I blog at Male Submission Art, host Kink On Tap, and support KinkForAll as much as I can, among more things.
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Posts tagged: masculinity
Feminism and the Disposable Male (by girlwriteswhat)
I found this interesting. It problematizes the idea that “sexism=misogyny.” Can one go so far as to say, “It queers sexism?” That, even here, there is more diversity than one previously thought? I think so….
My one, initial critique of the entire piece is a glaringly obvious one: the orator’s repeated reference to “feminism” as a monolithic ideology. In point of fact, there are multiple feminisms and not all of them so callously disregard “male needs,” although I will concede that most mainstream (read: bumper-sticker) feminisms at least seem to do so quite readily.
Closer to home, I’d argue that “sex-positive feminism,” or at least those veins of the sex-positive movement embracing a queer social context that questions gender binarism and accepts the implicit challenge to see people complexly in its own discourse, does not so easily succumb to the dynamic described by “male disposability” as presented here. On the other hand, “sex-positive” feminism and many other feminisms still suffer from a binarism in which people’s salient hermeneutic characteristics are categorically defined, a tragedy in which no opportunity exists for the same thing—be it a personality trait, facet of sociosexual identity, or one’s way of thinking—to hold two “true” meanings simultaneously. What obscures this fact from, say, the BDSM community, is that the characteristic given primacy in determining a person’s “disposability”—how valued or devalued they are—is not gender, but rather role orientation: domism is not sexism, but the two lean on one another both inside and outside of BDSM Scene-State societies and subcultures. What I’m most personally interested in is the experiences of men when these two things intersect.
Anyway, a transcript of the video’s speech is below. Please note that the links in the text are my own additions intended to connect the pieces of the text with ideas that they spawned in my own mind as I was listening to them. They are probably not the author’s original intent and are not presented here with the intention of making them appear that way. Rather, the links are a hypertextual record of my own multi-threaded thought processes for later bisociative analysis. That being said, emphasis in the transcript reflects emphasis in the orator’s speech.
Not too long ago, I headed out with a feminist who had come into a male-safe space from a feminist blog, just to scoff at the idea of male disposability.
She she went there and basically said that the entire concept was a myth, that men’s lived experiences were completely wrong, that they were just a bunch of whiners who were complaining over nothing.
Yeah…. Anyhow, that got me thinking about the concept of male disposability and how that interacts with the feminist movement.
Male disposability’s been around since the dawn of time. And it’s based on one very, very straightforward dynamic: When it comes to the well being of others, they come first, men come last. This is just the way it has always been. Seats in lifeboats, being rescued from burning buildings, who gets to eat.
Really, society places men dead last, every time. And society expects men to place themselves dead last, every time.
* * *
Humans have always had a dynamic of “women and children first,” and that has not changed at all. The 93% workplace death gap has to be evidence of this, if only because nobody with any kind of importance or power is interested in changing it, at all.
In fact, I remember reading an article in the BC paper not long ago that described the increasing proportion of female injuries on the job as a huge problem. And in the insane thing was that the change reflected a decrease in male injuries rather than an increase in female ones. Men’s injuries on the job had gone down because the economic downturn had put so many men out of work in the resource sector that there just weren’t as many trees or pieces of heavy equipment falling on men as there had been before. Yet, this was framed as a huge problem for women that required immediate actions to solve.
It’s just crazy! It’s like, if men aren’t dying at work at twenty times the rate women, are we must be doing something wrong as a society.
* * *
Back when we were still living in caves, that attitude was necessary for human survival. Nature’s a really harsh mistress, especially when you think of all the animals that never, ever get to die of old age. Things were a lot different for humans through most of our history on this planet than they are now. Life was dangerous, human settlements were small, isolated from each other, and [so] one big disaster that took out a lot of women pretty much meant the end of the entire shebang for that group of people.
So, really, the level of importance that a human settlement placed on the wellbeing of women and children reflected, almost always, how successful that settlement was. And that can be expanded to encompass entire societies.
I keep hearing from the feminist camp that femaleness has always really been undervalued by society and that maleness is preferred, but I have always contended that it’s the exact opposite. The feminine is intrinsically and individually valuable, simply because females are the limiting factor in reproduction of any species. When it comes to producing babies, every woman counts, whereas (biologically), one very happy man could probably do the work of hundreds in that regard. So, the level of instinctive importance we humans place on the safety of provision of women and their children—it’s one of the main reasons why we’ve been able to be so successful that we come to really dominate this planet.
And while I will concede that this drive to keep women safe from all harm has often resulted in extreme limits being placed on women’s mobility, their agency, their power of decision to direct their own lives, all through history in many cultures, and in many cultures even today, I think it’s telling that those cultures tend to be the most backwards.
When you consider the restrictions placed on women in places like Afghanistan, and then you consider that, if we bomb them into the stone age, it would be progress, I think you can conclude the most successful societies had a really good balance between allowing women freedom and the ability to choose and direct their own paths in life, and the need to protect them and provide for them.
However, feminists will insist that these kinds of restrictions in those kinds of societies are the ultimate form of objectification. You lock up your possessions to make sure they will never be lost, or stolen, or harmed.
Honestly, if I were a guy on a battlefield, I might appreciate being objectified in that way. I think if I was going to be an object, I’d rather be a sexual one, or somebody’s prized possession, than an object that can simply be thrown in the trash or smashed into pieces in the service of somebody else’s purpose.
* * *
It was that last segment that struck me most strongly. Could there be a parallel between the idea of “male disposability” and the devaluation of male submission? It seems likely.
Back to the video:
Feminists also have a very simplistic idea that our willingness to absolve women of their crimes, slap them on their wrists, spare them punishment, comes from a deep disrespect society has for their personhood. Not seeing them as full human beings capable of looking after themselves, that we see them as children who don’t know any better. And, yeah, while there are parallels in our desire to protect women and children from not only their own poor decisions but the full consequences of their shitty behavior, it’s really not as simple as they try to make it out to be.
I mean, seriously, even today—even today, in 2011—we fully expect that, if it comes down to a man and a woman in a burning building and you can only save one, the expectation is that you choose the woman, every single time. So honestly, whose humanity are we placing above whose here? We’re not talking about going to work, we’re not talking about getting an education, we’re not talking about having freedom to decide what you want to be in life, and we’re not talking about getting to take Taekwondo. We’re talking seats and lifeboats here. The person in the lifeboat is going to survive no matter how capable or incapable they are of managing their own life, and the person who went down with the ship is going to die no matter how independent, self-sufficient, and awesome he is.
That’s the equation. One life, more valuable than another, and the woman wins every time.
So, honestly, is there any argument, anywhere, that women’s humanity has always been held in higher regard by society than men’s?
To be important to society, a woman merely has to be. A man has to do in order for his life to have any meaning to anyone other than himself.
Ah ha, here I begin to see the parallel: I was once asked what a sexually submissive man has to do to stand out from the throngs of other men a dominant woman could choose to spend her time with. I didn’t realize it at the time, but the question itself betrayed the problem. My answer was surely similarly unhelpful. In contrast, dominant women are valued simply by being present, albeit harshly tokenized.
Well…sexism may not be misogyny, but both of those things still sucks for everyone involved.
Okay, once again, back to the video:
I think it was Man, Woman, Myth who said, “Our society reduces men from human beings to human doings,” and I really think that’s an apt analogy. We measure a man’s worthiness to where the title of man, and therefore the title of human, through how useful he is either to society or to women. And one of the most useful things a man can do, even now, in the eyes of society is to put women and children before himself.
And while I think there’s plenty of argument that this attitude is at least partly innate, the way most survival traits are, even collective ones, if it starts in the chromosomes, we really do everything we can as a society to reinforce this dynamic. Studies have shown that even though baby boys tend to cry and fuss more than baby girls, parents are quicker to attend to or console a baby girl than they are a baby boy. Even just the level of acceptance of infant male circumcision in our culture when female genital mutilation was banned pretty much the first afternoon we all heard it existed, really says a lot about the differing expectations we have for males and females.
I mean, speaking as a mother, the last thing I would have ever wanted was to hear my child cry, especially when they’re at an age when they’re completely helpless, completely at the mercy of outside forces, and utterly dependent on the adults in their lives for every last thing. And yet, even knowing how painful that cut is, we expect baby boys—only days old, for fuck’s sake—to just suck that up.
And just think about what these very first interactions and experiences, these differences in how we nurture our babies depending on what gender they are, what this teaches them.
What do we teach baby girls when we attend to their crying so quickly? We teach them to ask for help because their needs are important. We teach them to let us know when they’re afraid or in pain because it’s important for us to know when they’re sick or in danger or hurt, so we can do something about it! We teach them that when they’re sad, or lonely, to summon comfort and comfort will be there. We teach them that they’re important, their needs and wellbeing, both emotional and physical, are important, just because.
And what are teaching baby boys when leave them to cry? We teach them there’s not much point in seeking help because it will be grudgingly given, if at all. We teach them that they should become self-contained in their ability to deal with emotions like fear, helplessness, loneliness, sadness, pain, distress. We teach them stoicism. We teach them to suck it up. We teach them that their fear and their pain are things that are best ignored. We teach them that their emotional and physical wellbeing are just not as important as other things.
I mean, given all of that, is it any wonder it’s like pulling teeth to get a man to go to the doctor when he’s sick‽
What we’re teaching that baby boy is all the things a man needs to know and feel and believe about himself if he’s going to stand in front of a cabin with a rifle while his wife and kids hide inside. We’re preparing him for the day he has to fix a bayonet to a rifle and charge a hill under enemy fire, and we’re preparing him to make a decision to resign himself to an icy fate while women and children escape in the lifeboats. We are really teaching him to internalize his own disposability.
And baby girls? By attending to her crying so quickly, by letting her know she’s inherently important to us, we’re preparing her for the day she has to think of her own safety first, even if it means the man she loves is left standing alone with a rifle in front of a cabin. We’re preparing her to take that seat in the lifeboat. We’re training her to not allow guilt or empathy or acknowledgment of a man’s humanity, or any sense that he might just maybe deserve it more, to convince her to give her seat to him, because for millennia, the human species absolutely depended on her feeling 100% entitled to that seat.
And that brings me to feminism.
You know, the patriarchy smashers, those righteous avengers of equality, dogged dismantlers of every single gender role. What exactly is feminism doing to dismantle this traditional role of the disposable male?
Feminism’s greatest victories have only reinforced in everyone that society still owes women provision, protection, help, and support, just because they’re women. In its collective dismissal and abandonment of male victims of domestic violence, it only reinforces in men that it’s pointless for them to ask for help because men’s needs are of no relevance, and their fear and pain don’t mean anything to anyone.
Feminism teaches us to put women’s needs at the forefront of every single issue, political or social, whether that issue is domestic violence law, sexual assault law, institutional sexism, social safety net, education funding, homeless shelters, government funding for shovel-ready jobs that didn’t stay shovel-ready once feminists got wind of them. Everywhere you look, everywhere you look, there are feminists pushing their way to the front of the line demanding women’s “fair share” of all of the goodies, the good stuff, the loot, the booty, the cookies. Even if women don’t need it, even if women don’t deserve it, and even if somebody else needs it and deserves it more.
And they get it, because we give it to them.
Feminism has done nothing but exploit this dynamic of the expectation on men to put everybody else before themselves, especially women. Women’s safety and support, women’s wellbeing and women’s emotional needs, always come first. This is the most stunning piece of society-wide manipulative psychology I think I have ever come across.
Feminism has been on the down-low with old-school chivalry right from the start. And they might seem like strange bedfellows for sure, but they’re not, because both concepts are built on a firm foundation of female self-interest.
We made our way as humans through a really harsh history, and we became the dominant force on this planet, and one of the reasons we were so successful is because we have consistently put women’s basic needs first. Their need for safety, support, and provision. It was in humanity’s best interest for women to be essentially self-interested, and for men to be essentially self-sacrificing.
But we don’t need that dynamic anymore.
I mean, our species is in no danger of extinction. I mean, we’re 7 billion people, clogging up the works here. What’s the worst that could happen if we all just collectively decided that men were no more disposable than women and women were no more valuable than men?
In fact, the greatest danger I see to us right now is that in our desperation to bend over and give women everything they want and everything that they say they need, we’ve unbalanced society to the point where we’re just in danger of seriously toppling over.
And really, the only difference I see between the traditional role and the new one for men, with respect to disposability, is that maleness—manhood—it used to be celebrated, it used to be admired, and it used to be rewarded, because it was really fucking necessary, and because the personal cost of it to individual men was so incredibly high. But now?
Now, we still expect men to put women first, and we still expect society to put women first, and we still expect men to not complain about coming in dead last every damn time. But men don’t even get our admiration anymore. All they get in return is to hear about what assholes they are. Is it any wonder they’re starting to get pissed off?
* * *
Anyhow, that’s not all I have to say about this subject, but it is all I have to say about it today since my kid is about to walk in the door home from school, so I am going to sign off and hopefully I will see you all again.
For now, I’m GirlWritesWhat, ciao.
This blog is my job. If it moves you, please help me keep doing this Work by sharing some of your food, shelter, or money. Thank you!
Japanese pornography is so dominant here [in China] and they really promote the image of young innocent submissive female, and they appear to be underage. I interviewed a lot of guys who say that, yes, this is my primary fantasy. I want to see this submissive girl. What does it mean? I think it means that it gives the guy the sense of empowerment. They can handle the submissive girl. So in this fantasy world, they can deal with this kind of girl, but it doesn’t mean that they have this girl in real life but the fact that they have to probably deal with the quite powerful women around them. In Japan there are studies explaining that this fantasy is a reversal, a sense of weakness and incompetence that Japanese male was like spoiled by mothers also. In China it’s a little bit similar.
[…]
I found a lot of Chinese men and Chinese women have different aspirations…so does it have anything to do with the fact that they create the fantasy of easy submissive girl. Maybe it’s related. It’s a kind of reversal, that they can dream about submissive girl, but in reality, those Chinese men are rejected so badly by Chinese women, for instance on dating sites. The Chinese women are very demanding, and they publicize their requirements. And the Chinese men feel quite bad in a way. So I can see that Hong Kong and China is patriarchic. And I know that in reality, in the workplace, and at home, men have a lot of power. But that’s also just one way of investigating the reality. There’s also other realities where women have a lot of power as well.
This blog is my job. If it moves you, please help me keep doing this Work by sharing some of your food, shelter, or money. Thank you!
Your liberation makes space for my own « Kink in exile
:) Yes. See also:
And they say my generation is apathetic. Well, I won’t believe it. I say we are overwhelmed, for we are the first generation who hear others’ suffering in their own words.
This blog is my job. If it moves you, please help me keep doing this Work by sharing some of your food, shelter, or money. Thank you!
A Femanist View: BDSM theory vs real life, F/m edition
I have no idea how I missed this fantastic post on the subject of entitlement culture manifested in the BDSM Scene and affecting “male bottom/female top” interactions.
See also:
- For a poetic counterpoint, see Give Me the Lion.
- For an independent take from a dominant woman’s perspective, see The Cost of Devaluing Male Submission: One Token.
- For my own retelling of other submissive men’s experiences who came before me, see Raging Chrysalis: The End of the Mute Submissive Masculine.
This blog is my job. If it moves you, please help me keep doing this Work by sharing some of your food, shelter, or money. Thank you!
The following is copied from a private conversation, but is interesting insofar as it relates to an oft-misunderstood point: if there are so many submissive men in The BDSM Scene, how can claims of marginalization carry any weight? It’s a fair question but a logical fallacy.
While I’m usually reserved with my own musings because it feels self-indulgent and I’m afraid of it backfiring on me, I figured I’d publish my (very hastily-composed) explanation in the hopes that it…I don’t know…resonates with others, or whatever.
The issue with submissive men being “marginalized” is complicated because there are a few different factors that feed into it that when left unexamined feel as if they are at odds with one another. Here is some reading material on the issue:
http://www.labcoatlingerie.com/2011/08/02/one-of-the-nineteen/
http://maybemaimed.com/2011/06/02/signal-boost-the-devaluation-of-male-submission/
http://www.labcoatlingerie.com/2011/08/09/the-cost-of-devaluing-male-submission-one-token/
In brief, they are not “marginalized” for meanings of “marginalized” that discuss visibility, but rather for meanings of marginalized that discuss worthwhileness. Submissive men are an oft-cited and oft-dismissed group, which seems paradoxical but is not dissimilar from the way that other intersectional issues affect, for example, women of color.[0]
One of the problems is sexism, which we are familiar with. But the other problem is domism, which is not as widely known. Here is a great piece on domism and its effect:
http://yesmeansyesblog.wordpress.com/2011/05/02/domism-role-essentialism-and-sexism-intersectionality-in-the-bdsm-scene/
The intersection of domism (the privileging of experiences of “dominants” over those of “submissives”) and sexism (the privileging of [hegemonic] masculinity over femininity) results in a situation in which for submissive men to be both masculine and submissive at the same time is culturally impossible, improbable, or difficult. Instead, many submissive men adopt feminine personae in an attempt to create a valid projection of submission. However, this devalues their masculinity and furthers the stereotype of femininity as inherently submissive. See also:
http://maybemaimed.com/2009/10/02/dont-you-fret-sexism-is-alive-and-well-in-bdsm/
and
http://maybemaimed.com/2011/03/31/good-boy-and-other-kinds-of-complicated-sex/
So, long story short(er), submissive men are not “marginalized” insofar as their presence is not noticeable, but rather ostracized to an extent that fractures their self-identity in such a way as to make them unable, even and perhaps especially in sex-positive subcultures, to be fully self-expressed and fulfilled. A submissive man faces many parallel problems that hetero-ciswomen face, [but in different manifestations]: when women complain about having a hard time walking the line between “slutty” and “prudish,” I can relate to the dilemma. For a submissive man, expressing submissiveness is often viewed as an expression of meekness, while expressing masculinity is an expression of dominance.
Neither of these are respectful or accurate. When taken to a cultural extreme, i.e., the formal BDSM community, these group-social perceptions hurt men like me more than most people are willing or able to acknowledge.
Cheers,
-maymayEXTERNAL REFERENCES:
[0] http://maybemaimed.com/2011/07/16/on-letting-the-world-burn/#replicant-offspring
I’m not entirely sure why I feel particularly insecure about publishing this specific explanation. Maybe I am not confident that my words are correct. But when I am thusly diffident, syndication is preferable to sublimation.
This blog is my job. If it moves you, please help me keep doing this Work by sharing some of your food, shelter, or money. Thank you!
This blog is my job. If it moves you, please help me keep doing this Work by sharing some of your food, shelter, or money. Thank you!
Transcript of my appearance on Sexploration with Monika this past Friday.
VOICEOVER: This is sex. Everyone gets what they want. This is Sexploration. Explore, play! This is Sexploration with Monika. Sex is proof that God loves us and wants us to have fun! Sexploration with Monika on FCCFreeRadio.com.
MONIKA: What a night tonight is going to be! We are having a “Sex Geek Potluck.” It’s basically like a conference, a very informal conference, of sex educators. We have filmmakers, we have sex workers, we have activists, we have people who are making some very sexy and interesting and strange sexual technology to do scientific experiments on orgasm. And it was the brainchild of sex educator Reid Mihalko of ReidAboutSex.com. Yay, and the crowd goes wild! Reid, Reid, Reid, Reid! Okay, so…
[FADE OUT]
…destabilizing hierarchy and creating community, which is precisely what the Sex Geek Potluck is all about!
[LAUGHTER]
REID MIHALKO: “Yes!” He said, rolling on his wheelchair, trying to catch the mic! Yeah, so, for the people tuning in right now, I’m trying to flip-camera some of this. I’ll be flip-camera-ing a lot of tonight, and I’m also your official wrangler.
MONIKA: You’re, yes.
[FADEOUT]
Well, I want to talk about maymay’s work, so maymay, if you will join the discussion. And then, we also have—okay, so who do we have after maymay? We have Priscilla of SexxBBoxx—oh, yes, Maggie, yes! Don’t forget about Maggie. Okay, so Maggie’s after maymay. So Maggie from PSIgasm.
MAYMAY: Usually she comes before me.
[LAUGHTER]
MONIKA: Oh, Maggie—Maggie Mayhem?
MAYMAY: Yeah. Usually it’s the other way around….
MONIKA: Awesome! She’s totally next door. Maggie Mayhem’s next door.
AUDIENCE: Oh, she’s next door?
MONIKA: Yeah, go get her. Go get your hummus and go get her. Okay, so she’s—Maggie Mayhem’s gonna talk about PSIgasm. So maymay is here from Kink On Tap.
MAYMAY: Hi!
MONIKA: Hi, maymay nice to see you again!
MAYMAY: So good to see you again!
MONIKA: Yeah!
MAYMAY: It’s been too long.
MONIKA: It has been too long. We talked a little bit about how you’re working with Megan Andelloux about remaking male submission.
MAYMAY: Well, I’m going to be doing a seminar there, at The Center for Sexual Pleasure and Health—I think it’s March 23rd? I hope I got that right—at The Center for Sexual Pleasure and Health, called “Remaking Male Submission” and what I’m going to be talking about is confronting sexism in the BDSM community—
MONIKA: Right!
MAYMAY: —and actually in BDSM porn and, sort of, the imagery, the iconography of BDSM, or SM imagery, where you see a dominatrix. The question really is, is that (with the leather and the whips) is that really much more or less, is that not a virgin-whore dichotomy or is that another sort of manifestation of it? Are we, sort of, infused by the mainstream culture?
MONIKA: Well, I think that we definitely have ideas about gender—
MAYMAY: Absolutely.
MONIKA: that infuse porn in kind of a—it can be really toxic.
MAYMAY: Yeah.
MONIKA: And not affirming of people’s full sexual expression.
MAYMAY: And yet we call it an “alternative” sexuality, right?
MONIKA: Right.
MAYMAY: So the question is, of course, “Alternative to what?” And then the question becomes, well we talk about an alternative to this, and then we have to gauge is it reactionary? So, when we talk about alternative sexuality, is it ‘a reaction to’? And I think that a lot of the formulations we see on SM iconography, especially when it comes to men who are submissive and women who are dominant, what we see is in fact a reification of a very misogynistic worldview. And that’s unfortunate. I, as a submissive man myself, definitely want to—
MONIKA: Okay! Back up a little bit. Okay, so how is a dominatrix and a male submissive misogynist? Or woman-hating?
MAYMAY: Right, well, it’s a good question, because, y’know, we—
MONIKA: ‘Cause ordinarily people would say, “Oh, that’s a very empowered woman!” Ba-da-da-da-da….
MAYMAY: Well they wouldn’t—well, “ordinarily” is an interesting adjective to use there. What I find so fascinating is that so much of the pornography that we look at of dominatrices, of men being submissive, sort of de-sexualizes the male persona in the imagery—
MONIKA: Oh, yeah!
MAYMAY: —and hyper-sexualizes the female persona.
MONIKA: Hmm.
MAYMAY: And what’s interesting about that is that, it’s very much like putting the woman on a pedestal. It’s just a different pedestal. It’s still a pedestal. So the question isn’t—
MONIKA: Rather than an objectified pedestal, it’s just a, sort of, like a…
MAYMAY: Well, you could argue—
MONIKA: It’s objectified in another way.
MAYMAY: Exactly. So, it’s not—
MONIKA: Like a power object.
MAYMAY: Right. So, we have this interesting notion of the “male gaze” or the “female gaze” in pornography and a lot of, sort of, counter-culture pornographers now are making “porn for women!” And the idea of porn for women is that the subject in the porn, the person holding the camera, is a woman, is a female. But in a lot of femdom porn, y’know, you don’t get that.
MONIKA: And what’s femdom porn? It’s when the—
MAYMAY: Female dominant.
MONIKA: —female dominant is….
MAYMAY: And let’s talk about just that phrasing.
MONIKA: Okay….
MAYMAY: “Femdom” porn often includes men who are being submissive and women who are being dominant, or includes women who are being submissive and women who are being dominant. The object in either of those situations is the female top. Right?
MONIKA: Right.
MAYMAY: The objectified persona there is the woman being dominant. So, as a submissive guy, I have to wonder whether or not that’s actually catering to—
MONIKA: Why don’t you get to be objectified?
MAYMAY: That’s my question! Hey! And I realize that’s a very—it’s hard be—it’s a very non-objectifying thing to say, “Please objectify me!”
[LAUGHTER]
MONIKA: You’re, like, asking for a voice.
MAYMAY: Suddenly you’ve got agency there, and it’s hard, especially for bottoms in the SM community.
MONIKA: Because you don’t really speak up as bottoms.
MAYMAY: We’re not taught agency. We’re taught how to be okay not having agency, as bottoms. That’s a really important thing. It’s really helpful and important to know that it’s also okay to not have agency in some situations.
MONIKA: Sure.
MAYMAY: Y’know, we deal with that in reality all the time. On the other hand, it’s also very, very, very empowering to be able to say as a bottom, “I’d like you to objectify me, please.”
MONIKA: Right.
MAYMAY: And you are claiming agency in that.
MONIKA: And it’s really nice to have a choice.
MAYMAY: Um, I would argue it’s a way to improve the world, to have a choice.
MONIKA: Yeah, totally.
MAYMAY: That’s a world-changing, sort of, sentiment.
MONIKA: Yeah, it’s destabilizing the hegemony and all that stuff.
MAYMAY: Precisely.
MONIKA: And the hierarchy and the dualism.
MAYMAY: Right. So that’s what the class is going to be about in March.
MONIKA: Cool.
MAYMAY: I’m looking forward to it. I’ve never taught at The CSPH before, but I’ve been there, and it’s a fantastic little spot.
MONIKA: And you are also a panelist on the Western Regional LBT—
MAYMAY: LGBTQIA, alphabet soup, conference.
MONIKA: —Conference—
MAYMAY: Yes, indeed.
MONIKA: —at UC Berkeley, with Maggie Mayhem!
MAYMAY: With Maggie, yeah! This is going to be a lot of fun. This is a BDSM 101 panel. So, Louie and William, who are a UC Berkeley alumn and a student there, they’re facilitating a panel with me, with Maggie, with a couple other people about just the beginnings of BDSM. It’s very much for newbies. We’re not gonna talk about pornography a whole bunch, we’re not gonna talk about gaze, it’s really gonna be about, y’know, how do you stay safe? What are the main theories of consent? What are the differences—
MONIKA: Oh, just the beginning.
MAYMAY: Very, very, very novice level stuff.
MONIKA: Sure, right.
MAYMAY: But we also—the hope is that we’ll also humanize a lot of what people see. Because everyone’s gonna come into that room, sort of, having an idea of what SM is.
MONIKA: Right.
MAYMAY: They’re gonna have an image in their head of a dominatrix. I just need to say “dominatrix” and you’ve instantly see, y’know—
MONIKA: Wapsshhhh! [whip noise]
MAYMAY: Exactly.
MONIKA: She’s wearing a black pencil skirt and it’s leather!
MAYMAY: And she’s got a corset on, and she’s in hells, y’know? Like, you instantly see that image. And that’s because—
MONIKA: And probably red lipstick.
MAYMAY: Probably red lipstick. Uh, interestingly enough, probably also a collar, and what does that say about our culture?
MONIKA: Right.
MAYMAY: That’s an interesting one, too. But, y’know, you instantly have this idea and that comes from, of course, mainstream culture. There’s a huge amount of fetishization in marketing, in, y’know—have you guys seen the Volkswagen commercial with the woman wielding the whip? They’re selling a car! And the way they’re doing it is she’s whipping the car!
MONIKA: Oh, interesting!
MAYMAY: I am not [kidding], like, literally whipping the car. She’s not whipping the car very well, but, she’s whipping the car.
MONIKA: Oh, really? She’s not whipping it well? That’s hilarious!
MAYMAY: No, her technique is a little bit—
MONIKA: She’s got bad technique!
MAYMAY: It’s…it can use some improvement.
MONIKA: [laughing] That’s awesome!
MAYMAY: I don’t want to speak too ill of her on the air, but, uh, it’s less than good.
[AUDIENCE LAUGHTER]
But the point is that everyone’s gonna come into that room having an idea of it. But the idea that we typically get from the marketers, who want to sell you a Volkswagen—as opposed to, y’know, wanting you to have a good time in bed because they care about you ‘cause they’re your partners—they don’t have the same…they don’t understand people who do those activities as full human beings. Like, I—I’m a programmer, y’know? I also spend my time at the park. And I like Vietnamese sandwiches. And these are things you don’t typically hear about—
MONIKA: [laughing] ‘Cause you live in the Tenderloin—
MAYMAY: ‘Cause I live in the Tenderloin, which is awesome.
MONIKA: —near the sandwich places.
MAYMAY: Oh, Saigon Sandwich?
MONIKA: I love that place.
MAYMAY: Big, big slices of carrot! Really good!
MONIKA: [laughing]
MAYMAY: So, but, we’re hoping also to humanize—
MONIKA: Right.
MAYMAY: —people who do SM—
MONIKA: Right.
MAYMAY: —in a way that we’re hoping will be a, sort of, gentle introduction for folks. And make it less scary! The subtitle of the talk—of the panel—is called “Kink Isn’t So Scary.”
MONIKA: Cool! And this is maymay from Kink On Tap. You can find him at KinkOnTap.com. We’ve been talking about his work remaking male submission and then, of course, this conference at UC Berkeley coming up.
MAYMAY: There’s also another conference, actually. If you are on the East coast, KinkForAll Providence 2 is happening on March 19th, so I’ll be there for that as well.
MONIKA: Oh, neat!
MAYMAY: Yeah. Megan might be there, too, in fact.
MONIKA: Oh, neat! Megan Andelloux, cool.
MAYMAY: And that’s at KinkForAll.org.
MONIKA: And Maggie Mayhem is also going to be on the Western Regional LGBTQIA Conference at UC Berkeley as a panelist. What are you looking forward to talking about?
MAGGIE: I am looking forward so much about this conference because I actually attended when I was an undergraduate and a freshman the LGBTQIA conference in 2004 and 2005. And I absolutely loved that experience. I had never had—I’d never seen so many queers in one place at one time.
[LAUGHTER]
MONIKA: Isn’t that nice? To be like, “Wow, I’m not even that freaky right now.”
MAGGIE: Oh my god! It was amazing! I would have the most amazing conversation of my life, followed by the most amazing conversation, of my life, followed by the most amazing conversation of my life, followed by the worst meal of my life—
[LAUGHTER]
—followed by a great conversation and then so many flirtations—
MONIKA: And then there’s that.
MAGGIE: —both physically and intellectually, and emotionally, because so many people were talking about so many things. I was flirting with ideas. And I loved that conference for that reason. It was intellectual foreplay. And then—
MONIKA: That’s what they call it. Y’know, intercourse?
MAGGIE: Yes!
MONIKA: Like, dialogue. Intercourse.
MAGGIE: Oh, yeah.
MAYMAY: There’s intercourse and discourse.
MONIKA: Right, exactly!
MAGGIE: Intercourse and discourse, yeah.
[FADEOUT]
It’s a lot of work. I hand it to the organizers.
MONIKA: But it’s really important to create—
MAGGIE: Oh, vital!
MONIKA: —queer community—
MAGGIE: Yes.
MONIKA: —and sex community, because I think so much of our stuff is in the closet and marginalized.
MAGGIE: Yes.
MONIKA: I mean, there’s so many people that are like, “Oh, no, you can’t say that on the radio. You can’t do that in Newspapers.” You know what I mean? All that stuff.
MAGGIE: “You can’t say that on television.”
MAYMAY: “You can’t print that on the Internet!”
MONIKA: Oh, the Internet, no!
MAYMAY: Absolutely, yeah! I’ve been in Providence, when I was actually visiting Megan one time previously, I went to the adult section of the Providence public library. The adult section—they had a kid’s section and an adult’s section—and I figured, y’know, I would be able to get to my blog specifically because I was going to the adult section. Turns out, nope, my blog was censored in the adult section in the public library.
MONIKA: Wow. In the adult section. That’s weird.
MAYMAY: Yeah.
MAGGIE: Censorship is really, really incredible. You start to feel important. I’m starting to notice that my website—
MAYMAY: [laughing] You start to feel important!
MAGGIE: —my website is being censored!
MONIKA: Yeah….
MAYMAY: Congratulations!
MAGGIE: Thank you!
MONIKA: You are getting a certain amount of dominant culture recognition when you’re censored.
MAGGIE: I have a dangerous ideologue.
MONIKA: That’s right.
MAGGIE: And it’s driving me crazy. I’ve never felt so powerful in my life until I was censored.
MAYMAY: That’s right.
MONIKA: It’s annoying, though, ‘cause now you’re like, “I’m reaching slightly less.”
MAGGIE: I actually got really interested in censorship on the Internet because I worked with the San Francisco homeless shelter system and I didn’t realize how severe sexual censorship was until I was doing an HIV training. And I was trying to facilitate not only HIV 101 skills but also research skills. I wanted to try to pass on information about how one evaluates a source. How do you determine how accurate it is? How inaccurate it is? Because, um, in the homeless system, you’re working with people who did not get to have a formal education in the same way. It’s always been interrupted. So, these are skills that many people take for granted. How do you evaluate a sexual source that is going to be, um, biologically, medically accurate?
Language is changing constantly. If you look at something, we’re using different terms, moving above and beyond. So I wanted to show that. And one of the questions I asked was—I did this with an Internet, um, “scavenger hunt,” I called it. I asked questions; I was trying to implant as many keywords one would search for with a question. I said, “I know you don’t have the answers to any of this. They’re very complex. I want you to go use Google, and tell me what you find.” And every single person in the shelter came back and said, “You set us up. You’re wasting our time. They’re calling me names. They’re very angry with me.”
And I’m thinking, “All right, patience. It’s a teaching moment. I’m teaching people how to use Google. It’s a harder skill to learn than you might think, especially if you’ve never had a computer.” Until I realized that the search—
MONIKA: It’s the library staff is, sort of, not letting the homeless people use the computers, or something?
MAGGIE: Well, there’s that problem. But in the shelters it’s so, so, so censored because they’re so afraid of pornography, that every sexual keyword is blocked. And the question I noticed that this was important for was—especially in an HIV regard—I asked, “What is PEP? And how do you get it in the city of San Francisco?”
MONIKA: Post-exposure…?
MAGGIE: Post-exposure prophylaxis.
[FADEOUT]
So, PEP is something I take seriously because it is preventing infections. It is making a change and people in a shelter system are in some of the highest risk demographic and they have some of the least resources.
MAYMAY: Were they able to find it? Were they able to answer the question that you asked?
MAGGIE: The entire search string was blocked.
MAYMAY: The search string?
MAGGIE: Literally, the search string—
MAYMAY: Oh my god.
MAGGIE: —came up with a window that said, “The firewall is preventing this search. It is an unacceptable adult search.” Because all of the pages about post-exposure prophylaxis included words like “anal sex.”
MONIKA: Right.
MAMYAY: God. See, but that’s what’s so interesting that I find about censorship, because it’s almost like the censorship itself will almost create new slang. Right?
MAGGIE: Correct.
MAYMAY: People who work around the censorship, socially speaking—kids do this! You know the, “Oh, is that what kids are calling it these days?” What that means—
MAGGIE: Yes!
MAYMAY: —that is a new—that is an evolution of language to avoid whether it be technical censorship on Google or whether it be, “Oh, I don’t want my parents to know that I’m talking about this.”
MAGGIE: “I don’t want my parents to know that I’m talking about this,” but also when you’re talking about health resources, we’ve banned the language that literally on Google will find the resources to prevent getting infection. But the porn—
MONIKA: Right, yeah.
MAGGIE: —that they’re so worried about, you can find it a million different ways.
MAYMAY: Yeah.
MAGGIE: So we’re not keeping the porn out, we’re keeping the good information out.
MONIKA: Not that there’s anything wrong with porn.
MAGGIE: No! There is nothing wrong with porn. I do porn!
MONIKA: There is nothing wrong with porn.
MAYMAY: So, that’s the thing. I think the moral of the story is, “Just say no to censorship, kids.”
[AUDIENCE LAUGHTER]
MAGGIE: Say no to censorship!
MAYMAY: No to censorship. Just say no.
[LAUGHTER]
MONIKA: Okay, so I’d like to thank maymay from Kink On Tap, KinkOnTap.com.
MAYMAY: Thank you, Monika, this was awesome.
MONIKA: Yeah, thank you!