“Name someone who uses a whip.”
That was the question posed to contestants on Family Fortunes on Saturday night. With vanilla company, I scarcely batted an eyelid, depsite my astonishment.
Jockeys, lion tamers, circus ringmasters and “the wife” all got a look in. And the deciding answer – second in popularity on the overall list?
A dominatrix.
This, at 8.30pm on primetime Saturday night television. Sadly, the Ball team (including delectable TV/radio presenter Zoe, and her legendary kids’ TV star father Johnny) got it wrong and lost.
Still, I spent the rest of the evening contemplating a slightly different question – “Name someone who uses a belt” – and imagining Zoe blushing with remembered shame as she answered:
“Daddy.”
Do you think he said “Think of a number” when getting young miss Ball to decide how many strokes there’d be?
Telling you man, when it comes to SM in mainstream media, it’s always the woman on top. I mean it’s obvious why it is that way, but still a pity… I am sure, for instance, that if a relative stumbled over our toybag, and in the seconds before they realize that the cuffs and collars are clearly meant to fit a petite woman, they’d assume that I top.
I couldn’t agree more with Amber. Femdom is an extremely fashionable commodified “transgressiveness”- the dominatrix is to being “sexually adventurous, empowered and modern” what mountain dew and SUV’s are (according to TV commercials) to wilderness adventure. I also understand why its problematic to show the other side of S&M… and its not that I have any desire to have vanillas convert to my own orientation…but it does rule out in the minds of many credulous media consumers the possibility that some men and women like another dynamic. What’s worse to me is the constant stream of pathetic “yes dear” themed jokes/commericials/sitcoms in the mainstream media… like “the wife” as an answer to the whip question Abel mentioned. Oh the hilarity of the “everyman” nature of male obsequousness! Ick.
(sorry if I’ve gone on a bit!)
Nathalie, I totally agree with you. I can see that in a way it’s culturally necessary for the pendulum to swing that way for a while, having been at the other extreme for centuries – but I wish it could revert to a central position now, so that female submissives can come in from the cold without being accused of being gender traitors etc. etc.
Littlenic – I’d always known the answer to the old joke to be “69”, but can now see that “6” would be more appropriate.
Fascinating discussion here. It would have been interesting to see the oh-so-prudish, outraged faces had one of the women answered, say, “My husband.” Cue – no doubt – police cars rushing to arrest the partner, counsellors on hand to support the ‘poor’ ‘abused’ ‘victim’.