theladyjanedoe:

oldenoughtobeyourfather:

sub-chronicles:

alaric1960:

a-ds-archive:

instructor144:

Feminism

June 7, 2019

Dear Instructor144,

 As someone who self-identifies as a feminist and teaches Gender and Women’s Studies, I want to comment on the many posts I see on accounts such as yours that use feminism to support a woman’s desire to engage in such “anti-feminist” practices as submission, masochism, traditional gender roles, etc. This is a long response and I completely understand if you don’t post it as you may feel that I’m disrespectful/angry/too political and, well, too long.

As I understand them, these posters define feminism as a woman’s “freedom to make choices” that are right for her. Whether she heads a Fortune 500 company or stays at home with her children, her choices are empowering because she makes them of her own free will and for herself. This, many of your followers argue, is a central tenet of feminism. Yet, scholars and dictionaries define feminism as “the belief in social, political and economic equality between the sexes. In practice and in history, feminist social movements and academic theories have defined the relationship between the sexes in general and the liberation of women in particular. Feminist movements have attempted to influence politics and social policies through research, education, activism and legislation” (Issitt/Flynn 2016). Note that nowhere does this definition mention “choice.” First-wave feminists fought for the right to vote; second-wave for equal work/educational opportunities; and third-wave for political representation and on behalf of intersectionality (transgender, ethnic, and lesbian women).

While, globally, we’ve made many strides in gender parity, there’s still a long way to go. Statistically, for example, women are more likely to live in poverty than any group of men (https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2018/02/14/women-poorer-and-hungrier-than-men-across-the-world-u-n-report-says/?utm_term=.f52f23c10adc). In the United States, even married African-American, Hispanic, and Native-American women proportionally experience more poverty than white women (https://nwlc.org/resources/nwlc-resources-on-poverty-income-and-health-insurance-in-2017/). All the “freedom to choose” in the world would not allow these women to stay home if they wished because neither they nor their partners have the economic resources to do so.

I say all this because I’m bothered that defenses of the lifestyle choices represented here describe feminism as synonymous with “choice” without acknowledging that only a select few have the means to make these choices. In fact, it’s not feminism that enables a woman to stay at home and/or cede financial control to her dominant partner; rather, it is her and her partner’s ethnicity and status (statistically, U.S. lifestyle communities are overwhelmingly white and middle-class; while I realize that not all of you self-identify as such, exceptions are not the norm; https://www.salon.com/2012/01/12/bdsm_its_less_transgressive_than_you_think/). For those who disagree, please understand that your definition of feminism rests on privilege that billions of economically disadvantaged women world-wide do not share. As you engage in your safe, sane, consensual, legal lifestyle choices, please be aware of some potential consequences (such as the dominant partner’s sudden inability to earn a living, for example) and please be aware of how lucky you are that your class and ethnicity allow you to do so.

This brings me to my next point: please stop making feminists – even a percentage of feminists – out to be the ones most critical of these choices. First of all, we’re not (though I concede that some feminists are anti-porn); secondly, you stereotype feminists as rigid, angry, combative, and man-hating; and, thirdly, you dismiss our very real accomplishments. Right now, feminists are fighting to keep Planned Parenthoods – often the only places low-income women can get mammograms, birth control, and STDs treatment – open in far too many states. We are fighting to correct the gender pay gap, which still means that women earn eighty cents for every dollar that men make (https://iwpr.org/issue/employment-education-economic-change/pay-equity-discrimination/). And, globally, we are fighting war-time sexual violence, which is an epidemic in Somalia and Uganda, to name only a few countries (https://www.unicef.org/sowc96pk/sexviol.htm). We are not, quite frankly, taking the time to fight against your lifestyle choices. If you want to resent anyone, resent those who believe they have a right to control your body (https://www.cnn.com/2016/10/09/opinions/the-important-issue-about-women-trump-has-raised-ben-ghiat/index.html). The leap from forced birth (and here, yes, feminism is about choice) to forced heteronormative lifestyles is not a big one given that both deny bodily autonomy.

So, if someone who self-identifies as feminist criticizes your lifestyle, I ask that you please engage with that person as an individual rather than using that exchange to attack feminism on the basis of this one or even relatively few encounters. You would not wish others to make reductive generalizations about your lifestyles based on a few extreme interactions; I ask that you grant feminists the same courtesy.

Thank you for your time and attention.

Sincerely,

Ffeminst3

@instructor144 Ffeminst3

SS didn’t define feminism as choice in her posts

She addressed what freedom and choice for women means

“ 1.) Equality and freedom means I get to choose for myself.

2.) “My body, my choice” doesn’t mean shit if you decry my choices.

3.) Stop policing other women. We get enough of that shit from religion, etc. Don’t be a fucking lowlife collaborator. I have your back for your choices. If you don’t have mine, at least have the decency to sit down and shut the fuck up.

4.) STOP BLAMING WOMEN FOR THE BAD BEHAVIORS OF MEN!!! You’re just providing aid and comfort to the “She was asking for it” crowd. “

She also made the point often that D/s snd BDSM aren’t about gender

A Messy Archive

A Messy Archive

This Anon is absolutely correct because they choose the definition:  “As I understand them, these posters define feminism as a woman’s “freedom to make choices” that are right for her. Whether she heads a Fortune 500 company or stays at home with her children, her choices are empowering because she makes them of her own free will and for herself. This, many of your followers argue, is a central tenet of feminism. Yet, scholars and dictionaries define feminism as “the belief in social, political and economic equality between the sexes. In practice and in history, feminist social movements and academic theories have defined the relationship between the sexes in general and the liberation of women in particular. [implicitly, the Anon supports this definition.] Feminist movements have attempted to influence politics and social policies through research, education, activism and legislation” (Issitt/Flynn 2016). Note that nowhere does this definition mention “choice.” First-wave feminists fought for the right to vote; second-wave for equal work/educational opportunities; and third-wave for political representation and on behalf of intersectionality (transgender, ethnic, and lesbian women).

“

Given that definition, and their application of it to their understanding, then everything which follows is correct, because it builds on it.

It is well-researched, well supported by references, and very sincere.

Unfortunately it is all opinion, and opinions, like sincerity, are no guarantee of truth.

I can sum up my response, not limiting myself to feminism, with my own personal belief and opinion:

Freedom is the right of an mature individual to choose for themself.  Fascism is taking away the choose to choose from another, regardless of the reason.  Therefore, the excuse “I’m doing it for their own good” is not valid – there is an option to educate instead, and then let them choose.

Someone chooses to murder?  They have chosen their consequence, as laid out by the law.  Someone chooses to submit to another, in a lawful and moral sense?  Then they choose their consequences. In my opinion, if they chose well, they have chosen happiness.

As you can tell, Anon, we have irreconcilable differences in our definitions, and therefore our moral structures and views of reality.  Your definition removes choice, removes free will.  Mine is predicated on it.

I had saved this as a draft so I could respond to this with my full attention, and had every intention of typing out a lengthy response…

But, @alaric1960 hit the nail on the head, and said it all for me.

I couldn’t respond any more beautifully than that.

Meh.  The tobacco industry uses that “freedom to choose” argument all the time.  So do opponents of net neutrality (”you can pick the restricted network that’s right for you!”)

So I’m going to send a big “fuck you” to anyone who claims the OP is “fascist” for raising those concerns or that feminism (or kink!) is entirely and exclusively about “choice.” 

Besides, that whole “freedom/fascism” axis is a false dilemma.  it’s also a fool’s choice.  Feminists shouldn’t go there, sure, but neither should “eww, Teh mean Femininimimisters” types either.

You want to really interrogate things from a radical feminist perspective let’s look at my favorite eye-bugging example, spanking.

From a conventional, Patriarchal perspective spanking – repeated blows the the buttocks, possibly with socially-humiliating exposure – is always and exclusively a form of punishment.  And if so then from a Patriarchal perspective getting erotic pleasure out of either spanking or being spanked is a first-order perversion!  

If one is being purely reactive to Patriarchy (never a bad idea but you need to practice awareness while doing so) then one’s first reaction is to… agree with the Patriarchy that erotic spanking is perverse.  This creates an odd-bedfellows effect where both Patriarchy and classical Feminism agrees: spanking should never be enjoyed because it’s punishment.

But if you apply what used to be called a “sex-positive” or “3rd-Wave” feminist critique of spanking you end up somewhere much deeper and darker – a place that’s perfectly compatible with actual Feminism but utterly damning for Patriarchy: why the goddamn hell do we turn a sexualized activity into a form of punishment?

I mean, think about it.  The buttocks, thighs, and adjacent genitalia are incredibly rich nerve endings related to sexuality.  It’s well known that these can be stimulated even against the victim’s will, as in sexual abuse.  Presenting the buttocks during sex is a welcoming/inviting gesture during consensual sex, and being forced to present them without consent is criminally actionable.

And yet the Patriarchy specifically endorses sexualized forced submission and eroticized impact of the buttocks as a means of punishment.

Is it worth mentioning that spanking as punishment is very rarely applied to adult men but is commonly applied not only to women but children?  I think so!

Hmmm!  

Maybe the problem isn’t spanking as a pro-Patriarchy, anti-feminist.  Instead maybe it’s the Patriarchy choosing the buttocks precisely because they’re an erogenous zone and choosing percussive blows because they’re particularly arousing, and choosing to expose the buttocks for punishment because involuntary sexualization of any sort (a.k.a. sexual assault and battery) categorically humiliates the victim.

As you might imagine I never, ever spanked my own children.  And find it a grossly oppressive capital-P Patriarchal behavior that’s tolerated only due to appalling lapses of critical consciousness in a thoroughly indoctrinated population.

Anything in there about “freedom” or “fascism?”  Ahaha, no, cause those are loser mouth noises.  Fuck that bullshit.  You go arguing in terms of “freedom” and “choice” then feminism loses and Patriarchy wins the way the tobacco and coal-mining industries win.

—

Want me to go a little further into this?  I bet you don’t but I’m going to anyway.

Ever notice how many activities that are defined as “submissive” are… things one would ordinarily do if you had internal, a.k.a. “receptive” sex organs?  It’s difficult (though not impossible) to perform cunnilingus on a standing woman while in a kneeling position, but it’s easy as pie to perform fellatio that way.  Penetrating a partner with a penis while bending over for a partner is effectively impossible, but it’s extraordinarily easy to engulf a penis while bent over.

Funny how all those things are defined as “degrading” or “submissive” when really the “problem” is that they’re largely how women and non-penised and/or penis-engulfing bodies have sex.  Who defined all those things as submissive and degrading again?  Let’s see – feminism in the modern era can’t really be traced back further than Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Woman back in 1792 AD, and it really didn’t have any significant impact till the early 20th Century.  Meanwhile English, European, Middle-Eastern European, Asian, and North African cultures had already defined… well… “feminine” modes of sexuality as degrading and submissive at least as far back as Middle Assyrian laws codified no later than maybe 1000 BCE.

So if you think feminism is to blame for contemporary prudery you are barking. Up. The. Wrong. Tree.  

If it were me (hey, it actually is me!) I’d invite academic feminists to interrogate the Patriarchy’s role in the social construction of sexual “submission” and “domination” and inquire further what benefits accrue to Patriarchy when those constructs are perpetuated.

Anything in there about “freedom vs. fascism” or “feminism only means choice?”  Ahahahah, no, because those arguments are for paleoliberal losers.

—

One last little thing you probably don’t want to hear about but I’m going to mention anyway.  If you weren’t thoroughly indoctrinated to Patriarchal constructions of domination and submission you wouldn’t argue over whether women should be submissive or men dominant.

Instead you’d ask where are all the submissive men and dominant women?  After all neither submission nor domination are gender qualities.  Instead, domination and submission are distributed evenly between male- and female-bodied humans.  

So a better question might be who’s erasing dominant women and submissive men?

I think it’s stupid, offensive, and wrong that almost all depictions of dominant women are sexualized, often as tightly corsetted “dominatrix” sex-workers teetering on 9-inch spike heels, and made available for consumption mainly by mainstream “sex-tourist” men.  And equally egregious is the standard depiction of male submission as “forced feminization” or “sissification.”  Oh, or receptive homosexual male, though what the actual problem would be with gay bottoms is beyond me.

When in reality most dominant women (like most dominant men, incidentally) are virtually indistinguishable from the rest of the population.  Same for most submissive men.

Yet society is almost entirely blind to dominant women who aren’t either hyper-masculinized or hyper-feminized, or to “alpha” submissive men.

Hmm.  If I had a degree in either women’s studies, social theory, or the anthropology of sex I’d love to dig into why submissive men basically never refer to themselves as “alpha submissives” the way so many women submissives do.

Bottom line, though, is instead of brassholing around about “freedum,” if I was a kink activist, especially if I identified as feminist, I’d probably spend a hell of a lot more time taking an axe to the Patriarchal stereotypes that amplify conventionally gendered D/S kinksters at the expense of all other D/S kinksters.  Many of whom are likely still in their various closets because nothing they see on dilweed “D/S” and “BDSM” sites and too many Tumblr blogs looks anything like them at all.

Just putting it out there.  You want to change old-school feminist’s mind about D/S?  How about giving them something they can really sink their teeth into, in a context that means a hell of a lot to them.

Just gonna say it one more time: feminism is not the enemy of kink; patriarchy is.  To the extent that feminism succumbs to patriarchal assumptions, the solution is not to condemn feminism (heh, no) but to engage them.

The OP had and has a point: too much of D/S looks like the worst abuses of Patriarchy.  Sites like fucking Kink.com and it’s lyingly “sex-positive” stunt fucking really do reinforce the dominant paradigm about women as receptacles of sexual violence and men as both perpetrators and beneficiaries of it.

People in kink are usually extraordinarily conscientious.  Compared to the general population anyway.  They’re frequently more socially aware, and often passionate advocates for the principles and practices of feminism (even when, like much of Western Civilization, they express it as “I’m not a feminist, but…”)

So there’s really no reason for kinksters and feminists to be on opposite sides against Patriarchy.  And there’s really no reason to pretend the disagreement has anything to do with questions of “freedom,” “choice,” vs (oh dear god!) “fascism.

@oldenoughtobeyourfather There are parts of your argument that I totally get, but I think you’re going to lose some of your audience with the fuck-all-holier-than-thou tone that reflects the “I’m an egalitarian” mindset we see so often. Because that’s how this reads: Lots of yo-yo-ing in defense of feminism (and telling us how to do it better?) while simultaneously letting us know that you do not identify as one. Which, comes as a surprise on my end because I’ve been following you for years and generally find that we align on most things. Perhaps I should’ve been paying better attention, or, perhaps I’m reading too much into this. Idk.

So, I’m not picking a fight here, and I hear what you’re saying in some of your rebuttal (especially the facism parts and how D/s often does reflect traditional Patriarchal roles) but this does come across as an attack on feminism as a whole. There was pertinent dialogue happening. However, to take the time to tear apart a lot of FEMALE thoughts on the matter of how we see the relationship between D/s and feminism is really not your place.

I do find feminism to be about choice. Whether a woman wants to work or stay home, whether she wants to be feminine or not, whether she has children or not, whether she submits to someone or not, (and many other things that are only her business) she SHOULD be allowed to choose one without shaming the other… and making these choices analogous to an activity that could literally kill you, like smoking, is not only irresponsible, it is downright ridiculous.

Sorry to hijack your post @instructor144 , but I had some thoughts.

OMG @theladyjanedoe  That wasn’t my intention at all.  My sincere apologies if my impatience with “libertarian” attitudes spilled over into my critique of the arguments.  Which as i re-read my post it certainly did.

I’ve been passionate about feminism since roughly puberty.  I haven’t always been a good feminist or feminist ally, or maybe more accurately I haven’t always been a competent one.  But as a man, a human being, and a kinkster I feel strongly that feminism and its critique of patriarchy’s impact on everybody is indespensible to climbing out of this mess we call modern civilization.

But that’s just me defending myself, which is always dumb.  I fucked up.

Instead let me see if I can repeat my points without being quite such an asshole.

1) I’m leery of discussions centered entirely around choice because I feel this is often used to the detriment of others and can often be turned back on those who use it.  I mentioned the tobacco thing but you can see it from everything to justifying “food deserts” to neo-nazis.  So while self-determinism and autonomy is necessary to feminism I feel strongly that it’s not sufficient to carry the argument in the debate started by i144′s correspondent.

2) I feel strongly that instead of the best known feminist critiques of kink as glamorized or internalized oppression, a more productive path would be to question the social constructs that use the pleasurable things we do as tools of oppression.  Particularly cis-straight gendered oppression.  Spanking was one example, blowjobs another.

If I took credit for this point of view I’d be an asshole since was raised repeatedly by feminists labeled as “3rd wave” or “sex positive.”

3) I also feel strongly that saying D/S is bad because it oppresses women begs the important question of why do we ignore women Doms, and their partners when at least on paper both sides of D/S are distributed evenly.  That people have to make up special, diminutive words for women who are Doms (when they’re acknowledged at all!) should be critiqued and called out, as should the presumption of feminization of men who are Subs.

But!  I fucked up, letting my aggravation and despair make it sound as if I’m not committed to feminism, I’m opposed to choice, and I’m holier-than-thou.  Bleah.  

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