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.)

Gender Supremacists in BDSM: A Difficult Confession

I was just thinking of a comment of Verte's in another thread, wherein she mentioned asking people into male-supremacist BDSM "why they get off on it"

and I was thinking that it seems to me that they're not just getting off on the idea of a world following the dynamic they like, but interpreting the world AS secretly following that dynamic. And I don't know why that is, but my guess is insecurity. If you know something secret about women or men that they don't admit to, you don't have to feel like a pervert or an outcast or a nostalgic, reactionary person.

Why am I mentioning this? Because of an old, completely cringeworthy personal diary entry of mine from Feb 2001 (at the time -- though it should be obvious -- I thought I was straight. I was also trying to use "femdom" as a way of making myself more feminine. I'd always been more comfortable androgynous or masculine, but felt ashamed. When I discovered the Scene, being a feminine top seemed a good compromise and I tried to shoehorn myself into it for a while. Later I let go of that and realized that I didn't really want to be feminine, even in a dominant way.)

I realized something today: I never thought I saw things along gender lines, but I'm now realizing that I do. i just see things along backwards gender lines. :) I am beginning to think that maybe the reason I'm still a tad confused by Maledom/femsub relationships is that in some fundamental way i see things the opposite way. I always used to think I was totally egalitarian on this -- equality, M/f, F/m, But I am beginning to believe (to my own disquietude) that what I have is not only a preference but perhaps a paradigm. No, I don't wnat it to be one -- I want everything to be equal in my own eyes... but right now I think it's not.

I say this because I think of the Femdom as the ultimate in the ideal of a female -- a sort of goddess nature that I strive toward and can't help but believe other women strive for as well even though I know their quest for their inner divinity doesn't have to take that form. I say this because I see male bottoms the same way -- as a perfection, as this noble form that exemplifies what the male essence really is. I know it's not actually true, but it is what my instincts tell me: that all the male posturing, endless male jockeying to be at the top of the sexual totem pole, subjugation of women in the not-too-distant past, etc is all an illusion, built on fear of losing power and becoming what they truly are.

I don't like that I have this feeling -- I know it is not true, and everyone is everywhere along this spectrum. But I can't shake it, and that is what makes me find Maledom/femsub so odd. I can't imagine that any woman in her right mind would be submissive. Not that I think it's wrong in any way... just that it leaves me confused. I can imagine easily a woman submitting to another woman -- then she'd just be lower in the hierarchy than the other woman who Doms her. But I just can't picture why someone who has the inner force and actie spirit of Goddess would choose to give herself over to the sublime passivity that for me is the domain of the guys, I know our culture says the opposite, and I myself tried to fit into the "passive, feminine girl" mold -- and only felt natural when I let that go. But i am universalizing my experience here, and that's not good.

Why am I? I don't know. Rationally, rthere's no reason for it. Rationally, I see that many people see men the way I see women, and women the way i see men, and such views have limited both. But for some reason, my instincts tell me it just makes more sense one way than the other.

Yowie. Yuck. Ewww. Gah.

But re-reading it, I DO remember feeling that way. And I DO remember having no idea why, feeling that I was being unfair, etc.

Now that I think about it years later, having been exposed to tons of different BDSM dynamics and people, being comfortable with my bisexuality, having played with women, dated a woman, etc...

...I really think that came from insecurity on my part. I was a very new top, and very young (21, at the time) and overwhelmed with new feelings. I was frightened because I knew that society in general thought I should submit to men. And in the dungeon I was seeing men let down a facade of dominance and become comfortable and open in a way I often didn't see from men with macho walls up.

So I suppose it was easy for me to look at men who were behaving nastily or who seemed insecurely macho and grin knowingly and think "I know what you REALLY are..." (and of course, that meant that what had been a threatening or uncomfortable interaction with a sexist fool could become a sexual fantasy about what might happen when he let that facade down... ;)

Applying this to male tops, I can easily imagine similar faulty reasoning on their part too. Silly as it looks to most feminists, there are a lot of men out there who feel insecure because feminism has shaken up what's expected of them. Witness how incredibly incensed men can get about minor points of etiquette, like whether or not women want doors held open for us any more, and how rude or disorienting this is for some men.

As silly as I find all that stuff, it's not hard for me to think myself into the place of a man like that and think that, perhaps, believing in some secret kernel of submission in all women could make him feel just a little less threatened and bewildered. If he's not secure enough to let go of that thinking... well, that's where some of the pushy insistence that all women submit (or should) could come from.

As far as the submissive people who are into gender supremacy, that one I can't wrap my head around as easily because I'm not submissive. But I suppose it could be similar. A straight man comes to terms with the fact that he yearns to be a woman's slave, but still feels emasculated among his straight male peers -- and BAM! secret truth: Women are Superior Goddesses and patriarchy is bitter fear of The Real Reality. A straight woman finally manages to escape the pressure of what she deems a "feminist" life path/demand set, and BAM! "we're all unhappy with 'the feminist new order', deep inside..."

I don't know. I'm embarrassed at that old post of mine. But I do remember thinking it. And I remember the thought that most straight men were liars, that they secretly yearned to be mine, under it all... it was an exhilarating thought.

Remembering it, I'm not surprised that some immature people would be stuck there.

Gendered supremacies and consent

There was a documentary on recently in the UK called Obedient Wives, a glimpse into the lives of women who have chosen to submit to their husbands and experienced greater happiness from this change in their behaviour. I was pretty cynical when I read the brief, and the review that warned against watching it if one happened to suffer from blood pressure problems. Days before the program even aired, we were arguing about the concept of gendered supremacies on a UK BDSM forum, and it became clear that a belief that one gender is inherently more dominant than the other, or should be, made a few of us quite uncomfortable - unsurprisingly, all the 'discomforted' women identify as feminist. Interestingly, I've seen far more male sub profiles seeking a 'female supremacy' model for relationships, an unshatterable belief that women are inherently superior to men, than I’ve seen it the other way around.

Outside the BDSM community, but often closely connected are the Goreans, whose relationships tend towards Master/slave. The Gor subculture is alive and well and is a popular fantasy even for liberal women in the BDSM community, even though we may still ridicule the texts themselves and to a smaller degree, the idea that people would choose to live their lives by the dodgy philosophies of a series of obviously misogynist fantasy novels. I have rarely come across real misogyny on the fetish scene. Sexism, yes. Bigtime. From both sides. But misogyny? No. But I
do wonder whether a belief in gender supremacy, whether it is a genuine belief or a fantasy scenario, encourages thisbehaviour in Goreans, and therefore affects the way male Goreans address and treat women outside Gor who haven't chosen to live a Gorean lifestyle. T (my boyfriend and, yes, dominant) has been flogging his BDSM wares on Second Life, and stumbled across a flourishing Gorean community. As his alterego is female on the site, he experienced some amazing woman-hating comments and was quite shocked by the way he was treated because of his SL gender.

How do we, as feminists, respond to these lifestyles? If a woman's made an informed choice about the way she wants to live her life, how can we disagree with that choice? Indeed, Laura Doyle, author of The Surrendered Wife, is apparently a self-confessed feminist, and speaks of wanting to offer women as many choices as possible. And it was this revelation that perhaps helped me understand why feminist anti-BDSMers tend to misunderstand hetero D/s, or forbid feminist subs, particularly, usage of their hallowed word. To them, there is no differentiation between the Surrendered Wife and the BDSM sub. As long as there is a hierarchical relationship structure, it’s all much the same thing. Yet at the same time, I feel the problem with a lot of these belief systems is that they are so strong and rigid to live by that it is easy to impose them upon people who do not choose to abide by, for example, Gorean rules. I keep a profile on a crap BDSM personals site purely for the comedy messages sent out. I'm quite fascinated by the way men trawl women online, and find it has a tendency to make some ‘dominant’ men act with all this big bravado, approaching women in ways I’m pretty damn certain they wouldn’t down their local pub. Oh, and there’s usually a big veiny cock shot attached. Seductive. Sometimes a daily dose of sexism is reassuring. I just like to check that it's alive and well from time to time, you see, and that feminism is still worth my time. Yesterday I got a message from some uber-dom who wanted someone he could "humiliate, degrade and objectify to fulfill herself as a woman". Because that's what women, to his mind, are for. To be humiliated, degraded and objectified. The thing is, no matter how angry this makes me, no matter how violated I feel by this idea, I can imagine people defending this in the BDSM community; that many women DO want this, many women DO fantasise about this. And of course they're right. And perhaps for that man, even for Goreans, the whole idea of women as a gender as subordinate, and involving punishment and force to subordinate them is more of a fantasy than I imagine. Though many Goreans claim to live their entire lives by the 'philosophies' of John Norman, is the whole thing just a merry bit of escapism? For both genders? As long as a female slave has at some point consented to the relationship, there are no more questions to be asked as to her treatment and the way she must modify her behaviour so as to be consistent with Gor.

On Gorean Whispers, I found the following passage written by what is known as a free woman. I
understand that a slave conducts herself differently to a free woman, but don't see many fundamental differences:

One of the greatest things I have struggled with, is showing certain men respect. It has taken me a long time to even begin to master that. I see some men as weak, and struggle to show them the respect entitled to them by virtue of their sex. Yet, I try hard to give them the general courtesies expected from a Gorean Free Woman.

This includes my daughters school principal. He is an arrogant man, who is often cruel in his dealings with the children. As a mother, and a woman, it is hard for me to show this man respect. I have learnt however that respect is different for each given individual. I can respect that he has accomplished a lot in his career, achieving his placing in the school as Principal.

Okay, so here is my problem with gendered supremacy. To put men, in general, above women here seems to come at the expense of the daughter who I assume is not yet a fully fledged Gorean, although the writer takes pleasure in her daughter’s budding femininity and desire to serve. I do not understand why she would bother to seek out good points in men who are cruel to children in order to 'respect' the fact that they happen to have the same genitalia as her partner/father/John Norman. In the Obedient Wives documentary, I think the moment that really did creep me out was the scene where the mother was teaching her toddler daughter to be a surrendered wife.

The other things that scares me about a number of these concepts – the Surrendered Wife, Gor, even the bizarre Christian Domesic Discipline - regarding sex, there is one quite simple message: no means yes. Or rather, even if a woman does not want sex, she will say yes. Is this the final compromise? Is this a backlash against the 1991 law in the UK (rejected by the Lords more than once) to make rape within marriage illegal and prosecutable? Is it rape? I've still heard similar things from within the BDSM community on the issue of 'consensual non-consent': consenting to a scene in which there is no safe word. You trust your partner to the extent that you don't need one. But can a female dominant carry out a similar scenario with a male sub if she's planning to penetrate him? Can no mean yes in the same way? Do women actually get away with not seeking consent more? T’s best friend, who’s quite submissive around women and is certainly slightly terrified of me was pretty much coerced and harassed into sex when very drunk and stoned. And it happened in our living room. I was absolutely horrified.

There is also the issue of beating one’s wife as part of a marriage. Obviously, many subs are masochists. I’m a masochist. I really love the sensation of pain. I get bored in vanilla relationships if I’m not going to get pain alongside sexual pleasure. It’s just a more intensely erotic sexual experience for me that way, being pushed and pulled one way, then the other, veering towards pleasure, into pain, through pain to a strange alchemic pleasure, and then back down to earth. Yet, in marriages where male supremacy counts, religious marriages, particularly, do women gain pleasure from this experience? More importantly, do their husbands? Where does religious law come into this? In the Qu’ran there is much discussion over what is meant by the permission given to hit one’s wife after admonishment, and banishment to a separate bedroom, if she still does not obey or entirely comply with her husband. Christian Domestic Discipline, on the other hand, offers a safe and consensual model of DD on the front page, but I can’t find the word ‘consent’ anywhere else on the site. But what happens if these wives enjoy being spanked as punishment? Does the relationship then slide into the dirty, immoral world of BDSM? It’s confusing.

The truth is, there are so many different models of D/s, it is impossible to stereotype and say ‘well, D/s ISN’T like that philosophy' and remove ourselves from it. Because female subs sometimes have certain things in common with Surrendered Wives and Gorean slaves and free women. The difference is, at least for me, I enjoy every aspect of a BDSM sexual relationship, and we have taken tiny bits of D/s lifestyle philosophy and made it our own. We are queering D/s our way, in a way that feels right and is productive for both of us. But nowhere in this, nowhere in our dominance and submission, does gender really matter. Apart from the fact that pairings, triads, whatever, will often have different genitalia, I’m quite confused by the idea of polarising gender in BDSM. I’m not sure quite what it might add to a relationship. What does it bring to either party? What does it achieve?

So many questions.