But first, it will piss you off.
I asked May last night about the etiquette of linking to opinions you wish to disagree with. His reply was “It’s the Internet. You can do whatever you’d like.”
Yea. Doesn’t that just hit the nail on the head?
john (his capitalization use, not mine) has a great blog. He’s thoughtful, he’s sincere. He and I have some differing opinions, but in general I quite enjoy reading his posts. (He also posts a lot, which is great for keeping me entertained at work.) And he reads this, so I’d like to make it very clear that I quite like him.
But yesterday he approvingly posted a quote. And when I read it and his response to it, I screamed. (Apparently, Elizabeth screamed too.)
I didn’t really get the bitterness. I yell, and I fume, but there’s always been something a bit alien to me about just how bitter May is, or why Bitchy is such a bitch. But guys, I understand now.
Here’s the quote I have a problem with:
You are the male of the future and your message is an important one. The Female Gender is the superior gender. I am not saying males are useless, they are the yin to our yang, but the best male is one who understands his role as helpmate and passive.
Funny how people toss about “superior” without owning up to its binary relationship with the word “inferior.” “Inferior” is such a nasty, tricky word.This is sexism.
Check it out, straight out of the all-knowing Wikipedia: Sexism can refer to . . . different beliefs or attitudes [such as] the belief that one gender or sex is superior to or more valuable than the other.
Many folks seem to think that sexism must necessarily go hand-in-hand with chauvinism, or misogyny, or misandry. Actually, no. Hatred is not a prerequisite for sexism. You can say you love and respect men in their inferior status, and you’re still sexist. A lack of hatred is not a mitigation.
Still others think that since culturally women have been getting the short end of the stick since god-knows-when, espousing a doctrine of female superiority isn’t sexist; it’s payback. Well, there’s a word for that too: reverse sexism. Notice how the word “sexism” still exists in that phrase.
And hey, maybe it’s just me, but I don’t happen to think sexism is okay. Neither, might I add, does the U.S. Government.
Perhaps you would like to live in a world in which we are not all created equal, or in which there are no efforts made to protect the human rights of certain groups. But this is not that world. This world is fucked up and twisted about and still suffering massively under the influence of people who believe in the superiority or inferiority of generic characteristics in their fellow human beings. One of the things you do not have, as a random Internet voice, is the authority to include me in your world view. And one thing you shouldn’t be doing is allowing philosophies that promote violations of human rights to be approved, respected, or used to represent the opinions of a larger community.
Here is how that quote could have been written in such a way that I would have no problem:
You are the male of my future and your message is an important one to me. I consider myself superior to you. I am not saying you are useless, you are the yin to my yang, but the best male you can be for me is one who understands his role as helpmate and passive.
That? If she wrote that to me, or May, we’d both still find it offensive as hell. But that’s a personal matter. Excluding generalizations makes that a personal comment, which means it’s no one’s business except the person who wrote it and the person who’s receiving it. A generalization covers more ground than you think. It covers every woman, and every man, and every space. Your method of anonymous communication via the Internet does not excuse generalizations.
In the privacy of your own home you’re welcome to say anything you like. You can say that Jews have horns, or that men are pigs, or that French people smell bad. You can say that one gender is superior to another.
But I’m here to tell you, anonymity and privacy are not the same thing. The Internet is a public forum. Which means you are espousing a public opinion. Which means you are promoting sexism in a public space. You’re just wearing a mask to do it.
Can we think of any other examples of rhetorics of group superiority being espoused from behind the supposedly untouchable comfort of anonymous masks?
Saying that you’d like to be superior/inferior to a specific man/woman in a certain context is something ya’ll can work out for yourselves. (Yes, I’m even okay with the word “superior” in certain, pre-negotiated relationships.) But the minute you generalize it to include people you don’t know, the minute you say it in a public space, you are espousing a sexist philosophy of life. You say it on the Internet as though this space exists only in a fantasy realm. As though the online world is an extension of your bedroom. Or maybe you think that speaking to a sympathetic audience excuses the offense your opinion gives to those outside your audience.
Say it in your workplace, and you’d be fired. Say it in a non-anonymous public forum, and maybe you’d get sued for your trouble. That’s the trouble with generalized philosophies of superiority; in the real world, practicing them is illegal.
Don’t delude yourself. Maybe there are fewer consequences here, but this space is not an extension of your bedroom.
Maybe you happen to think sexism is okay. Maybe you love the idea of being dominated and inferior, or dominating and superior. Y’know what? Great! Fine. Your rights are your own. Give them away, exchange them with your partner, do whatever you’d like with them.
But the second you generalize your opinion of superiority or inferiority, you include others. If you say women are superior, you include me. If you say men are inferior, you include May. You are fucking with our rights, and our status, and our place. You are spreading propaganda about us.
And you do not negotiate my rights.
20 Comments
I actually don’t like john at all (not that you asked for my opinion.) The things he posts seem all to refer to a particular kind of D/s that I find insufferably grounded in fantasy and flights of the mind (or of the wanking fingers) rather than in personal work to make himself the kind of person a Mistress would consider an honor and a credit to herself.
And honestly, I really find his whole “oh, I’m not a masochist” schtick annoying. Fine, if you’re a bottom and are specifically negotiating for the meeting of your own needs.
Less fine if you’re presenting yourself as submissive, as someone who wants to serve another. Service is not about finding someone who happens to suit your perfect fantasy, but about giving of yourself because of a driving inner need.
Someone who wants to give himself over to me, for example, is not allowed to gasp and titter at my pain fetish, thanks.
If someone I’m considering taking on can’t handle this (well I’m not sure why I’d take hir on, actually, but bending the truth a tad for discussion) then sie should surely say so, and I can’t force it necessarily. But the attitude he has, this sort of stunned gasp at the very idea oh oh!
really doesn’t sound to me like anyone who’s truly interested in D/s. It strikes me instead as someone lurking on the edges of very specific communities, with very little actual experience of the hard, serious work involved in making D/s work and creating a personalized, enduring power dynamic.
I’m not interested in people who, for example, post lists that someone they admire posted on how to do D/s without serious discussion of each point, how it’s applied in their own dynamic, and preferably what pitfalls it comes with as well.
Personally all this is something I find that more queer and gay-oriented D/s subcultures are better at. There’s a lot less posturing and fantasy and supposition, and a lot more workshops, training, and discussion.
At this point johnny boy strikes me as a wanker, dick in one hand and the other at his keyboard. No, I’m not fond of those. I took one on as a sub once, and it was just about the stupidest decision I ever did make.
Hi Trinity!
(I freakin’ love Pro-SM Feminist Spaces, by the way. Thanks for stopping by.)
I haven’t backread all of what john writes, and so am not able to address a lot of what you’ve referred to.
That said, I do agree with a lot of what you’re reacting so viscerally to. (I did scream out loud, after all.) john strikes me as the product of an environment I don’t enjoy and often rail against. On the other hand, he asks questions, and takes advice, and doesn’t have his head completely up his ass. I don’t know him personally, so I haven’t got much to go on. But I like that he asks questions.
I’m wary of definitions of “submitting” vs. “bottoming” that include some expectation of giving up a certain kind of control or a certain kind of power. As I was trying to get across recently in my post ‘Submission,’ I think we all define these things differently. And I think we all have the right to define them differently - john’s attitude when faces with the idea of masochism may be out of line (by creating an expectation for his culture which is inappropriate) but his right to accept or not accept that kind of play remains intact.
You said yourself you wouldn’t take on someone who couldn’t handle the ideas he can’t handle. Well, there you go; you two aren’t compatible. I wouldn’t take him on either; I find his opinions to be too different from my own. I find it frustrating that much of what he and other submissive men are exposed to propogate the kind of ideas that infuriate me.
My point here is, I think, that I like hearing his opinions precisely because they are so different from my own. I don’t like that he, and many others, present opinions as absolutes, or attempt to create a certain kind of culture or certain kind of rule structure that they think should apply to me or anyone else. I try to read around it when I see people do that. (As this post proves, sometimes I fail.)
I agree with you that training, education, and awareness are very good ways to separate fantasy from reality. I would encourage anyone who’s running into people who say “this is how it is” to go and get some outside education, and form their own opinions. And hopefully while they’re learning their own opinions, they also learn that their opinions relate to themselves alone, and have no place trying to dictate my life, or the general community.
Actually, if that comment were re-written the way you wrote it, I wouldn’t be offended, I’d just disagree. I have no problem disagreeing with people; I encourage different viewpoints. I do have a problem with imposing different viewpoints, however. That is evil.
And as I wrote recently, imposing one viewpoint by silencing all others, or because no others are vocal enough, is just as evil.
I hate the fact that so few others who speak for self-awareness and don’t operate on the assumption of a starvation economy (I am dominant, therefore I am more/better/superior/whatever than submissives, as but one example) are as vocal as we are; it makes my life harder and I didn’t ask to be one of the first to shoulder the burden of legitimizing my own opinions.
That said, I understand the use of generalizations to make a point. And that said, I don’t think john or this Mistress who left that comment had the presence of mind to understand the use of generalizations to make their points. Sometimes people’s opinions are genuinely misguided. I sincerely hope these opinions were merely ignorant.
Hi Eileen -
Thanks for writing. :)
You’re generous and kind about John’s sincerity in the original post. I don’t know about the woman whom John quoted. It’s an unusual name, but there’s no google results for her that I could find. Perhaps it’s the first time she’s ever posted anything and it just happened to be on John’s blog.
My POV is that a generous handful of people who perpetuate this crap online aren’t sincere at all. They are men who write because writing the words makes them hard, or women who write because they are looking for money from men who get hard at reading them.
I won’t say *all* to the above. I’ve gotten emails from very nice men, whom I believe truly sincere, who eventually get around to talking female supremacy as if it’s a given than any woman who identifies as dominant would wisely agree.
I don’t know if they are so deluded they can’t think for themselves, or just misinformed that believing in female supremacy is a *requirement* for a guy to sexually submit to a woman.
Lotta insincere, misinformation around…..
but not here.
hugs, E
“And I think we all have the right to define them differently - john’s attitude when faces with the idea of masochism may be out of line (by creating an expectation for his culture which is inappropriate) but his right to accept or not accept that kind of play remains intact.”
Oh, I wasn’t saying that.
What I am saying is, well, there are a lot of people out there in the world who love to talk about how sub they are but as soon as you talk to them
“Oh, no pain. Oh, wait, you’re not gonna wear a corset for me? Oh, what, you don’t like the idea of punishing me and would rather I own up to my mistakes? Oh, you want me to call you and tell you if I want to go to other play parties? Oh, you’re annoyed because I told you I’d do the dishes, but didn’t? Oh, you’re not going to play Bavarian Ice Queen now? Oh, you’re not gonna make me come now?
What IS this, anyway?”
and… yeah. That to me is assuming bottoming (wanting to do something for one’s own fun) is submitting (wanting to serve, obey, please.)
I don’t see anything wrong with being either, but it chaps my hide terribly when people say “submission,” I make sure they understand that when they say that I expect service (and expect them to be claiming they ENJOY serving, not that they will grit their teeth and do it and hate every moment), they tell me they do and that’s what they live for, and then the demands begin, and the list grows longer, and longer, and longer! and!
That, I hate.
“Hey, will you flog me? I’d get off on it” doesn’t at all. Or “May I lick your boots?” or any number of things a person would not do or offer to do if it didn’t bring him, himself, sexual gratification.
It’s when someone pretends to understand that what I want from SUBMISSION is not that, and then attempts to play games with my head, that I get pissed. There’s nothing wrong with being a greedy little bottom.
And to me, john’s reaction to anyone who doesn’t fit his very narrow kink indicates something much more along the “bottom” continuum than the “submissive.” His fantasies may not be about pain, but they are very just-so, and heaven forbid, from what I’ve seen, anyone not fit his scripts.
Again, it’s fine (well, would be if he stops universalizing it), but it’s not submission, to my mind.
Trinity -
I think what you’re articulating is mostly a problem with vocabulary. We have such enormous problems communicating clearly, because everyone has subtexts and personal definitions of broadly used terms. Rarely do people use words in their exact sense.
For me, the “getting to know each other” process is often a matter of hammering out the nuances of a shared vocabulary that will then allow me to speak exactly and clearly to that person when communicating my wants and ideas. Unfortunately this doesn’t always happen, which leaves us all talking at cross purposes.
I semi-agree with your once overs of the definitions of submission and domination, but of course I have my own nuances, and they’re based on my own experiences.
And yea, when submissives demand things from me that I haven’t offered to give, and then get pissed or dissapointed because of miscommunications in exactly what I mean when I say “submit to me” that pisses me off. And when they say they understand and then prove that they really haven’t been listening, that pisses me off even more.
Elizabeth -
Unfortunately, insincere misinformation is still misinformation, and we haven’t got any kind of radar to tell us who’s writing what and with what intention. Words have to be taken at their written value. There are no “Oh, but I just meant . . .” or “Well that was only my opinion . . .” caveats. And also unfortunately, people get the idea that they don’t have responsibility for what they write.
One of the reasons I got so pissed at the original post that started all of this tirading is because john was so sweet and sincere in answering the comment. It made me angry to see that kind of blind acceptance coming from him, someone I’m interested in respecting. (I have to wonder now if he’s read all this back-and-forth about him. john, are you lurking?)
“I think what you’re articulating is mostly a problem with vocabulary.”
Yeah, that and — well, there are a lot of people who say one thing in initial negotiations and then turn out to be very different from what they claim, especially when play turns to dating. It’s one thing for it to be all right with a dude who loves feminine women that I dress like a gay leatherman… if we’re just clubbing. If we’re dating, it becomes “well but can’t you wear the skirt once? oh yes you’re the boss but I never thought I’d never see legs!”
and that kind of thing, unless both people are really, really interested in dating one aonother, rather than both creating some edifice in their heads and projecting the other person onto it.
i find it difficult to accept the use of terms like “reverse sexism” or “reverse racism”, because it seems to imply that racism and sexism only happen to one group. because reverse sexism usually means against men, and reverse racism usually means against those generally considered “caucasian”. but its still racism or sexism.
granted this isnt on your main topic at all.
Darkness -
I don’t generally use the term. But it’s a good marker of a certain kind of sexism that I was trying to artiulate. I don’t personally think that using the phrase devalues the level of sexism involved, but I do agree that using the term implies a closed system of possibly groups to be discriminated against, which isn’t good.
Point taken.
Over the last couple of years my feelings about that blog have shifted about.
At first I thought it was mildly entertaining. Later I wondered if it were some sort of project for collecting responses to stereotypical opinions. Or simply a hoax.
Anymore I find it a cross between a specialized form of wanking and a bid for attention.
The one virtue is that the writer expresses himself clearly. But overall the quality of thought and feeling is as deep as a politician’s speech.
(Of course my own vice is coming off like a prig.)
Richard -
Huh. I didn’t realize I was linking to something that so many people have had such reactions to. Then again, I haven’t been hanging around here for any significant period of time that would let me gauge such things.
Is it all right if I call you a bit of a lovable prig?
Even though I’ve been involved in kink blogging for longer than many I would’ve never guessed the level of response.
But that stems from the quality of your readership.
lovable prig
Thank you!
Two things:
Say it in your workplace, and you’d be fired. Say it in a non-anonymous public forum, and maybe you’d get sued for your trouble. That’s the trouble with generalized philosophies of superiority; in the real world, practicing them is illegal.
…really? Given the way sexism tends to work in 2007, I’d say that if you espoused the view that women are superior in the workplace, you’d maybe be considered a little wacky, but possibly progressive. Of course, it depends on circumstance (doesn’t everything?), but I’d imagine a man who lauds the superiority of women in a non-kinky context and with a modicum of tact would be praised. Yeah?
Second thing:
I find it a cross between a specialized form of wanking and a bid for attention.
Because I’ve been thinking about firing up a blog of my own (verdict: I have to read & comment more before I make one), I’ve been musing about the raison d’etre of blogging. Can’t all blogs (not just sex blogs!) be described by Richard’s phrase, at least in part? The psychology behind blogging, or something a little more network-y like Livejournal, fascinates me, and I wish I knew how to approach that question with any degree of seriousness.
Hiya M -
You’re right that if you were to go about your workplace just saying that women are innately superior, you might not get fired. (If you did the same about men, I’m sure the consequences would be much more extreme, which is just plain silly.) But if you said it in a work environment wherein you also have any kind of control over your fellow employees (hiring & firing, promotion, etc) then I’d say a pretty good case could be brought against you if an employee could demonstrate a particular instance of feeling discriminated against because of sex. We could poke around and find more specifics on the law itself, but that in the impression I have from the reading I’ve done thus far.
May and I have decided to make a prize called “I Wank Intellectually” and pass it around to people who do so. That’s a lot of people :). I think Richard’s comment can be applied generally, but plently of people have different intentions, and not everyone wants to think of their blog as intellectual masturbation. Heheh. Let’s have more of that conversation in person, yes?
You’re right that if you were to go about your workplace just saying that women are innately superior, you might not get fired. (If you did the same about men, I’m sure the consequences would be much more extreme, which is just plain silly.)
I have said this before, but I want to see more female dominants talk about this phenomenon, which extends itself far beyond the vanilla workplace and does indeed impact all combinations of genders and orientations negatively, IMHO.
It is one of those things that no matter how often is said by men, no one ever seems to listen to.
…not everyone wants to think of their blog as intellectual masturbation.
I think a case can be made that everything we do is masturbatory, if we can temporarily disassociate the word’s meaning from our genitilia. Whether or not people want to think one way or another, however, is another matter entirely.
May-
Yes, I am now also in love with that misspelling. I think it’s because it has a weird diminutive sound to it.
Thank you for your kind words regarding my blog.
Respectfully,
-john
john -
No worries. :). You’re welcome.
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