Being a feminist kinkster

A thought occurred to me the other day:

But if it's my sexual agency, my power - isn't it mine to give away if I want?

If, as per feminism, I am an agent of my own free will, if I own my own agency, if I have the power to make choices for myself, why can't I sometimes choose - CHOOSE - to give that power away to someone else?


As has probably now been made quite clear, I identify as a feminist.  I firmly believe that I am the equal of anyone on the planet - not the same, but equal - that I am fully capable of making my own choices, that no one has the right to take those choices away from me.  I believe that I am a person, too - and that we are all people, even the ones I don't like.


What's probably painfully obvious is that I also identify as kinky.  And while as a switch, there are definitely times when I want to be giving out the beatings, more often than not I want to be on the receiving end.  (And sometimes, I just want to go to sleep oh god just let me sleep.)  (Who am I kidding, most times I want to sleep.  Mmm, sleep.)

And I've spent a lot of time, well, anguishing over these two parts of my identity and trying to bring them in to alignment with the whole of me.  It's not an easy fit for me.  Being less than anyone doesn't go down easy.  This entry is the result of a lot of reading, and a fair number of years of thinking distilled.

I see no signs of being finished with the whole "cohesive identity" thing yet; I fully expect that to take a lifetime.  And there's a lot to unpack, I think, with kink and the intersection with the culture I live in.  (Note to self:  write about kink intersectionality at some point.)

But, my will, my power, my agency, belong to me - inasmuch as they can belong to anyone raised in the miasma of the patriarchy.  I may not own every aspect of it, and I may not understand owning it completely.  I may not even fully know how far that agency goes. After all, I was raised under the memo that I don't own that, that I am subject to someone else's will.  But even if that ownership is a work in progress, I am choosing - there's that word again - to act as if it isn't.  To own, in totality, what I have, and to act as if I do completely own my own agency.

So therefore, if the choices are mine, why can't I give them away?

But, and this is a big but, the important part is that I am in fact choosing.  It is, incontrovertably, my choice to give away my agency, or part of it, to Jay.  Sometimes.  Under certain circumstances.  Where I am completely involved and invested in negotiating what those circumstances are, and just what choices I'm giving up.

There's a huge, vast difference for me in choosing to give away  my choices, my power, and having them taken away from me.  Having my choices taken away from me, my freedom as a person taken away, happens every day, in big ways and small - from court rulings and laws enacted that take away from my bodily autonomy and limit my access to reproductive healthcare, to the person on the street who says "Oh honey you really shouldn't wear that".  It's a kind of theft; it's a violation.

But it's a different feeling and experience than voluntarily giving up a choice, or a group of choices, or a fair number of choices.  It's different when it's a conscious choice.  Regardless of what informs or motivates that choice.

So.  If it's mine - and I have to function as and believe that it is - why can't I give it away?