Ah, Maureen Dowd

I had planned to blog about Dowd's last column, the one about "Should Hillary Pretend to be a Flight Attendant." The question that seems to haunt Dowd is Why can't she seem to land a rock? She clearly seems to want one. Now that the late, great and much missed Molly Ivins has left for a great political protest in the sky, Dowd is the most visible, competent female columnist in the country. (Of course Coultergeist is more visible, but given all the insane things that woman has said, let's do our best to ignore her?) I'll talk about this issue later, but in the meanwhile, let's look at today's column: "Shake, Rattle and Roll."

This isn't a particularly political blog (although I'm a very political person), so I'm not going to go through a long list of Dowd's insane attacks against liberal politicians. Her vitriol against Al Gore took every nasty right-wing rumor and dressed it up with a little respectability. She has been hounding left-wing politicians with factually inaccurate issues for ages now.

But today's column takes this to a new level. Clearly Dowd knows her way around the BDSM world: Hillary is a "control freak," "the Debate Dominatrix" who "started disciplining" and "has continued to flick the whip," "using her voice, gaze and body language to such punishing effect that Obama looks as if he has been brought to heel." "After a tortured exchange... she owned him."

Meanwhile Obama, being a nice, sensitive guy, is clearly not a real man. He is pussy-whipped. "Obama does care." "He responds to the sort of belittling treatment," which makes sense because "he lives with another strong woman who knows how to keep him in line" and is "a master at the art of the loving conjugal put-down."

Rudy, on the other hand, is a real man. "Rudy will not be so easy to spank." He's probably a top too, and will "will go with relish to all the vulnerable places."

OK. So I don't think the BDSM references are just in my head. Dowd seems pretty obsessed with this stuff. If I were to do to Dowd what she does to everyone else, I would guess she's pretty obsessed with the BDSM stuff, but hasn't acted on it and still keeps it at the 'eww' factor in order to avoid coming to terms with her own desires. If I had to guess (and I do read her columns and even made it through her last book, Are Men Necessary), she would love to submit, but is from a generation where women had to fight for every ounce of power and so it just seems too horrible to admit that, on some level, some of the traditional values, 'men should be in charge' folks are right for some people some of the tim. How the hell can they be right? She's one of the most powerful fivethousand people in the country! There's no way in hell she's going to let her own nature betray her ambition that way. But that sort of arm-chair psychoanalysis of a public figure is silly. Almost as silly as most of Maureen Dowd's columns.


But this kind of talk drives me insane (and not in the good way). It is part of the marginalization of kinky folk and has a voyeuristic, tittering, smirking quality. Maybe most of the "of course, I'm not into that" are really wishing to submit to whatever their desires are. "Can you believe, oh my God! No one should do that." It enforces social norms by shame and humiliation.

Additionally, the idea that if someone is submissive they are weak is a stereotype, that, in my experience, is just not true! Speaking for myself, when I have a lousy job where I have to be subservient during the day, I have no interest in surrendering at night. I only ever surrender at night when I have authority and respect during the day.

Finally, someone who does want to dominate needs to do it with respect for the needs of the person they are dominating (duh). I bought into this stereotyped rendition of treating someone like absolute crap and ran away for a long time because of it. It continues a marginalization that serves to make it all the harder for people coming to terms with what truly excites them.