Dominant men, women, and BDSM suspicion that Ms. E. Sutton must really be a man
Mary's pet,
Thanks for your clarification:
marys_pet said:
.... Within the BDSM community the largest demographic is submissive men. Dominant men and submissive women are present in lesser numbers than submissive men, and dominant women are the smallest group.
which makes sense.
It occurs to me the skepticism expressed in your initial comment in post 93 of 21 July 2010 (above); that is:
marys_pet said:
Ms. (if she is indeed a 'Ms.' — there are a great many doubts about that in the BDSM community) Sutton's propaganda concerning the societal transformation she claims is underway ignores the presence of so many submissive women in the world, and so few dominant women.
most likely follows from your choice of reference group, "the BDSM community."
As I noted in post 98 of 21 July 2010 (above), the BDSM community cannot be considered representative of the population at large. Rather, it is a subgroup consisting of people who are sexually turned by bondage, domination, sadism and masochism (obviously). (There are some other flavors as well, according to Wikipedia, which you're familiar with no doubt.)
Now, suppose the subset of the BDSM community that finds "bondage, domination and sadism" appealing includes more men — perhaps many more men — than women. If so, there would be more dominant men than dominant women in the BDSM community. Suppose also the subset of this community that finds masochism appealing also includes more men than women. (Conceivably this could be a result of men being more accustomed than women, generally speaking, to working in corporate, military, sports, and political organizations where they do what the boss tells them to do.) If so, the subset of masochistic men would also be larger than the subset of masochistic women, and considerably larger as well than the subset of dominant men. (The latter is implied because there are more followers — masochists, in the case of the BDSM community — than leaders in any sizable group of people.)
Then, it would follow that your statement:
marys_pet said:
…. Within the BDSM community the largest demographic is submissive men. Dominant men and submissive women are present in lesser numbers than submissive men, and dominant women are the smallest group.
is true. (As an aside, it would also follow that in the BDSM community there are significantly more men than women. In the population at large, of course, the female/male ratio is close to 1 [50/50].)
In addition to the above, suppose dominant women* tend mostly to be members of a different subculture; i.e., the femdom (/female-led relationships) subculture, and they tend to stay away from the BDSM community because, as you point out, most of the dominants there are men. (There may be other reasons as well.) It would then make sense that in the BDSM community there is widespread suspicion Ms. Elise Sutton must really be a man. A logical reason would be that because almost all the dominants are men in the BDSM community, Ms. Elise Sutton must really be a man in disguise.
But, this suspicion is based on the male v. female breakdown in the subgroups of the BDSM community, not the male v. female breakdown in the population at large nor in the female-led relationships community where dominant women, I suggest, are more likely to be found.
—Custer
* A large percentage of dominant women presumably don’t identify themselves with any subculture of a sexual nature, at least in part because they suspect or know that if their desire to dominate men sexually is “outed” that would result in being viciously attacked and possibly destroyed in their positions of (e.g.) political or business leadership.
