Hello, this is gonna be an oddly specific OOC submission for you, so if this doesn’t interest you that’s more than okay. I am a young enjoyer of your blog. I’ve discovered such taboo erotica since I was young, so growing up especially in a misogynistic environment it’s been difficult to accept this part of me, all the while being a feminist and genuinely loving women. I’m sure you do too, and most of the women here as well. But do you ever wonder why women tend to develop these types of fantasies more than men? Like, of course there are submissive men, but I’m not talking about submissiveness, but a kink about degrading your gender as a whole, you know. Do you think it’s because we’ve all grown up in a patriarchal world that certain views have been instilled in us subconsciously? The reason I’ve come up with, and what I tell myself to cope with the shame, is that it’s hot to explore erotica that completely sabotages your own morals that you’ve proudly established. Maybe, that self conflict at hand is what’s arousing. Maybe, men don’t really have erotica about degrading their own gender, because they wouldn’t have to experience this kind of “self conflict”, because they don’t hold pride and significance in their gender equality the same way we feel about feminism; they never had to fight for it. I’d like to tell myself that a lot of women’s taboo kinks are subconscious products of the patriarchy, because the alternative conclusion that women are just secretly, innately, biologically prone to want degradation is disheartening. Do you question about things like this? Did you ever have to cope with this side of you? Or do all these thoughts just never really occur to you? Anyway, to end it off, I love your writing, thank you for putting your writing out there.
[OOC] Thank you for the ask, anon. It seems like you’ve already thought about this a great deal. The short answer is no, I don’t believe women are “naturally submissive” or inferior to men.
There’s a great clip of Jameela Jamil shooting down this idea succinctly. Her reasoning follows that of John Stewart Mill, a 19th century philosopher, who argued that if women were naturally submissive, we wouldn’t need laws to enforce it.
Combining sex with powerful emotions is arousing. Shame is an intensely powerful emotion (I’d argue stronger than fear or disgust, because shame is very personal). Women and other AFAB people have had the experience of being treated as lesser than since basically birth, so it makes sense that most (if not all) women have experiences of both external and internalized misogyny. Those can be hot to play with in a context where, as a consenting participant, you can and should have control over what happens, unlike most of our experiences of misogyny.
You see the same phenomenon in other marginalized groups, like non-white people who engage in race play and gay men/trans femmes who like sissification. The existence of sexual fantasies about taboo ideas doesn’t speak to the real truth of those ideas; it speaks to the deep psychological impacts discrimination has on us. Eroticizing the weapons that have been used against us can diffuse the power those stories have on us in real life.