 |
| This is bad? |
Updated 10.02.2005: The linsk on this page seem to have been lost, so I have no references. Most of them were fromt he old Ms. Magazine message forum which has since been dissolved fo from the Michigan Womyn’ Festival and The Margins. If you find any specific links, let me know and I’ll add them back in.
Well, we all know how evil that nasty BDSM is. It’s sick, twisted, bad, hot as hell and needs to be stopped. Fortunately, the feminists are leading the way. Remember, evil evil evil!
Star stupidity quote: “I think that SM practitioners, whether they are feminists or not, do not resist the way their experiences of abuse inform their longings. They basically cave. With a whole lot of encouragement from the SM movement.” – quote in context
Something actually intelligent: “well, i happen to disagree with Radical Feminists thoughts on SM. They think seeing a woman in leather with a studded collar is forcing them to partake in some random SM scene, much like religious folks believe seeing two women kiss in public is forcing them to partake in a homosexuals lifestyle…it just doesnt make sense. No ones forcing you to agree with what you see, or even accept it really, just acknowledge that we all have equal rights to express who we are.” – quote in context
Well, there is a long way to go with this one… read along, hit a few threads, be amused. There’s nothing like seeing the ignorant of the world tell you you are too stupid to spot your own abuse to make you feel empowered!
- “Why is it so frightening for women to claim their own sexuality and let sex empower them? What is so scarey about two women negotiating their own sexual encounters with each other and not asking for approval from “radical feminists”? Why do “radical feminists” get to dictate what’s not ok in the beds of people they aren’t sleeping with?” – quote in context
- “was reading this and wondering if maybe it’d be more accurate/useful to say that the majority of WOMEN, in general, have been sexually abused — or even that all women, due to living in the world we have to live in, are sexually abused in myriad ways. And that, because of this, women learn to respond sexually to our own abuse.” – quote in context
- “So the thing I keep coming back to in all this is that, if someone has an investment in a sexuality of dominance and submission–if someone’s orgasm or sexual pleasure or release is dependent on imagining another woman’s submission, or on dominating or humiliating another woman, or on being submissive and degraded herself–then how able and willing is that woman going to be to work alongside me for a world free of violence and abuse?” – quote in context
- “I think, for example, that any child who was ever paddled (“spanked”) by a parent or school principle or other authority was abused, and that it is an abuse which, if not outright sexual, has sexual overtones.” – quote in context
- “How is the way someone erotisizes domination in SM any different than how a woman having sex with a man erotisizes giving head, with everything that goes along with a woman performing oral sex on a man, and especially if the erotic nature of the act is, for that woman, tied to all those abusive images around women performing oral sex?
My first thought is that it is not very different, not different at all. Women willingly participate, act like and feel like they want to do both, both have erotic power for the women but both are very much tied to domination/submission that is erotisized. I dont know, I feel like SM just makes the dynamic really obvious and overt where in “normal” het sexual interactions its much more covert and the dynamic is not even labled as domination/submission (sometimes it is but often not) but called something like “natural male and female behavior” or “mens and womens nature” – quote in context
- “Not so with SM. SM practitioners KNOW they are participating in dominance and submission, they celebrate it, and they are political activists on behalf of it, including as a “lifestyle.”. They think it’s great, just fine, including for feminists. Their consciousnesses have been raised all right as to dominance and submission, and contra everything feminism stands for or ever stood for, they are embracing dominance and submission and advocating for it.”
- “As the saying goes, you can’t stop the birds from flying overhead, but you can keep them from nesting in your hair. I think the difference between viewing SM as a good thing and entering into it volitionally — no matter WHY you do it, whether you think it’s transgressive or cathartic or fun or fantasy or healing or liberating or empowering or godly or righteous or obedient to scripture or your role as godly religious people or whatever — and participating in it in a way that is not mindfull, that is a result of living under male supremacy, is a big and important difference. In the one case you have, again, people dedicated to seeing to it that dominance and submission in relationships and sexuality continue. In the other, you have people who are more or less ignorant, and hence, educable. ” – quote in context
- “Well, that was my response. My point was that I can’t avoid SM at Fest, no matter what I do. There is no way for me to ensure that somewhere, sometime, I am not going to see or hear things which deeply offend me as a feminist, things I have left behind and believe to be harmful to women. I am going to see womyn on leads or womyn dressed in sm regalia, or tables full of leather gear and sm books, I’m going to hear or see the movies, I’m going to get invited to the Zone.” – quote in context