I've been interviewed! It was awesome.
I have been interviewed by the lovely Dishevelled Domina, also of Tumblr fame. (The interview link is work safe, the Tumblr link is really, really, really NSFW.)
We talked about a lot of fun things, including tabletop RPGs and '80s cartoons, as well as more thinky stuff like feminism and kink and marriage and so on. I talk a little about my own history and how I became aware that I am a big ol' pervert, which I haven't actually done all that much of, especially recently, so that was interesting. And there's a picture of me in a pirate hat.
So please, stop by and read and comment! I'll be checking in and answering questions. (Although I am almost always up for fielding questions either here or on my Tumblr, JSYK.)
Have an excerpt! My two favorite questions:
How did you discover your power exchange preference?
It just kind of . . . blossomed. I’ve had sadistic/masochistic fantasies ever since I was five or six. Once I became aware of BDSM subculture, somewhere around the age of twelve, I was intrigued by it. By the awesome clothes, by the glamorous people, by the strong presence of female sexuality, by the way it was forbidden.
Of course, I grew up and discovered that BDSM culture is far from perfect. And, sadly, as I explored the idea, I became aware that the female sexuality showcased in most BDSM photography and porn/erotica had little to do with my personal desires and values. But the core of that appeal remained. Pain, lust, beauty . . . I have always found the idea of a beautiful man suffering intensely erotic.
Flashback to the ’80s: I remember there was this one episode of Thundercats that had my favorite character, Tygra, getting strapped into this torture/execution machine called The Four Winds, which was basically designed to rip a person’s arms and legs off. It wasn’t the drawing and quartering I found sexy - I thought that was creepy and gross - it was that Tygra was chained in it, waiting, for hours. The anticipation was lovely. The peril. And the being chained up spread-eagle.
I only saw the episode once, but I had all kinds of fantasies about it; someone whipping him, someone cutting his clothes off, someone hurting him with pointy things, performing painful and humiliating experiments on him. I acted these out with my action figures to excess. Right in front of all my My Little Ponies, too. I’m sorry you had to see that, Moondancer.
Do you think there is a connection between feminism and femdom? If so, how would you characterize it?
Only in the sense that any issue involving women claiming their sexual desires, especially ones forbidden by the cultural roles thrust upon them, can be framed as a feminist issue.
I am an avowed feminist, and I find the conflation of “feminist” with “thinks women are superior to men” annoying. I do not believe that. Interestingly, woman-as-goddess is a huge part of the fem-dom fantasy. It’s common to see men painting women as the superior sex, especially submissive men. I have no use for that. It’s not any better, to my mind, than telling me that men are superior. It’s offensive to me as a person, and I am really tired of it, and tired of people who dismiss feminism because they do not understand what it’s about. There are legitimate bones to pick with modern feminist dialogue, it has its areas of ignorance, but one thing it is not about is putting women above men. I’ll get off my soapbox now.
I do think that femdom is often depicted in an incredibly sexist way, and while leather-clad ice-queen porn can still be well-produced and very hot, and while I don’t fault people who like it or fantasize about it (what gets you off gets you off, have a great time and don’t be ashamed), its rampant exclusion, as a genre, of the desires of actual dominant women is a huge problem, a huge turn-off, and a huge barrier to dominant women recognizing their own dominant inclinations for what they are. Thankfully, it’s changing, and I have hopes that we will be seeing more appealing male-sub imagery and writing. I am trying to contribute to that by writing erotica that appeals to me personally.
I also think that for a lot of people, the femdom fantasy does derive a great deal of its power from the subversion or inversion of traditional roles, whether we are aware of that individually or not, whether that’s affected us individually or not. I can’t honestly say whether that’s had an effect on me. I was so young when I started having these thoughts that I am inclined to think that a desire to reverse traditional roles had nothing to do with it. Those roles are probably what kept me from recognizing it for what it was in the first place.
So drop on by and say hello! And peruse the other interviews while you're there! They have been a fascinating cross-section of kinky folks, and I really admire the project and what DD is trying to do.
Penthesilea's interview is especially excellent, and what she has to say about femdom/kink/BDSM and feminism is spot-on, and I wish I had read it when I answered that question, because I could have just pointed to it and said "What she said."
X-posted from Dreamwidth. Comment count:
We talked about a lot of fun things, including tabletop RPGs and '80s cartoons, as well as more thinky stuff like feminism and kink and marriage and so on. I talk a little about my own history and how I became aware that I am a big ol' pervert, which I haven't actually done all that much of, especially recently, so that was interesting. And there's a picture of me in a pirate hat.
So please, stop by and read and comment! I'll be checking in and answering questions. (Although I am almost always up for fielding questions either here or on my Tumblr, JSYK.)
Have an excerpt! My two favorite questions:
How did you discover your power exchange preference?
It just kind of . . . blossomed. I’ve had sadistic/masochistic fantasies ever since I was five or six. Once I became aware of BDSM subculture, somewhere around the age of twelve, I was intrigued by it. By the awesome clothes, by the glamorous people, by the strong presence of female sexuality, by the way it was forbidden.
Of course, I grew up and discovered that BDSM culture is far from perfect. And, sadly, as I explored the idea, I became aware that the female sexuality showcased in most BDSM photography and porn/erotica had little to do with my personal desires and values. But the core of that appeal remained. Pain, lust, beauty . . . I have always found the idea of a beautiful man suffering intensely erotic.
Flashback to the ’80s: I remember there was this one episode of Thundercats that had my favorite character, Tygra, getting strapped into this torture/execution machine called The Four Winds, which was basically designed to rip a person’s arms and legs off. It wasn’t the drawing and quartering I found sexy - I thought that was creepy and gross - it was that Tygra was chained in it, waiting, for hours. The anticipation was lovely. The peril. And the being chained up spread-eagle.
I only saw the episode once, but I had all kinds of fantasies about it; someone whipping him, someone cutting his clothes off, someone hurting him with pointy things, performing painful and humiliating experiments on him. I acted these out with my action figures to excess. Right in front of all my My Little Ponies, too. I’m sorry you had to see that, Moondancer.
Do you think there is a connection between feminism and femdom? If so, how would you characterize it?
Only in the sense that any issue involving women claiming their sexual desires, especially ones forbidden by the cultural roles thrust upon them, can be framed as a feminist issue.
I am an avowed feminist, and I find the conflation of “feminist” with “thinks women are superior to men” annoying. I do not believe that. Interestingly, woman-as-goddess is a huge part of the fem-dom fantasy. It’s common to see men painting women as the superior sex, especially submissive men. I have no use for that. It’s not any better, to my mind, than telling me that men are superior. It’s offensive to me as a person, and I am really tired of it, and tired of people who dismiss feminism because they do not understand what it’s about. There are legitimate bones to pick with modern feminist dialogue, it has its areas of ignorance, but one thing it is not about is putting women above men. I’ll get off my soapbox now.
I do think that femdom is often depicted in an incredibly sexist way, and while leather-clad ice-queen porn can still be well-produced and very hot, and while I don’t fault people who like it or fantasize about it (what gets you off gets you off, have a great time and don’t be ashamed), its rampant exclusion, as a genre, of the desires of actual dominant women is a huge problem, a huge turn-off, and a huge barrier to dominant women recognizing their own dominant inclinations for what they are. Thankfully, it’s changing, and I have hopes that we will be seeing more appealing male-sub imagery and writing. I am trying to contribute to that by writing erotica that appeals to me personally.
I also think that for a lot of people, the femdom fantasy does derive a great deal of its power from the subversion or inversion of traditional roles, whether we are aware of that individually or not, whether that’s affected us individually or not. I can’t honestly say whether that’s had an effect on me. I was so young when I started having these thoughts that I am inclined to think that a desire to reverse traditional roles had nothing to do with it. Those roles are probably what kept me from recognizing it for what it was in the first place.
So drop on by and say hello! And peruse the other interviews while you're there! They have been a fascinating cross-section of kinky folks, and I really admire the project and what DD is trying to do.
Penthesilea's interview is especially excellent, and what she has to say about femdom/kink/BDSM and feminism is spot-on, and I wish I had read it when I answered that question, because I could have just pointed to it and said "What she said."
X-posted from Dreamwidth. Comment count: