**This is Part I of a three-part post.
The measure of a group’s oppression is not how well their oppressors can convince them to accept their lot, or how completely they give up hope of rebellion; nor is it the extent to which their sense of self becomes so thoroughly annihilated that they lose awareness of the very fact they’re oppressed.
No.
The measure of it, is how well you can convince them to enjoy their oppression. To revel in it. To seek it out. To regard subordination and pain as a path to freedom. The measure of it, is how many women you can get to embrace the belief they are being subversive when they are permitted to glorify their degradation.
Following a recent real life incident I have thrown myself into researching the world of sadomasochism. I’ve been looking at websites and blogs of BDSMers for over a week and, let me tell you, journeying the black tunnel into the minds of men has been a rough ride.
BDSM is inextricably linked to porn, so researching the “lifestyle” without being bombarded with pornography is impossible. Try conjuring up the worst scenario your brain will allow, multiply the sadism by five hundred, then picture that image magnified, displayed in a luxurious setting, photographed with clever lighting, and judged as ”art”. But we’re still not even getting close to what men do to women, because the image must then be replicated in a thousand original ways with thousands of different women, each placed in a situation more humiliating, degrading and painful than the next.
Imagine the oppressor group–men– boasting about their hatred of women without a hint of shame, bragging about the fact that they are disturbed, half-built, brittle, psycho-sexually defunct people, who must destroy women in order to stave off the feelings of impotence, which arise–I’m guessing– through being forced by fate to inhabit male bodies…
The patriarchal set-up
For certain women, why is BDSM the most intense sex they have ever experienced?
I believe this is the most important question we can ask about women’s sexuality.
Female sexuality is distorted and stunted by patriarchal societies. It is possible that today’s young woman experiences her first sexual encounter with a boy who has already watched porn, and has certain expectations of her. He may expect her to be “well-groomed” and have a repertoire of male-pleasing tricks up her sleeve.
To me, this is a mind-boggling state of affairs. When I was a teen, boys were GRATEFUL to get into your knickers. There were no PIV expectations placed upon you until about seventeen when they turned into men, by which time you had gained enough experience of your sexuality to gather a sense of what you liked.
My friends and I generally liked night-long sessions of sensual PIV-free love with an adoring partner. I thank my cultural background for allowing me the freedom to experiment alongside my close female friends, with boys of the same age whose sexuality had not yet been fully influenced by the phallic-worship of their patriarchal elders (mostly it took place at house parties when our parents were away or camping trips in the nearby forest).
When boys become men it all changes. PIV is the focus, and newly-minted men regard it as their dues. They forget their early experiences (if they were lucky enough to have any), and begin dehumanizing women by projecting their narrow, circumscribed version of sexuality onto them. Women try to adapt. They may decide to have intercourse out of peer pressure, or curiosity about the Big Secret, having swallowed the line that there is a causal link between PIV, pleasure and womanhood.
Afterwards, they are shocked by the anti-climax, and at just how rubbish PIV sex is vis-a-vis how dangerous it is to their female body . They think there must be something wrong with them. True, it gets better the more you practice. But perhaps the risk is only worth it for women who cannot imagine sexuality existing in any other form.
If a woman can somehow hang onto her early girlhood experiences she may remember that there is another way, and that there is something lacking about adult male sexuality, an expectation gap which cannot be filled.
But what if she forgets? Or what if her first sexual experience was intercourse? The scene is set for a lifetime of disappointments and almost-orgasms at best, and at worst, unexpected pregnancies for not much pleasure in return.
What we’re all supposed to forget that female sexuality was not originally defined by men. Patriarchal rule deploys all the weapons it can to prevent us from recollecting the fact that:
“Woman has sex organs just about everywhere. She experiences pleasure almost everywhere” [Luce Irigaray, in Greer, 1999]
“A woman is like a sponge. You pour pleasure in the top and she keeps sucking it up until it drips out the bottom, but she still absorbs more. They can never get enough. I’m very jealous of women’s ability to do that” [Joel Ryan, in Greer, 1999]
“I have come to believe…that female biology–the diffuse intense sensuality radiating out from the clitoris, breasts, uterus, vagina; the lunar cycles of menstruation; the gestation and friction of life which can take place in the female body–has far more radical implications than we have yet come to appreciate. ” Adrienne Rich, in Greer, 1999]”
The potency of female sexuality is ignored, chopped down to size, and realigned to serve men’s needs. I believe that the radical feminists of the seventies were right, when they said that the revolution will take place when this particular Pandora’s box is prized open.
Once a woman understands her body’s potential, and what sex actually is, how can she can ever again be satisfied with the half-a-glass offerings of patriarchy? It’s spells patriarchal doom. As well men know. Which is why throughout the ages they have kept strict control over female sexual expression through a reign of terror. Severe punishments (usually death) for sexual crimes such as adultery have been meted out to women, with no corresponding punishment for men. More methodical means, such as clitoridectomies have also been very popular. This practice has existed all over the world, including Europe and America ( in the UK, women who wanted a divorce were subjected to this procedure, which was deemed as “very successful” by the medical establishment). Women freeing themselves of patriarchal-defined sexuality is a frightening thought to men. Marriage, as we are seeing, does not survive when you can no longer convince women that sex must be confined to its stalls. And what on earth would happen to heterosexual women, if they came to understand that a penis was not necessary for sex?
What women claim to get out of the BDSM experience is the euphoria of transcendence. They talk of a sense of stillness and peace, of sharpened mental faculties in the days after being involved in a “scene”, an ability to think more clearly, of being better able to focus on the mundane tasks allocated to them, and of finding it easier to meet their obligations.
So what exactly are they transcending? The answer has to be daily life and “vanilla” sex. Vanilla sex is a derogative term used by BDSMers to describe the once-a-week-with-the-light-out sex that long term heterosexual couples are said to engage in. It is boring, goes the argument.
I’ve no doubt that it is.
Having coerced, obligatory PIV once a week with one Nigel is indeed very boring. This practice is not connected in any way to innate female sexuality, however, but is one of the demands patriarchy places upon women i.e. to sexually serve one man. And let’s not forget that men–as a group– are notoriously incompetent in the bedroom, which is another reason why women are prone to feigning headaches, or lying back and thinking of England.
Compared to this, BDSM does seem like an exciting alternative.
BDSM, then, is the solution patriarchy offers to women in place of the joyless, mundane, sexuality-less intercourse-posing-as-sex that women have to be “up for” unless they want to be labelled frigid.
And what is daily life to women, except patriarchal oppression? If an endorphin high frees women up in some way to enjoy their lives….. then what does this tell us about women’s lives?
Could it be, that women’s lives are unbearable and that the outer-body experience offered by being a sub is a short-term escape? Sub women talk of the sense of being unable to move when restrained and how this feeling frees them from having to think…
It. frees. women. from. having. to. think.
Women are the busy-bees of the human race, doing all the work that makes life worth living. They’re the ones with the shopping lists in their heads, the itinery of household stock to account for, the kids’ birthday parties to organize. They are the office tea-ladies, the carers, the till staff at the supermarket check-out, the toilet cleaners, the P.As to Big Men…Women daren’t stop running on the hamster’s wheel because they’re not quite sure where they will land if they fall, but they’ve got a sneaking suspicion it will be someplace worse than they are right now. Women’s lives are constructed to be empty.
BDSM is the final solution offered by the very people who have caused the problem in the first place. Like shopping, it is a legitimized outlet for female frustration and rage.
There are even some women who participate in a slave lifestyle, which means that their male partner, often a husband, dictates every decision in their lives, including what they wear– which sounds so similar to your average conservative patriarchal marriage over the ages and across geographical space that it’s hard to tell it’s a “kinky” BDSM relationship at all! I know married women whose identities are defined by their love of cooking and cleaning. I want to tell them that it’s lucky they do love it because the shit would hit the fan if they just stopped–and that it’s only when we try to move that we begin to feel our chains.
That was a terrible thing to have happen and I hope that your writing about it is helping you to work through it. <3
Plus there’s another bonus feature: “Sorry honey, I’m too tired. I spent the day cooking and cleaning. For you.”
