This week’s guest blogger is Violet Grey (@v_greyauthor), a submissive feminist. As a straight submissive feminist myself, I’ve often had to deal with people who believe that’s an oxymoron. How can I be feminist yet also enjoy getting spanked by a man? Over the years I’ve given different answers, refining and explaining as I learn more about my own sexual desires and the ways in which the world tries to police them. I’m delighted to welcome Violet Grey today to give her own answer, as well as kick back against some of the toxic ideas that we need to challenge when we’re thinking about submission within relationships.

 Note: this post will discuss a few concepts that may be disturbing to some of you, including the ‘TradWife’ movement, religious policing of bodily autonomy and marital rape. 

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Sexual consent isn’t gendered – at least, it shouldn’t be. If you’re chatting someone up in the hope that you’ll get to have sexy fun with them later, you shouldn’t be putting pressure on them to do things they don’t want to do, no matter what your gender or theirs. So apologies to everyone who knows this already, but I just wanted to pick up my sledgehammer and really slam this point home. Men: your consent matters too.

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I’m not a massive fan of getting head. I’ve said it before, and people are occasionally horrified: how can I call myself a feminist if I don’t insist on oral equality? I am a huge fan of giving head: I take egomaniacal pride in being able to suck cock so well that it has my other half whimpering and trembling on the edge of orgasm for the duration of an entire Portishead song. So where’s the reciprocal pleasure? What of the famed ‘orgasm gap’? Surely I, as a feminist, should insist on oral reciprocity? No.

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This weekend, the Guardian published ‘A letter to my friends with children’ from a childfree woman who is sad that she sees less of the women she loves when they have children. “Each time one of my female friends has a baby, our friendship changes,” she explained, and a few parents I followed on Twitter understandably rolled their eyes and got a bit annoyed.

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I almost didn’t publish this blog post, because I wondered if it was a bit too harsh. It’s sat in my drafts for a while, getting edited and tweaked in an attempt to soften some of the blows. But this morning I read an article in Metro about men refusing to believe the evidence of women’s experience, and I figured ‘fuck it: why not?’ Let’s talk about Schroedinger’s Twat.

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