The research that I did on marriage and power exchange introduced me to many new thoughts and some new people. It cemented in my mind that there is no magic to gender. Dominance is not a masculine trait nor submissiveness a feminine trait necessarily.
Eve Ensler, author of the Vagina Monologues had me listening carefully to her when she said in an interview this week that she loves that state of androgyny when female meets male; that state which is neither one thing nor the other.
With those thoughts in my mind, I found the conversation with a close friend to be extraordinarily staid. Her niece has just married well (i.e. his family has plenty of money) and she said that her sister was acting like Mrs Bennett (of Pride and Prejudice) and summing up the men in town in terms of their suitability for marriage. This behaviour was making my friend feel that her daughters (in their late 20s) had 'missed the boat' and were destined for "spinsterhood".
I suggested to her that there seemed to be two streams of thought now: the holding onto conservatism whereby a daughter should settle down and find herself a suitable husband to sire her children and keep them living comfortably and safely, and a much more fluid society where such a notion was much less important and/or required.
Certainly, if you look at the statistics, marriage rates are dropping but the number of people in de facto relationships is not and it seems that the vast majority of us still look for a mate with which to live and share our lives.
Builders and developers continue to make small one bedroom apartments at an increasing rate, holding onto the belief that many of us will be single dwellers for at least a time. Perhaps, this is a trend towards not necessarily needing a relationship at all. An airline pilot friend of ours told me that in Japan not one of his crew was in a relationship. Beautiful air flight attendants were, rather than having a boyfriend or husband, making sex dates with no intention of pursuing the association further than fulfilling their sexual needs.
With all this in mind, I sometimes go searching for some dominance in myself. Maybe I would like to get on top of someone in some small way. Well, obviously, like anyone else, I try to get people to co-operate with me to get things done. To that end, I want my way. I'm going to point out if someone is overcharging me or if they are doing something in a manner that is not satisfactory.
But, if I do do that, I don't assault them with some supercharged me. I tend to try to use a mixture of politeness, femininity, reason and logic to get them to see my way. The more in control I feel of myself, the more likely I am to use strategies that allow them to adjust their state of mind to see things from my point of view. So, in my case, I never really forget that I am a woman and that I must handle things with some subliminal awareness of my femininity. Maybe it is the 'claws' at the end of my fingers these days, but the femininity, if not the submissiveness is always present.
What delights me about the research that I have done is that I feel completely accepting of all variations on this theme. Eve Ensler talked of how she hoped that next Valentine's Day (V Day) 1 billion people would "dance" to stop violence against women. In that group she included women and "good men" - those men that deplore violence against women. I truly admired her daring goal and her belief that we all, individually and collectively, had the ability to make a difference to the whole world. Suddenly, androgyny seemed like a very wonderful space - that place where femininity meets masculinity.
On the other hand, what she was asking for was really a very conservative stance, I think - a recognition that women are vulnerable and that men need to protect them against bad people and bad circumstances. It is a stand for good against evil; for good people to rise and do something. It definitely left me feeling that there is a strong force for peace in this world and that somewhere in our more fluid society, we may be onto a good thing.
Eve Ensler, author of the Vagina Monologues had me listening carefully to her when she said in an interview this week that she loves that state of androgyny when female meets male; that state which is neither one thing nor the other.
With those thoughts in my mind, I found the conversation with a close friend to be extraordinarily staid. Her niece has just married well (i.e. his family has plenty of money) and she said that her sister was acting like Mrs Bennett (of Pride and Prejudice) and summing up the men in town in terms of their suitability for marriage. This behaviour was making my friend feel that her daughters (in their late 20s) had 'missed the boat' and were destined for "spinsterhood".
I suggested to her that there seemed to be two streams of thought now: the holding onto conservatism whereby a daughter should settle down and find herself a suitable husband to sire her children and keep them living comfortably and safely, and a much more fluid society where such a notion was much less important and/or required.
Certainly, if you look at the statistics, marriage rates are dropping but the number of people in de facto relationships is not and it seems that the vast majority of us still look for a mate with which to live and share our lives.
Builders and developers continue to make small one bedroom apartments at an increasing rate, holding onto the belief that many of us will be single dwellers for at least a time. Perhaps, this is a trend towards not necessarily needing a relationship at all. An airline pilot friend of ours told me that in Japan not one of his crew was in a relationship. Beautiful air flight attendants were, rather than having a boyfriend or husband, making sex dates with no intention of pursuing the association further than fulfilling their sexual needs.
With all this in mind, I sometimes go searching for some dominance in myself. Maybe I would like to get on top of someone in some small way. Well, obviously, like anyone else, I try to get people to co-operate with me to get things done. To that end, I want my way. I'm going to point out if someone is overcharging me or if they are doing something in a manner that is not satisfactory.
But, if I do do that, I don't assault them with some supercharged me. I tend to try to use a mixture of politeness, femininity, reason and logic to get them to see my way. The more in control I feel of myself, the more likely I am to use strategies that allow them to adjust their state of mind to see things from my point of view. So, in my case, I never really forget that I am a woman and that I must handle things with some subliminal awareness of my femininity. Maybe it is the 'claws' at the end of my fingers these days, but the femininity, if not the submissiveness is always present.
What delights me about the research that I have done is that I feel completely accepting of all variations on this theme. Eve Ensler talked of how she hoped that next Valentine's Day (V Day) 1 billion people would "dance" to stop violence against women. In that group she included women and "good men" - those men that deplore violence against women. I truly admired her daring goal and her belief that we all, individually and collectively, had the ability to make a difference to the whole world. Suddenly, androgyny seemed like a very wonderful space - that place where femininity meets masculinity.
On the other hand, what she was asking for was really a very conservative stance, I think - a recognition that women are vulnerable and that men need to protect them against bad people and bad circumstances. It is a stand for good against evil; for good people to rise and do something. It definitely left me feeling that there is a strong force for peace in this world and that somewhere in our more fluid society, we may be onto a good thing.
