- Feb 26, 2009
FemDom vs. Feminism: Power doesn't come from penetration (and other complaints about porn)
What I was searching for doesn't seem all that extreme or strange.
Something where the female was in control, and the focus was on her getting whatever she wanted.
There is plenty of the inverse. Too much. There is also of course a healthy amount where no one is dominant, the majority in fact.
Female dominated (or FemDom for short) is shunted off to the side as a fetish, a subset of BDSM (bondage domination/submission sado-masochism).
Of course male dominated BDSM exists too, and occasionally is even pretty good. But there is also lots of male dominated porn which doesn't fall under the BDSM category. Its regular sex, with no pain or bondage involved, but the guy is clearly in control of the situation, and his partner is there to please him. In and of itself, I'd have no problem with that - so long as it were balanced.
In femdom, almost invariably, at some point the mistress dons a strap-on and penetrates her slave. I realize plenty of real life people are into this, and that it can be pleasurable for the guy, an interesting fantasy for the girl. But every time? If the guy is only there to please her, whether he enjoys any part of the experience should be mostly irrelevant. And she doesn't actually get any direct stimulation of her own from this act. From the stand point of her sexual pleasure, it's kind of pointless. It may be fun, but it's not exactly sex. Were it really just an alternate form of sex, it would be common (or at least exist occasionally) in genres other than femdom. That it is confined to that subset means there is an assumption that the act of penetration itself is not just masculine, but dominating.
And that assumption in turn implies that simply via their biology, women are inherently subjects in every sex act.
I have always subscribed to the idea that feminism is nothing more than the "radical" notion that women are people. Not that women are men. Not that women are capable of being men. That women are people, and men are people, and, as Pete says in 'The Muppets take Manhattan, "Peoples is peoples". Claiming that women are capable of doing anything men are doing is also the suggestion that men should be the standard by which people are measured. Similarly, a woman should not have to artificially take on an approximation of male biology in order to be (or appear) strong, confident, or dominate. One could just as easily re-think male penetration as female envelopment.
She just needs to be the one in control.
Its rare for their to be any ordinary penetration in femdom porn - you know, the one physical act which is, in the most literal sense, actually sex.
I admit that I am not, and never have been, a woman, but I tend to trust my partners, and in my experience, women don't only have intercourse for the sake of their partners. They actually enjoy it. Which leads me to suspect that, if she were given free reign to do whatever she felt like, it's not altogether unlikely that intercourse would be an item on the agenda.
This doesn't mean she has to cede control. In fact, he needn't even have his limbs free.
Some would point out that it would be physically impossible if he were not aroused, but arousal does not equal consent. Barring artificial lubricant, it is pretty important that the female be aroused too - the male is a much greater risk of severe physical injury if intercourse takes place with neither natural nor artificial lubrication. Terrible, gruesome possibilities which I learned about in my emergency medical technician class. Things which I won't subject you to and I strongly advice against looking up (let this be a warning to would be rapists everywhere).
For that matter, another act generally taken as an example of male domination, the blow job, consists of a guy trusting some of his most delicate parts and symbol of his very manhood to her jaw - which has the highest strength-to-size ratio of any muscle in the human body, and is capable of concentrating 280lbs of force onto incisors designed specifically to bite through things. Who really has the power in that situation?
No, seriously. Think about that for a second...
A woman has complete and total control not only over a man's pleasure and satisfaction, but is in a position to cripple him for life, and this is almost universally seen as a submissive act, even if it is voluntary.
I believe it is this same basic, and severely flawed, premise which makes some people claim that porn is inherently disrespectful to women.
Consider this scenario: a heterosexual couple, who love, respect, and are attracted to each other, decide to have consensual sex. Pretty ordinary, and very few people will claim there is anything wrong with that. Now say they decide to videotape themselves. Same exact people, same exact act. Now say they later decide to sell that video on the internet. Suddenly (according to many), it becomes disrespectful, demeaning, objectifying, dehumanizing - primarily, if not entirely, to the female.
The unspoken - unconscious - assumption is that sex itself, by its very mechanism, is inherently disrespectful to women. The issue at this point is not with media or society, it is with biology. If you are calling biology sexist, well, that is pretty blatant misogyny.
The only type of true feminism there is is sex-positive feminism, because woman are people, and people have sex parts and enjoy having sex. Everything living thing (well, the vast majority of multi-cellular organisms), from mammals to fish to insects to plants to fungus, is sexual. To be anti sex, you are both anti-life, (and, since women are alive) anti-feminist.
[UPDATE: I have greatly expanded on that idea in the following two posts:
http://biodieselhauling.blogspot.com/2013/01/the-oldest-profession.html
and
http://biodieselhauling.blogspot.com/2013/01/RapeAndFeminismPage1.html ]
My second complaint has no socio-political undertones to it.
Why the hell does every porn producer, past and present, large and small, professional and amateur, believe that it is absolutely vital that the viewer get physical proof of the guys orgasm, every single time?
I mean, I enjoy a good bukkake movie as much as the next guy, but come on! Everytime? Why do I care if he's faking it? It could not be more obvious that it's set up - no matter how good the actors are, how realistic the setting and script, even if it is entirely unscripted: there's a guy standing there with a camera, or else we wouldn't be able to be watching. So it's a situation of suspended disbelief as it is. Dear god why, why(!), would a guy who is having spectacularly good sex with a beautiful woman stop, at the last possible moment, take the time to take off the condom, and then cum, not in her mouth, but toward it?!?! Or, if she is giving him oral, and she is letting him cum in her mouth anyway, who would finish by hand and not have her mouth around him at the end? It makes the whole experience a let down, its unsatisfying. At that last moment you want more than ever to be IN; and if I am trying to enjoy what the actors are doing vicariously than they need to at least pretend to be focused on their own pleasure instead of obviously acting for the camera.
It gets worse. Sometimes there are scenes where he really cums while in her mouth. But then, without exception, she opens her mouth to show us, or snowballs, or drips it into her hand. Anything so that the viewer can see cum. And there is a subset of porn, "creampie", where the guy cums inside of her the traditional way (imagine that, actually having real sex, to its most natural completion, is a subset, as though it were a fetish!?). And in those, the camera always takes time after wards to watch it drip out again.
I want to see and hear her when she cums! I want to watch them enjoying each other in every possible way. I don't want to see extreme close-ups of cum. Its just not that sexy. Please excuse the expression, but, as a guy, wanting to look at extreme close-ups of cum seems kind of gay. Not that there's anything wrong with, but I don't happen to be (and I have to assume most guys watching straight porn aren't either)
These ridiculous trends have gotten to be so prevalent you see the same patterns almost universally in even amateur porn (i.e. non-professional actors and small independent production companies), and is all to common in home-produced porn as well.
This has been aggravating me to no end for years, and now that I am single it is all the more vexing.
I am afraid the only option is that I become a producer myself, and institute the changes that we all want to see. When it becomes wildly successful, it will be a sign to the rest of the industry to follow suit, and then I can go back to being an environmentally friendly hauler/mover/handyman. It wouldn't be my first foray into the adult industry, and I think I am getting old enough to handle the responsibility of producer.
Then again, legally as producer you can't actually be involved in the scene (if you were, since you are paying the actors, that would make the transaction prostitution). That could make the whole single thing even more vexing. Ah well. I guess we will just have to stick with the rare well done home made porn, at least for now.
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