This post may get a little metaphysical. Having previously argued that femdom wasn’t broken, I’m now going to suggest that it doesn’t actually exist. How’s that for consistency?
This post actually started life as a reply to a comment from weezie, and was a continuation of my thoughts on the original post. The reply ended up being such a sprawling mess I thought it deserved it’s own post, so it could at least sprawl at its leisure. Rereading the original post again the last sentence caught my eye.
Maybe I just need a new word – “FemDom” seems broken.
I’ve already tackled the ‘broken’ part, but it seems to me that the first part here, the ‘new word’, really gets to the heart of the problem. Because what actually is femdom? Wikipedia, that definitive purveyor of absolute truth on the internet, defines it as: “Female dominance (or Femdom) is those BDSM relationships and BDSM scenes in which the dominant partner is female.” Which is true as far as it goes, but seems a little circular for a definition.
Being the analytical engineering type I like to define things in very concrete terms. What do I see? What do people do? What actions are performed? When I try to define it in those terms, I very quickly end up with a big complex multi-dimensional space. For example, some possible axis include…
Pain – From an essential part of the experience to something always unpleasant and unwelcome.
Dress – From heavy fetishwear through to normal daily clothing.
Time – From having a very strictly defined and limited playtime to an active 24/7 lifestyle that blends into daily life.
Attitude – From a warm and loving approach to a cold and distant dominance.
Character – From heavy role-playing to an active dislike of any kind of ‘false’ roles.
Submission – From deeply submissive at all times to enforced submission only in aspects of play (e.g. bondage).
Psychology – From humiliation and degradation to affirmation and equality.
I could go on, but you probably get the picture. Any kinky person sits at a different point on these many axis. Or, more likely, sits at a range of different points on these axis, creating a sort of complex multi-dimensional fuzzy shape in kink-space. A heavy masochist/non-submissive/leather loving/role-player occupies a very different area in the space to a submissive/24×7/cross-dressing/cuckold. Some people will have very small tightly focused kink shapes, while others will occupy be far more vague and volatile. The Kama Sutra may describe 64 different sexual positions, but that’s nothing compared to the infinite complexity of kinky coupling.
So if what I observe varies dramatically, if different people use different definitions and the actions are inconsistent, can the concept even exist in a useful and meaningful form? Is it nonsensical to say that the masochist doing a piercing scene with a pro-domme is engaging in the same general activity as a lifestyle submissive giving their partner a pedicure and foot massage? Femdom, if it exists in any form at all, encompasses this entire space. But people typically use it as a shorthand for specific regions that are meaningful to them.
This problem is compounded by the fact that the representation of femdom in pornography and kink culture is clearly not an even distribution across kink-space. For example, the area outlined by pain, fetishwear, humilation and cold dominance is heavily featured in BDSM porn. Whereas people desiring a warm loving approach, with no heavy pain, no fetish gear and a sense of infused submission are far more badly served. Partly that’s a practical decision. It’s a lot easier to portray the former in a photograph or ten minute video clip than it is the latter. It’s also down to market forces, historical tendencies, then influence of other porn genres, etc. And there’s no doubt a self-perpetuating element to it as well, as the culture reacts to itself and not just external pressures.
Whatever the reason for this uneven representation, the result is often the kind of understandable frustration expressed on blogs like Not Just Bitchy, Delving into Deviance and of course the original Bitchy. Fed-up with the leather, heels, whips and snarling pro-dommes, they proclaim this isn’t femdom. It’s a twisted warped version of something that should look very different.
I have a lot of sympathy for this position. I’d like to see a richer and more interesting kinky culture that is welcoming to new people. But it’s not clear to me that this is a zero sum game. It doesn’t seem necessary that the traditionally over-represented areas have to be scaled back for the alternative voices to be heard. The young guy jerking off to leather clad spiky heeled dommes might grow up to be a wonderful and thoughtful submissive for someone. Putting positive alternative voices out there is more likely to make that happen than attacking the images he likes.
The fact we use this single term to describe such an incredibly varied and complex experience is always going to lead to problems. People want to feel a sense of ownership in their self-identified culture, which is difficult when the culture encompasses so much and is pulled in so many different directions. I think one helpful step would be to attach far less importance to the term femdom, and focus more effort on defining and naming the specific areas that appeal to us. Recognize the complexity and validity of the entire kink-space, but carve out and identify important regions. Identities and names provide rallying points and help shape thinking.
Of course, given my blog title and domain name, I probably should be a little careful about arguing femdom doesn’t actually exist as a useful concept. I’d hate to vanish in a puff of logic.
‘I refuse to prove that I exist,’ says God, `for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing.’
`But,’ says Man, `The Babel fish is a dead giveaway, isn’t it? It could not have evolved by chance. It proves you exist, and so therefore, by your own arguments, you don’t. QED.’
`Oh dear,’ says God, `I hadn’t thought of that,’ and promptly vanished in a puff of logic.
`Oh, that was easy,’ says Man, and for an encore goes on to prove that black is white and gets himself killed on the next zebra crossing.Douglas Adams in the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy
Finally, to finish what has to be the longest post on this blog to date, here’s a nice image of someone enjoying the thing that doesn’t exist. I found it on Femdom Style Counsel.
Upvotes for HHGTTG reference.
You’re treading in the area that I’ve been trying to describe: maybe the entire paradigm is so wrong that we need a completely new syntax to describe it more accurately.
I’m always happy if I can sneak a HHGTTG quote in somewhere 🙂
I often think that an entirely new syntax and ontology would help a lot. But then I look at some of the gender/sexual categories that have developed and wonder what barriers to entry that’d throw up. e.g. To pick a random label I saw used “…a pansexual androgynous pre-everything transmasculine genderqueer guy…”.
I think the main problem is using the words dominant and submissive, and constraining masochist and sadist to just the pain part.
Masochist:
“Over a period of at least six months, recurrent and intense sexual arousal from the act of being humiliated, beaten, bound, or otherwise made to suffer, as manifested by fantasies, urges, or behaviors.”
Submissive:
“Ready to conform to the authority or will of others; meekly obedient or passive”
Which of these better describes the people who are called submissive? It’s absurd that the word is even used…it describes the opposite of what most masochists are. It really does mean “doormat”. Personally I would never date a woman who insisted on getting her way…my desires are only sexual…as they should be for both people. ACTING submissive falls under humiliation and control…so it fits in with masochism. But the key word is “acting”.
If people weren’t so obsessive about not being judgmental I think it would be acknowledged that actually having a strong desire to selflessly please is a personality flaw and is unrelated to sexual masochism. Many vanilla people have it. It’s terrible that it’s encouraged by bdsm people (online anyway).
If people understood s&m as two broad urges it would be simpler. And except for when people fetishize an individual aspect of it, or bring in another kink like exhibitionism, it does just seem to be those two broad urges, with variation in what people find specifically appealing.
On a related note I found this story very funny:
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.subculture.bondage-bdsm.femdom/browse_thread/thread/8106ae9666398adc/c418f409121aa367?lnk=gst&q=the+vanilla+wife#
I suppose the word “submissive” could be kept for people whose main kink is acting submissive. Submission-enthusiast world be better, like bondage-enthusiast. But how many of those people are there? If all they really wanted sexually was to obey orders to make their wife happy, they’d find a demanding vanilla wife. But somehow I think the desire to be bound or beaten or made to suffer would show itself…
I certainly agree that the terminology is both confusing and misused. I’m guilty of that in this blog, as I use terms like slave, submissive and masochist very loosely and without thinking enough about them.
However, I also disagree with a lot of what you’ve said here. I think you’re in danger of doing what I was arguing against, which is carving off chunks of the space and labeling them “right” or “wrong” based on your preference.
The masochist/submissive intersection is interesting enough that I think I’ll save my comments there for an actual post. There are several possible permutations there. But I certainly don’t think submission=doormat.
There’s no such thing as a selfless act. At the root it’s always about satisfying an internal need. But that internal need may be very complex. It might be to put someone on a pedestal and remove problems from their life. It might be to give someone the gift of control. It might be the desire to micro-managed and have no decisions to take.
The idea of a demanding vanilla wife misses the point IMO. It’s not about the simple acts themselves, it’s the dynamic between two people. A demanding vanilla wife is simply selfish. That’s taking without giving. A submissive may give up control, or orientate themselves around another person, but it only works if that other person understands that and appreciates the gift. The dominant has work to do as well to make the dynamic function, and meet the submissive’s needs.
The story was kind of funny, but the underlying point is a fairly obvious one. Both people need to get their needs satisfied, and if they don’t align then you’re pretty much fucked. Just because someone’s submissive doesn’t mean they fail if they don’t submit to whatever they’re faced with. In that scenario the dynamic between the dominant/submissive is the thing that fails. And I’m sure there are some guys out there who would have loved to try out the scenario described 🙂
Obviously everybody’s entitled to their hard limits. I definitely identified with the man in the story, and my first reaction when considering what if my wife did that to me was, “Oh, Hell no!” But after I let the idea simmer for a bit, I concluded that I’d do it for her. I wouldn’t do anything sexual with another man for her (hard limits, and all), but I would submit to torment from a man if that’s what she wanted. I’d give anything for her to throw a curveball at me, even if it meant doing something I wouldn’t ordinarily be turned on by.
D/s is full of these kind of interesting contradictions. For situations on the edge I guess it really comes down to how much you can channel the dommes pleasure into your own satisfaction.
I also personally think it’s possible to separate submission & masochism from sex, even if that acts themselves are sexual. But that’s more a personal slant on it.
Excellent. Yes. After much discussion, I came to the realization that my poorly-phrased-original-article (“FemDom is broken”) led people down the wrong path.
My original intent was the sentence you picked up on – I need a new WORD.
And you sketched out the problem here VERY well, and it’s even helping me to fully realize the problem I’m having. THANK YOU.
I hate that when I use “submissive” people reject me and my ideas and think of me as lesser; I hate that googling “Femdom” never turns up what I want; and I hate that when I say “service” people think of butlers.
I agree that the solution is not to attack those terms or those lifestyles. I am accepting that they are equally valid.
I just need new words to set me apart from them. Time to start flipping through all the old obscure dictionaries 🙂 I can’t be the first to want this!
Glad my collection of fairly random thoughts and ideas was helpful. It’s an interesting area. I certainly enjoyed drafting the post over a couple of glasses of wine!
Good luck with the word hunt. Although I wouldn’t hold my breath for google to start doing a better job. Given how much confusion and discussion there is on this topic among real live people, it’s hard to imagine a search engine figuring it out 🙂
-paltego
I wandered over here from some comments you made on another blog.
Your post here is a good one, and ‘femdom’ is a word that has been, and will probably continue to be defined as per the majority of misinformed mainstream public who have access to the lowest common denominator in terms of information. The number of people who see the term femdom, or male submissive in their full glory of a range of different types of people and relationships etc is currently too small to make a difference to anything.
But I don’t think having a new term for it is the answer. Boringly, it’s education and information that will influence how the term is seen. We can call ourselves ‘jimmyjamflimflams’ for all it matters, as soon as you have to explain what that is, you are again in the realm of using words that people have skewed definitions for.
I have no answers except to keep talking about it. At the very least, I would be hoping that people who are genuinely interested are able to find information/education/discussion/images/porn that at least gives them some clue that there is diversity in the term.
Ferns
Hi Ferns,
Thanks for commenting and glad to have you wander in this direction! Nice blog by the way, I must add it to my blog roll.
I kind of like the term jimmyjamflimflams, so it’s a shame we can’t rename and use that. 🙂 Although it doesn’t so much trip off the tongue as give it a good working out.
I certainly agree that education and discussion are vital. However, I so often see online community energy get turned inwards in a negative fashion, debating what is and isn’t right or real femdom. Rather than education we end up with a lot of posts complaining about some aspect of the kink culture. So it’s not primarily the misinformed mainstream that concerns me. I think if we had some better labeling of the areas in kink-space, we’d end up with a better separation of groups and interests, and an easier job in informing others and discussing our own desires.
-paltego
Thanks for the compliment.
Yes, I agree that there are elements of that. I think it’s difficult for many of us to separate ‘oh FFS, stop portraying us like that, it sucks so bad I want to kick you all in the face’ vs ‘look, this is what it really is or can be, look LOOK!!’ My blog is the latter, but I *feel* the former so bad it makes me itch.
Bah, I can’t preview this comment to see if the blockquote will actually work *shakes fist wildly at the internets*
Ferns
I’m so happy the photo of me being. Caned has become such a popular photo. I’m honored!
That’s an awesome photo! And thanks for dropping by to comment and mention that it’s you. I’ve seen it pop up on a lot of blogs and tumblr’s, so you have a famous bottom by now! 🙂
-paltego
Just a quick p.s. I have more pix of that shoot on my Flicr account @ andyspb. 😉