L&R July 2017 Magazine

He wants to know the things she knows about herself, and the things she hasn’t yet
figured out. He wants things for her, as well as from her. He learns her the way a
musician learns an instrument—but a sentient instrument, with its own desires--so that
he can create, express, bring out the nuances, and so that they can, if you will, make
this extraordinary kind of music together. And she, in her desire to surrender and give
pleasure, finds fulfilment in his vision, delight in his satisfaction, and joy in what they
create together. In a moment like the one I described above, he may say, “expand on
that part of the concept and let me read it again.” (He didn’t this time, but he might
have.) In that moment, at his command, my “voices” will all go quiet—oh magical
power!--my focus will narrow and clarify, and I will do it because he wants it, because
he knows that I want it too, because I have such faith in his understanding of me, and
his judgment in general, and because I have chosen my expert well. I didn’t have to
forsake feminism to discover all of this—I just had to embrace its true intentions.
Feminism was and is about liberty, opportunity, and equality of rights, protections and
compensations. It was never meant to replace one set of limitations with another, to
release us all from the old box, only to entrap us in the new. It was meant to give us
choices, and the freedom and confidence to make them for ourselves. But for so many
women, it also created a new set of constraints. And in a way, that was inevitable. A
pendulum never rests in the centre until it has exhausted itself with swinging from
extreme to extreme. So we swung to a new set of ideals and potentials, and therefore,
ironically, to a new set of entrapping expectations.
I would like to think that people like me represent something even better than “coming
to rest in the centre.”
I am not dwelling in the compromise between autonomy and dependence. I am
reaping the benefits of the fight to give women the full range of choices. I can pepper
my autonomy with surrender when it suits me. I can deed my choices to a trusted
partner in full understanding that I am respected, loved, and safe—and that society
and its laws support my choice to submit or not, as I will. Central to D/s principles is
the idea of consent—and true consent only becomes possible when women are not
hobbled by a social structure that makes them dependent on the approval,
beneficence, support and protection of men. Consensual power exchange requires
that two people start out on an equal footing. In that sense, D/s is not antithetical to
feminism—in fact it could not have existed in its present form until the women’s
movement made it possible.