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Titaniya -> RE: Your opinions? An interesting read imo. (10/7/2012 11:01:39 AM)
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I'm going to make a few scattered statements as I read. Hopefully some kind of coherency will peek through.
I think I've felt the effects of "domism." When I first entered The Scene,* I identified as a switch for various reasons. As I developed both within kink and outside of it, I started to identify much more strongly with the dominant side of things to the extent that the submissive/bottom side faded out, and I changed my listed role accordingly.
While no one treated me poorly per se as a "switch," there seemed to be a bit of superiority in the way people (particularly female-identified dominants) spoke to me, both when talking about kink and not. After I changed to a "domme," they started treating me as an equal - they listened more closely to what I had to say and the manner with which they spoke to me changed. Obviously, some of that is probably my internal bias, and some of it might be due to the growing amount of time we'd spent together, but it seemed so instantaneous that I'm fairly certain some of it was also what I identified myself as. I've never listed myself as submissive, so I can't give perspective on that.
As far as the article goes... It seems to make some valid points concerning gender roles and kink orientations. I do think submissive men tend to be viewed as "lesser" in some contexts, and I'm certainly curious about the sociological influences that might help explain the tendency for women to choose submissive roles and men to choose dominant ones.
One of the cited quotes says: "...she argues, men are likely to assume that women are submissive, and further, to create a (one-way) relationship of dominance (through inappropriate touching, or through language) with these women." This strikes me not as a bias about kink orientations but rather sexism enabled by men applying labels to themselves. Outside the community, it's been my experience that men in other social gatherings assume women are (well, I am) submissive/weak/etc because I'm female and small (before talking to me). I feel like men who do it in kink contexts just use their "dominant" label to justify their assumptions and their "rights" over women.
I feel that the article is, to an extent, targeting dominant men in its criticisms. From a feminist sort of perspective, that's par for the course, but it bothers me because most of the people I've felt "domism" and other oppression from within my local community have been women. This might be because my local community has an abnormally high number of female dominants (or female switches that lean that way)... I've had better success consistently getting treated as an equal by and making friends with male dominants and switches than female ones. On a fairly related note, I believe I only know one or two male submissives through my local community, so I can't give a comparison of that role between the genders.
From another cited quote: "Much like service topping, badass bottoms occupy the lowest status among bottoms; terms like 'do-me bottom' and 'just a masochist' illustrate the perspective that without claims to powerlessness, SM play is less meaningful." - It's been my experience that those terms aren't applied to masochists and bottom-but-not-submissive types, but rather to people who solicit a lot of random tops/dominants for play, usually without knowing them and without trying to get to know them and get annoyed when they're refused. I've never seen a bottom who asked for a non-D/s play session with a top-type they already knew or were friends with get any backlash for it.
I'm not sure where I stand on the article overall, and I'm not sure I buy most of its arguments, but it's certainly given me quite a bit to think about. Thanks for posting it.
*My offline experience within The Scene is limited both by time (it's been a little over a year now) and location (I've stayed in the Bloomington/Indianapolis area).
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