Women, Sex and "Domination Myth"

I had to write this entry in response to an article I read, that was written – sadly – by a woman.  Now this woman, Katie Roiphe, has been very vocal about her theory of the date rape “myth”, so it’s hard to take much of what she says seriously.

But, her latest article is garnering a lot of attention, and appropriately, outrage.  Her claim is that feminists are sick of having so much power in the world, in the workforce, that they are just “crying out” to be dominated in the bedroom.

Without any research whatsoever, Ms. Roiphe claims that women, now more than ever, are fantasizing about being dominated, degraded and even hurt in the bedroom.  Her comments are uneducated, unfounded, and down right dangerous!

The truth of the matter is that with our growing pornified culture, and the extreme violence in mainstream porn, people are in fact, altering the neurotransmitters in their brain.  From childhood, we all carry certain images, sounds, smells, touches that register in our brain as “arousing”.  When we get older new images, sounds, smells and touches get added to our “arousal template”.  This is natural human sexuality.

But...when something dangerous or unhealthy is added into the mix...our brain doesn’t reject it.   For example...a young woman is raped at age 19.  She was forcibly raped, was hit and choked.  During the rape, she had an orgasm.  This is nature, not her choice.  Her body responded to stimuli, even against her will.  As months or years pass, she finds her body reacts to rape scenes in movies, she feels aroused but hates herself for it.  She doesn’t understand, and she is ashamed. 

This example is to show that arousal is not a conscious choice.  It’s your body’s natural reaction to a stimulus.  

There are millions of women who are being introduced to sexual violence by their partners.  There are millions of people who can no longer function sexually, without said violence.  With the rising amount of violence in mainstream porn, and with the increasing acceptance of pornography – more and more people are damaging their arousal templates. 

Kathy was in her early 20’s when she began dating Mike.  She was sexually inexperienced, he was not.  Slowly, he broke her down over the years and their sex life became extremely violent.  It started out with him asking if he could spank her, she would say no at first, but he would keep asking, so she gave in.  From there, he wanted to tie her up, blind fold her, whip her, choke her, smack her, rape her, sodomize her.  He would force orgasms from her, call her whore, and bitch.  Kathy had learned to ‘disassociate’ during sex...and because she sometimes had orgasms, she didn’t understand why she felt violated, and ashamed.  Doesn’t an orgasm mean you like it?!

Kathy got out of the relationship, and struggled to understand the sex life she had with Mike.  Once she was out, it was easier to see and accept the abuse she had suffered.  She didn’t “want” to be dominated in the bedroom.  It happened so slowly, and manipulatively, and she was never able to acknowledge it...until it was all over.  There are millions of women like Kathy.

Before making such dangerous, blanketed statements that women want to be dominated in the bedroom, Ms. Roiphe should have done some research.