Cadance in furs; musings about BDSM and ponies · 5:16pm Jul 2nd, 2017
About a year ago, I came across a fic--one I'm sure many are familiar with, the Clocktower Society, which for want of a more romanized way of describing it, is essentially a story about a BDSM cult that everypony (literally everypony) is a part of. Except Twilight, but she gets her own eventually.
Ultimately, this blog post isn't about that.
One thing that bugged me about it, however, was the impression that every female character in the world of Clocktower, is a submissive. Indeed, if one looks at the core relationship represented to us--Twilight, Rarity and Doctor Horse in a herd--one can't help but notice that the later is an unknown, uncharacterized male character. This pattern seems to repeat itself over and over; important, otherwise powerful or attractive mares act as subs to unimportant, largely anonymous male characters. To the point where one fic features Luna (who, supposedly is a switch) engages a male character who literally has no name what so ever.
This blog isn't about this story, as I said, but it did push me down a path that led me to thinking about BDSM in a more general sense. Beyond the somewhat 'mehness' of featureless males (which is to say, vessels for which the presumably male reader might pour himself into) who are chosen for no other reason than that they might dominate someone, it felt somehow off to me. It feels off to me that all these mares would just automatically submit; it is very human, but as as rule, I prefer my ponies to be, well, ponies, and have pony ways of going about their lives.
So, what does pony BDSM look like?
To answer that, I think we have to know what human BDSM looks like. After several months, perhaps even years, of bouncing off of the BDSM community, it struck me that BDSM by and large appears to resemble 'patriarchy', in a more primal way; males dominate females. While I think feminism sometimes takes the concept of patriarchy as an almost conspiracy, I don't think it's unreasonable to say that our societies are male led, and male dominated. In western society, we've recognized that women are equal to men, essentially, and should be treated as such. Yet BDSM seemly reverses this, and has men dominating women (presumably because there's a certain stripping away of civilization about BDSM; civilized people don't hurt one another, but that's sometimes the desired outcome for BDSM, even if the pain is pleasurable).
While this might seem like an unfounded assertion on my part, I think there is some evidence for it. For example, while female dominates do, of course, exist, it seems to me that it often taken as an exception to the rule; consider for a moment that such sex is often shorthanded as femdom, as if there's something unusual or additional to the idea that a dominate would be a women. Indeed, while the data is shaky at best, a 2013 article by Slate seems to support the idea that its usually male dominants and female submissives. A stronger bit of evidence that BDSM is partly a reflection of patriarchal thinking, is sissification or feminization, depending on who you're talking to. Generally, this involves dressing a male sub in female clothing and so forth. It seems to me that the underpinning implication is that being made into a woman is degrading, or humiliating, or both--presumably because there's some devaluing of being a woman to begin with. More damning, though, is that there doesn't appear to be a comparable version in which a woman is 'forced' to be masculine.
People who've read my stuff, or heard me ramble on about worldbuilding know that my approach to worldbuilding with ponies is generally built upon the idea that the ponies live in a matriarchal society; indeed, this certainly seems to how the show is presented, with Equestria quite literally being led by mares. But more interestingly, is that horses tend to behave like this in real life; feral horses generally form bands, consisting largely of mares, fillies and colts, and one or two stallions. It would be a mistake to think that the stallion is in charge. Rather, it is one of the mares. So, building off this, if we assume that ponies are matriarchal in nature, how does this change their approach to BDSM? The central issue I found myself thinking is that it makes very little sense to 'feminize' somepony, because being a female in a matriarchal society is not a bad thing, it's not degrading--presumably being male, or male like would be seen as less valuable, although the exact pinning down of what those might be is probably best left for another blog post. Some that spring to mind is that stallions might be seen as being, well, sexual in a sort of uncontrolled way. They simply can't help themselves, when a mare in heat walks by, etc.
As such, it seems like to me that in a matriarchal society--like the sort I think we have good reason to think the ponies have--that BDSM would ultimately take on a slightly different form, and be primarily female domming male subs. Of course, this doesn't mean that there are no dominant stallions or submissive mares, but they are probably exceptional, rather than the rule.
I would say it offers an explanation for patriarchy: There are probably as many male subs as female subs, but there are more male doms than female doms. You can tell there is a shortage of female doms, because that's what the market will pay the most for.
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While I'm skeptical about the academic strength of the
Slate article,* it's worth noting that the survey (despite how the data is presented) isn't just being presented as just the stats on who's dominating who. In the three samples:We can infer from this that there is also a whatever-percent-left-over 'switch', too. It's certainly interesting that there appears to be no difference in the Canadian sample, although this may be due to having such a smaller sample size.
*I just realized that the Slate article is actually reporting on an academic study carried out by dutch psychologists
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To be active in the BDSM community, though, you usually need a partner (or at least a man who doesn't is not highly prized), so what those numbers mean depends on who they surveyed--people in the community, or the population at large. Sub men have a hard time getting into the community because they have a hard time finding a dom partner.
Did they report total numbers in addition to percentages?
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According to the study, they surveyed from http://www.bdsmzaken.nl/ a 'large BDSM web forum' from the netherlands, and control participants from a Dutch woman's magazine, "Viva", newspaper ads, the online site http://www.geheimenvan.nl . The total number of responses were 1571 for the BDSM forum, and 2775 for the control group. In the former, 902 responses were 100% complete, consisting of 464 males and 438 females. The final control group size was 434 with 129 male and 305 female.
The study says:
I'm having trouble with the californian study, so I can't describe the methods they used to gather the values.
I do see what you're saying, but given the nature of the gathering method, I would suggest that perhaps this is controlled for. Since they were asking on a forum--where not everyone, presumably, is necessarily actively involved with a partner(s) in such a relationship, those who are reporting their role are doing so divorced from restrictions like fewer women dominants.