I'd be interested in what people think of this, because it rang a few bells for me:
What women claim to get out of the BDSM experience is the euphoria of transcendence. They talk of a sense of stillness and peace, of sharpened mental faculties in the days after being involved in a ?scene?, an ability to think more clearly, of being better able to focus on the mundane tasks allocated to them, and of finding it easier to meet their obligations.
So what exactly are they transcending? The answer has to be daily life and ?vanilla? sex. Vanilla sex is a derogative term used by BDSMers to describe the once-a-week-with-the-light-out sex that long term heterosexual couples are said to engage in. It is boring, goes the argument.
I?ve no doubt that it is.
Having coerced, obligatory PIV once a week with one Nigel is indeed very boring. This practice is not connected in any way to innate female sexuality, however, but is one of the demands patriarchy places upon women i.e. to sexually serve one man. And let?s not forget that men?as a group? are notoriously incompetent in the bedroom, which is another reason why women are prone to feigning headaches, or lying back and thinking of England.
Compared to this, BDSM does seem like an exciting alternative.
BDSM, then, is the solution patriarchy offers to women in place of the joyless, mundane, sexuality-less intercourse-posing-as-sex that women have to be ?up for? unless they want to be labelled frigid.
And what is daily life to women, except patriarchal oppression? If an endorphin high frees women up in some way to enjoy their lives?.. then what does this tell us about women?s lives?
Could it be, that women?s lives are unbearable and that the outer-body experience offered by being a sub is a short-term escape? Sub women talk of the sense of being unable to move when restrained and how this feeling frees them from having to think?
It. frees. women. from. having. to. think.
Women are the busy-bees of the human race, doing all the work that makes life worth living. They?re the ones with the shopping lists in their heads, the itinery of household stock to account for, the kids? birthday parties to organize. They are the office tea-ladies, the carers, the till staff at the supermarket check-out, the toilet cleaners, the P.As to Big Men?Women daren?t stop running on the hamster?s wheel because they?re not quite sure where they will land if they fall, but they?ve got a sneaking suspicion it will be someplace worse than they are right now. Women?s lives are constructed to be empty.
BDSM is the final solution offered by the very people who have caused the problem in the first place. Like shopping, it is a legitimized outlet for female frustration and rage.