by cherryblossomlife

**This is part III of a three-part post. Part I and Part II are here.

S & Love

After diving into the complicated depths of female masochism, addressing sadism is like coming up for air. Due to its simplicity. Because a woman should never forget that whatever her personal feelings on the matter, and whether or not she gets off on pain and humiliation, the inescapable truth is that she is with a man who enjoys hurting her.

This may sound obvious. But many women seem to be in complete denial over the fact that men really and truly do want to hurt them; despite the fact that the patriarchal propaganda of porn has now permeated the entire world. Turn on the TV any night of the week, watch almost any movie, and it will invariably involve men hurting women. In a brilliant Orwellian coup, men have somehow managed to convince women that hate is love.

What would happen if all women realized that men, in general, want to hurt them?

In the words of one sadist:

” This scene was the first time I ever experienced “dom space” or “god mode”. This girl took every thing that I threw at her and begged for more. almost 90 minutes into a scene that should have lasted no more than 40 and I finally snapped to and realized that she would NEVER ask me to stop. She flat out couldn’t. Not that she was spaced, not that she was unconscious, or that she was out of it. It just wasn’t in her nature. Now, I have seen this sub receive more pain and punishment than what I put her through, but I was not at the level of skill to provide that level of pain safely. I had to call MY safeword and have someone else take over the scene” “…In that particular scene with the ‘black hole’ I was afraid that she would continue accepting to a level that would cause harm. At the moment that I knew I could no longer continue I clearly remember thinking to myself “I could kill her and she would thank me with her dying breath.” That, as one could imagine, shook me to my very core. I find myself, as do most of the people around me (or so they tell me), to be a fairly gentle person with a compassionate nature and a big heart. The thought that I had put myself into a position where such a thing is possible made me physically ill.”

Perhaps when women talk about the empowerment of submissiveness, they are actually talking about the power of the double bluff: “You want to hurt me? Screw you; you’ll never hurt me more than I want to be hurt myself.”

At least sadistic males are honest when they use sadomasochism to eroticize society’s subordination of females– getting off on the fact that in all areas of society, from politics to business to law, women have very little power. Charlotte Croson points out that it is, quite literally, the eroticization of power difference: “the erotic kick of power disparity, that is the sine qua non of patriarchal sexuality“.

I found the first-hand accounts of sadists refreshing to read because so often women are fed lies about men’s motivations. We are bombarded with patriarchal reversals, designed to throw us of the scent. We are pointed in the direction of beautiful poetry, as though no further proof be needed that men. love. women. We are supposed to turn a blind eye to the fact that while these gallant bards were coining sumptuous stanzas in the name of the fairer sex, real women were, quite literally, chattel in the eyes of the law.

Love songs and Valentine’s day serve the same purpose. “Love” is the concession men have traditionally offered women. In Sexual Politics, Millet shows us that “love” is a form of chivalry, men’s way of allowing women to save face, so to speak:

It is generally accepted that Western patriarchy has been much softened by the concepts of courtly and romantic love. While this is certainly true, such influence has also been vastly overestimated. In comparison with the candor of “machismo” or oriental behavior, one realizes how much of a concession traditional chivalrous behaviour represents–a sporting kind of reparation to allow the subordinate female a means of saving face. While a palliative to the injustice of woman’s social position, chivalry is also a technique for disguising it. One must acknowledge that the chivalrous stance is a game the master group plays in elevating its subject to pedestal level. Historians of courtly love stress the fact that the raptures of the poets had no effect upon the legal standing of women, and very little upon their social status. As the sociologist Hugo Beigel has observed, both the courtly and the romantic versions of love are “grants” which the male concedes out of his total powers. Both have the effect of obscuring the patriarchal character of Western culture…”(Millet, pp37)

Perhaps we can draw a parallel between Millet’s analysis of the way “love” keeps women bound to their oppressors and the way that male sadists make concessions with their female subs. I know of a case where a woman’s husband would beat her black and blue and then kiss and bathe her bruises afterwards with sweetest tenderness. And in the article S & M story, one woman describes how her husband was at his most loving and kind right before he was about to abuse her:

I felt like a sort of traitor. He would talk to me, tell me how much he loved me, as he was tying me up, spread eagle, to our marriage bed. He would kiss me gently, more gently than he ever kissed me before we fell into this strange ‘fantasy’ of BDSM. Then he would hit me, or whip me, or stick strange things inside of me and I was supposed to like it. I knew, somewhere inside of me, that I was supposed to like it. The confusion set in and my mind became divided. This was my husband, the man I had sworn to be with, the man who pledged his love to me. Surely, he didn’t WANT to hurt me, and, even if he did, it was my husband, the man I loved. The man who loved me. I was supposed to be enjoying his attentions.

The author of the article was a completely dehumanized, generic “woman”. When a man hurts a woman, especially through a sexual violence, the nullification of her humanity is horrifying to her: she is suddenly forced to see herself through men’s eyes. The scapegoated women are no longer Over There Far Away in the brothels, she has transitioned, become the scapegoat known as Everywoman. She glimpses for a moment the woman-hatred that society attempts to contain by channelling it towards prostitutes. [Not that her experience is in any way comparable to a prostituted woman]

The love and adulation of men, even if it were genuine, does nothing to better the lot of the particular living woman (Greer). A woman would do well to believe a man when he demonstrates that he hates her. It seems to me, that if a man declares his undying love, the only sane thing for a woman to do is to run for the hills.

The lyrics to the song, Where the Wild Roses Grow cannily demonstrate that love, sex and death are one and the same in phallocracy. Written by Nick Cave in 1995 for the album “Murder Ballads” , it succinctly sums up the interchangeability of women in the eyes of men; the necessary dehumanization of females (necessary, that is, for the continuation of patriarchy) and the male lust for necrophilia.

“They called me the wild rose

But my name was Eliza Day

Why they called me that I do not know

For my name was Eliza Day…”

Male masochism

Another commonly made mistake is the concept that female dominatrices are able to exert tangible power over men.

Yet more lies.

When a woman is a “domme”, she is still serving men. As Sheila Jeffreys points out in Beauty and Misogyny, male masochistic fantasies involving women are based on the amusing pretense that the power dynamic has shifted, an erotic pretense, which of course could not exist without the actual subordination of women in real life. When a man pays a prostitute to “subordinate” him, it is clear where the real power lies. Jeffreys makes the point that a person with true power out there in the world would not need to spend her time dealing with the bodily fluids of men in exchange for cash. Whether she is a prostituted or a voluntary domme, outside of the BDSM scene nothing has altered: the man’s place in society is set in stone.

Male subs appear to be acutely aware of this fact, whereas women in the BDSM scene come across as being surprisingly ignorant of the true nature of male masochism. They seem to fall for the notion that they are powerful, when in fact their role is to cater to male sexuality. The female domme’s enjoyment is neither here nor there. If she enjoys it, all the better. If he can’t find a woman who enjoys it, well that’s what prostitutes are for.

Or if you’re a heterosexual guy who likes being a bottom, and you happen to have a spare female slave handy (aka a wife) you can call yourself “trans” and coerce her into pretending you’re both lesbians [true story!].

Whether “top” or “bottom” it is the men who are in control every step of the way, thanks to their caste status: male.

“In SM pornography and prostitution women are beaten, tied up, fistfucked, burnt, cut, by the male customers. But women perform the role of dominatrix to men too, because that is a way that men can gain the excitement of submission in an environment that they control. As fashion pornography has incorporated men’s sexual interest in sadomasochism both these two sex industry roles on the part of women are represented for men’s sexual excitement.” (Sheila Jeffreys, Beauty and Misogyny pp. 91)

In the same vein, fashion house designers such as Thierry Mugler claim that their BDSM-porn influenced designs empower women:

“There are other remarks by Mugler which indicate his philosophy. He says that he seeks to make women powerful, “I only like women who have power. I put women on top of the world.” (1998, p. 85) This sounds very like the sentiments of McQueen above. It is hard to accept unless we believe that dominatrix prostitutes really have power in the world. Women who seek power are more likely to want to enter the media, or IT or some other aspect of the corporate world rather than dealing with men’s bodily fluids for economic survival.” He tells us that, “The Mugler woman is a conqueror who controls her looks and her life. She is free, self confident, and she’s having fun.” (1998, p. 202) The women covered in black vinyl and insect paraphernalia don’t look as if they are having a tremendously good time, however. He continues, “Every woman has a goddess within. I like to bring her out.” (p.110) But why a goddess would be dressed in the stigmata of sadomasochism is not clear. Mugler explains his porno vinyl look by stating, “Black leather, vinyl, nothing’s more classic than that.” (1998, o. 138). Black vinyl does have a history, but not in women’s everyday fashion. It has a history in men’s fetish clothing stores. It is a classic of pornography. Mugler opines that, “Elegance is courage and audacity, and an animal instinct that shows in every movement. It is harmony and oneness, and enjoying one’s body.” (p.164). This is opposite a photo of a woman with material draped across her torso and held up by nipple rings. Elegance is not the first word that comes to mind.” (Sheila Jeffreys, Beauty and Misogyny pp. 101)

Furthermore, to many men “woman” and “masochist” are interchangeable. Which is why so many men have confused themselves into believing they’re female, when of course they’re not.

“For conservative men who want to gain the sexual excitement of masochism it may seem impossible to remain “men” because they associate manhood with dominance. But women and lesbians do not base their self-definition on sexual masochism. This is not the very core of our understanding of ourselves as it is for autogynophiles…. There is an arrogance in the assumption on the part of such men that their sexual interest in subordination makes them women…” (Sheila Jeffreys, Beauty and Misogyny, pp 61) Peter calls himself a “lesbian”. He is quite open about the fact that being a woman means masochism to him, and says: “We haven’t even talked about the masochism of it all. I think, sexually, there is a desire to be punished, and part of that is the illusion of what women are. That they’re there to be the sexual object and there to be the punished object. It all kind of goes together… There is a degradation aspect to it, of giving up control. Part of the whole transsexual experience is to live that fantasy of spreading your legs and being fucked. (Vitzhum, 1999) The cross-dressing author Charles Anders notes: It may be politically incorrect, but I’m guessing a lot of guys associate wearing slips and hose with a passive, receptive role in sex… For some guys, becoming feminine could be part of a fantasy of submission, where someone else ties them up and spanks them, or dresses them up as a French maid named Fifi and makes them serve cannolis on their knees. (Anders, 2002, p.1o in Beauty and Misogyny pp. 59)

In the video below, “Amanda” is a typical autogynephile who sees “woman” and “masochist” as synonymous. [I don’t actually recommend watching this vid, by the way. It is a lengthy diatribe of the life journey of one male dom. But because of his homosexuality (I assume) and perhaps because of his pretty-boy looks, he was subjected to many of the same experiences that girls are growing up. He shows symptoms of trauma which stand out when they manifest in men, but are par for the course when exhibited by women.]

The Dark Side of Porn – Me and My Slaves (2006) from FlangeFart on Vimeo.

To BDSM Activism

The aim of The National Coalition for Sexual Freedom is to raise awareness and promote the normalcy of sadomasochism. BDSM has now become a movement. In a painful irony, women are expending valuable energy marching on the streets for their right to be accepted as subs by society. They demand social acceptance for their “alternative” lifestyle and seek understanding from family and friends. There is much hand-wringing over when is the best moment to “come out”, and they hope one day that their lifestyle and alternative (read: mainstream) sexuality will be accepted at work.

As if it wasn’t already normal.

As if we do not live in what Mary Daly termed “the sadomasochistic society”, where females are relegated to the role of “sub” at birth.

The double un-think of BDSM “activists” is that they claim to be a marginalized minority, when in fact they wield a lot of clout and have an enormous public voice and platform. By contrast, radical feminists are silenced at every turn.

The ones who are, in fact, denied speech by almost all alternative (not to mention mainstream) publications are radical feminists, specifically in their attempts to critique what they see as a male supremacist sexuality. (Adriene Sere)

By claiming minority status BDSM activists are creating yet another reversal. We see exactly the same dynamics at play when the powerful trans lobby uses its class power (the sexual class: male) to further deprive women (females) of the few rights they have. It is a cruel “double double unthink” whereby powerful white heterosexual men get to claim minority status.

Further examination of the National Coalition for Sexual Freedom website reveals that that their real aim is to get men who harm women off scott free by searching for “signs” that a woman consented to whatever sadistic act that was committed on her body. A link to the left of their website reads: “Lawyer says tape proves Rough Sex was Consensual”. The article contains statements such as “It’s just the evidence shows to me she’s lying, and the video will support it as does the audio; it’s sad why she would do this, I have no idea,” Hanlon said….”

Which is the only logical direction BDSM can go… It has now become very fashionable for murderers to say that their victim wanted it, and for the court to believe them. In Italy recently, a 42 year old man killed a student in what he called a “sex game gone wrong”.

“The engineer was originally held for murder but authorities in Rome believe Ms Caputo and her friend consented to the game.”

was overturned on appeal: Jane Longhurst’s murderer claimed he had killed her in a “sex game gone wrong”. In fact, phone records show he had tricked her into visiting him by pretending her friend (his girlfriend) was home. The 2004 murder conviction for his March 14th of 2003 strangulation killing

All he had to do now was convince another jury during his retrial that he didn’t do it on purpose. The jury would have to ignore the fact that after Jane Longhurst’s death, Graham Coutts put her body in storage and kept visiting it to masturbate, displaying a disturbing fetish for necrophilia. They would have to ignore the fact that he regularly watched extreme pornography that was based on strangling women and having sex with their corpses. They would have to ignore the fact that pathologists indicated that Graham Coutts strangled Jane Longhurst long after it was apparent that she was in danger and for a while after she was actually dead. Well, they didn’t ignore those facts.

On July 4th, 2007, Graham Coutts was again found guilty of strangling Jane Longhurst to death with a pair of tights.

As we can see, women are now being accused of consenting to death. Of consenting to being murdered.

Why not? After all, if they can consent to pain and rape, why not death too? How can a line be drawn, when we know that porn is linked to sex crimes, and that rapist-murderers get their ideas from BDSM porn? Like the British man who recently raped and murdered his twelve year old niece ‘because he felt like it ‘, in order to re-create a scene from one of the hundreds of porn movies in his collection?

And it works the other round way too.

What about women such as Annabel Chong , who after being subjected to sexual attacks in real life attempt to exorcize their trauma by becoming involved in porn? Surely it matters that we can never know for sure who is and isn’t re-enacting trauma when they “consent” to becoming a masochist?

Thanks to the tireless campaigning of Jane Longhurst’s mother, the UK law has now been changed to allow the police to prosecute a man in possession of violent porn.

To Radical Feminism

On a positive note [wry smile], I found a mainstream pro-BDSM website offering this advice:

“BSDM may seem weird, but you’ve gotta admit; the act of “normal” sex is pretty fucking weird by itself. Seriously, what difference does getting tied up and spanked really make when you’re already playing Stick Your Penis In Her Vagina? Let’s keep perspective here, people.”

She has a point. “Dick-centric sex” is *not* seen as the only way to get it on in BDSM circles. One Agony Aunt and Uncle website entitled Dear Dom even go as far as to call PIV/dick-centric sex as “vanilla”. When a woman writes in asking for advice because she doesn’t fancy having PIV with her new man, some alternatives are suggested: “If you truly want to move away from pen-opoly to BDSM, try playing some new games” Pen-opoly. Would she have received such an understanding response from a mainstream magazine or website? Or would she have been coaxed into having PIV one way or another? Which leads us to the subject currently being discussed at Fabulous Fab Stuff. Could the appeal of BDSM be the fact that there are rules such as “safewords” and “aftercare”? Whether the rules are adhered to or not, does the concept of rules offer an illusion of safety and love that a woman wouldn’t get with a vanilla guy? Women’s attraction to BDSM becomes understandable when you see it in this context. And if PIV is avoidable, what’s a bit of pain compared to an unwanted pregnancy (which inevitably leads to a lot of pain)? As I reach the end of this three part post, I have to go back to the beginning. The existence of BDSM is perhaps not so much the tragedy here as is the fact that so many women see it as a portal to freedom. Women have wholeheartedly embraced this soul-destroying, woman-hating cultural practice, just as Chinese women, with crushed and damaged spirits, embraced binding their eight year old daughters’ feet. Like the lotus foot, contemporary female sexuality has been twisted and contorted beyond all recognition. If I think about what this means for the revolution, I’ll go crazy. Because ultimately, I believe that the desire to revolt is the most important weapon in an oppressed group’s armory . Even if we do not have the means to follow through (and most women cannot afford to spend a night in jail); even if we’re too frightened to risk a police beating; even if the third wave doesn’t gather momentum before men destroy the world taking us down with them, nothing can be more wretched than the thought of women willingly submitting their hearts, souls and bodies to men’s destructive sadism

But back to pain. If there’s one message I want to leave to sex-positive BDSMer “feminists” it is this: if you can’t give up the adrenalin rush you get when men are beating and hurting you, can’t you at least join some feminist rallies where there is a police presence and do some social good at the same time? I have it on good authority that participating in a radical feminist march is the most exhilarating high ever. And the police do so love it when women step out of line so they have an excuse to retaliate with force. Because society does not tolerate women who are truly subversive.

Police beat women at a women’s rights march in Turkey

Police beat women at Sudanese women’s rights protest

Police beat and grope Egyptian women at Tahrir square women’s march

Police order women protesters, including one pregnant woman, to strip in Zimbabwe

Ongoing military beatings rapes and femicide of Honduran women

[thanks everyone who commented on my thread at Cherryblossomlife, because the comments there helped me formulate this post]