/fornicate/
The first time I witnessed bondage in pop culture was when I watched Pulp Fiction at the age of sixteen, the same year that Rhianna released her pop song S&M. Less than twelve months later, the bestselling grammatical nightmare that is Fifty Shades of Grey hit the shelves and I haven’t stopped hearing about it since.
BDSM (Bondage & Discipline/Dominance & Submission/Sadism and Masochism) is being drawn increasingly into the public eye and, more importantly, into the public conversation. Although this heightened visibility creates the opportunity for informed, positive dialogue about a community and way of life that have long been regarded as taboo, it also leaves an opening for misconception.
One of the big questions that arises as people feel more comfortable to talk about kinks and fetishes, either personally or in the abstract, is this: aren’t relationships with a female submissive and a male dominant inherently sexist? These are the gender roles that we fight hard to subvert in our everyday lives, so how can we live and act as feminists (or equalists, if the F-word scares you), and still want to be dominated sexually?
Reconciling these two, apparently opposing, desires can be a slippery slope. While the core tenet of feminism is unconditional equality and opportunity, including the freedom to express and explore your sexuality however you see fit, it cannot be disputed that we live in a patriarchal society. Our cultural understanding of sex and sexuality is therefore heavily influenced, if not defined, by patriarchal values. Under this banner fall the ideas that women enjoy acts of sexual submission because they are taught or conditioned to do so, and that the media and pornography industries inform our ideas of what is ‘sexy’ including clothing and lingerie, sexual positions, etc. Then there is the theory that, evolutionarily, women are hard-wired to desire dominant males because they are most likely to father strong offspring.
But this is the 21st-century. If we want healthy offspring we can pop down to the sperm bank and choose the most suitable co-parent for our progeny without ever having to meet them. And while our lives are affected to a point by the patriarchy, it is insulting to everyone’s intelligence to say that what we enjoy in the bedroom is dictated solely for us by that dark overlord of ‘society’. Isn’t this what feminism is about? Not accepting or conforming to the out-dated ideas of ‘femininity’ or ‘womanhood’ that we had no part in creating?
Many sexual acts and practices, including porn and sex work, have historically benefited men at the cost of exploiting women, but these things are increasingly being taken back and transformed into platforms for female empowerment. In an interview with Vice, adult film actress Sasha Grey talked candidly about coming to terms with her own interest in BDSM, saying that she initially felt that she “shouldn’t be thinking these things” as she searched for pornography depicting kink and fetish acts. So she began seeking to validate her own desires by sharing them with others. Another woman wrote a powerful blog post under the pseudonym Lucy Bee, titled Confessions of an Empowered Submissive, about accepting herself and her kinks after ‘feminist’ friends condemned male-dominant BDSM in the bedroom. Her revelation was simple and striking: “Did I make my sexual choice of my own free will? Yes. Do I enjoy my sexual choice? Yes! Isn’t that, in itself, empowering?”
Ultimately, wanting to be dominated by your partner/s in a controlled and consensual environment of mutual trust is not even in the same ball park as being dominated by social ideas of how you should be and act, as a person and as a sexual being. Feminism at its core is about equality, and exists not only so that you can express yourself sexually in any way that you choose, but so that you can feel comfortable and validated in doing so.
Regardless of whether you choose to make BDSM a lifestyle or occasionally enjoy a light spanking, rest assured that you don’t need to burn a bra to restore the balance of feminist karma. After all, nice underwear is expensive and the power is in your hands. What you do with it is entirely up to you.
