For those of you that haven’t encountered his writing before, maymay writes the ‘Maybe Maimed but Never Harmed‘ blog. He’s an interesting guy and he writes about all sorts of stuff connected to kink, sexuality, gender and politics. Some of his stuff I find thought provoking, some of it strikes me as completely over-the-top and excessively dramatic. And don’t even get me started on some of his dumb comments about pro-dommes (for example here and here).
One thing he’s often commented on in the past is the prevalence of male dominant/female submission in scene spaces. So I couldn’t help thinking of him when I wandered past this page on the kink.com Upper Floor site. The alleged concept of the Upper Floor is:
The creation of a 24×7 BDSM lifestyle space as fantasized about in BDSM literature such as ‘Story of O’, Anne Rice’s Sleeping Beauty Series, and Laura Antoniou’s MarketPlace Series. Such literature often describes a castle like place in which the norms of society are replaced by the rules of dominance and submission. “The Upper Floor” is an exploration into the feasibility of such a place and lifestyle.
That sounds like fairly ludicrous and laughable concept to start with. However, lets run with the concept of a luxurious decadent space to explore a formalized D/s “lifestyle” (quotes definitely required), and look at the main characters they’ve assembled. There are five in total, four men and a woman. There’s the Master (male dom), the Major Domo (male dom), the Steward (male dom), the Butler (male dom) and the Governess (female switch). Yes, the only woman there is also the only one they put into both a dominant and submissive role. They couldn’t quite bring themselves to add a simple dominant female, despite the fact that ‘Mistress’ would actually be a very appropriate addition to that list of roles. Instead lets ignore the fact that ‘Governess’ sounds like a pretty strict top role, and go with:
Punished or punishing, she is an expert in all things protocol and corporal. Her experience as both top and bottom give her a unique outlook on the needs of both slaves and masters.
Admittedly there’s also a very brief mention about the Butler being punished if he screws up, but it’s kind of lost in all the mentions of him dominating and punishing slave girls.
To add insult to injury, the governess is also responsible for “the close training on the kitchen slave”. So the only woman there also gets put in charge of the kitchen staff. Personally I’d have thought that would be more a job for a cook rather than a governess, but then again what do I know about these kind of 24×7 lifestyle D/s communities?
As kink/gender injustices go, this one is probably a fair way down a pretty long list. But just for a moment or two it ticked me off.
For an accompanying image I thought a governess style shot would be somewhat appropriate. I found this on the Superior Women tumblr site. I’m afraid I don’t have an original attribution.
🙂 That’s wonderful.
I’m also glad that both of the examples you cite of my vapid remarks are from 2007. That’s so long ago, I’ve surely gone through no changes in my thinking since then. 😉
Thanks for stopping by maymay. Happy to hear my channeling wasn’t horribly off-base. And also that your thinking on prodommes with respect to sex work has changed since 2007.
Although it’d be good to hear that you’d also evolved your thinking on all the other fairly wild statements in those posts (most prodommes are about looks not skill, most clients are socially awkward or emotionally unintelligent, they’re just in it for the paycheck, they separate professional from personal life because of pathetic men (?), etc). There’s no doubt elements of truth in there about some individuals. But there are a hell of a lot of prodommes and clients out there, and saying ‘most’ is to paint with an awfully big brush. Particularly without any data other than ‘some people I know’ to back it up.
And why’s that, paltego?
Saying “most” is accurate. It would be inaccurate if I had said “all” or “some.” I didn’t.
Is the sting more acute when the broader brush is also the more precise? I bet it does.
What on earth do you think would sting about a bunch of random opinions clearly pulled out of your ass? I just hate seeing anyone look stupid, and these kind of responses don’t really help you in that respect.
Maybe one day you’ll consider these kind of responses as equally vapid as you now regard your 2007 comments. But I’m not going to hold my breath on that one.