Femdom is broken

At least it is according to this post by weezie over on the Not Just Bitchy blog.

Did we keep the receipt? I don’t remember filling out the warranty card. It’s probably lost in a kitchen drawer along with all my appliance instruction manuals. And what is the standard returns policy on a social/sexual/lifestyle orientation?

I actually have a great deal of sympathy for the underlying point of the post. I’d like to see more material focused on genuine emotional connections between people. Random fetish elements and kinky trappings alone do nothing for me. However, I think a good underlying point is lost in a huge overreach, with big generalizations that just don’t stand up.

You’d be hard pressed to find a single collection of images, interviews, articles, or books that doesn’t make the cock (artifical or otherwise) the central star of the story. When did everything become about dicks and not about d/s?

When I look around image blogs or interview sites or article collections I really don’t see a surfeit of cocks. If anything there’s a lack of male bodies and appendages. There are certainly a lot of dominant women (in a variety of attire) and a fair amount of traditional BDSM activities and toys, but I’m typically not having to wade through wall to wall cocks (if you’ll forgive the mental image). Sites like kink.com take a lot of criticism from some sections of the femdom blog community, but whatever their faults, I do think they’ve made a positive contribution by actually introducing more male bodies into their material. I remember the old days of kink porn (the late 80’s and early 90’s in my case), when it mostly consisted of naked tied up women or annoyed looking dommes in leather outfits. Sites like leda showing ‘genuine’ M/f or F/m interaction were the exception, not the rule.

I think we can all agree that FemDom porn is particularly terrible.

Really? All of us? I don’t want to be out on my lonesome here, but…ahem….raises hand. Firstly – particularly terrible? That suggests that within the porn genre itself, the femdom segment is particularly egregious. I’ve argued in the past that femdom porn is actually one of the more authentic genres. It at least sometimes represents how some people in the community play in their leisure time when the camera’s aren’t rolling. Would anyone argue that other well known porn segments (lesbian, milf, teen, racial, ts, etc.) are in some way better or more authentic? And secondly, what absolute standard are we holding femdom porn up to? Thanks to the internet it’s certainly better now than it has been at anytime in the past. So what’s the comparison point? I’d agree there’s a lot of crap out there, and a lot of viewpoints are under-represented, but that’s not quite the same as saying it’s particularly terrible.

I think the argument goes something like this: If a submissive is willing to take a dozen lashings, or engage in CBT, or even go into an orgasm-denial full-time-relationship, that “proves” the submissive loves his partner and is willing to devote his body and life to her.

News flash: HE PROBABLY LIKES THOSE THINGS. See that stiff cock in all of those circumstances?? Do Dominants really truly believe it’s all about them and not about his dick? Does he cuddle? Does he nuzzle their neck without prompting?

It was this section in the original article that really triggered this post, as I found it very puzzling. Obviously any submissive engaging in corporal or CBT enjoys it at some level. That’s why he (or she) does it. Similarly, a service submissive gets satisfaction from cleaning or cooking or whatever service is required. And somebody who cuddles or nuzzles their partner is doing it for the emotional and physical closeness it brings. We enter into relationships for what we think we’ll get out of them. That’s true whether it’s D/s or vanilla, gay or straight, romantic or platonic. The trick of course if finding someone with complimentary needs.

There seems to a presumption in the original article that because CBT might be physically satisfying to the submissive that somehow makes it invalid as femdom. Well here’s a new flash in return – sadists actually like hurting people. When I’m doing CBT, or any kind of intense masochistic activity, I’m not only enjoying the power exchange and the physical sensation, I’m also enjoying the pleasure my partner takes in it. I’d hate to play with someone who was bored or annoyed. The goal is mutual satisfaction, in whatever weird and wonderful forms that may take for both parties. Just because the submissive enjoys it doesn’t somehow make it ‘topping from the bottom’.

As I said at the start, I actually kind of agree with where weezie is coming from. There are many facets to femdom, and most of them are very badly represented in our culture. But I tend to get frustrated when I see ‘My preference isn’t represented’ stretched into ‘and your preference is wrong’.

I was tempted to illustrate this post with a big close-up of a wax spattered cock. But instead I’ll go in a different direction, and try something explicit and yet intimate. This is from the musing and muses tumblr site.