One morning in September when I was fifteen years old, I woke up at 6am and drove, with my two best friends and one parent chaperone, to King Richard’s Faire in Massachusetts, thus cementing forever my most extreme form of geekery: Renaissance faires.
One of the moments I remember from that day was meeting a skinny man in a purple shirt. He had a small pewter dragon nestled on the ridge of his ear, and he took my hand in his, bent down, and kissed my knuckles. I remember feeling him caress my skin with his lips. It was the most shocking thing a stranger had ever done to me; I remember the jolt that slipped up my arm and down again.
I was one of those little girls who thought the knights and princes of fairy tales were fascinating. Early and prolonged exposure to romantic adventure novels wrapped chivalry part-and-parcel up with gallantry, attraction, and once I started going to faires, with sex. It is fair to say that a large part of my sexual awakening came about because I became a rennie. On weekends and in summers I skipped like a fat, awkward stone right out of high school hell and into costume, bawdy songs and dirty jokes. I made friends with men who bemoaned my less-than-legal age, who bought me roses, called me beautiful, knelt, oh god, at my feet.
And Renaissance faires were also my first real exposure to the gender-role bending of fairy tales. So I forgot, for a little while, that the brides of white knights were constantly getting swept away on white horses. That the kind of man I liked was once again a dominant man. In gender-bent fairy tales, strong women are matched with strong men. I wasn’t thinking about power yet; that was as far as I got.
But it wasn’t enough.
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I remember the first time a man kissed my hand at a ren faire. I was very taken aback. But a few years ago, all this stuff was my entire life.
Until you learn how to live the life you want in reality, roleplaying and fantasy geekery must suffice.
I started hanging out with the SCA while I was in college; my experience was very similar. An unattractive, overweight, awkward girl got to play the part of a strong, desirable, sought-after woman. And you know what? Once I realized I could let it, that role became part of me instead of a mask I’d wear on weekends. Formative stuff, that.
I’d almost forgotten the wonder of those first ‘adventures’ (almost 20 years ago! Gah.)…thanks for the pleasant reminder. :)
I fell off that twisting ladder game. Really hard. But other than that King Richard’s Faire was a lot of fun. No one ever kissed my hand though.
I never went to RenFaires, I can’t quite understand why, unless they don’t have them in the UK, but this seems unlikely. I used to do LARPing, and enjoyed that as an outlet to play with different identities, and also fun impossible stuff like magical binding, telepathic control, and fighting to the brink of death before being healed.
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[...] Chivalry, and I will go so far as to say romance, though many people will doubtless disagree with me, not only hurts men, submissive or otherwise, it hurts women, dominant or otherwise. Chivalry (and romance, which always seems to be monogamous) puts Woman, The Object of Desire, shiny, “pure,” “virginal,” and “good,” on a pedestal, only to be taken out by a man to sing odes to, to lay flowers at the feet of, to make promises to, until he no longer needs her and locks her back in her bower. I say this as someone who loves Tolkien, a man who loved to put shiny-pure-virginal-good women on pedestals and leave them there forever and ever into eternity. Literally. [...]
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