Figleaf's Real Adult Sex

Replying to a comment of mine about orgasm fetishes, of Miss Calico, who occasionally works as a professional dominant, raises a paradoxical point (emphasis mine.)

I think I have been extra, super put off by the post-‘70s reactive feminist stuff because so many submissive men fetishize it. I mean I’ve literally had men come to me and tell me how they were “raised by feminists to be submissive to women”. (What does this entail? Lots of humiliating them, telling them how they can’t please a woman, and kicking them in the balls, apparently. Because not being pleased is ever so pleasing to me.)

She said it in comments here.

Um. Yeah. All the feminists I know raise their boys to be submissive. Because, you know, that’s all feminism is about, right? Yup. Oh wait!

There’s only one way to be heterosexual in this world: one partner has to be dominant, the other has to submit; if the man can’t be top in a relationships the only possible alternative is to be the bottom. Feminism is about women not always being submissive, therefore feminism must logically be about men becoming subs.

Or…

Maybe they’re full of it. Maybe they’re just making shit up.

Because… you know, even long before I started figuring out my relationship to feminism I knew a lot of feminists. Many of the women in my hometown church called it “women’s lib,” and a few, now in their 70s, 80s, and even 90s, still do. Many of my early partners would listen to feminist musicans and talk about whether they would “come out” if the musician did. In college there many, many feminist women including a noticeable handful of stereotype-embodying, Birkenstock-and-wool-sock wearing, man-hating, political-lesbian, turkey-baster-self-inseminating separatists. I know feminist programmers, feminist document handlers, feminist bloggers, feminist minister, feminist lawyers, artists, athletes, parents, and even feminist sex workers. Many or most of my partners both sexual and otherwise have been somewhere between Shulamith Firestone quoting to “I’m not a feminist, but” feminists. And yet… and yet…

Y’know? Sex with feminists is pretty much like sex with anyone else. Events leading up to sex are often decidedly different since if it’s going to happen there’s often a lot less bullshit to wade through (compare and contrast what worked and didn’t work for Holly) but since when did “steers clear of assholes” equal “demands submission?”