If my last post about gender normalization and sexual agency seemed too long winded, the exuberantly sexual Bad Man of Bad Man’s Tumblog says it a lot more succinctly in a brief discussion of an expressly sexual, conventionally pornographic photograph of two women and a tied-up man. (You can see the photograph if you follow the link. Otherwise not.)
If Femdom were like this, I’d be down. Somehow, I think that this is way more the male fantasy of femdom rather than femdom done with a woman’s pleasure in mind.
That’s pretty much it. It’s just not the case that “dominant women” means only “accommodating men’s fantasies.” For that matter it’s not even the case that dominant women is another word for domineering women. That doesn’t mean it can’t be, just that assumptions about our highly-not-normalized present probably aren’t the best way to frame projections about what a normalized future would look like.
To attempt an extremely non-sexual example, the original plan for Automatic Teller Machines was that they’d be put in the lobbies of majestic, marble-columned bank branches… as a way to keep unimportant (i.e. the undeserving poor) customers from bothering real tellers! There was much (entirely understandable) editorial and even legislative hue and cry about that typically-elitist-in-those-days banker’s proposition, with the result that ATMs languished largely unused for several years. But then some young Archimedes thought to put one of the things in front of the bank for use after hours… and not all that much later independent ATMs started showing up in grocery stores and even coffee shops and… marble-columned bank branches are almost as obsolete as dumbwaiters. The point being that the ultimate result of automatic tellers wasn’t just more egalitarian than either it’s inventors or prospective users anticipated, it was socially transforming.
Same thing with gender normalization: just as the advent of ATMs was seen as a benefit only to already-overprivileged bankers, too many people — men and women — are seeing only “oh boy, more privileges for men!” It’ll be more privileges for people, which, whatever that turns out to be, isn’t going to be a whole like what we’re doing now.
Bad Man may not know what it’s going to look like either. Nor, sensibly, does he sound worried about it. But he gets it
Submitted by 2644 (not verified) on Mon, 2009-01-19 16:04.
Figleaf, I'm trying to figure out what you mean by "normalization" in this pair of posts. Could you maybe toss out a definition, please? When I think of "normalization," I think of conformity to some norm. (Or - in Foucault's sense - a set of discursive power relations that presses people into conformity with norms.)
But here you seem to intend something different. You are talking about *changing* norms, I think, so that there would no longer be separate norms for men and women. Or am I off base?
[No you're totally fine. I may be misusing the term "normalize" but I'm using it in the diplomatic/international way one would say "normalized trade" or "normalized relations" between countries. The point being one of change that brings two sides into an ordinary rather than highly-differential and constrained balance. Or as in the difference between normal and contrived. If my use introduces ambiguity I should probably find another way of saying that. Thanks for the heads up, Sungold! --fl]
Submitted by 2644 (not verified) on Mon, 2009-01-19 16:20.
Y'know, sometimes femdom (at least light playful femdom, but hey, that counts) is kinda like that. After all, domination isn't ultimately about denying your partner pleasure, it's just about giving it in a way that makes it clear you're the boss--which these women are doing. Being helplessly pleasured isn't exactly the most taxing form of submission, but it is submissive. Femdom ultimately isn't about male pleasure, it's about mutual pleasure.
That said, the girl in the back on handjob duty is kinda getting the short end of the stick. So to speak.
[Agreed, Holly. It's just that Bad Man's right that you can't *assume* it'll be like that. And yeah, while we could spin something out so the woman in back in that photo was empowerfulled it looks mostly like she's just there because the photographer said "look busy." :-) Not that it *couldn't* work as femdom, just that it doesn't look like it there. Thanks. --fl]
Submitted by 2644 (not verified) on Mon, 2009-01-19 19:51.
I am going to go with the snark and say that the average straight vanilla man *already* experiences femdom, with the woman deciding when, and where, and under what prior conditions of relationship expectations (or not), dating expectations (or not), etc. etc. I don't know if I'm seeing a gendered power relationship that ONLY reflects the educated Euro-American middle classes, but in my reality women are always negotiating only exactly the type of sex they want, with the men they want, utopia is already here, and I stop before this gets into the TMI zone.
Amanda Marcotte gave me a rather interesting reply that lots of things qualify as slut-shaming, like attempting unduly to influence someone's reproductive choices after sex, which leaves me with the somewhat confused feeling that straight men are dependent on female reproductive freedom, safety from rape and harassment, and safe sex for the sex they do have, which is often experienced as never enough.
[It may surprise you but I'm going to agree, though with one rather large caveat. First, you're right that under present circumstances where men almost invariable initiate it's the case that women set many... sometimes even most... of the terms. The caveat, on the other hand, is that women really aren't presently allowed to initiate... which makes it a bit of a stretch to say they're able to be "dominant." No matter how one looks at it it's all the more reason to equalize gender pressure. Thanks, ES. --fl]