of role-by-gender approaches. I guess, being bi, I have to co-own the harem of slaves in Femdom Utopia with another woman rather than owning her too, or something.)

Submissive Men and Radical Bullshit, er, Feminism

A couple of people had asked me what radfem theory has to say about submissive men. Well, hunting back through everyone's favorite piece of completely wrongheaded literature I found it! Here y'all go:

Some politically co-optive men have even claimed that their masochistic identification is "woman-identification" and that it is meant as evidence of sympathy with feminism -- which shows how abysmal is their understanding of women and feminism. But that any men should wish to experience what they think women experience -- this is old news, as old as Pentheus' curiosity (and is rooted, I think, in envy.) Men who see themselves as relatedly masochistic, "femme," feminine, etc. obviously are insulting the female (in person and in principle.) If they grovel to a male master they are mimicking (for fun) an experience all women in patriarchy are in some way or another forced to endure in reality. If they cower before a female 'dominatrix,' they are superficially reversing, and thereafter trivializing, real women's real oppression. The one act literally makes fun of the pain of our reality by ignoring our powerlessness; the other act mocks the reality of our pain by denying our powerlessness. Both are vicious, expectable, and for the purposes of our investigation, irrelevant. [i]

---

[i] Morgan, Robin. "The Politics Of Sado-Masochistic Fantasies." Against Sadomasochism: A Radical Feminist Analysis. Edited by Robin Ruth Linden, et al. (San Francisco: Frog in the Well, 1982), 117.

*huggles the irrelevant femmes* I still love you...

And honestly:

"You mock my pain!"

"Life is pain, Highness. Anyone who tells you otherwise is selling something."

Honestly that's SM in a nutshell to me, right there. LIFE HURTS. Might as well have fun with that rather than sit around blubbering about it. Orgasms > pissing and moaning.

What do we mean by feminist BDSM?

Is it...

A more egalitarian or 'ethical' approach to BDSM relationships and dynamics?

A resistance to much of the traditional, gendered protocol of BDSM spaces?

A refusal to accept that all expressions of BDSM are inherently degrading to women, and that feminism's cause and greater acceptance of BDSM as a valid, consensual choice are connected and entwined?

An understanding and acceptance that sexuality and desire, yes, even for the wimminz, simply can't be rationalised or policed?

The idea of steering relationships, within voluntary hierarchies, away from traditional gender roles?

For me, it's all of these things. The last thought, actually, is interesting. It seems to me that a lot of F/m relationship dynamics steer the m away from traditional notions of masculinity and male gender role.

Is it hard to believe that many M/f relationships do the same?

T has disciplined me into shrugging off a lot of 'femininity' baggage; traits, beliefs, judgements I have placed on myself according to what society, and to a small extent the BDSM community, has defined as 'feminine' or 'submissive'. Just as many female dominants enjoy educating and empowering male submissives into accepting and understanding that not all men want or need to be the hunter-gatherer, the 'alpha' male or sexually dominant, is it possible that a lot of male dominants might want to do the same with female submissives?

One thing I'm sure of: this dynamic, this acceptance and understanding that conforming to gender role in my development as a BDSM submissive was unnecessary actually led to my reclaiming 'feminist' as part of my identity and politics.