“Inherent Female Submission”: The Wrong Question
2011 1 Jul
I get a certain question occasionally, from straight dudes who’ve had a number of sexual partners. It goes something like this:
All the women I’ve slept with liked pain. They asked me to hurt them or to dominate them in bed. I did it, and enjoyed it; I loved how much it turned them on … it turned them on a lot. But I keep thinking about it now. Why are all women into being submissive and/or masochistic in bed? What does that mean?
They ask me this question in vaguely worried tones. Sometimes they say things like, “It’s really creepy.” It is obvious that these dudes are rather concerned about this Terrible Truth.
Here’s my short answer for those guys: If you know women who are submissive and/or masochistic in bed, that means those particular women like being submissive and/or masochistic in bed. It doesn’t mean anything else.
You’re still here? Ah, well. I figured that wouldn’t satisfy. So here’s a longer answer:
Firstly, if you’re a straight dude, and you’re drawing conclusions about “all women” based on the women you get involved with, then stop. Just stop. Even if you have slept with zillions of women, you don’t actually know what all women want, because:
A) Your experience of women is limited to women who got involved with you. You are screening for certain qualities, sometimes consciously, and sometimes unconsciously or by accident. If you tend to enjoy the dominant role, for example, or if you use a dominant style of flirtation, then you could be screening for submissive female partners, whether you intend to or not.
B) Everyone has biases, including you. I love the old saying: “When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.” If you have a bias towards seeing women as sexually submissive (and you almost certainly do, because female sexual submission is a hugely prevalent cultural trope), then you’re more likely to see female submission in places where it does not exist.
C) Women, like people of all genders, are demonstrably varied. You really don’t think non-submissive straight women exist? Why then, it must be so inconvenient when I point you to the work of blatantly dominant women, huh? It’s shocking, I know … next I’ll be telling you that queer and asexual women exist! (Not to mention women who switch among roles — from submissive to dominant, from sadistic to masochistic. I primarily go for submissive masochism, but still, I myself play for both teams.)
The thing is, though … no matter how many holes I can poke in these dudes’ anecdotal “data”, I can’t bring myself to worry like they do. Even if a brilliant, well-reviewed study came out tomorrow and proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that 100% of women are submissive masochists in bed, I wouldn’t care. (I bet you my left ear this study will never happen, but I’m just saying, even if it did, I wouldn’t care.)
Let me say it really clearly: Even if most women are submissive masochists in bed (and I’m not convinced most women are), there’s nothing wrong with that. I don’t care. [ 1 ]
Why don’t I care? Because all this anxiety and argument about submission — and in particular, what it means for women to be submissive; whether all women are submissive; whether women are “inherently” or “biologically” submissive; whether BDSM is an orientation or not … this is all the wrong question.
I’ll note that the research seems to indicate that more kinky women are submissives than dominant. Of course, this doesn’t necessarily indicate anything about the tastes of women who don’t identify as kinky. And it’s probably biased by culture, in that everything from fashion photos to romance novels emphasizes female submission and male dominance. Within BDSM culture, female dominance and male submission are often disappeared, much to the justified frustration of actual female dominants and male submissives. When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail — sometimes including our own psyches and sexualities. Plus, if the only available patterns for kink emphasize something a person doesn’t like, then that person will probably avoid kink. Note that in the research I linked to, for example, the percentage of submissive women was higher in samples from within the BDSM subculture than in samples from outside the BDSM subculture … perhaps because many BDSM subcultural gatherings emphasize female submission and thereby alienate women who are primarily dominant. Anyway, regardless … this is still the wrong question.
In short, “inherent female submission” is the wrong question.
Certainly, I’ve fought through a lot of personal fears about what my interest in BDSM meant for me as a feminist … but these days I have trouble understanding what, exactly, got me so upset. I can’t believe how long it took me to outthink those fears. Now, it just seems instinctively obvious to me that:
1) The only reason these conversations happen at all is that BDSM, and especially submission, is seen as broken and problematic and screwed-up and a sign of weakness. What if we viewed S&M proclivities as a superpower rather than a perversion? What if submission and masochism, in particular, were viewed as signs of strength and endurance and emotional complexity, rather than weakness?
2) Sexual kinks don’t necessarily affect one’s performance in non-sexual fields. A sexually submissive woman won’t make a bad CEO (at least, not because she’s sexually submissive). I mean, come on, it’s not like there aren’t sexually submissive men in powerful corporate positions. When I was younger I remember being scared that, in some bizarre way, I was betraying women’s liberation by being sexually submissive; this seems ridiculous to me now. That fear can only survive in an culture where people are looking for excuses — no matter how flimsy — to control and disempower women. Because it doesn’t make any damn sense on its own.
3) Rape is still rape. Everyone still has a right to consent, including submissives. A submissive partner (of any gender) must be able to withdraw consent, and a dominant partner (of any gender) must make space for them to withdraw consent. It’s always great when both partners can have an honest conversation about desire, trying to avoid pressure and unfair expectations (whether those expectations arise from sexist culture or from whatever else). Safewords are one frequently-recommended communication tactic for those who have rape fantasies, although they aren’t the only tactic. What really burns me about many discussions of “inherent female submission” is that they have horrible overtones of blaming the victim and justifying rape … much like “she was wearing a short skirt, so she was asking for it”. In reality, “inherent female submission” says absolutely nothing about women’s right to choose our partners and protect our bodily integrity. Female submissives have made it perfectly clear that we do, in fact, claim that right.
I think most of the dudes who ask this question come to me, a feminist, and they ask this question in hushed and worried tones, because they are decent guys and they are concerned about The Consequences Of This Terrible Truth. I’d venture a guess that they’ve met other dudes who talk nonstop about how women are vain and stupid and hysterical and, snicker snicker, why do we let those dumb bitches even vote and, oh by the way, did you know that lots of girls like to be choked and isn’t that sooo significant …? And so these decent guys who are talking to me — they have learned to associate discussions of female sexual submission with anti-feminism, and with attempts to disempower women in other spheres.
Being decent guys, this worries them, because they know that people of all genders deserve equal opportunity. But it is all a red herring! It’s a series of illusions thrown up by BDSM stigma; by the idea that sexual kinks always mean something about the rest of a person’s life; by people who don’t comprehend that everyone has the right to consent; and by blatant, uncomplicated misogyny! Female sexual submission isn’t even close to a threat to women’s liberation, unless we allow it to be. If we weren’t constantly forced to deal with the broken assumptions of a broken misogynist culture, this question would never occur to anyone!
It doesn’t matter nearly as much what the cultural patterns are around sexual submission, as it does how we deal with sexual submission. If your partner is submissive, you can respect their desires and also respect them as a person. As I already noted, in BDSM this means communicating carefully, like with safewords and/or other tactics. Some people can have great sexual communication that’s totally non-verbal — but I always encourage explicit verbal communication because for many people, it’s easier to make intentions and desires clear that way, and tactics like safewords provide a fallback in case there’s a mistake. [ 1 ]
So: what does “inherent female submission” mean for women, for feminism, for equal rights, for women who work, for powerful women? For housewives? For disabled women? For female rape survivors? For rape survivors of other genders?
Say it with me now: It’s the wrong question. The mere act of asking this question implies a cultural context that is seeking excuses to disempower women. Female sexual submission means nothing …
… except what every woman wants it to mean, for herself.
* Footnote: These paragraphs (#11 and #21) were added for clarity on July 2, 2011.
Some more related links (but the ones I already linked in the post are pretty awesome, I promise):
* The Fantasy of Acceptable “Non-Consent”: Why the Female Sexual Submissive Scares Us (and Why She Shouldn’t), with Stacey May Fowles (as seen in the incredible anthology Yes Means Yes)
* Domism: Role Essentialism and Sexism Intersectionality in the BDSM Scene, with Thomas MacAulay Millar (over at the Yes Means Yes blog)
* When Scientists Don’t Understand Sex: Feminism, Dominance, and Arousal, with Charlie Glickman (of the classic feminist sex toy store Good Vibrations)
Tags: BDSM, communication, feminism, stigma
You always seem to post topics like this at exactly the right time to pick me up! I don’t know how it works, but thanks, Clarisse.
I’ve wondered if it has anything to do with male secondary sex characteristics being geared towards physical dominance, and people attracted towards men doing cued partly by those characteristics.
Thank you, thank you, thank you, Clarisse. I always love your way of pointing out the obvious truths that “some people” just don’t seem to get.
I get tired of people making comments like, “All women seem to be submissive” (Really? Then you haven’t been reading many blogs by male slaves or female Mistresses) or “Most female subs seem to have been abused”. Seeing a pattern does not mean it is the ONLY pattern or even that there IS a pattern.
I think it’s very wise you pointed out that men who seem to attract mostly submissive females are probably doing it subconsciously… not that there are no other women out there.
What if submission and masochism, in particular, were viewed as signs of strength and endurance and emotional complexity, rather than weakness?
YES YES YES! This is an argument I’m in the midst of making for an academic paper that ties together a couple of seemingly unrelated texts on that very theme. Yes!
I’m a female submissive (although sometimes I switch because my boyfriend also likes to be dominated.) Sometimes I wonder what people might say about the fact that I’m both kinky and a victim of sexual assault – but the assaults happened after I decided I was into BDSM (and were in a vanilla context, not a kinky one.)
I think it’s hard for women to express their dominant sides, so a lot of them do it indirectly. Or perhaps many women are like female chimps, expressing their dominance differently than the males. Besides, most of the ‘submission’ I see from women in vanilla relationships seem to be a classic case of topping from the bottom.
And the funny thing is, whenever the sexists who go on and on about female submissiveness try to defend themselves, they’re just as likely to start claiming that women control everything and whatever sexist behaviour they exhibit is only because women wont let them be any different (*cough* PUAs *cough*). Yes, I’m angry about this.
Also, the mainstream BDSM version of female dominance is just flat-out unappealing. I had my first sexual reaction to an image of a shirtless tied-up guy before I became a teenager, but I’ve never considered myself to be someone who could be interested in sexual dominance, precisely because of the imagery described by Bitchy Jones.
Yay, Clarisse! You nailed it! Thanks for a breathtakingly SANE piece of work!
Sometimes, I think, the “Why are all women into…” question is actually a dodge for a different one (“Why do these women keep choosing me for this?” or “What are these women seeing in me that I’m not seeing in myself?”). It’s the flip-side of your point A.
That aside, though, good takedown.
If I thought it was plausible that all (or an overwhelming majority of) women were inherently sexually submissive, my primary fear would not have anything to do with feminist or gender equality concerns, for precisely the reasons you outline. My primary fear, rather, would stem from the realization that if all women were sexually submissive, then I would have to fake being someone I am not in order to satisfy any potential partner of mine, and that any potential partner of mine would have to fake being someone they are not in order to satisfy me. In short, I would be fearing inherent sexual incompatibility with every woman I will ever sleep with. (Imagine how you would have felt back in the day if you learned that men could not stand being dominant in bed.)
I personally do not like being sexually dominant–except as a transient, mild, playful thing–and feel trapped and shamed by culutural (and other) expectations that I be so. That is the kind of fear and concern I experience when I entertain the idea of all women being sexually submissive.
I am assuming from context that it was obvious that was not the issue the guys approaching you were struggling with. But I suspect there are at least a few other guys out there like me that are not sexually dominant ;-), and thus would have similar insecurities. And to men like that, the cultural notion of all (or at least a highly disproportionate number of) women being inherently sexually submissive can be emotionally corrosive and depressing.
But, as it turns out, there are plenty of women that are not into the submission thing beyond just playing a role for kicks and giggles, or because they are not quite comfortable with sex yet (easier to be sub when you do not know what to do…). So I do not really worry about that too much. ;-)
An ethics question, please answer anyone.
I am a male looking for a mildy submissive girlfriend. When I meet an interesting woman what is the appropriate way to “screen” her submissiveness? I have used “dominant style of flirtation” before, but then I worried it would be an abuse of male privilege. Because women are pressured in the patriarchy to go along with what men tell them to do, she might submit to me just because that’s what she has learned to do. So if I do something dominant like give her a keen look in the eye before approaching, she might respond positively not because she wants but because the patriarchy told her to. And then I’d be perpetuating the patriarchy.
What do you all think? Do you think it’s wrong to flirt dominantly with a woman I just met?
@ James – Yes, she might respond submissively because that’s what the ‘patriarchy’ has taught her to do. I don’t know. I guess it’s a possibility.
However, I see a big problem with going around being worried that women only behave in the way they do because of some big, faceless ‘patriarchy’. Male privilege exists, sure. But by assuming women’s responses aren’t genuine or can’t be trusted because, naturally, we have all been brainwashed into being submissive to men at all times is pretty insulting. You’re assuming that women can’t make their own decisions, because they are effectively being mind-controlled. That’s not very nice.
At the end of the day, you just have to treat other people like autonomous adults. Of course everyone is affected by their culture and upbringing, but you can’t keep second-guessing everybody. There has to be a point when you say, look, these people I’m interacting with are adults, I’m going to assume that what they say is what they mean, rather than assuming I have to look out for them.
Isn’t it a given that all women are not inherently submissive? A quick glace at the real world and the more reliable history, not the feminist version will tell anyone that.
Although its my experience that the majority of women are interested in sexual submission on some level.
Wel, James you need to go on the Partiarchys website, we keep a list of every woman and which particular brainwashing techniques we used on each of them.
A few quick clicks and you’ll see exacly what we taght any woman you might meet and the post hypnotic trigger wods to make her do anything you want.
Not celebrites though, only grand masters get to use famous women
As a promiscuous guy who actually asked you this recently, I have a few comments.
1. How can assuming female submissiveness be disempowering if submissiveness is powerful in its own right? This seems like a contradiction in your argument to me. Either submissiveness is equal to dominance in power (which I personally believe) and therefore men are not disempowering women by asking this, OR submissiveness is inherently weaker and a tool for disempowering women. You can’t have it both ways.
2. It’s funny, the more feminist literature I read, the more I see the same logical fallacies being made on the other side of the fence that PUA’s make.
For instance, PUA’s will say, “90% of women like to be dominated, therefore ALL women want to be dominated and the other 10% are just screwed up.” Whereas I’ll often see feminists saying, “Look! 10% of women like to dominate men! Therefore most women just don’t know how to express their dominant side!”
It’s the same fallacy made on both sides. Anybody ever consider that, perhaps, the majority of women are sexually submissive, the majority of men are sexually dominant, AND THAT’S OK? There’s nothing WRONG with that?
The PUA’s are a fringe group (men obsessed with their sexuality), and therefore they view the world through a specific lens. You’ll often here them talking about how the 90% of men who are happy to get married and sleep with 3-4 girlfriends their entire lives are “frustrated chumps” and sexually repressed etc. It seems to me that a large percentage of feminists are involved in LGBT and/or BDSM, and therefore see the world through that lens. Meanwhile (like the PUA’s) they forget that their perspective really only represents 5-10% of the population.
Yes Clarisse, I’ve been reading “Yes Means Yes,” and it’s a true exercise in will power.
@Mark:
I haven’t seen this reasoning from feminists, especially not the number (which you seem to have made up). But that women have trouble expressing their dominant sides goes without saying. In fact, many women even say so. That doesn’t mean there’s anything inherently wrong with submissiveness, but linking it to women simply because there is little cultural narrative for female dominance is still a mistake.
lujlp @13: That was really uncool. James was asking how to engage in his kink in an ethical way, not “lol how do I force chix to submit to me”.
James @10: There’s nothing wrong with behaving assertively, which is really what you’re describing. What you want to avoid is in acting as though your girlfriend’s input and consent is irrelevant. A woman who actively decides to allow you to lead is different than one who gives up because you’re going to do what you want anyway.
Mark @14: if submissiveness is as powerful as dominance, then wouldn’t we expect equal numbers of men to express as submissive, and would expect submissives to be perceived as equally “empowered”? Can’t have it both ways.
I see it constantly. Yes, the numbers above were made up as an example.
There will be some statement about how society assumes that women are X, and then they’ll cite lesbians as a counter-example, or some nomadic tribe in Botswana as a counter-example, not taking into account that those groups account for like 1-3% of the entire population.
This will then be followed by some vague rant against “patriarchy” and the male power establishment, etc., etc.
I should add though, in fairness, that my exposure to feminist literature has been quite meager thusfar. But so far from what I’ve seen, I’ve seen it quite a bit.
What Xakudo said at #9.
The main problem I have with “vanilla D/s” is that it’s typically an unnegotiated expectation, and it’s neither so ubiquitous that specific recognized ways of negotiating an alternative power dynamic exist, nor so infrequent that there’s no reason to worry about the expectation of dominance being imposed on me.
@Mark:
First off, ‘some nomadic tribe in Botswana’ is actually an excellent counter-example. Whether a society consists of 150 people, or 50 million people, it doesn’t make the larger society more relevant (if that was the case, it would be widely acknowledged that Germany represent a more general/natural way of living than Denmark, due to size alone). Variations within a society are more relevant if we want to establish human nature.
If the tribe in Botswana lives in a way which is completely at odds with what we understand about human nature, and has lived that way for centuries, it shows that what we believe about human nature is not given, and that people brought up differently can show a radically different pattern of behaviour. The feminist likely aren’t saying “This is the norm/this is true human nature” but rather “This way of living is entirely possible for human beings/our way of living is not the only possibility”.
And secondly, trying to claim that there’s proof of a natural female tendency of sexual submission when female dominance is considered as unusual as it is, is on par with saying a century ago that there is a natural lack of ability/wish for women to hold most well-paid, powerful, and prestigious positions, due to how unusual women in those positions are.
@mythago, I dont care about James kink or how he brings it up, I was ridiculing his moronic idea of a vast male conspiracy which brain washes women into submitting to a mans every desire even if she doesnet want to
Hey Mark, thanks for commenting. For the record, this post was not especially aimed at you; I get this question a lot.
I’m glad you’re reading YMY. I know you’ll probably have a lot to say about it, but I look forward to it — because while I’m sure you’ll disagree with lots of it, I know you’ll give it careful thought. When the going gets tough, just imagine me reading fastseduction ;)
In response to your thoughts:
1) I don’t think submission is weak, and I also obviously don’t think that women should be disempowered. BUT submission is very obviously stigmatized in such a way that people CONSIDER it weak. There are multiple false premises here: (a) people who think submission is weak, (b) people who think women should be disempowered. One of my points in the original post is that these false premises are intertwining in a horrible manner. As you say, “you can’t have it both ways”, but I’m not the one who’s trying to have it both ways; sexist people are. They’re the ones who are making the claim that submission is weak, and then trying to use that to disempower women — not me.
2) Anybody ever consider that, perhaps, the majority of women are sexually submissive, the majority of men are sexually dominant, AND THAT’S OK? There’s nothing WRONG with that?
Actually, I thought that this was one of the points I made in the original post. I explicitly said that even if the majority of women turned out to be sexually submissive, I wouldn’t care.
@C — You’d probably also like my last post, S&M Superpowers.
@Anonymous — There was a brief conversation about kink and abuse in the comments on above-linked superpowers post … you might also be interested in LoriAdorable’s work. But she experienced non-consensual stuff before she got into BDSM.
@AB — Yes, I’ve always really related to Bitchy Jones’s complaints about how female dominance is portrayed. In fact, the male submissive who gave me my first angle on female dominance did so in part by sending me one of her blog posts ;) (Alas, she took that post — “My Hero” — down, and although I’ve begged her to let me repost it here, she has her own plans for it.) Female BDSM submission is stigmatized, but female BDSM dominance is invisible except when it’s highly stylized, and how are those of us who do have dominant inclinations supposed to find ourselves if we aren’t a fucking Amazon with perfect hair in a vinyl catsuit? I’ve thought a lot about writing more about this, and about my own experiences of dominance, way beyond my old switching post … except Bitchy Jones already wrote it all and I’d feel so unoriginal. My recent posts seem to have a 101 trend, though, so maybe I’ll do it after all.
@Infra — Sometimes, I think, the “Why are all women into…” question is actually a dodge for a different one (“Why do these women keep choosing me for this?” or “What are these women seeing in me that I’m not seeing in myself?”). It’s the flip-side of your point A.
Oh interesting. Anxiety about being seen as a so-called “abuser” or “predator”?
@James — Yeah, I co-sign what Ruth said in #11 and mythago in #16. Oppressive patriarchal gender dynamics exist, yes, and I’m glad you’re aware of those, but there is a difference between acting in accordance with them, and acting in an attractive and confident and assertive way.
hmm … this comment got rambly and I don’t have time to clean it up. I’ll post it as-is, and hope that something good comes out of it, but be aware that it’s rambly …. SO:
Personally, I also do not respond well to dominant men who don’t obviously have respect for my opinion, personality, gender, etc. I’ve met a lot of self-identified dominant men whose behavior really turned me off because they were so aggressive. It doesn’t sound like you’re at risk for this, but I still think it’s worth noting that acting like a sexist asshole will indeed probably turn off a lot of submissive women.
And, actually, in the past, when I’ve been attracted to male submissives, they were confident and assertive men. But they did have their own ways of flirting that put me subtly “in power” …
At a certain point — like I say in the original post — it actually doesn’t really matter where sexuality “comes from”, as long as it’s implemented respectfully. A sexually submissive woman may be responding that way because she’s influenced by misogynist culture, or she may be responding that way because she’s “biologically wired” that way … but either way, if you see her responding to dominant body language, it’s more important that you respect her as a person and emphasize that, than it is that you’re using dominant body language. Granted, it isn’t always easy to read the reactions of someone we’re interested in, but if you keep an eye out for her reactions, and just make sure to quit if she doesn’t seem interested, then I don’t think there’s anything at all wrong with trying out dominant body language. (And if you don’t feel confident in your social skills to read her reactions, then the best solution is spending lots of time in social environments to practice your social skills.)
As a final note: If you are using the kind of “keen look” that I’m imagining right now (I think of it as the look that makes me feel like a butterfly pinned to a board), then I’m 100% sure it is super hot to female submissives, and I am also 100% sure that it can be counterbalanced with respect and appreciation for her personhood, because I have observed this in real life.
Thanks for a great post. I spent a lot of time worrying that my submissiveness in the bedroom would cause problems outside, but you know what? In the real world, I’m powerful, assertive, and I have no qualms about being in charge. In fact, being submissive sexually helps me release those tensions I get from day-to-day dominance in the workplace! Fantastic.
Clarisse,
“2) Sexual kinks have no impact on one’s performance in non-sexual fields.”
maybe me asking this question makes me more radical feminist than I thought, but I think it’s unlikely that one’s sexuality doesn’t influence the rest of one’s life, simply because it’s such a big part. That doesn’t mean that people aren’t able to separate spheres of their lives, but that the spheres are likely still influencing each other, or that there’s a common desire hoping for expression that’s at least a thread visible to the person experiencing it, but not limited to one sphere.
Of course I’m speculating, and my personal experience is the most important basis for that speculation – but at least in my (very vanilla) way, I would say that general personality/psychological traits that made my life difficult sexually (OCD) also influenced my decisions and performance in other aspects of my life.
Of course, a submissive person can be a great CEO. But I’d say it’s still unlikely that something as big as such a sexual preference can be considered completely isolated from the rest of someone’s personality. And if there’s indeed aggregate preferences that manifest that way, I don’t think they will not also manifest in some way in other spheres of life.
That’s a very complicated question, but based on my experience I’d say humans likely aren’t able to entirely uncouple their sexual and non-sexual behavioral preferences, and that leads to al the problematic questions of what possible social consequences such possible desires could have in the aggregate – and how to deal with them. Tricky.
Btw, I also wonder if what the guys you’re talking to call ‘submission’ isn’t merely female desire to be cast in a performance of the classic dating script (ie, be romantically pushed against the wall…) – this would sort of back AB’s observation of “topping from the bottom”.
Sam, I updated the sentence in question, because it’s too strong a statement for me to be able to really defend it. I guess what I would say more thoroughly, though, is that the impact of sexuality on the rest of one’s life is extremely hard to predict, and sometimes impossible to show. Also, as I note in my S&M Superpowers post, stigma leads us to assume that the correlations to certain sexualities are going to be bad; but that’s just stigma …. Maybe I’m awesomer at everything when I get whipped over the weekend ….
Sexual submission, as one example, is too complicated and individual a phenomenon for us to be sure that subs “tend to” be any particular way in the rest of their lives … and even if some kind of correlation could be demonstrated, it would be impossible to say whether the correlated factors are caused by the submission itself; by the stigma around sexual submission; or by something else entirely. You already know this, of course, but sometimes it’s just useful to note again for the audience that correlation is not causation :P
Clarisse,
“Sexual submission, as one example, is too complicated and individual a phenomenon for us to be sure that subs “tend to” be any particular way in the rest of their lives …”
of course, no one can be sure of anything. And as I suggested, I think what most people seem to allude to, at least in my understanding, when they talk about “all women like to be submissive” is, I think, rather an expression of their desire to perform their role in a scripted performance they have come to desire than an actual sexual submissiveness. Why else would one read so much about how to “unleash the tiger in her”, when that tiger would not *want* to be unleashed.
There’s a tricky aspect, though, I think, in that case – BOTH, the desire to perform the gatekeeper/superficially submissive script and the tiger are subjectively and “objectively” real expressions of desire. And I think that “fetishized” cultural performance is what most people would call “submissive” in such disussions. But I doubt this is what you have in mind when you’re talking about sexual submissiveness… or maybe it is?
@James:
I think that the part that really matters, as far as perpetuating the patriarchy is concerned, is how you treat the women that you are _not_ flirting with. A lot of the problem is that women in our culture are treated better or worse based on their sexual desirability (or lack thereof). If you’re treating women in general with respect, and using whatever social and professional power you have to push for women’s equality, then you’re doing fine.
When it comes to flirting and sex and relationships, if you use a “dominant” style of flirting, and the woman you are flirting with responds well to it, it’s actually a little disrespectful to assume that she’s reacting the way she is because she’s been brainwashed by the patriarchy. That’s its own sort of subtle sexism.
~ Patch
@James
I’m a het switch who mostly bottoms in a submissive way, love dominant guys in the bedroom, and I can’t stand guys who behave “dominant” in real life, they just seem like assholes to me. I like guys with a shy sweet quiet personality and I like drawing the dominant side out of them as they respond to how clearly I get off on it.
So I just want to let you know that overall personality doesn’t necessarily have to be linked to bdsm preference and they don’t necessarily correspond in the way people might assume.
Mark @18: Do you really not see the irony in your statements? On the one hand, you say that you’ve only seen a tiny bit of (unspecified) feminist literature, but you nonetheless feel confident in generalizing from that to All Feminism; on the other hand, you say that anyone who draws conclusions about human nature from a small group (like lesbians, or Botswanans) is mistaken. Contradiction much?
And AB @20 is spot on.
You know, I’m going on 32yrs old now, and I’ve yet to see a patriarchy meeting anywhere. Where do they meet? What sort of commitees do they have?
How exactly do they manage to infiltrate and influence society on global scale without leaving a trace of who and where they are?
Also given we are now aware of this mysterious global cabal, how is it they manage to make us do what they want even when we are aware of it and dont want to do as they command?
@lujlp — No one (including feminists) claims that the patriarchy is a vast conspiracy that meets by committee (although I too used to suffer from this misconception of the term, when I was 17 yrs old). The term patriarchy is usually more of a blanket term for oppressive gender dynamics. I try to be open to commenters with little experience of feminism, but if you continue to comment here mocking terms that you don’t understand, then I’ll put you on moderation.
Post updated to clarify intent and provide more practical feedback.
Clarisse:
I just love how you push all the problems of female sexual submissiveness onto “patriarchy”.
As if there isn’t a whole radical tradition of feminism still giving you gals crap about female submission (or heck PIV in the bedroom) as we speak at many places including anti sex work organizations, blogs, and in the laws.
Did it ever occur to you that maybe- just maybe – those guys were asking you those questions because they have been taught (by that Patriarchy again, I suppose!) that hurting women is wrong and that we are all equal and that you know – they don’t want to be tied up and spanked in the bedroom – so how could a woman who presumably doesn’t like abusers and is their equal want to be bossed around or hurt?
You literally have threads on this blog that consist of hundreds of posts where you are talking to PUA’s and other men who have had issues with attracting women and what is one of the very basic complaints? That the society at large does NOT tell men how to appropriately approach women and – if they are aware of feminist theory- that the type of things that many men who are successful with women do are problematic to say the least. Given all this, how you could fail to see considerable GUILT that questions such as that typically exhibit escapes me. At least I can co-sign your feminist answer but trust me the society at large gives most men no idea of how to ethically act or be dominant at all.
Clarisse, I am well aware that there is no organization with defined membership responsibilities in executing the will of the group.
I mock it as such because the very idea of the ‘patriarchy’ is just stupid and laughable in every respect.
[a bunch of stuff was deleted for moderation purposes ~CT]
Nice dig on the age thing too, I love the sarcastic wit, reminds me of the tone my mother uses
[a bunch more stuff was deleted for moderation purposes ~CT]
lujlp:
Before Clarisse does, I will say that this isn’t the thread to be discussing or arguing the term patriarchy.
I criticized Clarisse because while there are some patriarchal themes that operate on the submissive women /dominant men theme (I know WELL the shame of being a submissive man) I think she overused the concept in this instance because as far as I can tell most guys that have issues upon finding just how many girls are submissive -at least in the bedroom- are shocked and often (in my experience) a bit upset in that it doesn’t seem to match what they’ve been taught about what they should do to or with women, nor how women should “want” to be. Being taught not to hurt women and being taught all about equality they tend to NOT KNOW how to dominate in the bedroom, and of course not only do sub men run into this, but some men aren’t naturally or sub OR dom in the bedroom and find the whole thought of spanking a woman abhorrent, let alone tying her up or otherwise torturing her.
I also didn’t like Clarisse white-washing feminisms role in all this: quite a few legitimate 2nd wave feminists will say it is impossible to be submissive in the bedroom (let alone anywhere else) and still be a feminist. The personal is the political, you know.
Most of the issues surrounding BDSM in general and female submission in particular are from the intersection of a narrow form of neo-victorianism (hey, some sexism, pedestalization and patriarchy) and radical feminism.
Anyway it’s her blog. Please don’t critique the patriarchial construct in general unless she has a thread for it unless you like being moderated or banned. And in this case, I’d support her. It’s her blog and this thread isn’t about that.
@lujlp — Oh, for fuck’s sake. Welcome to moderation. I probably should have known better than to let your first comments through, but I’ve never actually deleted comments before, and I have this weird attachment to free speech, not to mention attempting to actually communicate with people in a straightforward way and have an honest conversation when I’m trying to moderate discussions. Your contribution is so obviously trolling and off-topic, however, that you have convinced me to delete massive portions of your last comment. Which is the first time I’ve ever done that. Congratulations; I’ve gone to the dark side. Let the MRA blogs rejoice, and pretend that they finally have something worth attacking me for.
And, for the record, I wasn’t trying to make a dig at you by mentioning my age; I was a damn smart 17-year-old. I was just trying to explain that I had a similar reaction to you at one point in time. Nice dig in return, though — apparently, for you, comparing me to your mom is an insult.
Grrr. I’m so tired of this crap. Moderating online discussions is the most exhausting thing ever.
OK. Back to regularly scheduled programming.
Thank you Ruth_Remains, mythago, Clarisse, Patch, and ggg_girl for all your advice. Thank you for pointing out my subtle sexism and helping me be a better feminist. I will try and develop a non-asshole, non-misogynist, dominant style of flirting that attracts submissive women and lets non-submissive women know what they are getting into.
@Clarisse, #23:
Not that, necessarily. It’s that, if this was something about these particular women, and not something about all or most… then it’s reasonable to think that they screened him, and him specifically, as being capable of those actions. To realize that might be to realize that he’s being seen as predatory or abusive, but there are other possibilities: that cultural (or subcultural) stereotypes are coming into play and defining the terms of his sexual engagements, or that his assertiveness is being inappropriately read as aggression, or that an aspect of his sexuality that he’d like to keep selective is being broadcast more strongly — and picked up more easily — than he’s comfortable with. To give some examples.
Personally, I think that it’s an issue of going through the experience of being sexually screened (and, on occasion, slightly or severely misjudged) by women, and finding that experience to be egodystonic. The context is sexual submission, here, but I find no reason why it couldn’t occur in others.
I think it’s often a shock to see yourself through someone else’s eyes. Ordinary actions suddenly seem weighted with meaning. It’s losing an innocence.
@James -
You’re overthinking it. Unless you have specific and active kinks, where you should be looking for someone you can negotiate with, probably on a BDSM site, what you’re looking for sounds like a primarily vanilla girlfriend who is somewhat submissive to you.
Another word for that is ‘Someone who works in a relationship with you’. There’s no good way to pre-screen for those kind of characteristics other than flat out asking. And in a vanilla context – that can be off putting.
You find the kind of dynamic you’re looking for by going out and meeting people, interacting with them, hopefully dating them and finding out if you gel. It’s vastly more beneficial to be genuinely ‘you’ than to run any kind of shit test/candidacy appropriate filtering mechanism. Remember that what you’re looking for is not to capture a prize – you’re looking to form a relationship – so the characteristics that you’re looking for have to start with attraction to your personality and attraction to your realtionship role. And unless you’re planning to be some forced/unnatural level of dominant for the duration of your relationship – you can’t fake that. But you should also remember to not hide the personality aspects that you’re hoping your partner will be attracted too.
I firmly believe that for every sadist, there is a masochist. I know a predominantly homosexual furry sexual top, bdsm bottom/switch who’s ‘fursona’ is a dinosaur. He’s had a few partners in the time that I’ve known him.
A kink as common as enjoying a moderate level of D&S in your relationship won’t be any hassle to find partners. You just need to be authentic and find someone who’s attracted to the reality of what you’re offering.
On the topic at hand, I think the core message here is that the universal application of generalities is dumb. There’s no qualitative value to commonality. And the evidence used by PUA’s and muppets to infer that submissive tendencies among heterosexual women are common is flimsy at best. It’s like going to China and deciding that all women or normal women have black hair and implying that there might be something wrong with Redheads.
While I know (and adore) a fuckload of dominant women (a hefty portion of my best friends are included in that list, and most of my long term female partners have been switches or had strong dominant sides) – I think that even allowing for my biased samples (being a scene active, out, dominant guy, I’m sure the people who indicate their preferences to me are more likely to be people who I have mutual chemistry with, and correspondingly more likely to have submissive inclinations than the broader global population, so my experience is clearly biased, but I think even allowing for that bias) – there’s a reasonable case from my experience that ‘most’ women have some submissive elements to their sexuality.
But that quantative assessment doesn’t imply anything about normality, or any other qualitative assessment of non-submissive women. I think think they’re common. But you’d have to be an absolute jackass to assume that that commonality means that all women are submissive. Or that there’s anything wrong with non submissive women. Or that you could reasonably interact with all women as though they are submissive. It’s just an observation of commonality of a personality trait in a restricted population.
@James:
It might help to clarify what you meant by “mildly submissive.” My inclination is to guess that you mean something along the lines of visceral submission — a kind of organic response, like the “pinned butterfly” reaction that Clarisse mentioned earlier on — more than the kind of gender dynamics that show up in vanilla relationships or the more commonly known (i.e., readily identifiable) formal elements of scene. In other words, nothing arbitrary; it has to be firmly rooted. Like I wrote, though, that’s just a guess.
The use of protocols might be closest equivalent, if you’re familiar with them. But what you might be looking for is a specific type of D/s, and not necessarily a kind that could be described as “mild.” More context would probably be useful.
Let’s not be too hard on James. I think his questions are actually quite logical given the sorts of feminist ideas he’s obviously been exposed to. I think he’s been given some good answers, but they aren’t a slam dunk, and could use a little more elaboration on some issues. So for the rest of this comment, I will be in my radical feminist persona, Hugh Radfem.
Ruth_Remains:
If it’s even just a possibility that a woman might merely go along with something out of difficulty saying “no,” then shouldn’t James watch out for this in advance and avoid behaviors that might produce that result? The stakes here are high: women’s sexual autonomy.
But what if James can help make women safer by second-guessing their responses to him?
Patch said:
He shouldn’t assume that a woman is merely going along with his dominant flirting because of the patriarchy conditioning her to have trouble saying “no,” but shouldn’t he recognize the possibility that this could be the case? Shouldn’t James acknowledge the very real possibility that many women will not be into dominant flirting? And if it is the case, then it’s potentially costly to the woman involved, who might feel intimidated, harassed, or pressured to go along with it?
Clarisse said:
The thing is, I’m not sure how easy it is to separate those things. James’ own notion of attractiveness, confidence, and assertiveness is informed by hegemonic masculinity. Even if he is aware of some of the problematic forces, he still might slip into them without being aware. And even if he doesn’t, some women are vulnerable and would have trouble raising boundaries against even healthy expressions of assertiveness by him.
He doesn’t sound aggressive to you, but isn’t there a risk that other women might feel that a “keen look” is aggressive, creepy, or pressuring? For instance, ggg_girl says:
She doesn’t seem to like guys who behave dominantly in the early stages of the interaction. So to be on the safe side, James should probably just refrain from any sorts of dominant body language, gestures, and eye contact until explicit verbal negotiation has occurred. Some women might like it earlier than then, and it might not be harmful to them. The problem is that James can’t know that it’s welcome in advance.
To be on the safe side, it’s probably just better to avoid any sort of dominant flirting that isn’t pre-negotiated. But still, even in the pre-negotiation, she might feel cultural pressure to accept his request for dominant flirting, especially if she is young and vulnerable. Sure, she could be making genuine decisions motivated by her own interests, but James can’t be sure that she is, and him being wrong could be very costly to her.
Furthermore, her own perception of her interests is influenced by culture. She might feel that she enjoys dominant flirting from men, but such behavior could be part and parcel of an interaction that denies her autonomy and makes her vulnerable to submitting to unwanted sexual activity. So just because she consents to dominant flirting with him, that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a good idea.
Smashing the PUAtriarchy,
Hugh Radfem
Hugh, you crack me up, and your comment is certainly clever (if perhaps a bit rationalist in that rationalist-man-who-prefers-overly-logical-deconstruction way), but seriously, let’s stay away from patriarchy jokes. Also, I would like to state for the record that there is a great deal of radical feminist theory that I respect, despite the divisions between radical feminists and sex-positive feminists such as myself. Also, what did you think about my point on learning social dynamics? Would you say it was precise enough?
I will get back to all the recent comments on this thread including Clarence, but it might take me some time!
I’m glad my comment cracked you up. Although I couldn’t resist a good patriarchy joke, Hugh Radfem’s comment wasn’t just a joke.
Most of it is intended as serious arguments, the type of which go through my head all the time, and perhaps go through James’ head also, depending on what he’s been exposed to. It probably sounds rationalist because I was trying buff up those arguments, rather than just slinging fire and brimstone.
Some of those arguments are inspired by serious arguments I’ve heard from feminists, such as in debates about pickup (the “male dominance sets women up for unwanted sexual activity or abuse” argument came up a lot around the “neg”). The “vulnerable people-pleasing woman” concept also comes up a lot, and you’ve raised it a couple times in other threads, as I recall.
I know what I think is wrong with those arguments, but I wanted to try to engage other people and draw out exactly what’s wrong with those arguments. If nobody bites, then I’ll stop being cryptic and say what I think.
I liked your point when you said:
I agree. Also, James could watch women interacting with other men, and try to figure out if they are enjoying it or not (if it’s female friends of his, then he might even be able to ask them later about their impression of the guy, and whether he was enjoyable to talk to or creeping them out). That will help him hone his ability to read them.
Of course, Hugh Radfem would say:
This is neither a joke nor a parody. The last two sentences especially are common tropes in feminist discourse about consent.
@Hugh: Why do you have to troll the open-minded feminists like Clarisse? Are you trying to exhaust her good will? Don’t answer that. Just find some real man-haters like factcheckme and troll them instead.
Hugh (either),
love your comment. Here’s the thing, though -
Clarisse said -
“if perhaps a bit rationalist in that rationalist-man-who-prefers-overly-logical-deconstruction way”
Hugh Ristik said -
“This is neither a joke nor a parody. The last two sentences especially are common tropes in feminist discourse about consent.”
We’ve been there a couple of times in the manliness discourse, haven’t we? We’ve seen over and over that literal understanding of feminist arguments, particularly radical feminist arguments will really leave not a lot to argue with. Clarisse once called that a “reductio ad absurdum” (with respect to safety vs saying ‘hello’ in the followup thread, for example), but I don’t think that’s entirely fair since ‘common sense’ and ‘proportionality’ as an antidote to literal interpretations are rarely invoked analytical instruments in feminist theorizing. But she also accepted that a lot of usually general claims work much better when appropriately qualified.
If Hugh Radfem accepted that, he could then appropriately qualify the statements made without all too many tacit assumptions not shared by anyone else, and a lot of the contradictory nature of his statements would disappear.
@Hugh #45:
What you’re pointing at is, in my mind, the central point of negotiating healthy sexuality in a patriarchal environment: yes, women are often not taught to effectively set boundaries in sexual situations and frequently “rewarded” for compromising what boundaries they do have, and yes, many women do appreciate and are attracted to men with dominate personalities and sexualities that may be problematic. This, which you poke fun at in what seems like an effort to discredit part of this conundrum, is the whole problem!
Your comments seem to deny the possibility that both parts of this double bind can be true, which is the whole idea behind Clarisse’s post. It is equally true that behaving in a dominant manner is effective in attracting women and pushes their buttons positively, and that behavior is reinforcing dynamics that elide women’s agency and boundaries. Just because these ideas are contradictory doesn’t make one or the other false; both sides often try to reduce that complexity (usually to find some sort of dating silver bullet list) but I think we can agree that that’s a losing bet.
Trying to find the line, to be assertive-not-aggressive, dominant-not-overbearing, those are the crosses men are left bearing when they become aware of women’s feelings of being pressured, molded, unable to effectively state what they want. It’s a tough spot, one that most PUAs usually are trying to navigate when they first come into the community, one that James is obviously trying to figure out for himself. Making light of it to make points against radfem ideology just seems crass to me.
In the end, I think it’s a self-negotiation, and one that is constantly changing from person to person, situation to situation. And, obviously, an unwanted “keen look” is on a whole different plane than sexually harassing someone; there’s so much less harm at stake if you err on the side of too dominant when you’re just flirting. So really, why sweat the small stuff?
A person who cares about not hurting others and has even a modicum of social skills will be able to use both positive and negative reactions to their approach style to refine it, and that can include not stepping on the autonomy of others. I don’t know why sometimes in these kinds of discussions it feels like we’re talking about people raised by wolves (which I doubt you or James have been), other than we want to find an easy, failproof, one-size-fits-all strategy for getting out sexual needs fulfilled. That, from my POV, is unreasonable for either men or women.
I think we have to embrace the challenge of negotiating interpersonal relationships tainted by mores and tropes that screw with us all (which, I believe was a big part of Clarisse’s point about female submission). It’s not ever easy, but the other option is being an asshole.
James (and anyone else who feels like HR is trolling) — I kind of felt like HR’s comment was a bit much too, but he and I have a history of productive conversation/debate/friendship. I think his intentions are good … that’s why I stepped in quickly to ask him to tone it down a little, but that was all. Also, he’s read Yes Means Yes and he’s taken more women’s studies classes than I ever did, so I do feel confident that he understands feminist theory, although I’m not always excited about his take on it ;)
now EVERYONE GO WATCH FIREWORKS
No fireworks round here tonight :|. Enjoy!
@scootah, Infra
I guess when I said “mildly submissive” all I meant was a woman who wasn’t in the BDSM community. If surveys are to be believed, there are lots of people who get turned on by power play and most of them are not in the BDSM community. Although I’m not in a hurry, I am looking for a long-term (hopefully life) partner and to find her I’ve got to date a lot. Honestly it’s just mathematics. Most people who would enjoy kink are not in the BDSM community and it would be imprudent to ignore women in the general population.
Maybe it was a bad idea to play Devil’s advocate as a radical feminist character. That move has made people think that I was parodying radical feminism and making light of its concerns. Yet that’s actually completely backwards from what I was going for. My goal was to take radical feminist ideas (some of which were hinted at in James’ original post) and try to state them in a defensible way, in order to encourage people to tell me their implications.
If people think my comment was trolling, then perhaps they don’t take radical feminist intuitions as seriously as I do. I admit that I find some radical feminist arguments amusing because they are so sweeping, and because their conclusions make me uncomfortable, but that doesn’t mean I don’t think they express serious concerns.
James, the goal of my comment was to voice some of the serious concerns that often go through my head from my engagement with feminist ideas, concerns which your original comment and its replies brought to my mind. If it didn’t resonate with your ethical concerns and wasn’t helpful to you, then I apologize.
I’ll take comfort in the fact that a least a couple people appreciated my sense of humor, and that it did draw the sort of response I was looking for from AnneBonney, even while annoying people who didn’t realize how serious I was.
AnneBonney said:
What you’re pointing at is, in my mind, the central point of negotiating healthy sexuality in a patriarchal environment: yes, women are often not taught to effectively set boundaries in sexual situations and frequently “rewarded” for compromising what boundaries they do have, and yes, many women do appreciate and are attracted to men with dominate personalities and sexualities that may be problematic. This, which you poke fun at in what seems like an effort to discredit part of this conundrum, is the whole problem!
Actually, I take this conundrum quite seriously. The point of my comment wasn’t to poke fun at these concerns, but to encourage feminist women in this thread to explain their view about exactly how far we should take these concerns, and what practical behavior or restrictions they imply.
Here’s how it looks to me. Radical feminism implies one view of sexual ethics that isn’t very kind to male dominant behavior in the context of dating. Feminist women in this thread acknowledge those concerns, but in general they have a different view of ethics. I’m curious about what that view of ethics is, and what tradeoffs women here consider acceptable, and why. The replies to James help hint at their view of ethics, but I suspect they are just the tip of the iceberg.
I know what tradeoffs I consider ethical, but I feel uncomfortable telling James, a man with a feminist background, what sorts of risks with women’s comfort levels I think are reasonable for him to take.
I agree that we can’t provide him with a dating silver bullet list, or a one-size-fits-all solution. But I think more detail can be provided about what sorts of tradeoffs and risks might be acceptable, and how to tell.
Your comment does begin to describe the sort of detail I was looking for:
I fully agree with you. I could have made this point to James myself, but it has a lot more weight when it come from a woman, rather than from me.
Where I disagree with you is that this point is “obvious.” It’s obvious to you, because you have a certain view of sexual ethics, but to others, it may not be obvious. If it had been obvious to James initially that the potential harm of a “keen look” is “small stuff,” then he would never have needed to ask his questions in the first place.
Furthermore, it’s not obvious to everyone that “keen looks” are on a “whole different plane” than sexually harassing someone. In many college harassment codes, some types of gazes are defined as sexual harassment, such as “elevator eyes” (looking up and down), “leering”, and “ogling”. These harassment codes are clearly based on a different view of sexual ethics than yours that considers gaze to be much more suspect.
While neither James nor I were raised by wolves, lack of experience can make it tough to judge the ethics of certain behavior. I suspect that if James was more experienced using dominant flirting, he wouldn’t need to ask if it was ethical to dominantly flirt with women he had just met, because he would already feel “100% sure that it can be counterbalanced with respect and appreciation for her personhood, because I have observed this in real life,” as Clarisse put it.
Maybe it satisfies James merely to know that feminist women here think it can be ethical for him to dominantly flirt with women he doesn’t know. I was interested in them spelling out a bit more explicitly why they think so… because it’s not always obvious to everyone.
@Hugh: I’m not sure that you’re going to have too much luck finding people to genuinely argue the pure “radfem” standpoint you were parodying/exploring. At least, you won’t have much luck getting it from me: radical ideologies are sometimes interesting to discuss, but they rarely make a good map for practical, reasonable behavior.
I think the key thing, when evaluating one’s actions, is whether you are treating the woman you are interacting with as a human being. If you have to objectify her or treat her as a sort of different species to justify your actions, you’re probably running into bad ethical territory. If you are interacting with her based on the assumption that she is a person, just like any other person (just like you), then, assuming you are basically a decent human being, you’re probably going to be fine.
The nice thing about treating somebody as a person is that a whole bunch of social infrastructure in your head kicks into gear, and you can rely on a lot of gut level instincts and intuitions to guide your actions.
This probably doesn’t work as well for somebody who has a mental disability that knocks some of that infrastructure out of commission. The best advice in those cases is to step carefully, and try to get as much explicite feedback from people as possible … in general, though, the whole treating people as human beings thing works well.
@James: I’m a dominant leaning man, and I’ve never found myself really needing to “screen” for submissive traits in the women that I date. I’ve found the people I feel a romantic connection with are usually subs or switches, and it’s usually pretty easy to tell after a first date whether there’s the potential for a romantic connection. Having The Talk about Wanting to Do Weird Things To You has usually gone very smoothly; the reactions are generally “ooh that sounds fun,” rather than “get away from me, you creep.”
In other words: you might also just try relaxing, going on dates, and being you, and see how that works. (Disclaimer: I tend to hang out in very geeky circles, and geekdom and kink tend to go together; I’m not sure how well my advice works if you’re looking for more “mainstream” people.)
@ Hugh
Okay, well, sorry Hugh, I didn’t fully get that sense from your spoof-posts.
I didn’t personally respond to James because I honestly don’t feel it’s my place (anymore) to give advice about other people’s dating styles, because my boundaries are not the same as anyone else’s. So even to say “I think this is fine, I think this is gross” can give the wrong idea to the wrong person (not saying James is, necessarily), and frankly I don’t want the responsibility of normalizing behaviors I am okay with that other women will find intrusive.
I’m not completely against to discussing my personal negotiation of this, but not in a context that piggybacks on a real dude’s dating questions. Besides, I am not a submissive woman, sexually or socially, so my opinion against that backdrop is a little out of place. But I wouldn’t be adverse to discussing it with those disclaimers, I suppose.
Well, honestly, this is one of the “raised by wolves” hypotheticals I was referring to. When I read that someone flirts with “keen looks”, that is immediately separate to me than, say, leering aggressively or staring in threatening or depersonalizing manner; of course, this is individual to me, but I would think (I might be wrong) that most people could differentiate between them. Again, context is key: a look that would be benign or even flattering in a singles’ bar would be completely inappropriate in a business meeting. Is that something that really is unclear?
It’s trying to split those hairs that makes me wary of these kinds of conversations, it always feels like an attempt to negate context when to me it comes down to: how would you like it? Does the person have reasonable outs? Are you treating this person you want to flirt with like a person or like a sex object? I don’t think those burdens are so strenuous, but then again, I am not a spokesperson for all the ladies, so, I suspect that I’m completely unhelpful here.
Also, what Patch said. :)
James (#10), enthusiasm is the key. If she’s reacting enthusiastically, all that disapproving feminist theory can go jump in a lake.
Sagredo, some feminist theories might disapprove, but others would obviously approve of enthusiastic consent, it’s their thing.
Anne Bonney,
“It’s trying to split those hairs that makes me wary of these kinds of conversations, it always feels like an attempt to negate context when to me it comes down to: how would you like it?”
But doesn’t the whole sexual politics complex turn that around? I remember seeing a “humoristic short film” once about a guy who had a crush on a co-worker in his office and shyly attempted to ask her out only to make her threaten him with a sexual harrassment lawsuit (or something like that). But then the guy she likes comes over and makes tons of inappropriate comments and she totally digs it.
That’s why the whole context/standards thing cannot really be totally subjective, wolves or not. Fairness requires at least some mutually accepted behavioral standards.
@James:
Here is my take on it:
1. It is okay to make mistakes. If you accidentally make someone feel uncomfortable/pressured/whatever while trying to learn how to interact in a dominant style, recognize it as the mistake it is and try to learn from it. You haven’t committed some horrible crime, so no need to beat yourself up about it. Such a mistake is no worse than if a woman made you feel similarly uncomfortable/pressured/whatever. Just do your best to learn from it.
2. Regardless of any patriarchal “brainwashing” a woman may have gone though, she is still an adult, and she still has the same responsibilities to herself and to others that any other adult has. Therefore, if she pretends to enjoy something such that a person with typical social skills wouldn’t detect the difference from genuine enjoyment… well, that is her issue, and you are in no way responsible for tip-toeing around that.
3. Having said that, a lot (most?) of the time when someone pretends to enjoy something that in reality they do not, there actually are signs. And you can get better at reading those signs with practice (see point #1).
4. As long as you are prepared to back off when you realize someone is not/no longer enjoying an interaction, you really do not have much to worry about, IMO. The problematic behavior is when someone keeps pushing even after they know that the other person is not enjoying the interaction. Accidentally making someone uncomfortable and backing off is totally normal and acceptable (even women do it!).
5. Sometimes when a person gets upset or uncomfortable or whatever, it actually is not your fault. Some people have had bad experiences in the past and are hyper-sensitive to certain behaviors, even when those behaviors are perfectly reasonable. And that is not your fault, and, as long as you back off, you should not hold yourself responsible when it happens. Sometimes it is your fault, of course, in which case see #1.
6. Re-read #1 again. Preferably several thousand times. ;-)
@Hugh Radfem:
It is cathartic to read things like that, because it reminds me of my own screwed up mental processes when I was hardcore into online feminism, and it reminds me how far I have come since then. I realize that was not exactly your intent, but thanks anyway. :-)
@AnneBonney:
Hopefully you are treating them like both. ;-) At least, it would certainly feel odd (and very unfortunate) to me if a woman flirted me up without seeing me as a sex object on some level. The important thing is that they also see me as a person.
Arguably it is not ‘sexual objectification’ if they also see you as a person, but that is not an argument I would choose to make. I mean, how many people want their partner to scream, “You’re such a good person!” while they are having sex? I think most people–both men and women–want to be sexually objectified in the right contexts, by the right people, as long as they know they are respected as a person as well. And I think this also applies to flirting–especially the later stages of it.
@Clarisse:
Interesting. I would be very curious to know which parts of radical feminist theory those are.
Personally, I have found very little–if any–theory in radical feminism that I respect that is not already well represented in more mainstream feminisms. Having said that, though, I am not super well-read on radical feminism (I should probably actually read some Dworkin and Daly, rather than just reading other people’s summaries of their theories and ideologies).
It is also worth noting, of course, that some mainstream feminist thought did originate from radical feminism, even if it is not exclusive to it anymore. For example, IIRC the whole gender-as-class analysis (i.e. the origin of the term “privilege” and the notion that it is one-way by nature, etc.) is originally due to radical feminism. But as far as I can tell that is pretty mainstreamed at this point.
@Sam:
Well, yes. A person might enjoy flirting with a person they know well and are comfortable with, and might conversely be creeped out when that quiet person who never talks to them suddenly confesses undying love and devotion. The film is a fictionalized exaggeration, but I don’t think that the woman who is the focus of the crush is necessarily being unreasonable, in the in world of the film.
When you’re writing laws and making official policies at a business or institution, sure, you have to lay out clearly defined rules. When you’re acting in the real world, context matters a whole lot. And if you’re treating the people you are romantically attracted to as people, rather than mobile dating services/sex toys, you will generally wind up behaving ethically. (Depending on your gender and sexual orientation, you might still wind up stepping outside of the law, but that’s a separate issue.)
“The Consequences Of This Terrible Truth”
Which probably means that they think if those women are submissive in bed, it means they want to be dominated in other life areas. And i guess that concerns both types – the ones that would want them to be (Can it really be the truth? Horray! Male dominance galore! Now i can feel ok with what i want to do!), and the ones that would not want it to be (Wait, what? So all that gender equality is inherently impossible? And i can’t get life i wanted? Crap).
Of course, as you said, the reality is that people are rather more complex, and someone dominant/submissive in hir sex life isn’t necessarily dominant in all other life areas, all the time. Sounds like simple explanation, so I guess it’s because people still want to know the mysterious other sex and how one handles the contacts with it. Oh, so they want submissiveness? So I have to be dominant, right?
Guess what, I again got back to analyzing your own needs and not what people would prefer in you, which was my summary of PUA stuff. Which fits right in into what AB said about PUA misogynist claiming women control everything. Because in their minds, women do control the most important issue for them. Poor frustrated PUA chumps :p ;)
I also recently tried to read (no time enough however) on feminist critics and after browsing it (it was science report about women preferring stereotypical masculine – dominant – characteristics, mainly in sex life), and the question I wanted to pose there was:
“Just how much. It’s science reporting on gender, where minute differences – like, 3% of explaining the variation gets presented as ‘this gender prefer that’, so the fact the effect is too minimal to be considered isn’t conveyed and readers interpret it as the most important factor”
As I said, the most important sentence in the infamous Brain Sex book (infamous in my country – basically a book about psychological differences between sexes) was ‘generally, the differences between sexes are insignificant compared to differences between individuals with the exception of skin touch sensitivity on the middle back’. Yeah, one sentence and the book then progressed to listing all of them in above fashion.
About the sexual compatibility issue, raised by Xakudo #9. I lived through something like that years back when I realized that humans aren’t exactly build (physically) to make PIV intercourse (which I considered – and still do – quite nice) satisfying both sides. Oh the horror of realizing that women actually don’t orgasm that often (really, I did a short query among my colleagues and found that one in twenty did regularly) during to intercourse.
“Although it’s my experience that the majority of women are interested in sexual submission on some level.”
Well, from my, limited experience, all people are interested in sexual submission on some level. ;)
Clarence (#34 and #36)
You are quite right in one aspect. I even recently wrote something about how men are supposed to be sexually active and successful (in strictly defined terms, of course), but they also are supposed to know it, idk, inherently – like women are supposed to intuitively know how to take care of the child. It’s totally fucked up, because it objectifies all people, both the initiator and responder, disregarding their desires and making communication difficult. PUAs are response to it, although a response that is fucked up in its own peculiar way.
In a way it also fucks up parenting by women, but that’s another issue I’m currently throwing a fit about at feministe.
I disagree, though, that all people interested in this are equality-minded. But that’s complicated, since this is not binary issue, whether one is sexist or feminist.
Also, i second Xakudo interest in reading about your story on radical feminist parts you respect.
This is an interesting topic. As a cis straight male, I have found myself surprised at how many women that I have slept with have expressed an interest or desire in submission, and what I guess could best be called light masochism. I agree with you that I might just be screening for these women or engaging in behavior that disproportionately attracts these women subconsciously, but I wouldn’t say that it is a case of seeing nails everywhere, since like I said, I was initially surprised at how common an interest this was.
Also, I would never presume that ALL or even most women have this interest, I do take the fact that I tend to encounter this preference without really trying as some evidence that at least the preference is at least somewhat common.
All kinds of late (and I only noticed this part when it showed up on my tumblr) but I have a question (that may have already been answered, thousand pardons if it has):
Its true that there are sexually submissive men in the high end corporate world. But don’t those men also have to worry about keeping that part of them hidden (which I assume is your main point but I’m just asking to be sure)?
lujlp, since you’ve demonstrated yourself incapable of leaving a comment that’s not insulting or derailing, just go away. I’m not going to let your past comments through because I’m done being patient with the manipulative crap I keep getting from people like you. I guess I should write a comment policy now.
Everyone else, my best girlfriend is getting married this weekend, so that’s why I’m AWOL.
Thank you for this. I’m still internalizing much of my own sense of self regarding submission, and this…is good.
Clarisse:
Hope you have fun, and the Wedding is blessed.
@James:
YMMV, of course… but in my experience, the best indication that I’ve come across that helps to distinguish between someone whose submissive preferences are personal and someone whose preferences are more socially influenced is that, in the case of the first, they’re far more likely to show variations in response, both positive and negative. Because they have a personal connection to it, they have personal responses to it; the responses affect them (and I mean that in reference to affect as well as effect) and, accordingly, the way in which they respond to it is a matter of importance. But when it’s more of a social-influence thing, it tends to operate more by rote, and it tends to have a duller, more stereotyped character.
It isn’t quite the same thing as enthusiastic consent (and isn’t exclusive of it), but it’s in the same ballpark.
Describing that in clear terms would be difficult, much like trying to pin down what it means to say that someone has “a sense of style.” But if there’s one point in it that I’d highlight, and that defines the difference between the two, it’s this: when it comes to the genuine submissive’s response, their response is important to them, which is not as evident, if it’s evident at all, in cases where it’s a social source. It won’t just be a reaction that reflects power dynamics, but one that also reflects the estimation of value.
I agree with what Tomek said regarding “analyzing your own needs and not what people would prefer in you” and it’s interesting how this comes up in feminist discussions of initiation. There’s a thread on Feministe where reasonable advice is given for getting a date with a woman, but it places all of the selective power with the woman.
@ James, in case you’re still reading:
I could be described as a “mildly submissive” type in bed, and I’d like to push back on the idea that you can spot mildly submissive women by seeing how we respond to “dominant flirting”. For me personally, being submissive in bed is erotic precisely because it is a total contrast to the way I am in daily life. When flirting, or really in any kind of interaction with strangers, I can’t stand it when people act overbearing or do things like try to fix me with a keen look. It’s more likely to garner a knee-jerk response from me, making me laugh or making me angry. So, I guess I agree most with Infra so far. You’d definitely get a reaction out of me. It would also definitely not be the one you’re looking for, because a consciously dominant flirting style is one of my biggest turnoffs!
Anyway, I completely agree with you that you should be looking for people who are into mild power play outside the organized BDSM scene. It seems to me that there are so many people out there who like stuff like slightly rough sex, being held down or holding a partner down, or even a little fooling around with restraints, that it’s rarely a problem to find someone who’s willing to experiment. In fact, those types of interests are so widespread in my experience that it hardly counts as “kink” per se any more.
Personally though, I’d like to warn you against using dominant flirting as any kind of test to find or attract mildly submissive women, unless you are also looking for a partner who’s submissive outside the bedroom. Just get 3 or 4 dates in and have the “so what are you into?” conversation. You’ll obviously end up dating a few incompatible people, but it sounds like that’s a price you’re willing to pay anyway, right?
Good luck, you sound like an awesome dude.
@Clarence 34 — I just love how you push all the problems of female sexual submissiveness onto “patriarchy”.
I didn’t use the word patriarchy even once. I just love how you immediately assume that all feminist discussions of oppressive gender dynamics = patriarchy :P You and commenters like you are the ones who convinced me that that term is limited in the first place, although I continue to think that many feminists just conflate it with “oppressive gender dynamics”; don’t undo your work by insisting on reading me as using that term when I’m not even using it.
That the society at large does NOT tell men how to appropriately approach women and – if they are aware of feminist theory- that the type of things that many men who are successful with women do are problematic to say the least. Given all this, how you could fail to see considerable GUILT that questions such as that typically exhibit escapes me.
You’re correct that I didn’t work very hard to give concrete feedback about what the guy could do in this instance, given guilt and/or anxiety. In the past couple years of feminist blogging, being trolled by misogynists, and (lately) pickup artist research, I think I’ve gained a much more defensive mindset. I’m working on a better post about this topic.
Re: white-washing, I am reluctant to do a whole bunch of feminism-blaming here. I find it extremely difficult to believe that there weren’t any shy guys who felt anxious about hurting women pre-feminism (chivalry, anyone?). As you noted, sexism and pedestalization are playing a huge role here too. And even if we do assume that feminism is mostly responsible for “collateral damage” in terms of discouraging men from expressing attractive assertiveness — which, again, I think is a stretch … it’s a symptom. Blaming feminism for the vast majority of social gender problems is like blaming the symptom of a disease, rather than the disease itself.
I’m not saying there are no problems with feminism — as you point out, there are still feminists who attack sexuality in itself, or BDSM, and even me in particular for my preferences. But in this arena of the discourse — a lot of men who are “successful with women” (a construct that often contains a lot of problematic assumptions, btw) ARE doing things that are problematic, and frankly I think the world would be a better place if those guys felt a bit more anxiety about it. In short, I’ll be happy to quit discouraging male aggression once I get to walk the streets without fear of aggressive men. (Escaped an attempted street attack a couple weeks ago. I shouldn’t have been where I was at the hour I was there. Oh, Chicago.)
Even as a female primary-submissive who occasionally has trouble drawing out some men’s dominant sides, it’s a lot more okay with me to deal with that difficulty than to have to deal with yet more aggressive men pushing my boundaries.
That having been said, I really am not inclined to debate the Horrors of Feminism, especially given how big and diverse feminism is. I’d be more interested in further conversation about concrete suggestions for how to deal with guilt about being a dominant dude, while moderating potential privilege issues.
@Xakudo — It is also worth noting, of course, that some mainstream feminist thought did originate from radical feminism, even if it is not exclusive to it anymore. For example, IIRC the whole gender-as-class analysis (i.e. the origin of the term “privilege” and the notion that it is one-way by nature, etc.) is originally due to radical feminism. But as far as I can tell that is pretty mainstreamed at this point.
Well, if you’re going to define “radical feminist theory” as “radical feminist theory that hasn’t ever been used by any other form of feminism”, then I’m a lot less likely to be able to cite radfem stuff that I like. Interesting note: I met an older feminist recently at a conference who talked to me for a while and when we got on the topic of radical feminism she sighed and said, “Why do THEY get that word? I was a radical feminist too! I’m still a radical feminist! Except they managed to take it over!”
I would say that a huge portion of my perspective comes out of radfem analysis and that I still find that analysis really valuable, and it’s not less valuable just because I’ve added sex-positivity. One might say that a number of my posts, eg sexy dreamgirl post, are much more radfem than the typical sex-positive stuff. Incredible feminist organizations like Jane, Rape Victim Advocates, the Chicago Women’s Health Center, etc (all mentioned in this post) all have their roots in radfemness. Etc.
@Danny — Its true that there are sexually submissive men in the high end corporate world. But don’t those men also have to worry about keeping that part of them hidden (which I assume is your main point but I’m just asking to be sure)?
Yeah, that’s part of my point. Also, I could add that when a sexually submissive male CEO is outed, he will be mocked etc etc, but his submission won’t be used as an attempt to “discredit” his entire gender.
@Hugh Radfem — If we ever get married then I expect you to take the last name Thorn in exchange for me taking the last name Radfem.
I’d co-sign pretty much everything Patch and AnneBonney have said. I do think I understand what HR is getting at, even though I felt like it was a bit of a reductio ad absurdum (especially given that nobody who’s likely to comment on THIS blog, of all blogs, is really going to take a hard-line radfem standpoint), as well as Sam’s point that:
That’s why the whole context/standards thing cannot really be totally subjective, wolves or not. Fairness requires at least some mutually accepted behavioral standards.
At this point I’ve sort of concluded that one of the few good (and short-term) solutions is to find ways of better socially-calibrating initiators, analyzing social feedback and offering better ways of understanding social situations. There may be some really great long-term solutions, but I’m not sure what those are. Obviously, the pickup artist community is mostly horribly misogynist and broken, but as many of us have discussed before, it can sometimes be a good source of information on this.
I do think that sexual harassment policies at work are a good start. They can be abused, but all laws can be abused. They certainly aren’t stopping all, or even most, sexual harassment. But they seem to have contributed to at least some kind of change in the culture.
In any human situation there are going to be exceptions and outliers. I think part of the key is to not allow those exceptions and outliers to define the discourse. A few false or confusing reports of stealing never leads us to talk about how stupid stealing laws are. It’d be great if sexual harassment laws were the same. But no matter how brilliantly written, any law is going to talk about pure actions when human behavior actually IS all about context. If we’re going to talk legalistically, this problem won’t go away. The truth is, the law has always been a clumsy way of mediating human behavior. Law is like the Churchill quote about democracy — to paraphrase, it’s the worst form of regulating people ever, except for every other one that’s ever been tried.
@Clarisse:
I was thinking more the theories that distinguish present-day radical feminists from the rest of present-day feminism.
But, of course, that is not the only sensible definition to use, especially if we want to speak from a historical perspective. And from a historical perspective, there is some radical feminist theory that I respect as well. I just don’t think of it as radical anymore.
I think this anecdote actually highlights the difference between identity vs description. It sounds like she treats “radical feminism” as an identity label, whereas I treat it as a descriptive term. In other words, I consider radical feminism to simply mean the most extreme elements of feminism during a given period of time. So to me it totally makes sense that “they” get that word, because they are the radical ones now, and she is (I presume?) actually pretty mainstream with respect to present-day feminism.
But “radical feminism” is also an identity label. Which makes everything either hilarious or maddening, depending on how much you care about feminist identity politics.
Honestly, when I read that post it read to me more like therapeutic venting than like analysis. And I do not mean that in a derogatory sense at all. I thought it was actually really valuable because of that. Hearing about people’s raw life experiences is extremely valuable.
Anyway, how did we get talking about feminism again? I need to watch myself better…
Amen.
But how the laws are enforced is important too. The punishment should be proportionate to the crime, for example, and the standards for conviction should become more stringent as the punishment becomes more severe (to avoid punishing the innocent).
And I think a lot of the fear that some men have around these laws is about enforcement, not about the laws themselves. Similar, perhaps, to how black people are not opposed to laws against stealing, but many are fearful of how those laws may be enforced, and of the power those laws give white people even if technically the laws are symmetric.
I do not get the impression that those fears on the part of men are justified, though. But I have not given the issue a detailed and thoroughly-researched look, so I cannot actually say that without a grain of salt.
(Hoping it isn’t too late to get some comments in because I just found the post)
The only thing I would add is that the same is true for male submission. Submission is not a male or female thing. It is not masculine or feminine. It is simply a way of relating and, at least in my case, expressing love for a person.
@James – the way you make sure a woman is compatible is to talk to her about what she wants and/or expects. Before and after having sex, and possibly during. Pay attention to her and if things aren’t going right, you’ll pick up on it.
Having said that, I know what “flirting” is, but I have no idea what “dominant flirting” is.
I’d also like to address the thought of “what if most men are dominant and most women are submissive.” As already pointed out, it doesn’t really matter. However, it is nearly impossible to determine how much is socialization and how much is inherently a part of someone. If they are in alignment, then everything works wonderfully. It is when they are in conflict that problems arise. And for all of our talk of having a more tolerant society (which we actually do), we have not yet found a way to be tolerant and accepting of men who challenge masculine stereotypes or women who challenge feminine stereotypes. If anything, we’ve simply added a level of uncomfortableness for people who purposefully seek a power imbalance in their relationships.
Clarrise:
Yeah, that’s part of my point. Also, I could add that when a sexually submissive male CEO is outed, he will be mocked etc etc, but his submission won’t be used as an attempt to “discredit” his entire gender.
Not the entire gender, just the (probably) significant portion of us that are the same. No the “discrediting” of our entire gender usually happens when talking about dominant men in the form of holding them up as some sort of “proof” that men (as a class) get off on hurting women.