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My fantasy novel Father of Dragons became available today through Samhain Publishing’s ‘Discover New Authors’ promotion.

You can now download the first half of the book in pdf form totally free. And you can read the blurb, excerpts and order Father of Dragons in ebook or paperback here

Female fantasies are diverse, yet a recurring theme is the idea being subordinate–the flip side of being protected and cherished is, it seems, being mastered.  It is never a fantasy that has done much for me but over the years I have seen that it continues to top the charts of most common female fantasies.  As a reader and writer of romance it is hard to ignore how popular the ’swept off her feet’ fantasy remains, even in the form of “forced seduction” (and beyond).

 In sexual terms this subordination may range from a simple preference for the so-called “missionary” position to bondage and extensive roleplay–up to and including voluntary lifestyle slavery.  But having fought very hard to give women independence, feminism forums often have difficulty tolerating, let alone accepting, sexually subordinate fantasies.  For example, a few days ago Stacey May Fowles wrote: “inability to accept BDSM into the feminist dialogue is really just a form of kinkophobia, a widely accepted prejudice against the practice of power-exchange sex.” 

And I would agree with this.  I think we fall prey to a common logical fallacy that I have discussed before–in confusing that girls can do anything with the idea that they must.  Ultimately it is not the role of feminism to change what being a woman is, so much as open up the possibilities of what she may choose to be.  Because if we simply change a constricting subordinate role with a constriction autonomous or dominant one, what have we really achieved?

Freedom includes the ability to choose service, servility and even subordination–be it to a career, an ideal, a God, a country, a woman or a man.  It maybe service that is lifelong, for part of life, part of the day, or one aspect such as sexuality.  After all, each of us choose to be obedient to some degree, in some ways, some of the time for some reasons.  We have, variously, employers, family, clergy, policemen and judges, teachers and mentors… and some have a master or mistress (or some other form or degree thereof) in sexual activities.

It is naive to conflate the fantasy, even the reality, of surrender with the status of victim.  The difference, the real power, is in choice.  A person who is financially, legally and psychologically emancipated can walk away from a relationship that does not suit her.  She may give up her power but equally she may take it back.  The choice of sexual subordinate is in no way equivalent to the violence of sexual abuse because the not only consent, but active choice, drives the voluntary submissive–and the conscientious modern master.  And, as Fowles notes on relation to bondage (but it is true of many other forms of subordination) “regardless of appearance, by its very nature BDSM is constantly about consent.”

And I say this as a female who, on a visceral level, simply does get why anyone would want to be subordinate.  But then I don’t get why some people like to eat anchovies, watch basketball or run marathons–and I am not going to make moral judgments about those who do.  (Okay, maybe the marathon runners but that’s a whole other issue).  And that applies equally to women and to men, gay and straight etc etc.  There are subordination, and even humiliation, fantasies of many kinds and within a culture of consent they are simply part of the diversity of human desire.

There are endless debates about whether female subordination fantasies are so common because of basic biological reasons, or due to roles taught to woman as part of a patriarchal culture.  But ultimately I don’t think nature versus nurture is a the point.  Each one of us is a complex product of genes, environment and experiences–creating desires that, so long as they can be satisfied within a context of the constant availability of autonomy and constant presence of consent, should not be a source of shame.  Feminism should never become a missionary position of the mind, replacing the universal edict of female subordinate with a universal edict that bans the surrendering of power in any context.

Women and men alike are free to surrender their freedoms to others, as individuals and collectives.  We respect and honor this choice in the contexts of religious service, the rule of law, and volunteers such as in charities and the armed forces.  And as in any case where a person enters a vulnerable state, scrutiny is appropriate, but honestly–choosing to be spanked or bound should really not be such a big deal.  No single way of enjoying sex is the ‘normal’ or the ‘ideal’.

What is it with the advertisers tryng to get women to fall back in love with housework, literally.  First it was the swiffer ‘Baby, Come Back‘ advertisements which seemed to suggest what the bored married women needs is to leave her old mop for a new toy boy swiffer.  Now I see a dish detergent sold with a sponge saying, in Lothario tones, that what he loves most about a woman is her hands (how many fetishes do you see there?)

Research last year suggested that when a husband does more housework, the couple have more sex.  This suggests to me that what is sexy is either a man with a mop, or a woman on the couch with her feet up, drinking a beer.  But maybe that is just me.  If yuou think a man doing housework is unlikely, you have no idea what my apartment looks like.

Me falling in love with cleaning up?  I’ll believe that when mops and sponges actually do start to talk.

I bought this nut cracker with the vague intention of giving it to someone for Christmas, but somehow that bever happened. When I bought it I thought it was funny but then whenever I considered giving it to someone I thought of all they ways they would misunderstand….

I’m not lesbian

No, I am not suggesting you like naked chicks, honest.

This objectifies women.

It is an object. Objects are meant to be objectified. I mean imagine if you had to worry about personality clashes with your appliances. Other than cars and computers, that is. They are totally temperamental. Oh, and toasters.

This thing perpetuates unrealistic body expectations for women.

It is clearly an exagerated depiction of the stereotyped pinup body. I think that’s the point. Maybe it isn’t. I don’t really care–it’s the point for me. I think it’s funny

Why on earth would you find this funny?

Um, it’s a nutcracker. Don’t you think a pinup nutcracker is kind of… well, ironic? Kitch? Fun?

So you were actually suggesting I was a ball breaker?

No.

I don’t get it.

Oh. Well. Merry Christmas to me then.

Except I scoured the supermarket and could not find a single bag of nuts in the shell.

I may sulk.

Pat Boone wrote a book for teenagers in 1958 called (with an excess of ‘Aw, Shucks’ styling) ‘Twixt Twelve and Twenty.  It is predictable that I would have quite a lot to say about such a book, not least the idea that a man who eloped and married at 19 might be the best choice for advice.  Nevertheless the idea of making a more general statement was eclipsed by my reaction to one small section.  Beneath the title “Sweet Sixteen” the following is said of (and to) girls of the ages 15 and 16:

“…there are even more rules of conduct for girls at this stage. One of them is that, even if a fellow runs like a three-legged hippopotamus, he must be the pursuer. In this game of hide-and-seek the male is always’”it.” The girl who makes the advance tips her hand immediately. That throws the game, for if she’s “it” then the fellow has to run hide, and usually does. This I know, from experience. Of course girls do have subtle ways of reversing the game. For example:

There once was a maiden of Siam
Who said to her lover, young Kiam,
“If you kiss me, of course
You will have to use force–
But you’re certainly stronger than I am.”

Undoubtedly, she got kissed.  But down Nashville way, we would have seen right through her.  We didn’t cotton to “bold” girls in Tennesse.  The fact is that one of the best ways for a galt o catch a guy is to let him chase her!”

It is hard to even remember a time when it was respectable to believe, and to advise children, that no means yes.  And this without even considering for a second that this might lead to a situation where a boy, or indeed a man, fails to accurately distinguish between a no that means yes and a no that actually means no–let alone how to deal with the consequences of the error.

It is an old joke to say “the masculine embraces the feminine”, meaning that one can (a.k.a. once could) say “he” or “man”; and be understood to mean “a person” or “the human species”.  It is, in my opinion, archaic to assume that using a term that is male can be assumed to include men and women.  But if anyone is going to be archaic I suppose it is going to be the Pope who is tasked with head up one of the biggest, oldest traditions on the planet, the Catholic faith. 

But a beleif can be ancient and progressive.  For example, the the Pope’s Christmas message touched on the preservation of our planet–a bridge between ancient and modern ideas of stewardship and protection.  Specifically Christianity and environmentalism.

However, three years ago Pope Benedict gave his Christmas message in gender neutral terms.  So my appreciation of his 2008 message was undermined by the confusion of jumbled genders in passages such as: “Since faith in the Creator is an essential part of the Christian Creed, the Church cannot and should not limit itself to transmitting to its faithful only the message of salvation. She has a responsibility for Creation, and it should validate this responsibility in public. In so doing, it should defend not just the earth, water and air as gifts of Creation that belong to everyone. She should also protect man from destroying himself.

And is this use of the masculine to embrace all humanity as casual an unintentional anachronism?  I would argue that it is, in fact, a deliberate step back from gender neutrality–given the very next part of the message:

“It is necessary to have something like an ecology of man, understood in the right sense. It is not outdated metaphysics when the Church speaks of the nature of the human being as man and woman, and asks that this natural order be respected. This has to do with faith in the Creator and listening to the language of creation, which, if disregarded, would be man’s self-destruction and therefore a destruction of God’s work itself. That which has come to be expressed and understood with the term ‘gender’ effectively results in man’s self-emancipation from Creation (nature) and from the Creator. Man wants to do everything by himself and to decide always and exclusively about anything that concerns him personally. But this is to live against truth, to live against the Spirit Creator. The tropical rain forests deserve our protection, yes, but man does not deserve it less as a Creature of the Spirit himself, in whom is inscribed a message that does not mean a contradiction of human freedom but its condition.”

This makes is clear to me that a deliberate choice was made to desert the use of gender-neutral language and insist that the female listener subsume herself within a male identity.  And further that the interests of the Earth are to be subordinate to preserving what is presumed to be the correct role for humans, which differ depending in being of the male and female sex–with an explicit repudiation even of the notion of culturally-created gender.  And, lest the full implications of this be missed, the very next passage goes further:

“The great theologians of Scholasticism described matrimony - which is the lifelong bond between a man and a woman - as a sacrament of Creation, that the Creator himself instituted, and that Christ, without changing the message of Creation, welcomed in the story of his alliance with men. Part of the announcement that the Church should bring to men is a testimonial for the Spirit Creator present in all of nature, but specially in the nature of man, who was created in the image of God.”

I am not a person of faith, but I have a reverent and deep respect for ancient and ongoing beliefs that are at the core of human culture.  Most people believe in God and religion is a great force that moves across the face of the planet.  The Catholic church and Christian leaders in general have increasingly embraced the need to protect the planet.  But so long as this secular and universal concern is explicilyt subordinated to an agenda of opposing divorce, gay marriage, extra-marital sex and evolving gender roles I doubt our ability to overcome the selfishness of pollution and wastage that is threatening to irrevocably degrade the planet.

I do not expect the Catholic faith to change in its position on these issues.  But I did hope that the common cause of inter-faith communication and protection of the planet could be raised above, or held equal to, agendas that are less universal and less inclusive. 

The Pope’s message should, of course, be tailored to those of the Catholic faith, but three years ago it reached out to and indeed embraced those from other religions and secular traditions.  In 2008 it is beginning to sound more like there is no room for us at the Inn*.  Women, animals, and the wider environment may come in from the cold–so long as we accept the idea that the creator made a place for us in the basement, not in the living-room.

*”Inn” in the Bible being a translation of a word meaning “upper room”.  At the time of Jesus’ birth a house often had an upper floor for the people and a lower room in which animals were kept. 

Sometimes is can be tricky to explain to a guy why gender myths(a.k.a. gender stereotypes or false beliefs) are/can be a big deal.  Partly this is because most of the gender myths we are taught as children continue to just seem plausible to us throughout life.  The other is that myths about males are a bit more insidious than those about women.  Women are characterised as weak, emotional, hysterical and erratic.  Being characterised as strong, logical, laconic and herois doesn’t seem like such as bad deal (until you try to live up to it all the time without ever showing a hint of weakness).

It can be helpful to illustrate how gender myths can be unnecessarily limiting by reach for example from the past, and examples relating to the male gender.  In fact there is one particular example that I have found to very effectively in getting the point across.  I will illustrate it with some quotes from what was considered a rather progressive book about sexuality, circa 1912.

 ”…the growing man [up to the age of 25] needs the semen secreted to develop his own body.  It is now recognised as a fact that the semen, if not dissipated, will be reabsorbed by the system and aid materially in the development of the body.  Boys who waste this “elixir of life” during their youth do not develop as they should.  The youth who practices masturbation …  during this period of development is wasting energy he never can regain.”

That’s right, it was commonly believed that a male up to the age of 25 should (could) abstain from any emission.  And what would happen if he did not?  Well according to this author:

“…self-abuse has a weakening effect on the body … capable of producing the most serious of results, such as insanity, idiocy, impotency and sterility … Children who have developed the habit of self abuse usually sleep badly, become thin and haggard looking, peevish, nervous and excitable.  Some even have convulsions.  Older boys who are masturbators usually get  a sallow look and hang-dog expression.  They become  absent-minded and lose their frank expression.  The young man with this habit becomes overshy as he is conscious of doing something that should be condemned. Adult masturbators may show no signs otherwise than that they are cowardly and mean-spirited … He lacks the willpower necessary to succeed in any undertaking and drags through life as a failure.”

These days we joke about going blind or getting hairy palms.  But this was a real basis for shame and confusion for boys who did what came naturally.  They must genuinely have feared becoming a coward, pervert or weakling.  In fact this belief lingers in certain subcultures to the present day.  Young boys were watched closely, sleep on hard beds with light blankets on the understanding that being warm ’stimulates’ erotic desires–in fact if possible they were mean to sleep outside or at least with a window wide open.  Using condiments on food was also considered dangerous and cold baths both a preventative and curative treatment.  Children born to men under 25 are described as likely to be deficit and under-developed.

It may seem funny now, but I doubt it was at the time when many boys would have been ashamed of something they were told was, on a moral and scientific basis, abnormal.  How would we know which of the beliefs we hold today might eventually be shown to be just as fallacious?  It may seem easy to dispute the opinions in an old book (one that goes on to discuss ‘race suicide’ and the advisability of sterilising imperfect humans). 

But irrational shame still lurks in the form of gender myths in our own day to day lives.  We obsess about our sexual attributes, orientations, the strength or absence of libido, our appearances, our fantasies, what we view and read–and equally we are judgemental of others based on the very same things.  It should be simple, really.  There should be no shame where no-one is harmed.  But false science and moralising convinces many people that what comes naturally to them harms themselves or others.  And it is hard to sort truth from myth when another camp, especially on the online Wild West, will suggest any kind of abuse is actually normal and loving.

It may take a funny example to make the point.  But gender myths limit how people behave and who they are, not just sexually but in every way.  Some of these limits are beneficial and prevent selfish abuse or others, and some are arbitrary and perverse with a needless legacy of shame and self-loathing.  The trick, as ever, is telling the differemce between the two.  Or at least trying to.

 * Quotes from Himself: Talks with Men Concerning Themselvesby EB Lowry and RJ Lambert (Forbes & Company, Chicago, 1912)

I wonder how many people walking in the ‘Take Back the Night’marches considered how literally the idea could be taken.  I mean, if you ask most people who the most powerful god in the ancient greek pantheon was, most people would say Zeus.  (Either that or give you that “you’re crazy look” and ask if you are a Satanist.)  But anyhow, Zeus was considered the greatest of the gods.

 But consider this, when it came to deciding how long a man would live, on god and one god only determined that–and Zeus only enforced her decision.  Atropos, or as the Roman’s called her Mortis.  She was the oldest of the Fates.  Her sister spun out each mortal life, and measured it’s length, but Atropos alone determine when it was cut off.  (An old lady with an enormous pair of sheers, what would Freud have to say about that?)

And Atropis was the daughter of Night (a.k.a. Nyx or Nox–pictured above by Edward Robert Hughes).  She was, quite literally the darkness, and the darkness was feminine.  Night is spoken of rather rarely.  Her children spread her legacy.  Her named offspring are the avatars of sleep, death, darkness, day, the air, blame, toil, misery, doom, dream, retribution, pleasure, madness and strife as well as the Fates.  Some of her children had fathers of her choosing, some had no father at all as she could give birth without any contribution from a man.

Atropis, Night, Lilith… history seems to be strewn with powerful female figures.  Some draw their power from the night, and some are banished there.  But better that than to live up to the one dimensional feminine ideal that follow.  The bright, blonde, bouncy heroine, the female without a shadow.  Maybe our progress towards the balanced female hero will necessarily take us through the darkness.  Perhaps the current vogue for but kicking, sarcastic, neurotic and promosicuous heroine s is part of that assimilation.

If we are to marry Eve and Lilith it is not the blessings of Zeus that will make the union work–it is the succor of Night and the forbearance of the old lady with the scissors.  Let there be female heroes again, let them leap fully armed from our head like Athena did from the cranium of Zeus.  Or let them be born by a woman with no input from a man at all.  Let there be female heroes that follow their own path, through light and through darkness.  Let their be urban fantasy, romance, ebooks and pinups.  Let there be pornography and let it be shameless.  Let there be be mood swings, inspiring dreams, arguments, deep breaths, daybreaks and the endless toil of writing through it all.

And if it is part of the greater whole, the root of female creation: by all means, let there be Night.

In the United States approximately 10-16% of construction workers (1, 2, 3) are female–and groups within and oputside these industries have clealry states goals of increasing the particiation of women in skilled trades and management, and reducing obstacles for their participation in laboring roles. However, the most recent data suggests that, when newly hired, women are paid an average of 79% of the wage of a male worker. 

Perhaps they do not appear the this line up below because about half of these women participate in an administrative capacity, and that is not really “working” as compared to laboring, trades and management?  And As for how many women are employed by railways, I just couldn’t find out.  There are several associations for railroad women (1, 2, 3) but they do not state the demographic situation or any goals on relation to it.  In fact all I can find on this subject is historical, mainly in relation to the involvement of women in railroad professions during World War II.  By contrast, the interest (scholarly and popular) in womens’ contemporary involvement in the railways seems to be almost non-existent. 

This is the time of year where people start to bring up trivia, such as that the reindeer ostensibly pulling Santa’s sleigh would–if they have antlers–be female (or castrated males).  Bull reindeer, you see, shed their antlers before Christmas.  It is interesting that it matters.  Are Santa’s deer presumed to be male because they do physical labor, or on some weird assumption that only males have horns.  This is true of some species, but in most horned species both the male and female go equipped.  (And that would include common livestock like cows, sheep and goats of their horns were not surgically removed).I spend quite a lot of time on this blog questioning what people assume about gender.   But it is worth considering that although the meaning of gender beyond chromosomal and anatomical domain is disputed, gender itself is a categpory even broader than species.  That is, there are far more individual out there that are female, than that are human.  This is not to say that I have more in common with a female giraffe than a male human (although it may sometimes feel that way) but that the meaning of gender can be considered across species boundaries.

It is said that in technical terms, only humans have “gender” which implies a cultural meaning attached to perceived male-ness or female-ness.  Animals are described, in most scientific publications, as being of the male or male ’sex’ not ‘gender’.  But I have recently noticed a number of exceptions.  This may be simply because ’sex’ is a word that makes people uncomfortable because it is now used vastly more often to refer to copulation than to specify between male and female.

I would argue that referring to an animals “gender” is equally justifiable because animals are also treated differently, by their own species and others including our own, depending on whether they are male or female.  And this is not only for innate and unchanging biological reasons, but also due to what individuals learn during their lifetime–due to within and between species culture.  I would argue that more sentient species of animal have a basic concept of their own gender and that of other animals that goes beyond reflexive reproductive acts.

And animals are a diverse and shocking lot when viewed with an open mindm rather than through the lens of Disney-fied assumptions that plague even scientific endeavors.  Research focused for a long time on male combat, not female choice.  On aggression and not bonding and appeasement.  In the animal king/queen and drone-dom every  norm of femininity from size to nurturing role is reversed as a norm in some species, and by at least some individuals in every species.  Even if you hold animals do not have “gender” not every animal of a certain sex follows the life path typical for the species.  Some either do not want to, or chose not to breed, some are homosexual in their focus, some are poor or abusive parents, some fill the role in their community more typical of the other sex. In short, every ‘deviancy’ painted as unnatural in humans is found in other animals.

So by saying sex is more pervasive than species I am not say it is more rigid and standardised–quite the reverse.  Looking at the mouth brooder, the lilytrotter, the reindeer and the honeybee, it is in fact flexibility and diversity of sex roles that we see.

And p.s. to be perfectly honest, why are Santa’s reindeer shown with antlers?  I suspect it is because later days artists find that embellishment aesthetically pleasing, and no other reason.  After all, Santa doesn’t employ all that many fact checkers to protects his brand and trademarks from such misrepresentation.   (Although, if Santa is sensible the team are non-breeding girls and eunuchs rather than bulls exhausted after the rut or pregnant females.)