Examining...

[fierceawakening]

So someone asked over at Ren's if any kinky people had talked about examining their desires, and Ren recommended reading me.

Not sure exactly why, as all I've been saying lately is that such a thing involves asking the wrong questions, but... just so this person has something to see, here goes nothing.

Comments

[fierceawakening]

Hello, preciouslilme!

Thanks for reading.

As far as there being more submissive women than dominant ones, yes, I do think patriarchy may have to do with that.

However, as some people on the Feministing thread pointed out, the issue is complicated by the fact that bottoms and submissives outnumber tops and dominants. It may be that some of the lopsidedness we're seeing simply comes from the fact that the vast majority of people prefer that role in general.

I do think there is a noticeable dearth of women tops, though, and I do think this probably has to do with patriarchy. However, I'm not sure this is because BDSM isn't natural and women are trained into submission. I think it may also be that women look around them and see vague social support for their submissive desires (though I also urge you to read the stories of submissive women who felt like freaks and failures, too), but that women don't see support for dominance.

I know that, for me, I felt bombarded by the message that if I did partner with men, I'd be expected to relate to them in certain ways that made me submissive or at least a little bit submissive.

For me, though, that clashed from a very early age with the sense of myself in my head and with the feeling that I wanted all that reversed! So I really don't think people just soak up what culture says. I think that people may be ashamed to defy it, though, and this leads to lots of problems.

[fierceawakening]

also, I may just be missing something, but why is someone with an icon of a woman licking blood off her hand, labeled "sinsuality," talk about BDSM as "unnatural"? Are you into it yourself but think it's entirely social? Because I must say that has me very confused.

[preciouslilme]

What do you think explains the lack fo female tops? I think that the clashing with what society says is okay explains the difference between the men who have submissive fantasies and the men who actually act them out.

I do believe there are some natural subs but I do wonder to what degree society has made women who might be interested in BDSM take on the submissive role automatically. I was one of those women myself and my partner took on the role of dominant. It wasn't until a year later that he told me that he hated being dom and was actually more sub. I'd figured out I hated any sort of power play altogether soon after we started.

[fierceawakening]

What do you think explains the lack fo female tops?

I already answered you above:

I do think there is a noticeable dearth of women tops, though, and I do think this probably has to do with patriarchy. However, I'm not sure this is because BDSM isn't natural and women are trained into submission. I think it may also be that women look around them and see vague social support for their submissive desires (though I also urge you to read the stories of submissive women who felt like freaks and failures, too), but that women don't see support for dominance.

Is there something more you feel I'm not addressing?

I do wonder to what degree society has made women who might be interested in BDSM take on the submissive role automatically.

I do think this happens, and I do think patriarchy is likely to have something to do with it. On the other hand, I think that a lot (but of course not all) of the BDSM community encourages people to do what they want to do, rather than what they feel they should. I've seen a lot of women start out thinking they'll be bottoms or submissives and then discovering either that they are happier as tops or that they'll gladly switch.

[preciouslilme]

My thoughts are that if BDSM is natural then there would be somewhat equal numbers of dominant women and men. Are you saying that there are dominant women who are not involved in any sort of BDSM because there is little social support for it or that in there interest of BDSM become submissive instead?

I actually don't have a problem with the BDSM community in general and I think if more people who were practicing any sort of power play became more involved in it and read more about it then that would be a really good thing. I do wonder about people who aren't involved in it though. When I talk about people who have no examined where their feelings have come from and why I think I'm mainly referring to those who aren't really apart of the community. It's that aspect that worries me the most as I think less thought and less safety (both physically and mentally) goes into it, and that's where the problems of women being submissive who aren't naturally that way begins.

I think society (along with the patriarchy) has made maledom/femsub sex a lot more normalised than any other type of sex to the point where people don't think about it anymore and that therein lies the problem. That is not analysed and discussed without it being just being considered "anti-sex" to question it I think causes more problems than it solves given the way the patriarchy has consolidated it to some degree.

[fierceawakening]

Preciouslilme:

My thoughts are that if BDSM is natural then there would be somewhat equal numbers of dominant women and men. Are you saying that there are dominant women who are not involved in any sort of BDSM because there is little social support for it or that in there interest of BDSM become submissive instead?

I'm not sure why you're confused. What I am saying is that I do think there's widespread social norms about what relationships look like, and I do think those norms are a certain kind of heterosexual romance that puts a man in a "leading"/dominant-ish role and a woman in a "following"/submissive-ish one.

As I understand radical feminist critiques of BDSM, the idea is that BDSM is like this as well, just more extreme. That's the viewpoint I assumed you were coming from here, so please correct me if I'm confused.

Now, you ask me about BDSM. As I said, the fact that the majority of people are bottoms complicates things. But leaving that aside: I do think that that social norm influences people who are kinky, just as I think it influences people who are not.

How does it do this? That's of course complex, but here are a few possibilities:

1. A woman has an interest in power exchange or pain. This is not specific by itself. When she looks around at the general culture, she sees images of M/f more frequently and keys into them, and therefore wants to submit to men.
2. A woman is dominant. She sees around her that her culture disapproves of people like her, so she feels ashamed and decides to make do with the other role.
3. A woman who would enjoy both roles finds that the submissive one "feels more natural" to her at first because she's been trained by society that this is a more "womanly" role. Only later does she realize that both suit her equally well.

Does that help you? I think there are a lot of women who would explore topping or dominance sooner in Utopia.

I think society (along with the patriarchy) has made maledom/femsub sex a lot more normalised than any other type of sex to the point where people don't think about it anymore and that therein lies the problem.

Yeah, I do think (like I said above) that norms of romance have power dynamics embedded in them, and that worries me too. Not because I'm against people enjoying power dynamics, but because I'm not entirely comfortable with their being the default for everyone.

What bugs me, though, is how this tends to get brought up in discussions of BDSM, when I think there's a lot more of this unreflective acceptance of power dynamics among "vanilla," "normal," etc. straight couples. I think people need ti start there, but often are more... shocked by? interested in? intrigued by? the people with the whips and the chains.

[roykay]

>it does not explain why women so much more often fall into the submissive side and men to the
dominant.

It is hard to estimate the actual population in the BDSM communities (plural, there are more than one), given the paradigms the main stream media apply to this. Remember conventional people only look at events through conventional eyes, trained to look for things that fit their POV - AND NOTHING MORE. I mean consider any other social-cultural reporting, from the drug war to whether it really is all that "responsible" to pass a "bail out" bill, in a hurry, with no definitions of how it is supposed to work. Yet MSM take comfort in knowing they have reported what sounds NORMAL.

However, there is one little butterfly effect in one aspect of BDSM, spanking. Female primates have a sexual trick called "bottom bouncing", which is sort of a masturbation, pre-masturbation activity. In fact, the astute hetero male (and bi and lesbian female) will look for this sign of readiness whether they're orangutans or homo sapiens. That comports with fanny patting and progressively to spanking, depending on the positive sensory effects. As it happens spanking is also used to force a submission of children, and bare bottom spanking a sort of added pain and humiliation given the pressure to wear clothes. Same acts, different effects, but a S-R conflation and intermingling of the two is quiet likely. That in turn creates further conditioned stimuli, which also attain eroticism.

In fact, my introduction to spanking and the rest of BDSM has been led by women who expressly wanted it. So, originally I reconciled myself to fanny patting, then was encouraged to harder and harder smacks. Then I accidently scrape a nipple with my teeth and got a positive "hurt, but it's a good hurt" response. Each step has been led by the women and sometimes I have trouble keeping up with it in a creative way. (Never, ever, bore your partner in sex.)

So, I am left with a choice of either denying my partners what they want because I elect to find their desires "illegitimate", or having fun with some truly great women, both in bed and out. Ehhhh. I'll take door #2.

I do understand the desire to have easy and power-orthogonal sex with people just because "sex is good" Sex IS good. I understand that concern with anything related to "pain" or "punishment" or "humiliation" having to do with sex because sex is NOT intrinsically painful, bad, or humiliating. I used to look askance at BDSM for many of the same reasons you do. However, I have met entirely too many perfectly liberated women who say they want to sub (or bottom, actually I am a top not a dom) to not accept that and play with that in with an underlying respect for their own agency - unimposed upon by my vision of what they SHOULD want.

[preciouslilme]

Wow, way to generalise from monkeys. And thanks for telling me what I like otherwise I would have never figured it out! . I'm not a monkey. I've only ever been "spanked" once (actually it them violently hitting me given the lack of consent) and if anyone ever does it to me I'll hit them back, harder and not somewhere there's lots of fatty tissue. There is nothing inherent in me which makes me like it. Quite the contrary actually. I'm not sure how I'm supposed to take the rest of your argument seriously when you claim something like that.

Have you ever supposed that women are raised to not like ourselves, to see ourselves only in the light of what we can do for others? And how this lack of respect for ourselves can lead to allowing others to disrespect us? Sure, I've gotten off on being submissive before. In the same time period I also thought I deserved to be "raped" and that it was all I was good for. And yes, I was the one asking for it at this stage. Everywhere women are given messages that we are there to serve men's sexual needs. Some of it is bound to sink in. It seems from your comment at least that it doesn't really matter why they want these things as long as they fit into what you desire.

And I could argue that sex is not intrinsically good but if you think BDSM is good well we're going to have enough to disagree upon anyway.

[roykay]

Actually you are a monkey, or more accurately an ape; as am I. Only the creationists bother denying we are apes. We are a different species of ape from chimps, bonobos, gorillas and the like, but an awful lot of hardwairing is characteristic of all.

Now not all people experience spanking the same way. Sometimgs a pleasure connection is made and sometimes not. My note is that it happens often enough to create a S-R pattern and ultimately a culture of people with similar S-R patterns.

>Have you ever supposed that women are raised to not like ourselves, to see ourselves only in the light of what we can do for others?

Ohhhhhhhhhhhhh yes. Essentialist second wave Feminists were big on pushing this, to cast wommen as "the nurturers" and thus anchoring womens rights not in equality but in speciality. That is part of the whole "Rape is the means by which all men keep all women in a state of subjugation." thesis. Men are the rapists - violent and uncontrolled. Women are the rapees - peaceful and stoic in care. It wasn't us guys who were making this argument of gender roles. It was second wave feminists.

>Everywhere women are given messages that we are there to serve men's sexual needs. Some of it is bound to sink in.

heh heh. I hasten to assure you that men get the converse message - that we HAD BETTER serve women's sexual needs or there ain'ta gonna be no sex.

>It seems from your comment at least that it doesn't really matter why they want these things as long as they fit into what you desire.

Read for comprehension, please. I was fitting to their desires, i.e. I was serving their self reported needs. This is really pretty explicit in what I wrote.

>And I could argue that sex is not intrinsically good but if you think BDSM is good well we're going to have enough to disagree upon anyway.

You're really have trouble with this reading for comprehension thing, aren't you? I didn't say BDSM was "intrinsically good". Can you point to a uote on that?

Are you saying sex isn't intrinsically good? Okay, then is sex intrinsically bad? What IS sex to you?

[preciouslilme]

If someone was to like spanking I would not put it down to biology but cast it as a learnt behaviour. If it was biology shouldn't the majority of women like it? I find it hard to imagine I am the only one that deviates from your theory.

In case you haven't noticed we've moved on from second wave feminism. Women are raised to believe that they exist to service men. It has nothing to do with speciality and everything to do with patriarchal culture. And last time I checked men are the rapists and women are predominantly the victims. Even when men are raped there rapists are predominantly male.

Two seconds of attempting to please a woman does not constitute equal pleasure. Men go down on women for two seconds and expect their blowjob to go to next Christmas.

Unless you say that you have explicitly talked to them about why they want the things they do and made sure that it is not coming from a place of hatred then I will believe that ultimately you are doing it because you want to get laid, with no interest in the woman's wellbeing at all.

Er, I never wrote that you said BDSM was "intrincically good" either. If you're gonna quote at least quote right.

Sex is intrinsically neither. To say it is intrinsically good is to take away from all the ways it is used as a power trip.

[fierceawakening]

Y'know, could you please stop disparaging BDSM *and* using that icon? It's really bothering me. It's like... BDSM imagery is OK when you use it, but requires examination when everyone else does. It's actually really bothering me.

[preciouslilme]

I'll stop using it given it bothers you but its not BDSM imagery at all. It's berry juice being squeezed.

[fierceawakening]

Roy,

As much as I actually did say I wanted to see your thoughts on this, the whole monkey comparison is really creeping me out. The whole thing you're talking about doesn't resonate with me at all, and yes, I do like women.