|
Esstee -> RE: Submissives who call the shots (2/19/2009 9:23:47 AM)
|
I've found some of the statements here to be a bit confusing. This is my first post on collarme, and I hope I'm complying with the protocols here. I'll mention, because of some of the remarks made about gender and identification, I'm female and identify as a master, rather than as a mistress.
To me there seems to be two issues here; feminism, and 'dominance expressed as submission'.
Feminism: I've identified as a feminist since 1976, and still do, even though it's become the F-word to many people. Many of my students (I teach university) have started remarks by saying "I'm not a feminist, but..." as if there were something wrong with being a feminist.
Feminism was and is the assumption that all people have the right of equal access - to education, to employment, to participation in public discourse, to assert their preferences sexually, and to whatever else the culture offers. Feminism came directly out of the civil rights movement of the early '60s, which found men having political conversations while women were in the kitchen making coffee and sandwiches. Some of those women started their own conversations about equal rights - for themselves - and all the civil rights issues that were being applied to people of colour started being applied to women. So, feminism is not, strictly, about women. It's about women being included as equals in all civil rights issues.
Personally, I don't see a relationship between feminism and being a submissive who calls the shots.
Dominance expressed as submission: First, our perceptions are affected by our expectations. If the expectation is that someone who identifies as submissive is entitled to respect and the expression of self-respect, then it's reasonable that the submissive person acts like a person, instead of a doormat. A person who is submissive has as much responsibility for choosing a compatible partner and negotiating suitable terms of play and/or relationship as a person who identifies as dominant. Regardless of their presentation of self, all the people involved are of equal value.
Once the relationship is negotiated and operative, the intrinsic equality of the people involved may be *expressed* differently. The submissive person has whatever rights have been negotiated. If s/he tries to exceed those rights, either by making inappropriate demands or by manipulation it's time to call a time-out and discuss and possibly renegotiate the dynamic.
Several people have been collared to me over the many years I've been in the scene, and I've found renegotiations of that sort to be very helpful. In my experience - and therefore in my opinion - those renegotiations have to be done out of role.
|
|
|
|
