Not Just Bitchy

Dumbdomme’s post about Katie Roiphe, Feminism, and BDSM inspired me to write a nearly post-length comment of my own, which I’ve expanded into this post.

There seems to be no shortage of stupid people getting all worked up about the popularity of Fifty Shades of Grey. In particular, I’m looking at Katie Roiphe’s wild speculation, although Russel Smith also misses the point by quite an impressive margin.

But why, for women especially, would free will be a burden? – Katie Roiphe

How on earth does enjoying an erotic story about consensual submission have anything to do with seeing free will as a ‘burden’?

So much of this freaking out over what the popularity of books like Fifty Shades of Grey means seems to imply that being submissive is somehow bad. Molly, an actual submissive woman, wrote a fantastic rant about just that:

Firstly the notion that this is some filthy secret that woman are holding onto, that even though we are educated and ‘free’ we still all long to be chained to the kitchen sink. Secondly there is the hidden undertone that being submissive means you cannot be ‘independent’ or ‘have a career’, which implies that submissiveness goes hand in hand with what? Lack of intelligence? Lack of ambition?  Lack of imagination? Or the best and most common one of all seems to be weakness. Poor weak women who all secretly want to be dominated by a man…

What people want in bed has nothing to do with how they want to live their lives outside of the bedroom! Having an interest in submitting sexually does not mean that a person wants to give up control when she’s not having sex. Even if she does want to give up some control outside of the bedroom, that still doesn’t necessarily mean that she wants to relinquish all control over all parts of her life. Even if she does want to give up some or most of her control over her own life, that still doesn’t mean she’s weak.

To quote DumbDomme, “Logically, A submissive can’t be submissive unless she or he submits, willingly.” While I’m not submissive, I believe submission is an act of will, not an escape from it. Enduring something you don’t enjoy to please your partner takes will power. Accepting someone else’s authority is sometimes very hard work. Negotiating power exchange in a way that works for both parties isn’t easy either. Just knowing your own needs and wants well enough to start negotiating takes a degree of self awareness that’s just too scary for some people to handle.

The fantasy of sexual domination may be in vogue, but that’s a far cry from actual sexual domination being in vogue. It’s sad that it needs to be said, but fantasizing about something does not necessarily mean you want to go out and do that thing to the furthest extreme you can possibly take it. Has Katie Roiphe never fantasized about anything she didn’t actually want to go out and do? I’m not even talking solely about sexual fantasies, but about the kind of idle daydreams we all have about, say, moving to Fiji and opening a little bar on the beach. In reality, I’d hate living in Fiji and I’d hate running a bar, but daydreaming about it made working long hours at a thankless job a little easier to take.

All this hysteria over women being interested in sexual submission depends on the assumption that women and only women ever fantasize about submitting. If both men and women sometimes enjoy submitting, then it’s just a preference no more worthy of concern than preferring a spicy bowl of chilli to a comforting bowl of chicken soup. Both submissive men and dominant women are conspicuously absent from all of the articles I’ve seen published about Fifty Shades of Grey.  Leaving them out of the discussion takes the book completely out of context, and makes freaking out about it no more meaningful than freaking out about two people getting into a fight and quietly failing to mention that they happened to be participating in a martial arts tournament.

Sure, you can say that there are fewer submissive men than there are submissive women, but how can we know that’s true? It’s not as if society’s gendered expectations of behaviour would massively skew the numbers of people of all genders who are willing to admit to  having even the mildest submissive fantasies… oh wait. Eventually, there will be a ‘Fifty Shades of Grey’ for submissive men, and when it comes out people will freak out what they think that implies the same way they’re freaking out right now about their own ignorant ideas about female submission.

But even if women actually are disproportionately interested in sexual submission, I think there’s a fairly simple explanation. Stress. To quote Greta Christina’s excellent two part blog post about what we can learn from our sexual fantasies:

But while I think it’s a huge mistake to think that our sex fantasies accurately reflect our “real” desires, I do think they can offer us a clue about them.

I think fantasies can be a clue to what’s missing in our lives. A portrait drawn in negative space. A signpost to the road not taken.

…

At times when my life is intensely over-scheduled and I’m micromanaging it in fifteen minute increments, I tend to have more kinky fantasies about being submissive, putting myself entirely into somebody else’s hands and riding an emotional and sensory rollercoaster of their creation.

What I see as missing in so many women’s lives is a place to relax. There’s no way for women to get it ‘right’. If we have careers, we’re not good enough mothers, but if we’re stay at home mothers, we’re traitors to the feminist cause. If we dress too provocatively, we’re sluts, but if we dress too modestly, we’re frigid bitches, and on, and on, and on. Even though I’m a dom, I can understand how gloriously relaxing it would be to have someone actually spell out exactly what it takes to be ‘good enough’.

And if that doesn’t suck enough, there’s also the tremendous pressure women are under due to the equality movement not having gotten all the way yet. We still assume that the daughter, not the son, will take care of an aged, ailing parent. We still assume that women will do most of the cooking and cleaning and general labour of keeping a household going. We still assume that the mother, not the father, will take the day off work when the kids are sick. On top of all that, we’re supposed to be happy and cheerful and well-groomed at all times. That’s bloody stressful! Again, I can understand why letting someone else take responsibility for everything for a little while would be an awesome vacation from the crushing stress of everyday life.

Women aren’t fantasizing about giving up responsibility because we’re becoming more equal to men, but because we aren’t equal enough yet.

Already a dozen columnists have claimed that the fantasy of powerlessness is a symptom of the employed and busy female, the very apex of feminist success – a dream of losing responsibility, an easing of pressure (which, incidentally, is said to be the primary reason for high-status businessmen visiting dominatrixes). You have to be a real acrobat to stretch this argument into plausibility though: There is nothing at all contemporary or current about the dream of self-annihilating true love as promised by these romances. – Russell Smith

Russel Smith disagrees, but his argument is a bit of a non-sequitur. It’s true that all-consuming love is an extremely old fantasy, but the reason we’re all talking about it is because a particular flavour of it has become extremely popular right now, today. I’m fairly sure that makes it both contemporary and current. You know else is both contemporary and current? The extreme pressure women are under to ‘do it all’. While I am absolutely not, under any circumstances, saying that women had it better when they had fewer choices (mother, nun, maybe teacher or secretary if they were particularly ambitious), they were pulled in fewer different directions.

Another thing Russel Smith gets wrong is this:

The success of these books, in which a woman is forced to suffer indignities very similar to those portrayed in porn for men, is going to prove very difficult to explain for those who would continue to believe that men and women will always have different tastes in porn. This is entirely conventional romance plus entirely conventional porn.

It’s the romance part that makes Fifty Shades of Grey different from conventional porn. You would think writing the sentence “This is entirely conventional romance plus entirely conventional porn.” (emphasis mine) would tip you off to that fact. Another thing that makes written porn different is that the story is very often told from the point of view of the submissive. In particular it goes into detail about how turned on the submissive party is in a way that is very difficult, if not impossible, to convey on film. This reassurance that the woman is having a good time, that she’s submitting because she enjoys it, allows not-necessarily-kinky women to enjoy written submissive porn when they would likely be at best puzzled and at worst disgusted by kinky video.

It is perhaps inconvenient for feminism that the erotic imagination does not submit to politic. –Katie Roiphe

What’s inconvenient for feminism is stupid people conflating a sexual taste with a desire to recreate the rigid gender roles of the ‘50s. If you have two brain cells to rub together, it’s obvious that women feeling comfortable exploring their sexuality is a clear win for feminism.

I’d even argue that the phrase ”mommy porn” as demeaning as it is, is also a sign of the progress feminism has made. To quote Ester Bloom:

Captain Obvious would point out that there is no such thing as “daddy porn,” presumably because dads remain men, even after procreating. Once they give birth, women apparently morph into “mommies,” neutered creatures who may be venerated but don’t need to be taken seriously. Hence their easily-dismissed “mommy blogs” and now their “mommy porn.”

People may insist on deriding porn that’s popular with women as “mommy porn” but at least they acknowledge that it exists. Ridiculing it is merely an excuse not to think about women’s sexual needs.

Under most circumstances, I’m no fan of dress codes at kinky events. Back when secrecy was more important they had their uses in telling real kinky people from tourists, but these days little serious harm is likely to come of a vanilla person accidentally wandering into a kinky party. If a play party had a dress code, I think it would be entirely reasonable to question the point of requiring people to dress up when they’re supposed to be there to play.

However, if a party is all about dressing up and is clearly advertised as such, then it’s reasonable, even necessary, to have a dress code. Have you ever gone to what you thought was going to be a costume party, only to discover you were the only one who actually dressed up? Or completely misjudged how formal an event was and shown up dressed completely inappropriately? Feeling stupid and out of place is the exact opposite of fun. Obviously, fetish parties are much more fun if everyone is required to ‘fetish up’ if they want in. These parties are also supposed to be safe places for people to indulge their clothing fetishes (latex or leather, for example). That’s why they’re called fetish parties. Without a dress code, people tend to tone down their costumes for fear of ending up as the one latex catsuit in a sea of slackers who couldn’t be bothered to dress up. That’s hardly a safe place for a fetishist, now is it?

Fetish parties are also collaborative in a way I really enjoy. A fetish party isn’t something you just show up to, it’s something all the attendees create together. Without everyone pulling their weight, the party falls flat. Going to a fetish party without even attempting to dress up is like showing up at a potluck without so much as a token store-bought veggie tray and expecting people to be happy to see you.

But! What if you just don’t like dressing up? What if your friends want to go,  and you want to hang out with them, but you don’t care for fetish wear? I’m sure you’ll be delighted to know I have a very simple answer for you: STAY HOME.

It really is that simple. The world will not end if you miss one (1) party. Your friends will still be your friends if you take the drastic and unprecedented step of saying ‘Fetish parties aren’t really my thing. Have fun, we’ll get together later.’ Is your desire to go to this party and see your friends really more important than everyone else’s desire to have a safe space to wear their fetish gear? Is the effort the organizers and other attendees put in worth so little to you that you’d rather shit all over it than deal with the minor inconvenience of missing a single party?

Of course, if you’re worried that there may be someone in the local scene who isn’t aware that you’re a whiny little princess, then by all means argue that you should be given an exception to the clearly stated rules. For extra princess points, bitch and whine about the dress code when there is one and only one public party in the local scene that has ever so much as suggested a dress code.

I am no way exaggerating with that statement. The Kink Underground Fetish Revue is the only party in Victoria that I know of to ever have a dress code of any sort. Other kink events in Victoria include:

Sagacity play parties: these have no dress code and never will.

Sagacity munches: these have the absolutely draconian dress code of regular, everyday street wear. Because munches are casual get-togethers, fetish wear is actually discouraged.

Sagacity workshops: regular everyday street wear, comfortable clothing you can move in encouraged.

Other workshops(TellMia, SPARC, etc): regular everyday street wear, workshops with hands-on sections may recommend wearing something that’s easy to move in.

Rope nights of various sorts (Rope Dojo Without The Ego, Kinktastic Enterprises rope nights, Victoria Ropettes Women’s Bondage Experiment, etc): Again, comfortable clothing that’s easy to move in is recommended.

It’s almost like there are lots and lots of things you can do in Victoria without ever changing out of your tshirt and jeans. Kink Underground was also very clear about the dress code and the intention of the party. They even offered fetish makeovers to people who weren’t sure what to wear or who didn’t have any fetish wear. I don’t know what they could have done to be more inclusive while still having a fetish party.

Even with all that, people still whined and cried about the dress code. Apparently most fetish wear for men looks submissive, dominant men prefer to just wear black street clothes, for the purpose of getting into a fetish party submissive women are fashion accessories, and people who have been involved in the scene for a while should be given exceptions from the clearly stated rules. Let me count the ways all of those statements are complete and utter bullshit.

1. Supposedly, most male fetish wear looks ‘submissive’. FAIL. No, no it does not. And even if it did, so fucking what? Will the sky fall in if (gasp) you leave the house in anything less than a complete leather police uniform?

2. So, what you’re saying is that dominant men are lazy little shits? I hope you cleared that statement with all the dominant men who are either fetishists themselves or aren’t complete fucking slackers. FAIL.

3. In what parallel universe does the dress code for a party apply to groups, not individuals? Even ignoring the fact that submissive women are people and not fashion accessories, it simply makes no sense whatsoever that you should be allowed into a party with a dress code because you brought a woman who meets the dress code. Would you invite someone to a post-move thank you party because their friend helped you move? No? FAIL.

4. This is where I get really angry. Supposedly people who have been involved in the scene for a while shouldn’t have to follow the rules. Specifically, if one of the reasons to have a dress code is to keep people out who might not know how to behave at a party full of scantily clad people (that is, people who might not know that bare skin is not an invitation), and this supposed paragon of the community knows to keep his hands to himself, we should just let him in. Never mind that it’s little tough to tell at the door who has been going to parties for years and who just dropped in to see some tits, never mind that letting one person in who doesn’t meet the dress code but not another is blatant favouritism, never mind that people at the party might  not be comfortable being stared at by some jackass who couldn’t be bothered to dress up even if said jackass is familiar with the kink scene, never mind that the intent of the party is to create a feast for the eyes for everyone attending.

Especially, never mind that people who have been in the scene for years should fucking know better! If we can’t expect people who have gone to kink parties before to understand and respect the rules, who can we expect to follow the rules? If anyone gets a pass, it should be people new to the scene who couldn’t have known better. People who have been around for a while should be held to higher standards, not lower ones. After all, they’ve had plenty of time to learn what’s appropriate and what’s not. Who’s to say that someone who thinks they’re above following a simple dress code doesn’t also think they’re above keeping their hands to themselves unless specifically invited? Why should I trust someone who believes that his desire to attend a party is more important than the other attendees feeling safe and comfortable at that party?

Finally, why should I have the least bit of respect for someone who whines and cries about a dress code? If the rules of an event are a minor inconvenience for you by all means state your case, but please shut the fuck up after you do so. Incessant whining about how you should get an exception because you’re such a special snowflake impresses precisely no one. Next time,skip the whining and just wear a tiara, princess.

I just added some blogs (I’d like to say they’re new blogs, but they’re not. I’ve just been extremely lazy about updating) to my blogroll.

The first two are personal friends of mine, Kadri and Weezie. Kadri posts pretty regularly about a variety of interesting kink-related topics. Between his niceness and my recreational assholery, we make one decent human being

Weezie doesn’t post nearly often enough, you should go and nag  him  He got his start doing guest posts at my blog and Dishevelled Domina’s, then he branched out into his own blog.

Peroxide’s blog is a great in-depth read about what makes this submissive man tick. Ever since his very first foray into blogging, an interview on Dishevelled Domina’s blog, he’s been full of fascinating insights.

Finally, I can’t say enough good things about Dumb Domme. How can you not love a woman who has the guts to freely admit that sometimes she does dumb things, and who openly mocks the stereotypes that female doms are expected to conform to?

So that we’re all on the same page, here are some handy definitions:

Censor: an official who examines materials (as publications or films) for objectionable matter. For example: Government censors deleted all references to the protest.

Coward: a person who lacks courage in facing danger, difficulty,opposition, pain, etc.; a timid or easily intimidated person.

When someone deletes a troll’s comments, it’s not at all unusual for the troll to complain that the owner/moderation of the blog/forum/discussion group is a censor and/or a coward. Not only is that not true, but it’s so stupid it inspired me to write an entire post about it.

When you censor someone’s writing, you are preventing it from reaching a significant number of people.  Here in Canada, our customs agents can censor shipments of books by refusing to allow them across the border. According to the Canada Border Services Agency’s Policy on the Classification of Obscene Material:

2. One category of goods (tariff item 9899.00.00) differs
from all others however, and involves material that is
suspected of constituting obscenity under subsection 163(8)
of the Criminal Code. The Customs Tariff prohibits the
importation of such material into Canada, including written,
visual and audio materials. (emphasis mine)

Because Canada customs is a government agency, they actually do have the power to censor people. Refusing to allow material into the country is a fairly effective way of controlling what all the residents of Canada can and cannot read.

A publishing company, however, is physically unable to publish every book submitted to them. Picking and choosing which books to publish doesn’t make them censors, it makes them rational. By definition, a single blogger’s refusal to approve any particular comment, or to edit a comment until it meets their approval is not censorship. Nothing I do on my blog prevents anyone from commenting elsewhere, starting their own blog, making pamphlets and handing them out on the street, or just yelling about their ideas on a street corner.

Because FetLife is an overwhelmingly popular kinky social network, it could be argued that its refusal to post a given comment anywhere on the site would be censorship. Deleting a post from someone’s own writings section would likely be a dick move, but it wouldn’t necessarily be censorship. They can always comment on other sites, after all. Insisting that someone follow the rules that they agreed to follow when they joined the group is definitely not censorship. Again, having to edit yourself to meet a group’s standards, or even being banned from that group in no way prevents you from joining another group and commenting there, starting your own group and commenting there, commenting on your ‘wall’ or your friends walls, posting in your ‘writings’ section, adding your comment to your profile, joining another discussion site entirely and commenting there, commenting on another blog, or starting your own blog. That sounds like an awful lot of options to me.

As for group rules, not only do you have to read them (or at least scroll past them) to join the group in the first place, but nothing is forcing anyone to join a group with rules they don’t like. Also, group rules, at least the ones that I’ve seen tend not to be very restrictive. Disagreeing civilly and refraining from outright bashing other group members is simply not that great a hardship. And if you really feel the need to ridicule people for being idiots, there are always personal blogs

Speaking of ridiculing idiots, it has finally become necessary to have a comment policy on my blog. Namely, idiots will be ridiculed and, after at most one warning, banned. My blog is not a democracy.

Now, let’s get to the ridiculing. Someone going by the name rjkj attempted to post the following comment on my post about ‘forced’ feminization:

i think that forced fem is a monstrosity and it should be wiped from the face of the earth like the crap it is. And im an athiest so gone preach bible nonsence but i do belive that women should sumit to to men and deal with i mean if thier abusive then thats diferent but it doesnt justify this crap nothing does.

For starters, that’s a truly impressive number of misspellings and grammatical errors for a two sentence comment. Hardly the worst thing about it, but it’s a particular pet peeve of mine. I feel that at least trying to spell correctly and use reasonable sentence structure is a sign of respect for the owner of the blog you’re commenting on. Rjkj’s comment might as well be graffiti for all the thought they put into stating their thoughts clearly.

The meat of my problem with this comment is the idea that women should submit to men. Only a worthless troll would come to a dominant woman’s blog and say that women are meant to submit. Don’t feed the trolls, you say? To quote Greta Christina:

“Don’t feed the trolls” is bull. Ignoring Internet misogyny is exactly how the trolls get fed. Speaking up destroys them.

If I ignore this troll, they might think that their comment was just eaten by a glitch. Quietly deleting comments from the moderation queue fails to send the message that being an asshole is not cool. Trolls, and more importantly every else reading, need to hear that what they’re doing is unacceptable. This is not censorship, it’s simply having standards. Rjkj is completely free to post their drivel anywhere but on my blog.

And it really is drivel. The second sentence is so poorly constructed I’m not entirely sure what they’re getting at. “im an athiest so gone preach bible nonsence”? Really? I’m afraid that calling yourself an atheist doesn’t magically make your opinions stop being nonsense. If you’re ‘not going to preach bible nonsense’ (my best guess at what rjkj meant), then what justification do you have for saying that women are meant to submit?

I have to say, I’m disappointed in the quality of troll I’ve gotten. Kitty Stryker’s trolls on her post about candid pornography put far more effort into being complete assholes. People, if you’re going to troll me, do it whole-assedly, okay? Half-assed trolling is just sad.

Now for the accusations of cowardice. Trying to hide a problem is certainly cowardly, and deleting unflattering comments is certainly one way of hiding a problem. Deleting comments that add nothing to the discussion, as in Kitty’s case, is not cowardice. It’s boredom. Aside from a flash of irritation, there’s nothing to trolls. They’re not making a point, they’re not thought-provoking, they’re not furthering discussion, they’re just being dicks.

In rjkj’s particular case, I can’t very well be accused of cowardice for singling out their comment for ridicule. However, any further stupidity from the same person will never make it out of the moderation queue. Why? Because rjkj is boring, and on the basis of their spelling and sentence structure, too stupid to argue with. I no more owe them space on my blog than a business owner owes vandals graffiti space on their building.

If you’ve ever complained about the near complete lack of porn for dominant women (or the lack of porn for discriminating submissive men), you’ve probably been told ‘you should make some yourself’. If you’re like me, that phrase makes you want to set things on fire, but it’s hard to articulate exactly why it fills you with arsony rage. Conveniently enough, there’s a new post on Adventurotica explaing why ‘just do it yourself!’ is a pathetic fucking cop out.

Here’s an especially good snippet to tempt you to go read the whole thing:

It is a conversational shutdown tactic by people who are presumably happy that the status remain quo, when the status is not quo at all. And it is so handily disguised as a pep talk, a kind of “Well, you should just take your awesome and go make that stuff. Call us when you’re done, ‘kay?”

That’s a dick move for a host of reasons, all of which are conveniently laid out in the post. Make with the reading!