the intersection of feminism and kink

You'll have to forgive me now dear readers (all two of you left - I abandoned you! I'm sorry! I blame this place and the very nice young gentleman who bullied me into playing with him there. It's sucking up my time and energy in the most awesome way imaginable) while I talk about two of my very favourite things: Sex and gender politics.

Those of a nervous/prudish/overly excitable disposition may want to look away now.

A recent feature on kink published on The F Word (a superb UK based Feminist blog that I highly recommend you check out) and the presence of a new(ish) man in my life* (who I am pretending is not reading this so that I can make my point) have led to me feeling the need to articulate an opinion. Stay with me on this, I have a point. Honest.

So here's the thing: I've always been kind of a natural submissive. I think this is partially to do with being an absolute control freak in every other area of my life but mainly it's because I'm just really, really lazy. The way I saw it as a younger woman was thusly: if you're being restrained you're not doing any of the work and really, what could be nicer?

Then I got a older and a little wiser and realised that it was slightly more complex than that and loss of control was probably a major factor. And then I got older and a lot wiser and realised that serious levels of trust (and some strict ground rules) were the only thing that made that loss of control work on any kind of non-horrendous level.

Then I started learning more about Feminism and things got more complicated. Because on an academic level I know that female submission is highly fetishised by society (for an incredibly decent summary of why this is the Sex chapter in The Beauty Myth is an absolute must read) and that while deeply personal my own kinks could be treading into dodgy political territory. Because I spent so long completely ignoring my own internal and political belief systems it's very important to me at the moment that I figure out how everything fits in with my world view. Now, I'm aware that not everything fits together but somehow understanding why it is that certain elements of my personality do or do not gel with one another gives me a much better explanation of who I am as a whole. So the submission thing bothered me a great deal, I fully believe in political, social and economical equality so the fact that I could believe in what seemed to me, at the time, to be sexual inequality was a very disturbing thought. Although, it never felt unequal to me, which may have made my upset over the matter worse.

And that's why the article I mentioned struck such a cord with me. I've read Feminist discussions on sex before and always found that while enlightening they're also very, very confusing. Which is why I found Kit Roskelly's piece so affecting. Especially the following section, which is something I've thought in the past but been unable to articulate:

The power exchange is carefully negotiated and considered beforehand. It is paradoxically true that the submissive is more in control of any scene played than the dominant partner. Dom/mes take on a controlling role because they are interested in the sub enjoying the scene. They may also get an erotic thrill out of the scene they are performing, but the submissive controls the direction of the scene through negotiation and holds the ultimate veto, the safe-word, if the scene does not work out. The power-play is illusory.

Her point about the power of the dominant partner being an illusion is a good one as without the express permission of the other participant they wouldn't have that power in the beginning. The submissive in effect hands the power over to the dominant partner. It is a gift and one which can easily be revoked. I find that dichotomy alone endlessly fascinating, even without the other factors involved.

The point above also went quite a long way to helping me figure out why I have, in the past, been in certain situations that in theory I would have enjoyed but found myself, well "hating" may be too strong a term but... yeah, I'm going to go for "hating" actually. Which was an interesting revelation to receive so long after the fact.

So yes. That's my musing for the evening. Opinions? Comments? You know what to do.




*I am, incidentally, taking suggestions for how to refer to him in blog land as the moniker Mr TheOdd has been taken and soiled by the dreaded (and still apparently psychic) ex. Obviously I can't just use his initial as that's actually what I call him and hence wrong. So yes: answers on a postcard (or, you know, in the comments section.)

the backlash against feminism

There's a fantastic article in the Guardian today, written by Kira Cochrane who is one of my ever present girl crushes. The article is huge in scope and covers a massive variety of frightening topics including rape conviction rates, inequalities in the work place, the shocking lack of funding for women's charities (I've read the statistic a million times but it still enrages me that sick donkeys get more money than battered women on this isle of mine), the increasing prevelance of the sex trade and my own pet subject:

In gossip magazines, women's bodies are pored over - a pound gained provoking headlines that they're fat, a pound lost leading to headlines that they're too thin. Circles are drawn around a spot on their ankle where they've failed to apply fake tan, around a bitten nail or a tiny, incipient wrinkle beside their eye - which could just be a stray lash. What is implicit but unsaid is that there is no objective standard of beauty, no level of perfection that a woman could reach at which her body would be perceived as acceptable and in control. In the eyes of these magazines, a healthy body mass index could be considered seriously plump. A woman deemed too fat in one magazine could, on the basis of exactly the same picture, be deemed too thin by another magazine. The constant message is that women's bodies are not our own. They belong to everyone but us, and are there to be picked apart. Women can try to curry favour, come up to snuff, spend hours like, say, Madonna, working out, perfecting themselves. But there's then every chance that they will be derided for the veins on their hands. There's something essentially depressing about women being derided for their veins

I suggest you go and read the whole thing, I'm already trying to work out a way of forcing everyone I come into contact with into reading and understanding it. Maybe that would make my day to day interactions bearable.

UPDATE: Apparently the ladies over at Jezebel agree with me.

Inequalities in the field.

There is an article in the Education Guardian today with some rather disheartening, if not unexpected, statistics. It turns out that even in a field dominated by women we’re still losing out to our male counterparts. Over half of all secondary level teachers are women (it’s a percentage in the high 80s for primary level positions) and, if we judge by the number of female candidates entering postgraduate teacher training, that doesn’t look set to change. Despite all this the number of men in leadership roles after twenty years of service is more than double that of women in similar positions. As in the majority of other professions we see that men are more likely to ask for pay rises and actively seek promotions. Like I said before, this isn’t unexpected. Teaching is a popular career choice for women who intend to take time off in order to raise children – unlike jobs in the business or research sectors the teaching profession won’t move on in leaps and bounds if you take a few years out to “have a family” – your career won’t be progressing while you do it though.

"Career patterns show women are less likely to experience swift promotion and face discrimination in relation to career breaks in a profession structured around a ladder of promoted posts.

"Women are also less likely to seek promotion on account of issues such as personal priorities, as well as experiencing negative attitudes."

Part of me would expect a little more from a field “dominated” by women but experience tells me not to hold my breath. That’s beside the point, it’s the same for the majority of career paths I could have chosen, it’s universal sexism (and universally unfair) but not what I want to talk about today.

The issue at the forefront of my mind is the almost invisible inequalities of employment – not the ones that affect my pay (I’ve never been in a position where my salary is defined by anything other than an arbitrary number on a pre-defined scale so I’ve yet to experience the pay gap first hand) or my rate of career progression but rather the ones that niggle every day and make my life just that little bit harder. I’ve experienced this all the positions I’ve worked in, except my current post in academia (there I suspect any difficulty in doing my job is not brought about by my gender but rather the fact that my job really shouldn’t have existed in the first place). The obvious issues associated with being a young, female member of bar staff sadly still go with the job, sleazy customers offering back massages and well dressed professional couples leaning over the bar and confiding that I looked like “the kind of girl who really enjoys it rough and dirty” (Erm, thanks?) were par for the course and upsettingly just became part of the daily grind. Working in the store I did in my retail days meant that some customers would actively avoid me because I was a woman (only to be sent straight back to me when it turned out they had a question my non video game playing male colleagues couldn’t answer) and a primarily male environment meant that occasionally “banter” got out of hand. I did once have to threaten to file a sexual harassment complaint if the current line of conversation did not stop (this was before my days as labelling myself as a Feminist. I’m still highly impressed with myself, and with my colleagues who took it in very good grace and apologised profusely). Teaching however has thrown up some other, more interesting issues that won’t apply to my male colleagues.

Aside from having to buy an entirely new work wardrobe (appearing too “sexy” in your manner of dress is something that a relatively conservative dresser such as myself has never had a problem with before but apparently 90% of what I own is inappropriate for dealing with teenagers. Although I get the feeling that I’d still get heckled even if wearing a floor length, shapeless dress fashioned from Kevlar, which may actually be a sensible option for my inner city placement, safety-wise), issues with being 5’1” and attempting to control a class full of kids twice my size who all look older than me and all the fun sexual harassment I get to observe and have very little power to counteract to look forwards to I also have the small issue of my name.

I identify as Ms O’Irishname. Not “Miss”, not “Mrs” but “Ms”. I find the use of Miss to be infantilising and have felt uncomfortable being defined by it for as long as I can remember (I used to think it was just my old surname I took issue with, apparently it wasn’t). I’m not married and I’d like to think that if I were I’d choose not to be defined by my marital status so Mrs is out. But how in the hell do you convince kids and colleagues of that? I already have issues with getting banks and my mobile phone companies to use the correct title even my flatmates find it weird (as I’m “not divorced or in [my] forties”). It’s a minor issue when compared with classroom control, the possibility of violence or parents questioning your decisions but it’s one that bothers me all the same.

Procreation? Not so much. Footnotes? Absolutely.

Two articles caught my attention today the first, over at Jezebel is a truly horrifying report of a woman in Sweden whose boyfriend fed her RU-486 without her knowledge in a bid to abort the foetus she was carrying. Even more frightening is the fact that he's not the first guy to have this stellar idea. The Jezebel article highlights some of the comments left on the original news story, which I'll reproduce here:

I find it interesting that he gets sentenced to 18 months in prison for trying to get rid of the fetus and she can legally get rid of the fetus by having an abortion.

Most of the responses to this are completely in tune with my personal reaction of "The FUCK? He drugged her, that's assault you fucking moron" which is always heartening to see. It's nice to know that rampant stupidity doesn't permeate to every last corner of the internet. As far as refuting the moronic arguments like the once above goes: it all comes back (like so many things) to the "my body, my choice" philosophy. I've been reading a lot on this subject recently and I have realised something very important. This is an ideal which I will fight to the death to defend. I will also say this, melodramatic as it sounds: if abortion or emergency contraception were ever made to be completely illegal I would have myself sterilised. For real. I don't care how painful, expensive or irreversible the procedure would be there would be no way in hell I would take that chance.* I'd rather never have children at all than have them before I'm ready for them. As for abstinence? Fuck off. I mean, you have met me right?

This brings me neatly onto the second article, via Feministing, which happily put me in a much better mood. Shockingly enough some women genuinely don't want children. Why? Because they just don't. I cannot tell you how happy this and the associated comments made me feel. The second I say something such as the statement I made above I immediately get jumped on with the "oh you'll change your mind soon enough"s or the "it'll be different when it happens to you"s and I am sick to the back teeth of it**. It's part absolute fury at being told what I will and will not feel at some undetermined point in the future (which I do not like) and part repulsion at the idea that I obviously will never be able to be a complete and rounded person until I have popped out a sprog. I've stopped saying that I don't want children now, not because I suddenly and magically do but because I can't take arguing with people over it any more. It appears that the answer of "because I just don't really feel I want them" isn't good enough and I utterly despise myself when I catch me starting up with the "I can barely look after myself, what would I do with a baby? I'd probably lose it. I even kill my houseplants HA HA HA" schtick which seems to be the only verging on acceptable response. Anyway, it's not as simple as that I'm not saying I'll never have kids just that I don't want them but people can't seem to understand this distinction. It is very, very simple: if I meet someone who desperately wants a family then, yeah: I would consider it. However, I also think that if I never got around to reproducing it wouln't be any great loss - my life would be just as fulfilling and I'd be just as happy either way. Is this a wildly radical notion? Does the logic of this not compute somewhere? It's another case of people assuming that just because they get something out of a particular situation (and yes, so do billions of other people) then everyone else must do too.

Although I will say this, having gotten older and making friends with women who actually are mothers some in real life (some in a life that just feels real) my perception of motherhood has changed. Realising that parents are real people (who can get irritated with their offspring, or find them unintentionally hilarious, or have any number of any other utterly rational human responses to a completely autonomous living entity) rather than the Stepford-bot mega-mommy 3000s I grew up around (seriously, private school girls have issues 90% of them parentally induced) my horror of having spawn has been downgraded from "I'd rather jump off a bridge, oh God. Why would you even say something like that to me? What the fuck, man." to "well maybe, if I had the money and the support and someone else who promised to feed them and clean out their cages... meh, what's on TV?". So there's always that.

* This is not to say that I am anti-children (obviously, or my future career plans would be kind of stupid), or anti-anyone having children ever. I am however anti-me having children. I am also anti-bringing a child into the world into a home situation that either doesn't want it or isn't ready for it.

** This particular rant may or may not have been brought on by the fact that my baby cousin, who ok is only 9 months younger than me, moved in with her boyfriend this week highlighting the fact that in my family's terms I am officially an old maid. Seriously, being 22 and not having met/married someone yet is positively deviant - especially as my Mother was living in London when she was exactly my age and yet she still had time to find herself a husband.