A seriously steamed dominant female (and manifestly not “femdom”) Bitchy Jones of Bitchy Jones’s Diary explains why she shouldn’t have to explain why the BDSM practice of “forced fem,” the practice of giving men jollies by making them adopt “humiliatingly” feminine clothing or behavior is not like (as a commenter of hers evidently keeps insisting) like a Jewish person getting off on role-playing Nazi victimization.
Who has the power outside the bedroom is relevant. Taking something that oppresses you in daily life and making it your sexual power source is a valid and often useful thing to do. And hot. Taking something you use to oppress other people and then making some parody of it to stroke off some ideas you have that wouldn’t it be dirty to be a slutty women, ain’t the same thing. That’s why I can say it isn’t okay and not be oppressing the way some oppressed groups make sexual fantasies of their oppression.
It is a different thing.
Look, you know that bit in the America version [of] the office where Steve Carrell’s character takes off a Chris Rock routine and it’s horrifying? That’s the same thing. Rock takes some language and ideas that oppress the group he comes from in real life, and makes them funny. Carrell takes some ideas that oppress a group that he has power over in real life and that makes it horrifying. That’s the difference.
And that’s not even getting started on forced fem’s prevalence in femdom enforcing shitty little ideas about femininity and submission being, like, what, fucking interchangeable, or something. Just stop. Really. If everything we do in femdom equates the ideas that femininity is what submission really is and dominance requires a cock and no emotional engagement, femdom will never stop being a joke, a sickness, a wrong, wrong thing.
Just to be clear, there’s nothing wrong with getting your own jollies by indulging or even sharing your partner’s fantasies. Just don’t confuse that with either dominance or sadism. And for crying out loud don’t assume that’s what dominant women are “supposed” to want to do.
As I’ve mentioned in the past I think dominant women like BJ, and submissive men like Maymay, are even closer to the cutting edge of gender-awareness on this particular gender issue than mainstream or even radical feminism because they face erasure from all directions.
—-
Update: Two other points:
- One common assumption (that also drives BJ nuts) is that heterosexual “femdoms” hate men. But what assumptions should we make about men who think being forced to act feminine is to be (erotically!) humiliated?
- It’s unusual (not to mention redundant) to say “she’s a woman doctor” or, going further back, “she’s doctoress” because “she’s a doctor” is sufficient. So what does it say about gender entrenchment that we say things like “He’s a male submissive” or “she’s a female dominant?”
Submitted by 2574 (not verified) on Mon, 2008-12-15 02:55.
What really burns my shit on this one is that it's one of the recurring topics which I feel very few people actually listen to submissive men about, but a lot of people's ears perk up when they hear a dominant woman talking about. Not entirely sure what's going on there, but it's certainly pretty insulting.
In any event, thanks for the mention in this post. Most people don't get that far.
[Hi May. That reminds me, there's another point I meant to mention. Thanks! --fl]
Submitted by 2574 (not verified) on Mon, 2008-12-15 17:40.
Actually, I made a similar point a few years ago on a message board, but the only response I got was a guy saying that the didn't think of forced feminism quite like that, it was more like being forced far outside his normal image and role lends an additional element of humiliation, not that he thought that feminine necessarily equaled submission. I suppose that there could be some truth to that, since women being "masculinized" is mostly acceptable in some circles, while the reverse is usually not. That still doesn't fully explain things or mean that it's necessarily true for everyone who's into that, though.
[Nope. But it comes up often enough that it *is* that way that I thought BJ's irritation was the right response. Thanks, Nightfall. --fl]
Submitted by 2574 (not verified) on Wed, 2008-12-17 05:32.
I love being feminine, and being crossdresssed. I also like to play with being submissive, too. But because of the strong association that some folks have between "feminised" and "humiliated", I can't combine the two, because a) I'm not into humiliation-play as Bottom and if I think someone else is trying to humiliate me, I get very wound up about it, and b) I just strongly disagree that there should be any such link.
So what does it say about gender entrenchment that we say things like "He's a male submissive" or "she's a female dominant?"
I think it probably relates more to language entrenchment, in that the gender+orientation form develops and carries over from contact forms where gender might not be immediately obvious, and the form was used as self-identification.
However, I think it IS problematic in that there seems to be a much greater need demonstrated in common usage to qualify the orientation when talking about female Top/male Bottom, and that this does reveal a certain amount of gendered association of the terms "dominant" and 'submissive" - while "she's a female submissive" and "he's a male dominant" certainly are commonly used, the gendered qualifier is sometimes omitted, whereas it is only very rarely omitted when talking the other way around.
[Exactly. I probably could have been more clear that what I was chaffing at was there are "dominants" and there are "female dominants;" submissives and "male submissives." As if... that... was so novel one had to make sure. Thanks, SE. --fl]