Here’s this week’s cover, on newsstands and the iPad tomorrow morning. And the summary of the corresponding story:
In an age where women are dominating - in the workplace, at school, at home - why are they seeking to be dominated in their love lives? Recent media portrayals have shown that a rising number of modern women fantasize about being overpowered, while studies are turning out statistics that bewilder feminists. New shows like HBO’s Girls and books like Fifty Shades of Grey are showcasing the often hidden desire for powerlessness. But why? Katie Roiphe examines the submissive yet empowered female in Newsweek. “It is perhaps inconvenient for feminism that the erotic imagination does not submit to politics, or even changing demographics,” she writes.
We haven’t seen the cover story yet, but color us intrigued! Let’s hear your pre-thoughts, tumblr.
Whoa.
My thought is rage, frankly.
1. High powered people enjoying a bit of submission is nothing new. But we don’t write articles about it when it’s men. If we did, we’d just giggle about it, or say everyone needs a break, instead of pathologizing.
2. If women are dominating in all those places why are most executives still male? why are US women overall still making $.77 to every $1 a man makes? and have you talked to anyone lately in academia — there might be more women getting more degrees, but the Academy still silences and rips its women apart. Ask any of the many female acafans who know just how careful they have to be about being known to be fannish because they are women.
3. “The Fantasy Life of Working Women” — really? Like stay at home moms aren’t kinky? The whole thing sounds like a Mad Men-era “what the liberated woman wants in bed” slime piece.
4. The second you twine how I want to fuck and feminism, you’ve kind of just failed feminism, because the implication is my equality is determined by what turns my crank. That’d be no.
5. So let’s stop talking about sex as inconvenient. Let’s stop making desire a problem — personal or political. Just…. UGH.
6. Also, fuck you and your pretty fake show bondage. Because yes, submission is a big category for a lot of kinks, including being a pretty, pretty thing, but if we’re really going to talk about the desire to submit, doing so in a way that only highlights the generally non-rewarding way women are asked to submit every day by making sure they are that white/thin/pretty/delicate/femme/cis-gendered enough and then paying the price for it if they’re not, misses the point of everything that is gorgeous about kink, desire, communication, surrender and more.
Look, I know it’s written by a woman and it seems to be addressing these concerns sorta kinda in what we know, but I have a bad feeling about this. And bucket of salt: I’m someone who has an uneven and difficult relationship with their submissive history, current kink reality, place in the world, and intermittent needs and all of that’s intersection with gender, so my opinion is biased and flaily. But god, I think I am not amused.
“Oh those silly ladies. When will they learn they have no place in dominant working positions. Even their lady bits tell them so! They’re just fooling themselves~”
UGH GAG ME WITH A FUCKING SPOON.
“Why surrender is a feminist dream” TALK ABOUT MANIPULATIVE, PANDERING PIECE OF SHIT.
The last thing we need is to give misogynists more fodder. As lettersfromtitan said, KINK SHOULD NOT BE USED AGAINST SOMEONE. Which is exactly what this fucking blurb describes. OH THE NUMBERS SURE ARE PUTTING FEMINISTS IN A TIZZY, THEY DON’T WANT ANYONE TO KNOW THE TRUTH THAT LADIES LOOOOOOVE BEING SUBMISSIVE
No, fuck you, the truth is we don’t care what makes people sexually happy past the blanket statement of “FUCKING GO FOR IT, FUCK RESPONSIBLY AND WITH CONSENT. GRAB A CONDOM IF YOU NEED ONE AND REMEMBER YOUR BIRTH CONTROL”. What we care about is uneducated, disingenuous assholes turning kink into an excuse for patriarchal oppression.
So in closing;
Fuuuuuuuuck you.
I read this a few days ago and it was aggravating.
The author only ever mentions sex as a physical encounter between a man and a woman. Seriously, there was nothing in there at all about the LGBT ten percent, and that pissed me off. For an article that’s supposedly about women, it should be about ALL women.
The author might be a woman, but that doesn’t mean she can’t make sexist statements. Most of what I got out of the article was “Hey, look, women are subservient to men in bed.” Kind of a punch in the gut to queer women everywhere.
