On my recent post “Oh, just stop worrying what other people think”, a commentor made a very good point about dominance and gender roles:
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I don’t know how to flirt, I act too masculine and scare men away. Femdom doesn’t solve the issue because I am very far from the common idea of domme – I identify a lot more with male dominants. Which just makes me feel twice as bad, it’s one thing to fail at being what vanilla men want, I even fail at being what submissive men want.
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Society has very strict expectations for women, and it’s only more complicated when you add dominance to the mix. For starters, dominance itself is assumed to be masculine. To be dominant and a women is only acceptable to the extent that we turn submissive men on, and not at all acceptable if there aren’t any of them around.
And that’s even if we perform femininity “correctly”. God forbid we fail to be passive and receptive, to look fuckable at all times, and to always put men’s feelings first. Then no amount of hot, sexy dominance will make us anything but man-hating lesbians in the eyes of everyone around us.
Look at the way we describe women who take charge: pushy, bossy, bitch, man-eater, overbearing, domineering. Men get to be assertive or natural leaders, but women who act the exact same way somehow become unlovable freaks, destined to die alone and possibly get eaten by their many, many cats.
No wonder there are so few dominant women. Who wants to embrace a part of herself that she’s rightly worried will mean no one will ever love her for who she is?
Sadly, just being submissive doesn’t mean a man understands how restrictive society’s gender roles are for women (just because he thinks it’s hot when a woman he’s attracted to is assertive in just the right context, that doesn’t mean anyone else appreciates her), or make him secure enough in his masculinity to be able to deal with a woman who isn’t traditionally feminine, at least outside of the bedroom. Dominance is all well and good when it’s actively getting a man off, but what about submitting when the floor needs mopping and it’s not fun or sexy? Or when you’re tired and you just assume you can have a night off whenever you want one?
Or, and I realize this is kind of ridiculous and would never actually happen, but what if she’s not hot? What if she’s not tall, thin and pretty, with long hair and large breasts? What if, and now this is really out there, but what if she dresses or acts masculine? Do women who don’t look like Dominatrix Barbie get to be dominant too?
And that’s all just on the personal relationship level. What about telling your friends that you and your girlfriend started dating when she asked you out? What if they notice that you dress nicely to please her but she doesn’t dress up for you? Or that she doesn’t make excuses for it if she openly disagrees with you or outperforms you in some way?
With all the reasons even the most traditionally feminine dominant women have to feel like unlovable freaks, it’s a wonder any woman at all identifies as dominant.
“Society has very strict expectations for women”
…and for men too.
In traditional patriarchal societies, boys are privileged in many ways, but the downside is that they are required to act up to that privileged status and are vulnerable to social attack on their relative masculinity (not so much from women but precisely from men and especially male peer group – who for example ridicule others as girlie, as unmanly, with attendant loss of prestige and self-worth…).
Many, if not most men are incredibly insecure about their ‘masculinity’. But they’d better not show that insecurity or they’ll be toasted.
“Sadly, just being submissive doesn’t mean a man understands how restrictive society’s gender roles are for women”
Genuinely submissive men, i.e. men who are interested in more than just being bottoms who have nice things done to them (I call it letting HER have YOUR way), *are* aware of these issues, and would like to be part of the struggle. But maybe you’re right and they are as rare as hen’s teeth, or maybe there are more out there than are prepared to identify themselves.
Yes, it’s crazy, sad, and deeply depressing that after 50 years of feminism, we’re still locked into these ludicrous gender fixity problems, even in developed Western societies. Worse than that, the forces of reaction and bigotry are out and about everywhere attempting to use the economic crisis to push back and tear down all the hard-won gains of the post-war period.
You know what’s interesting? On my post about how hard it is for submissive guys in particular to just stop caring about what people think of them, it wasn’t until the 5th comment that someone started talking about how it’s hard for dominant women too. But when I try to talk about the shit dominant women in particular go through, the VERY FIRST comment is all about men.
I would genuinely love to be wrong on that one. By all means, show me a man who can let a discussion about how things are hard for women be about women.
So true, it’s an wonder why they do identify with dominant. Thank goodness many defy the odds, and society’s expectations. And with any relationship, they just need(deserve) to find the person who accepts them, feminine or not.
And being eaten by cats humored me immensely and made me remember the batman movie where catwoman was nibbled on by the cats, being unconscious. (Shoot, does that date me?)
Society has very strict expectations for women…. Sadly, just being submissive doesn’t mean a man understands how restrictive society’s gender roles are for women.”
You’d probably find few, if any, submissive men who couldn’t tell you that society has pretty strict and restrictive gender roles for men too, ones that are quite possibly stricter and more rigidly enforced, actually, given that 40 years of feminism have opened up a lot of opportunities for women (without any complementary movement existing to do the same for men), and that gender-conformity among males is often enforced with physical violence, especially in childhood and adolescence.
“Look at the way we describe women who take charge: pushy, bossy, bitch, man-eater, overbearing, domineering. Men get to be assertive or natural leaders, but women who act the exact same way somehow become unlovable freaks, destined to die alone and possibly get eaten by their many, many cats.”
I’m not sure who’s “we” here but men who act in a way similar to the adjectives used above, I describe as “pushy, bossy, asshole, dictator, overbearing, domineering,” and hardly at all as “assertive or natural leaders.” There’s a big difference between the two and it has nothing to do with gender: I’ve seen plenty of bad, overbearing, domineering, would-be “dominants” of both genders (and, gratefully, enough dominants of both genders as well whom I would get assertive and natural leaders in a heartbeat). Bad male dominants tend to get identified and policed more effectively on this score though, in part because there just are more male dominants to compare them against and to keep their egos and strutting in perspective. A smaller number of femdoms means that the bad, overbearing, domineering ones won’t get compared to better ones, or called out by better ones, as often (and they’ll probably have at least some desperate and overeager would-be male subs who will ignore their obvious faults in the midst of sub frenzy).
Female subs also tend to be much better than male subs at identifying bad, or potentially dangerous, dominants and cutting them a wide berth, because they know, for good reason, that hooking up with the wrong “dominant” could mean getting raped, seriously hurt, or even killed. (Protip: it’s a really good idea for male submissives to cultivate friendships with female submissives, to learn from them about how to size up dominants, and to get their opinions about which potential female dominants are worth talking to versus which to avoid. The ladies are way ahead of us on this score.)
“Or, and I realize this is kind of ridiculous and would never actually happen, but what if she’s not hot? What if she’s not tall, thin and pretty, with long hair and large breasts? What if, and now this is really out there, but what if she dresses or acts masculine? Do women who don’t look like Dominatrix Barbie get to be dominant too?”
Sure they get to be dominant, and they might have a really incredible D/s or BDSM relationship with someone who isn’t attracted to them, but a sexual or romantic relationship might be another matter altogether (or, at least a sexual or romantic relationship that is satisfying to their partner and/or doesn’t involve said partner needing to close their eyes and fantasize about being with someone else in order to get off). Attractiveness doesn’t need to determine whether someone’s D/s or BDSM abilities are up to snuff or not, and it’s a lot easier for a would-be dominant to buy a bunch of fetish gear and make-up for Saturday night than to actually take a few months or years, say, to learn kinbaku or high-protocol or to come up Old Guard-style as a bottom before you can top. The physiology that governs winning hearts and hard-ons tends to be a bit more intractable. Most of us guys though are attracted to a much wider range of things than pr0n, Hollywood, and Madison Avenue would suggest, so the floor for most of us in terms of who we are or aren’t going to get hard over leaves a lot of room beyond “Dominatrix Barbie,” fortunately. For what it’s worth, I think that almost anyone could probably be found attractive by someone out there, if perhaps not necessarily a very large number of someones. For me, I often like tomboys and women who look capable and active, more Norma Rae than Norma Jean. One ex- of mine I got more excited seeing in jeans, boots, a green military-style jacket, a do-rag and no make-up working on something awesome and complicated and messy with her hands than I would have seeing Beyonce after five hours in the make-up trailer. (And she was a far cry from “Dominatrix Barbie”: seven inches shorter than me and fighting a lifelong battle with her metabolism to keep her weight under control.)
I tend to assume though that people who pay no attention at all to their appearance or presentation—without making it an obsession or necessarily dressing up to impress other people—are communicating laziness, social gracelessness, and possibly disrespect, more than dominance or anything else good. Dominance ≠ simply saying “f*ck it” to social convention, at least not by itself. Social conventions have a power unto themselves, and being able to navigate and negotiate them reasonably successfully conveys power. There are always a few people that have got just that much force of personality and character that they can get away with audaciously ignoring or subverting social convention all the livelong day, and seem all the more powerful for it, but it’s the personality and character they had in the first place that lets them get away with ignoring the rules, not the ignoring the rules that gave them personality and character. If you really think that you’ve got the snap and pop in your step to look like you just rolled out of bed fifteen minutes ago yet still be noticeable at a fetish ball where everyone else took all day to get ready, and I’ve known a few people who could, then have at it, but it’s going to be up to other people whether you pull it off successfully or not.
So, you agree that “being submissive doesn’t mean a man understands how restrictive society’s gender roles are for women”? Because derailing a discussion about how being dominant is hard on women to talk about the only people who really matter, men, is not exactly respectful to women.
Let me google that for you: http://lmgtfy.com/?q=perception+of+female+managers
So, where exactly did I say that dominant women should be able to get away with being total slobs? I did say that it’s unfair to expect us to dress up for men, but what I meant was “dressing up” as in dressing up for a special occasion. Men can still be considered attractive when all they do is a “reasonable token effort”, that is, clean clothes, clean hair, beard trimmed or shaved. Women are expected to put a lot more effort into grooming themselves.
Moderator note:
This is a post about how gender roles constrain WOMEN. The fact that I spent the entire post talking about WOMEN might generally be recognized as a clue. This means that talking about how hard men have it is off topic. If you want to talk about how hard men have it, you will go here: http://www.notjustbitchy.com/oh-just-stop-worrying-about-what-other-people-think/ to do so. Alternately, you can wait for the post I’m working on about how rigid gender roles lead to equating submission with femininity. Either way, further comments mentioning how awful it is to be male will be edited to keep them on topic, or deleted if there is nothing left of them after the off topic parts are removed.
I apologise if I gave the impression of wanting to hijack the discussion of female discontent about gender roles and divert it towards a discussion of men.
Perhaps I should have posted something I wrote the other day that’s more on topic. Feel free to delete it if it’s not.
An anthropological view of this question is that feminity is “attributed” in the sense of being inescapable, and tending to manifest itself as restriction, not (earnable) privilege.
Traditionally a woman tended to be always “only a woman”, who if she “usurped” male forms of behaviour could be condemned, but also, just as symptomatically, could get backhanded praise (Look, she’s as brave as a boy, as clever as a man etc etc..Remember how the right-wing arseholes used to idolise Thatcher because she had more ‘balls’ than the men in her cabinet?).
Freud’s theory of ‘penis envy’ has been deservedly shot down in flames, but that leaves room for a theory of what could be called ‘penis resentment’.
Imagine a girl growing up and seeing all the power and privileges that are given to boys, at least to those who have earned their stripes of ‘masculinity’. She’d be stupid not to realise at a very early age that that she’s frustrated, restricted, and disempowered as a human being, and that those who are not subject to this frustration are boys and men, who, she soon observes, have one very obvious anatomical feature in common – the penis.
And she’d have to be abnormally compliant as a human being *not* to feel a tad resentful and not to want to kick against the pricks (pun intended). Of course, should that resentment dare to show itself she’s branded as a witch, or a bitch, or a shrew, or a miserable cow.
A dominant female friend once told me me how she used to copy her Dad’s shaving motions with a coffee scoop when she was little. Was she thinking that if she went through the appropriate ritual she would be allowed to join the club that seemed to confer so much power and freedom to its members?
I do appreciate the apology, but at the risk of derailing my own comment thread I have to point out that it’s not a very good apology. Using the phrase “I’m sorry if…” implies that whether you actually offended anyone is in question, which it is not. If I went to the trouble of posting a grumpy moderator note about something you’ve done, you can be certain that you caused offense.
Also, it’s not that you “gave the impression” of wanting to hijack the discussion, it’s that you did in fact try to hijack the discussion.
Here’s a new version of your apology with the suck taken out:
I’m sorry that I tried to hijack the discussion of female discontent about gender roles and divert it towards a discussion of men.
That’s much more interesting than some whining about how terribly hard it is being male, middle class and white. I can definitely see dominant women feeling like they have to emulate men if they want to have any power. When practically every behavior we see as powerful is also seen as masculine, it’s not exactly surprising that women aren’t terribly comfortable being dominant or being seen as dominant.
I’m the one who made that comment, I didn’t expect a post about this issue but thanks for bringing it up. It’s weird how little this gets talked about even in all these blogs that write about femdom critically.
I think the main problem here is that F/m as it exists has been defined almost entirely by men. This is true of course to some degree with relationships in general, they’ve traditionally revolved around men’s needs and wants, but I think it’s not as bad in vanilla or even M/f world. Sub women have been involved a lot with defining what they want from their relationships and sex – the 50 Shades of Grey phenomenon is just the latest example. Even Story of O was written by a woman, not to mention countless romance books with themes of female submission. In F/m on the other hand, it seems like only women who have been really involved defining what femdom means have been professionals – pro-dommes and porn actresses/creators. Us ordinary women with dominant desires have not been heard.
I see the stereotypical image of what femdom is supposed to be as just extremely unfair to women. Not only does it contain many of the traditional gender roles we already get offered in vanilla relationships (like that women are supposed to always make an effort to look good while men aren’t) but it also adds some extra restrictions (like how dommes shouldn’t want penetrative sex, shouldn’t want love/closeness, should never show weakness etc). And what does she get out of it? Some thrill of having power over a man who treats her as fetish toy & would bow down to any woman in latex?
Yes, femdom stereotypes are unfair for men but don’t forget that men are the ones who created them and most sub men, even when they dislike the “worthless worm” stereotype to some degree, still enjoy femdom porn and pro-dommes. Femdom revolves around male desires which is why it’s so broken and twisted. How am I supposed to feel like I have power when I’m constantly forced to do something that I hate, to fit a box that is way too narrow for me, to be able to count as “real domme”? I don’t see how corsets are supposed to symbolize power (if anything they are powerful symbol of female historical subjugation), same with high heels that make you vulnerable. And then there is the issue of objectification. With female subs it seems to be taken as granted that they like to be objectified and look good for their doms, but I’ve never heard of malesub doing that. Instead, the traditional gender roles remain, I’m supposed to work harder to please my man than he is supposed to work to please me. It’s not about being a slob like TomCatoNineLives implies, it’s about how strongly the ideas of what is considered attractive in women are tied to submission, tolerating discomfort, pain and working hard just to please men. And the fact that for many women like me, part of our sexuality is that we enjoy objectifying men – I know I’m not alone if I say that I want a man to look good for me because he KNOWS that it pleases me and makes me want to pin him down and do naughty things to him. I can’t be authentically who I am sexually if I am forced to play that role of object to someone’s subject – I want those roles reversed.
Hi Lisa:
“I think the main problem here is that F/m as it exists has been defined almost entirely by men…”
If nothing else, we’ve been the ones who’ve reliably showed up, given the oft-lamented unbalanced demographics of femdom. All we had to do that was based on what was in our own fantasies. We weren’t able to read the minds of all the potential femdoms who might or might not later show up to make a ready-made community and culture for them to come and be entertained by. If you don’t like our fantasies, what’s wrong with expressing your own, and finding ways to portray them, rather than just saying that ours suck? (Or are “broken and twisted” in your words… Why would you want to engage with people you consider broken and twisted, and who want to do things that you hate, by the way?)
Regarding the Bitchy Jones thesis, that the “other 95%” (whether they actually exist or not, but that’s a different issue) of femdoms who don’t show up are turned off or alienated by femdom culture, I had to call “chicken or egg” on that one. I’m not so sure whether it’s femdoms not showing up because they don’t like the imagery of the F/m scene, or it’s us having had to create the fantasy out of pr0n and pro-dommes to make up for the femdoms who either didn’t show up or who just don’t actually exist in sufficient numbers for most of us to find partners. Of course, both things could be true at the same time in a vicious circle: we have to create a fantasy world out of pr0n and pro-dommes because there aren’t enough dominant females, but those things also prevent more dominant females from getting interested. Discouraging thought that. Basically, we guys who’ve created F/m have had to imitate Pygmalion.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pygmalion_(mythology)
“Sub women have been involved a lot with defining what they want from their relationships and sex – the 50 Shades of Grey phenomenon is just the latest example. Even Story of O was written by a woman, not to mention countless romance books with themes of female submission.”
Maybe it’s the subs, rather than one gender or the other, in both F/m and M/f who do a lot of the heavy lifting in terms of expressing and seeking to fulfill their fantasies? Somehow it seems more OK though when femsubs do this, seek to actively contribute to and define the erotic culture of their scene, than when malesubs do. (Or at least I don’t hear a lot of femsubs getting called “broken and twisted” by male doms.)
From my experience in the LA kink scene (where I live), among male-dominant MDHL and similar groups, the female subs do A LOT of the practical heavy lifting of organizing and keeping events, groups, and organizations running. M/f would collapse completely without femsubs keeping it going, kind of like femdom ironically (of course, a lot of male doms are also just lazy, and want to spend their time strutting around looking bad ass like leather-clad, shaven-headed, pot-bellied peacocks while they leave all the real work to their women, but that’s not a model of dominance that I think is worthy of imitation).
If nothing else, we’ve been the ones who’ve reliably showed up, given the oft-lamented unbalanced demographics of femdom.
Yeah…unbalanced because many men won’t acknowledge a woman as dominant unless she does it in the way they fantasize about.
I have had alleged “subs” tell me I’m not a Twue Dominant because I refused to wear slutty, fetishy clothing for them. Let’s stop and think about this for a moment: I got disparaged as not-dominant for insisting on doing things my way.
I do not believe there are more male subs than female dominants. I believe that a whole lot of guys equate doing things that appear degrading with being submissive, so they falsely identify as subs. And I believe that a whole lot of women love the idea of taking control in a relationship but would never identify as dominant because they equate that with being a bitchy drill sergeant in leather and this image doesn’t appeal to them. So really, things probably even out.
If you don’t like our fantasies, what’s wrong with expressing your own, and finding ways to portray them, rather than just saying that ours suck?
Do you honestly think that all the women complaining about this issue are reluctantly shoehorning ourselves into heels and corsets we would never normally wear, and screaming orders in a voice that gives us a headache, because “Well, I guess that’s just what you have to do…*sadface*…”?
The complaint we’re making isn’t “why do I have to wear these stupid thigh boots, it’s not faaaaaair!” – if that were the case, maybe “don’t wear the boots, then” would be a viable solution. No, our complaint is it’s bullshit that many men will (paradoxically…) only view a woman as dominant if she’s catering to his specific fantasies. And expressing our own kinds of dominance isn’t fixing this. Maybe it will generations from now. But not any time soon.
I’ve been “finding my own ways” to portray dominance for over 20 years now. I get told on a regular basis that I don’t “look like the dominant type” or that I cannot in fact be dominant because I don’t wear leather or enjoy face-sitting/humiliation/having my ass eaten/etc. etc. etc. Or I get into an argument with a potential sub because he keeps whining at me to fulfill a fantasy that I have expressly stated is not on the table. Dudes mostly don’t see an atypical kind of dominant and expand their idea of what dominance looks like. They see an atypical kind of dominant and go “Pfft! She’s not a Real Domme!” It’s the ultimate, eternal, infuriating No True Scotsman argument.
I’m trying to process the cognitive dissonance of criticizing “one twue way”-ism and insisting on one’s own chosen path while at the same time deciding that someone else is falsely identifying as sub. What exactly is the problem in not being acknowledged as dominant by men you don’t consider sub? Sounds to me as though they’re “not the droids you’re looking for” and vice-versa. If they’re being rude, disrespectful, or manipulative, rather than just politely saying “thanks but no thanks,” then I agree that sucks.
On the one hand I do try to avoid outright saying “wow, so-and-so is just not submissive”, but on the other hand if someone chooses “submissive” from the role dropdown on their Fetlife profile, then messages me and refuses to talk about anything other than what I can do for him, what would you call him? The absolute kindest thing I can say there is “wow, you are so extraordinarily bad at expressing submission that you might as well not be submissive at all.”
Yep. It’s like there’s a connection between how unwelcoming the scene is to dominant women who don’t embody the stereotypes and how few women there are in the scene.
If only there was some way to make more women feel welcome…
There’s something terribly ironic about all the whining about how few dominant women there are and the total refusal to acknowledge a woman as dominant if she doesn’t behave just the way you expect.
Ugh. I got the exact same shit when I was actively looking for play partners. I used to give out deliberately vanilla pictures of myself to weed out the douchebags who expect me to be Dominatrix Barbie. It certainly worked, but even when you’re deliberately baiting jerks it’s kind of dispiriting how many of them take the bait.
I’d actually like to find a personal sub (the ridiculously adorable boyfriend is amazing at service but isn’t particularly interested in taking beatings, and sometimes you just want to beat the hell out of someone), but then I think about all the shit I’d have to wade through looking for a decent sub and my motivation just slinks into a corner and dies.
I’m totally guessing here, but I think it’s just easier for people to talk about sexy stuff than to rant about gender roles and deal with all the trolls who crawl out of the fucking woodwork to remind us all that while no matter how soul crushing women’s expected gender role is, what’s really important is that men can’t wear skirts without worrying about getting beaten up.
I would imagine things can get pretty bad in the maledom/femsub community, but I think you’re on to something there. Submissive women’s desires get into the mainstream so much more easily than dominant women’s do. I think a big part of that is that it’s so much easier to talk about a maledom/femsub dynamic without challenging society’s ideas about what men and women are supposed to be. It’s just a little kinky for a woman to be submissive, but a dominant woman is still a freak. Eventually that’ll change, but I don’t think it’s going to be any time soon.
Yep. There’s a reason the tagline on my blog is “And I’ll play wearing fuzzy slippers if I damned well want to!”. I did some bitching about the femdom dress code here: Fuzzy Slippers, and about the idea that female doms aren’t supposed to want to have sex (particularly penetrative sex) here Real dommes don’t have sex.
And this is exactly why all the whining and crying about how few dominant women there supposedly are drives me up a wall. To quote Bitchy Jones:
Ugh. I’m even willing to occasionally wear a corset and even more occasionally to wear heels, but it’s just the littlest bit suspicious to me that what dominant women are supposed to wear is so strangely similar to what submissive women are supposed to wear. It’s almost like the dress code isn’t about women’s desires at all.
And yet another link to one of my own posts I want to do the wanting. Oddly enough, I don’t feel very powerful when I’m the only one trying to look good for my partner.
Exactly!
How did I miss this post?
This is painful for me to read, because I love a woman who puts up with all of this crap on a daily basis. I honestly cannot believe that everyone cannot see how beautiful She is, and I shudder that She has to contain Her natural Dominance (even over me) when we are around others.
I hate people. People suck.
Check out the web site/forum “She Makes The Rules.”
This forum seems to be about non-kinky F/m relationships.
An important term-Female Led Relationship, or FLR
The word “Led” implies the word “leader”, and of course “Leader” has positive connotations.
Why not a woman as a leader?