I am on the road to my marriage being this way. Last weekend was a major breakthrough for us...long talk. Complete openess. I honestly think it was the amount of stress he has in his life right now with family stuff that led him to being more open to this lifestyle. I know he has certainly took to it...yesterday and last night was testament to that.
. In my friend's case, she initially had trouble in both roles, both M and s, because as M she felt guilty telling her (f) s to do these things, feeling like she was imposing the role on her (she also had a m s that she struggled with, because he was so sweet and worked so hard outside the home, she hated turning this over to him, until she realized he was very happy to have these things; she fund out the hard way, when she said she would help, he got really upset , like she was criticizing his work.A friend of mine, a lifestyle D/s person (interestingly, she had been in both M roles and s roles in 24/7's) said something interesting about that. The problem feminists have with the s role is that as you point out, if it is a woman in that position that has been the 'traditional' role that they were forced into, doing most domestic work and so forth, and it seems to reinforce those old gender roles. She is probably as strong a feminist as you could want, has fought the battles and so forth, to try and eradicate all the bias that exist against women and so forth, and she said her epiphany happened at a women's conference where she met a woman in a long term relationship with another woman, they had kids together, been together many years, and she was in the 'traditional' SAHM kind of role, taking care of the kids, housework and so forth. The woman explained that with them, it is what they both really loved, that their roles are what they looked for, that her mate if asked would be glad to help around the house and so forth, but their relationship worked like that and they both were happy and content. The SAHM was accomplished, she was a lawyer, had worked at a high powered firm for a number of years and so forth, but having done that she found what she was doing worked for her, and it wasn't coerced, her mate would have happily made it more equal, but that is how it worked.
The basic answer is if you are choosing to do this,if it fulfills you, if you aren't forced into it, then it is within the idea of feminism, about women being able to make choices about what they do and how they live, rather then being forced into. A woman who works outside the home, and then has a mate who basically says "I am too tired from working, that is your job", said or unsaid, is not what we are talking about, we are talking about someone who gets a sense of self in doing these things,rather then feeling like a doormat expected to do this stuff (or this is what she told me), and I can understand that. It is like the battles over things like wearing heels, being girly girly versus 'dressing down', and the answer seems to be that if you are doing these things to suit yourself, it is fine, if you are doing it to suit someone else where you get nothing out of it, it isn't
, but that's the extent of my love for domestic chores. I love cleaning at other people's places, though.
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