"The way in which individuals express themselves is a very important part of who they are. It is not possible to force all people to live outside of femininity and masculinity. Only androgynous people live comfortably in that gender space. there's no social compulsion powerful enough to force anyone else to dwell there...
"Why would we want to ask anyone to give up their own hard-fought-for place on the gender spectrum? There are no rights or wrongs in the ways people express their own gender style. no-one's lipstick or flattop is hurting us. No-one's gender expression is any more 'liberated' than anyone else's" - Feinberg (1998:53).
It strikes me that submissives are often subjected to bigotry by the various (fractured) liberation movements. Female submissives are certainly berated for playing into the hands of 'male-dominated' society, or of betraying the 'women's liberation' movement, when they express their self-defined gender and sexuality. I have not myself witnessed it, but I suspect gay male submissives, for example 'cubs', are equally oppressed by those not in the same headspace as them.
As a Dominant and Mistress I feel that I must (and I will) defend the rights of submissives and bottoms to express their gender and sexual identities at least as vigorously as I defend my own.
Bibliography
Feinberg,L.(Ed.), 1998), Trans Liberation: Beyond Pink and Blue, Boston (USA): Beacon Press
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