Pages

Tuesday, September 28, 2010

Glass houses

Kinky people, I think, are pretty reluctant in general to criticise other people's kinks. That's probably a good thing most of the time. I personally think kinks are really only open to criticism when they leak or overlap into the rest of life; when they don't, I think it's generally a matter of taste. Often, however, it seems to me that people give something a pass just because it's flying a kink flag; e.g. sexual assault goes unrecognized because the genders are the same, and being upset would be homophobic. I've been pretty vocal here about my objections to some kinds of dommes.

Two kinks which I do not object to, but have little or no taste for, are sadism and forced feminization (little and no, respectively). I've just been reading Bitchy Jones's take on forced feminization. She's really fun to read. She correctly recognizes that we shouldn't give something a pass just because it's identified as kink, and makes a pretty ironclad case about why forced feminization is wrong, including this summary:
* Doing housework is humiliating for men
* Men doing housework is exceptional and surely only the domain of exotic sex play
* It's humiliating for a man to be made to do something most women do every damn day. To make it even more humiliating for this MAN he can dress as a WOMAN as well. Well, yes &mdash how humiliating. *For* *me*.
* Femdom is full of misogynistic, archaic, fifties gender role inspired shit.
* No consideration is being given to female sexuality &mdash instead we are supposed to enjoy femdom because it means we don?t have to do all the housework (like other women *do*, apparently) rather than because it TURNS US ON.
OK, this sums up pretty well why forced feminization is not one of my submissive kinks; these things don't resonate with me for exactly the listed reasons. (And also the result would be just plain comical in my case, something like what you'd get with Macho Man Randy Savage in a dress. With apologies to all crossdressers who aren't built for it.)

However, I'm going to defend the practice here. I think the problem with turning this kind of analysis on kink can be quickly summed up by comparing it with BJ's main kink, sadism:
* Doing housework is humiliating for men
- You're hurting people
* Men doing housework is exceptional and surely only the domain of exotic sex play
- You get off on hurting people
* It's humiliating for a man to be made to do something most women do every damn day. To make it even more humiliating for this MAN he can dress as a WOMAN as well. Well, yes &mdash how humiliating. *For* *me*.
- Hurting people is your whole kink
* Femdom is full of misogynistic, archaic, fifties gender role inspired shit.
- Pain hurts
* No consideration is being given to female sexuality &mdash instead we are supposed to enjoy femdom because it means we don't have to do all the housework (like other women *do*, apparently) rather than because it TURNS US ON.
- You are just directly, immediately, unequivocally, obviously, not subtly, not by-implication, not if-this-has-the-stereotype-reinforcing-effect-I-predict, hurting people
Most kink that I've heard of is based on stuff that is inherently unacceptable in ordinary life; and a whole lot of it has roots in some pretty fucked-up stereotypes. Kinks including housework and wearing dresses stand up a hell of a lot better to real-life analysis than, say, BJ's
I want to *decimate* his masculinity (Hey Latin freaks – leave it! I *know*. I’ve fucking masturbated about what decimate *really* means). But I want to be able to see his masculinity as I take it apart.
Neither of them should be subjected to that unless they become real life.

6 comments:

  1. Sex columnist Dan Savage says that most kinks stem from something we're afraid of...so a gay man who came of age in the time of Stonewall might suddenly find himself turned on by cops, or a guy terrified of being cheated on might develop a cuckoldry fetish. I'm not sure what this means about men who enjoy forced fem...I'm gonna guess either they're inherently chauvinist (so being an icky stupid woman is their worst fear) or they're crossdressers who haven't come to terms with their kink and need to feel like someone else is making them do it.

    I agree that forced fem is icky - any girlyboy of mine is a) a feminist and b) going to dress up pretty for me of his own volition. But I don't give a crap what other people choose to do with their lingerie.

    I got tired of Bitchy Jones really quickly because she simply does not comprehend that some people have different taste than she does. She's made long, repeated rants about how submissive boys whose online ads feature drag pics are being selfish and gross because "nobody wants to see that". She's declared her hatred of feminine men over and over again and simply will not concede the fact that some of us like them.

    She's also fucking whiny. "Wah wah wah, I'm quitting my blog because pornographic depictions of BDSM in don't look like the things I enjoy doing. Porn has ruined my favourite pastime!" Yeah, well, non-BDSM porn doesn't look anything like most people' vanilla sex, and yet somehow we keep on getting laid and the world doesn't fall off its axis.

    Porn is designed to appeal to its target audience's basest desires. If BDSM porn is all about women in tiny PVC dresses and stiletto boots barking orders, then this is probably what a lot of subs secretly wank about. And that is the crux of the problem, not some widespread BDSM misconceptions spread by society: Bitchy is flat-out worried that she might not measure up to her partners' fantasies. She doesn't know that (for any well-adjusted guy) real-life sex with a normal person is a hundred times better than idealized sex on a screen because the real-life sex is happening to you.

    In keeping with her rampant insecurity, a lot of her posts have an annoying bravado to them: she acts as though she's the only dominant woman ever to enjoy pushing men around. I remember one of her posts was like "Have you ever heard of a woman moaning and trembling at the very sight of a man being tied up? Have you? Huh?" ...Heard of? No, my talks with my friends don't get that specific. But I've felt that way personally. In this sense Bitchy seems to have a touch of Twisty Faster in her - one gets the feeling she thinks all the other dominant women are just doing it "because of the patriarc-" oops, I mean "because of that awful, unrealistic BDSM porn" and they don't actually love it or anything.

    Wow, I ended up ranting for a really long time there. :P

    -perversecowgirl

    ReplyDelete
  2. ...and btw:

    No consideration is being given to female sexuality — instead we are supposed to enjoy femdom because it means we don't have to do all the housework...rather than because it TURNS US ON.

    I do get a bit of a tingle watching Minx do the dishes. Especially in his slutty maid outfit.

    Once again Bitchy assumes her way is the only way - that she only likes hands-on dominance so clearly that's all anyone likes. Some of us enjoy the power dynamic itself, dammit. I'm turned on by a sub who's afraid of me and/or loves to serve me. I'm turned on by thinking a boy has freely given himself to me and now I own him. The pain factor (if there is any, and often there isn't) is utterly secondary.

    -perversecowgirl

    ReplyDelete
  3. perversecowgirl, that's a really good analysis of things I was just starting to sense from reading Bitchy Jones.

    Some of us enjoy the power dynamic itself, dammit. I'm turned on by a sub who's afraid of me and/or loves to serve me. I'm turned on by thinking a boy has freely given himself to me and now I own him. The pain factor (if there is any, and often there isn't) is utterly secondary.

    Except for the fear, that's a good description of how I feel from both sides of the switch. The way I regard marriage is, now she owns me and I own her; and the only way I like to express that ownership is playing it out in FUN terms. I love to serve a person I love, sexually, and I want to be with someone who feels the same way, so we can serve each other.

    Fear is one of those things I just don't enjoy; I don't really enjoy haunted houses or rollercoasters, either. Therefore I also don't want to be feared, because I don't see it as pleasurable. That's probably a big part of why I like play bondage (bonds that can be easily escaped) but not real immobilization.

    Sometimes I like a little bit of pain or play humiliation, like a few barehanded spanks, to underscore the giving, serving, and ownership. As you've heard from me before, I regard sexually pleasing your spouse as a basic responsibility of marriage; if you're not committed to that, don't get married; or at least not to ME. Pain or humiliation are not any kind of responsibility; they're sheer gift, a gift of service, from the pained to the inflictor. They say, I will take this pain, I will abase myself for you, just for your pleasure, just because I want to make you hot.

    ReplyDelete
  4. She seems to be operating under the impression that she represents the world. Not just in the sense of "she's somehow authorized to speak for the whole kink world", but that her perspective actually is representative of everyone.

    She's a sadist. So everyone must necessarily be approaching their sex lives from an S&M angle.

    If you actually believe that (as she appears to), then her point is pretty on-target. Trouble is that, like most narrow views of the world, it's complete nonsense.

    ReplyDelete
  5. That's right, Matt. I think she thinks all dominant women are just like her.

    ReplyDelete
  6. perversecowgirl, I just noticed four copies of your first comment ended up in my spam filter. I marked them as not spam to try to discourage Google from doing that again, then, meaning to delete the first four, deleted the last four. Hopefully I didn't lose any important edits.

    ReplyDelete