Ooh, how did I miss this?

La Phalene muses on kink and gender:

There’s a lot in this kink business to make the feminist in me froth at the mouth. And no, I’m not talking about the images of pretty girls tied up, or the way that rape is dressed up as a perfect fantasy or that rad-fem line about how many sex acts are degrading to women. Rather it’s things like the two opposing camps, the female supremacists and the people who announce women are inherently submissive, and little things about how gender in constructed in the scene and in the archetypes. This is not a different world than vanilla, it’s all the baggage of the rest of my life seen through a somewhat tasteless spooky-goth lense that dresses people up in shiny black and involves a lot of smacking.

....Both sides of the gender superiority thing construct a very narrow definition of womanhood. For a subculture where having breasts is no proof of your genetic gender, people are pretty quick to either thrust me up onto a pedestal for qualities I might not possess or put me down as a sheep in need of a firm hand. This can be pretty awkward in either respect because it’s a narrow box to shove slightly more than half the human population into.

Classically the people who believe in gynarchy say it’s because women are warm, empathetic and emotionally intelligent, bringing wisdom that will end wars. Men who say women are submissive point to their classic social position and need for protection, talking about evolutionary biology or theology, or maybe gorean psychology. They generally phrase things in terms of a yin/yang, with female deference not as an explicit proof of male superiority but part of the natural order of things, like plug into socket.

I’m a young woman, who sort of conforms to the physical proportions desired of women in my era, fresh faced, vivacious and vicious in my interests. If you talk to vanilla people, the image ‘dominatrix’ is the closest to what I am, though not a label I embrace personally, and this symbol is what people perceive about kink. I’m bossy, aggressive and I like violence. According to the gynarchists, either I fail as a woman because I raid from the masculine side of things or my superiority is so unsupported as to be a point of religious faith. According to the man-as-patriarch, this is the flapping around of an unsatisfied woman who needs a Real Man ™ or I’m a unicorn who can be satisfied with a nice fluffy ‘female’ man. Both sides are very quick to write from the perspective of how females fit into this, either above or below. I really would like to see some f-sub writing on the perspective of gender-as-orientation, because while it seems like men write in generalizations (as do the female tops who believe their own hype enough to call their gender the best) the f-subs are all writing about personal service and the closest I’ve seen to them talking about belonging at the feet of men in general is waxing poetic about service making them feel fulfilled.

So where do I, the visual spokesperson for my kink, fit into all of this? I want a master like I want another hole in my head, but I don’t want to top someone because they believe in extreme sexual dimorphism, I want it to be submission gently coaxed (or brutally conquered) because of who I personally am, with mutual respect. And not the yin/yang separate but equal role bullshit, either. Subs aren’t subbing because this is mystical; it’s a fetish where, unlike the people who love inanimate objects, luckily the object of my desire can love me back. They might be the bolt to my nut, but to work we’ll both need to be made of the same material and my perfect opposite would probably find me dreadfully tedious and overbearing. They might get off on that, but being healthy we’d end up compromising.

Love it, but even the "bolt to my nut" phrasing is too stereotypically gendered for me. *wink*

And I also still scratch my head at the dissing of femme men, too. Not sure what that's about.

But in general: Yes. Just yes.

I actually can't edit the link list here...

...but here's a useful link.

Orlando C is collating results from studies of BDSM and has posted them here:

www.kinkresearch.blogspot.com

Personally I'd like to, if at all possible, see links to the studies themselves, but this collation is great. From my admittedly not-thorough perusal, it looks like many of the results he cites are from the book Sadomasochism: Powerful Pleasures, which collected studies and articles about BDSM (and which if I recall right was originally a special issue of a particular journal, but I may be misremembering that.)

Guest Post #2: Stoicism by cereus_sphinx

This was a recent post on cereus_sphinx's livejournal. I asked for permission to crosspost it here, so here it is:

###

OK : Warning this is going to be a really rough draft. But I've been thinking about this for years and I'm finally getting to the point where I can sorta-write about it. I know - I come up with big Ideas, but it can take months/years to say them - it makes for sucky conversation. And the latest post on SM-F triggered this. Because I see one attitude in rape and the other in BDSM I guess.

One of the things that bugs me is the way stoicism gets put up on some pedestal and masochism gets dragged through the dirt.

Stoicism - going into a bad situation DESPITE the fact that you hate it for the benefit of others.

Masochism: going into a bad, dangerous, scary, difficult situation BECAUSE it's something you can enjoy or get something out of that might benefit other people.

It seems that the first one makes you a hero, the second one makes you a creep.

I can't afford to be stoic, it's like my mortal enemy. I see myself stuck in a bad situation that I don't want to be in, frozen because I should just be self sacrificing and put up with it. Going Numb. I see myself turning away from enjoyable things (that others might even appreciate me doing) because I might enjoy them and that would be sick.

Or dancing through flames, unharmed. A plant rooted in bare rock, my face turned towards the unmitigated sun, the monsoon deluge.

(Or in Dune, transforming the Water from poison into the stuff of visions ;) )

Numbness and pain, or joy.

My experience with SM and Hypersensitivity/Aspergers actually are mutually beneficial because they both show how to enjoy myself even if it means doing something different than other people find enjoyable. I can put a soft limit on sustained social interaction and noisy places (and cold :( ). I can fully enjoy 100+ temperatures. My body can perform miracles, It Comes First. No matter if what it wants is not what it's supposed to.

Sex, Intimacy, Connection, and Critique

Roy Kay has an interesting post up at his LJ on the "radical feminists vs. BDSMers" dustups that happen now and again in blogland:

There is an additional obliviousness about one of the chiasmic differences among BDSM communities – whether or not sex in properly even involved in BDSM. Yes, there are a lot of BDSM practitioners who really and truly fuck – and have sex in myriad other ways. However, there is a contingent which absolutely insists that sex is a frivolous distraction from the True Deep Relationship formed in pain, submission and other elements.

I personally don’t concur with this view. I mean, I AM one of those hyper-frivolous sluts that would take a pass on the whole deal if it didn’t get me and my partners’ orgasms, preferably many of them, on the road from interest through excitement to exhaustion. But the truth is that some people are quite the opposite, and that BDSM is wholly NOT about the sex – it’s about the emotional connection. Somehow this is another aspect they prefer to be oblivious too. Maybe it’s because its too close to the emotional connection they feel in keening against those outside the RadFem community.

I commented to him there with this:

I'm not entirely sure this would actually be convincing to them, though. I think they're concerned about the whole idea of valorizing power relations, and so I think they might respond that whether or not power play causes orgasm is not the point.

I don't think "She's my slave, but I don't fuck her" would get anything like a "Oh, well, that's different then" from these folks.

To further expound, I do think that one part of what worries them is "orgasm as a powerful reinforcer," which you see in a lot of anti-pornography feminism as well. On such a view, coming to something means associating that something with a flood of happy brain chemistry, and this is uniquely suited to making you want more of the something, sometimes against your own better judgment. (I think here of some comments in the anti-pornography documentary The Price of Pleasure, wherein a guy who uses porn describes how he has orgasms to porn, but feels dirty and ashamed and sullied after doing so.)

So if you have nonsexual D/s, you remove The Pavlovian Pitfall -- so Roy has a point; what about when that's gone? Doesn't that invite the possibility that it's not merely swoony infusions of serotonin that keep some people desiring to serve and valuing serving?

I think that's a good point, but I think we need to say more. The obvious question that comes next is "what does it mean to value serving?"

And the thing is, as I've said many times, I don't think kinky people should be required to justify our desires. But I do think "radical feminists" of this stripe will want to know what people get out of service. (And will probably dislike some answers to this question. Then again, so do I, and I'm an unrepentant pervert and dominant to boot.)

The thing is, though, that instead of this meaning "All you subbies have your assignment, dears: prove that what you get out of service is worthwhile and the meanie radfems might leave you alone. You just haven't examined enough!" I think this means something else.

I think the burden of proof is on the anti-BDSM folks. To them I say:

You already have our stories written down for you. You've had them since the publishing of Coming to Power, even all neatly wrapped up in feminist contexts. It's you who are not defending yourselves. All you can say when we say "Prove that our stories are meaningless in a feminist context" is some vague, lukewarm old politics you haven't heated enough on your stoves. It's cold and it's old and there might be some mold. Why are "trends, not anecdata" so popular with you, when you don't explain these "trends" with reference to anything like scientific studies?

The few times I have brought up data from studies -- usually the ones in Powerful Pleasures -- they haven't gotten any comments at all, not even very obvious criticisms of methodology! Hell, usually I'm the one saying "Here's the data, though of course this and this don't quite tell us what the researchers wanted, because of that..." What is up with that, exactly?

Really, if you want to be taken seriously as speaking in some Objective, Observing Voice, unlike the partisan people who are swayed by, uh, doing something because they like it, you need far better methods of data collection and collation.

More Linkage: Ren says "prove it"...

...about the claim that there'd be no BDSM in Utopia:

Grumble. Okay, so, some interesting stuff going on here over at Trinity’s: The Have You Examined Baseball Bat Effect and the bullshit and rage it inspires, the Patriarchal Influence Pie Flinging fest and how annoying that shit gets, blah blah blah, the story that never fucking ends, some people are just so much more enlightened, and IN A POST PATRIARCHAL WORLD THERE would be NO BDSM or other such “unsavory” sexual activities…

To which I say: PROVE IT.

How is there any way, whatsoever, to prove that in any sort of society, or future, whether or not desires to dominate or submit, be aggressive or passive, take power or relinquish power, would simply disappear?

So many fucking people like to write off things like aggression, power seeking, or want to dominate as “male” things, but I do not buy that shit for a second. I think those are human things, human desires, with no real specific gender, and no matter what sort of world we live in, there will always be people who want, like and get off on those things –regardless of what is between their legs.

I do recall, many years ago, in an Ethics class, I proclaimed quite loudly that I never believed there would be peace on earth. I was rewarded with shocked and stunned looks by a roomful of silver spoon hippies who had never worked a day in their lives, and of course, they all wanted to know why! My response…well, because there will always be someone like me, who will want what you have, and be willing to try and take it, and there will always be people like your parents, who have things, and will do what is needed to keep people like me from taking them.

Grim? Yes. True? Also yes.

I think that we can chalk up more to a human desire to thrive and prosper, and good old envy and shit like that, rather than “patriarchy”.

And I have to ask, in this mysterious future where everyone is all happy happy joy joy equal love woohaa…

Is everyone equal in all ways? I mean, I’m non-neurotypical. As in, well, I am just fucking wired differently. Aggressive. Anti-social. High strung. Don’t sleep much. Truth is, I do like hurting people in sex, and being hurt in return. A lot of that probably has to do with that aggressive, anti-social thing I have going on. Yeah, I do it with consenting people, but yeah, there it is. Sooo, do people like me, or any of the other countless non-neurotpical people out there, exist in future perfect land? Are there no bi-polar, or OCD, or schizophrenic, or psychotic, or depressed, or any other type of non-neurotypical people out there? Or how about those folk with physical issues which make alternative forms of sex sort of the only sort of forms of sex that work for them?

Or do we not just exist in that perfect future and all? Somehow, we’ve all been…dealt with.

Do tell, I’m curious. How does one think they can eliminate HUMAN desires like control, aggression, submission, dominance, pain, and things of that nature.

How do you plan to so utterly rewire humanity like that?

What, dare I ask, is the plan?

Examination Burnout

A post by Kiya on this "examination" meme, so wonderful that I reproduce it in its entirety:

I was reminded of something by this post, and it's stuff I've mostly found too raw to post about, but I feel like writing a bit now while it's in my head.

I've written before about "Just Say No" culture and sexuality. What I haven't talked about was the way denial-and-examination culture intersected with my inner kinks.

When I was an elementary school child, I started building an understanding of my sexuality as it was at the time. I had very separated experiences of physical sexual pleasure and romantic attraction - it had not occurred to me that these were related - but I explored both as best I could. I was aware that my experience of romantic attraction was somehow related to "grownup things" like marriage and families, but I recognised (consciously, even) that that was something I would figure out when I was older; for now, there was the boy, and I could beat him at wrestling.

Once my fantasy life had developed into fiction rather than fascination with the boy, and once I had grown enough of it for my sense of physical pleasure to get tied into my sense of attraction, they took on a structure of extreme power differential, often with bondage aspects. I was never ashamed of these fantasies, or, as I thought of them, the stories I told myself when going to sleep; however, I knew, bone-deep, that I could never talk about them.

I never have.

(Think about that for a moment. I have never talked about those fantasies in more than generalised referents, themes and content.)

I knew that if I told anyone about them, they would try to figure out what was wrong with me. I didn't know words like "misogyny", but I knew that I'd have the concept thrown at me. I knew that I'd be treated as sick and wrong, because Good People don't have thoughts like that. I knew that I would never, ever be able to express these things; at least on that last I was wrong.

And as I became aware that these things were things I should not express, I became aware of the idea of examination. I had an obligation, I knew, to figure out where these things had come from, that they could be excised. I was a sleeper agent of the oppressor, my sexuality out to subvert everything that women could achieve, and I had to cure myself. There was no support for this - it was still unspeakable horror - but it was clear that the wrongness was something that I would be expected to purge before I was an adult.

Guilt started to creep in around the edges. The fantasies became even more secret, because there was this edge of belief that I should not be that way, that I should be someone else, someone more loyal, more diligent, more compatible with the universal goals that I had been assigned on the basis of my sex, class, and race. I squelched the impulses in my more conscious mind, leaving them only the release of the nighttime stories, giving me dreams of the taboo-breaking man who might love and own and honor me despite the shackles of surrounding culture.

I was an emotionally isolated young adolescent, full of need and loneliness and hunger and wanting to explore the concepts of sex and not knowing how. Nothing in the world around me had ever given me any understanding for figuring out what I wanted or how to implement that safely; I was still half-consciously aware that what I wanted was Bad anyway, so figuring out how to get it was unthinkable.

It didn't go away, of course. And sometimes these things come out in badly sublimated ways. Hook a loop of fear-paralysation into a mind frantically denying its need to surrender, bait a touch-starved, curious adolescent with affection from a pretty older boy, and watch a psyche fragment into a perfect rape victim and a panicked, impotent observer. Respectful and loving submission was unavailable, unthinkable, unallowable, so all I had was deer-in-the-headlights capitulation, where my sexual drives and my terror and his unceasing pressure conspired to shove me into a closet in my head.

And maybe, with a little more examination, I might guess that this is one of the real reasons that I have never really been able to forgive myself. Because, after all, if I didn't have those wicked, shameful desires, then maybe the combination of mental lockup and pressure wouldn't have been enough to get my psyche fridged. It can't really be his damn fault, right? He just happened to luck into that siren song of unacceptable woman-hating sexuality. And I can't hold it against him, because he stopped short of rape in the end, when he saw that I was broken. (I can't even write 'that he'd broken me' and feel honest, right now.)

This was not ... the only time I fell into that pattern, though it was the only time it was assault. I had an abusive vanilla relationship that hit my submission buttons around music until I hit a wall and threw him out of my life. I had a relationship with someone who was deeply uncomfortable with my submission, and so like a good little subbie and a good little woman I stifled it again to make him happy. I had other issues. And I worked on it until I came to a place where I could return to childhood and refuse to be ashamed.

Where does it come from? I don't give a damn. And not giving a damn is not just a political position about the unworthiness of the question, but me fighting back against the investigation of myself for which fruit of Original Sin was why I deserved to be nearly raped before menarche.

If the message had been that I needed to figure out how to deal with these desires in a sane, reasonable, and balanced manner, if it had included discussion of consent and how to set boundaries, if it had been anything other than "WHY ARE YOU LIKE THIS?! WHY ARE YOU A FREAK?!", maybe things would have been different.

Why am I like this? If my established answer isn't good enough, fuck off. Why am I a freak? Welcome to the edge of the map. The Antipodes, where men walk upside down.

"So humanly, humanly..."

Renegade Evolution, weighing in on the current blogthrash:

As the latest bit of the BDSM wars seem to wind down to the inevitable stand off, as they always do, and I continue to try to pick through the rubble seeing if anything even remotely useful or educational or insightful has come about from this latest skirmish there is one thing I’ve really noted this time.

Sure, I’ve seen it before, I am sure I will see it again, but it is really, really standing out this time. That thing? The outcry- sometimes made with reason, sometimes with an attempt to appeal to empathy, sometimes made with resounding rage- on the part of BDSM participants to be seen as…

Human.

Not deluded, not programmed, not victims, or trapped, or insane or stupid, not pathetic, not wicked, not weak, but human.

Like everyone else.

And you know what? Humans? All of us? We’re flawed creatures. Every last one of us. Kinky people are no more or no less flawed than any other human being walking the face of the earth. They are no less imperfect. What they do in the bedroom does not make them any more (or any less) broken or messed up or duped than any other person out there. They are humans, like everyone else, flaws and all, and what they want, what they demand, and what they deserve is to be treated as such.

How hard is that to grasp? That kinky people merely want the same consideration and treatment that is accorded to other people? Flaws and all? Their sex lives make them no more or less so. But it is due to their sex lives they are so often treated subhuman, lesser than, as if they are alien or other…and of course, far more flawed.

....We all have our issues and less than charming quirks and battle scars and bullshit. Each and every one of us. We are all humans- but damn, we are all very, very different. And I do not understand why that is such a hard thing to recognize, to realize, to accept as perhaps the one actual universal truth out there- and thus, we are all going to like or be into different things. And whatever those things might be? Well, there is no guarantee, no promise, that the reasons we are into whatever has anything to do with being flawed, or whatever flaws we have. There is no way to say, without doubt or question, that the reason a person is (or is not) kinky is because…woo, they are messed up!

And even if it is- that is no reason to treat them in some way less human than thou. There is no promise that those kinky people are any less intelligent, self-aware, self-realized, thoughtful, stable, or anything else than thou. And the vibe that gets sent out that somehow, because they are kinky, they are? That crap needs to stop, it is infuriating, it is dehumanizing, and further more, it is entirely possible it is bullshit. Pure and simple. There is no promise of any of those things, and further more, no reason.

There is also no reason that I can see for such a need for all of us to be the same. That, a world where we are all the same, uniform in thought and desire and whatnot? Fuck, if that does not sound like a horrible, dreary, boring place to me. It sounds like a nightmare worse than any one I’ve ever actually had. Short version- I find it incredibly, bone chillingly terrifying. That idea is so alien, so horrible to me that I get queasy just thinking about it- and all that goes with it. It creeps me out, and I am pretty dang creepy. That’s saying something. I would rather have us all being here, our flawed, diverse selves, than be in a world where everyone and everything are the same.

But I would like us all be able to see each other as humans, worthy of basic human respect, and all marked by flaws and differences and strengths and what have you, and see a bit…okay…a lot more tolerance of those sorts of things. I’d never force someone to be kinky against their will, suggest they need some sort of reeducation or whatever to make them how I am, make them like the things I like…I don’t understand why other people think doing the reverse is such a grand idea. Or, that it is even something that is wanted or needed. I by nature am real uncomfortable of doing things for other peoples own good, the whole I am my brothers (or sisters) keeper thing… eww, just, eww. And you know, it is not as if myself, or other kinky people, have not examined, do not examine, are incapable of examining because we’re blinded by our selfish, selfish orgasms or whatever…we have in fact done those things. And we’ve come to our own conclusions. Those conclusions make us no less human.

Thanks, Ren.

Minute of Perfection: Fight Club and Submission

Another excellent link on the recent SM and feminism debates

Minute of Perfection: Fight Club and Submission

Before I went to college, I considered myself a feminist and I was pretty passionate about it. I thought feminism was about how to fix the wage differential, overcoming the glass ceiling, helping women get out of abusive situations, and raising social consciousness about the way our culture is oppressive to women. In college, I learned that it was really about replacing a patriarchal definition of my body and sexuality with the feminist one. Oh, and that the huge majority of my sexual interests were really just reinforcing the patriarchy. I had to start talking seriously about whether or not all heterosexual sex was rape and whether or not I should be a lesbian as a matter of political/social obligation. Also, I wasn't devoting the majority of my freetime to feminist activism, so I wasn't doing enough and was really complicit with the patriarchy.

It all became too much when I had to start listening to professors and others who obviously had never tried being in a full-time BDSM relationship, or maybe anything beyond looking at a few websites and being horrified, about what my sexual interests really meant in relation to the patriarchy. Well, fuck that.

At the same time, I felt very much like me backing away from feminism and being unable to give up the joy that many aspects of BDSM give me was a symptom of moral and personal weakness. If I just wasn't so selfish, or so sexually oriented, etc. then I wouldn't need this. I still felt like there was something deeply wrong with our society and the way patriarchy limits choices for everyone. It reinforced me feeling like a whore, or a slut, etc. except these terms now became synonymous for "tool of the patriarchy" for me. As much as some might talk about rape, or victimization, or whatever, I wasn't being raped. I enjoyed all these sex acts that were obviously horrible and evil, loved them to the core of my being, so I must be evil, as complicit in the patriarchy as those who would oppress me. I began to feel like learning to accept patriarchy and anti-feminism was the only way to be happy and I felt very confused.

....I thought of all the things I'd done for my Master. How happily I'd done them. Without shame in the moment, so proud I'd overcome all difficulties and obeyed. Still, there's a swelling of pride knowing that he thinks that I've been a very good girl. Those moments of trust, laying open before him, cradled in his arms like a child ... supplicating for his guidance, suffering for him as a sacrifice for my devotion. So happy and full of love and pure, unadultered joy. In those moments, though, it doesn't take long for the self-hatred to follow. What sort of creature am I that nothing would make me more happy than obliterating my will and my desires, my physical comfort and selfishness, completely in another? Is someone who wants to consent to giving up ownership and control of themselves really even human? If so, then I'm totally fine with not being human, don't want to be. But ... My mother's voice, asking "Where did I go wrong? How could you want these things?" A 'friend' saying, "Independent thought is the foundation of what makes you human, the responsibility of being human." A blog going on about the invisibility of "almost rape" ... but I sort of like the feeling of being "almost" raped, of feeling like it's beyond my control completely with someone I love. Not wanting to, and being taken, of feeling my self and my will stretched out and pliant before him. His voice telling me how beautiful I am, the pleasure and steel in his eyes and he pounds into me, over and over. Feeling myself give over to him completely in those moments and loving it. Feeling so affirmed, so happy. But ... what does that mean about me, that my greatest act of happiness and affirmation is submitting completely to another? A male other, no less, as a female. In a patriarchal society.

Letters from Gehenna: The World on a Slant: The Shareef Don't Like It

Kiya from Letters From Gehenna has collected an amazing compendium of links related to the latest dust-up in the feminist blogiverse.

Letters from Gehenna: The World on a Slant: The Shareef Don't Like It

I'd comment myself, but it's time I should be making sleeps, and I'm not sure there's much more to say, really. A lot of the people in these conversations are just absolutely rock-bottom certain that BDSM is inherently abusive and no one truly consents to it.

In the face of such faith, brilliant enough to blind some very intelligent eyes, what is there to say? I'll continue to tell my story; maybe some, eventually, will listen, and not run through the same set of grooves in her head.

Link: The Fetish Industry and Feminism

There is currently a discussion going on over in LiveJournal's community "feminist" about BDSM and feminism, particularly focusing on women working in the fetish industry. I thought you all might want the heads up.

If any of you are part of that community (I left ages ago, myself), you might want to point some of the people who are clueless that there ever have been feminist criticisms of BDSM over here... *hint hint*

:)

ETA: I particularly like this comment:

Marginalizing anything having to do with desire and with sexual relations is unfortunately, very common. Desire and arousal are complicated and very, very unconscious. It can all be deconstructed until the cows come home, but I think the people who need to deconstruct it are those who engage in it. It is dangerous for someone who desires one thing to tell someone who desires another that they are >>wrong<< and that it excludes them from a group as varied as feminists. The ONLY time this is at all o.k. is when it somehow trespasses on another's life without consent.

I actually disagree that "the only time this is OK" is trespassing. I do think that sometimes we can tell when close friends or lovers are getting into something that isn't good for them. If I noticed a good pal falling head over heels for a pushy, abusive ass of a "dom", you'd better believe I'd tell her I think she's making a mistake. But that's not because her desires make her unfeminist, that's because sometimes NRE makes smitten people do stupid shit. Or because some people really do have unrealistic outlooks about which of their fantasies they can really fulfill (Absolute, never-waning-ever, negotiated-once-and-that's-it TPE? Come ON.) that land them, as individual people with specific, individual lives, in unhappy messes. And I do think we can tell friends they're wrong, if they don't see it themselves.

But, well, that's got to do with friendship. It's not got shit to do with feminism, or gender, or social norms, or cultural expectations. Tell your friends they're making mistakes when you're in a situation to know this. Don't say anything in the name of feminist "theory" to anyone else.

Sex, Lies, Transmisogyny, and the Heteronormativity of BDSM, pt. 2

Sex, Lies, Transmisogyny, and the Heteronormativity of BDSM, pt. 2

Part 2 of Lisa being amazing. On BDSM:

Her implication is that being a sub, being a slave, being a bottom, whatever you want to call it, is completely passive. That basically, all you do is lay there while your top whips you, drips hot candle wax on you, ties you up in restraints, and so on. The top gives and the bottom receives. That the dynamic goes exactly one way. That the top has power and the bottom does not. That the dynamic is identical to the stereotypical heterosexual missionary sex act where the man plunges in and the woman just lays there and takes it. Healthy BDSM relationships just don’t work that way. They have to be highly interactive, with communication and power going both ways. The top has the power to do whatever she wants within the bottom’s boundaries, and the bottom has the power to stop it at any time. Trust is the primary facet of a strong relationship between a top and a bottom, and Ms. Croson does not even acknowledge this. She can’t afford to, since she wants her readers to view BDSM as abusive heterosexual practices taken to an extreme. The top as an angry, controlling wifebeater, the bottom as a submissive victim who can’t even bring herself to leave her abuser.

This is echoed in the beliefs, when inclusion of BDSM practitioners at MWMF was being debated, and some women believed that allowing them on the land would give the subs a chance to escape these obviously abusive relationships. Some suggested setting up workshops to help them get away - of course, none wanted to get away because they love their kinks and have too strong a sense of themselves to allow others to talk them out of it.

On transgender:

She repeats the same arguments about transgender as she does about BDSM - which is expected, because she wants both equated as the same kinds of “wrong things” in feminist eyes. She again asserts that “where identity springs from is never examined.” What she really means is “Whenever trans people explain their identities, their sense of self, and why they transition, we ignore them and impose our narratives upon their lives. Those invented narratives never examine where identity springs from.” As I mention before, if you differ from the expected norm, you’re almost forced to examine it. I spent years when most kids think about G.I. Joe or Barbies trying to deconstruct what the hell “being a girl” meant vs. “being a boy.” I tried to see myself as a person with both a male and female spirit before I was eight years old. I tried to examine the possibilities that I was just a transvestite, or gay. I questioned constantly how I could know I was a girl when my body said I was a boy. I examined my identity, my sense of self, every way I could think of. I tried to suppress the idea entirely. I never really got to the bottom of it all, but I searched every nook, cranny, and crevice I could find that might give me some hint. I just don’t see how you can grow up with the sense of being one gender, your body being the other sex, and dealing with the messages society sends boys and girls while trying to sort them all out without some serious examinations of what’s going on.

Her argument seems to imply that trans people decide one day that we want to transition, that we’d be more comfortable as the other sex, or life would be easier because we can’t handle being gay - this isn’t much of a stretch, because other articles on Questioning Transgender explicitly lay this out. In her lack of understanding - and her lack of willingness to understand - transgender lives, Ms. Croson imposes patriarchy upon who and what we are.

Sex, Lies, Transmisogyny, and the Heteronormativity of BDSM, pt. 1

Link time! Sex, Lies, Transmisogyny, and the Heteronormativity of BDSM, pt. 1

An amazing post rebutting a "radical feminist" "analysis" of the supposed politics behind SM and transgenderism, and how they supposedly intersect. I excerpt my favorite bits, but the whole thing is excellent.

This is one of the linchpins of bigoted feminism in general - the basic premise that women can never be the oppressor. That because women are oppressed by men, that it is impossible for women to oppress anyone else, that they don’t have the power. Earlier, she complains that pro-trans people and pro-BDSM people criticize Feminist arguments against both groups as “saying that women lack agency.” Of course, the idea that women can’t oppress is saying that - it’s saying that women are too weak to do anything. If you can’t oppress a group with less social capital than your own, what can you do? To be honest, the idea that these cis vanilla women are not oppressing BDSM practitioners or trans women is ludicrous, and smacks of newspeak. They’re trying to redefine the language - the meanings of the words used - to say that what they do is not oppression, while at the same time practicing oppression. They may as well place a sign reading “Freedom is Slavery” and “We have always been at war with Camp Transia” over the entrance gate to MWMF, given how thoroughly they practice this redefinition.

....The problem with not allowing yourself to be defined as an oppressor is pretty simple: It excuses you from owning your shit. It’s like white people who claim to be “colorblind,” thus denying the reality of race relations and pretending they aren’t racist. It’s a luxury the privileged have - to ignore their own status as oppressors. The cis women who want trans-exclusive space have the luxury - with their cissexual privilege - of denying that there’s any oppression going on here, because it costs them absolutely nothing to do so. On the other hand, I can’t deny the oppression I experience, I can’t afford to. I can’t look at the MWMF trans-exclusive policy and how it’s echoed throughout lesbian and feminist culture, and say “Well, that has no effect on me” because it is aimed directly at me. I don’t have the luxury of believing cis women who not only say that they’re not transphobic, but deny transphobia even exists. Women who openly practice BDSM are in a similar position. They can be ostracized for their “patriarchal sex practices” and do not have the luxury of pretending that all of the lesbian community accepts them, or at least treats them fairly. Lesbians who don’t practice BDSM can believe that, because again it doesn’t cost them anything to deny their own agency and complicity in this oppression.

Next, Ms. Croson discusses “transgression.” One of the red herrings that comes up in discussions about trans people is that transphobic radical feminists will start attacking imaginary transgender political stances. One of those is the idea that trans people run around claiming to transgress gender, that we’re gender rebels out to smash the gender binary. They then criticize us for not actually doing this. It’s immaterial that we don’t run around claiming this, we’re judged for not doing so because, well, radical feminism would like to destroy the gender binary, and they see us as reinforcing it.

She talks about how it’s transgressive for women to choose our own sexuality, to choose sexual roles denied by patriarchal norms. And I do think that the willingness to accept yourself as anywhere on the queer spectrum is transgressive. Modern society hates gay men, hates lesbians, hates bisexuals, really truly for sure hates transgender and transsexual people. When someone who appears to be a man goes through all that effort to become a woman, society punishes us harshly - we lose friends, family, jobs. We sometimes get pushed to the point where we have to engage in survival sex work just to pay the bills and keep the hormones flowing. A trans person is more likely to be murdered than anyone else in America. This is because to society, we are transgressive. The fact that a trans man can grow a beard and be accepted as a man if his trans status isn’t known is just plain outside what many people are willing to accept as valid. But because most of us go from man to woman or woman to man, we’re accused of reinforcing the gender binary, of not transgressing the norms, etc. etc.

The other problem with this is that it conflates our desire to live our lives with political goals. Real lesbians do not declare themselves lesbian to transgress heteronormative society. Real lesbians declare themselves lesbians because we want to live our lives and not suppress who we are. This does affect our politics, but our politics do not drive this. People who practice BDSM do not practice BDSM as a political statement. They do this because that is the kind of sex they enjoy. We do not choose these things to transgress, but society punishes us for doing so because they are transgressions.

I am in lust with Lisa's brain.

Especially the points about transgression. I definitely think people have a tendency to look at people who transgress and assume the thrill of defiance is the whole reason why. And for some people I'm sure it is... but for a lot of people, getting a little thrill out of transgression is a meager positive compensation for living the lives we have to live to be ourselves.

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.

"How a Girl Learns To Say No..."

More linkifyin', this on the potential positive effects of D/s dynamics:

When I first met Julie, she had low self-respect and poor self-image. She was, at that stage, still in an abusive relationship. She was the classic 'victim'.

Then she met me. I made it my business, as her Master, to make her into someone that she loved for herself. A person who valued herself, and thereby who acquired value, someone who was valuable, because she valued herself.

Now, time for a simple comparison. When I first met her, her need to please overrode every other impulse, and she set her own value as being lower than that of anyone else, and more specifically, lower than that of any man who showed an interest in her (yes, I include myself in that - but wait for the conclusion, please!)

Yesterday, she told me about her latest attempt to find herself a man of her own age to give her the BDSM loving that she needs.

....Many women, I think, will be familiar with the routine. She approached him, on a site devoted to alternative sexuality. His response was to ask her to perform for him on webcam. She told him this was not available, and he was, shall we say, a trifle rude in his response to that. Pause for a moment, dear reader, and contemplate what she might have done before her relationship with me...

Now that you've imagined that, let us look at what I taught her, what she learned by being my slave:

Her response was calm, collected, and polite. It was also to the effect of, "No, thank you. I deserve better." She stood on her own two feet to say that, she didn't need me or anyone else. She's a highly sexual being, and she certainly has a strong desire for a partner, but she is no longer the shrinking, insecure woman she was, who would let any jerk order her around.

I don't like to take credit for it, because she is the one who has done all this, she is the one who has moved from where she was to where she is. Nevertheless, she is kind enough to say that she appreciates that I gave her the ability to make that journey.

Personally, I've seen the same thing. If a submissive person (actually anyone, really) wants to believe in herself but has trouble, a person that she respects and trusts reinforcing "Yes, you do deserve better than that jerk/deserve to do that thing you've always wanted/have it in you to accomplish that difficult task" can work wonders to help her get there.

"I believe in you" is a good thing to say to those you love. You should all go do it. So should I.

"A Few Thoughts On Sex And Feminism"

An interesting post on the virgin-whore dichotomy, here:

At any rate, some people seem to believe that anything that could possibly be seen as giving in to the patriarchy is irrevocably bad. That includes: makeup, sexy clothes, skirts and dresses of any kind, pornography (no matter if it's "feminist" porn), BDSM, blow jobs, having sex with men at all, etc. All of these things are essentially off-limits to "free" women, and these tacit limits are set to keep you free.

Wait. What? Isn't that like wire-tapping your phone to keep you free? While one of the great goals of feminism is to take back female sexuality, so horniness isn't labeled "hysteria" and considered to be a physical ailment, somehow this doesn't seem right. After all, when railing against things like porn and BDSM, there are always those inconvenient wrenches in the works in the form of female couples who perform BDSM, or women who like to watch porn. If, say, BDSM is really just a legal way for men to tie up and torture women, how come there are so many women who are Doms, or who like to be submissive, either to men or to other women. For real, omfg, how could The Story of O have possibly been written by a woman????? Too bad it was. If the whole Venus in Furs man-is-submissive-to-woman kind of thing can be explained by the idea that masochists control the situations in which they're submissive, how come woman-is-submissive-to-man sex, or woman-is-submissive-to-woman sex can't be explained by anything but "legal torture of women?"

Female sexuality is complicated, and the idea that anything but clitoral stimulation (preferably performed by a woman) is subservience to the patriarchy just doesn't cut it. Sorry. If you want to reclaim female sexuality, you have to acknowledge that it exists, firstly, and secondly, you have to acknowledge that any parts of it that you don't like or understand can exist without being submission to the patriarchy.

Not that everything is hunky-dory in reference to women's sexual options these days. There are still some pretty stupid and damaging ideas about sex that are floating around. However, if a woman tells you that she likes to be spanked or whipped or likes to give blow jobs to her partner, perhaps this isn't the time to go "Oh you poor oppressed dear, let me psychoanalyze you to see how brainwashed you are." But instead, it's time to listen to her.

But I don't think that's what's happening. Which is why figures like Belledame or Ren cause such a ruckus amongst several of the the self-identified radfem bloggers. To them, a feminist who likes anything besides or in addition to clitoral stimulation can't be a feminist. Therefore, she must be the opposite: a Paris Hilton sexbot, a servant of the patriarchy, an oppressor, a status-quo holder-upper. Really? Because to my mind, anybody who breaks paradigms is a lot more radical than someone who goes around espousing old dichotomies dressed up in new clothing.

boldface/"strong" emphasis mine.

I think the notion of the "freak", the maverick, the defier of the status quo, gets lost in feminists' interminable looking at things through a structural lens. Of course the structural lens is important, but when we slot people into "oppressed" or "radical" like this, we lose sight of the freaks.

And I do think there are freaks, are people who are boldly defiant. Of course nowhere near all BDSM people are. But I do believe some are. And I think we need to remember that.

LOLTHEORISTS

LOLFoucault and LOLCalifia (and LOLJeffreys *shudder*), among others

I figured I just had to plug it here, of all places.

Cuntensquirten: BDSM is Worse Than Hitler!

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