TheI,

Very well-stated, perhaps the best stated discussion on this issue I've seen here. I agree that the contradiction doesn't totally resolve itself with the argument that the sub-female is freely submitting. As a submissive female who outside the constraints (if you will) of the bedroom is completely autonomous and liberated, I too have misgivings about my fantasy space.

It definitely gets you thinking about what motivates us to either dominate or submit. I certainly haven't suffered any abuse in my past, if anything I've just been exposed to the same depictions of pleasure as most, depictions that tend to humiliate women in a general sense. But that doesn't necessarily explain the desire to be tied up, humiliated, to experience pain. Of course that eventually gets us into psyche-talk, a topic which I'm neither qualified or interested in addressing.

Ultimately I guess our task is to identify what gets us off and under what conditions, and to control those experiences. Those experiences are pure fantasy for me as well, mostly because I find it hard to broach the subject in “real life.” (“No it's ok, you can bite, no do it harder”). But that's a whole other issue.....