John's Dilemma in Helen's "Take Clothes Off As Directed"

[fiercelydreamed]

I got involved in a very interesting discussion over at cathexys' LJ of helenish's Take Clothes Off As Directed, a Stargate: Atlantis story that the author describes as an "unauthorized homage" to Xanthe's Coming Home and General & Dr. Sheppard. For those who aren't familiar with either, Xanthe created an alternate universe where social and sexual roles were determined not by gender/sex but by one's identification as a "top" or a "sub." This discussion took place in a locked post, but Cathexys suggested that I make my interpretation available in a public post.

cathexys's original post raised the question of whether or not Helen's story treats power roles as biologically-based or culturally constructed. A lot of people read this story as an allegory for sexism and a pretty brilliant feminist critique of the struggles people face trying to live within socially-constructed roles framed as natural. However, the story contains a line that complicates this reading: "John had known he was a sub since he was six and lost his virginity at 17 with his high school girlfriend, tied to her bed with knee socks with unicorns on them." This line prompted Cathexys to wonder about choice and visibility of identity in this world:

"The extreme imbalance of the system makes it difficult to maintain sub/toppiness as *choice*. The story slides between identity positions that are written on the body (like sex [and race]), which fit with the overall allegorical thrust and the various moments of clear feminist struggles, and identity positions that may be in-born but that are not as easily detectable in random daily encounters. As such, the sentence reads like sexual orientation more than gender, which means it can be hidden, that it needs to be announced by the subject in question." [Used gratefully with her permission.]

I got into the discussion to argue that John's identification of himself as a sub at a young age doesn't contradict with a constructivist reading; this post explains how I personally read this story.

When I talk about the BDSM-based alternate universe, I'm considering the way it functions in Helen's story (TCOAD for short). I should note that I've only read parts of Xanthe's Coming Home (in most of the ways that count, I see it as a very traditional romance novel, and that's not a genre I personally enjoy). When I'm speculating about social constructions in TCOAD, it's entirely possible that Xanthe addressed these issues in her novels and that I'm not aware of it. It's Helen's version of the world that captured me, and that's what this post will be focusing on. (Also, comments in the post suggested that Helen's world differs from Xanthe's in subtle but important ways.) Most of this post comes directly from comments I made in the original discussion, which I've restructured a little to make sense outside of the comment-threads. Because that post was locked, I'll be leaving out the names of the other people involved in the discussion; if you recognize any part of this as a response to something you said, let me know and I will be happy to include your name so that I can credit your ideas properly. Also, if I've mis-characterized any of the points or arguments in trying to summarize them, please let me know.

To me, TCOAD is a queer love story. It looks at two characters (John and Rodney) who are living within the roles available to them, who feel some identification with those roles, and who choose partners deemed appropriate by the structure of those roles. However, neither of them performs those roles in traditional ways, they don't identify with all aspects of those roles, and those roles don't contain all aspects of their selves, identities, or desires. In the context of the BDSM world, Xanthe's Coming Home is emphatically a straight love story, and a top/top or bottom/bottom partnering would be a gay one. John and Rodney as Helen write them are living deviantly within the roles available to them -- they're manipulating the social scripts to find room to breathe, but they're renegotiating the available social constructions rather than rejecting them outright.

As many people in the original discussion pointed out, the world(s) Helen and Xanthe write don't work like our version of BDSM. I don't know whether or not this was intentional on Xanthe's part, but her establishment of top/sub (as opposed to the usual lexical pairs of "top/bottom" or "dominant/submissive") flagged that for me immediately. Someone stated that she didn't think this world mapped well onto BDSM-as-structured-kink because any kink practiced 24/7 has become a lifestyle. I agree -- the role structure in Xanthe's world doesn't correspond to what we think of as kink, because kinkiness is a sexual deviation from cultural norms, and in this verse BDSM power roles are the cultural norm. The question she raised of whether lifestyling is still kink is an interesting one (and not one I've ever personally tried to answer, so I'm curious to hear your thoughts on it), but I'd say that the sub/top roles in this 'verse aren't the same as BDSM lifestylers in our world either. Again, a lifestyle is a set of activities that differs from a given culture's default set (unlike kink, this difference needn't be a deviation -- lots of lifestyles are considered acceptable normal, or within standard deviation to use a statistical metaphor), and top/sub roles are completely normative in that verse.

The most important difference I see between our BDSM and this verse centers on the question of consent. A common understanding of BDSM (though by no means the only one) is that it hinges on the submissive's ability to consent or to withdraw consent; the dom(me) may structure and control everything that happens within a BDSM situation, but the sub's ability to end their act of submission gives them power. The subs in Helen's world don't seem to be able to withdraw consent for their social subjugation (any more than many women in ours can) -- they can try to gain rights and respects as subs, but they can't "safeword out" and call a halt to the power roles that structure their society.

Helen never addresses how children come to occupy the role of subs or tops (I don't know if Xanthe does), but it seems that they're securely positioned in those roles by adolescence. Several people wondered how children could identify as roles we think of as sexual -- or how they could do so if those roles weren't biological and innate. Also, several people raised the question of why anyone would choose subhood, given their disempowerment, and John's very unpleasant experiences.

I imagine that children in this 'verse end up with power roles the way children in ours would end up with gender roles if bodies weren't determinant of gender. Some children will feel identification with aspects of one role or the other and claim it, which is what John seems to do. Though Helen never addresses this, I imagine that some children might not identify with either, in which case the adults around them (seeing these kids as "a little delayed" or "late bloomers") would likely begin to read a role onto their personalities and start nudging them towards it (in that same "gentle" way many parents nudge their kids toward gender-normative behaviors even while allowing some deviancy).

Regarding why someone would choose subhood, I think a lot of women (myself included, at some times) enjoy their experiences of their own femaleness, the particular powers and pleasures that it brings, and so given a true choice would still choose it in spite of the very real penalties of sexism. Many little girls get real pleasure out of performing femaleness, with all of its limitations and subjugations. For children, good and voluntary role performance (of any kind of role) can bring enjoyment and pride (just as poor or unintentionally deviant performance brings shame and penalties). I don't find it that hard to believe that young children would choose subhood, given that they can't critically understand what that choice means. I think it's mostly problematic to imagine choosing that role as someone not socialized into their power system; I know a lot of kinky, proudly submissive people, but only a minority identify so strongly as subs that they voluntarily have that role structure the rest of their lives.

This gets us to the question of what subhood means to John, whether passing as a top would solve his problems, and the way he and Rodney work as a couple. As I said earlier, I read Helen's John and Rodney as queer characters -- their sexualities and their social performances of power roles (equivalent in this 'verse to gender roles) don't fit with the socially accepted dichotomies. They certainly aren't analagous to gay (that'd be a top/top or sub/sub relationship); their queerness lies in their lack of strong polarization. (I had a boyfriend who, in dress and interaction, did his gender very similarly to the way I did mine at the time, and we could never consider ourselves a straight couple. Not only because I was queer-identified, but because those structures didn't encompass the way we related. More on this stuff later.)

In Read My Lips, Riki Anne Wilchins writes, "I am not unhappy with the gendered alternatives, only the way they are administered [...] Movement, mix and match, are strictly prohibited" (150). I imagine this is the way John feels about the power roles. If we accept that key line (John had known he was a sub since he was six) as evidence that he feels an authentic identification with subness, then his problem is not that he is a sub but what his being a sub means to everyone else. We don't see much of John's desires -- in the sex scenes, the way Helen writes him invokes for me Deborah Tolman's descriptions of the "silent and confused" bodies of teenage girls who avoid connecting to their own desires out of fear of the consequences (the power those desires might have, or what it would mean to actively want things that aren't socially acceptable). I'm still on the fence about whether his fantasies about Rodney clearly show that his desires are in keeping with the sub role -- I buy that he enjoys some things that subs are supposed to enjoy, I just don't know if the absence of fantasies about things tops are supposed to enjoy means that he isn't into them or that he lacks (personal, cultural) permission to consider them. I'm leaning towards the interpretation that he genuinely likes and prefers subbing, but not in the ways he thinks are expected of him.

We don't ever get enough of a view into Rodney to know if the role of top feels authentic for him -- the characterization suggests that he likes what he likes in the sack, if that makes him a top to others then fine, but damned if he's going to do anything he dislikes to accomodate their reading of him. His problem with the sexual script John keeps trying to implement isn't primarily that he (Rodney) doesn't find it appealing (though he doesn't), it's that he's (rightly) convinced that John doesn't really desire it either -- he's just been fucked by enough assholes that he believes sex isn't legitimate unless he hates it.

Several people asked why John doesn't try to pass as a top -- he seems so unhappy with what that role forces onto him socially, and Helen never indicates clearly that he enjoys any aspect of subhood outside the bedroom. This led to some pretty fascinating conjectures about what social structures might make power roles a matter of public knowledge and public record, how early that social positioning becomes public and fixed, what it would take to hide that history in both social and institutional eyes, and whether social conditioning could write those roles on the body (through mannerisms, proxemics, etc.) in a way that would remain visible even through attempts to cover. I read this discussion with interest but didn't participate, because I accept the idea that John does authentically identify as a sub -- and if that's the case, then suggesting he pass as a top is suggesting he stay in the closet.

If he presents as a top, then he's sparing himself from having to perform the role of subness but rendering himself invisible to potential sexual partners. He becomes Rosalind in As You Like It -- not to mention every straight-acting man who seeks out anonymous sex in gay bars because he can't figure out how else to get the partners he wants without the marked and disempowered public identity he doesn't. Like I said, John's problem with being read as a sub isn't that he doesn't identify as one (and I'm guessing there are even some social components of subness that he enjoys), it's that there are a lot of compulsory aspects of that identity he doesn't like and doesn't want. He loses out if he goes to the effort of passing as a top, because he has to solicit all partners either in secrecy or under false and confusing pretenses (if he successfully wooed a top as another top, that partner would be expecting something different in the sack than John wanted to provide). He loses out if he goes to the effort of passing as a normative sub, because then he may attract partners who expect that normative performance to extend to the bedroom (which, of course, happens to straight women all the time). In Helenish's story, he's resigned himself to presenting as authentically as he can and knowing that most people won't read his presentation closely enough to realize that his deviance (when visible at all) is intentional and not a failure or lack of skillfulness -- let alone accept his authentic and unscripted identity, as Rodney actually does. What I find striking, realistic, and saddening is that John's committed to deviating from social expectations but has been sufficiently beaten down by former partners that he forces his own conformity to the sexual expectations. I think of a lot of strong, smart, feminist women I know who reject conventional beauty imperatives, call sexism out when they see it, and maintain their rights to define themselves as women -- but still worry that their partners dislike their unshaven legs, feel uncomfortable masturbating, or can't achieve orgasm during partner-sex because they don't feel able to articulate their desires or because they worry that their unconstrained responses to pleasurable sensations will be "weird" or "turn off" their partners. It's easy (relatively speaking) to nonconform socially if you know that the people who will like you less for it are the people you dislike or don't respect anyway. Being rejected for your nonconformance by the people you love and desire will hit you where you live.

As I mentioned before, this reading of John's subhood and how he occupies that role (by accepting the label but willfully deviating from the script for it, knowing that when he ventures off-script his differences are either not visible or are illegible) are influenced by my personal experiences -- I identify strongly with the dilemmas he faces. I think John's position with regards to his subbiness is a lot like mine with regards to my gender. I'm female-bodied, grew up identifying myself as female, but I always had a sense that I wasn't fully encompassed and described by that role -- not all parts of the role fit for me, and lots of me did not fit within that role.The main difference between my understanding of my gender and John's understanding of his subbiness is that John felt an identification with that role by the age of six, whereas I figured out sometime in college that I could have been born male-bodied and raised male-identified and probably would have fit that role just as well (or just as poorly).

I've spent a lot of my life trying to negotiate the roles available to me. There have been times when I tried hard to feel accepted and attractive in a feminine way, and times when I performed my gender as queerly as I could without rejecting my body (which I like fine, I just don't like what it means to others) or my accustomed pronoun set. Lately, I've started resigning myself to the fact that no amount of effort can render my "authentic" self fully visible and legible to all people in all settings (especially as I experience my identity to be reactionary, situational, and fluidly changing over time). I've found that the harder I try to make my self readable, the more I end up acting in ways that feel artificial and uncomfortable to me. Currently I'm trying to act in ways that feel authentic regardless of what picture that presents for others, in hopes that the comfort that comes from behaving authentically will exceed the discomfort of being (unavoidably) misread. Since I don't have control over the way others read my identity and I'm no longer trying to force the issue through emphatic presentation, I spend a lot of my life unintentionally/involuntarily passing as the bearer of identities that don't fit. Depending on context, I am read as normatively female (or intelligibly female even if deviant), I am read as straight or as a lesbian (but rarely as queer, because desire doesn't have the visibility of identity unless you're engaging people on a sexual level in public), and whether or not I'm read as Jewish depends on the level of knowledge of the people around me (or whether it comes up in conversation). There are times I perform the unmarked identity for ease or safety, times when I fully perform the marked one because I enjoy it, but mostly I try to occupy the in-between spaces that I find authentic knowing that no script exists to allow others to correctly interpret my performance.


ETA: Now with a section of cathexys's original post for clarification. [11/20/2006]