I blog at Male Submission Art, host Kink On Tap, and support KinkForAll as much as I can, among more things.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, I'm censored in some places. Make of that what you will. Follow me on Twitter.
Posts tagged: sexism
“Arousal, sexual desire, and female domination” is an interesting, if ill-premised, post:
Female sexual desire, it seems, is often reflected from being desired. As Marta Meana, professor of psychology at the University of Nevada, explains, “being desired is the orgasm”. Being lusted after brings pleasure and ignites lust. I do not disagree with this. It may be a bit politically incorrect, but it is supported by research, and if you look around in the BDSM community you can see this phenomenon at work. There are more female submissives than female dominants out there. The popular conceptualization of female submission and dominance often leaves the submissive female feeling more desired – ravished, taken, bound for her master’s pleasure than the dominant female – who must remain cold, aloof, and worshiped. It can be somewhat harder sometimes to feel desired when you’re taking control sexually.
I left a few comments. Here’s excerpts:
The foundational notion of gender equality is however you prefer to feel, you can feel. As women are indoctrinated to believe that they desire to “be desired,” so too are men indoctrinated to believe they desire to “be desirous.” This indoctrination is so sinister precisely because it layers a cultural belief about one’s own desires on top of one’s actual desires, forcing one to remove the curtain before one can examine one’s own naked wants.
[…]
Choosing when and who to tell how to make one feel desired has absolutely nothing to do with being a man, being a woman, being a submissive, being a dominant, or being any other identity. This is a skill, not a characteristic. The current cultural scripts we are beaten over the head with do not teach this, neither to women nor to men. (See also: 8 Things Submissive Men Want From a Dominant Partner.)
Here’s another one:
The BDSM community, writ large, is full of sexist people. So is the mainstream world. People in the mainstream world are erroneously taught that femininity equates to submission and masculinity equates to dominance. People in the BDSM world are erroneously taught that performing femininity shows submission while performing masculinity shows dominance, regardless of one’s actual gender. But this, too, is erroneous because this one premise—that feminineness is submissiveness and masculineness is dominance—is articulated in both contexts and is asinine.
This is the core of why people say there are “more” male dominants. Would-be female dominants that aren’t aggressive, snarling, bitches are constantly silenced—you’d think that to be a dominant woman, you’d have to have the very worst qualities of the male psyche while having the very “best” qualities of the female body. And so are would-be male submissives who aren’t groveling sissies—you’d think to be a male submissive you’d have to have the mind of a stereotypically submissive Japanese girl and the body of, well, an obese American trucker.
That’s why this “common observation” is, as you say, a common observation and also why it’s total fucking rubbish.
As for submissive men treating you like their desires are more important than yours but doing so in a disrespectful way, well, yeah! So-called “submissive men” are often the most misogynistic in the lot. Just look at “femdom” porn for an explanation of this: it isn’t really female domination porn, it is gendered privilege-reversal porn.
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When Kink On Tap special guest Staci Newmahr told me she would be interviewed by founder of Greenery Press and famous sexuality author, Janet W. Hardy and crew on their podcast, The Female Voice, I offered my congrats. I eagerly looked forward to downloading the episode. Well, I just did and suffice it to say my respect for my would-be hero has just fallen through the floor, along with my jaw.
Listen to the bullshit this Sarah Black moron spouts, starting at 2:17 into the recording, emphasis mine. Janet does an okay job of re-framing things with more sensitivity towards the importance of diversity, but I’m honestly just flat-out shocked she didn’t push back against Sarah’s clear and present (and viscerally disturbing) gender essentialist language:
SARAH BLACK: Yeah, I was actually kind of addressing, like, the idea of, like, casual submission on my blog the other day.
JANET W. HARDY: Mhm.
SARAH: Cuz I—I told you—I had that date with a dom. And I realized I just can’t, like—for me, like, maybe other people can—but for me, I can’t casually submit to somebody.
JANET: I’ve heard D/s folk say that there’s no such thing as casual D/s. That it just doesn’t work that way. Y’know, I’m not a D/s person myself…
SARAH: Yeah…. I…. The only time I ever, like, really been submissive, I’ve been madly in love with my partner.
JANET: Ah, yes! One of the classes I’m teaching in Australia is—
SARAH: —I’m just not sure that you can worship someone if you’re not really—
JANET: Well, I don’t know.
SARAH: —crazy about them. [Laughs.]
JANET: Pro-doms manage to work. Y’know, they manage to put people into subspace casually, so there must be a way to do it.
SARAH: Yes but they’re generally working with male customers. You’re talking about female tops, male bottoms, male tops, male bottoms. I think with men, I really think it’s different, like, a male bottom, I think, than a female bottom.
JANET: Yeah, that’s true.
SARAH: Cuz, I think, I know for me anyway, as a female bottom, so much of it is wrapped up with my emotional state.
JANET: Yeah.
SARAH: Whereas like, when I’m dominating, like, it’s not even about, like, my emotional needs. I’m not even thinking about…. Like, ‘cause casual play is really easy for me as a dominant, but not a submissive—at all.
JANET: Mhm.
SARAH: And guys, guys are just happy to have a woman sitting on their face.
JANET: [Laughs.] Yeah, that’s true.
SARAH: [Laughs.]
JANET: Yeah, I don’t know. I’m trying to think of the times that I’ve scooted up next to the edge of D/s and, uh—
SARAH: ‘Cause we basically did an SM scene. He just considered himself to be dominant because he’s all masculine.
JANET: Yeah, yeah….
SARAH: And I was like, we didn’t, we didn’t—it wasn’t a domination—you weren’t dominating me, I wasn’t submitting to you. I was submitting to you in the literal sense in that I presented my body to you and let you beat me up. But that’s an SM scene and you were almost more of my service top in that scene. He did not like hearing that, but—
JANET: Yeah.
SARAH: —I think he needs to read more. I think he doesn’t know what his definitions mean.
JANET: Well, and—
SARAH: I think he needs to call himself a top and not a dominant.
JANET: [Sighs.] A lot of these distinctions are so new in The Scene. It didn’t use to be, uhm, taxonomized the way it is now. And I don’t much like it. One of the things I like about this book [Playing on the Edge: Sadomasochism, Risk, and Intimacy] is that she does not call it BDSM she calls it SM.
SARAH: Because she’s talking about SM.
JANET: Well, no. Because up until 10 years ago—you don’t know—that was what it was called. BDSM is new. We didn’t use to call it that. SM was the umbrella term. And top and bottom were the umbrella terms. It’s only recently that—
SARAH: Oh, and that’s why she’s still using these older terms.
JANET: Yeah, and in the queer community, that’s the way it’s still used. It’s just the heterosexual community that fragments it this way.
SARAH: Yeah, I wasn’t reading about this stuff over 10 years ago. I was just doing it. I didn’t start reading about this stuff until the last 4 or 5 years.
JANET: The problem that I have with all the taxonomizing is that it makes it so easy for us to pretend that we have nothing in common with people who are in a different sector than we are.
SARAH: Well, I just want it for, like, dating because, like, if I’m looking for a dominant, I don’t want a top.
JANET: Well, why, why…
SARAH: [Laughs.]
JANET: …yes, but why do you have to describe who it is instead of what you want to do? Why does it have to be a label for your person instead of a label for your behavior?
SARAH: Yeah, but, well, I guess, see, for me the top labels the interaction in that I’m just gonna be a bottom and you’re just gonna cane me or you’re gonna spank me or whatever SM-type scene we’re gonna do, but whereas when I’m looking for a dominant I want someone who’ll make me turn into a gooey little fuckin’ schoolgirl and—
JANET: You want someone who’ll dominate you.
SARAH: Yeah, and be my daddy and, like, and not only beat me and talk dirty to me but also hold me and cuddle me and, and, turn me into that trusting little ten year old or whatever age I was the last time I trusted somebody. But, I’m not gonna find that casually because you have to have a real relationship in order to have that kind of level of trust.
JANET: I’m here to tell you, I could take you there.
SARAH: [Laughs.]
JANET: I know how to do it. It’s not hard to do if you know what you’re…
SARAH: Well, I probably—yeah, but I probably would submit easier to a woman than I would a man because I trust women more than I trust men.
JANET: As may be, but the fact is—
SARAH: And for me a lot of it is the trust.
JANET: I do not identify as a dominant but I do know how to take someone down that way. Um, and, in fact, if I’m gonna take someone down that way I will be in male headspace. I have a couple of alternate personas who are not female and not very nice. [Laughs.] That’s who I use when the scene wants to go that way.
SARAH: I like the daddy dom….
AUGH! Where do I even start?
Do I start by picking on her narrow understanding of what “a real relationship” looks like? Sarah needs to think more about polyamorous relationship structures and she ought study the power of asexual intimacy.
Do I start by asking her to explain her truly tragic admission that it was not since she was ten years old when she last trusted someone? Sarah needs to unpack her own deeply misguided notions regarding age’s relationship to power.
Do I start by throwing my finely honed monkey-wrench into their conflation of dominance with masculinity? How about pointing out the oppressive nature of the discourse itself?
Sarah betrays such profound ignorance coupled with an astonishingly shallow motivation for her own educational endeavors that I have to wonder what the fuck she is doing co-hosting a podcast like this at all. (And for the love of love, stop saying “like” so much; you’re not on 90210.) This is the kind of sexist bullshit you petulant SM assholes so quickly decry when I point it out in dominant-identified men. They are, yes, often petulant SM assholes.
But, here’s the thing: plenty of you submissive-identified women are no better than them. And many of my fellow submissive men are often among the most misogynistic in the whole lot. Fuck you all!
Oh, and, Sarah, whether you’re open to hearing some unsolicited advice or not, let me suggest you go read more. Start with history, and for goodness sake, don’t skip the glossary. Because it sounds to me like you don’t have any fucking clue what your definitions mean.
AUGH!
Maybe after I cool off I’ll go listen to the rest of the episode, as Staci suggested. For clarity’s sake, I’d be remiss not to note Staci’s own surprise at the shit that apparently passes for worthwhile commentary on SM these women published. But at least for now, I’m writing the whole damn podcast off as yet more sexuality community self-consolement that I’ve already wasted too much of my time on. </disgusted rant>
Update: I listened to Staci’s interview. I thought she did a good job. And I thought the hosts were unacceptably patronizing. Very disappointing.
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I do want to turn power roles on their heads but, perhaps unexpectedly enough, I don’t believe that the outward performance of female sexual dominance will have much effect in that regard. Perhaps the only reason that I do not merely reiterate the idea of a female supremacist state governed by spike-heeled, latex-clad, Wanda von Dunajew clones is that I’m not primarily dominant, and therefore couldn’t be Queen of such a state. But more than that, I think even such a proposal, while it seems to be the most radically opposite thing possible from anti-sex feminism, is in fact propagating the exact same problematic anti-sex and anti-femininity ideas as those it seeks to oppose. While I greatly admire and at times practice female sexual dominance, in terms of sexual politics I think it is far less useful for female empowerment than it would appear to be, sort of in the way that the SAT answer choice that seems totally obvious and easy is usually wrong.
This is because intractably submissive men are actually often the biggest misogynists around: their worship of dominant women is the only way they can indulge deviant sexual desires while keeping their virgin/whore complexes intact. The dominant woman and the puritan virgin are in fact quite similar. They are both impenetrable fortresses of untouchable femininity; the woman-as-what-you-can’t-ever-have. The danger of actuality, of real possession, of the sex act and what follows in all its sticky complexities—which we never resolve because it’s no part of the stories of pursuit and courtship on which men and women alike are raised; stories that end with a fade-to-black on the way to the bedroom—is conveniently never reached, and the man can remain in a safe, comfortable state of unfulfilled torment.
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!
I lacked the context to make any real analysis of why I wasn’t getting the FemDom sex I wanted from either clients (for whom I was indeed providing a detailed service and bear no grudge about my lack of personal sexual satisfaction) nor my local dungeon scene. As soon as I identified formally as a female dominant in a BDSM context, the only men I seemed to be able to attract were the kinds of men who would dictate the entire script for their ideal sexual encounter with the expectation that my sexual pleasure would come strictly from serving that desire for them. On paper we would be on the same page for a scene negotiation but I would notice very quickly that the expectations were less of a close match than I thought. My actions were ostensibly those of a dominant, but my role was much more submissive in nature and it just wasn’t doing it for me. I began to even question whether or not I was a dominant because I wasn’t having fun doing all of these so-called “dominant” things.
After awhile I felt jaded about the whole formal Fem Dom thing and eventually scrapped it out of frustration. […] I stopped going to BDSM parties “as a domme.” Given that I could also enjoy heavy bottoming without a submissive context (a type of play I had to learn how to articulate and negotiate well) I abandoned my formal quest to find submissive men to play with inside the BDSM scene. It wasn’t too long after that when I stopped going to dungeon parties completely because the bulk of my sexuality had been put on pause.
[…At LAN parties, however, m]y desire to be dominant in the bedroom and direct the course of a sexual interaction with a man was welcome so long as I did not formally identify myself as a dominant female. At the time I didn’t find this problematic in the slightest because I too was more than a little fed up with other dominants who would approach me with a, “ME DOMINANT, YOU SUBMISSIVE” attitude.
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!
Since FetLife’s isolationism is increasingly dangerous—a topic I may expound have expounded upon at KinkForAll Providence 2—I’m cross-posting the following from this thread in response to Suraya’s article over at Good Vibes:
Wow. For a thread on FetLife, this was unusually good. Of course, we can’t have a thread about women’s porn without someone saying something stupid like this:
The 800 pound gorilla in this room that no one likes to talk about or admit is that MOST (not all, but MOST) people, both men and women, prefer looking at nude females to nude males. This even crosses gender preference lines to a point, it’s part of our programming in evolutionary biology (see some of the “ideal face” studies that show even babies look for certain sets of features) which dictates that the female form is more aesthetically pleasing.So I’m glad to see some photogs spouting the ridiculously sexist party line to preserve their precious status-quo. And not even being shy about it. “Dictates”? Really? Really? And using idiotic evolutionary psychology arguments to boot. Nicely done, @SLEPhotography, you affirmed my faith in the privilege-denying capability of so many male (and “top”-identified, predictably) photographers. Thank you, sincerely, for the reminder of my own relevance.
Then there’s this intellectual straw man:
The other point that I hear quite often is that men are more “visual” than women, men get turned on by the look of a woman and the outfit she is wearing, women are more into touch, feel and scent than looks. Of course this is a generalisation, but IMHO it contains a grain of truth.Yup, that’s the party line without the intellectual acrobatics SLEPhotography is able to pull it off with. It’s the same bullshit, though, just easier to debunk. (An early example with commentary for laypeople. Here’s a more recent example, too.)
What’s so disturbing is that the observations most people make, such as “men and women react differently to available pornography,” are totally fair. Not even I disagree with such simple observations, despite the generalization. It’s the conclusions (“women aren’t as aroused by visual stimuli”) I find preposterous. And I’m not the only one.
As for my own theory, I grow increasingly convinced that the difficulty in finding pornography “for women,” i.e., of a “female gaze,” has at least as much to do with the flawed dialectic of “male gaze” vs. “female gaze” as it does with other cultural factors. To that end, I think Lady Porn Day is feckless at best.
Cheers,
-maymay
It should perhaps be noted that I’m told deep linking to FetLife from outside FetLife is not looked upon kindly. That’s news to me. And it’s crackbrained, so I’m not going conform to that apparent social norm.
Later, SLEPhotography returned to the thread proffering all sorts of ridiculous explanations. Chief among them, of course, was how he is not straight, as if that matters. Not willing to let the topic be changed by such shallow spin, I called it out as such:
Hey, SLEPhotograhy, good to see you have the courage of your convictions to continue digging your own hole. :) One last thing before I stop spending my time here behind FetLife’s Google-repulsing curtain:
I list myself as “heteroflexible” here and split my play between both male & female partners. In my training as I came in to this life I was mentored by female and male tops & Dom/mes, and the male tops were all gay men. I also mentioned in my post that I work with male and female subjects, as I notedThat’s all very nice for you, and all very irrelevant. I don’t give a fuck who you fuck or who you worked with. (See also, “I’m not racist. I have a Black friend!”) You get an A for effort on your redirection attempt, especially considering the blind hypocrisy necessary to do it while telling me I’m redirecting.
It’s this
I tend not to display my male nudes in wider forums because it makes larger audiences avoid my work altogether (there’re far too many people who’ll say “If there’s a penis present I don’t want to look)coupled with this
for a majority of the audience photographers need in order for their market to be profitable those biases existthat’s relevant. And what a steaming pile of circularly reasoned nonsense that is. Nothing personal, I understand, it’s “just business.”
As for privilege, I’d bet money on that the fact that your failure to understand why “not displaying your male nudes in a wider forum” for “business reasons” is a privilege as a photographer (not as a man) is probably why you feel the need to offer silly objections to Suraya’s Good Vibes article in the first place.
Wanna talk more about this? Let’s do it where the rest of the Internet can see. FetLife’s iron curtain is a dangerous illusion.
For those who want to literally hear more, Suraya can be heard talking about this issue extensively on Kink On Tap episode 18: Where’s the dick?
Cheers,
-maymayP.S. Also, Arbor
IMO using terms like “the usual bullshit” and “Party Line” does nothing to enhance your arguments.I think what you mean to say is, “using terms like ‘bullshit’…is not nice,” since the cogency of an intellectual argument has nothing to do with whether it’s described as bullshit or not, and anyone who thinks otherwise is an idiot. On that note, calling SLEPhotography’s arguments out as the sexist Party Line is all of accurate and pertinent and, yes, not “nice.”
Gosh, that was easy.
UPDATE: Round 2 was even easier.
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!
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!
These are fascinating. And so blunt. And so, so the same as today.
well, at least the anti-feminist argument has matured and become more nuanced over time
oh wait
^^^ this all damn day
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!