Hmm. This is going to be interesting. And opinionated, and possibly loud. And this is the kind of post where I feel the need to say beforehand that this is my personal opinion, and this is how I live my personal life. If I could make “whatever floats your boat” into a life motto, I would.
Also? This is essay length. I was going to split it, but I’ve decided against doing so. Read at your leisure.
Strap-ons.
On one of the first posts I made there was some commentary about gendered play. A nice man commented about the nature of his relationship with his dominant female partner, emphasizing his own masculinity, and writing in parentheses: no strap-on dildos here! I added the exclamation point, but you get my drift.
And at the time, that surprised me, but I hadn’t really registered yet that such a comment is totally in line with much of the blogosphere. Hey, whatever works.
But sorry. I’m not a card-carrying member of the No-Strap Ons Club. In fact, I’m a card-carrying member of the Strap-Ons Rock My Socks Off Club. We’ve got jackets.
I love strap-ons. Love them. Love them like I love singletail. I use a strap-on on a man, and I get to glory in every reaction I elicit from him, moans and little fragile cries and all. I enjoy this the way I enjoy whipping a man until he falls to his knees. I want to see what he does. I will push him just to see how he pushes back, or whether he does at all. If he’s never done it before I want to see what happens to his mind once it’s over. I am a reation top; I get off on the reations I inspire in others. Not all tops are like this; lots of doms get off on having their pleasure sated. I do that too. Reactions are my pleasure.
For female dominants who deal strictly in their own pleasure, strap-ons seriously stink. It’s true; I don’t feel anything. It’s detached, like any other toy is detached. It’s not arousing in any kind of physical way. It does not work for everyone, and I wholeheartedly agree with Bitchy when she says it should not be the cum shot of femdom, and we shouldn’t all have to rush out and buy one. It’s all about getting what you want. To get what you want, first you have to understand what you want. Then you can go finding a set of tools that work for you, be it handcuffs or rubber gloves or strap-ons or paddles. Whatever.
Like, what? I can’t be a powerful woman with a strap-on? I can be whatever I want with a strap-on! Pull out of this the only part of the sentence that is actually worth a damn to me: I can be whatever I want.
A lot of femdom throws out the strap-on emphatically because emphatic gestures, even when overly simplistic, are often the easiest way to deal with complex problems. I don’t believe that femdom needs to eradicate the use of the strap-on in order to stop the perpetuation of equating masculinity with power. I think we actually need to restructure our thoughts on a very different, more fundamental level.
We’ve got these two sets of binary ideas: male & female and power & weakness. We have them all wrapped up with each other, entirely interdependent in so many ways. I want to erase this connection. I want to separate the idea of the male & female from the idea of power & weakness.
I’m amazed you’re still reading, by the way.
Male phallus worship has been around for thousands of years. Female power worship has also been around for thousands of years. And you know, I’d call myself a feminist, but that’s not right. I’m more of an equalist, if such a thing existed. I think many equalists become feminists because it seems to be the best way to approach the current situation. The thing is, the current situation is fucked and will not benefit from tinkering. It should be defenestrated. I wish to throw it out the metaphorical window.
We want to change the kink world for the better, yea? The way to change the world is by thinking differently. Step back, take a breath, and redefine. Reexamine your accepted truths.
Culture tells us that penetration equals power, penetration is masculine and therefore masculinity and power are forever linked. Because we’re dealing with two halves of two binary ideas, culture automatically links the other halves together; femininity is weak.
In order to combat this fuckupery we have decided to embrace being penetrated as strong, in order to cause the inevitable chain reaction which concludes by stating that the female gender is the one with the power.
The problem with deciding to turn the idea on its head is that we’ve already demonstrated that the logic behind the idea is faulty; culture came to the conclusion that women are weak, and we disagree. So we take the exact same logical treatment of ideas and arrive at the conclusion that women are strong, which suits us infinitely better but in no way fixes the problem of the faulty logic. This isn’t trying to fix the culture. This is trying to reaarange it to our convenience.
Rather than rehash an old process with new ideas, it serves us better to examine the process itself to figure out what the hell’s going wrong.
Point one: Penetration equals power. Not true. Penetration is a tool to be used in the process of power exchange. Being the giver or taker of a penetrative act in no way necessitates a certain kind of power, as all the lovely women who can top while being fucked have proven. Scratch it. It’s a false assumption. We knew that already; that’s the basic premise of the No Strap-Ons Clubs’ argument.
Point two: Penetration is masculine. Well hey, guess what. I don’t think that’s true either. And I fully realize I’m going against literally hundreds of thousands of years of biology here, with men having penises and women not. But doesn’t it seem that the very invention of the strap on has pretty much made this whole argument bullshit? Not only that, it’s not just a penis one can penetrate with. I can penetrate you with a knife, a needle, my fist, my finger, my teeth. I can penetrate your personal space. I can penetrate you emotionally with my mind. I get as much pleasure out of penetrating you with a strap-on as I do from penetrating you with a needle. I’m a woman with full control over the ability to penetrate people. I’m not taking on a masculine trait. This does not need to be gendered. Seriously, stop gendering things. Really.
With point one and point two pretty much gone, the conclusion just doesn’t hold up now, does it? Masculinity does not equal power. It’s not because masculinity equals powers’ opposite, weakness. It’s because, guess what, you don’t actually need to gender your power exchange in any one particular way. You can if you want to. But you don’t have to.
Especially not when stuck within this rigid bullshit idea that gender and power are binary concepts. Gender and power are fluid concepts. The two scales can play off one another with or without being intertwined. You can treat them any way you’d like.
I believe gender is necessarily fluid, because we’ve stuck ourselves into a binary idea and then have to embrace fluidity in order to account for all of the people, ideas and actions that don’t fit the binary model. I include myself in this fluidity. And I believe that power is fluid for exactly the same reason. I wear boys clothes, I kiss girls, and I don’t always think of myself as totally feminine. And I don’t hold every single solitary kind of ultimate power in my relationships, and don’t want to.
We insist on gendering power exchange because we choose the genders of our partners. It makes so much sense if you’re a submissive man to connect women with power. You want a woman with power. It’s not a far jump from there to wanting women to be powerful, even if they don’t want to be. And from there, to deciding that womankind is powerful. We are so insistent on gendering everything! Look how we name our interests: fem dom, male dom, fem sub, male sub.
If you’re not heterosexual this whole insistence on a binary equation of gender and power just up and fades away. Seriously, the heterosexual scene needs some prolonged exposure from the LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans) scenes. Most of them figured out what I’m about to say a long time ago.
They’re *people,* people. We’re humans in the end. Embrace the idea that you are powerful because you are you. You demand power, you work for it, you get it. Embrace the idea that you are vulnerable because you choose to be, not because of how your sexual organs happen to be arranged.
It’s not me being a man, or being masculine. It’s me with a strap-on. It’s all about me. My gender identity informs rather than defines my identity as a whole. I claim power, because I am me. It’s so more elemental than gender.
A strap-on is a tool. Penetration is a tool. Power exchange is mental; power exchange is not about the tools you use but how you how you use them. It’s not about what you do; it’s about how you do it.
This is bad news for every annoyingly clueless femdom who’s ever walked into a play party and demanded that strange men bow down to her. It’s bad news for every male dom who argues that women are naturally the weaker sex. It’s bad news for every male sub who insists he’s worthless, and blissfully perpertuates the idea that all women are to be worshipped. It’s bad news for every man who wants to be fucked up the ass to make himself feel like a weak woman.
Nope. Sorry. Here in my corner of the Internet, I’m going to make you work for it. I will not accord you a place on any power scale according to your gender or a gendered idea of how you want to play. It’s going to be much harder than that, and it’s going to involve understanding the exchange of power as something you have to deal with consciously. Something you have to earn because of who you are as a whole person. What you think, and how you play. I have power because I use the tools I have available in order to gain power.
I’m not saying people can’t go out and gender their power exchange if they want to. Gender is fascinating, and an incredible tool to have available. I’m saying do it consciously. Have strap-on sex, or don’t! Whatever! Give and take as whole people, not arrangements of sexual organs.
But don’t come looking to me for femdom. I’m not a femdom. I’m a dom. Straight up. And I penetrate.
29 Comments
It’s funny because when I wrote my strap on post, I kind of felt like such a lone voice saying, ‘Um, we should look at this.’
Ah, it may be my conceit that what I said was ‘Um, we should look at this.’
Anyway this is a great post, because it’s the first one I’ve read in defence of strap ons that takes on my points and works with them rather than just tells me to fuck off. I can’t find anything to disagree with.
I’m not really one for forcing labels on people that they don’t want - but you are a feminist. Trust me.
Strap-Ons Rock My Socks Off Club has a jacket?
I must have overlooked it in the monthly newsletter.
I use a strap-on but it’s not because I want to pretend I’m a man. I rather like being a woman, well most of the time. I could serious give it up though during that one week a month when I turn absolute bitch and hurt from head to toe.
Physically a strap-on doesn’t do a thing for me, least not anymore. Mentally it’s a totally different ballgame.
When I first started using them it was a power trip kind of thing for me, but at the time I was also a newbie into the world of D/s and, long before I had ever heard of the term Domme or dominant in sexual terms, I had my fantasies about it. Once I got those out of the way and became more experienced it turned from being a power trip thing to look at what it does to him when I use it kind of thing.
Truthfully, anymore I have to fight myself to keep from laughing when I first put it on, but I usually end up forgetting about how silly it looks when I see the mixture of fear and excitement on his face when he sees it.
Bitchy -
Obviously something you said about thinking worked, because this post is pretty much totally your fault. So maybe it was a little mini conceit. But, y’know, it worked. I read your post and a few other things and started saying “Waaaaait a second . . . ” because I’d never stopped to think specifically about the gender implications before.
The thing is that the basis of what I was trying to get across is “do what works for you,” and that’s kind of a hard statement to disagree with. And obviously, please don’t fuck off. If I wanted that I wouldn’t be linking you so fast and furious.
Clearly I need to do some more reading on the specifics of feminism, because I skipped women’s studies in school. I sense a Wikipedia bout coming up.
Sierra -
I laugh at myself with one on too. But I’m right there with you - I love what it does to him.
It is wrapped up in D/s for me, in much the same way that all of my play is. I readily draw dynamics like that out of any situation I’m in control of. It took me a very long time to arrive at the idea that I was a dom, not because I wasn’t playing that way, but because I always had been and it took me a ridiculously long time to notice.
I might have to go make some jackets now.
This post really solidified a lot of things I’ve been thinking about this year. And its funny because I’ve gone about this thing from the opposite end and have come to the same conclusions.
And from the opposite end, I mean using a strap-on to penetrate another woman and the feminist implications of that. What I’ve come up with, in the end, is the same as you did in your post. It doesn’t matter! A strap-on does not stand for masculinity in my book. At least not when I’m using one.
Of course, going the LGBT/women’s studies route, this isn’t news. But figuring it out for yourself and sharing it with others is, because though feminists have been shouting things like this for decades (if you exclude the anti-sex/porn/fun fake feminists), it hasn’t made it over the fence into less radical territory yet.
And with that, you’ve got me in the mood to actually start some of my thesis work. Thanks for sharing, I wholeheartedly agree.
Tyler! Ohmigod, hi!
I kind of forgot that people I know are reading this :).
I’m glad to hear that what I was thinking is old news. That’s comforting, somehow. And I find it so weirdly both strange and cool that we’re the “less radical territory.”
Glad I inspired you. The thesis monster is slippery and tricky.
power exchange is not about the tools you use but how you how you use them. It’s not about what you do; it’s about how you do it.
This was your entire post. In fact, this pretty much sums up all of what the better bloggers are trying to say.
And about those jackets? Tight, revealing leather things are never out of fashion.
Hi Tom!
I know. I think, actually, that I could probably take this entire blog down and replace it with the words “It’s not what you do, it’s how you do it.” I think Bitchy talked once upon a time about just knowing that somewhere out there was some kind of magic formula that would make everything better. (I might be putting words in her mouth, but I swear I remember that.)
Anyway, I think for me those are the magic words.
Also, tight, revealing leather jackets? Although I get the appeal, wouldn’t nice well cut jackets make more sense, which could then be opened to reveal tight, revealing leather corsets?
That whole idea of doing what you want how you want it is what I tried to write about earlier, too.
Good post.
Oh, by the way, tag, you’re it, if you wanna play.
wouldn’t nice well cut jackets make more sense, which could then be opened to reveal tight, revealing leather corsets?
*fans self*
Oh my, yes!
See, this is what I’m talking about, BeeJ; Strap-ons and tight leather. Totally Dom/me territory over here. Not that making me toil naked in the field ain’t Dommish and all, but once in a while I need that kinky, fetish fix.
::laughs::
Sorry, Tom, that was a cheap shot. But it’s so easy.
May -
I love that we use different subjects to arrive at the same conclusions. ‘Cause discussion is sexy.
Eep! I’ve been meeeemed!
Sorry, Tom, that was a cheap shot. But it’s so easy.
Cheap & easy - yes, not unlike yours truly.
fucking awesome post.
Almost -
Thanks you!
And I’ve just visited yours, and I friggen love your feral posts. I can relate to that feeling so intimately. Very cool.
Well done, well written, etc.
Most of what M and I do is me getting off on her reactions (such as me tickling her, etc). I too get off on her reactions more than the fact that I am the one in charge.
Also, I’m still getting used to the new blog set-up.
Hello hello,
I’m still getting used to it too. It drives me nuts that Blogger won’t stack comments the way LJ does, but I actually love the way it orders and manages posts. And it’s nice to have some separation, methinks. It keeps me from feeling too weird about being me.
::grin::
See you tomorrow for beachy fun!
If heterosexual men could get over the phobia about having their sphincter penetrated even guys who aren’t into BDSM could learn to enjoy having their prostate massaged.
I think of gender as a range of colors. I like almost all of them. But I’m happiest with people who can smile at gender. That it is taken so seriously in the F/m subcultures is something I find very alienating.
Richard -
Humor ever. It helps us remember that we’re not out to save the world.
Hopefully someday the prostate will enjoy its sexual heyday. Hopefully soon.
Hello Eileen,
I really really enjoyed this post. But I had a real problem focusing and paying attention after:
“But sorry. I’m not a card-carrying member of the No-Strap Ons Club. In fact, I’m a card-carrying member of the Strap-Ons Rock My Socks Off Club. We’ve got jackets.“
All I could think of was “Mmmmm, strapons…..” and my mind kind of started wandering away from the lovely valid and interesting points you were making. I feel so…. um….
Ok, I’m going to pull myself together now, I swear. And I must find one of those jackets, I didn’t know we had jackets. :D
I liked the way you express the distinction between gender roles and power exchange.
Mmmmm, strapons…..
Ok, ok, I’d better put this comment down now and back away slowly before I get drool all over your blog.
A smile and a wave, from
Lubyanka. :)
Lubyanka -
I liked the post you wrote as well, in very much the same way :). Hehehe.
1) stop gendering masculinity.
2) Invasion is power.
3) Lesbian/Homosexual interaction.
Agreed. It is about how you do it.
I could write about three, four thousand words in regards to this post, agreeing emphatically with many of the points (particularly those about defending the strap on) and disagreeing emphatically with many of the points. I shall ruminate on it. But I think three points need to be clarified.
You are gendering the word “masculinity” by denying its use. Masculinity is a condition and a description, not a gender. It is a useful word, with clear definitions, that has been applied towards both genders for the last century of psychological research, and I don’t think we should dispense with it because many are too ignorant to read a dictionary.
Intercourse may not be power. However, invasion IS power…at the point of a sword or the point of a dildo. The soldier cannot “feel” bullets striking an opponent, but the emotional impact is still present—particularly endorphins and adrenaline which exist to aid prehistoric humans in gathering food by killing. You’re perfectly right in your argument that you do not need to sensually feel the strap-on; your brain is there to do that for you.
Finally, research has indicated that male-male, female-female and male-female relationships operate on wholly different dynamics, regardless of their success. Male-males have a great deal of sex, initiated by either partner—and a great deal of promiscuity; female-females suffer from having the least sex, presumably because neither party feels comfortable with initiating; and female-males fall neatly into the middle. This is not an accident. We are NOT all human beings together. Your body is flooded with all sorts of chemicals I never experience. You are allowing your egalitarianism to cloud your pursuit of knowledge.
This is an important post. It addresses a fundamental weakness in the nonsensical fundamentalism of soft-sell femdom. Well done.
Alexis -
Thanks for stopping by.
1. All right, I see where that came from. The way I used the word in this post is not the way the word is defined from a psychological standpoint, or from some of the stricter dictionaries. It is in line with the way the word is commonly used, however. Does that make the common usage of the word inappropriate? Yes, it does. But that doesn’t make it less effective as a means of communication in certain contexts. This may not have been the right context, and I’d readily admit that my definition of the word “masculinity” is not fully formed. Nor do I wish to “dispense” it. It’s a good word to have around.
So much of communication is disrupted or clouded by different vocabularies. Rarely do people use words strictly by their dictionary definitions, as their vocabularies are more commonly shaped by their experiences and opinions. It makes our language richer while simultaneously making it more obscure. I find personally that the better I know someone the clearer our communication becomes, as we build a mututal understanding of how we each use words.
2. “Invasion is power.” Agreed. But not the same as “penetration is power” in the context of this particular post. I don’t know that the penetrative partner and the invading partner need necessarily be the same person in regards to the penetrative act of sex when combined with a mental power exchange. When I have sex, I am penetrated, but I don’t feel that I am invaded.
3. “We are NOT all human beings together.” Here’s where we’re going to have to agree to disagree. No, we’re not the same. You have hormonal responses I have no access to. Similarly, you have different emotional pathways connecting your brain. You had different formative experiences as a child. You and I may have different upbringings, different educations. We certainly have different pyches. We may have different skin, or hair, or IQ levels.
If you would like the biological details that you’ve cited here and in the blog post you referred me to (good posts, by the way) to be the difference by which you sort human beings into catagories, that’s your choice. I haven’t yet seen evidence that I should sort human beings that way particularly, or in one of countless other ways I could do so. Of course I sort people, when I meet them personally, according to my personal standards, and it’s entirely possibly that once I know a whole lot more about how people function, I may choose to sort them. (Maybe not, though. I’ll let you know if that happens, but I might have to become a neurosurgeon first, and I don’t think that interests me.) But in the meantime, we are all human beings together. Just as apples and oranges are both fruit.
Perhaps my egalitarianism is not clouding my pursuit of knowledge, but simply taking me in different directions than yours.
I accept that.
Alexis -
::laughs:: Such a simple ending! Thanks for the conversation. I quite enjoyed it.
I came hunting for posts on you as a reaction top (since “reaction junkie” is often the way I describe my sexual identity - although I’ve grown uneasy with the hyperbolic nature of the word “junkie”) and I found this.
Love it as a post, I agree you need to read some more women’s studies because you ARE a feminist. *grin*
It reminds me I will have to add a post about being penetrated to the list of subjects I want to cover.
Finally, this made me laugh out loud: “It’s not what you do, it’s how you do it.”
I laughed because it is the theme song of the cheezy Cannonball Run movies.
(here is the chorus)
It’s not what you do
It’s how you do it.
Be anything you want to be
It’s not what you got
It’s how you use it
You be you
And I’ll be me
It’s just a matter of style
You can fake it
Mile after mile
Feeling free
If you got the soul
you can make it
Move-em out (move ‘em out)
Let ‘em roll (let ‘em roll)
From sea to shining sea
Ball (ball)
Cannonball (cannonball)
Victor-
Yes, this is just what I need! A cheesy theme song! Why didn’t I think of this before?
Also, since I wrote this I have re-thought the feminist label. I’d now call myself a very wary, very under-educated feminist. We’ll see how this develops.
I have a near overwhelming compulsion to try and find this song and download it now. :-)
As far as feminist, that seems a fine label to take. (I sometimes take feminist as a label, but since it sometimes turns into an argument about who is a “real” feminist, I will happily abandon the label as long as I still get to subscribe to the beliefs, do what I want to do in the way I want to do it, etc.)
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