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.

Letters from Gehenna: The World on a Slant: The Marked Case of Equal

Letters from Gehenna: The World on a Slant: The Marked Case of Equal

The usual brilliance from dw3t-hthr, on "egalitarianism":

And here's the thing with certain models of egalitarianism: the argument that people should be treated the same regardless of their preferences on the matter mostly looks like the nightmare-bogeyman that was hacked together to explain why we shouldn't be commies to me. The argument that I shouldn't go my kinky-submissive way because it promotes inequality mostly looks like I am held to be unequal: that because my stuff is outside the Normal Human Thing, it doesn't deserve the consideration that other people do.

And I should be pleased with the way the disability insurance will pay out for my prostate problems, too.

This is the thing: equal treatment has to take into account individual differences, individual experience, context, background. No amount of modelling the default human as male will take away my uterus; no amount of modelling the default human as vanilla will take away my kinkiness.

I've had a relationship with someone who was so devoted to egalitarian treatment that he was deeply, painfully uncomfortable with my submissive tendencies and only faced them with such ambivalence that I wound up, more often than not, suppressing the reactions so as not to distress him.* I have a relationship now with my liege, who not only accepts but cherishes my submission even though he doesn't always remember to do anything with it (outside when it becomes quite obvious in the bedroom). And it's in the latter of these I feel far more treated as someone with equal standing in the relationship -- because even though I am explicitly in a support role rather than one of "equals", even though I have to deal with certain constraints and obligations, I am in a position to define what that interaction means and my satisfaction with the dynamic is of equal importance to his.

As soon as one starts to acknowledge the range of humanity, there has to come an acknowledgement that different people want and need different things as part of their support, satisfaction, and even happiness. And, as the old saw goes, if it were otherwise, think of the oatmeal shortage.

I am not a lesser being because of being submissive, nor is it a sign of weakness or ready compliance.

I'm just a marked case.

Admin stuff

... and she emerges.

I thought I'd make a quick post to ask for suggestions for the blogroll, which I'm going to add today. Who do we love? What makes worthy reading on BDSM on the internet? Is there anything else that has a feminist slant? Where's the good BDSM porn?

Apart from a blogroll, I want to add links to BDSM websites, whether dedicated to specific fetishes, or just stuff we rate that might explore the subject matter of posts we make here in more detail, or from a different perspective. It's worth noting even at this early stage that BDSM terminology is incredibly fluid, and tends to mean very different things to different people. Perhaps we also need to put together a glossary of anything we, collectively, feel we CAN define?

Also, I'm no designer. Clearly. If you can't read the blog in its current guise, let me know. My partner, who is hoping to contribute to this blog himself, is quite up for designing something wonderful, but is in the middle of a big job at the other end of the country at the moment so we'd have to put up with a shitty template for a couple of weeks...

Service -- reposted from comments to another post.

I originally said this in comments to another post, but I'm reposting it here because I want to think further on the topic:

I think a big thing that doesn't get discussed in these interminable "how much D/s is too much?" headspinning games is:

the concept of service.

Many, if not most, of the "slave" types that I have met are not so much looking to lose their freedom or not make decisions so much as they are looking to serve. They feel called to some kind of life of service, and want to be part of relationships or dynamics that allow them to serve well.

To me, the dominant partner in such a dynamic is not so much The Boss making All The Decisions as she is someone who provides the opportunity for the submissive to be of service to someone. The service is more important, for most I've met, than the decision making.

There are of course many people who do have the Stepford attitude, both male and female: decide everything for me O Sir/O Ma'am. They tend to proliferate, a la roaches or paramecia, on the internet especially -- as do the sorts of "Master" they want.

But in the real, dedicated, M/s community *I've* met -- it's Service that matters most. Obedience is secondary.

Do I know some people who I think overvalue it? Yeah. But I only consider myself qualified to offer relationship advice to people I know. And I find the more I get to know people, the more flexible I realize their power dynamic actually often is.

Yes, even the masters and slaves.

I first really noticed this with an old play partner/buddy. He wasn't my partner, in service to me, etc. But we were friends, and we'd play. I started to notice that he would do all sorts of little small things for me, totally unprovoked. Make little arts and crafts projects to give to me. Clean his car if I mentioned I didn't like it not to be tidy. Small things like that. I didn't ask for them, not at first. But when he did them, and I was impressed and grateful -- his face would warm like the sun. He loved to do those things.

I didn't really know what it was about. Gradually I realized that my buddy was what they call a service oriented submissive. That all was part of what he wanted to do and enjoyed about (mild; remember we were mostly all just buddies) submission to the people he was friends with.

At first I'd always assumed that I wouldn't like service oriented people. I figured that they were servile, and unsure of what they wanted. I felt sure that they would be unhappy, always giving other people what they wanted and never paying attention to themselves. But observing my friend, I realize that the small acts of service that he would frequently do made him happy. He really enjoyed giving toppy friends little things that they wanted.

And I don't remember him being chronically unable to stand up for himself. I do remember a couple of situations in which I thought he was a bit too flexible. But I don't remember times when something was important and he didn't tell us to shove it if we were being jerks.

So I started to realize that for a lot of people who feel called to SM slavery or other forms of deep submission, what it's really about is something similar. Service. Feeling pride in service will given. Of course they enjoy their place in the power relation -- that's part of the definition -- but it seems to me like enjoying that is more about kink and fun, and the service is the real calling.

I don't mean to say that there are never problems. Some people get very into the idea of behavior modification, and even those words make me cringe (if you want to know way too much about why, go have a look at ballastexistenz and look up any references to "the Judge Rotenberg Center"). I remember talking to a certain couple in the local MAsT group, who mentioned to me a persistent problem that they were trying to correct.

The issue was that the dominant wanted his submissive to speak in formal, polite ways: "Yes, Sir." "Please, Sir, may I ____?" etc. She had a rather gruff manner -- think New Yorker, though I don't think she was one. She'd lapse into "Oh, yeah, yeah." when she was supposed to be being formal. It drove her dominant absolutely up the wall.

They described an absolutely sitcom quality carnival of follies coming from attempting to modify this woman's behavior. No matter what they did, she could not speak this way. They were both very distressed about it, as she clearly wanted to change but simply could not.

To my mind, this is where the dominant partner in the relationship cuts his/her losses. If a person simply cannot change something, no matter how much D/s is put behind it, that's just a facet of that person. If he really absolutely couldn't stand it, to the point where it was dealbreaking, then that would be time for a dumping. If not, then that would be time for him to learn to deal with it, and choose some other ritualized behavior to demonstrate her politeness or her elegance or her service, whatever it was that the polite way of speaking was supposed to demonstrate.

So it's not that I think that anyone can do whatever they want, or that I believe that strict behavior modification is a wise thing for people to do. What I do think, however, is that service oriented submission is a valid life path, and that setting up power relations with such people is not inherently limiting, oppressive, restrictive, or bad.

I think if people want to challenge long-term D/s, they should at least be aware of the stress many people put on service, and be able to either argue

that it too is a bad thing from a feminist viewpoint

or

that it isn't relevant to the issue at hand (this would include, of course, a discussion of why it is not)

or

that it doesn't do enough to divorce long-term D/s from problems. This discussion should include, bare minimum, discussion of the nature of service and how it is given and accepted.

Some thoughts on "power play"

This is actually a repost of an older entry from my other blog; since the subject seems to be coming up in comments here, figured: haul it out for another look.

...heh, turns out actually it's mostly links, including one going back to you, trin. There's some good convo in the comments, though.


******

Otherwise known as "BDSM," and/or "kink." And yet, those terms come with a lot of baggage now, don't they. What does it all mean, dear? in relation to "real life" power dynamics? -Is- there a fresh way of approaching this?

For now, just a couple of links to other people; I have some thoughts of my own, but, later: it needs to cook.

First, Dw3t-Hthr at World on a Slant

A Cat May Look: Fealty and Slavery

Three threads to this braid: respect for support roles, individualism vs. collectivism, power and vulnerability. It starts at the beginning of all the threads, but trying to write that will start putting letters on top of each other and be wickedly hard to read. And I'm not gonna try to be clever and format it into columns or shit like that.

First mentioned thread: there's this fascinating thread of contempt for people who willingly take support roles. That nobody would hire on as the night janitor if they didn't have to. That nobody would settle for being the secretary if they could be the power executive. When it goes into caretaking it gets worse -- the idea that a full-time parent is actually working doesn't cross the mind of many, the people who take care of their elderly or ailing relatives are treated as having a time-consuming hobby.

A better person, a more competent, more capable person, that person would be in charge -- would have ambition, drive to succeed, would want to be the name on the letterhead, not the initials in lowercase in the bottom corner. Clearly, the one doing the typing, mopping the floor, changing the diaper, they're not suited to anything better. Anything worthy of respect.

Second thread: there's this creepy hivemind thing that I see a lot in the name of individualism. I mean, one can hearken back to the whole being a special unique snowflake just like everyone else when being flip, but there are Rules out there. Be a strong individual and follow your dream -- so long as your dream isn't to be anything that threatens the Rules. Maybe you get to pick your Rules a little and only take flak from people using different ones, but the Rules are still there. Shouldn't work, shouldn't work in these fields, shouldn't work for less than this amount of money, shouldn't think that way, shouldn't dress that way, why? Because we're more mature than that now. We know better. This is the right way. We don't want to be mistaken for Them.

Being an individual is all well and good, so long as one knows which ideology one's an individual in. Then there are the neat boxes that can be dragged out, some of them marked 'good' and some of them marked 'evil', and everything is neatly filed away, and nobody has to think about who anyone is.

Third thread: In the presence of a power differential, the people on the low end of things are living exposed and somewhat vulnerable. The power exists to affect them, and they have less to retaliate with. Holding that power is a drug, and like any drug, there is responsible use and irresponsible use. The position of power is a position to compel intimacy, to know and control more about someone else's life; even if one is not using that power, the possibility does exist for it to be used. And if the power does not exist in a framework of agreement and sufficient support for intimacy, people are gonna get hurt. And do get hurt, all the time.

Let's knot those three together with: I am kinked submissive.

And starting to braid:...

Read the rest at World on a Slant.

Then, coming from another angle, here's trin at the strangest alchemy:

When I came into SM, it was a group in town. I hung with the townies. And there were some real class differences between my daily life at school and the people I hung out with, learned from, and beat because it's hot. Talking to other kinky folks I often hear that most perverts are high class: we can afford floggers and very expensive leather clothes, corsets, etc.

But the people I knew were not those people. They were rural folk, some of whom had never heard much at all about highfalutin stuff like feminism. I remember being a little scared of them and quite a bit classist -- "what the fuck is wrong with their teeth?" most notably. When my parents later met the guy I ended up dating, who was quite poor compared to most of us attending school on our parents' dimes, many years my senior, and a townie -- oh, the teeth thing. "That person must be someone who can't take care of himself if his teeth look like that. Isn't it gross to kiss him? How disgusting."

...Anyhoo. Pervy townies.

Quite a few were good country girls and boys who'd never questioned that women submit to men, and discovered that could be made into a shitload of fun if you bought yourself a couple paddles for cheapish from the local guy who makes 'em.

And learned by meeting the rest of us that some people are gay, some people are poly, some straight or bi women dominate their men.

Their minds got opened by being involved in the alternative lifestyle, not by theory or by sudden understandings of social oppression. They went to the meetings, met someone nice, discovered he kisses and fucks other boys and went "oh hell, we're all weird motherfuckers here," and moved on with a more open mind.

So for me... eh. I feel like I'm overstepping if I say I know all about the class dynamics of it. I don't -- I wasn't a townie. I did most of my kink out in the country when I wasn't at home with my lover -- rural Virginia or West Virginia. But I wasn't them.

But they were my friends, my leather community, my tribe. Going back to town and hearing the younger, richer, more feminist women tell me that the screen savers they filled up with porn and looped when they threw play parties was a problem... never felt right. That was a country-boy Master's idea of fun. Maybe it wasn't great -- I have some thoughts both about porn and the porn the person I have in mind picked -- but it sure as hell wasn't about sending messages. It was about how nice it is that in a room full of perverts you can proudly display what you like, not keep it hidden and stashed away -- and some of them might like it, too.

Going back to school and hearing the other women scold me for getting used to the porn, for liking some of it -- well, in addition to "Noneya biz!" it also felt like here we are in an ivory tower deciding what other people's lives should look like. That what they consider manners are sexist, even when they're friendly and loving to dominant woman me. That their friendliness and openness and the fact that at least one of my best friends went from being raised strict Baptist to being kinda fundie but bi and kinky and open to just about anyone else's way of life (and a top!)... wasn't enough....

read the rest.

Cuntensquirten: BDSM is Worse Than Hitler!

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Oh yeah--one more thing.

Not -as- big a deal, but: even if you don't wish to get a blogger account (understandable, goddam blogger) or use your regular pseud, please, at least either

1) click the "other" option when signing in and pick another pseud for the purposes of posting here

2) sign your name/pseud at the bottom of the "anon" post.

Because otherwise, speaking of 'bots, it gets very Cylon-esque. "Well, Anon, I think Anon has a point, what do -you- think, Anon? Right, Anon, that's it, you're banned...oh."

"Malkovitch Malkovitch Malkovitch Maaaaalkotviiiiitch...."

SO, I'm gonna go ahead and start a rough "comments policy,"

...which my cohorts are more than welcome to add onto, revise, adapt, nuke, or what they will. We have been discussing this already, however.

As the title of the blog implies, and as the first several posts should suggest, this is a place where we are discussing the intersection of two things that matter dearly to all four of us blogging here--feminism and BDSM. This is -not- a place to rehash eternal arguments about the inherent value of either one, whether the two are, in fact, compatible (hello, basis of ENTIRE BLOG, not up for debate), or whether we are reactionary tools of the patriarchy, ev0l feminazis, deluded fuckbots, fembots, sexbots, or OppressO'bots. (Although we might discuss 'bot fetishism at some point).
We reserve the right to refuse service; my own personal motto, which may or may not be adapted by the others, is "no shoes no social skills no service." Actually, I don't really care about the shoes. Those who ignore this will be directed to various outside sites that might be more suitable, mocked, and/or deleted, not necessarily in that order.

Having said that, discussion and consensual gay banter are certainly more than welcome. And no, you absolutely don't have to be an expert on either subject to participate, and yes, as far as I'm concerned, respectful questions are fine (we may add a FAQ eventually); we are not "advanced" anything, hell, we all start tabula rasa, there's no shame in not knowing shit.

Just don't be an asshole.

We trust that you know the difference.

Introductions, and a review

Trin has a good overview of common stereotypes of BDSM, both mainstream and from a particular feminist analysis. In passing, as it were, she notes, of a certain stereotype which is only reflected irl, if at all, in a very narrow subset of actual player:

Not only are they all male dominant and female submissive, or *maybe maybe maybe* *possibly* butch-femme in an extremely traditionalist way, but they are all male dominant and female submissive in a cartoony way. No one's dynamic actually looks like that

...which is as good a segue as any into my review of a performance I saw last night. Speaking of "cartoony..."

First of all, I should say a little something about my own background. Hi, my pseud is belledame222, and yes, I have been asked before if I am "sans merci," and the answer is: sometimes. Mostly I post over at my other blog, fetch me my axe, which tends to be more political than personal. My -other- other blog, sense and sensuality, was meant to be more intimate, but I haven't been updating it as much as I'd like. Maybe this will be an impetus to put more into that one as well. Kink-wise, I haven't really done more than obliquely touch on my tastes; this post in particular might give you a bit of an idea of my particular bent.

My current career trajectory is in psychology/counselling, and funnily enough, I see my interest in BDSM, particularly my as-yet-mostly-novice-irl toppishness, as...not unrelated. The shadow side, if you will. The way I like to think of it, sometimes...there's a quote from Angels in America, where Belize the nurse has Roy Cohn at his mercy in a hospital bed, weak and debilitated from AIDS but still a nasty, racist, imperious bastard. Finally, Belize gets fed up and says, "very fiercely:"

Watch. Yourself. You don't talk to me that way when I'm holding something this sharp. Or I might slip and stick in your heart. If you have a heart.
...Now I've been doing drips a long time. I can slip this in so easy you'll think you were born with it. Or I can make it feel like I just hooked you up to a bag of liquid Drano. So you be nice to me or you're going to be one sorry asshole come morning.

Of course, there's no room for the "Drano" side in counseling (Dr. Laura or even Dan Savage aside, whose method I emphatically do -not- approve of; no fucking safeword, and even for professional assholes, there really are limits). In real life, though, as opposed to fantasy, you need empathy and compassion for both--topping and counselling. Both require self-awareness. Both require learning about -really good communication,- and boundaries. Each has its own protocol to maintain those boundaries. And both require an intense attention to what's going on with the person who's placed hir trust in you, who is, for the duration of an hour or so, in your care.

I definitely plan to explore this relationship more in later posts, particularly in relation to my experience with more body-centered forms of therapy, drama therapy, and most of all the explicitly erotic healing work I've done with an organization called Body Electric, among others.

Before my interest in psychology, my passion was theatre. Which, too, has many connections with BDSM: there's a reason they call a scene "a scene." Costume, props...power play. These are all things I learned about in my stage training, and possibly part of the reason why some of the things that seem to upset some people so, I just took for granted. Tricky bits of technical stagecraft that can and often do go wrong, setting up, improvisation within a pre-set structure, even the physicality. Most of all, the understanding that what's "real" and what's "not real" is, in such a milieu, rather...ambiguous. This is also a subject I plan to come back to again and again.

For now, though, I want to get back to this performance, which was of the "straight" (hah) theatrical variety, last night.

The set-up: I'd gone to a sort of American Idol for the stage, interesting concept,in order to see the excellent Black Amazon's audition piece(s). After the main "contestants" had finished their performances and received their critiques, as a special treat, we got to see an excerpt from the play that was being auditioned for. A monologue from the POV of a professional domme.

So the lights dim, and out struts this skinny white chick in a black vinyl three-piece that looked like it came straight out of a Halloween costume catalog--ruffled micromini, bra top, and, bizarrely, a neckerchief--fishnets, and lavender "fun" wig. Plants one foot up on the chair placed center stage, jutting the hip of the standing foot out provocatively. Riding crop clutched stiffly in one hand, extended, for some reason, behind her. Already I'm thinking "this can't be good."

She starts her spiel. And, first of all, 1) kink aside, this is just basic: given a choice between a completely inept "accent" and none at all, ALWAYS go for "none at all" 2) yes okay, a German accent, that makes the whole thing much more Serious Domme, not at all Mel Brooks, okay.

But that was the least of it. The speech itself, even if she'd given an adequate performance--even if I hadn't already known it was written by a (probably straight, almost certainly vanilla) dude, it was pretty obvious that the author's knowledge of kink came from similar cutesy-snickery performances and references in mainstream media. The gist: all men, zey are slaves, a real man knows his place is at the feet of his mistress; but, dammit, a good man/slave is hard to find. Where o where have all the good slaves gone. And ends with her sitting alone on stage, as started. Disconsolate. Which -in no way- resembles every other "pushy broad at the top of her career, but just can't get a man" riff.

But even without that, the performance itself...Oy.

YOU! (oo goody, audience participation). Vat are you looking at?! Vell?? Are you looking at ZIS? (thrusts out ass). Vell, DON'T look! (little smile to break the mock-severity!) I zaid, DON'T LOOK! NO ZPANKING FOR YOU! (hands on the knees, little ass-wiggle, grasp crop in both hands as though flexing a police baton, another coy little smile, strut back to the chair for another contorted pose...)

And so on. There's nothing worse than bad theatre; it's actively painful, there's nowhere you can go, you feel embarassed for the actor, and then annoyed for feeling sympathy for someone who's for all intents and purposes keeping you hostage.

What interested me was, the same rather macho writers/directors/coaches who'd been critiquing the auditioners, in many cases with on-the-money observations such as (I paraphrase) "don't wave your hands too much, and don't shout; this character is powerful, and too much motion, especially with your hands, too much shouting, actually make you -less- powerful"--

--and yet, here was this dame prancing about, presumably with their blessing, as the writer/director of the play was in the house and she'd been an actor in a previous performance--and yet, if they had any problem with any of this capering, they gave no sign.

And predictably, when the cheeseball "M.C." that was hosting the thing came back out, mock fear, hoo, I'm scared now, you know.

Of course, he -also- did that in response to BA's not at all sexual but very fierce monologues (angry woman! not kidding! no smiles! SCARY), and even with the pixie-sized actor who did a piece wherein she hectored some unseen henpecked husband, clutching a pair of tongs in one hand (she was grilling, see). Whatcha gonna do with -those-, oo, cower.

And I thought to myself: those same feminists that trin was talking about, the ones who, if/when they mention femdom at all, tend to dismiss it as just a cutesy let's-pretend game for the pleasure of the mens--

--annoying as that is, I can understand why, if this sort of thing was what they, like apparently everyone involved with that play, imagined a female top to be like--well, I can understand why they wouldn't see it as "empowering."

And it's not the first time I've made this observation. Take "mainstream" hetporn, which I don't watch often, but f'r instance the last one I saw, a big deal production called The Fashionistas, which might or might not be worth a review in itself at some point, but basically: same deal. Yes, there were some scenes in which actual, serious technique were shown, but: the female "domme," while lightly bitchy, never really gave the impression that she was to be taken seriously. And in fact, she and her sub "girlfriend" ended up catfighting over Rocco Siffredi, who never really did "bottom" in any real sense. And even before that, I remember, there's a blonde sub who's been "punished" by the leading domme and then left, provocatively posed, for Rocco to find; when asked if she's "all right," she responds, among other things,

"She's just a woman, after all. She doesn't hit very hard."

--with, of course, the suggestion that Rocco do her right, which of course he promptly does (more vanilla than anything else, if I recall). Hetnormativity and sexism 101, ahoy!

And I remember thinking of Midori, of her demonstrating the "Queen's Walk" in a workshop; of the gleeful, evil-six-year-old smile on her face as she nimbly brought a man twice her size to the ground and tortured the tender spots between his toes with a toothpick; of the sensual near-ballet she did with a swooning young woman and a flogger; or her ability to bring a laughing, chattering room to silence without...saying...a word.

Command presence.

You learn it in any number of places besides the dungeon: the stage, yes, but also in politics, in (so I'm told, by Midori, for one, who was actually in it) the military, in front of a classroom. Any place you're expected to -lead.-

The costume, in feminism and elsewhere, is nearly always what gets focused on first: the heels, the cleavage, the long eyelashes, the lipstick. And yes, costume matters, although not always in the starkly gender-binary way so many people seem to take for granted. (Is makeup always pink girlie froufrou? Or might it be "war paint?" Does a glistening scarlet mouth make you think of submissive pouts and blowjobs, or of fresh blood from her latest victim? Do you teeter on your heels, or use them for kicking and crushing?). But it's far from the most important thing.

It's--well, yes, -acting.- Body language. Voice. And...something more ineffable.

-Power.-

It's not what most people think it is, either. It's really more a verb than a noun.

But that, too, is for another post.

I'll just wrap this up by noting, with amusement, that I got three quarters of the way through this without realizing which shirt I'd put on today--a shirt, by the way, I did -not- get at a kink-related event or anything of the sort. I think my (liberal, square, blissfully kink-ignorant) mom got it for me, actually, perhaps through a catalog, or at the mall.

Content! Fortheloveapete! Content!!

I'm feeling rather tired of the interminable feminist bickering about BDSM. I've been studying the arguments on both sides of the sex wars since college and into graduate school. I know them backwards and forwards, whether that's the arguments of people in Against Sadomasochism, or with the that's the arguments of Califia and Rubin.

So there's not much knew I have to say. All I really want to mention is that, as a woman who tops not only women but also men, there really isn't much about us in the internal warfare. And I wonder why this is. on the one hand, I know that it's because the radical feminist analysis (Yes, I realize that not all radical feminists agree with this analysis, but that's what it's most often called, so that's the short cut that I will use.) is concerned about dynamics between submissive women and dominant men. I know that their interminable analyses of lesbian sadomasochism, as well, center around a faulty idea that all leatherdyke are butch-femme, and at a butch is emulating men.

All that means that a woman top, unless she is very strongly masculinely identified (oddly, I think I might actually qualify on some of these analyses, though I doubt people would expect me to top men since this would slot me into "butch" if anything), doesn't make any sense and doesn't show up on the radar at all. Neither does a male bottom, unless he is into such stuff as feminization, in which case he's slumming for fun. ( gay men don't fit into this well at all either, since these sorts of feminists pride themselves on not caring much about men. The assumption is sometimes a similar butch-femme dynamic, which totally misses the hypermasculine emphasis in much of gay leather.)

So the fascinating thing is that these radical feminists have nothing to say to me. They have nothing to say about what it means that my Barbie doll locked Ken in towers and kept him captive there, a boy Rapunzel -- and let's not forget that to a little girl like I was, boys don't grow out their hair!

They have a few things to say about my fascination with pain, since the fantasizing little-girl me was pretty indifferent to who that happened to. But even there, the idea that it's fun at least in part because it feels good, rather than because of incredibly polarized power roles, doesn't show up much at all when you look at their analysis.

And that's the thing. I happen to believe, probably unlike many other sadomasochists who've run afoul of these people, that their analysis is actually impressively internally consistent, and difficult to argue with in some ways because of that. But the big problem with it is that it's extremely narrow. It works, if it works at all, for a tiny set of textbook cases. Not only are they all male dominant and female submissive, or *maybe maybe maybe* *possibly* butch-femme in an extremely traditionalist way, but they are all male dominant and female submissive in a cartoony way. No one's dynamic actually looks like that, not even the M/f folks I know who consider themselves old-fashioned.

And that's the problem. What they've come up with is a theoretical analysis of a theoretical problem. It's internally consistent enough that it can convince people that they understand what's really going on -- if said people don't actually know or want to know about the real nuts and bolts of sadomasochists' lives, play, and (possible) power relations (remember, they're optional!)