Worst Description of Female Domination Ever?
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As a long time feminist man I certainly know that there are some people within the spectrum of feminism who can’t possibly be happy with any form of BDSM. Having certainly seen patriarchal abuse I understand how sensive one can be to signs of it.
That some will be blinkered to the possibility of an enjoyable, voluntary, healthy recreational and loving power exchange is a given.
But I don’t forgive taking your limited set of personal experiences and generalizing them on groups of people who are far more diverse than you seem to be able to understand.
This is by no means the most egregious paragraph:
If female “dominants” were the BDSM equals of male dominants, as we could infer from the “liberated woman!” propaganda surrounding them, why would anyone need to mis-pronounce words (“domme”), add Latin diminutive suffixes (“-trix”), or use female-exclusive words with less-powerful, more sexual connotations (“mistress”) to denote the gender of the person in question? Why would the gender of a dominant even matter, in a liberated, enlightened discussion between “scene” aficionados? Particularly when the language used to describe them is inherently less powerful?
Comments
Um, well… I stop taking anything seriously when I see the name “Andrea Dworkin” in the text.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go exploit some women by allowing them to think that they are liberated but are in fact, merely tools of the patriarchy.
Posted by: Tom Allen | February 9, 2007 11:45 PM
Bleah.
For the record, “-trix” is a feminine suffix, not a diminutive.
It’s discouraging that frequently words in the feminine do become associated with less power.
Seems to me like someone is confusing the effect with the cause.
Wouldn’t have wasted time on this if they had bothered fact-checking the word endings.
Posted by: R | February 10, 2007 1:43 AM
When I see these kinds of posts, I am tempted to respond, but when the language is this strong, I doubt any kind of meaningful dialog can occur.
I’m baffled by this guy’s claim to 3 years experience in the BDSM scene, including organizing groups. What he describes is completely at odds with my experience. I can only assume he was involved in some kind of hyper-maledom slice of the subculture. Too bad.
Posted by: Peter Tupper | February 11, 2007 9:48 PM
I think you do this too much credit by filing it under “Worst Description of Female Domination Ever”.
“Waffle” seems like an appropriate category.
Posted by: ASG | February 16, 2007 10:03 PM