Laura wrote:Maggie, the reason I didnt reply to you again, aside from the fact that you said I was making you sick, is because you keep insisting on telling me what I should and shouldnt think, what I should and shouldnt say and do and read. It is patronising, even if that is not your intention.
Well, I'm sorry you took it that way! And I'm sorry for panicking and sounding "patronizing" through my advices! It was not my intention. I didn't mean to make you feel that way... I'm
not interested in blaming one particular woman for her determined and stubborn choice to like BDSM. I was just trying to
encourage you to consider the fact that we have everything to win in utterly resisting domination/subordination behaviors, which are the results of milennia of patriarchal social conditioning (and nothing else, i.e. not 'nature' per se). I don't blame women. I blame patriarchy and all its atrocious sado-masochistic trainings!!!
It is my belief that Radical feminism is about
rejecting patriarchy and all its misogynistic social trainings (and I know I've interpreted radical feminism right, here)! I have no interest in blaming women, or one particular woman for anything (unless when
some women defend "pornstitution" relentlessly, and thus replicate patriarchal cruelty -- but that's another thing...). In other words, I have
no interest in blaming you for your own sexual choices, Laura. I just believe that they have been
conditioned by patriarchy and nothing else, and it makes me sad (that's why I was asking you to
consider an egalitarian sexuality, that is non-degrading, role-free and based on humanity, mutuality, and respect -- coz it
makes me sad that you have made such a choice to defend BDSM instead of repudiating patriarchal conditioning)... I believe that the radical feminist stance against sado-masochism is a great
amazingly progressive sexual politics! And I also believe that the strongest feminists
will have no trouble unlearning "all the forms of masochistic submission which are taught to us as the very content of womanhood", repudiating "the whole patriarchal system, with its sado-masochistic institutions, with its social scenarios of dominance and submission all based on the male-over-female model", and destroying "in ourselves the drive to masochism at its sexual roots" (in Dworkin's words)!!! (What I was and am saying is: Please, Laura, be strong! -- coz it makes me sad).
As Dworkin also said:"I believe that we must establish our own authenticity, individually and among ourselves--to experience it, to create from it, and also to
deprive men of occasions for reifying the lie of manhood over and against us. I believe that ridding ourselves of our own deeply entrenched masochism, which takes so many tortured forms, is the first priority;
it is the first deadly blow that we can strike against systematized male dominance. In effect, when we succeed in excising masochism from our own personalities and constitutions, we will be cutting the male life line to power over and against us, to male worth in contradistinction to female degradation, to male identity posited on brutally enforced female negativity--we will be cutting the male life line to manhood itself." ("The Root Cause" -- boldening in text is mine).
That is why, as I said, I believe that the radical feminist stance against sado-masochism is a great amazingly progressive sexual politics. It is a political stance (it is not about blaming one person for her/his stubborn choice not to utterly resist patriarchy). It is about
calling on women to renounce their deeply entrenched masochism (even though it may seem very difficult to some) and establish their
own authenticity -- for their
own good, for the preservation of their
own humanity...