Original post:
So many others have risen up against the recent rantings and ravings of Nine Deuce and her GenderBorg pals.
But it takes a certified living sex goddess and long time sexual artist to deliver the ultimate smackdown of ND’s foolishness.
Enter….Nina Hartley…who’s more of a switch than a sub or domme, but who knows fascism when she sees it, and isn’t afraid to call fascists out on it.
Hence, this post — which was originally sent to Claire Adams’ LiveJournal page, and will ultimately to appear in more detailed and polished form in Nina’s “Sub Space” column in the future June 2007 print issue of TABOO magazine — whose editor just so happens to be her husband Ernest Greene, who happens to be a het male dom himself as well as a sexual rights activist in his own right.
Thanks go to Iamcuriousblue for reposting it to the Blog of Pro-Porn Activism, and to Ernest and Nina for granting permission to repost it here. I have added numerous embedded links to the original post for reference for those unfamiliar with the original controversy. After further thought, I decided not to, since I have no need to give them any more free bandwidth. Just Google “Nine Deuce BDSM” or use the other links.
Nine Deuce says my husband should commit suicide. Why? Because he’s a heterosexual dominant man. As for submissives well, we should all spend our lives alone and frustrated because we’re so sick and broke, we’ll inevitably seek out abusers with whom to mate and convince ourselves we love them. Of course, she denies “telling other people how to live their sex lives,” but I defy any objective reader to check out her flavor-of-the-month “radical feminist” (or neo-con feminist as I prefer to think of it) Internet blog. The faction of twenty-something resurgent second-wavers to which she belongs has found a new pinata to bash: BDSM. And the kind of BDSM involving dominant men and submissive women is where they find the poison candy they’re looking for.
A recent series of particularly inflammatory posts over at Nine Deuce’s pop-stand reveals so much about the prejudice she and her friends preach toward the likes of us, it’s too ugly to ignore. They’re all about button pushing, and knowing that going in, you don’t have to consent to having your buttons pushed.
Each starts out with some “observations” from the author, who offers up some regurgitated Dworkin-era stuff about the “problematic” nature of any woman’s consent to engage in acts of sexual submission within the context of a patriarchal culture. This she spices up with witty observations like these: “If exploring your “dark side” entails wanking to women being tortured, it might be best to leave it unexplored. Or kill yourself.” It’s not that she wants to tell any of us what to do with our lives, of course. Then there are the trenchant summations, couched in a hip, mocking tone worthy of the locker room at a particularly catty middle-school: “The way I see it, if you think you’re punk for getting off on reenacting the kinds of abuses that real women and children in this world suffer on a daily basis (and thus mocking their suffering), you can go fuck yourself.” Oh, am I cherry-picking these comments and leaving out all the brilliant analysis that justifies them? Allow some of her comment-thread cyber-cafe revolutionary pals to bring you up to speed. “…we as women must be aware that BDSM relationships always involve manipulation from those involved. I don’t understand how a woman can lower herself like that, reducing herself to a thing, says one in response to a perfectly civil dissenting post from a self-described submissive woman. “These women harm feminism more than any pathetic gorean man.” Um, the Gor thing, so eighties, but then so is the rest of this bullshit.
Try this on for size and see if it fits you or anyone you know: “I can’t believe the levels that people will go to justify hurting other people. It is really sick and insane. This is not what feminism is fighting for- your right to “choose” which man beats you and gets off on it. Y’all may think your man “loves” you or respects you, but no decent man would hurt his partner. End of story.”
Well, maybe not quite the end of the story. The juiciest parts are reserved for dominant men: “I’d like to hear just one of these male sadists stand up and say, “Yes I like torturing women, I get off on it. I like to hurt them - it sexually excites me” because surprisingly enough despite their so-called dominance, they spend their time hiding behind submissives who have to keep repeating the mantra to anyone who will listen,“’I chose it.” Choice and consent? No such thing for women under the almighty patriarchy, which means that our right to choose to have an abortion or to deny consent to a rapist is essentially as meaningless as our right to honor our own sexual orientations. They’re not really our own, but implanted in our brains by an evil, male-dominated society, kinda like something out of a pod-people movie. “This “choice” argument was created by anti-feminists who wanted to claim that every choice a woman makes is a feminist choice which is clearly ridiculous. It’s an anti-feminist concept not a feminist concept,” we’re told. So the sex that turns us on is sick and the men who “groom” us “to think we like it,” well, “I really want to drive ice picks into this guy and the douchebag in post 1’s brains,” one of these enlightened humanists exclaims. “They’re all monsters!” according to another. And when a self-described dominant guy actually takes the bait and tries to explain himself, he gets this: “Have you ever had a relationship where you didn’t beat up your female partner?”
Of course, when a few daring sub-gals show up to defend the men they love, they’re only doing it because they’ve been brainwashed: “BDSM is not kinky. It’s A-B-U-S-E. Physical and psychological abuse. Not hip, not edgy, not fun, not kinky. ABUSE!” Gee, thanks for the heads-up on that.
And of course, all submissive women are really doing is embracing the patriarchal norm, so it’s not like they face any prejudice for it, if you don’t count the constant need for secrecy to avoid losing jobs, friends, child custody, security clearances or any of the other lovely rewards that mainstream society bestows upon women who declare their submissive kink openly, or have it leaked by someone who hates them.
It goes on and on like that, and not just in one nasty spot on the Internet. I can list off a dozen blogs where BDSM is getting a good thrashing from neo-con feminists at this very moment. Clearly, bashing kinksters has become quite the rage, literally.
Fortunately, it’s not a one-sided conversation. A couple of brave female bloggers step up to all this spewed bile with their waders on. I have no hesitation about using their screen names, because I think they should be proud of their calm and clarity of thought in the face of this onslaught of invective. The wonderful Renegade Evolution braces these bullies straight up: “Do you actually think that after telling these women “Wow, you are fucked up, sick, in denial, stuck with a monster of a partner, and pathetic!” that they are going to turn around and go “Why thank you! You are so right! Thanks for that wisdom, I am totally going to reform now and start having the kind of sex and relationships you would approve of!” I mean, that would make total sense now, wouldn’t it? Perhaps in some strange, twisted, alternate reality, but no, this is the really real world.”
And pondering the foaming-at-the-mouth viciousness displayed by women toward other women for betraying our entire gender by refusing to hide in the leather closet, the coolly brilliant Trinity offers the most disturbingly spot-on explanation: “I honestly think some of these folks think it’s good that we think of suicide.
I don’t think anyone in here is actually saying “Go kill yourself” and meaning it.But I do think that people are saying the world would be safer and sparklier and better if we were not in it. They wouldn’t hand us the guns or the pills — most people aren’t that cruel — but as long as our despair is not directly their doing, they don’t care. They don’t see us as fully human.”
If we speak for ourselves, we’re just doing our master’s bidding and he’s hiding behind us. If and when male Doms accept an invitation to share their opinions, they’re harangued off the boards for being abusive, slimy assholes. This crowd.has a ready-made response for anything we say. If these people wore white sheets, we’d know to stay away from their hateful trash-talk but they stalk the world looking like you and me.
If I could do anything for my sister submissives it would be to encourage you to hold their heads high and look anyone in the eye who tries to belittle them or their choices and tell him or her politely to go fuck themselves. Every woman has a right to decide the who, where when and what of her sexual expression irrespective of the ‘implications’ others project onto them for it. Consent isn’t just a defense for some kind of pathology a deux. it’s not just the absence of “no.” It’s a continually renewing process of the very “examination” these nasties are always telling us we need to make of what they consider our evil sensibilities. It’s the process by which we bond with like-minded others through relationships built on trust, as opposed to mutual suspicion and hostility. Consent, and our ability to give or withhold it, is the very thing for which women have fought so long and at such cost, and we have no more cause to surrender it to the rad-fem politburo than we have to the murderous fanatics of Operation Rescue. Arguments against the centrality of consent to the way we live are lives will always run counter to the best interests of all women, kinky or not.
As women and as kinksters we struggle daily for the right to live our lives according to the dictates of our consciences and we can’t let these shame-mongers push us back. We are who we are and the reasons are none of anyone else’s damned business.
My husband is not going to kill himself because on some mean-spirited bloviator’s say-so and I’m not going to stop speaking out on behalf of other submissive women because she thinks I shouldn’t. Go have the kind of sex you and your partner desire. You have no need to defend who you are and how you love to those who deny your humanity.
“You have no need to defend who you are and how you love to those who deny your humanity.”
Spoken like a true progressive feminist….and a decent, compassionate human being.
Of course, she’ll probably be dismissed as always by the GenderBorgians as a lost cause, a stupid slut, a mindless shell, a puppet whose only speaking through Ernest’s brain (forgetting the fact that she has been outspoken and speaking out long before she even married Ernest), or simply, a “privileged” paid agent of THE MAN. (Oh, and one poster to Claire’s blog has already launched the “anti-Semitic” card at her, misreading her “neo-con feminists” blast as an excuse to smear all feminists and progressives….a libel which is dispatched quite easily.)
Whatever. Those of us who know and love her and who understand the truth will see what’s real and what’s bullshit.
Brava, Goddess. Just simply….Brava.
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