Towards a Performance Model of Personal Appearance

The highlight of my last Tuesday was finding a few cute tee shirts at Target for far cheaper than they should have been. I actually spend at least a small amount of time every morning blow drying my hair and styling it with gel. I probably spend more than is consistent with my goal of practicing temperance on good hair stylists and optional treatments like highlights.

Fifteen year old Alcibiades is rolling in his grave.

In high school, following fashion and practicing personal grooming beyond what was necessary for hygiene seemed like a pointless shell game. It was, as I conceived it, a transaction: if I were willing to put the time, effort, and money into looking good, you might give me the time of day in a social situation. Since even in the darkest days of my most strident utilitarianism I was leery of placing the sacred value of friendship into the crass hands of commerce, I considered that I was better off not playing the game. At least then I knew that my relations and friends were interested in something more important than superficialities.

There's at least a grain of truth in that narrative to my 180 degree turn. My migration from a social context where a 120-pound guy with a boyish face and a curvy body was apt to be treated like a scrawny weakling to one where such a one was more likely to be treated as a sterling example of queer submissive sexuality certainly helped start the transition. I've found a milieu where such care is far more likely to produce results in getting people to be friendly and in finding sexual partners.

Yet I have also found a milieu where such an appearance is more likely to be appreciated and validated by my peers. While this may superficially seem to resemble the transaction model I outlined above, and would have probably seemed so to my 15-year old self, it is not necessarily so. While the notion of the atomistic man, drawing a conception of self wholly from within, admitting of no social influence, may be attractive, it's simply not an accurate depiction of reality. The formation of an identity is necessarily a social endeavor, whether one defines oneself in contrast to or in accordance with dominant paradigms. Examples of others and esteem of peers point in fruitful directions for self-actualization, and there's nothing wrong with that. While one shouldn't allow the collective to run roughshod over any trace of personal expression, one shouldn't turn down the help a group of peers offers guidance towards how one wants to present oneself.

Which isn't to say that there is no authentic expression of the self involved, and that all is social influence. Part of my continued interest in fashion can be attributed finding models that can exemplify and peers that appreciate, not simply the looks that I can pull off, but the looks that personally appeal to me. Once I got around the latent homophobia preventing me from exploring the girl's section of clothing stores, with their tighter jeans that showed off more and their tee shirts that had a color palette broader than gray and white, I found a lot more worth spending money on.

When I walked into a gay bar for the first time, soon after my 21st birthday, I was blown away. Here was a group, finally, that appreciated the gender expression I'd been struggling towards for years, with a huge selection of attractive looks that I wanted to emulate, not out of a desire for social return, but as a means to be comfortable in my own skin and become the person I want to be. And even though I had some highly unorthodox selections of accessories, my collar and cuffs (laid over the most colorful tee shirt and the tightest jeans I had), everyone there was friendly and sociable. I never felt compelled to dress like them for acceptance.

That isn't a transaction model, where I expend the time and money on looking good for an expected social return. It's a performance model, where I take the examples given to me as an opportunity to express myself and create something I personally find valuable. It's a model that I think is far healthier and, frankly, allows me to have a lot more fun.

On Male Submissive Role Models, Part Two: Hayate the Combat Butler

That's our protagonist on the left, the eponymous Hayate. Leading a comically crappy life played with almost insensitive levity, he has to work to support his spendthrift and worthless mother, who has accrued more debt than he could possibly pay off. By the first episode of the show, his luck in evading his debtors has run out: he is cornered by yakuza, intent on taking what's owed to them either in yen or pounds of flesh. Owing to an improbable set of circumstances, a fabulously wealthy heiress, at the center of the above picture, comes to his rescue and thwarts the thugs. Now in her debt, the only way Hayate can repay her is to enter her service as a butler in her antiquatedly aristocratic manor.

Of course, they fall in love.

Much of the show's action, invariably played comedically, revolves around Hayate's and Nagi's budding romance while Hayate attempts to discharge the duties incumbent upon him as a butler to such a prestigious family and Nagi navigates the social terrain at her posh academy. As one would expect with a butler falling in love with his employer, the show hits subtly on d/s themes, though appropriate for its younger audience (if you have any doubt about its intended audience, scope the PSA that occurs before every show, urging kids not to sit too close to the television). While concerned with bailing his family out of financial distress, Hayate's number one priority seems to be reflecting well on the Sanzen'in family, taking his service-oriented role as a point of honor. His wooing of Nagi's heart generally revolves around showing his care through service, for example, in a madcap dash to evade yakuza, samurai, and giant robots to deliver a forgotten lunchbox to her at school.

As the above plot would indicate, this show doesn't take itself too seriously. It's light-hearted fare, and its absurdity can begin to grate if you're not part of the young teenager target audience. This is a show that both relishes and lampoons traditional anime tropes, and as such may seem utterly inscrutable to those unfamiliar with the medium. While I would encourage first-time anime watchers who are only interested in the d/s themes to give it a shot, it wouldn't surprise me if you tune out after a few episodes. You have been warned.

One of the wonderful things the show has done for me is rescue the business-suit-as-submissive-attire from the toxic tendrils of stereotypical femdom. Hayate is invariably dressed immaculately (except in the episodes where his ruining of a suit, expensive to both his pocketbook and his honor as a representative of the Sanzen'in family, becomes a plot point), but it's intended to highlight his pride in service to his aristocratic family. The suit functions as a reinforcement of his service-oriented attitude, rather than, as in most femdom, a contrast with it, proof that the powerful seductress can get even the powerful businessman on his knees.

This has been particularly useful for me, as, owing to the internship I accepted this summer, I find myself in possession of quite a few suits. At first I dreaded the entering of hegemonic masculinity that would be expected at my new workplace, tempered only by my refusal to trim my long hair. Male fashions have always seemed excessively drab to me, focusing on the most uninteresting part of the color palette. Yet I was pleasantly surprised by the array of colors available in dress shirts and intricacy of patterns available for ties. Especially for a college-aged intern, it wasn't difficult to put together a wardrobe unmistakably masculine and playfully flamboyant and vibrant, a rarity given our visual lexicon for male fashion.
Musings on suits aside, I've heard through the grapevine that Hayate, as befits his feminine body type, eventually ditches his traditionally masculine attire for a maid outfit. Having not arrived at that point in the series, I'm inordinately curious to see how the show handles it; given its respectful treatment of male submissives so far, I doubt it will be festooned with the self-loathing that too much of crossdressing in a femdom context is laden with.

A quick note: If you're looking for the show online, it's much more likely to be known by its Japanese name, Hayate no Gotoku, rather than by the English translation of its title. It's not available in English dubs, to the best of my knowledge, though as with seemingly all anime these days pirated versions with English subtitles are readily found with a simple google search.

On Penetration and Power

I've noticed in several gay communities online (nearly all of them also have a furry bent, for whatever reason) that sub/dom is becoming a synonym for top/bottom (in the queer sense of the penetrating or penetrated partner, not in the kinky sense). For example, this picture was posted in the "subs coming handsfree from being fucked" thread on fchan:


(click the picture for the gorgeous full resolution version)

The one getting penetrated sure doesn't look submissive to me!

In any case, it's true that being the penetrated partner has always had submissive implications for me. I recall once Socrates suggested that we try it, and I nixed it, arguing that it wasn't submissive enough (yeah, sexism, homophobia, and topping from the bottom all combining into one moment of ignorance. Not my finest hour.). Of course, at least part of my reluctance was because of ambient cultural memes about penetration: surely any guy that wanted that had to be submissive.

Yet it was also because of the simple mechanics of the acts as they had been presented to me by the culture: as far as I could tell, the penetrating partner controlled the action. He or she was generally in an upright, dominant position, with the penetrated partner in a vulnerable, inviting position, ass high in the air or on his or her back. While this is what the culture tells us what penetration should look like, it doesn't have to be so. When I gave Socrates that flippant answer, I'm not sure I could have even conceived of a picture like the one above. As Maymay said,

I like fucking. I like it when I’m getting fucked on my penis. Yes, that’s perfectly possible. When I’m talking about getting fucked, I’m not necessarily talking about getting penetrated. A man with an erect penis can actually get fucked—fucking or getting fucked does not have a one-to-one relationship with one’s anatomical genitalia. That said, I don’t see why men who top shouldn’t be able to get it up the ass if they want to. Again, topping or bottoming does not have a one-to-one correlation with whether you are the “active” or “receptive” partner in a sexual encounter. So, it follows, that I also like getting fucked in my asshole.

While I've still got a bit of weird and totally irrational pride about never having penetrated anyone else, I'm interested in starting to experiment with this.

All of this leads back to the fact that I have no idea what to make of the trend I've seen in the furry gay communities. If the change in terminology makes pictures and acts like the one above easier to imagine, I'm all for it. At the same time, I'm more than a smidge leery of dubbing all penetrators as doms and all penetrated people as subs. I suppose it depends on whether it retains more of its meaning from the kinky context or the vanilla context.

Now I've just got to figure out how to last more than two seconds while on an orgasm denial regimine.

On Punishment and Self-Esteem

I think that for me there is a huge distinction between feeling like Murre is upset with me, and feeling like Murre is objectifying me or belittling me. They are both humiliating, of course. But if she is upset, she wants me to change my behavior: the humiliation is supposed to have a corrective result. If I am her toy, though, the humiliation is just something she wants me to feel, and perhaps internalize as part of my status. But I'm not supposed to do anything about it.

The latter is almost always sexy, and when it isn't sexy, it's only because it's too scary, or I am too tired or stubborn to surrender. It's humiliation-as-correction that I have trouble with, and even then I only have trouble with it sometimes. Murre routinely corrects me for things that both of us perceive to be “real” faults. For instance, I was caned in the middle of one of the aforementioned arguments for my tone of voice. And that was lovely and useful and really cleared the air...it was also humiliating, as punishments always are for me.

http://inscarletink.blogspot.com/search?zx=aee3b2b357cdd00f

I'm reminded of of an experience I had this summer. Those three months were groundbreaking in a lot of ways for me: somehow I had snagged a pretty prestigious (paid!) internship in one of the coolest cities in the country, when before I hadn't even held a minimum wage job. Of course, the internship in a different city than my parents' home, so I took the housing stipend given by my employers and had to start a new life for myself for three months. In a sink or swim situation, I mostly swam, but of course I made mistakes in my first time paying my own rent, finding my own place to stay, navigating mass transit for the first time to get to work on time, cooking my own food, etc, without having a support network in the huge city. While in retrospect, I think I did a pretty good job seeing how little experience I'd had with such things, it was a sore point for me at the time, and the few mistakes I made galled me.

At the time I was also dating a wonderful dominant guy, and while we hadn't gone as deep into the dom/sub dynamic as I had in the previous relationship, it was there. And he seemed to really enjoy disciplining me for those mistakes of simple competency: being late because I had misread the train schedule or things of that nature. And my thought throughout all that was, "man, I get enough of that shit in my everyday life." The punishment wasn't making me more motivated to improve at such things; it just made me feel bad about myself and reinforced my doubts about being able to hack it as a competent adult. So eventually we talked about it, and it mostly stopped.

This isn't to say that punishment as correction is always negative for me. Later in the summer I had orgasmed without his permission during one of our scenes, and punishment came soon after. And it was amazingly hot. Of course, there are a few reasons why this might appeal more than the former: the tie to sexuality is obvious, it involves a controlling of something far more intimate than my schedule, and we had not explicitly established an orgasm control regimen, so it was hot to think of it as an arbitrary imposition of authority. Most importantly, though, it didn't prey on any of my insecurities. I generally don't beat myself up for not being able to control my sex drive, so rather than punishing me for something I despair of improving at, it was easy to take it as a goad to improvement. And it left me feeling incredibly humble, without feeling self-denigrating, which is basically the point of humiliation.

On Male Submissive Role Models, Part One

"I have, in the back of my mind, always clung to this idea that I might be a switch. Not that it mattered much since Belle’s unlikely to ever let me top her and she’ll never let me top anyone else, but I clung to it. Like a blanket. Like a thing that made me feel better but was actually totally worthless. Now I know, thanks to Rika and what she wrote and how it finally knocked the final pieces into place, that I’m not ever going to be a switch. I am, in fact, always going to be on the bottom. And that freaks me the fuck out.

First of all, I admit to carrying around a prejudice against submissive males. Submissives in general kinda creep me out. It makes no sense, I know, but that’s what it is. It’s like I’m the white supremacist who just discovered the black grandmother he never knew about or the uber-masculine father of 12 who suddenly figured out he was gay. This is all horrible and all nasty and sad and not anything I’m happy about, but I see now that I’ve never fully embraced my submissive nature because I don’t especially like the archetype as it exists in our culture. In fact, there is no archetype. No role model. Nothing positive to look towards. Just layer after layer of stereotype and ridicule and cultural indifference. And now I know I’m one of them."

http://denyingthumper.com/2010/01/04/the-nose-on-my-face/

It's not difficult to see why Thumper and Maymay internalized negative stereotypes about male submissives. With even pornography directed us demeaning us, and our sole representations in the mainstream being targets of ridicule, it's a wonder any of us are comfortable enough in our own skin to write these blogs.

And yet, I find myself completely unable to sympathize with Maymay and Thumper on this score. If anything, I've been a bit peeved that I don't live up to the romantic ideal of the submissive more. I surely imbibed the same memes about submission as these guys, and I definitely watched much of the porn they watched, but I remained mostly unaffected. I was bewildered by this at first, since I couldn't figure out who my role models were, if not submissives in porn.

Jesus came readily to mind after perusing my blog for inspiration. My father came to mind as well (hopefully, more on that in a future post). I wracked my brain for portrayals of submission in the media remembered from my youth, and I was surprised with the results.

Yeah, believe it or not, I found my submissive role models in Digimon. Back in elementary school I was obsessed with this show; I took HTML classes over the summer after it came on the air to make a better Digimon fansite with my best friend.

A digimon was everything a submissive should strive to be: they obeyed orders, directed their every effort to making their partner (they called them partners, ferchrissakes!) happy and making sure they were protected, and were generally lower on the social ladder than their tamer. But their submission was neither simpering nor pathetic; their devotion was noble, born out of love for their partners. It was clear that they weren't where they were because they were inferior, nor would they take the other role if they were only strong enough to do it: they had their purpose and fulfilled it. Their role was sanctioned by the cosmos, foretold in prophecy, and had a mission of civilization changing proportions.

And they were cool. An anthropomorphic fox that could summon daggers at will or a T-Rex that could fire nuclear missiles could not be called wimps. While their doms were little more than damsels in distress or cheerleaders when the shit hit the fan, they were kicking ass. And yet every bit of their earth shattering power was placed in the service of their partner.

And they came in every archetype and gender imaginable, their personalities largely reflecting their dominants: you had the tomboy, the computer whiz, the hot head, the loner, and others. Perfect for finding someone to identify with no matter your personality- and to find someone to crush on no matter your fancy (I'll let you figure out my crush from the pictures).

If I wound up feeling fairly positive about my submissive identity, it's probably because I spent at least as much time reading erotic Digimon fanfiction as I did watching grainy femdom clips.

On Labels and the Right of Self Determination

I'm a boy who finds both men and women's bodies sexually and aesthetically attractive. I tend to be attracted to people dominant both in bed and out of it, which given the way we socialize the sexes makes me more attracted to men on average. My main sex act outside of BDSM play is receptive anal sex, but I enjoy being taken with a strap on or its biological equivalent equally. I find myself profoundly uncomfortable with the hegemonic heterosexual male gender role in relationships, and as such tend to gravitate towards alternative and genderqueer women, and am far more at ease in a queer social setting than a straight one.

Fuck if I know where that puts me on the gay-bi-straight axis or even on a 7-point Kinsey Scale. Is it proper to take into account the socialization that most men and women have undergone when figuring which one I favor, or are only intrinsically masculine or feminine qualities in bounds? Is it fair to take into account the greater difficulty of finding people of one sex over the other with common sexual interests? I tend to wash my hands of the matter, claiming a reasonably approximate, "bisexual," or slightly to the gay side of the Kinsey Scale only when pressed.

Here's what I do know- my sexuality involves at least a modicum of attraction to both sexes. Which is why I get so frustrated with the "bisexuals don't really exist," "male bisexuals are really gay, and are only saying that they're bi to placate their families," "bisexual women are just in it to get attention," memes.

(As an aside, I get the frustration lesbians feel when a girl leads them on, when they were only in it to turn on their boyfriends. Obviously such duplicity is immoral. But seriously, this "real lesbian" shit has got to stop. No one gets hegemony over sapphic love. Not one of us gets to define what it is for everyone else. Most of us like turning our partners on, and there's nothing wrong with self-aware adults putting on a show. Yeah, this particular manifestation can say troubling things about homophobia and power differentials in the sexes (why are women the only ones turning to same-sex encounters to turn their partners on?), and yeah, compulsory bisexuality sucks, but that doesn't mean that you can paper over someone else's life with your theory).

Fundamentally, this is about respect. It's about believing that your fellow human beings have the capabilities to assess and define themselves. It's about respecting the right everyone has to name their own experiences.

Really, espousing such opinions doesn't make you homophobic, or even biphobic. What they make you is an asshole. It betrays a chauvinistic self-centeredness that demands your experience be the normative one, at the center of the universe, and that everyone's experience fall into some constellation that agrees with the way you view the world. It betrays a hubris so strong even the objectivists would blush at to contend that you are better able to understand and define another better than they are able to.

Just as important, we should be asking ourselves why we feel that these stereotypes even matter, or why we view them as negative. Why should it matter that many gay men at one point were or identified as bisexual? Why is it so negative that someone had to go through a process of self-discovery before finally figuring things out and accepting themselves? Were you born fully formed with an identity? Did you never go through a process of exploration? Were you immediately comfortable the first time you had a gay desire? Likewise, why is it so negative if a woman likes turning on her partner with a show?

I am reminded of the tired cliches of watermelon and fried chicken eating blacks. They are not particularly important differences, or even necessarily negative ones once divorced from their context, but they serve to marginalize the stereotyped class. Above all, the fact that they are even notable betrays at least a minor level of uncomfortableness about the stereotyped classes, serving a need to make them truly other.

One cannot ignore the negative effect that this can have on bisexual people. It's generally viewed a negative if, say, a bisexual person's sexualitiy changes over time, and they find themselves inclining more and more to the gay end of the spectrum. It makes certain progressively minded women feel guilty about tresspassing when enjoying a perfectly kosher kink. And it balkanizes the queer and alternative sexuality communities, when what we need above all is unity.