To Cherish, to Protect, to Hurt, but not Harm

or: My thoughts on reading Please, Sir: Erotic Stories of Female Submission.

I’m a believer in serendipity, or, at least, I believe that it’s a sign that something is important and top-of-mind enough to seem serendipitous. And so the past week has been serendipitous around the topic of Dominance and submission, particularly around the question of “that thing you do, that so many people would have problems with, what does it mean to you?”.

First, last Thursday, I was talking with my Exquisite Treasure about that and she told me very eloquently what our arrangement means to her. True to our arrangement, I directed her to write that up which she is doing (I’ll post and link to it when it’s done).

Then, last Friday, I was talking with my counselor (not poly/kinky but able to deal and learning about this all from me) about how that question is really the fundamental existential question that anyone who’s thoughtful and kinky ultimately has to face. After all, we do things by choice that many people find disturbing. Hell, even kinky people, find what other kinky people do distrubing.

And now this week I find serendipity must indeed be at work, because with my reading of Rachel Kramer Bussel’s Please, Sir: Erotic Stories of Female Submission this week that same important question has come up.

Please, Sir is a collection of short erotica about female submissives and male dominants.  These stories deal with a topic area that sets that important question against the backdrop of one of the more difficult power relationships in the kink world. Because, after the important (but still incomplete) strides towards gender equality feminism has helped make, male dominant and female submissive relationships can seem like a throwback to a (blessedly) bygone era. And so, anyone engaged in or talking about female submissive and male dominant D/s relationships has to sometime answer the question: “that thing you do that so many people find to be abuse towards women, what does it mean to you?”. That is something that I’ve had to face in my own Master/slave relationship (and indeed discussed Wednesday because of reading these stories).

I’ll be honest and say I’ve not read a lot of contemporary erotica. A love of the classics (Story of O, Anaïs Nin), a lack of time, and a huge body of other interests have just kept that off my shelves. And so, I can’t say I would’ve picked this book (or any other) off the bookshelves. But I’ve read some of Bussel’s work online and was so impressed that she was brave enough to do a story on bukkake (which forces that existential question maybe even more than this topic) that I jumped at the chance to join her “virtual book tour“.

And I have to say, it was a leap of faith that has paid off. Because, much to my pleasant surprise, these stories of female submissives and male dominants aren’t simple stories of domineering men and the subjugated women who cower before them. No, these stories eloquently expound, usually in unstated language, the characters’ answers to that critical question. And, to my ears at least, the answers are complex, nuanced, and varied. But they show that, dominant isn’t domineering, and submissive isn’t subjugated.

What you find are stories of women whose scenes of submission come only after negotiation and bargaining with the man as a peer. You find scenes where a black woman spends a weekend acting as the domestic little helper of a white man and finds the experience to be one of equality for them both.

What you find are that, contrary to what you might think, these are relationships that both the submissive females and the dominant males approach with respect and seriousness. These stories show clearly that the dominant men in these stories are not there to domineer and subjugate the submissive females. Rather, as one author put it, they are there to cherish, to protect, to hurt, but not harm.