Within me there has been a sort of amicable duel between my belief in gender equality and my position as a Dominant within the BDSM culture. At first glance, the latter seems to strike down the former. I believe that my girlfriend has a certain place in our relationship in which she belongs, along with a set of duties and responsibilities. There is an order to things that suggests a certain lack of equality.
But at the same time, I entrust more to my girlfriend than I have anyone else, both in the emotional sense, and in more mundane daily activities. In the past I might have taken over more aspects of my relationship, relegating my partner to the role of cheerleader more than teammate, but that is no longer the case. There is a sort of reliance that has never been present before.
It is a strange contradiction to have such a high level of respect for someone while you're telling them to shut up and get on their knees, or beating them with a flogger until they start begging you to stop, or telling them to make you dinner because fuck, that's what they're there for. So strange that I'm at a bit of a loss to explain it, even though that's by job as a writer, to put words to the inexplicable.
I think if I were to put words to it though, my explanation would be that Male-Dom BDSM (at least healthy BDSM) is an extension of feminism. I think that feminism is about respect, about respecting a woman's personality, both the parts that go against gender stereotypes, and the parts that fall in line with them. Saying that a woman shouldn't act in a particular way runs counter to feminism because all it does is modify the notion of how a woman "should act." It's a prison under a different name. True feminism is about allowing a woman the freedom to make her own choices based on her personality and not passing judgment on them, even if they involve her getting on her knees like a good little girl and opening wide.
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