Recently following a clicky treasure hunt I happened upon this. Although I think the hackle enrising part of it is probably pure embaitment it did still remind me of the ‘it’s natural’ mandom and just how troublesome he is.
It’s surprising how often I encounter this kind of things on BDSM message boards. Usually it begins with a mansub posting about his woe about how he can’t find anyone to dominate him even though he is so very completely worthless. Then some mumsy femdoms and femsubs will chime in, offer sympathies, occasionally point out that his profile is completely empty.
And then mandom will appear and all will scatter as he proclaims that this is just the way it is and no woman is attracted to a submissive man and you only have to look at the stats to see that there aren’t really any dominant women.
Now I can tell you exactly why I think the stats line up the way they seem to
But ‘No,’ sayeth our lord god mandom, hushing me with his commanding baritone, it is not for that reason -there are no dominant women ’cause women’s natural place is tied up in a mandom’s basement sucking cock, possibly with the additional ‘natural’ additions of a plastic tit job and ten million tonnes of overly-sticky looking make up.
And, in fact, that is what they really want.
Okay, first let’s debunk. If it is not ‘natural’ for women to not be attracted to submissive men because he can’t bring home the dinosaur bacon (yeah, not really true of submissive men, that’s kind of like saying gay men can’t wank with their limp delicate wrists), but say it were true, why, in that case, would any man be attracted to a dominant woman? Surely your prairie/jungle argument has to apply to men too – or are only women so backward that their sexualities were forged in the ur-fires?
Course, it is probably fair to say that a lot of women might not feel they are attracted to male submission as they currently understand it. That is because, as we have discussed, male submission has a big image problem OF ITS OWN MAKING. Women might not be attracted to submissive men because submissive men have done a lot of working describing in great detail to any woman who comes near them how unattractive they are.
Because being unattractive to women gets them off!
BUT that’s got nothing to do with things being natural. And, in fact, clear the crap away and you will find many, many examples of women – and, hell, people in general – finding male sacrifice and suffering hella attractive. I mean, it’s not like, for example there was ever a succesful world religion founded on that. It’s not like miserable tortured characters ever get any women hot.
So look, can we just get that straight, the reason for the shortage of dominant women is because femdom is so fucked up and submissive men deliberately present themselves as unattractive because they are ridiculous woman fetishising prodom-drunk lunatics, NOT because all women really want is a mandom with a big club to bop them on the head and drag them back to the cave.
(Some women do want this. Although I have never met one who wants to be treated this way simply because she is a woman – but in an infinite universe anything is possible.)
Applying naturalness to sexuality never does work out well and make anyone look clever. They tried that on gayness and that ended up being a bit of an own goal as once gay animals showed up the reliance on naturalness as rightness argument kind of made gayness natural anhd right. Whoops. (Course rightwingers can always avoid science with a bit of foaming.)
See also a personal favourite weird use of the ‘it’s natural’ argument to say that female bisexuality if fine -(and of course natural as women are all soft and stuff (and soft is everyone’s favourite texture)) – but male bisexuality is scary fucking shit. (If you are a gay panicking straight man that is, everyone proper knows male bisexuality is actually sizzling hot shit.)
And god it makes me so mad that the fact my sexuality is FUCKED also helps the mandom’s “it’s natural” craphat argument. And while I don’t think women being dominant is any kind of act of feminism – it’s certainly true that stopping women being dominant by making it so crappy crap certainly helps whory old sexist arguments about “natural”.
And asshat mandom is asshat isn’t the worst thing about kinky sex being skewed to look as if mandom/femsub is the only real flavour.
When you think about the battalion of people who don’t like kinky sex, from anti-sex feminists to tabloid editors, one of the biggest baddest hurtiest piece of ammo they have got is aimed at the fact that kink looks like is all about mandom/femsub. That kinky sex is just lazy rapists and women deranged enough to facilitate this. Hell, if kink *were* all and only like that it would piss me off too. Even this relatively balanced BBC article which, despite the image at the top and the case it is actually about, interviews and mandom and femsub and a prodom as if that represents all of us thank you. It is very easy to be scared and disturbed by kinky sex if you think it is all about women succumbing to men because they truly think that is natural.
Once I was talking to Gwen about Jack and weirdly a lot of the things he liked and she liked overlapped. And she was pleased, saying that it was nice that he liked those things too because then she didn’t have to think so much about whether her liking of those things was some kind of gendered idea. Not that she worries about hose things much – but it’s still nice not to.
My point is this. Femdom is broken. It’s not even there. In a way you can’t blame mandoms for thinking there are no actual dominant women. Real femdom based on the desires of dominant women and submissive men coming together to find places of intersection is gone or never was. All there is a male-desire based economy so pervasive that even people doing stuff for themselves think the women needs to be dressed like and advert for herself as if she needs the business. And it isn’t really surprising that this popular idea of femdom fake out doesn’t have the visceral power of the popular idea of mandom. Because it isn’t real.
Actual sex is so exciting because there are two people involved. Two desires. Unpredictability and compromise and magic. If one person is just doing what the other person wants it’s just enacting a fantasy. One person’s desire. Not the same thing. Wanking with special effects; porn with a smaller audience than usual.
Practically everyone inside and outside kink (really, if they’re being honest) discounts prodom/mansub as nothing more than exotic prostitutes for enthusiastic fetishisers (which is what it is) and considers what is actually happening to be the mandom/femsub stuff. And if most people (not just those mandoms) see kink as exclusively men dominating women are you surprised they get so squicked?
(Don’t get me wrong – mandom/femsub doesn’t squick me, but that being the only way kinky sex ever kinked probably would.)
If kinky sex felt like a world were women were as likely to be dominant as submissive, where who got to crawl didn’t feel like it was some kind of gender expectation, it would be far harder to criticise kink.
And that’s another reason why fixing femdom can save the fucking the entire world – not just the bit of it that is in my bedroom.
15 Comments
August 24, 2008 at 8:30 pm
*applauds*
August 24, 2008 at 9:38 pm
This makes perfect sense.
And is also clever and wonderful.
Like you.
August 24, 2008 at 10:38 pm
Oddly enough, 99% of the people who’ve told me that men should never be submissive have been women.
Women are telling me that they want a dominant man more often than those who tell me they want a submissive.
“Because being unattractive to women gets them off!”
That’s a new one for me. Sure I’ve heard of the guys who enjoy being called worms and pathetic losers, but I’ve never been one of those guys.
If being unattractive to women really got me off, I’d start doing things to make myself less attractive. I’d stop working out, stop showering every day and I’d start voting Republican.
You’re right though, something is broken in Femdom.
How can I help fix it?
August 25, 2008 at 2:36 am
Awesome post! I especially appreciated your point about how if femdom is really unnatural, then men wouldn’t run around craving it, either, as if only women have been affected by natural selection.
Also, in addition to some submissive men being unattractive on purpose, I’d say that there are a lot of submissive men (or, maybe more accurately, men who fetishize submissive sex acts) who just have absolutely no clue that women have desires. They see only what they want and don’t even realize that a woman is a separate human being.
At least in maledom/femsub, it seems like there is some focus on the woman’s needs. Even if the emphasis is on denying her needs, at least her needs have to be acknowledged in order to be denied. For this reason, I sometimes think maledom/femsub relationships are more feminist than femdom/malesub relationships. Excepting the crazy “It’s Natural!” internet mandoms, of course.
Finally, vanilla men who want nothing but casual sex have some difficulty finding women who will do them for free. Kinky men who aren’t interested in a relationship and just want a fuck buddy are going to have an even harder time finding partners. For them to expect otherwise is pretty ridiculous.
August 25, 2008 at 5:06 am
“Also, in addition to some submissive men being unattractive on purpose, I’d say that there are a lot of submissive men (or, maybe more accurately, men who fetishize submissive sex acts) who just have absolutely no clue that women have desires. They see only what they want and don’t even realize that a woman is a separate human being.”
Email that I get all the time:
“I want to please you by (insert his fetish here)”
Things wrong with these few words:
“I want…” << yes you have wants, don’t pretend like you’re serving MY wants when every sentence you type starts with YOUR wants.
“… to please you…” << when he obviously has fetish-ized the concept of pleasing a woman to mean NOTHING about the woman’s pleasure, but his own.
“… (insert his fetish here)” << presumptuous bag of un-sexy!!!! Why would anyone assume their kink ‘pleases’ me?
*
Of all the ways that submissive men have ever made themselves unattractive to me… THAT sort of attitude is #1.
August 25, 2008 at 5:17 am
oh… that bit got me distracted… I almost forgot what I wanted to say…
I get all teeth-gnashing angry, too, when I read this stuff. But for less all-encompassing reasons…
… I want to bitchslap individuals (especially male type ones) saying what it is *I* want as a dominant woman). I don’t need to have you outline my sexuality for me, kthnx!
The thought that people are randomly giving submissive boys advice on hiding their sexuality because the corresponding sexuality is also hidden (or invalid) and would be squicked out??!!!
BAFFLING!
Think of it this way… if you’re a hetero woman (as I am) this is the equivalent of saying:
“don’t tell a hetero woman you have a cock right away, because she reeaaallllyyyy doesn’t want cock. Wait a bit and sneak the cock thing in later after you’ve suckered her in with your non-cock qualities!! Actually, pretend you have a vagina! Because that is really what hetero women want, not cock”
Seriously. How stupid does that sound. Way stupid. And it’s the same thing!!!!!!
August 26, 2008 at 9:20 am
I am a hetero woman who sometimes likes to be whacked with things, and I’m utterly pissed off by the idea that men are “naturally” dominant. It’s not just sexist; it’s a huge disgusting turnoff. You know the thing where you complain about your dominance being twisted into something gross and unrecognizable and sexist? I feel kind of like that about my masochism. I’m not looking be put in my place by a Real Man (in fact, eww). I don’t even like big manly men; I tend to go for evil little glam boys who look good in eyeliner.
Even though it’s not my kink (well… mostly not my kink), I would be really happy if female dominance had greater visibility. I’m in this scene for the whip and the cock, not for the icky gender baggage.
August 27, 2008 at 5:41 am
I think there’s also something blah about being “just natural” in the same sense that “everyone’s bi” is blah in that it ceases to mean that it is special, thought out, hard won, negotiated, coming from a thoughtful place. If it’s so pre-programmed into me as a human to just be X then there’s really nothing special about it – there’s something special about the people who are not it. In some ways, I think the “naturalness of female submission” is a way of negating the hard work and the struggle that really submitting to someone else can be (if women do it) and the “naturalness of male Dominance” lowers the bar required to be it. All you need to bring is your dick and your sense of entitlement and You Are Dom. Uh, no.
August 27, 2008 at 4:49 pm
Hehe – Do I get a prize for my thread being linked?
August 27, 2008 at 6:33 pm
I started as a submissive female, and actually got so annoyed with the, “It’s natcherall” crowd that I first tried my hand at Topping out of spite.
Then I realized it was a LOT of fun and it made me all kinds of happy between my legs.
But I’ve got to say, sometimes I think being a Top-heavy Switch can be even harder than only being Dominant or submissive. While it opens up more possible play partners, it also closes off a lot of them- my favorite reaction at fetcons is when malesubs realize I’m a Switch and suddenly I’m not “Dommy enough” for them. The mandoms are the same way- a Switch can’t be a Twue(tm) submissive because she might (gasp!) want to Dominate someone at some point one day like ever!
It’s the same argument as a bisexual can’t be monogamous…
Yeah. Ok.
/rant.
August 27, 2008 at 10:51 pm
Bitchy here is a reductionism approach to ease your qualms. I didn’t read the whole article but the following puts it into perspective.
After a while one notices that the issues revolving around this and more are circular, its the same issues, the same frustrations, the same questions and it goes on year after year with no resolution.
When anyone has a sexual fantasy they control the entire fantasy no matter what it is; Therefore when of submitting, within the mind the Dominants are being controlled as a notion of control from the 1st person perspective within the postion from which consent is known best meted. In other words its just easier to be sexually submissive out of the 2 roles which is why there are always more subs than Dominants.
It has nothing to with how much of a man you are, how much of a slut you are or how much of a Bitch you are. Subs also have the capacity to Dom it lays Dormant in them all.
It has everything to do with sitting back and looking at all this thinking “Its all fucked don’t bother”.
Let them eat cake Bitchy
August 28, 2008 at 9:51 pm
But, I can’t help kinda feeling like the ever annoying “it’s natural” argument kinda goes both ways – throughout history and in multiple cultures women have had to be awfully dominant and be in charge of the whole home life. Even as recently and close to home as my grandparents: my grandad still had to hand over his paycheck to my gran and still had to answer to her the whole time they were married.
So either women are “natural born” switches or at least experts at topping from the bottom.
In conclusion, I agree, “it’s natural” is a fucked argument.
August 29, 2008 at 2:49 pm
I’m shocked and offended at your heteronormativity! Lesbians and ay males into BDSM exist!
=P
August 29, 2008 at 3:11 pm
“ay males”?
I mean, I’m guessing from the the emoticon thingy you’re joking. But “ay males”?
August 30, 2008 at 3:55 am
O my god. That Katy Perry Song. It’s such a piece of hypocritical crap, denominating any bisexual/lesbian feelings as no big deal or experimentation. I hate it with a vengeance. A friend of mine promised to record a male counterpart to it just so I would stop nagging about how awful it is.