Some feminist rhetoric suggests that the desire for power is a uniquely masculine impulse and that sadomasochism is an outgrowth of male oppression of women. Not only is this view historically groundless and intellectually hollow, but it has helped to sanitize and dismiss the diversity of female sexuality as thoroughly as did the Victorians. It is little wonder that the parochial view of female sexuality espoused by some feminists has garnered political support from the reactionary Right.
While women increasingly believe that they have a right to demand power in the boardroom, as a group, they have yet to demand sexual satisfaction in the bedroom, much less to seize (or even to accept) consensual power. Female dominance may be a final frontier in the empowerment of women.
INTERVIEWS
VICTORIA
Sometimes I scratch my head and wonder what I’m doing here. And then I look over at my honey and realize exactly why. For some women I think there would be a conflict. For me there isn’t. [But] I can’t really picture myself submitting to anybody else but Leonard. I think that if I did walk out of this relationship tomorrow morning, if I were in another D&S relationship with a man, I’d probably be dominant. But certain things in my personality and his gel a certain way so that we’re happy. As long as it is a matter of choice and I know he really does not think that he owns me, I feel secure in doing what I’m doing.
I have never been subservient. I am submissive. To me there is a difference. If I was subservient, when I came home and he said, “Hey, babe! Go in the kitchen and get me a beer and fix dinner and get right to it!” I would do it because I would be a brainless little booboo-head [who] wouldn’t know what [she wants]. I know what I want. If he tells me to go get a beer and I have something to do, then he’s going to have to get the beer for himself. I have a choice. He wouldn’t order me around like that in the first place. He understands. A lot of women do not have choices, which is why they’re forced to be subservient.
I grew up in a household where I saw what subservience is like. My mother gave my father the best part of the chicken all the time, because he was a man and was supposed to have it. She just accepted it. I asked her one time, “Why do you always give it to him when you like that part too?” She said, “Because he is a man,” and she gave me this helpless look. I swore to myself at that moment that I would never get that helpless look in my eyes. I have a choice [as to] what kind of relationship I want. There are certain emotional and physical needs that I have—if I could satisfy them another way, maybe I would, but at this point in my life I choose to be with this man in this way.
There is a definite difference between abuse and dominance. My father was verbally dominant and even somewhat abusive. I remember one time my mother and I were very upset. My father had a big argument with her and got physical. He put bruises on me, and we left and went to a women’s shelter. There were women who had horror stories that would make someone completely ill. There was one woman [whose] husband had tied her up with rope over a Christmas vacation and brought in prostitutes and had sex with them in front of her and told her that if she told anybody in her family, he’d kill her and their children. That wasn’t D&S, although some newspaper writer would probably make it sound like an S/M relationship because he tied her up. She was not a willing participant, and he was obviously doing this as a form of deep humiliation and showing her that he was a man and he could do whatever in the world he wanted to.
When I first started getting into D&S, I wondered, Is this some kind of desire for abuse? But then I realized that there was a great deal of difference. Leonard constantly asked me, “Do I have permission to do this?” I was enjoying it. When I got to the point where I didn’t enjoy it anymore, he would stop. In abuse, the abuser doesn’t care whether you’re enjoying it or not. In fact, he doesn’t want your enjoyment! He wants you to be miserable, because that way he can feel really powerful. When I say “he,” I’m not saying that there aren’t men who are abused—I know that there are.
As far as I know, I am one of the few black female submissives. I’ve had more problems dealing with that emotionally than dealing with being a feminist and submissive. Here in New York there aren’t a lot of black people who are into [D&S], at least not openly. I’d say that there probably are a lot of black people who are into it, but they either don’t call it that, they’re [only] doing it in their bedrooms, [or] it’s part of their everyday relationship and how they relate to each other. I think that the reason why you see so few people of color in the [S/M] clubs is because a lot of them, quite frankly, don’t have the money to spend on the clubs. Also, I think that among black people S/M [and] even things as mild as oral or anal sex are seen as a white peoples’ thing—one of those sick, kinky things that white people do. “We would never do that.” The same attitude exists about homosexuality. Even though some of the greatest activists and writers among African-Americans have been gay, lesbian, and bisexual, most black people will not acknowledge this because they see that as a white person’s thing. “If you do that, it must be because some white person seduced you and made you do it.” There’s a lot of denial.
Sex and sexuality [are] just not something you talk about. Therefore, if you’re some little black girl or little black boy who’s having naughty fantasies about being tied up, you figure you’re sick in the head, and you keep quiet. You never do anything about it. I happen to be an extremely nervy person so I try all kinds of crazy things. But I’m unusual. I find it hysterically funny that the stereotype among whites [is that] blacks have wild and crazy sex. In fact, most black people are horrified at the things that white people do. My students who think that they’re wild and crazy [will] say, “Yeah, I like getting busy [having sex],” but they’ll tell you all the things that they would never do, like, it’s disgusting to have oral sex of any kind. And they would never have anal sex—oh my God! That’s something homos do. They can’t even picture heterosexuals doing that. There’s a whole laundry list of things that they either haven’t heard of or, if they’ve heard of them, they just know that they’re wrong. It’s kind of amusing.
Why am I bisexual? To me, that’s like “Why are my eyes brown?” I don’t know! I think that God made certain people so that they can understand both the masculine and the feminine a lot better than others. As far as D&S: I think it’s a way for me of exploring power. I like to be in control of myself. I’ve never been interested in drugs, and I’ve never been interested in some of the other ways that people use to get outside of themselves. This is the way that I do it. I find that spiritually, if I’m in the middle of a really good scene—and just about every scene that I’ve ever had with my lover has been absolutely wonderful—[it’s] almost [an] out-of-body experience. The closest that I’ve ever come to doing that in a nonsexual context would be through meditation, because I’ve been doing meditation work for quite a few years now. So to me, it’s part of a larger continuum.
I’ve expressed some of my dominant feelings with my lover, but it’s not a major fantasy of mine. I’ve had occasional fantasies where I’d have him tied up to a chair and torture him by playing with myself and not allowing him to touch me, or playing with him and then telling him that he can’t come, because if he does, I’m going to give him a spanking. I sometimes keep those fantasies in the back of my head as an extra special turn-on.
As far as my work life, it’s a totally different thing. I’m a schoolteacher, so I’m very aggressive and dominant in that situation. I think that’s why I like being submissive at home: I’m dominant all day long at work. Our roles do carry outside of the bedroom. Not all the time, but, for instance, when we go out to eat, I’ll tell him what I want, and he’ll order for me. Lately we’ve done things like shop for clothing, and he goes with me and helps me pick out things that he really likes.
That’s not much different from the way a lot of women live their lives, but they wouldn’t call it a D&S situation. They would call it a typical marriage. The difference is that, first, I’m aware of what I�
�m doing. Second, to a certain extent, I would say that it’s a fantasy life—we don’t have to live this way; it’s not like if we stopped doing it, our lives would end. I’ve always considered myself a feminist, and I know that I am equal to my lover. That’s different than a lot of women who are in traditional relationships where they fool themselves into believing that the man is supposed to have his way because he’s a man. I don’t believe that.
I realized since about the age of about five or six that I liked both boys and girls. When I got a bit older, I found myself drawn to strong women, because we have a lot of strong women in my family. And I liked that feeling of power, both within myself and with other people. When I got into high school, a woman friend was into Victorian pornography, which has a lot of S/M and D&S, whipping scenes. I would read it and go, “Oooh, that’s disgusting! That’s awful! That’s horrible! What’s on the next page?” I found it disturbing because the women were objects. I never found out what they were feeling, why they were enjoying it. I thought, That’s not me, because, if I were having sex, I’d enjoy it, and these women aren’t enjoying it. I’m not a pervert like that.
When I got into college, it was a tradition for graduating seniors to give things to freshmen and sophomores. One woman gave me a copy of Story of O. I read [it] and thought, This is absolutely ghastly, this woman gives up her personality, but for years my favorite bedtime reading was the first few scenes of Story of O, when she’s shown all the instruments of torture and told what’s going to happen to her. I thought that was really nasty and dirty and wonderful.
I started reading magazines like On Our Backs, a lesbian porn magazine [with] a lot of D&S. I thought that was really hot, so I couldn’t understand why I was having fantasies about men. I was tempted a couple of times to find someone, but I didn’t know where to go. I felt guilty. Maybe these people were awful: I could end up in a body bag. I had horrible fantasies about what could happen to me. What changed was that I heard about a women-only group which met at a D&S club. I went, but I didn’t see any really interesting action, because of what I’m into. [Then] I read Outweek and answered an ad from a woman who said that she did some D&S. So I went on a blind date with her. She was nothing like what I expected. She was not a terribly interesting person, but she was going to a party and invited me along, and [that’s when] I met the man I’m with right now. We hit it off immediately. There was just something about him … I wanted to know more about him as a person. There was an aura about him that seemed to show that he was rather experienced. I figured [that] if worse comes to worse, we’ll have a couple of dates, and I’ll learn why I want to do this stuff.
On our first date we went to see this absolutely beastly movie, and he kept touching my thigh and murmuring subtle threats in my ear. I said, “Oh, my God! I’m going out with a maniac!” But I wanted to go out with him again. Somehow he seemed very gentle. It was really confusing. He told me that he thought that I was really beautiful, that I’d look even more beautiful if I had a collar on, and that he’d really like to put his hands on my breasts and caress them. I was just looking at him like, “I don’t believe that you’re saying this!” And he said, “You know you don’t want to [leave].” That really scared me, because he was right. It was like he could … read me. My mouth was saying, “This is horrible; why are you saying this to me?” But I could feel myself getting all warm and excited. So I had to keep on going out with him to figure him out.
A couple of dates later we went to a museum, and while we were walking around, he started whispering things in my ear about how he’d like to tie me up and how he’d like to spank me right there in the museum and let everybody see me with my skirt pulled up and how much I’d probably enjoy exposing myself because I was a naughty little slut. I almost ran out of the museum. But I wanted to hear more, even though I was horrified. Now that I look back, I realize that I was horrified because he was saying exactly what I wanted to hear. I didn’t want to believe that a nice girl—whatever “nice” means—could want to do things like that. Before I knew it, I kept going out with him, because I really liked him as a person. And he was great in bed. He was teaching me things that I had only fantasized about before. Some of them I hadn’t even fantasized about. I didn’t know you could do things like that to the human body. He’s very loving and gentle and has a very delicate touch. It feels really wonderful. One feels very trusting—at least one should. To me, it’s actually lovemaking.
What I found out from going out with him for a while was that he was interesting, that he was really fun, that he was the kind of person with whom I would like to spend time outside of [a D&S] situation. And I started falling in love with him. I hadn’t expected that at all. What I found from talking to him and talking to other people who were in the Scene was that I was not a weirdo. There are plenty of other people who grew up in nice little suburban areas doing the same thing. They didn’t die. God didn’t hit them with a thunderbolt. It didn’t ruin your life. Which surprised me. I thought I was on the highway to hell.
If I could do anything in D&S, I’d really like to help educate people. It’s hard, because with my job I’m not exactly going to come out and say, “Hi! I’m in D&S, and I’m happy!” Because people are going to say, “Uh huh! And you also don’t have a job!” But I think that, on an individual basis, I could talk to people who are upset by the fantasies that they have and reassure them that there are normal people doing this. I’m healthy and happy. This is not something for everybody, but if you want to do it, you won’t drop dead. [Just] be careful about choosing who you do it with.
LEONARD
I’m somewhere between heterosexual and bisexual, switchable, but predominantly dominant. I haven’t the foggiest idea how my D&S interests developed. Corporal punishment and discipline had no part in my upbringing, so none of that ever had a charge for me. I do vaguely remember a kind of excitement to tying people up or being tied up in [playing] cowboys and Indians when I was around nine years old. They probably reoccurred at 11 or 12 with mixed-gender play. “Hey, maybe we can get some girls and we can make them be Indians!” But it was not a childhood obsession. And even as a late adolescent I wasn’t really conscious of it, although I suspect it was there.
I was always a sensualist, so it was a place to explore. The trouble was I really couldn’t at the time envision my lover surrendering and enduring humiliation and pain. So it grew in little steps. When I was in my mid-20s, in graduate school, I was involved with a woman who was about 10 years older than me who had grown up in Germany and was a business executive. We spent several nights a week at her home. I deferred to her. She would get very impatient with me and say, “Be a man. Tell me what to do. I’ll do anything you want as long as I don’t have to make the decision! I do that all day long; I get tired of bossing men around.” I discovered she would do anything I wanted and enjoy it. Where we went to dinner, what movie, and also sexually, I could give her orders. And she would beg to be taken, and so I said, “Well, you know, somebody I love and respect can play this role, maybe not like [in] the fantasy fiction, but there are elements of reality [to it].”
Victoria will ask occasionally to take her collar off and for me to just make love to her rather than have her serve me. I do, and I really wonder whether an observer could tell the difference in our lovemaking. But for her, it is symbolic, and I can appreciate that. Obviously the observer could tell the difference from the times when she’s bound, when spanking is involved, when she’s covered in clothespins, or [when] nipple clamps are being screwed down as I make love to her. On the other hand, words have the [erotic] power of possession and control. So even while making physically very gentle love, [we] have given it a D&S spin by the labels we attach.
We playfully try to extend our D&S relationship out of the bedroom and into our lives a little bit. She will often address me as “sir.” I come from a very liberal background where even grandparents were called by their first names, so it’s not a matter of a strict household. “Sir�
� to my ears means “I love you.” So each time she addresses me that way, it’s a loving expression. Similarly, I like clothing or jewelry which are symbolic: a chain around her neck or a ring, preferably with a difficult clasp on it.
My favorite activities involve control of my submissive lover. This control can involve just touching her in a certain way at a movie theater and talking to her in a certain way. Or tying her up and making love to her and prohibiting her from coming, so it’s a matter of control of sexuality. Control of an almost uncontrollable turns me on. Victoria [and I have done] scenes where she is bound and I place vast quantities of clothespins on her [body]—50, 60 clothespins in rows on her body. It’s pain [and a] sort of tension. I may then also drip candle wax and then use massage and vibrators to build up to the explosive release. I’m dripping sweat but get really turned on by the control I have over her, the power. Now it’s not turned on in the literal sense—I may not have a roaring erection—but it’s psychologically satisfying.
One part of our relationship is this kind of erotic control. Other parts I also enjoy [are] discipline, inflicting punishment, and Victoria’s surrender to it. There are times when it’s just a matter of punishment. We’ve agreed upon a certain number of strokes with a cane or a riding crop or something like that. Sometimes it’s her job to begin: She knows she’s done something wrong. She tells me, “I’ve done something wrong,” and I say, “You’ll have to be punished for that. What do you feel is appropriate?” She’ll say, “20 strokes.” Sometimes I will agree, and sometimes I’ll say, “It was more serious; it will take 30.” She will say, “Yes, sir.” I’ll decide whether to do it now or some later time, at which point I may ask her to bend over, lift her skirt. Or I may wait and take her to bed where she can be tied down, and then we’ll start, often asking her to tell me when she’s ready, and [to] ask for it. And I’ll keep whipping till I feel she’s real close to her limits. If she can’t take much more, I will go one more and then stop. [With] the combination of whippings and caresses and the talking, she is often about ready to come when I finish.
Different Loving Page 8
