Discussion Main / AllWomenAreDomsAllMenAreSubs

Compared to the current title, sure, but not accurate enough. I still recommend Male On Female Domination Taboo.

While the trope could use a revamp or a rename, I havn't hear anyone express controversy regarding it's very existence. Have you? Where? Anyway, good example. Adding.

Isn't female/female rather common? I have seen it a lot.

Maybe Male On Female Domination Taboo

I have to agree there. The description is rambling and not to the point. The reference to rape is very strange, and the claim of double standard is not so obvious as whoever wrote it might think.

A little wishlist:

• Make it more to the point (which would probably make it shorter as well).
• Make the distinction between individual works and social structure.
• Bring up the issue of BDSM being gender neutral, and thus neither the old tired patriarchal male-domiance nor an inversion thereof.

Great points, imho. Especially the first one. Going too far into the second and third one might turn it more into an Useful Notes page and we don't need any more of them, I guess. I think that we should also remove the bad examples (subversions, aversions, not-really-examples). I'm not cutting it yet myself, because it's quite a big edit and I'd like to get some feedback on whether we should go with it. Here's what I think should be cut:

• "On a side note, the original Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei almost averted this by flashing some images of girls tied up in shibari position at the beginning of its opening. It was intended to be comical which should have subverted the trope, but the comedy is derived from the juxtaposition of the seriousness of showing such images as opposed to the general comedic content of the show." <- this doesn't really have anything to to with this trope. No male subs nor female doms.

• "Probably most famously and impressively subverted in Nana To Kaoru. It ranks consistently among the top 10 most popular manga. But since its publishers seem to regard it as porn and good luck explaining it to your parents or girlfriend, I suppose it might not be much of a subversion." <- it's not really uncommon to find female subs and male doms in sex related media. Quite the opposite, really. Do we need to list this subversion? Also, Fan Myopia. I've never heard of this thing.

• "In He Is My Master, Yoshitaka never quite gets to do the sick and perverted things he wants to do to his maids. Not even when it would make complete logical sense that he should be able to. The plot always contrives to stop him. It even seems, to all outward appearances, as if Mitsuki (and at one point Anna) would be totally okay with this. But it never happens. He doesn't even seem to consider Mitsuki a viable target." <- this means that he's not dom, but we don't have a female dom either. In fact, there isn't really BDSM here, if he doesn't do it. Not an example, imho.
• "However, there is that one picture in the third episode we get where Izumi is imagining where things will go if Anna becomes Yoshitaka's maid, and that's pretty much a full subversion as it is totally Played for Laughs (But it was probably only allowed because nothing actually happened)." <- subversion. Not needed.

• "Notably subverted in Secretary with Maggie Gyllenhaal as the sub and James Spader as the dom." <- yet another subversion.

• "Subverted in the Victor Cachat/Thandi Palane relationship in the Honor Harrington novels. She's a Hot Amazon Action Girl who prefers to be submissive in the bedroom." <- and another one...

• "Averted in one of the Jesse Stone novels, where a woman is the sub. The scene is played as unsettling, but it's more because she's cheating on her husband." <- aversion...

• "Another kind of subverted this by portraying one married couple as enjoying rape fantasies (with the woman being "raped"). But, as it turns out, the wife was poisoning the husband, so either Bondage Is Bad or she really wasn't enjoying it so much. " <- 1) it's "kind of subversion" 2)...or, you know, she could have other reasons to be poisoning him.

• "Interestingly subverted in an episode of Law & Order where one of the (female) victims is described as having frequented an S&M club where she participated (at least some of the time) as a sub. Unfortunately, she's dead before the opening so I guess that's all we get. " <- another subversion. It looks like we're listing mostly subversions. Well, that's how the supposed Double Standard really looks like.

• "Averted in the episode "Old Wounds" on The Inside. Cole Brant is a well-known dominant with a number of female submissives. While investigating the case, Rebecca admits her own submissive tendencies - though she has a panic attack when Brant cuffs her into a strappado - with a fairly even-handed discussion about the various benefits of BDSM. " <- aversion.

• " * Pretty much the case in Collar 6: most of the Doms we've seen so far were female. Exceptions include the unnamed Epic Mustache Guy who appeared in two strips, a male dom seen in a flashback, and the unseen but plot-relevant character Michael Kappel. All the subs are girls, too, but that has been changing in recent strips, as male slaves started appearing. In this case, the use of this trope probably has to do with the writer/artist actually being a male sub belonging to a female mistress in Real Life." <- if there are both male and female doms, this is not this trope.

Overall, I'd throw away almost half of all the "examples". Sorry if I won't be here for discussion for some time, but I'm moving to a new city and have some stuff to do...

EDIT: And correct me if I'm wrong, but are those "subversions" really subversions?

No, they are simply not examples. Tropes are narrative devices, not narrative dogmas. An author not using a certain trope is simply that author not using that trope. That's aversion, not subversions. And aversions should only be listed if they are relevant.

This kind of "subversions" tend to happen when the trope description make the erronious statement that all works use the trope. Such a statement does make the examples "valid", so the bad description need to be changed before the examples are moved/cut. Sometimes there's a need to make a new trope for the wayward examples, but I don't think that's the case here.

As for the second two of my three points, I agree that we shouldn't give them a lot of focus. They should be mentioned, but that's it. And we already have the Useful Notes page that we need, so the task is quite simple. I have now goven the trope a new first paragraph that cover all three points. I think we can probably chop a lot of the rest of the description now, but further analysis is required before we start working on that. Anyway. my new first paragraph is as follows:

When the authors want to include some BDSM into the plot, they might need to have some context and nuance to avoid having the audience mistake it for abuse. But what if there's no room for nuances, or they think Viewers Are Morons anyway? Simple! All Abusers Are Male, right? And BDSM is gender neutral, so the solution is simple: Make sure that it's never a woman being topped by a man.

This is way better, really.

...yet I still believe that linking to rape tropes is uncalled for. This is a trope about how to portray consensual BDSM and specifically so the viewers don't get the impression that it's rape. So why link to the rape tropes, if it has nothing to do with rape? Also, I'm removing aversions.

Actually, the same trope description says it when it makes the reference to porn. We are saying that, when a man gets tied up and abused, is funny. I find that, because SM in porn is explicitely humiliating for woman, this trope is actually a response to those porn plots and thus should not be seen as morally reprehensibly, just an odd extreme parody (or retribution) of the first.

Also, the name "Women are Doms" itself show the innerently pornographic origin of this trope, so I find that when there's an image of a smirking woman in a dominatrix suit, it's like, "porn stars with personality". Played for laugh, everything is okay.