Comments on: Submission in ‘not inherently wimpy’ shocker

By: Nameless

Nameless — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 07:23:35 +0000

Hey Ranai. That series looks great, I’ll have to check it out. I’m totally with you on the M/m stories, too. In fact, I think this is one of the reasons slash in general works for so many of us – no distracting godawful portrayals of women, no icky gender roles.

Hey Jayunderscorezero. Welcome, and thanks! I’m glad you approve. I’ll try to keep it up (work permitting, which has been a bit busy of late).

By: Jayunderscorezero

Jayunderscorezero — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 04:52:22 +0000

Hiya! I just wanted to drop in and say that I just discovered your blog through Bitchy Jones’ Diary and that I love it! I thought your first post on here was particularly sweet, too; it’s great that Beej helped open your eyes so.

Anyway, I’ll be making sure to check back again in the future. Please keep up the good work.

By: Ranai

Ranai — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 19:29:52 +0000

Regarding prejudices or not against gay submissive men, I suppose it depends where you look and who you’re talking to.

There’s already plenty of prejudice around in my society and yours against just being gay in general – never mind kink. For example, I certainly see plenty of homophobia among some straight submissive men. Every time a submissive man apparently thinks he has to assure me “I’m not gay” I’m thinking “What the hell? I’m a dominant hetero woman. Does that somehow make you assume that I’m homophobic?” This assumption can really ruin an otherwise interesting conversation.

Another example, I’m not familiar if there are prejudices against kinky subs prevalent among the majority of vanilla gay men – sort of like the flak kinky gay women (dom and sub) get from some prejudiced non-kinky gay women.

By: Ranai

Ranai — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 16:03:13 +0000

I can definitely say that in the realm of fiction, M/m stories are often the ones that have proved to be enjoyable to me without containing too many off-putting downers. On the one hand, because I find M/m setups sexy in themselves, and also because usually there I don't have to deal with ridiculous portrayals of female characters and arousal-killing inbuilt sexism. Occasional downers in M/m stories include, sadly, instances of general misogyny, sort of as an overreaction by the author to heteronormative ideology. All the greater is my joy of course when I come across a tale with F/m DS that is not built to turn women off. Regarding the Japanese concept of samurai loyalty, the fictional portrayal of such a relationship I've enjoyed most so far is a story of two female characters. There's no BDSM in there, but there is devotion, submission, eroticism, romance, love, sex, comedy, adventure, fighting and horror. The noble lady starts out as a girlish spoiled aristocrat with plenty of room for character development. The samurai is reticent and completely trapped in convention at the beginning - she doesn't stay like that either. So far the series has six stories, starting with Azumaya: The Eastern House. I hope the author will soon write the next one. Kwaidan: Supernatural Tales of the Floating World (A Series Set in a Fantastic Ancient Japan) by Nene Adams This was rather a detour from the original point of your post. Yes, many portrayals of F/m suffer heavily from sexist thinking. "Oh no, this is not just person A submitting to person B, it's a man submitting to a woman, so it has to be adorned with all sorts of gender-related clichés and tropes." I prefer to start at the basic "person A submits to person B" level. Basic thinking about DS needs more gender mainstreaming, enabling room for submission and dominance, (in our real lives and in fictional portrayals), as individual expressions.