Man-o-man. Contrary to what you might imagine, moderating a radical feminist blog (or “radfemblo,” as they’re known in the biz) is no tiptoe through the tulips. I read every single comment with my own personal eyes, and I’m here to tell ya, it’s not all lighthearted phluph like “14% of American women and girls live in poverty, which is 40% higher than the poverty rate for men, you ignorant conservative fucks,” or “abortion is a human right, you ignorant godbag fucks,” or “half a million women were raped in 100 days in Rwanda, you ignorant racist fucks.”
Sometimes, in fact, it can get pretty hairy.
Such as the comments on a couple of recent posts that ended up as discussions on BDSM.
OK, unlike the Bush administration and the New York Times and Oprah, I’m not gonna lie to you; I was getting pretty fawken creeped out by the pathologically violent fantasy lives described by some of our kinkier readers on whether flogging and corsets and Risk Aware Consensual Kinkiness represent the last word in women’s liberation.* In fact, I was this close to taking a 3-hour decontamination shower when, lo! I chanced upon a comment by reader LMYC, whose delightful remarks I republish here as an antidote to the seriously grody slime that had begun swirling around unbidden in the Twisty obstreperal lobe as a result of my having slogged through all those “flogging-as-intimate-communication” comments.
Thanks, LMYC.
[Note: this is the last post on this topic, I swear; I don't wanna get nominated for a Koufax in the Most Explicit New Bondage Blog category]
[Another note: to BDSM practioners, nothing personal, kids. Note that the title of the blog is I Blame The Patriarchy, not I Blame Individual Fetishists]
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Well. As a loud-ass bitch who is about as dominant as it’s possible to be, I can also tell you that the [BDSM] “scene” was not the bastion of anti-patriarchal transgression that it paints itself as.
I’m dominant. For a time, I thought it might be possible for me to find some sort of niche in BDSM.
Then I realized that it was just another way for ME to have the responsibility dumped on me again to become some goddamned spoiled brat male’s fantasy toy. Or perhaps someone ELSE in this oh-so-like-with-it scene can explain to me why PRECISELY it is that both female submissives AND female dominants are expected to wear EXACTLY THE SAME CLOTHING.
Corset? Let me tell you sumpin, cheeks. Being a dominant woman means that MY COMFORT IS PARAMOUNT. I ain’t pinching my skinny ass in half so some paunchy blobby middle-aged old fart can get off. He wants to be submissive? Then go join a gym and tighten your blobby ass up until YOU look like MY fantasy. How’s that? Oh, and BTW, I’m staying in my sweatpants. Get back to the gym and tighten up those abs baby, you’re starting to sag. And why isn’t my dinner ready?
And while we’re at it, you can fucking well hand over 95% of the Senate, the presidency for the next 223 years, the boards of directors for every fortune 500 company in existence, and make one third less money than I do for doing the same fucking job. You want submission? You got it.
If I’m a dominant woman, I want to be dominant in the way that COUNTS, not in a closed room with the shades pulled where it’s recognized as safely disconnected from reality. I want to make a shitload of money, own the governments of almost every nation on the planet, own nearly every square meter of the Earth. I don’t want some pissass “power” connected to wearing shoes that crumple up my feet and some bustier that shoves my tits up under my chin. Embodying YOUR fantasy isn’t MY idea of power.
That about encapsulates my experience as a REAL dominant woman in the “scene,” not just some airhead who playacts at being in charge when Mr. Sir says it’s okay. It’s just one more arena where women are expected to inhabit male fantasies and run hot and cold like running water for male preferences. FUCK that noise.
BDSM is truly anti-patriarchal like Madonna and Britney Spears swapping spit at the Grammys was truly lesbian. To wit:
If you’re only allowed to be in charge when the man hands you money to say it’s okay, YOU ARE NOT IN CHARGE. If being in charge requires that you wear punitive clothing, YOU ARE NOT IN CHARGE.
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* This argument, I am happy to report, is untenable; nothing as dorky as BDSM could possibly further any cause, except possibly orgasm, which, as I have noted elsewhere, is hardly the pinnacle of human achievement. Furthermore, there are obvious racist overtones in the almost constant use of the phrase “vanilla sex.”
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